Browsers

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

David Hardy <belovedbold357 at gmail.com> writes:
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at gapps.blu.org> wrote:
> >
> > Didn't know the Internet reached all the way up in Northern Vermont.
>
> It doesn't, actually.  Many areas up here are still without internet at all,
> or they have dial-up/modem, and/or no cell phone access.  A few party-line
> phone systems, too.   As late as the 60s, three-quarters of the roads up here
> were unpaved.  
> 
> And only a four-drive from Boston.
> 
> The pols and hacks keep promising the extension of broadband to the benighted
> hillbillies, but it just never seems to pan out.  
> 
> At Firebase Dave here, we have Verizon for our cells and Fairpoint for
> landline phone and internet.   With regular outages of all.

At least you *have* access to landline telephone service--recall that,
some months back, Vermont was threatening to tell Fairpoint that they
would no longer be allowed to do business in the state, due to
general inadequacy of service provided. This came up in a conversation
of mine, the other day, and I meant to look into how it all turned out;
from your description, I guess the state proved to be less powerful
than the utility-company?

We gave one of Openmoko's WikiReader units to my wife's sister
as a christmas-present, a couple years back, because she was
in the same situation (either in Vermont, or in one of the more
`Vermont-like' areas further up into New Hampshire; I don't remember
which it was--she's been straddling the border for a while).

It seems like a such a silly device, but she loved it--because
it was her `connection'; I wrote a short blog-entry about it, at the time:

    http://www.hackerposse.com/~rozzin/chronicle/jenny-and-the-wikireader.html

I'd initially lent her mine for a couple of weeks, just to get an idea
of `what real people think'; then she returned it. When given her own,
she said:

    "Oh! I've been so *lonely* without it--whenever I have a question,
     I think `oh, I'll just... *oh*..., I don't have it anymore!'"

I also wrote some longer posts around the time when I bought mine,
exploring, to some extent, some socio-economic and other elements
that seemed to support the notion of tapping the `lower 90%' market:

    http://www.hackerposse.com/~rozzin/chronicle/the-wikireader.html
    http://www.hackerposse.com/~rozzin/chronicle/wikireader-review.html

(though, on further reflection..., considering that there are all of
 10 people in Vermont--even fewer than New Hampshire's 100-person
 population...)

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."