The BFC Computing Weblog

DRED has published its ’Broadband Action Plan’ with recommendations on how to improve the penetration of high speed Internet service in NH. I attended a session in Plymouth last year to provide input on the plan.

Overall it’s a good report. I’m especially impressed with its recommendations to get State out of the way for access to land and towers, permitting, etc. Also, predictable, uniform, and competitive access to utility poles is a very important issue. They recommend the creation of a government office to oversee this work, but don’t set a recommendation for when that would would be finished. It may be necessary but this issue ought not be used to grow government in a permanent manner. This kind of communications infrastructure has the potential to really streamline government, so it’s probably a net-win to have the office. They’re asking for $100,000 for each of the next two years to fund the office, so it’s necessarily limited as currently proposed. A citizen of NH might expect to pay a dollar over the next few years to fund it.

I’ve noticed that Burlington Telecomm has been having revenue shortfalls and the ECFiberNet project, which I had high hopes for, has apparently abandoned the core attribute that made it exciting - that it would be self-funded, and has gone asking for bond money instead. That was always the uncreative option, but the private model made ECFiberNet free of coercion. That is to say, government-run models don’t appear to be very healthy, but where the government can act to get out of industry’s way or improve its monopoly grants we should welcome its action.

your black business cards

are very hip, except I

can’t write on the back

Somebody on the Cartalk forum asked about hidden surprises/costs for the Prius. I wondered where the break-even point was on gas, since everybody is “buying a hybrid because gas is so high”.

Here’s where my research led me: 280,613 miles.

This is using a worst-case difference for the Prius, in this case EPA Highway, and price numbers from Edmunds. My rusty high-school algebra (work below), assumes comparable maintenance costs and $3/gal gasoline. If common battery worries pan out, score down the Prius. If WWIII breaks out, score down the Corolla. If either car makes it to 280K, call Guinness!

I picked the top Corolla to be pretty close in options, but if you want to save more, you can. A really fair comparison would add ABS to the Corolla, so somebody please price that and re-run the numbers. Similarly, an all-in-town (Taxi-service) calculation would be better for the Prius, somebody can run those numbers too.

So, don’t buy the Prius to save money. You’ll definitely save on gas consumption. Whether the Prius has a total carbon load lower than the Corolla is a matter of some debate, given the additional electronics involved, and the high cost of nickel mining.

And, obviously, I’m quite used to high school algebra teachers bleeding all over my work, so have at it, in the name of science.

It looks like ValleyNet is going to do electronics recycling again, this Saturday at the Montshire from 9-12. See their website for more info, and bring a truckload of your old power-eating beasties.

Hat tip: Anne.

UPDATE: I went on Saturday around 11 and there were about 10 cars in line. I had a PowerMac 7300 (XPostFacto just wasn’t cutting it) two keyboards, and an office wastebasket full of miscellaneous circuit boards and parts. $10, which was fair, and the recycler seems dedicated to responsible recycling. They unloaded right from the car, and off we went. The only way it could have been more painless was if the line was a bit shorter. The Prius in front of me nearly ran over the volunteer because he didn’t hear its engine.

Here’s why Intel is going after low power in its new Core line. At the Yahoo! Keynote at CES Intel CEO Paul Otellini showed off a viiv-powered dual-core palmtop entertainment device. That’s a 1.5+ GHz dual-core processor in that little thing.

Intel says a slightly bigger one is coming out this year (iTVS remote?) and this model is 1-2 years out. Click the image for a vidbite from the Keynote. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel is in the other fellow in the video.

Bob Cringely crunches some numbers to learn why Google is building a data center next to a hydroelectric plant. “It’s a UPS, Stupid” Very clever.

Fuji Heavy Industries, by way of its Subaru brand, has developed a concept all-electric car using the newer, Lithium Ion batteries. They’re using a new manganese-based Lithium Ion cell that solves the runaway and overcharging problems typical of cobalt-based Lithium Ion batteries and can be charged very rapidly.

<blockquote><p>The lithium-ion batteries, co-developed by a joint venture of Fuji Heavy and NEC Corp., only take five minutes to be charged 90 percent, the company said. The car can be driven more than 150,000 kilometers without needing a change in battery.</p></blockquote>
          <p>There’s even a movement that’s sprung up around these cars.  <a href="http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=642">They</a> intend to pressure Subaru into bringing these cars to market.   Yahoo! Group <a href="http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/evworld">here</a>.</p>
          <p>On the National Security front, a group called <a href="http://www.setamericafree.org/">Set America Free</a> is <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20050813/ca_pr_on_wo/hybrid_tinkerers__bgt">attracting</a> some heavyweight support for the cause:</p>
          <blockquote><p>plug-in hybrids are starting to get the backing of prominent hawks like former CIA director James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, former president Ronald Reagan’s undersecretary of defence. They have joined Set America Free, a group that wants the U.S. government to spend $12 billion over four years on plug-in hybrids, alternative fuels and other measures to reduce foreign oil dependence.</p></blockquote>
          

Today, Yahoo! and Verizon launched a $14.95 768/128 DSL package. According to the news story, SBC has a package twice as fast for the same money.

Meanwhile, about 40% of the US can’t get broadband service of any kind. Here in the Upper Valley, things look particularly grim. The Hanover fiber project has tanked, and Finowin doesn’t have their technical lead anymore.

I spoke with a Verizon project manager last week, and they’re rolling out Fiber To The Home in the Nashua area this fall. Manchester is slated for 2008, and the Upper Valley is basically on the ‘never’ list (falling from 2014 a couple years ago). Some gear taken out of FTTH areas may trickle down to our area, but they’re still not going to put DSLAM’s in remote terminals. With cable TV non-existant in large percentages of the area, most home users more than 5 miles from a CO (does anybody know how to get/plot this data on a GIS?) will be using 26.4K dial-up forever, with the current march of progress. Even if Verizon could meet the 2014 date, the users would be on 20-year-old connectivity when they got here. I was very proud of my 300-baud modem in 1985, to give some perspective to how technology should progress in 20 years - my cable modem is 10,000 times faster.

DirecWay is too unreliable and non-scalable to be of any use, if you can even see the Clarke belt, and the Teledesic-style projects are all defunct. Stratellites have line-of-sight issues around here, and 900MHz mesh systems need more cooperation and user-maintenance than most people can handle.

Meanwhile, all these people are unable to download security patches for their computers (the full XP SP2 download is 250MB) which has some national security implications, as most of the big CIA thinkers expect a cyber attack sooner rather than later - attachs which depend on unpatched systems to succeed.

A few years ago, Verizon was saying they’d be up this way once they had DSL rolled out in urban areas. Fair enough. But now they’re just re-doing those areas with fiber so they can try to sell video services to the customers. But when they’re done with that they’ll be up this way (fool me twice…). We even have state Senators who want to remove all regulation of Verizon so they can operate without any competition in their state-granted monopoly.

With such a concentration of College/Medical Center/High-Tech workforce, often before a house can sell it has to pass the ‘can we get DSL here’ test. This increases the concentration of demand in the most dense areas of town, further driving up costs in a housing-crunch market, and driving out workers who make average wages (the very workers who would most stand to benefit from the educational opportunities a broadband connection would provide.) Besides that, no area business can consider an equitable telecommuting program if almost half of the workers are unable to do so, which just leads to traffic congestion and the further national security risk inherent in our reliance on foreign oil. I’ve talked to people from the Upper Valley Housing Coalition, who ostensibly want to improve the availability of affordable housing in the Upper Valley, but they’re not willing to consider the boadband angle. They’re also not willing to work with Vo-Tech programs at the high schools to increase the supply of tradespeople either, so it’s not entirely surprising.

This situation parallels the electrification of rural America - scattered neighborhoods were forming Co-ops, but many were unable to do so or get the cooperation of their neighbors. In 1936, the Federal Government realized the private sector wasn’t going to fill this void and decided it was in the nation’s best interest to see that everybody have electricity to their homes. Next year marks the 70th anniversary of that Act, and it would be a fitting time to establish a Rural Connectivity Act. The schools are wired now - let’s put that Universal Service Charge to use.

America faces several challenges in the next century: math and science education, national security, competing with China and India, and perservation of the American way of life. All of these are begging for universal connectivity, and it’s a winner at the voting booth.

I’m going to be speaking with a staffer in Charlie Bass’s office about this issue this week. If others are interested in helping with this work, drop me a mail or leave a blog comment.