Tag Archives: Internet

Georgia Power, nuclear buggy whip manufacturer

I think of Georgia Power more as like IBM when minicomputers came out. IBM built bigger mainframes. The Internet started to spread, and IBM pushed its own proprietary SNA network. (Remember SNA? I didn’t think so.) Then PCs came out, and IBM layoffs started….

Glenn Carroll wrote for Georgia Wand today, Georgia Power Stuck in a Nuclear Jam,

Everybody except for Georgia is jumping on the wind and solar bandwagon, but Georgia Power is side-lined in a nuclear jam like a horse-buggy manufacturer at the dawning of the Ford assembly line.

The white area on that map is for states that have no standards or goals for renewable energy.

Remember Georgia Power is the biggest part of its parent, The Southern Company, and the nuclear units at Plant Vogtle (operating and planned) are actually owned by another offshoot of The Southern Company. According to Southern Company’s webpage, Megawatts and Markets,

Southern Company regulated regional electric utilities serve a 120,000-square-mile territory in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi. Our competitive generation business extends to markets in six southeastern states.

It’s interesting how similar the Southern Company’s markets are to the states in that white southeast no-renewable-energy-portfolio area!

-jsq

FERC Chairman: baseload outdated; no new nukes needed; go sun and wind

Power companies’ main stated objection to solar or wind is that they are not “capacity” or “baseload” generation because sometimes the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. And those utilities are required by various state, regional Energy Regulatory Commissions right up to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to supply capacity or baseload power. That’s their main excuse for coal and nuclear plants. Well, the Chairman of FERC thinks we may not need baseload, nor any new coal nor nuclear plants, either.

Noelle Straub and Peter Behr wrote for ScientificAmerican 22 April 2009, Will the U.S. Ever Need to Build Another Coal or Nuclear Power Plant? The new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn’t think so

No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today.

“We may not need any, ever,” Jon Wellinghoff told reporters at a U.S. Energy Association forum.

So what will we need?

Continue reading →

Get Bellsouth to supply DSL on Hambrick Road —Timothy Nessmith @ LCC 2012-04-24

DSL in Lowndes County for fast Internet access? County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk passed the buck on citizen Timothy Nesmith’s question about that, at the 24 April 2012 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Chairman Paulk violated the Commission’s own Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to be Heard by saying Timothy Nessmith didn’t get a chance to fill out the appropriate form, but he was welcome to speak anyway. Now I think that’s a silly rule, and if the Chairman is going to waive it for one person, they might as well revoke it for all citizens so nobody has to sign up.

Nessmith wanted the Commission to pressure BellSouth to provide DSL on Hambrick Road.

Chairman Paulk chose to answer that by saying it was a Public Service Commission issue, and adding that due to housing density on that road “they [presumably the telephone company] can’t make it work economically.”

Like my neighbor Chairman Paulk, I know Nessmith’s neighborhood (Nessmith lives around the corner from me, although I had no idea he was going to speak, and have never discussed his issue with him). Later I will post some things the Commission could do.

-jsq

Caucus to elect delegates to DNC from GA-01, Waycross, 2012-04-21 @ DPG1 2012 04 21

Saturday Democrats from across Georgia’s First Congressional District caucussed in Waycross to elect delegates to the Democratic National Convention (DNC). The winners were announced:

DNC Delegates from GA-01: Miguel Camacho, Audrey Stewart, Joe Segui, Laverne Gaskins, Al Williams,
plus Jeana Brown GA-01 Chair

Speeches by the winners:

Here’s a playlist. A few videos are still uploading. Maybe some delegates or elected officials would like to do something about the horrible Internet connectivity we have here in south Georgia. For example, how about repealing the law that prohibits municipalities from running their own ISPs.

Caucus to elect delegates to DNC from GA-01, Waycross, 2012-04-21
Elect Delegates to Democratic National Convention,
DNC Caucus, 1st District, Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG1),
Jeana Brown, Chair,
Waycross, Ware County, Georgia, 21 April 2012.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP).

-jsq

 

 

 

Free the Internet: stop SOPA and PIPA

If you don’t know what SOPA and PIPA are, Google, Wikipedia, reddit, and many other websites will tell you today that those are bills in Congress to censor the Internet.

If you like blogs, YouTube, facebook, and other social media, you won’t like SOPA and PIPA if they become law, because they will enable big copyright holders such as movie studios to force websites to remove links to entire domains on suspicion of copyright violation.

What you can do: contact your members of Congress today. You can do that through one of the many online tools Or call, email, or send a paper letter directly. Free the Internet!

-jsq

You like blogs, facebook, twitter, etc.? Oppose the “PROTECT IP” Act

If you like facebook, twitter, eBay, blogs, other social media, or even Google or Yahoo, you won’t like the so-called “PROTECT IP” Act, which is coming up to a vote in the Senate any day now. It would let big corporate copyright holders impose monitoring, take down websites, and cut off funding, all without need for a court order. There’s still time to oppose it.

Parker Higgins wrote for EFF Monday, The PROTECT IP Act Is Very Real and Very Bad — Call Now to Block It

The PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) is the evil step-sister of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the much-criticized Internet blacklist bill introduced in the House last month. They’ve got a lot in common — both bills would allow the government and private rightsholders to censor the Internet for Americans, and both bills have faced strong opposition from regular citizens, business leaders, and public interest groups.

In one way, though, PIPA is much worse: while SOPA is still in the House committee stage and has been the target of extraordinary public opposition, PIPA is already out of committee and poised for consideration of the full Senate. That means PIPA is a few dangerous steps further along in the process of becoming law. And with only a few weeks to go in this legislative session, the Senate may try to rush the bill through before the public has a chance to respond.

Here’s one way to contact your elected representatives. Or call them on the telephone. See also LAKE’s contact information for national elected officials.

-jsq

Expert says Valdosta lags behind Thomasville in Internet speed for business

Let’s leapfrog Thomasville in the 21st century equivalent of roads, rail, and airports: Internet speeds!

Here’s another point from Chris Miller at the 2011 Economic Summit, according to the VDT story by Dawn Castro 18 May 2011, :

“Thomasville didn’t have hi-speed internet, so the process of moving products quickly was not possible,” he said, “With Rose Net hi-speed broadband, it is now able to work 25 times faster. That one simple step boosted economic product growth, and as we all know, the technical industry creates a wage growth path.”


Georgia Internet Speed Results by www.speedmatters.org

So if the Chamber wants, as it says, knowledge-based businesses and jobs, Continue reading →

Gigabit Internet in Chattanooga

If we’re going to copy Chattanooga about something, how about this: 133 US cities now have their own broadband networks by Nate Anderson in Ars Technica:
Such publicly owned networks can offer services that incumbents don’t, such as the 1Gbps fiber network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, run by the government-owned electric power board. And they sometimes have more incentive to reach every resident, even in surrounding rural areas, in ways that might not make sense for a profit-focused company.
According to this map of Community Broadband Networks by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, quite a few small cities in south Georgia have municipal cable networks:

All three of Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo use CNS, whose brochure for Moultrie says you can get:

DownstreamUpstreamMonthly Cost
5 Mbps1 Mbps$29.95
12 Mbps2 Mbps$35.95
22 Mbps3 Mbps$49.95
Now that’s not 1 Gbps, but it’s a darn sight faster than the allegedly 3Mbps AT&T DSL!

If Moultrie, Thomasville, and Cairo, and yes, Doerun can do this, why can’t Valdosta and Hahira?

And then how about add on a wireless network to reach the rest of us rural folk?

Maybe then we wouldn’t be the Internet backwoods.

-jsq

The Internet backwoods: that’s south Georgia

Saturday I heard somebody bragging about how fast the Internet is in Atlanta. That would be maybe a tenth of the speed it is in Tokyo. But still blazing fast compared to the broke-down wagon in a muddy ditch speeds we get in south Georgia:

I wrote that article more than a year ago, and Internet speeds in rural Georgia have not improved much if at all. This isn’t just about playing Farmville. It’s about communicating with your relatives, about competing in business, Continue reading →

“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state.” –Julian Assange

Some people compare LAKE to Wikileaks, so let’s go there. Julian Assange, like Wendell Berry, links the civil rights movement and the environmental movement. He then says:
“For the Internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time. We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state. The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness. Surely it was only a matter of time before citizens pushed back and we asserted our rights.”

LAKE’s motto is:

Citizen dialog for transparent process
That makes Assange’s proposition
“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state”
sound very familiar to us.

Locally it’s more a matter of elected and appointed bodies ignoring their chartered responsibilities to the public good and the general welfare. Well, many people are also tired of the permit inspection brigade, but that’s another story.

Assange also adds: Continue reading →