I Bought a Satellite and All I Got Was This Stupid News Post

[SilentHunter7]

Exactly. The "who" & "how" are very problematic questions, hence the reason I think the whole scheme is very naive with very little foresight, so much so it shouldn't go ahead.
Rwanda was duped into having a genocide...So yes, I do think that the people would need restricted internet access.
I'm actually more concerned about internal problems rather than international terrorism hence why I've mentioned Columbia and Rwanda.
Saying the internet is a tool for learning is just lying. It can be used for learning just as easily as it can be used to cause problems. Acting as if it is nothing more than an Encyclopaedia is just warping reality.

Rwanda was duped into having a genocide because the government propaganda machine, which was their sole source of information, told them the Tutsi was going to murder them all and take over the country. They had no way of knowing otherwise, because the only thing they had to go by were state-run media broadcasts. By the time anyone wised up, it was already far too late.

Misinformation and lies is the root of such tragedies, and are the tool dictators use to maintain a hold over their people. The internet can be used to spread such lies, but with no restriction on the content, it's like as Yahtzee put it, throwing a message in a bottle out into a sea of messages in bottles. The truth would drown it out.

Just look at China. There's a reason they filter what the people can, and cannot access on the internet. Because if anyone actually realized that their leaders weren't the all-knowing benevolent rulers they make themselves out to be, they might start to think a government by the people is a good idea.

Actually, it'd be kind of interesting to see how China would react if all you had to do to bypass the great firewall was point a satellite dish at a piece of sky.

 

[Snowalker]

This sounds good and all... until you realize we've already ran out of IP addresses...

Y2K MAN, Y2K!!!!! Also, IPv6. Look it up.

Also, that sounds awesome. Hope the guys pull it off

Already have, transition is not going to be as smooth as most of you here seem to think, but I digress, I don't feel like arguing.

 

[Unesh52]

...you get a pin decrying that you bought a satellite.

Did you use that word correctly? Maybe the pin says "I can't f*cking believe I bought a satellite!"

Also:

Step one: put a hole in a box. Wait. No.

I laughed

OT: This sounds like a spectacular idea. Honestly, it sounds like something Bill Gates would want to get in on. Someone should send him an e-mail. And wasn't there some guy who was trying to give lap-tops to kids in 3rd world countries? I think he was on the Colbert Report; maybe give him a call too.

Imagine it... a whole world sharing the same level of knowledge. First step towards utopia.

 

[SilentHunter7]

and getting more technical, would allow a sea of more bot networks and open a door of new scam possibilities.

Well then at least the Nigerian Scam e-mails would be actually coming from Nigeria

 

[sosolidshoe]

Clever idea that hasn't been thought through. You will need to provide said people with wireless receivers and PC's if need be, not to mention claiming the internet is a "human right" is absurd. When the internet is better monitored with the illegal & dangerous content removed, sure, then claim it as a right, but before then, tread carefully as we've seen in Egypt what modern communications can result in (not to mention the countless paedophiles arrested).

In Egypt? What, you mean the mass of oppressed citizenry rising up against a corrupt and autocratic regime which has plunged them and their families into poverty while stealing vast sums of public money? That Egypt?

Sounds fucking brilliant to me.

Access to information is very much a human right, without information we cannot make free choices, either as citizens or as consumers. Since the internet is the pre-eminent method of accessing information in the modern world, why the hell wouldn't access to it be considered as much of a right as any other?

How did mass communications and Rwanda work out? Still sound "fucking brilliant" to you?
Human rights are nonsensical dangerous jibberish. All rights are is a lazy man's way of justifying complex moral choices by saying "just cuz".

Aww, a moral relativist, how quaint. Tell me, how long did it take you to discard thousands of years of debate and discourse on moral philosophy? How many modern authors of philosophy have you read, to inform your opinion? No, I think that you're the one who wishes to resort to "just cuz". Arguments have been presented to you as to why access to the internet, indeed all information, should be a considered a right afforded to all, and rather than attempt to refuse those points, you claim that people have no rights, and further that the very concept of rights is a dangerous one(yet you don't explain why).

EDIT: And a fascist as well, apparently! This is my lucky day. Let me guess, you think that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government, right? That ignorance should be used as a method of controlling the "sheeple" rather than dispelled by education?

 

[teknoarcanist]

Inb4 telcom just buys the satellite out from under them.