I have been posting at least one article per day in the web tech section of The Pisstakers since we started in August 2006, but alas nothing seemed to get pinged yesterday. Sorry. The wonders of technology, it was taking 2 hours to upload a file that should have taken a couple of minutes. And the kicker - total failure to publish the rss file.

So, apologies to you and sorry to everyone who got in the way of my bad mood yesterday. I was at my limit of patience watching 3-word test emails time out! But I found a solution.

Fricking Comcast and their hi tech hardware. Don't you just love trouble-shooting damn fancy modems! Instead of falling out of sync for no reason, why couldn't it have flashed a light to say that it was out of sync. Perhaps I would have rested easier, had I thought it was a simple push of a reset button.

Download performance, or lack of it

Just to give you your money's worth of ranting, let me add another article to the Comcast archive. Below is a graphic of our 100mb/sec service performance. 5.6Mb/sec download speed. Hmmm. And upload speed? Apologies - but it was too embarrassing to print! 312kb/sec upload barely made a mark on a graph. Fricking pitiful. (Click on the graph to check your own speeds out.)

Slow internet cripples a nation's progress

Sorry to tarnish a whole nation with one Comcastic brush, but, if this is the best there is in the whole continent, the US is screwed in its capacity as an international economic power. I may be a Pisstaker, but I do know a bit about what goes on in the outside world. Internet provision is essential for future economic prosperity. Internet provision in USA is abysmal. Americans claim to be a world leader in technology. Sorry, that adds up to a horrible dose of reality by 2020.

It doesn't really bother me, because, hey, I already have an education and only need to publish a poxy blog with one small image per post. But what about the youngsters and technology-based ie nearly all companies that rely on the internet to conduct their business? They are working with one hand tied behind their back.

Wii-ing in the wind

And enough already of falsely congratulating the wonders of free markets as a solution to everything. Japanese Wii-playing internet providers and suicidal Swedes didn't get first and second in the list of high speed internet because their leaders held up their arms and allowed a free for all! But Comcast have got rich and uber powerful because US authorities did, and look where they are in the list!

Rather than picking on America, every English-speaking government really needs to step up to the plate and make sure free competition isn't quite so free, because if Swedish or Japanese become the primary languages on the internet, what have English-speaking countries got to fall back on for a marketing edge in the world of business? Certainly not a workforce capable of communicating in two or three languages. "2 languages in the same head? Noone can live at that speed!" (Eddie Izzard.)

Our life in the hands of Comcast? Ouch!

Every comcastic consumer in the US is definitely getting screwed one way or another already, but worse, the future kids, due to become captains of industry as well as pawns, are coming into line to be screwed royally too. It isn't good enough to be happy with lightening fast Wii's and slow-loading on-line timetables for the bus to the unemployment office. More than any generation before them, people will need access to a snappy and world-beating internet set-up. If not, a whole country could be left in the dust.

See, I am back full swing into the ranting with a happy heart, because the internet works!