You speak truth.

I am getting old. I do not want a wifi connected toaster, fridge, water heater, etc.

Now, get off my lawn.

Mod parent ++

LORAN was awesome!!! Wish they would have left the inland LORAN infrastructure in place. When a large CME or other unexpected astronomical event occurs, it would be nice to have ground-based electronic navigation already in place. Oh well.

> used to be a ton of "base stations"

I believe you are speaking of LORAN. Read more at wikipedia.

> ... allowed to TRANSITION your airspace. They are not allowed to sit there in your airspace and record what you are doing.

[citation needed]

It is perfectly legal in the US to slowly fly over someone's house at 400 feet in a REAL helicopter...or, hover for 22 seconds. The control of the airspace is by the FAA. No local jurisdiction over anything in the "airspace".
 

Are you a Troll? Dell business equipment is some of the best equipment for cost (I am speaking of PowerEdge, Precision, and Latitude series). AND, all their drivers are available for download. Dell also publishes their service manuals to the public...so a user can disassemble/repair their own hardware if they are so inclined.

With that said, I will concede that their consumer stuff can be flaky. I believe that the problems with the consumer stuff is poor quality control.

Please define "bad guys"

Move to Chattanooga, TN (north of Atlanta), you will be pleased.

Agreed. Mod parent +1, please.

This is also one of the issues with 4G data service. You can consume your entire monthly allotment in less than an hour with the kids talking to their grandparents using facetime on vacation. Arg...

I have epbfi. Where I live, I also have CenturyLink DSL, AT&T DSL, and Comcast Cable internet options. I have used all three. Comcast became completely unreliable with multi-hour outages multiple times every week. Had to purchase a sprint card to continue to get work done.

In the 2 years I have had EPBfi, I have never had a single outage. I also telecommute nearly everyday to work (as a network/server engineer).

Well, I have 1,000Mbps in my area; the fastest internet service in the US. See this news article published in 2010 about EPBfi.

All 100,000 customers have EPB power (this is the local electric power company in Chattanooga, TN, USA). Because of EPB's electric smartgrid, they also provide fiber to 100% of their coverage area. This means that every home/business/apartment has access to Gbit Internet and TV/phone.

The slowest speed they currently offer is 50Mbps (for $57.99 per month), the fastest is 1000Mbps($299.99). I am on 100Mbps because it is only $12 more per month than 50Mbps.

Oh, and there are no max bandwidth/transfer caps. You can do 1000Mbps all day long...EPBfi has the upstream bandwidth.

I was on Comcast for 8 years. I telecommute most days; Comcast would go down for hours at a time for no apparent reason. When I would phone Comcast to report the outages, the customer service rep would say that they are upgrading the services in my area. The service person would say it as if that was the script on their screen as why the internet went down for 2 hours at 11am and again at 4pm. It got so bad over the course of a year, that I had to purchase a Sprint broadband card/account to continue to get work done as I came to just expect outages. I could not tell a client that I was having internet connectivity issues when I am doing remote-based network consulting.) ;)

After switching to EPBfi 2 years ago, I haven't had a SINGLE service-affecting outage. They appear to have built their Internet infrastructure as solidly as they build their power distribution network.

Feel free to read more here: https://epbfi.com/internet/

Oh, BTW, I don't own stock in EPB or work for them....I am a customer that likes to pay for internet that works reliably.

Here is a news article published in 2012 about Chattanooga's upgrade of all customers from 30Mbps to 50Mbps.

It is interesting how none of the big media giants want to provide the additional speed/reliability; I guess if you can feed your customers sewage and tell them it's honey...and the customers believe it, more money goes in your pocket.

When I first read the summary of TFA, I quietly said to myself, "Good. I am glad we have solved all the big problems on our planet."

There are two things that immediately come to mind:

1. First world "problems" aren't problems: http://youtu.be/fxyhfiCO_XQ

2. Our perspectives and focus in life are highly myopic. For our species to survive, we must think broadly and deliberately. We need to have awe at the world around us. We need to take time to be still and listen. The latest gadgets and toys are great, but what we do with the gadgets and how we use them is far more important. The short time we are given on this earth is more important than most of us can conceive.

What I am trying to say is that there is so much more to life than the volume of television commercials. During this time of year, take time to turn off the tap of the media giants and spend some time with your loved ones...the people who helped shape you, and the people you are helping to shape.

Mr Rogers says it better than I can during his lifetime achievement award acceptance speech. You need to hear it if you haven't: http://youtu.be/Upm9LnuCBUM

Here's a video to help explain this broad overview perspective that I speak of: http://vimeo.com/55073825

Now, what was that about some new FCC legislation taking effect today?

Well played.

Love my Unicomp Classic 104!

I like the buckling spring feel. I use the Unicomp Classic 104 and have been very happy with it for 8-10 years now.