What is Digg?423 Comments
- secretrk1313, on 10/26/2007, -6/+166In the U.S. its not that they cant increase the speed, its that they would have to invest time and work to upgrade the current technology. Here is Comcast's current plan
1.Provide Internet Access
2.Tell you what you can and cant do with internet access
3.?????????
4.Profit! - GoodAthiest, on 10/26/2007, -28/+158Once again the "richest country" in the world is the middle class when it comes to services. I am very thankful for the living and working conditions here, but the "minimum wage" is not enough to be middle class. Gosh, why are we rich again? And where is all this money at?
- crushfan, on 10/20/2007, -5/+83LOL, Greece.
"TONIGHT, WE DINE IN LAG!" - dvddesign, on 10/20/2007, -2/+79What? WWII? It's faster because they spent the money to make it faster. We gave the Telcos here in the US several billion to develop higher speed fiber systems, and they've wasted that money buying up patents, buying up each other, and spending money to lobby congress to knock off any congressional reviews of their spending habits.
- reed311, on 10/20/2007, -17/+85The richest country in the world is also one of the largest. Japan is minuscule compared to the United States and, thus, much easier to blanket the country in broadband. If the US was the size of Japan and had the same GDP, it would have higher broadband speeds.
- Phyltre, on 10/20/2007, -6/+72Okay, let me say something about stability: US broadband stability is laughable next to Japan's. You can argue that's something relative to country size, but I say it's relative to competition--something the US can't seem to scrounge up.
- sedawk, on 10/20/2007, -6/+66Canada beats the US -- 10 times less dense and a bigger area.
- dvddesign, on 10/20/2007, -2/+62I have a friend who lives in a 80,000 population town in northern Japan. He pays $15 a month for 100Mb internet. $15. He downloaded the Bioshock demo for Xbox 360 in 10 minutes. It took me 5 hours in Texas. I guarantee you I'm at least 3,000 miles closer to the source than he was.
- NoOneButMe, on 10/20/2007, -44/+96The countries listed as having the highest speeds are small in terms of land. So it's easier and cheaper to set up a network. Not to mention Japan / Korea / France were pretty much destroyed during WW II so their infrastructure's more modern and is better designed.
After that, there's a big drop - for the rest of the 1st world nation's - a majority of which cover huge land-masses and are harder and more expensive to create a network over. - kakwakas, on 10/26/2007, -0/+48You forgot to put "brutally rape your wallet" somewhere in there.
- fullback, on 10/10/2007, -6/+47If geography and population density were the only reasons, why isn't affordable, reliable, high-speed fiber available in at least one major city in the US? How in the world did you ever get electricity, a phone and water in the US? It's sooo big!
I've had 100Mbps fiber for *years* in Japan and the stability of the infrastructure is world leading, not just world class. My cellphone has more bandwidth than your home connection. The reason the US is so far behind is that there is no competition. I have three fiber providers offering 100Mbps fiber and three offering 80Mbps Adsl, plus cable in my area of Japan... and I'm a 1-1/2 drive from a major city.
US providers are not interested in reinvesting earnings. Executives are simply cashing it in themselves and milking every last penny out of old technology. Providers received $200 billion from the US government (taxpayers) years ago to light up fiber across the country. They stole it and you still have crap, expensive service.
I don't blame those who are buying into the duopoly excuses. Most Americans have no idea about anything outside the US anyway, and they certainly don't know the facts about broadband around the world. It isn't your fault. If corporations and government have no interest in the advancement of your society, you're out of luck and there is nothing you can do about it. The Internet duopoly doesn't vote, but they have plenty of your money to lobby with to make sure they have more of your money to lobby with to protect their grasp on your nuts.
P.S. People do not "rarely use" a home connection in Japan. I don't know what you did while in Japan, or when you were there, but it's obvious you were not in the internet or keitei business. - airiox, on 10/10/2007, -13/+51Uggh, more spam from the same sites. I hate to be the tattle tell but I am really getting sick of seeing the same 10 sites over and over and over.
The first 6 diggers for this story digg only rawstory.com articles. I know its not a ton of diggs but in my opinion its still cheating the system. If you get 6 diggs very quickly people will notice.
Digg can we really please get some sort of temporary banning of these sites? Or perhaps give us the option to ban certain sites through our preferences? If not that, limit them to one story a day? or nullify the diggs of the users that have a 60-70% ratio of diggs for one site or another? Places like Gizmodo saw their articles always reaching the front page and decided to self regulate for the betterment of the digg community asking its readers to please refrain from digging things unless they were worthy of it.
Sites like rawstory are exploiting digg to make a killing off of advertising money. They are leaches of the community. It's nearly to the point where I could subscribe to the rss feed of these few 10-15 sites and not miss much from the homepage of digg.
Please digg staff, I would ask you to fix this growing problem. - maexus, on 10/20/2007, -5/+39A ISP here offers 15Mbps but I can't get it because I live on the other side of a street.
- JamesBrown, on 10/20/2007, -2/+36That's a ***** excuse the telcos use to avoid having to upgrade their infrastructure. The US may be spread out, but most people are still concentrated to large population centers. Nevertheless we can't get speeds even approaching other countries. I live in the middle of a large American city and I still can't get speeds faster than 600kbps on DSL. Pathetic.
/another free market success story - louiedog, on 10/20/2007, -3/+36We have lots of pretty densely populated cities. It'd be much easier to roll out faster broadband there. Why don't they?
- Segment, on 10/20/2007, -6/+37The difference is because in the United States, profit and corporate greed often outweigh the betterment of the people. Companies buy-out each other and influence government to impose rules and regulations that benefit corporate interests. Not saying that this doesn't happen in Japan, but I know it happens in the USA.
PS - To the guy who said Japan was destroyed in WWII, that doesn't hold ground. Most of the Internet backbones were made during the 70s to present.
enjoy. - zyklon, on 10/20/2007, -3/+31Japan always has the best toys.
- K3ITHK, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26Actually, I want to talk about those months. How do you not notice something like this? Also, how much do you ***** pay for that?
- omjeremy, on 10/20/2007, -6/+29I wonder how old this data is... not that US is that much quicker, but I have a feeling this is old.
NEVERMIND: ACTUAL ARTICLE LINK: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/blog/blogs.aspx - joshjoneswas, on 10/20/2007, -3/+25So the rebuilding of Europe after WWII included fiber optic? suuuuhweet!
- slicedoranges, on 10/10/2007, -2/+24Hopefully this chart will knock a few people off AOL. Guys, you can literally get speed 50 times faster for half the price. Not to sound like a commercial here, but this is 2007!
- Bleekster, on 10/10/2007, -6/+24Hey look! No surprise that us Aussies are so far below, ***** Telstra.
- walkable, on 10/10/2007, -1/+18Sure, that's what I thought too. Then I saw Canada ahead of us. Granted, it's not by much, but Canada is much more spread out than the U.S.
- Minutemanjones, on 10/10/2007, -5/+22Look at that!
The French finally beat the Germans. - niczar, on 10/10/2007, -3/+19Explain why Sweden and Finland, which have lower pop density or similar to the US, beat it hands down? The size thing is a stupid argument -- it doesn't even begin to explain why you can get 28 Mbps DSL for €30 a month in any small city in France, while you can't even get that in Manhattan, except those who are lucky to be able to get FIOS.
- redfox2600, on 10/20/2007, -16/+32Sweet, I'm moving to Japan hotter girls AND more bandwidth.
- ncairns, on 10/10/2007, -8/+23Let me summarize-
Phyltre: Even given the fact that Japan is a smaller country, their broadband service is still better than the States'.
khellendros1984: Yeah, but Japan is smaller.
Wow. - bunnybash, on 10/10/2007, -4/+19australia bloody sucks, actually no, Telstra suck and so does johnny howard... bloody hell make it competitive and let people loose on the tubes!!
- hiphoc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Mark Cuban said a similar statement. He said that from about your house to the local station/verzion location. Not sure what thats called. He said the companies wont invest in infrastructure so the web slows to a crawl on the wires going to your house. But much like oil, gas, 40 year old technology being used to get the shuttle into space. America seems to have stopped innovating, and spends most of its money on buidling prisons and bombs. If we put even 10% of the defense budget on infrastructure and social services this place would start to look like ***** paradise. And yes, we would still be able to blow up the world many times over.
- aussieNickuss, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13"ADSL2 running at 22.9 / 1 Mbps for just over $US30."
BS. If you're happy with a monthly download limit of 500MB then I'd believe that price, but no. - modafroman, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14Poor old Australia, our average is sitting down there at like 1.5mbit, even tho about 15% of the population has access to 21mbit cable, and a lot more has access to upto 24mbit adsl2+.
You guys think you have issues in the US, how about paying 5x more for less speed and data caps. Ugh. - blindmelon1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Who the hell would dig this down ?
Its the truth....Telstra stinks... our broadband is so far behind... even NZ, what a ***** joke. - Netrilix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11In my day, you considered it broadband if you happened to connect at 28.8 rather than 14.4.
- elCapitanNemo, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14George Bush Doesn't care about computer geeks.
- skidooer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12I can get 3Mbps DSL out on the farm, hundreds of miles away from any city. Mind you, I'm in Canada.
- shadowpr0ph3t, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11because there companies aren't as greedy as ours.
- Tetraca, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11That's why Germany is right next to the US despite many of its cities being destroyed during WWII just like Japan and Korea. It's lazy, stingy companies that are the issue here.
- amoeba, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Because we sped it up with some sheep-powered turbines and number 8 wire.
- Anomaly427, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10No, I can attest to the hotter, slimmer-but-curvier girls. Oh, and extraordinary internet access speeds. All good, no bad.
- khellendros1984, on 10/10/2007, -11/+21Japan has more people crammed into a smaller space. It's easier to run the lines within the cities and hit a greater percentage of the population. A relatively large percentage of Americans live in a rural area or a small town. Plus there's the whole thing where they have about 400,000 km square, and the US has almost 10,000,000 km square...
- mercurysquad, on 10/10/2007, -5/+15The US is not the richest country in the world. Some of you Americans need to get over yourselves.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Less dense on average, but about three-quarters of Canada's population lives within 90 miles of the US border. That ought to pump up the "real" density somewhat.
- ngut, on 10/10/2007, -11/+21California isnt a country
- KevinWhite, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11I'm impressed with Canada's ranking. Considering we're the second largest country by area and have a ridiculously low population density, we have a pretty good communications infrastructure.
- wastern, on 10/20/2007, -4/+13You say the minimum wage isn't middle class....no *****. Why should it be. Since when is the minimum amount somehow supposed to throw you into the middle. Basic math will tell you that you're an idiot. If minimum wage made you middle class then there could never be a lower class, thus middle would become lower, middle-upper would become middle, the rich would be upper, and the super rich would just be rich.
Are you seeing how this works? Its like curving a grade in school to get the top of the bell to a C. The market will adjust. Take an econ class. christ.... - alricsca, on 10/10/2007, -9/+18The logic that we have slower speeds because we are a larger country would make sense except that the fact that the over all size of country should not effect the ability to bring these speeds to the major cities. It is not like the lines need to be spread evenly across the entire surface of the country. So tell me, why does San Francisco lack these speeds? It is a small peninsula with direct access to several major Internet trunks? The fact is the ability to provide these speeds is being curtailed while the the duopoly of the cable and phone company suck as much money as possible from the users. In the countries that have the highest broadband speed, public policy supports strong and open access. Monopolies are curtailed and government supported infrastructure development allows these lines to reach even the remotest parts of these nation. To put it bluntly, the argument we do no have this because we are large is full of hot air blown by greedy blood suckers and supported by sheep to ignorant to bother to examine a problem enough to see through such shallow arguments.
- CielChocobo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9I would fight for you. That's ***** man.
- shadowpr0ph3t, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10It's actually because there telco's and governments have spent money. The US could be at the top if the government actually spent money where it is needed!
- GawtMilk, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14If you nuked the entire United States, and rebuilt it from the ground up, you'd have speeds that matched Japans. The thing is, most of the US is still running off of 19th century infrastructure because it's just so stable there. Look at the countries with high speeds -- Japan [nuked], South Korea [home of the world's most protected border], Finland [infrastructure new due to recently-explosive population]. The US isn't going to be a superpower forever, because it's going to run as it did in the 1800's.
Ever try taking a subway in New York? They're hot, overcrowded, slow, and the trains only reach some stations every hour and a half or so. Compare that to the Hong Kong MTR, which carries over 3,000,000 a day, and you see a clear difference. The MTR was built in the late 1970's / early 1980's and carries 60,000 people per mile per day, whilst the NYSS was built in the 1860's - 1900's and carries 6,200 people per mile per day. - fLUx1337, on 10/10/2007, -3/+11Note to self: Move to japan
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