Economics is generally a terrible way to try to understand a motivation since, broken down to its roots, it has no value judgements in it. Every economic model or approach takes an outside value preference as an input.

If an antique car can be classified as 'useful', then so can an antique computer. It can still do all the things a computing machine can do.

'Useful' is subjective, esp living in a society where our basic needs are so easily met (at least for the type of person who is likely posting here).

While people might wrap up their reasons in something with more authority or social support behind it, ultimately, most projects we do are 'because it is cool'.

Well, a nice high profile one would be the entire McCarthy era, and Hover's infiltration of civil right's organizations under the argument that they were aligned with communists.

Given the low visibility slashdot has today, probably not many if any at all. Slashdot just isn't the major nexus it once was, and using paid shills here would likely not be all that worthwhile.

On the other hand, the US has always had a rather loose interpretation of 'war fighting outside' which allowed for usage on disruptive elements of American society too. How much it is done is a big question though.

Eh, getting caught at it, even if everyone else is doing it too, is still news worthy.

It is one thing to blindly expect things to work out, but this person did their due diligence and made their decision based off the promise that the expected service was available. It is fair to want things that are promised to you after handing over massive amounts of money.

Title II does something similar, including having a fund in place to help cushion the cost of expensive hookups.

Not sure that really changes the thrust of the idea since, unless you land is completely contained within protected parcels, they can run a line via another route. It is no different than them saying 'well, your next door neighbor does not want us digging up their lawn, so it is their fault you do not have service'

Esp since the executives making the decisions usually have significantly larger personal warchests to sit on during such a dispute than average workers. Such a move barely hurts them.

Not really.

While people on slashdot might agree with this proposal, politically it is no different than all those other 'stunt' bills that have no chance of passing. The people proposing it get to stand up and say 'look what I did!', while being safe from any negative publicity from effects of their actions if it did pass. This IS pretending to lead.

I suspect that for most people it is not even a matter of 'I don't care as long a I am safe', but of 'if I do not vote to keep my representative in place, one from the OTHER side might get the seat!', so most just get reelected over and over no matter what they do.

Well, the only two possible outcomes are there is either systemic sexism, or women really are inferior otherwise they would meet the same standards and the meritocracy would see similar advancement and careers.

The inverse is often used as a test too, and is not considered offensive.

It should also be noted that in media, the number of projects that fail the reverse is negligible, while the former is extremely common, even in content that passes the first.. Thus the inverse is useful in demonstrating just how minimal the requirement should be and how unidirectionally it tends to fail.