Net gain to society? WTF. Are we advocating low impact crimes to help society? I can see some PSA's now - "Forget Jobcorps, come hack email accounts with us and help your community!" This line of thinking also states for future potential crimelords that if you hack into email, your time is a walk in the park. If there is no deterrent then what is the point of the criminal justice system?

Wow - I was planning on this tonight (using vagisil though - hand lotion is too greasy)!

I'll say this - If an emp ever hit big-time, you folks are all dead in a month. Get off the grid for a while and you'll find out that life did exist before the internet/cell. Friggin young whipper-snappers!

AT&T and Comcast are private companies (FTFY). You are quite naive if you think that you have to have their services or are required to pay them your hard-earned money. If people do not buy their services, they would not exist. Can you live without your cable/internet/cell/phone? Life may be more difficult, but yes - you can.

slashdot less and less. Over the past 10 years that I've visited, the stories are becoming less technical and more biased/political. This site would be better off returning to its roots. Its why endgadget is now my place to go for tech/gadget news.

No - you pay for high speed ACCESS to the internet. Not a high speed connection to the internet, that would be a tier 1 or 2 connection.

Amen to this!

Yes... Someone who gets it! We provide internet to Rural communities via Sat transport. a 1:1 of 1mbps of transponder space is something more then 2K per month. To deliver that 1 mbps to one individual who pays $80/mnth would be insane. So, we oversubscribe, we use compression and acceleration and do the best we can.

Except users don't bitch about access during the low points... Right?