The slashdot crowd of course is going to lambast this decision. But if you take time to think about it rather than reply with a knee-jerk reaction, it really isn't that unreasonable.

What is required to host thousands of emails online?
  - A web server. Presumably they have one of these, but is it just a simple website at some hosting company and not very easy to configure or mass-upload to, and perhaps with a limited storage quota? Is it their same server they had in the late 90's that might choke on 24,000 files in one directory?
  - How do you convert the emails to individual files which can be hosted? Convert to PDF perhaps? File -> Save As? Either way, it is going to be very labor intensive. Perhaps the email system is old enough that it is even more difficult and time consuming?
  - How long do you have to store the online files? Every day they store the files on the server costs them extra $. And every person who downloads the files costs them extra $.
  - What type of technical knowledge is required to put all of the pieces together? To a slashdotter it might seem trivial, but a town of 30,000 reachable only by water and air is not the type of place who will employ public servants with the technical expertise of a slashdotter. Their IT staff might consist of a guy who knows how to replace a monitor and reformat Windows XP. They may outsource all of the rest of their IT functions at an hourly cost to the state. All of these email requests are probably going to some poor secretary who has a hard time opening her own email.
  - Who should have access? IANAL, but this is a foia request so I presume anybody in America, but is Alaska required to make government documents readily available to the governments of North Korea and Iran? If not, who is going to setup the security to prevent unauthorized access?

Remember, this is a foia request which Alaska has to respond to, but they have no incentive to make it easy at their own taxpayer's expense. It is far cheaper and easier for a small town government office to tell people to come and get the information than it is for them to make it easily accessible over the internet.

I don't think your insurance theory has anything to do with it. Anyone who was really using AOL for insurance purposes would just pay ~$30 for a tethering plan or a 3G modem with their wireless provider. Faster, cheaper, and more reliable than AOL dialup.

Since the article and discussion is about providing high speed broadband access, then I assume the point of your statement is that because you have running water you should also have 1GB internet access?

The alternative is that a company who wants to do a marketing campaign with a prize has to spend hundreds or thousands of hours of legal time to research and comply with local laws in every country. In your scenario no company could afford to do a marketing campaign like this. Perhaps the local Google office (or name any other company) in your contry has run some sort of contest there? Shoud I be upset that I live in the US and can't win?

To have stockpiled this much explosive material in the house he lives in indicates that they guy is either insane or criminally dangerous. He is now likely facing life in prison so he has very little to live for. Only on slashdot would someone suggest letting the guy back in the house with all the explosives. What could possibly go wrong?

Mod parent up. All of these people posting that the government should clean it up rather than blow it up seem to be forgetting that a real, live person would have to do the clean up. I don't know what the risk factor is for detonating homemade explosives, but it is certainly not 0%. Multiply that non-zero number by a very large number of explosive devices and a real, live person is putting their life on the line.

1. Nobody called it oppression. I think this is just a dramatic word you added to try and draw attention to your post. 2. WTH does "being butchered" even mean? 3. People have been starving and going to jail for doing the right thing since the beginning of time. These are not easy problems to fix and they will likely continue for a long, long time. Sure, problems such as people starving and giong to jail are being worked on all the time. Do we make progress on those issues? Sure. Are there also setbacks? Of course. But are you suggesting that we drop everything and not try to fix any problem at all until those issues are completely resolved?

You do realize that the Live Gold service provides more than just Netflix and streaming media? The new things MS adds to the Live service is just bonus on top of an otherwise really good gaming service that you are paying $5/month for.

I also noticed that the other common factor is Netflix. In fact, I also noticed that Netflix wrote both applications, and would presumably be responsible for any bugs and patches. But I applaud your efforts to drag Microsoft into an unrelated issue.

Am I missing the irony pointed out a the end of the summary? An ex-employee donates some of his personal money to a cause he believes in, while Facebook (a company with a public image to maintain) decides not to take pro-cannabis ads. The two really don't have anything to do with each other, except both being about marijuana.

I am not blaming Republicans. I simply stated that both the summary and the article indicated that it was the Republican leader who didn't want to work on the bill, but the title implied that the Democrats dropped it. I was merely asking why. Jump to conclusions much?

Personally, I am very middle of the road and I don't have a "must be the GOP" bias. GOP does some things right and some things wrong, as do the Dems. But thank you for the additional information about the issue as it does help explain why the bill didn't move forward.

What's up with the title of this post? "Politics: House Democrats Shelve Net Neutrality" sure make it sound like the poster is trying to imply that Democrats were at fault for this bill failing. But the summary and TFA indicate that it was Republicans who blocked efforts to move this bill forward.

Perhaps RTFA would help....
"Ever since television caught on in the 1950s, the Federal Communication Commission has been getting complaints about blaring commercials"

Granted, that quote only tells you that yes, people do give a fuck about this issue. If you want better data, a quick 30 second internet search returns several links to .... "The telephone survey of 1,000 TV viewers, conducted for Harris Corporation (NYSE: HRS), showed that 89 percent are bothered by the often dramatic variation between regular TV programming and advertising volumes".

According to your logic, it would be ok for a site to serve up kiddie porn because nobody should dictate what the server returns when someone connects a browser to it.

If something is illegal, then it is illegal regardless of whether it is on a computer server or in a brick and mortar store.

5 Cameras actually. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692114(Surface.10).aspx