Darned Comcast

You can't really appreciate it from this picture but the new Comcast Tower ruined the Philadelphia skyline. We had our first glimpse driving up I-95 last Friday night. [My wife and I met in Philadelphia where we both lived some 13 years ago.]

Here's another angle:



It's the tall building to the left in the second pic. In fact it's the tallest building between NYC and Chicago at 975 feet.

If they had made it equal in height and similar in style (pointed) to the Liberty Place buildings, it mightn't have had such a damaging aesthetic effect. I don't really know.

Click here to read an interesting *curse* upon Philly sports teams from the erection of One Liberty Place - the former tallest building in town.



I may be *stuck* with darned Comcast (as the only Cable TV/Internet option) here on Boston's South Shore, but in Philly they really are subjugated by Brian Robert's massive Comcast ego.

The Lack of Good Sushi in the Slums is"Discriminatory"

I am trying to move to an area southeast of Boston. One major problem with this plan however, is the lack of broadband internet out there. All that's available is Comcast with their pathetic 8 megabytes per second service.

It's not like I watch YouTube all day, I need a fast connection to deliver my streaming stock and futures quotes. A slow or unreliable internet feed could cost me mucho dinero.

Why is only Comcast available out there? Well, I am not quite sure but I gather that the People's Republic of Massachusetts granted local monopolies to certain ISPs in an effort to "even things out". Heck, who could ever understand their motivations?

Regardless, Charter, Verizon FIOS, and RCN cable are not available in this area and I can't imagine spending the serious money I am about to for a home and having to endure Third World internet service. Mere words can not express how much this is stressing me out. Right now, my RCN connection runs at a freakish 50-60 MB/s - how the heck am I going to adjust to speeds one sixth as fast?

I called the other cable companies to ascertain if they would soon be expanding service to my preferred destination - but they aren't.

Then I started googling for info on the future roll out of Verizon FiOS and I found a Boston Globe article that just put my angst over the edge.

ROLLOUT BY VERIZON TRIGGERS CONCERNS
Network offered mostly in affluent, white suburbs

Verizon Communications Inc. yesterday added four more overwhelmingly white, mostly well-off Boston suburbs to the Massachusetts communities where it is deploying an advanced fiber-optic network that can deliver cable television.

Markey, who is the senior ranking Democrat on the House telecommunications subcommittee and has called for ''legal prohibitions against economic redlining in the deployment" of broadband, struck a middle-ground tone in an interview yesterday.

But Verizon is also deliberately beginning to market services where it sees the best chance to make money.

Elsewhere in the country, who gets next-generation service, and when, sometimes gets controversial. SBC Communications Inc. has been denounced for ''digital discrimination" in video rollouts by Chicago-area clergy members calling themselves the Ministerial Alliance Against the Digital Divide.



Behold the mortal sin of "deliberately" trying to make money!!!

So what next? Are they going to force Sushi restaurants to expand to the slums of Dorchester and Roxbury?

Even with all the yoga breathing and chi management, it takes every ounce of my energy to keep the socialists from depressing my life here in perhaps the worst state in the union.