Why don't they just site their centers up north?

That works - if there are fat enough pipes available to handle the data. If there isn't, and you have to roll your own, then it's probably not cost efficient to do so.

It's Slashdot and the tech world's version of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Watch that mouth or your mommy will kick you out of the basement.
Wow still to gutless to take a karma hit by showing your face. Go away now and wish you had the guts to show your face in the light of day.

No you are wrong.
"Many of our rules are violations of that first most basic right, pretty much anything that someone else thinks that you should do or not-do for your own good: rules about drugs, prostitution, abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, and yes, wearing clothes. "
Let's tear this apart one by one.

'rules about drugs"
No you are wrong. http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/medical-quackery.htm#page=0 not to mention FDA testing of drugs for safety and effectiveness. You are probably talking about recreational drugs but even then you will want laws to keep them safe and more or less pure and not mixed with who knows what.

"abortion,"
No you are wrong. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/kermit-gosnell-abortion-doctor-found-guilty-of-murder.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Even if you support abortion rights if you are not a total nut job you will want laws that make them safe like requiring a doctor perform them.

"prostitution"
No you are wrong. Even if you believe that prostituion should be legal you would want laws regulating the minimum age of the prositute and health checks of the workers.

"doctor-assisted suicide"
Yea what could go wrong with that. Again you would want laws to make sure that the patient understood and that they where not pressured into such a choice.

"wearing clothes"
Like hell! Don't you know that the only people that want to walk around naked are people that nobody wants to see naked?

This is all just extreme libertarian clap trap. It is as unworkable as anything Marx or Ayn Rand ever came up with. And just as with Marx and Rand it is too extreme and over simplified to be workable. What I am pointing out is that you are wrong. You really do not want to get ride of laws on those subjects. You want different laws that reflect your world view. There is nothing wrong with that just work within the system and change the laws and stop pretending you want to get rid of laws on those subjects because frankly they are needed.

"Cheap land? Check.
Cold frigid body of water? Check
Cheaper workers? Check
Lower taxes? Check"
Ever hear of the TVA? What about eastern Washington state and Oregon?
Tenesse and North Carolina have all of those things plus cheap power.
Washington and Oregon have all but maybe the lower taxes but I bet they are lower than California plus the cheap power. We are talking about data centers so they do not employ a huge number of people.
I think you are right about start ups but here is the rub. The VC firms and tech press are all in SF, Seattle, and NY. Getting coverage and money will be much harder to get. People on the coasts do not understand that the US is full of great beautiful places to live that are dirt cheap and dang close to empty. The problem comes down to money and press.
 

That is funny but their are good reasons. One do you have cheap Hydro power in Duluth? Fiber? The people arguing about latency are a bit silly. South Florida to Seattle is only 14ms distance so it would be about a third of that Duluth to LA or NY.
The places that they are building data centers have cheap hydro power and even better cheap cold water. Frankly the ideal place for a Data Center is probably the Hoover Dam. The Colorado river is actually too cold because of the dam so dumping the heat back into it would probably be a good thing for the ecosystem.

. I currently work part-time doing unskilled labor, and one guy I work with, after only being there 7 years, makes over 70k a year working no more overtime than many salaried employees. When he tops out in 3 more years he will probably be making close to, if not more than $100k. And this is in a job that requires no more than a high school diploma.

Where the hell do you live and what kind of job pays an unskilled laborer $100k/yr? (I'm presuming in USD.) More to the point, what the tax rate and cost of living where you are?
 
These questions may sound facetious, but they're serious - someone in a big city may make impressive sounding money, but actually be just treading water because of the local cost of living. (That's one of the reasons people endure hellish commutes - to get out of the city to where land and living is cheaper.) That, and I find it exceedingly hard to buy unskilled labor making anything anywhere near $70k except where labor is scarce - so why aren't people flocking there and driving down the labor rates?

It is hard to talk about what makes "economic sense" here, since the passenger rail business was killed by competition from heavily subsidized alternatives: the interstate highway system, and airplanes.

Um, no. Passenger rail was always a money losing proposition, maintained by the railroads despite this for prestige and as a loss leader for their freight services. But the railroad's physical plant were beat to hell after nationalization in WWI, a decade declining revenue of the Great Depression, and extraordinarily high traffic levels during WWII.. So when faced with huge capital modernizations costs and declining freight revenue due to competition from the interstate.... passenger service was thrown overboard. Air travel in the US was largely irrelevant to the issue as during the time frame in question (mostly the 1950's), air travel wasn't widespread and was *very* expensive.

This!

"Your darkroom is now [Google's] datacenter"? No thank you.

I like a real human bartender. One that I get to know, that knows me....at bars I'm a regular at, I like to have them set my usual drink in front of me when I sit down. I like that since I'm a good tipper...I get pretty heavily poured drinks.

I don't want anyone counting my drinks either.

How about getting mail for your ex-wife's deceased father,
- who never lived in your state
- much less your home?

How about collection notices to your workplace for a guy living in Chicago,
- a place you have never even visited,
- but his first and last name are the same,
- so you call to tell them about the mistake, and they send you another one the next year anyway?

How about getting tax forms from the town you used to live in,
- and when you call they ask that you send annoying amounts of proof of where you live just so they'll stop sending you forms,
- and you do it anyway
- and they still send forms the next year?

FedEx and UPS screw up too. I got a delivery confirmation once, where they delivered it to the wrong address and then FAKED THE SIGNATURE. I informed them of the issue, and they said they would send someone out to pick it up and take it to us. Of course, it was hours later and almost 7 PM with no delivery in sight. The guy who got it was nice enough to bring it to us himself by the point-- and we hadn't even met him before then.

My landlord gets tons of mail at my address. I have to collect them up and give them to him occasionally. I initially put that and he freaked out. I really like the place otherwise and would like him to renew the lease next year, so I comply. Ugh. //I think he's claiming residence on the place probably.

Why not make it easy on yourself, and just throw it all in the trash?

...and getting caught hunting with a semi auto rifle can get your firearms license revoked for a loooooong time.

Where do you live where you have to get some kind of license to own a firearm??

That must suck...