[PLUG-TALK] CenturyLink becoming Quantum Fiber

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG-talk <plug-talk-bounces at pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of Ronald Chmara
Sent: Saturday, May 6, 2023 12:31 PM
To: Off-topic and potentially flammable discussion <plug-talk at pdxlinux.org>
Subject: Re: [PLUG-TALK] CenturyLink becoming Quantum Fiber

Cherry picking some of this to emphasize a point:

>They are not our friends, they do not care about grannie in the sticks, and without being forced, regulated, controlled, >they will not act in any interest other than their goal.

Yeah but _I_ also don't care about grannie in the sticks.  Frankly anyone in the sticks and go to hell as far as that is concerned, everyone living in the sticks has tens of thousands of times political power as I do in their vote due to proportional representation, if they don't like the fact that they can't steam "Lost" to their TV over the Internet because they can't get Internet, they can then just move to the city, or they can pay the true cost for their Internet and phone service.

I get cheap Internet but I live in the city and have to deal with scum stealing shit out of my car, they live in the country and don't get cheap Internet but they can go to the back porch and blow cans off the fence with their AK47 all day long if they want.  I can't do that in the city.

You get different things depending on where you choose to live.  Grannie wants her guns so she lives in the sticks, fine.  She doesn't need my utility taxes paying for her Internet, too.  Particularly when she then gets online and spouts about how "she's an independent conservative" like most of them do.

>For the last 30 years (my adult memory) they have said "Oh, if you give us piles of money, we will build out quality >networks"... and then took the money, and failed to deliver.

You mean like how the rural folk said "give us your money and build us phones and power and we will participate in helping to build a better society" then once they got our money they started voting in all their Bible-thumping laws and telling us how to live?

I don’t see the difference here.  It's not an issue of government being the white knight for consumers it's an issue of every political group out there from the telcos to the rural folk to the progressives lying like dogs to try to get enough power and money to become little dictators and tell everyone how to live.

>ultimately, they're all so lightly regulated that their profit motives outweigh the interests of the people they have >controlling monopolies over.

And thank God for that because this is a game of having elephants fight with each other, always has been.  As long as the elephants are too stupid to realize if they all band together they can stomp on the rest of us, we will be OK.  Right now they are too busy fighting with each other.

The day that the MAGA people and the LBGTQ/BPIOC people figggur that out and realize if they band together they can dictate to the rest of us how to live, what to say, who to screw, we are totally f'd.

Ted