I watched it and thought it was funny. I didn't expect academy award worthy acting, just some physical comedy, dirty jokes, and special effects. It had all three and a sweet russian tank. T-54 I think.

Except that everyone is not doing this. The data collected by the big routers and voice switches can still be very incriminating to someone of a criminal or political, but I repeat myself, inclination. All of these capabilities are built into the hardware because the US government and other governments around the world requires it as part of 'lawful intercept' regulations.

FTFY

Actually what reduced the crime was the Cosby Show. Since that show came out crime stats have gotten better and better.

I've never seen that. WAN links typically all aggregate back to the BOE/DOE headquarters in the county, or a large high school, and then there is an IP service that is also leased. The WAN links are generally 1GE or 10GE and the IP service then is provided to that location as a separate product and circuit and usually is 'right sized' to be anywhere from 250 mbps to 2-3gbps depending on the size of the county. Usually that IP service is still overkill. I'm not saying that based on "Oh that looks like way too much for a school" but "Wow these guys are peaking at 4% max utilization on that link" ellipsis ellipsis ellipsis

Actually I work for a company that specializes in rural areas. Not Alaska or Wyoming rural, but we've built fiber into schools in towns too small for a gas station.
Like I said, if you fill out the right forms there is a ton of funding available.

If that's what you're worried about, we already know that this particular galaxy supports life. Our chances of finding it in one of the others was astronomically smaller anyway.

A steampunk universe, most likely.

At least that only violates one person's privacy.

This doesn't jive with my experience. K-12 schools can get federal funding for IP connectivity and in my experience they generally end up with way more than they need. I've seen bus garages with Gigabit connections and elementary schools with 10Gigabit. That's enough bandwidth to aggregate thousands of broadband customers. Maybe qualifying for that funding is a pain or has limitations that some schools don't qualify for, but there's definitely a LOT of money spent every year subsidizing new fiber for schools.

Or the Connect America Fund, which subsidizes rural telecom buildouts. Rural areas being predominately poor and expensive to reach.

You'd be surprised at how many of these we are still using, especially in the far north or the desert areas where it is both flat and sparsely populated.
Most of those old legacy microwaves only go up to a DS3 though, which is 28 T1s or about 45 mpbs of encapsulated Ethernet traffic.
Now there is a new generation of microwave gear going in for Wireless ISPs and cellular backhaul. A lot of it already goes up to a gigabit I believe. I'm a fiber guy though so I don't know too much about them.

You understand why you get cash back though right? You get cash back because Visa/MC are charging so much extra they can afford kickbacks to the user.
By the same logic, CurrentC would be able to afford the same sort of rewards programs to get you to NOT use Visa/MC. Just because they haven't announced this doesn't mean they're not going to do it. If anything, I would expect more lucrative rewards programs because they're cutting out that middleman entirely.

He's not claiming a loss. He's listing Goodwill on his balance sheet. Since this is an 'intangible' asset it's taxed differently than a huge stadium.

To an ever increasing portion of the population, everything is about politics.