http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1572/teens-cell-phones-text-messages from April 2010.
I just wish instead of the $30B on this project they spent the money to lay extra track for the Amtrak route between Sacramento and San Jose. And also maybe rework the route through the carniquez strait. I live in Sacramento and don't need high speed rail but rail that at least will go about 60mph and not have to sit in the middle of a corn field waiting for a freight train.
Extending BART to Tracy/Stockton, Antioch and San Rafael/Petaluma will also help alleviate the traffic.
LA is a lost cause as it's just a giant suburb. I like my road trips so would just hop in the car and drive there although usually I just bypass it and go straight to Arizona.
The hookers and blow are awesome. Things are great. I don't have a care in the world.
The major incumbents do not want fast low-latency broadband. It will cut into their profits. Right now they make 15.99/month of a me for basically doing nothing. That's what I pay for most basic land line in order to have DSL from my ISP. The only time I hooked a phone up to it was to figure out which phone jack to plug my dsl modem into. My DSL provider also has to pay AT&T $20 for access to provide my DSL. So, of the $40/month I pay for DSL, AT&T gets $35 and my provider gets $5.
For my cell phone I pay $49.99. I suppose I only need the phone minutes because my carrier requires it. So I got the minimum. Why it costs $10/month for unlimited texting is beyond me considering I have "unlimited" internet for the same amount. Why can't I just get a mobile phone with unlimited internet and use that for voice, data and text? Why does it need to be split up? Oh, I forget profits.
And for those who think well it's just all capitalism and AT&T has to recoup the costs of maintaining their infrastructure let me tell you a story.
I work for a public access television station and when Uverse came to town I was involved with getting our signal on to their system. The process went like this:
- Conference call with four AT&T reps. They spent the first 15 minutes gabbing a bunch of marketing crap about the Uverse system. I asked them what this had to do with getting our signal to them and could we please talk about that. They remarked "I didn't realize your time was so important". Apparently theirs isn't but we had four reps from our end and I sure didn't want to waste a bunch of time.
- Then we had a site visit. Three reps in stinky leather jackets who could easily be mistaken as Mafioso. They took a bunch of pictures and asked a bunch of lame questions.
- Then we had yet another conference call with four of the reps to make sure we did everything required as determined by the site visit.
- They then sent out an installer for a T1 line. Not once but twice. The installer had absolutely no clue they were installing the T1 on behalf of AT&T not us. I didn't order it. I did not care. He kept handing me cards and telling me where the POE was. I threw the cards away. Not my responsibility.
- Finally the day of installation came. Two techs and their manager drove up 350 miles from LA in two separate vehicles to install the equipment. All eight rack spaces of it. Took them all day.
Contrast this with how Comcast got our signal:
- Head end tech calls me to make an appt to install the equipment. Five minute call.
- Head end tech arrives with one rack space unit hands it to me and says plug audio in here, video in there and the fiber in here. Then leaves.
- I spend 15 minutes racking the unit and the job is done.
Over the past week I've had the following countries hitting my ssh:
108 location: RO
121 location: CZ
122 location: HU
133 location: AU
142 location: HK
143 location: MX
145 location: BR
151 location: TH
152 location: CO
158 location: IN
183 location: MU
184 location: NL
191 location: ES
205 location: ININ
234 location: JP
252 location: FR
270 location: CA
306 location: PL
313 location: GB
314 location: TW
355 location: CNCN
364 location: IT
379 location: RU
399 location: KR
632 location: DE
1361 location: CN
Surely the best way would be to download a torrent from The Pirate Bay in front of the Judge, leave it downloading during the trial (no intervention), and then once it was complete, show that you downloaded a copyrighted piece of material.
While at the same time the sysadmin at the piratebay monitors connections from the courthouse and reroutes the request for the pirated torrent to http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4469310/Rick_Astley_-_Never_gonna_give_you_up.avi.4469310.TPB.torrent
I believe the author was citing Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. Specifically, his Copyright regime vs. civil liberties keynote address. As popularized by the article mentioned in the recent slashdot post Interview With Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge
In this address Falkvinge stated while the Pirate Party is only the tenth largest party in Swedish politics. This was a first for a newly formed party and support is rapidly growing (especially under the youth demographic.)
His presentation showed a graphic pie chart with the Pirate Party as a wedge between the two equal divided dominant parties. Who is Prime Minister is quite often determined by the swing voters and Falkvinge states the Pirate Party, and thus it's platform, is a dominant player in that area.
With your bare hands?!?