I'm not disputing that. But these farms do not exist in a vacuum. They need to have infrastructure and skilled (as well as the unskilled that you mentioned) labor. Farms need to have mechanics, electricians, plumbers, doctors, lawyers, roads, etc. Rural life sucks in a lot of ways - take away electricity and telecommunications and you've made it really suck. As you insinuate, most sane people won't live like that. And some people will stay and live like mountain people. If you think it is good for our democracy to have vast swaths of the country controlled by mountain people, well - we're going to have to disagree.

It's both a pity and a blessing that Orwell didn't live long enough to see the geek in full flight.

The organization and planning of a crime, the recruitment of others to assist you, is more than thought, it is action.

The problem is that the Slashdot geek seems increasingly resistant to any story outside his comfort zone.

You see this most clearly when a story cuts close to the bone on issues of race and class and gender in tech --- but it comes through elsewhere as well.

Europe is larger than the US, with a comparable population. How come sparsely-populated areas of, for example, Sweden and Norway can have blindingly-fast internet, whereas similarly-populous areas of the US have terrible internet? Your argument is clearly nonsense.

I think he's hinting that internet connectivity should be a municipal service, as it is in some parts of the world (which offer better speeds than most US ISPs seem to offer).

A fair point, but I think you should consider something as well: food security.

If a rural place is so backward and so lonely that no one wants to be a farmer, what do you think that will do to food production? Not to mention the simple distastefulness of having barefoot poverty within the US. Sometimes market efficiency has to take a back seat to other priorities.

Size has nothing to do with it. Each ISP has local networks connected to each other (and other ISPs) by larger connections. The exact same is true in Europe. If what you say is true, then US cities should have wonderful broadband, but that is clearly not the case. Europe is larger than the US, with a similar population, so your comparison isn't at all accurate, and the more you trot it out in discussions like this, the longer it will take to fix.

Of course they're not as bad as ISIS, but to call the Christian Right "harmless" is not very accurate. The sheer number of people dying from back-alley abortions is a testament to that, and that's just one of their areas of "expertise".

As much as my libertarian side wants to agree with you, I can't help but notice the positive effects of rural electrification and phone service. Damn you, history and pragmatism.

But usually not capitalised, at least not since the late 1700s.

Well, sort of. There has been a much larger outlay of cash necessary to break into digital photography. You may realize a break even point sooner if you would have shot lot of rolls of film, but the initial barrier to entry is much higher than it was for film cameras, which really only needed to be a light-tight box. Having said that, the price of good digital cameras has come down a lot since the late 90s, so what I observe is more of a trough where film was pretty much phased out yet digital cameras were still really expensive.

New keyboard. New Problems.

I think it is a safe bet that the folks back home are running Windows and that is all their local dial-up ISP can reasonably be expected to support.

Local support is the only answer here.

Not the once-a-year parachute drop --- and not the trans-oceanic telephone call that has to be scheduled across five or six time zones, perhaps more. There is no joy in that even when it is IT Pro to IT Pro.

I don't see enough thought being given here to how his parents use their computer besides sending and receiving their emails.

Technical support by telephone across multiple time zones does not appeal.

His parents live overseas and he visits them only once a year.

To me that suggests that they are living in time zones at least six to eight hours apart, perhaps more.

1 Make a bold, dramatic assertion.

2 and. in your next breath, argue that is useless to offer any proof.

Such a talent is wasted in tech, You really ought to go into politics.