and then you simply get some absolute moronic signs like the one saying "a job is a right".

Is this moronic? Our current society is certainly built around the expectation that everyone has a job. People who don't are resented and denied anything beyond bare substinence income (and sometimes even that). When lack of a job makes you a barely tolerated human cochroach it's hardly surprising that some might start wondering if having one should be a formally recognized right.

> It's doubtful that anyone with vision would be willing to work for the pay most
> county school systems are able and willing to pay.

That isn't the problem. I'm way out in flyover country and even our school system pays enough I'd take it considering it is almost as secure as being a teacher. And remember, it is the benefits and job security that make working for the government attractive, until quite recently it wasn't the actual money and things are in the process of correcting back to that historical norm. But I have dealt with them enough to know better, it isn't the money that makes me conclude I'd rather do handjobs for cash if things were ever that bad. It is the knowledge that I'd be dealing with weapons grade stupid on an hourly basis even if I were running their IT shop.

> Oh yea, I'd love to download that 8mb PDF over THAT connection...

Each student could download an 8MB PDF every hour, even constrained to 25Kbps, which is slow by modem standards. And that assumes the average student could READ an 8MB document in an hour, which few could unless it is a comic book. And assumes each student needs to download a different one and can't retrieve the one copy cached locally before class by the instructor, and therefore directly available over the gigabit ethernet.

What drives the bandwidth needs are video and the rush to shut down the entire backend operation in the local school plus the school board and outsource all traffic except printing and perhaps the most basic of file serving. This scheme only appears to make sense because of the artificial economy created by the SLC funding mechanism that leaves the school system only paying a small portion of the bandwidth bill. In a more typical network a lot of the traffic is local and a smaller Internet feed will suffice. The Cloud is bringing this same idea into the Enterprise setting and the same hillarity is going to ensue as all the supposed savings are likely to be eaten by vastly scaled up Internet conection expenses.

Would you shoot some strangers baby in the face if the alternative was that he would shoot your baby in the face?

Can you explain how shooting a baby in the face will keep anyone from shooting yours? For that matter, how is shooting puppies or little old ladies going to help you win? It won't. If anything it just inspires the enemy. Which gets us to why "rules of war" exist: wars are extremely stressful situations, which cause people fighting in them to do unnecessary or even counterproductive cruelties. Rules of war and rules of engagement exist to try to prevent the more outrageous of these.

Now shut the fuck up.

Do you have some kind of personal stake here? Because you seem to be getting pretty emotional about the topic.

> Connections to schools aren't that expensive.

Yes they are.

> Most of the infrastructure is all bought and paid for through the 1996 telecommunications act.
> Schools, universities, and libraries get internet connectivity at absurdly cheap prices.

And because they don't see the true price of it they buy services they would never consider if they actually paid fair market value for it. But there is no bandwidth fairy, there is a reason there is a whole subculture of ISPs servicing SLC funded sites, it is great money with little risk because they are all government customers and most of the actual money is OPM. But it is being extracted in taxes from each and every one of us who uses a phone or accesses the Internet in the form of a special tax labeled "Universal Service Fund" on your bill. It also pays for the newly discovered 'right' to have a cell phone paid for by someone else and plans are afoot to jack the tax another notch to pay for the about to be discovered 'right' to Internet access even if you choose to live in a spot where it isn't practical.

> In fact, in the state of Illinois, they don't even have to connect to the internet directly,
> they only have to get a line to one of the very many connection points to the state funded
> network, which has more than enough connectivity to the internet to handle any workload.

On the other hand, this is a very good idea. Too bad we would never consider it around here in Louisiana.

What really needs to happen is we, as a society, need to realize that intellectual "property" is not property at all and we should stop treating it as such. IP and property have nothing in common.

> An OC-24 is a bundle of 24 optical cables.

No. An OC is roughly the same as a copper based T-3 which is of course based on the classic T-1. which is itself based on carrying two dozen 64Kbps calls multiplexed together. An OC-24 is therefore about the same as two dozen T-3 lines but would normally be delivered on a single pair of fiber. I know the single pair of fibers on our wall that currently delivers only 30Mbps can deliver anything up to 1000Mbps with nothing more than a phone call and a signature on an updated contract, no truck roll needed.

So let me guess, media companies are going to complain about all the "lost" revenue due to "piracy" and completely ignore the fact most of the highest grossing films have been in the internet age....

American interference in world affairs has -always- ended up bad for America and even worse for the rest of the world. Look at the Iran Iraq war where the US and UK allied themselves with Saddam's Iraq and supplied arms to them! The US (and other Western nations) prop up dictators and then later have to take them down in a perpetual war.

The problem with "Occupy Wall-Street" was there is no ideological unity and some of the protesters simply were idiotic (same thing with the "Tea Party" movement, but at least that had ideological unity) you get some sane signs protesting the bailout and then you simply get some absolute moronic signs like the one saying "a job is a right". I'm sure the Tiananmen Square protesters were much the same way, but looking at it from a foreign perspective it is much easier to generalize.