I'm pretty sure the bar card phrasing makes for a convincing argument in court lol. I'd also wager that the Texas bar doesn't align with the crazy 10th amendment rhetoric in Rick Perry's book, which, if were being honest, is where the current 10th amendment advocacy and thought leadership is at the moment.

You live in a fantasy world if you think the internet usage scenarios I'm referring to are Facebook and social media. I'm talking about the ability to actually live a respectable life that resembles modern society. Today the private sector directly and indirectly cut off services because there is an expectation that people can just use the internet. Banking is a huge example here where the poor are literally off the grid, which hurts them and us in the process.

Susan Crawford's book sums it up quite nicely.

As for your direct competition, municipal broadband is not direct competition, because that would require comparative services with what the private sector offers. I for one am quite happy with USPS, Medicare, Social Security, DoT, and host of other public services that used to be private. UK provides a great broadband model where wholesale capacity is public and service setup, internal performance and sales is privatized. Today in the US, you have 4 giant telecoms controlling the Tier 1 back haul capacity and the residential and commercial endpoints. It's the same shit AT&T was doing prior to the Ma Bell breakup.

Clearly you don't appreciate my sarcasm. I agree with you anonymous coward.

Nice explanation in theory. Unfortunately the infrastructure equation and values change when an infrastructure classes moves from being "new capacity" to "mission-critical." Today our politicians are treating mission-critical US broadband infrastructure as a cute side project, when it reality the internet has become a vital and essential part of our societal fabric. You can literally slice America in half between the haves and have nots. The poor, rural, and uneducated, homeless, the low income, all have a more difficult time functioning in today's internet driven economy than if they were living in the 70's and 80's. Broadband accessibility literally is a proxy for the new racial and classist divide.

I have specialized in PPP deals in my masters program. The deals in the US are all disasters for the public. They are backdoor taxes by the states. Regulatory and long-run fiscal outlooks for all the bond deals are piss poor and a net loss for the local and state governments. On top of this, there are horrible financial implications for the public if the private bonds default. The states should not be the ones paying for roads in the first place, especially during the economic conditions of the past 25 years. The federal government should be appropriating block grants for roads.

As a Texan, one thing that most Texans don't recognize is that Texas had a shit economy and was severely in debt, in terms of real goods. It had little productive capacity. The decision to join the union was a economic necessity at the time. Most people unfortunately lose this narrative and supplant it with this patriotic theme which is less than accurate.

You'd fail law school. 10th amendment is an throw away amendment that holds no legal meaning or legal standard. It's used today to galvanize the states rights / confederate base but there is no sound legal jurisprudence that has ever been accepted by the Supreme Court.

Correction - "wasn't successful"

They are monopolies in most cases and oligopolies in the rest. There is no rationale to justify the current broadband build strategy for the US other than monopolistic and abusive.

As for rural broadband initiative, it's not expensive at all. The fact that it was successful speaks more to the political will to deficit spend (which this country badly needs to increase.) Our political class has got it into their heads that federal appropriations need to be paid for in the same way that state gov, local gov, private businesses, and households do. This is FALSE.

Federal taxes do not pay for federal appropriations. "Taxes for revenue is a myth."

Anyone who has studied corporate shareholder agreements i.e. Lawyers, MBAs, finances ppl, knows that shareholder voting is a joke. Shareholders are not even legally "owners" of the company. This is a myth perpetuated by Friedman and other Chicago school economists. Shareholders are known as "residual claimants" with very limited and restricted rights, and a far far cry from 'owners' in the traditional sense of the word.

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What are you hiding? Do you shit gold nuggets?

I use Plex server (free) on my laptop which then is discoverable as a DLNA server on my Panasonic smart tv. Works great even with mkv files! The only downside is that non-HD files don't render as cleanly as when viewing on PC.

I meant desktop class gaming.

As far as the 150w vs 15w argument I disagree. Desktop components are typically less efficient than mobile components of the same generation. When you start comparing across 2-3 generations, than mobile components can easily perform as well as desktop components 2-3 gen behind. Desktop gaming targets multiple hardware generations usually so you have to factor that in, as game Devs always do. Today more game Devs are targeting hardware chips for better optimization.

  The xbox one is 30w TDP APU. However in general, if we are talking similar architectural class of components, then yes, more power is better.

If they are iPad/iphone class games then I'm okay with that. But real gaming would be docked anyways with a KB and mouse.