Sunday's Monitor had an ad from tewacom.com, as wide as the full Monitor page and probably the bottom quarter or third of the page.
I just checked the tewacom.com web site, and this is a company based on San Ildefonso Pueblo RUS (Rural Utility Service) grant funds from the US Department of Agriculture. They are using Motorola Canopy 900 MHz wireless hardware. They offer $24.95 per month 512 Kbits, $59.95 2 Mbits and $99.95 over 2 Mbits service, including pretty much throughout Los Alamos County's populated areas.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Where's the Enthusiasm?
I realize that the few who have visited this blog in the six weeks or so that it has been around lose interest in the blog itself when my posting interval stretches out to six or seven days.
But ...
If we can't get a dialog going here (meaning the readers have to show enough interest to post a comment, or at least tell somebody else who will comment to read the blog), I think that means there really isn't much interest in improving internet access in Los Alamos.
That the County should not waste its time even thinking about building a fiber network.
That I should not waste my money and time buying a wireless link to Albuquerque to bypass Qwest's overpriced circuits.
That we Los Alamos citizens will let LANL have the only decent (and for LANL, per-capita it's still pretty sub-standard for large-urban America, and way behind Japan, South Korea and the like) internet access outside Albuquerque (and Albuquerque is still pretty sub-standard compared to, say, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, probably Salt Lake City, etc.) in New Mexico.
Come on, pipe up, get the word out, or we're sunk.
But ...
If we can't get a dialog going here (meaning the readers have to show enough interest to post a comment, or at least tell somebody else who will comment to read the blog), I think that means there really isn't much interest in improving internet access in Los Alamos.
That the County should not waste its time even thinking about building a fiber network.
That I should not waste my money and time buying a wireless link to Albuquerque to bypass Qwest's overpriced circuits.
That we Los Alamos citizens will let LANL have the only decent (and for LANL, per-capita it's still pretty sub-standard for large-urban America, and way behind Japan, South Korea and the like) internet access outside Albuquerque (and Albuquerque is still pretty sub-standard compared to, say, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, probably Salt Lake City, etc.) in New Mexico.
Come on, pipe up, get the word out, or we're sunk.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Business Week's Keith Epstein on 4/11/08 C-SPAN Washington Journal
This is about some of the internet stuff that goes on that probably isn't advancing the cause of well and good on our planet.
E-spionage.
"The New E-spionage Threat," that's the Business Week cover story this week. Mostly it's about an e-mail that arrived at Booz Allen, supposedly about fighter aircraft for India. But that e-mail was probably really from mainland China. It contained a program that does keystroke logging and sends the results to a host in 3322.org, a China domain. And another program that subverts passwords in the recipient's Microsoft Access databases. As the article goes on to expose other anecdotes, the emphasis remains on China. I think maybe China is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider what's going on between US companies doing industrial espionage on each other. Also consider the botnets that at a minimum harvest addresses to use as targets for spam. All those are facts of life on the internet, but then again they present puzzles to be solved, too. I'm sure many in Los Alamos are thinking about those puzzles and solutions.
Links:
C-SPAN
Epstein appearance video
Business Week
Business Week E-spionage article
Business Week podcast (mp3) about the E-spionage story, beginning with the theme from the Dr. No James Bond movie
I noticed as I watched the C-SPAN appearance over the web (I saw it live over satellite, too) that one caller mentioned something he called "the minnow and barksdale" incident. That second time, I thought, "what did he mean by minnow?" Well, I think he meant Minot, which I think is pronounced my-not, not me-know, the North Dakota city and Air Force base. I guess he had read about it, and hadn't heard someone talk about the story. Barksdale is an Air Force base in Arkansas, and the incident was about nuclear weapons in a B-52 that were not the usual empty shells and were armed, unbeknownst to the B-52's crew and I guess a very serious violation of Air Force policies.
There are lots of links in the Business Week article, too, plus reader comments.
Isn't it amazing how well C-SPAN has packaged the video of Epstein's appearance? The Business Week mp3 is pretty amazing, too, compared to what we had pre-internet.
E-spionage.
"The New E-spionage Threat," that's the Business Week cover story this week. Mostly it's about an e-mail that arrived at Booz Allen, supposedly about fighter aircraft for India. But that e-mail was probably really from mainland China. It contained a program that does keystroke logging and sends the results to a host in 3322.org, a China domain. And another program that subverts passwords in the recipient's Microsoft Access databases. As the article goes on to expose other anecdotes, the emphasis remains on China. I think maybe China is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider what's going on between US companies doing industrial espionage on each other. Also consider the botnets that at a minimum harvest addresses to use as targets for spam. All those are facts of life on the internet, but then again they present puzzles to be solved, too. I'm sure many in Los Alamos are thinking about those puzzles and solutions.
Links:
C-SPAN
Epstein appearance video
Business Week
Business Week E-spionage article
Business Week podcast (mp3) about the E-spionage story, beginning with the theme from the Dr. No James Bond movie
I noticed as I watched the C-SPAN appearance over the web (I saw it live over satellite, too) that one caller mentioned something he called "the minnow and barksdale" incident. That second time, I thought, "what did he mean by minnow?" Well, I think he meant Minot, which I think is pronounced my-not, not me-know, the North Dakota city and Air Force base. I guess he had read about it, and hadn't heard someone talk about the story. Barksdale is an Air Force base in Arkansas, and the incident was about nuclear weapons in a B-52 that were not the usual empty shells and were armed, unbeknownst to the B-52's crew and I guess a very serious violation of Air Force policies.
There are lots of links in the Business Week article, too, plus reader comments.
Isn't it amazing how well C-SPAN has packaged the video of Epstein's appearance? The Business Week mp3 is pretty amazing, too, compared to what we had pre-internet.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Educause: Blueprint for Big Broadband
Someone forwarded a copy of Educause's "A Blueprint for Big Broadband" to me today. It is a whitepaper, and 74 pages long. I also see criticism that the report's target of 100 Mbits/sec is aiming too low. I agree, 100 Mbits/sec is too low a target.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Who cares about internet, and in what ways?
Where in your scheme of priorities might internet fit? Maybe you like the good old days with communication face-to-face? By letters sent via the Post Office? Phone calls? Telegrams? Maybe you rate God, family, job in that order, and any communication at all has to be about those and only in ways that existed before, say, 1970?
Maybe you find e-mail with family or friends useful, but the cheapest dial-up, say juno.com, is plenty fast for you, the main idea is to minimize expense? Are your kids sending you photos and movies of your grandchildren as attachments and dial-up is just too slow?
Maybe you run a business and could sell your wares using the internet? Advertise, for instance? Run your own catalog with current inventory updated with every order arrival and sale? Could you find something to special order for a customer using the internet? Could you communicate with your suppliers using the internet? Could you file government forms using the internet?
Maybe you're a health care practitioner and you could communicate with patients using the internet? Learn new developments via the internet? Research diagnoses via the internet? See images such as X-Rays, CAT, MRI, just video of the patient, maybe to see symptoms or just the facial expression as the patient talks? How about creating and accessing records using the internet?
Do you have an office job where you're mostly dealing with a computer, entering data, writing journal articles, books, articles and the like? Programming? Could you convince your boss to let you do that at home most of the time? Maybe you can't work at home because the rest of the family would distract you? How about teaming with some neighbors to have a neighborhood telecommuter work center?
Would you find a college lecture as a sound file, or a video file, useful? How about if you could exchange e-mail with, or video-conference with, the lecturer or a teaching assistant? Or if you teach or create courses yourself, could you publish them using the internet?
Do you own a car? Do you drive much? Could you drive less if you had internet, particularly faster internet? Have you considered that for much less than the price of a new car, quite a bit less than the price of a reliable used car, you could install conduit from your residence or business to two or three adjacent neighbors? That if everybody did that, really, really fast internet connections within town would be practically free? And if every town did that, fast connections within the state, within the nation, globally, would be pretty inexpensive? It's probably less than the cost of gas, insurance and maintenance of your car for a year, to put in that conduit that will serve you and your neighbors as long as the lifetime of that car, probably longer.
Are you a banker, but you only make loans for real estate or cars? Did you ever consider financing computers or conduit to the neighbors? How about loans on tools that help install that conduit? How about loans on network equipment for neighborhoods?
Are you an investor? Could you use the internet to help you manage your investments?
Do you travel? Would the internet help you arrange your trips? Do you know about mapquest, maps.google.com (including streetview for dozens of cities,) Google Earth and the like?
Do you vote? Would you know more about candidates and ballot questions if you used the internet to study?
How about just using the internet to make your bill paying more convenient and reliable?
Are you a government worker? Maybe your IT department is busting a gut to help you get something useful from computers and internet? Maybe, though, you're frustrating the efforts of others to expand internet access -- stop that!
Are you afraid technology will eliminate your job? Could you learn to do something else, perhaps using technology? Would that be worse than doing something a machine or somebody in Asia could do?
What are you waiting for? Somebody who will say, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you?"
Maybe you find e-mail with family or friends useful, but the cheapest dial-up, say juno.com, is plenty fast for you, the main idea is to minimize expense? Are your kids sending you photos and movies of your grandchildren as attachments and dial-up is just too slow?
Maybe you run a business and could sell your wares using the internet? Advertise, for instance? Run your own catalog with current inventory updated with every order arrival and sale? Could you find something to special order for a customer using the internet? Could you communicate with your suppliers using the internet? Could you file government forms using the internet?
Maybe you're a health care practitioner and you could communicate with patients using the internet? Learn new developments via the internet? Research diagnoses via the internet? See images such as X-Rays, CAT, MRI, just video of the patient, maybe to see symptoms or just the facial expression as the patient talks? How about creating and accessing records using the internet?
Do you have an office job where you're mostly dealing with a computer, entering data, writing journal articles, books, articles and the like? Programming? Could you convince your boss to let you do that at home most of the time? Maybe you can't work at home because the rest of the family would distract you? How about teaming with some neighbors to have a neighborhood telecommuter work center?
Would you find a college lecture as a sound file, or a video file, useful? How about if you could exchange e-mail with, or video-conference with, the lecturer or a teaching assistant? Or if you teach or create courses yourself, could you publish them using the internet?
Do you own a car? Do you drive much? Could you drive less if you had internet, particularly faster internet? Have you considered that for much less than the price of a new car, quite a bit less than the price of a reliable used car, you could install conduit from your residence or business to two or three adjacent neighbors? That if everybody did that, really, really fast internet connections within town would be practically free? And if every town did that, fast connections within the state, within the nation, globally, would be pretty inexpensive? It's probably less than the cost of gas, insurance and maintenance of your car for a year, to put in that conduit that will serve you and your neighbors as long as the lifetime of that car, probably longer.
Are you a banker, but you only make loans for real estate or cars? Did you ever consider financing computers or conduit to the neighbors? How about loans on tools that help install that conduit? How about loans on network equipment for neighborhoods?
Are you an investor? Could you use the internet to help you manage your investments?
Do you travel? Would the internet help you arrange your trips? Do you know about mapquest, maps.google.com (including streetview for dozens of cities,) Google Earth and the like?
Do you vote? Would you know more about candidates and ballot questions if you used the internet to study?
How about just using the internet to make your bill paying more convenient and reliable?
Are you a government worker? Maybe your IT department is busting a gut to help you get something useful from computers and internet? Maybe, though, you're frustrating the efforts of others to expand internet access -- stop that!
Are you afraid technology will eliminate your job? Could you learn to do something else, perhaps using technology? Would that be worse than doing something a machine or somebody in Asia could do?
What are you waiting for? Somebody who will say, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you?"
NM 502 pipe laying east of Rio Grande
I happened to venture to at least Pojoaque a couple of times in recent weeks, and I noticed some construction activity on the south side of NM 502 east of the Rio. The last trip, which I think was March 29, there were two HDD (Horizontal Directional Drilling) rigs. The pipe is white, probably threaded steel, so I suspect it is a water line. Maybe the San Ildefonso Pueblo is involved, since it is so close to there. Maybe it is the Santa Fe Buckman diversion project. Evidently that has been big news in Santa Fe for months if not years, but I first heard anything about it just a week or two ago. I wonder if whoever is doing the project realizes they could have pulled HDPE (high density polyethylene) conduit with that white pipe and have a place to put fiber, too.
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