Only One US City Makes "Top Ten Internet Cities Worldwide" List 240
An anonymous reader writes "A new report today has ranked the Top 10 'Internet Cities' around the globe, based on a set of five criteria: connection speed, availability of citywide WiFi, openness to innovation, support of public data, and security/data privacy. One might expect high-tech cities like San Francisco and Tel Aviv to appear on a list of 'Internet Cities,' but they don't. Indeed, no Middle Eastern cities appear here at all, and — due, largely, to the United States' poor Internet speeds — the only US city to make this ranking is Seattle."
Re:American priorities (Score:4, Informative)
Don't worry if your city wasn't included, I'm sure it's on this "Top 100" list:
http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20120215_01 [symantec.com]
Heh, marketing.
weird list (Score:5, Informative)
Seattle's connectivity is pretty abysmal, unless you live in the tiny areas of downtown Seattle serviced by CondoInternet.net. Other than that, you're lucky if you can get Comcast (trust me, there are FAR worse ISPs than Comcast).
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Because they have no justification or any reason to. The USA is the richest, mightiest, most powerful and influential nation in the world. Nobody else comes close.
You be Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Richest - The US is so deep in debt it can't hope to ever pay it off.
Mightiest - Temporary. That will wane just like it waned for every other empire that has ever existed. Many of those previous empires controlled a far greater amount of the civilized world.
Most powerful - See above.
Influential - The US's world influence is already waning. The US moral high ground is shot to hell. The spying and warmongering have destroyed trust from the US's closest allies.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: American priorities (Score:4, Informative)
That's bullshit, especially in this case. State-owned monopoly has no reason to compete with anyone. There might be some exceptions, but I live in Prague and the services used to be absolutely terrible until other companies started to offer these services around 2000 - cable, ADSL, wifi etc. It's much better now and most people have multiple choices. Btw the telco is not owned by state anymore, it was sold to Telefonica a few years ago.
Re:American priorities (Score:4, Informative)
No, you can fire people right away when they're actively malicious. You can fire them for being grossly incompetent if you've got that incompetence well documented. You can fire them for practically any reason (as long as you dress it up nicely) if you pay them a month's salary for every year they worked for you. And as long as they don't have a permanent contract, you can always decide not to renew the contract.
And I've been in a startup where people got fired, not even for gross incompetence, but simply for having a job that turned out to not really be necessary.
But I think the most important thing for startups is not just the laws, but also the culture. The US definitely has a more entrepreneurial culture. Netherland less so, but it's slowly turning around.
And I'm sorry for misunderstanding what you meant. You're absolutely right that amusing is not the same thing as inappropriate. I admit I was pleasantly surprised to see Amsterdam up there. I want it to be up there. But I'm also very likely biased.