Since the cellphones all connect to local towers and infrastructure, AT&T should actually see a rolling traffic spike as each tower and (possibly) it's back-haul connections are overwhelmed. I'm no wireless engineer, but I'd suspect the current congestion issues are mostly tower resource related.
And that's where cost taxes come in.
I'd be inclined to agree with you, but unfortunately those taxes very rarely, if ever, go towards covering the costs society bears for that activity. Take smoking taxes. Here in Wisconsin there is a $1 per pack extra tax on the stuff. If your theory held true, that extra money the state collects on behalf of society should go to fund hospitals and prevention programs. Instead it is a bait and switch - tax something unpopular to make an attempt to close a very large budget hole. That is the real reason for all these new exotic taxing schemes, and the politicos know which buttons to hit to bring the useful idiots out in droves to support it.
I live out in the sticks where Internet is either satellite or dial-up, and actually priced out a balloon to get line of site for the local wireless provider since neither choice was appealing. I looked at advertising balloons, as they were generally large enough to hoist a payload and a bit more durable. For the balloon, cable tether, anchor, a supply of helium, solar panels, strobe (for aircraft), battery, etc. was something like $1500 at the time. It was a bit more for the UFO shaped one to fsck with the neighbors.
The part you are forgetting is that once the information is collected you have no way of knowing how long it is kept. Once you become a person of interest (suspect, political target, etc), they will be looking at historical information to see where you have been, tie it to the transaction at the bank, surveillance cams in Walmart and McD's, etc. You don't really need to have someone under full time surveillance - all the pieces are already there recorded and stored.
it's really jarring to go in and then suddenly come out and find we're in the middle of a huge storm or something without even knowing about it.
Too true. I'm was in a temp office without windows due to a remodel. One day it snowed 16 inches from no snow cover while I was inside. I put in a webcam in an out of the way window the next day.
Makes you wonder how many voted for screw, but only got a wedg-e
That would be the monkeysphere at work. Did they do anything to raise their "value" in the eyes of the decision makers above cardboard cutout?
A job is about more than pure output. There are many ways to have face time, and not all of them require face-to-face time.
Exactly! Being forced to be at a specific location for a set period of time has substituted for performance and quality metrics. They can be done, but are very hard to quantify. That and a lot of managers are just as lazy as their reports are.
With the technology we have today, there is zero reason to move your biomass to another place unless you have to actually touch something. The whole concept of "going to work" is silly, and a hold over from a bygone era. People seriously need to get behind teleworking with enthusiasm. Can't get much greener/cheaper than that!
You may think they don't do enough or as much as they used to, but it still exists and is still important.
That is why I said managed, rather than non-existent. Stories have been delayed and modified quite often at the request of government. It's not so much that the information gets out, since it is hard to truly stop disclosure. NSA wiretapping - Delayed at the request of government, Yellowcake/Joseph Wilson incident - war buildup/political revenge, too many examples of news and govt getting into bed to list. The US news is very much a managed resource, since information is power. Heck, it would be completely stupid of them to ignore such a powerful tool.
Then there is the fact that you almost never see anything that would remotely indicate a change from the current Oligarchy. 2004 arrest of two presidential candidates, investigative work by GATA (although that is gaining traction), Ron Paul's approval numbers higher than a lot of "front runner" R candidates but almost zero media coverage, etc.
A lot of it could be explained away as individual incidents, but taken as a whole it points to a troubling reality.
we must continue to have newspapers in our society. Newspapers are the bulk of the 4th branch of government
What we need is accurate and timely information in our society, not newspapers. I will agree that newspapers are the 4th branch off gov.t, seeing as they are mostly owned by a few huge corporations with a political agenda. More than just general bias, since that has been prevalent since newspapers began. Their real purpose nowadays is managing opinions and information so that the status quo is the only option presented, not research. That died in the 70s with Watergate, rather than any monopoly benefits being curtailed.
Let them die - technology has moved on and so should they.
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
