FCC Considering Free Internet For USA 502
jbolden writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is considering a plan to provide free wireless internet. The plan would involve some level of filtering, but might allow adults to opt out. CTIA has argued that this business model has traditionally failed (see Slate magazine's analysis as to why)."
Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
WOW! Something that my tax dollars pay for that MIGHT actually benefit me? Neat-o.
I mean welfare and social security is great, but besides the roads and military it would be nice to get some value back.
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever eat food that didn't kill you ? (FDA), or drink water? How about housing the hard core criminals in prison?
Does it snow in your area? Plows are a nice thing to have.
Sure there is a lot of waste in government, but you get a lot more benefit then you are giving them credit for.
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Does it snow in your area? Plows are a nice thing to have.
OMG You've stumbled upon a government conspiracy to eliminate "snow days"!
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
How about housing the hard core criminals in prison?
Yeah, I'm sure all 2 million of them are way too dangerous to be let out on the street. No, this money is wasted housing petty criminals and drug users, while Bush and his crew, and let's not forget the CEOs of every investment bank in the country are free.
More people are arrested for marijuana possession in this country than EVERY OTHER VIOLENT CRIME COMBINED! Is that what you call a good use of tax payer resources?
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget that in America, the minimum sentence someone can get for a SINGLE pot plant is 5 years federal time, which is much longer than the average crack dealer gets for his first offense.
Nothing more dangerous than a pothead with a green thumb.
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Re:Tax Dollars (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting how the average sentences are 7-8 years for violent offenders and 6-7 years for drug offenders. It would be a better composite to take a whole year into account.....and what's that....Obama wants to double the tax on the rich? And what's with the bracket in the middle between 2-300k that only has to pay $12......???
Gotta love this stat...
"With less than 5% of world population; USA has over 2.3 million of 9 million world prisoners!"
"The U.S. incarceration rate is over 5 times higher than in 1971 when the impeached arch-criminal, "law-and-order" President Richard Nixon declared an evil "war on drugs" as a substitute for the good "war on poverty.""
"At midyear 2005, nearly 4.7 percent of black males were in prison or jail, compared to 1.9 percent of Hispanic males, and 0.7 percent of white males. Among males in their late 20s, nearly 12 percent of black males, compared to 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males, were incarcerated"
Oh he links to this great story too...
"CHICAGO -- The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which displayed those statistics on large banners in cities nationwide Thursday and Friday.
0923 05The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.
The estimates made by the group, which opposes the conflict, include not only the immediate costs of war but also ongoing factors such as long-term health care for veterans, interest on debt and replacement of military hardware.
"The wounded are coming home, and many of them have severe brain and spinal injuries, which will require round-the-clock care for the rest of their lives," said Michael McConnell, Great Lakes regional director of the AFSC, a peace group affiliated with the Quaker church.
The $720 million figure breaks down into $280 million a day from Iraq war supplementary funding bills passed by Congress, plus $440 million daily in incurred, but unpaid, long-term costs."
Of course he is also claiming that 1.2 million iraqis have died. I've heard the figures near the couple hundred thousand mark, but million?
Thanks for the zany link =)
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Not to mention that those hardcore cirminals are housed and fed for 7-10 years and sent back out on the street with a nearly 70% [state.pa.us] rearrest rate. Prisons are clearly an effective means of reforming the criminal population.
(BTW I'm in the military and I can tell you it's pretty hard to imagine how much money SS must waste if they actually spend more than we do)
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Informative)
SS? Social Security? Very low overhead, actually. Tiny. Nearly all of their spending is in the form of checks to citizens, which is the whole point. They even bring in more money than they spend--at least for now.
The problem is that they'll stop bringing in that surplus and start spending from savings in a couple of years, due to demographic shifts (the baby boomers). This means that they'll run out of money around 2040. SS can't spend money that isn't from the special tax that's set aside just for it (FICA) so it's unclear what would happen in such an event.
It's a bit misleading to compare SS spending to other government spending, in fact, since its funding is from that sole source and it does not and cannot take money from the general budget. In fact, the very large surplus from SS is used to as a source to borrow for spending in the general budget, so its presence makes our deficit look artificially lower than it is.
To summarize: SS is among the most efficiently-run government programs, and actually props up the general budget rather than dragging it down, at least for the next 30 years or so.
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Meaning they take more in taxes than they spend?
Sure. I'll grant you that. But as far as retirement goes, it's a negative return if you make much at all. You'd do better putting cash in your mattress. That's why it props up the budget. They take your money and give some back.
Let's skip the sad but true part that most people are simply too short sighted to even put cash in the mattress.
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Re:Tax Dollars (Score:4, Funny)
When is the last time you heard of a bank burning to the ground???
Haven't they metaphorically been doing this for the past few months?
Social Security doesn't *have* any savings (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there's a Social Security Trust Fund that's invested in T-bills. That just means that they've taken any surplus they had in the past and lent it to the Government, which spent it, and which promises to tax people in the future to pay it back. So when all of us Boomers start retiring and not dying off quickly enough, not only will the Social Security Tax on working people not be enough to cover the costs, but the Feds will have to start running a budget surplus to pay off the debt, instead of continually borrowing more like they did while we were working. So it's going to suck to be young and working, or old and collecting taxable interest on our savings.
Before Bush took power, we had a $5T national debt, because previous administrations didn't have the financial discipline to not run deficits even during boom years. Bush's Fiscally Responsible Small Government Republicans doubled that before the Crisis, and it looks like they're spending another $5T-10T on bailouts (though ostensibly they'll get some of that back.) The current total debt is about 1 US GDP, or about $50K/American.
And to the extent that us older people saved money in forms other than houses (oops), we'll be getting lower interest rates on what we saved than what I'd been planning on, because more of us will be competing to invest it in whatever businesses the younger people who are working are running. So it's going to suck to be old and not working. And because it's also going to suck to be young and working, those people aren't going to be buying $5 coffees that much, and Walmart only needs so many greeters, so obvious old-people jobs are going to be scarce.
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
Social (in)Security and retirement (Score:2)
well have no fear, the same program guarantees that other people will help pay for your disability or retirement in the event you need it,
Disability? Maybe. Retirement, out of what funds? Retirement (whether private or government) is based on two main assumptions:
1. People in their fertile years work hard to raise large families, so each generation is a lot bigger than the previous one.
2. People die soon after retirement anyway, so their retirement doesn't cost that much.
Both assumptions are false for my ge
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Given that the sea level is only projected to rise by 9 to 88 cm before 2100, I'm not holding my breath. Don't believe the propaganda, especially when the guy that's pushing at it has a ton to gain trading carbon credits.
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:4, Insightful)
But luckily the scheme is in place to prevent the "all my money for me" aspect. The point of SS is that the greater good is served by supporting those who can't afford to sufficiently save for retirement. hence the unambiguous name 'social' security. It's not about you achieving the best possible retirement. It's about trying to accept a minimally acceptable support for those who could significantly suffer after retirement otherwise.
Yes, it goes against 'survival of the fittest'. It's about recognition that public support of certain things may reduce overall efficiency, but the benefits gained outweigh holding back some of the peak performers.
Sure, we could go back to a situation with those who can afford to save enjoy a comfortable retirement while those who can't work until they die or end in the poorhouse even if they worked steadily for 50 years. But the people recognized that there are some places that social programs make sense. It's not the place of those that feel they don't need it to decide the one's who do can't have it.
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In the past it could be seen as a simple investment.
Sure, when you were younger you were giving away some of your paycheck to Social Secutiy and that money would be used by other people to help out when they were old and retired.
But when you get older, you got to collect on other people's checks which can help out when you're old and retired.
Unfortunately, as many have said now we're in a pickle. In a few years it won't really be around anymore, so it's kind of depressing to know that you won't get the ful
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Wrong. Social Security was always an Old-Age Survivor and Disability program. It also used to cover unemployment benefits.
Now it only covers O.A.S. (Retirement) and Disability. Unemployment is handled elsewhere.
Nice soapbox, too bad it's wrong.
Any person who paid into Social Security should be able to receive the benefits that they paid for when they retire.
Now giving out disability benefits to people not vested in the "insurance" program seems a more fair place to cut..
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
Try using a real source, like The Constitution, not some propaganda farm.
Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Article 1, Section 8:
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Its supported just like the US Military is. Now please take your fascist BS to someplace more appropriate; if you don't like China, try Iran, or Saudi Arabia. They're all more to suited to you.
You're Misinterpreting the Constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
First, IAAL, take it for what it's worth. Second, by saying the following, I am in no way attempting to disparage the welfare state, or suggest that it is unconstitutional. In fact, there is plenty of case law suggesting it is. (Google "Lochner Era" and "economic substantive due process" if you want to find it.
That said, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.
The Preamble neither limits or grants any power to any branch of the Federal government. The Supreme Court has read it that way for the last hu
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Monty Python quote:
Reg:
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
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Obligatory Monty Python quote:
Reg:
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
brought peace?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
Filtered Internet is better then no internet for a lot of people.
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:4, Insightful)
Who's going to pay a premium price for unfiltered network access when they get something they perceive to be virtually identical in value? (Not to mention the "oh, only the rich people get freedom of speech"-angle)
Re:Tax Dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it really isn't.
Free filtered internet means that all the people paying for a broadband line to read email, and occasionally browse the web, can now do so for free. Without the ~95% of customers who underuse their connections subsiding the cost of the ~5% who actually need broadband, ISPs will have to increase prices dramatically.
The end result is that only the financially well off will have access to anything the government feels like censoring on their network. And that's making the optimistic assumption that the censorship stops with government networks, and isn't extended, voluntarily or not, to the big ISPs.
What will happen to political speech when that happens? Given what we've seen of these kinds of filters thus far, they tend to pick up on key words, block entire sites for single pages, and generate a lot of what a reasonable person viewing a site would consider false positives. Will any site the agitates for the rights of sex workers, or transsexuals, or gays risk being marked as sexual content, and blocked from the vast majority of american voters? Will any site that discusses a hate crime risk being labeled as hate-speech, and excluded as well? How much harder will it be to get a major party to take up such causes in that kind of environment?
I think that free ubiquitous basic internet access is a great idea, that could do a lot of good for a lot of people and the economy overall.
But I'd gladly forgo it, if the cost is freedom of speech on the internet.
Any government supported network needs to be an unfiltered. Even forcing people to register with the government as adults to receive an unfiltered connection is far too burdensome, in that it destroys users' privacy and any potential anonymity for whistleblowers and the like. Any parents who want to restrict their kids' browsing have plenty of options to do so on their own devices, without unconstitutionally and unduly compromising adults' freedom of speech.
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Seconded,
Granted, if there was a federally operated internet, tampering with data online could be as much of a federal
crime as tampering with the mail...
Who thinks it would be a good idea to have a public wireless internet managed by a division of the US Postal
service, rather than as a media model like the FCC manages television and radio?
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Yeah, or intercepting/tapping phone calls without a warrant, or...
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Oh, great. That's just what we need. If the USPS takes over Internet access...
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And as long as a paid alternative exists (Like Cable TV) I don't care. I'd love to be able to get my parents on something faster than 14.4k.
You can show a full length porn at high noon on cable and the FCC can't do a damn thing.
Wishful thinking... (Score:5, Insightful)
People will absorb ANY amount of bandwidth if it's free. This thing will ALWAYS be overloaded and unusable. Period.
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A properly designed mesh will have more bandwidth the more users it has. Bittorrent is a virtual mesh network, and it works so well that the legacy network can't handle the simulation.
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There is no such thing as free and of course you are right to say that if it is free it will clog and be maintained badly. There is similar but not quite the same problem with any service where there is no relationship between actual usage and charge users must pay. It may work but will be slow, unreliable and expensive for tax payer (somebody will have to pay for it at the end). Better let private enterprise make things happen in a framework state or communities set. Something like for a basic fee (incorpo
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Personally, I think all taxation should be paid strictly in labour, that it shoul
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Like most of the highways in major American cities, during rush hour. However people still use those.
Public WiFi vs. public roads (Score:3, Interesting)
You are, certainly, correct, that public roads are enough of a disaster, that you may not benefit from them. But what makes you think, the free WiFi will be any better?
At least, with the roads, the excuse for government's involvement is that there can't really be competing private roads for the same destinations, and thus free market (which requires competition) can't be used to build and maintain them efficiently.
There is
So when it is illegal... (Score:4, Insightful)
Free internet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two entries down on the front page, there's an article speculating that the internet will meltdown due to some change an application is about to make, yet here's an article proposing FREE wireless internet to everyone?
If the infrastructure can't handle what people are paying for, how on earth do they plan to give it away for free?
Even with severe bandwidth restrictions, it's going to cause a hell of a lot more usage.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this kind of thing and I'd love to see Free Wireless internet for everyone, I just wish people would make up their minds - is the internet ready to expand or collapse on top of itself?
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The water, electricity, and gas coming into my home are pretty cheap. Having regulated monopolies instead of the current unregulated monopolies should reduce prices.
And the new bureaucracy would mostly replace the existing corporate bureaucracy.
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Nobody actually needs to use a phone 24/7, it's physically impossible to do so, but the internet is a different kettle of fish. When you say "Home internet service is designed to be used on-demand, not maxed out 24/7", I can happily say "Well it's been designed wrong".
At the very least, the advertised service plans are a disgrace, don't advertise what you can't provide, it's as simple as that. Why would it be so difficult for an ISP to advertise a truly unlimited 4Mbit connection instead of a severely overs
Re:Free internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't use your home phone to talk 24/7
You have clearly never seen a house full of teenage girls. lol
Could be a great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Out on the road? Can't find an open WiFi hotspot to check google maps? Solved.
Out on the road? Want to download the newest HD episode of your show? Ya, you're going to want to get a connection from a paid-for ISP.
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Censored internet? So basically the FCC will have the same level of control over the "free" internet that it does over things like radio stations and television? It sounds likely that this will turn into a situation where the majority of content producers have to conform to what the FCC wants because there is a nontrivial customer base that is using the free version.
Lets keep the current model, I would rather the government not take my tax dollars to pay for their version of what the internet should look
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So let people keep the "Paid for" alternative. You have free over the air TV. You also have paid for cable. Over the air TV has certain FCC regulation. Cable TV doesn't. I'd love to be able to get my parents on even 0.5Mbit connection just to send photos back and forth. USPS is literally faster to where I grew up than trying to send a photo website.
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Yes yes... You pay taxes which go into making this "free" service. I get it. We still technically pay. However, if you are only planning on using this to fill in the gaps between using paid-for services, being able to have access to federal sites, email, basic surfing, IM, etc is still worth it.
If I'm out on the road, I can still get my email. I can still keep in contact with family.
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"Free" is relative (Score:2, Insightful)
I predicted this before I read it. Anything a government is going to provide you will also be completely controlled by them.
That's the same thing they said about parents who want to home school their kids rather than sending them to public schools, but is not the case, they still have to pay for other peoples kids via taxes to get the worthless education currently being provided.
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Re:"Free" is relative (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree, there are some areas where the public school are quite good. Unfortunately the cost-of-living in those areas (along w/ property taxes) are quite high.
My old public High School used to be a decent place, back when I graduated (which wasn't THAT long ago) it was ranked in the top 15 of the state and I didn't have a hard time getting accepted into colleges. My graduating class was between 95-105 students.
Unfortunately, since then it has declined due to over crowding and poor management. The graduat
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The thing is it is not just your kid that matters. The high levels of interest by other parents positively impact your kid because it changes classroom dynamics. That's why I pay for private schools.
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Trust me when I say that improving schools starts with parents actually taking an interesting in their child's education.
Why? That's why they pay taxes and have the Department of Education! If they have to start paying attention to what their kids are learning, why do they have to pay for someone else to do it?
This is why parents need to be paying for their kids to go to school and it needs to stop being a free service of the govt paid for by unfair taxation of people without children. If they were kicking out their own money to put their kids through school, parents would be more interested.
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I suppose worthless was a bit harsh. It does function as a form of daycare.
I graduated from high school in 04 and I have a brother who will graduate this year. Outside of math classes (which are electives after sophomore year) nothing of use was taught to me passed elementary school. More choice needs to be enabled, so we aren't being held hostage until 18, 16, or 15 depending on the state you are in. It should have been up to me
Grammar (Score:4, Funny)
nothing of use was taught to me passed elementary school
It shows :)
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They could get some more money by removing the charity status from private schools.
Private schools do not have charity status. Public schools do. They are run by an educational trust and do not run at a profit. Private schools are privately owned and (aim to) run at a profit.
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Many private schools are affiliated and dependent on religious institutions, and are not run for profit. Many that are not dependent on another organization are still not run for profit.
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Oh no we wouldn't want to upset fox news...
And while I highly doubt this... (Score:2)
...will ever happen, before anyone cries foul about the proposed "pornography filter", waxes philosophic about who decides what's blocked, melodramatically laments censorship in all its forms, and then makes tired, mind-numbing slippery slope arguments, from TFA (not to mention the summary itself):
That, and under the proposal, access would be free, no one would have to use it, it is not desig
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That, and under the proposal, access would be free, no one would have to use it
A free tax increase with no incentive or requirement to use the service funded by the tax? Yay!
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Once they start filtering content they believe children shouldn't see, why would they not also filter -- and perhaps monitor -- adult access to gambling websites, The Pirate Bay, Al-Qaeda websites, etc.?
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Once they start filtering content they believe children shouldn't see, why would they not also filter -- and perhaps monitor -- adult access to gambling websites, The Pirate Bay, Al-Qaeda websites, etc.?
Because:
1. Anything other than pornography filtering is not part of any proposal.
2. No one has seriously considered anything other than pornography filtering in the interests of "children".
3. The opt out proposal specifically allows for unfiltered access.
So, thank you for proving my point, and making a slipp
Re:And while I highly doubt this... (Score:5, Insightful)
...and how long do you think that the restrictions will be limited to just porn and you can opt out? We have things like the "fairness doctrine" being kicked around in Congress to censor political speech on radio and **AA legislation for physical media. Once you give the government control, the cat is out of the bag and not going back in. Why do you think this will be one iota different?
Re:And while I highly doubt this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The effectiveness or lack thereof, is not the problem. The bigger problem is as follows:
First, They intend this thing to be available to the majority of the population, that means it will be a significant market force and not just some kind of low income, rural internet access for those who don't have one now. That means even if i choose not to use it, i will be affected by it in some way.
Second, these people, M2Z (the company) and the ones pushing for this behind the scenes, jumped right to porn when the question of blocking came up. Why porn? That question must be asked. Why not violence? Why not hate speech? Why not unhealthy recipes for sweets? Are we protecting children, or imposing a social agenda on the population? If you are going to block something, other things should be higher on your priority list if your excuse is protecting the children. Something tells me protecting children isn't the goal, or rather the idiots involved think porn is the most harmful thing children (or anyone?) could see on the internet.
Next, it isn't free either, it's ad-supported. No matter what, i am funding your censorship of me by using this network. They are either going to be altering traffic transparently, or forcing users to use a proxy, or run a desktop client (substantially limiting its usefulness) to show you those ads. And they are going to be selectively blocking one type of content unless you pay more as the summary states (maybe).
Those 2 things, altering traffic to show ads, and selective content delivery or prioritization (network neutrality etc), are things the FCC has been railing against for a long time. It is a conflict of interest for the FCC to be encouraging these things in one situation while profiting from the thing, while blasting other ISPs for doing the same thing.
I can only hope this entire thing fails at this point, it's a somewhat good idea, being hampered and fucked with through government interference and mandate (which might even be unconstitutional), and behind the scenes influence.
USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously folks, can't the greatest power in the world today do some form of prioritisation? Free internet access, brilliant a free utility, a basic fundamental right of every american guaranteed by the constitution and our founding fathers.
Free Healthcare of course is a communist plot to subvert the country and destroy everything America stands for.
Free Healthcare should be a right, the internet should be a utility just like power and water... something that you pay for.
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What power does the FCC have over health care?
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Someday, your medicine will come through the tubes as well.
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It seems a whole lot easier to provide free wifi.
Maybe some day medical stuff can carry connected PDAs for accessing patient info.
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medical stuff
Awesome, are you implying the future existence of robot paramedics and doctors?
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Government screws up everything it touches. Roads, military (talk to someone in the military and you'll get a million stories), mail, everything.
I'm not advocating zero government here, but we need to be wary about giving the government more work to do on such basic services. The opportunities for corruption (intentional or due to negligence) are immense here. Right now I fail to see the pros outweighing the cons when it comes to both govt-controlled internet and health care.
-Jeff
Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously you've never received care in a wealthy European nation. After spending some time overseas coming back to the US's healthcare system is like going back in time to the middle ages. "Oh, you wont cover that? You say its pre-existing? You wont pay for that test by doctor wants? Oh only $800 deductible? Oh, another bill from another readjustment? Oh, I lost my job and wont have insurance for two months and COBRA is 800 a month?"
>Government screws up everything it touches.
Bullshit. Certain people in power want you to believe competent government cant exist, but it does all over the world. Republicans love to sell you on this line because it helps their corporate masters make more money and provides an excuse for their corruption in office. Perhaps you should be voting in the guy who is willing to do things right as opposed to resigning yourself to shitty government run by shitty people.
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Certain people in power want you to believe competent government cant exist, but it does all over the world. Republicans love to sell you on this line because it helps their corporate masters make more money and provides an excuse for their corruption in office
Oddly, they're right in everything but the pivotal subject.
A bureaucracy invariably makes things more complex, and has an innate ability to screw things up. This is true if the bureau is public (see: DMV, INS, CIA, NASA) or private (see: Microsoft, GM, Ford, Citibank).
The pivotal question is "is this something best done by a single actor" -- such as, oh, licensing drivers on the road or deciding who's a lawyer and who isn't. If so, then it should be government. If not, then it should be private -- becaus
Re:USA where Internet is a right and Heathcare isn (Score:4, Interesting)
Government screws up everything it touches. Roads, military (talk to someone in the military and you'll get a million stories), mail
Right, because that privately funded interstate highway system has been so successful. Also, what's wrong with the USPS? AFAICT, it's cheap, convenient, fairly reliable, and definitely more secure than the private alternatives.
Right now I fail to see the pros outweighing the cons when it comes to both govt-controlled internet and health care.
You sound like someone without a pre-existing condition.
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Most Americans support some form of free healthcare. A free limited health care system that provides a minimal level of public health would get strong support and some support from both parties. Lets not forget that McCain campaigned on $5000k / person health insurance. The real issue has always been how to provide supplemental coverage.
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Most of us agree that the federal government, which generally overspends and either under-delivers or flat out fails on nearly every project it undertakes due to a variety of reasons including red tape, accountability, nepotism, corruption, power seekers, over-regulation, and plain old mismanagement, would do a lousy job providing internet access.
And some of you want to this same bureaucracy to provide health care?!
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Wont anyone think of the layers and layers of middlemen between a dollar and actual healthcare service? Well, politicans do. The healthcare system is such a racket that fixing it will lead to a lot of redundant jobs. A lot.
Lots of eggs need to be broken to make this omelette. Who is willing to step up and do this? No one.
ISP (Score:4, Insightful)
internet should be cheap, not free (Score:2, Insightful)
Health Care should be a right.
Internet access should just be affordable with reasonable performance.
Try getting old and/or sick sometime and you'll get the perspective.
Some level of filtering (Score:5, Insightful)
And a hell of a lot of monitoring...
Wireless Philadelphia (Score:5, Informative)
I am a resident of the city of Philadelphia. Maybe you've heard of our cities wireless initiative over the years. It began, as the Slate article mentions with Earthlink putting up access points all over the city, and charging $20/month for access. The main problem was that the service rarely actually WORKED. I tried it for a week when I was unemployed and looking to save money. They gave me a box to connect to my computer with an antenna the length of my arm, and even so the signal would fluctuate wildly from minute to minute, from full strength to zero strength, no matter where I put the box or aimed the antenna.
The network is still there after Earthlink abandoned it. It shows up on my celphone (sometimes) as something I can connect to. Only I don't think I've ever once successfully loaded a web page using in on my celphone, and not for lack of trying in all different parts of the city. In other words, now that its free its more useless than ever.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
WiFi isn't a very good technology to use for a city wide mesh anyway. I'm sure it can be done, but number of failed citywide WiFi networks vs. the few that are said to be effective reinforces my opinion on this. It looks to me that by and large, the people that set them up didn't understand and compensate for the weaknesses of such a network.
Re: (Score:2)
The city of Philadelphia wasn't willing to spend tens - hundreds of millions to make this really work. At $20/mo the cost is getting close to what a wired connection (cable / DSL...) costs in which case most people would rather go wired. This should have been free and well funded to be a real experiment.
Government-run communications (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want the government to be my ISP, and I really don't like the implications of having a net connection that is so directly controlled by the government. The fact that filtering is even mentioned at all suggests what a potentially bad idea this really is. Filtering, surveillance and the displacement of unfiltered commercial alternatives? No thanks.
panopticon (Score:5, Insightful)
from TFA:
Yeah, just type in your social security number and your password...
Age verification = no privacy...on a government network at least...
I really can't imagine a more effective way for the government to track and monitor the activities of its citizens. Which is bad. Normally I would love the idea, even if it had to be offered at slower speeds, but unless we make it open, with NO AGE VERIFICATION or anything of that sort we're just asking for 1984...
Free Internet! (Score:2)
The better to monitor you with! Would this be government operated? Yikes!
Re: (Score:2)
The better to monitor you with! Would this be government operated? Yikes!
The interstate highway system is partially funded by and partially monitored by the federal government as well as local law enforcement, blah blah blah. Still, a great deal of nefarious traffic is carried upon it. The same will be true of any government-provided internet.
It wouldn't replace all other ISPs. The only reason I can see that it would be a bad idea is that it would basically be the end of the mom and pop ISP.
This isn't the Internet - it's filter data access (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, the same FCC that is fining stations hundreds of thousands of dollars because they didn't bleep out Bono's "fucking brilliant" in time will determine what is and isn't suitable content accessible through this service.
Fuck that.
A great opportunity to push IPv6 (Score:5, Interesting)
There wouldn't be enough IPv4 to provide such a large scale service.
Just make the all thing IPv6, possibly with proxies to access the IPv4; that would instantly provide a massive incentive for third parties to start supporting IPv6.
Not Free (Score:2, Informative)
Whether you use it or not, you will pay for it via taxes, debt, or inflation.
You idiots, it's not FREE! (Score:3, Insightful)
Government doesn't have anything it didn't get from someone else. There is NOTHING they provide that is free.
It is an absolutely horrible idea to have the government become your ISP. Think of the danger this presents to free speech when the method of communication you use is controlled by the government. Would you have free speech if government controlled all the TV Networks or Newspapers? What if they said they will preform "some filtering" on them?
Now I know that they did not say they would be getting rid of traditional ISP's (who suck because they are usually government "provided" duopolies in most places) however if people feel they *already* pay through taxes for a service why pay extra again? Would that not make the government the dominant ISP?
Government has TERRIBLE customer service, it can't fix the roads, it can't do anything on budget, it can't fix our schools, it can't take care of the veterans, it can't make the poor wealthy, it can't solve the economic cries, it can't make you safe, and it can't make you happy... yet you idiots continue to turn to it to solve your every problem.. Why? What is wrong with you people?
Free* (Score:4, Funny)
*For extremely high values of free.
Re: (Score:2)
They are using the term in the sense of
business model = method or providing specific services or goods at a particular fixed unit cost to a specific population.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)