[clug] stupid Communications ministers

[Alex Satrapa]

On 17 Nov 2006, at 12:27, Paul Wayper wrote:

> So you don't:
> - Read up on product comparisons (e.g. choice.com.au)
> - Get involved in online communities (e.g. babysteps.com.au)
> - Read about news and current affairs and advocacy (e.g.  
> crikey.com.au)
> - Buy and sell things online (e.g. ebay.com.au)
> - Learn about stuff online (e.g. wikipedia.org)
>
> Your opinions of what people use the Internet for are straw man
> arguments: you've chosen the banal in order to ridicule it.

Which of the above requires ADSL2 to participate in? Photos of baby/ 
puppy/new house are more bandwidth-intensive than most entries on  
Wikipedia. My brother sends my father and I photos of my nephew, and  
I share photos of my new place with friends and family regularly  
(here's my kitchen full of boxes, here's my kitchen with the stuff  
all neatly stowed away - I'm so proud to actually be able to say it's  
*my* kitchen).

I don't need 20MBps to share my life with my friends and family. I  
watch videos on Youtube, I download another multi-megabyte patch for  
WoW every other week. I have not yet felt that my life would be more  
fulfilled if only my broadband was ten times faster.

> I honestly don't know whether you're being facetious here, or baiting
> people, or genuinely don't know.

I was asking an honest question. Why do you need faster broadband  
than you already have?

Google Earth goes down to about 1m resolution in most parts of  
Canberra, and it's easily accessible through 1.5Mbps broadband.  
That's the most bandwidth-intensive application I've used recently.  
Even Youtube doesn't come close (it leaves me bandwidth to spare).

> But I suggest that you're missing the
> point if you think the internet is only about meaningless
> self-gratification.  Maybe you should watch some commercial TV -  
> that's
> all about meaningless self-gratification.

Go back to the list of things I said seemed to be common things to do  
with the Internet. Is paying bills really meaningless self- 
gratification? The sentiment of your argument (through projection)  
appears to be that you only desire higher speed to fuel meaningless  
self-gratification... but porn is only 1% of the Internet.

This still doesn't go any way to answering the question - why should  
the Government foot the bill for something that isn't needed, and is  
being adequately funded by the market?

Alex

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