Re: Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996
At 10:08 PM 5/9/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
From: IN%"educom@elanor.oit.unc.edu" 9-MAY-1996 22:01:14.77
REGIONAL BELLS WANT RATE HIKES FOR WIRING SCHOOLS The United States Telephone Association would like to raise the average U.S. monthly phone bill by about $10 over the next five years to pay for wiring schools and libraries with new lines for phones and computers, and to subsidize poor and rural customers. The proposal assumes an $11 billion cost for wiring schools and libraries, with local phone companies paying about a third to a half of that. The rest would come from a surcharge on other services, such as cellular. "No single industry should be held responsible for fulfilling this major goal," says USTA's president. "Each has a role and should make a significant contribution to the national education technology mandate." (Investor's Business Daily 8 May 96 A7)
OK, someone tell me why the END USERS don't pay for this! If a school wants to be wired, the local school board can pay for it (and the local taxpayers can vote for the millage increase). If you don't think every five year old needs a net connection (maybe because you are afraid of them seeing nekkid ladies, or because you just think teachers should teach and not rely on technology to do their jobs for them), you can vote against spending the money. As for subsidizing rural customers, those people made a choice to live in a rural area, for whatever reason. I see no reason to subsidize that choice. Unless of course they want to pay higher taxes to subsidize the costs for my living in the city. Clay
OK, someone tell me why the END USERS don't pay for this!
If a school wants to be wired, the local school board can pay for it (and the local taxpayers can vote for the millage increase). If you don't think every five year old needs a net connection (maybe because you are afraid of them seeing nekkid ladies, or because you just think teachers should teach and not rely on technology to do their jobs for them), you can vote against spending the money.
As for subsidizing rural customers, those people made a choice to live in a rural area, for whatever reason. I see no reason to subsidize that choice. Unless of course they want to pay higher taxes to subsidize the costs for my living in the city.
Clay
I wouldn't normally respond to such an offtopic post, but this post is so egregious I couldn't let it pass. Who says they make a choice to live in rural areas? Do they also choose not to have enough money to pay for shoes? So, because they live in a poor district they are not entitled to the same level of education as a rich city suburb? The illiteracy rate in Alabama is 40%! This is just plain sick! I don't think that every school needs a net connection, I think they need better teachers. But the statement that we shouldn't subsidize rural customers because they CHOOSE to live there (even though some are poor and can't afford to live anywhere else) is just plain fallacious. Just because you choose to live in the city does not mean people always choose to live where they live. Education is one thing (perhaps the only thing) that deserves to be subsidized in this country. We're rapidly falling behind. I don't agree with the $10. I'd need convincing that every school needs a net connection when the students can't read, but the tone of the above message is callous, besides being wrong. -- ____________________________________________________________________________ Doug Hughes Engineering Network Services System/Net Admin Auburn University doug@eng.auburn.edu Pro is to Con as progress is to congress
Ever since most of the hard crypto content moved to coderpunks, there have been a lot of totally non-crypto political postings that make my skin crawl. In general, the only thing that cypherpunks have in common is a belief that privacy is a good thing, strong cryptography is a good way to improve privacy, and that cryptography with _manadatory_ key escrow is not strong. Stuff on the CDA yes. Stuff on the CBA no. Use of crypto for on-line tax filing yes. Generic Tax Evadance stuff not really. I kinda miss the Perrygrams :) ----- Cause maybe (maybe) | In my mind I'm going to Carolina you're gonna be the one that saves me | - back in Chapel Hill May 16th. And after all | Email address remains unchanged You're my firewall - | ........First in Usenet.........
Simon Spero writes:
Ever since most of the hard crypto content moved to coderpunks, there have been a lot of totally non-crypto political postings that make my skin crawl. [...] I kinda miss the Perrygrams :)
Well, there aren't going to be any more of them. Lots of people complained. "You're a fascist" they said. "We can post whatever we want, and you can't stop us. Nya Nya Nya." The intellectual level of of the counterarguments was more or less that possessed by six year olds, but it didn't matter -- they not only claimed their right to piss in the communal coffee pot if they wanted to, but they went on to exercise this right. Well, now they all get to drink it. Some of the people who couldn't help but take a leak in the well whenever they passed it by got upset that coderpunks drew off all the crypto talk. Well, actually, there was no crypto talk left. It would have been nice to keep one list, but some people insisted on exercising their right to be stupid in public over and over again and it got to be too much. It used to be that I turned to cypherpunks first to get news of breaking cryptography policy interest and breaking cryptography information. Now there doesn't seem to be anyone left here who gives a damn about cryptography -- even big news like MD5 getting nuked doesn't make it above the noise levels. I'm expecting that I'll unsubscribe from this thalidimide parody of a cryptography mailing list within a few weeks. Perhaps I'll start an alternative place to discuss cryptography policy that explicitly has the policy of tossing off people who want to post irrelevancies. I suppose then the rest of the crowd can just turn the filters up or whatever it is claimed one is supposed to do to find something worth reading in the cesspit. Perry
participants (4)
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Clay.Olbon＠dynetics.com -
Doug Hughes -
Perry E. Metzger -
Simon Spero