Browsers

[David Hardy]

The state here threatened Fairpoint, sure, but then there is RL.  And
economics.  And money.  The hacks in Montpeculiar understand money.

We keep the landline in case all the cell coverage blows up and/or the
zombie hordes start overrunning the state from the collapsing ruins of
Megalopolis south of here.

As for population, the whole state has fewer people than the city of Boston.
 This becomes clear during the morning and afternoon "rush hour" commutes.
 And by the plethora, still, of unpaved roads, even in the capital city.

Hey, I paid my dues down there for many years.  Never again.  Even if I have
to milk cows and mow hay.







On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at geekspace.com>wrote:

> 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))))."
>
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