I wish it were that minor around here. If you want more than 7.5Mb/sec DSL, your only option is Comcast. About 30 miles west of here there is a moderate sized city of about 100K people which also happens to sit on a major internet backbone with lots of access to cheap bandwidth. There, Comcast has to compete with ATT, several regional fiber optic providers, Century Link, and a few others. There, $75 gets you gigabit down from Comcast and $80 gets you symmetric gigabit from ATT. In our town where Comcast has no competition, that same $75 doesn't get you their basic 200Mb/sec plan which is actually $85 per month. If you want that, it's $140 which is their introductory price. It jumps to $200 after 1 year. Never mind that you can literally tell when everyone gets off of work because of how spotty and desolate the speeds become.

Honestly, it's my personal opinion that the US needs someone else to beat us to a major milestone in space. We've fallen into a bit of a winners dilemma. We've beaten everyone else, why do we need to keep trying? I think if China beats the US to Mars, you'll see the political will materialize around the space program again.

The 1st commandment of Capitalism: Thou shalt not piss off people with vastly more money than thyself...

How is this legal? It's my admittedly weak understanding of H1B law that it can only be used to fill a job position if there are no qualified domestic workers. It sounds very much like a case of Disney replacing a current employee with an H1B visa worker.

You may have just created a time paradox that would destroy the universe as we know. On the other hand, it may just be localized to those who don't read the article...

I keep hearing this argument. Our infrastructure is crap and getting worse. And yet, when the roads need repaved, somehow they are being repaved. When a storm comes through and knocks down utility lines, someone comes and repairs them. When some idiot digs up a fiber optic line and cuts it, otherwise known as backhoe fade, someone repairs that too.

Statements like this make it sound like our roads, electrical lines, and telecommunications are on the verge of collapse due to neglect. Our did you mean some other kind of infrastructure?

The few watt power bill might not justify buying your own modem, but the $8 per month "leasing" fee for using their modem does. Most modems will pay themselves off at that rate in less than a year,two years if you get an expensive one.

What do they mean "the coming nightmare..." If you've worked with Industrial or smaller IT customers, it's already here. I just had to deal with a CNC machine that, no kidding, ran OS2 Warp version 3! How do you get patches for that?

SCOTUS agrees unanimously on something? *Looks at the calendar* It's not April 1st... Am I being punked??

You aren't married to a non-techy wife are you? Good God! My wife already complains about how long the wifi key is, this kind of thing might actually drive her insane! Actually, now that I think about it, I may try this later tonight.....

That's like saying the F-16 or F-18 are 60's era equipment. Sure, the first models were built around then, but just like aegis, those fighters have seen a lot of upgrades and love over the years. The aegis systems of today are much more capable than their predecessors.

It just occurred to me that our country is so sensitive about that, there is a very real possibility one could find themselves in trouble simply for posting about talking about hypothetically blowing up an airport.

The sad part about that comment is that this kind of thing does happen in the US. Try walking into any major airport and casually discussing with a friend how could "hypothetically" blow up the airport.

[sarcasm]
If our government or governments in general, had a history of abusing unchecked power, I would care... quite a bit actually. But fortunately, since that is not the case and our government can be trusted with the use of power that skirts established law, I am not worried....
[/sarcasm]