Finland says that 1Mb broadband is a right, not a privilege
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted October 15th 2009 1:03PM
posted October 15th 2009 1:03PM
- Whereas all of those old episodes of Dexter available on the torrent trackers are not going to download themselves.
- Whereas no man or woman in a civilized society should be denied access to Garfield Minus Garfield.
- Whereas Finland has a population 61 times smaller than that of the United States.
- Whereas no household deserves to be "farther than 2 kilometers from a connection capable of delivering broadband Internet with a capacity of at least 100 megabits of data a second" (unless, of course, you're "in far-flung corners of the country," in which case you're out of luck).
- Whereas this is the same nation that brought the world Nokia and public restrooms that can only be accessed via SMS.
- Now, Therefore YLE reports that FINLAND has made 1-megabit broadband Web access a LEGAL RIGHT starting in JULY 2010, with the ultimate goal of making 100Mb available to all in 2015. Now APOCALYPTICA has no excuse for never updating its MySpace page.
[Via CNET]
All engadget comments are equal...just that some are more equal than others.
Yeah it's bloody annoying really, and it only marginally helps in preventing flamewars, there are tricks around it though, one quick one in firefox is selecting view-pagestyle-no style from the menu, which removes the CSS and makes it a bit messy but everything readable, handy for a quick peek though, and talking of which, the system is designed to allow sites to have several optional CSS sheets, meaning engadget could offer a 'with low ranked' style to select, but engadget uses the very simple basic blogsmith stuff with limited functionality I fear, which seems to have been coded by some amateur, not a really bad amateur, but not a professional dedicated coder.
Oh whatever, everywhere has its pluses and minuses. Northern Europe is not only COLD/SNOW but DARK in the Winter most of the time. Sunlight is often overlooked in importance and its one of the reasons why some things like homicide and suicide are high in Scandinavia.
But their social safety nets can't be beaten by America. We ALMOST got their with the New Deal, only Conservatives stopped Francis Perkins from putting in National Health Care (something were closer than ever of doing some 60+ years later).
Education isn't free because racism is still a large factor here, there's no other way to say it then to say it, its the truth no other excuse is even remotely possible.
Ike warned about the Military Industrial Complex, Powell in a little publicized video warned about the Terrorist Industrial Complex. These people want war because its profitable and for no other reason, protection of the homeland is very SECONDARY.
I'm ready to leave, Finland has some great looking women. I've been to Sweden and Norway before, I love Scandinavia. I remember once a girl I was dating was going to hook me up with a job at the Ford plant in Sweden... Hmmmm
You do realize it's cold/dark because of the latitude of scandinavia right? and that europe has places in the sun, it's like me going to alaska and saying the US is a cold barren place with stupid women running things :)
So take note: there's no link between socialism and the sun.
Shopkeep: One Megabits of internets pleaze.
Oh how I love this; one tiny little country makes a decision about an internet connection and soon the whole engadget commentary section is raging about how one's country is better than anybody else's... Politics, taxes, education, health care, trade - this is great!
I wonder if this is a Finnish tactic to annoy the people on both sides of the Atlantic, and when the chaos arouses - they'll take over the whole world!
this makes me so proud to be half Finnish half American and a citizen of both.
Everyone deserves internet except radical Musilims. They suffer from a lead deficency
YOU KNOW WHAT.........I DON'T GIVE A DAMN ANYMORE. THIS COUNTRY WILL NEVER CHANGE. BY THE WAY, FINLAND HAS A HIGH ALCOHOLISM RATE. NANNI NUKANEN, AN OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST IN SKI JUMPING HAD TO SELL HIS MEDALS SO HE COULD FEED HIS HABIT.
USA...YOU'RE STUCK WITH IT!
That's all nice and cool.... do you want to pay their tax rates??? We can all have a right to everything... remember how well that worked in the old Soviet Union?
Haha, yeah the soviets were well known for giving people rights.
I am fine with my internet speed and price. What concerns me is that the current administration is deciding on a bill that would allow the goverment to "turn off" the entire internet in any case as they felt it was "necessary" That, is what people are rising up against now. Government thinking that they control the population, rather than represent and work for us, That is not repesenting our constitution and freedoms as our forefather's wrote it. Freedom still reigns, and fortunately, I think we have awoken from the complacency and blind trust that we used to have in our government. We have to hold them accountable, and we will now.
True true, but where were you when bush pulled all his crappy fascist stunts? Or did you complain that time too? Or is/was adding 'patriot' before the name in a bill enough to fool you?
Geez I over-commented on this article, I'm quitting NOW
You know,
I think I'm just going to stick it out here int eh warmth of California.
No need to freeze my butt off for faster internet.
If taxes and internet usage are that great in Finland and I wanted to relocate there, is it okay if I bring all of my guns along?
If taxes and internet usage are that great in Finland and I wanted to
relocate there, is it okay if I bring all of my guns along?
I second that, things like this creates a dream of living in another country ????? OMG Swipe Technology. Why not get the hell out and move there then????????????
@Wwhat and WmPenn, I think you guys are not getting my point and are reading too much into my comment; much of what isn't there and you're just assuming I mean. I'm not bashing Finland or it's tax system at all. Socialism at theoretical level is great, and the Scandinavian countries are the closest to having it right (especially for certain services like healthcare, since they don't get lower quality services even though they're are public, unlike in the US). I'm only saying that with the amount of taxes they pay they should get free broadband (though not really free as it comes from taxes), without having to pay extra, or at least something extremely cheap (such as landline phones here in the US). That's it. I wasn't trying to say anything more than that.
Like an idiot I replied to the wrong post.
Hmm, well sorry if I came across too strong or misunderstood, but yeah as I said in anpother post in several euro countries they privatised lots of former public things like phone and mail and tailroads and such, seemingly trying to be more american, but then they don't say 'oh now that we don't have to pay for things that used to cost billions we can and should lower taxes!', hell no, they would not dream of it, so yeah I agree if you pay tons of taxes most of it should flow back to the people, and not as breadcrumbs from the table of CEO's of (failed or not) companies and banks.
I meant railroads, not tailroads, useful word though :)
That's awesome. It's unfortunate that most Americans have no desire to better society by technology advancements. We sure do love our Snuggies though...*sigh*