Slashdot Mirror

http://www.city-data.com/

I am sure downtown Nome, Alaska would absolutely LOVE a 50 story skyscraper next to the General Store.

If you can, you might consider a hybrid system. In many areas of the country (such as here in central NJ), wind and solar complement each other well.

Solar works best in the peak summer months, but not as well given the shorter days and lower sun in winter. [Although there are also less leaves in winter and less water in the atmosphere, which helps since there's less blockage.] Sites like PVWatt http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/calculators/PVWATTS/ve rsion1/US/code/pvwattsv1.cgi can help

Wind often works best in winter since wind speeds are higher during that time. Check the wind speed graphs of your local airport. http://www.city-data.com/city/Trenton-New-Jersey.h tml

Tektronix once the largest emp in Oregon with 24K people moved
one of their divisions to Redmond Oregon (not the one up north),
Redmond was a big city conpared to the Dalles. Redmond desert,
Dalles .. well depressed near the coast.

redmond http://www.city-data.com/city/Redmond-Oregon.html
dalles http://www.city-data.com/city/Dallas-Oregon.html

The pitch to the engineers was the view, outdoor activities,
etc. a friend of mine transfered there, after about a couple
years, that great view, which he saw ever single day, wasn't so
great, and you can only camp/hike/ski so many times.

The plus for Tek was basically free land, and a ready pool of
people for production.

It worked for a while, but many either left Tek or came back
to HQ which was just a few miles from Portland.

I can see the same thing happening again. Even though Dalles
is closer to 'cities'.

Tektronix once the largest emp in Oregon with 24K people moved
one of their divisions to Redmond Oregon (not the one up north),
Redmond was a big city conpared to the Dalles. Redmond desert,
Dalles .. well depressed near the coast.

redmond http://www.city-data.com/city/Redmond-Oregon.html
dalles http://www.city-data.com/city/Dallas-Oregon.html

The pitch to the engineers was the view, outdoor activities,
etc. a friend of mine transfered there, after about a couple
years, that great view, which he saw ever single day, wasn't so
great, and you can only camp/hike/ski so many times.

The plus for Tek was basically free land, and a ready pool of
people for production.

It worked for a while, but many either left Tek or came back
to HQ which was just a few miles from Portland.

I can see the same thing happening again. Even though Dalles
is closer to 'cities'.

I'm from a small town called Lafayette, LA.

Est. population in July 2004: 111,966 (+1.6% change), and that's not counting the unincorporated-but-actually-suburban areas that add a good 10-20,000.

That is not a small town. That is a small city. USA Today can call it a rural community all goddamned day, but it's an oil city with the state's only notable tech sector - complete with its own wtfpwned-expensive housing subdivisions.

We just had our government run utility system approve a bill to provide the funds for fiber to the home.

1.) They voted to issue $125 revenue million in bonds to fund plans to run fiber optics to homes in the city.

There is nothing in the bill that claims they MUST use the funds for fiber to the home.

But if they don't, they won't have a service to provide. Without a service to provide, they can't pay off the bonds. If they can't pay off the bonds, they have to raise taxes.

So they're going to use the money on fiber to the home. The real risk and problem is if enough people in Lafayette actually want it. Which leads to...

2.) Multiple courts have ruled that the Lafayette Public Utilities Authority has to hear appeals from residents - residents who don't want to pay for fiber they won't use - and say LUS and the city are exceeding their authority in issuing bonds for it. Nothing's happening. There is no bond money, LUS isn't laying fiber, no services are being provided. And the longer it's stalled, the less of a chance there is that anything will happen - that BellSouth or Cox will offer services that the greater market actually wants and will pay for, carving up the city and leaving LUS without enough subscribers to pay the bills.

And then guess what happens - everybody pays for it anyway.

Remember, the referendum passed by a very narrow margin. There is not a landslide of support for this. Lafayette is a Republican, free-market city - with a libertarian streak, yes, but downtown poetry readings from ULL libart majors aside, it's certainly doesn't have even a pinch of socialism in it. (To put it this way, Lafayette's idea of an alt-weekly newspaper is one that's more focused on reporting how great business is than the Gannett-owned daily. There's a rebellious streak, but it takes a back seat to the profiteering streak that goes all the way back to its petrochem-reliant days.)

LUS is there doing electricity out of necessity - back-in-the-day electricity providers who refused to provide service, driven by the free market. BellSouth and (once what was) Cox haven't said no to fiber, they just don't want to invest in something that they don't think will turn a profit.

The difference is, electricity establishes a basic standard of living, and everyone uses it. Fiber establishes a higher standard of living, but very few people actually need it, and about as few have any real use for it. Establishing a government-funded utility that you don't need will never set will with the free-marketeers, and appeals only to the "fuck the man" economic libertarians who don't mind the government being responsible for Internet access. (And you thought your ISP's restrictions were bad.)

One particular group in our town ... (ego omitted) ... made sure that if this bill got pushed through, the fiber would be run to the home and not the curb.

No, dipshit, you made sure the city would make plans to. What they'll actually do with the money - as you said yourself - is a mystery, and one that, as long as tax-fearing residents keep throwing up roadblocks, isn't going to be solved any time soon.

L

http://www.city-data.com/city/Tuttle-Oklahoma.html

Oooolala!!! Hot babe capital of OK!!!~!

If this guy was really 21 when the picture was taken on Dec 20, 2005, then that would make him 16 in 2000. Well according to www.city-data.com ( http://www.city-data.com/zips/74954.html ), there were about 40 people in the town his age. I am sure the amount of people in town his age has not grown a lot in the past five years. The local school district can propbably do a search on the local high schools for whoever dropped out of school, and then go from there. I am sure he went to either Roland HS, or possibly Muldrow HS, which is near Roland, OK.

Roland Schools ( http://oklahoma.publicschoolsreport.com/schools/OK /Roland.html )
Muldrow Schools ( http://oklahoma.publicschoolsreport.com/schools/OK /Muldrow.html )

There are only around 1500 males resident in the town, that's not a large haystack.

Population of 80,000 in 2000...that's not a town, that is a city. Not a big city, but it's sure bigger than a town.

http://www.city-data.com/city/Canton-Ohio.html

even at such a small scale

Small scale? Were you referring to the network that the story is about? I guess it depends on how you define "small".

Coverage of this 'small' network in Oregon: 700 square miles.

Area of city of Los Angeles: 469.1 square miles.

P.S.: For those keeping track, this story is a dupe.

"It will also provide a new source of tax revenue, which is the main reason the gov't wants it."

Exactly. North Dakota's state gov't is one of the most internet-savvy in the entire nation (there is almost no county, town, agency, or department, no matter how small, that doesn't have its own well-managed website). So I find it very hard to believe that this is being done from ignorance of what eBay IS, or how eBay differs from traditional meatspace auctions (which are still commonplace in ND).

Small businesses in ND just don't have the revenue base to shell out for this sort of thing, so what will happen is that 3rd party eBay consignments will simply go away.

BTW, Crosby ND is a farming town with a population of 1043 people, and is over 200 miles from the nearest city of any real size. I'm sure it must be a major hotbed of consignment sale fraud. ;)

http://www.city-data.com/city/Crosby-North-Dakota. html

Kind of close to Lakota

Those stats are 5 years old. The population of Vail, as well as all of Tucson's other suburbs, has increased dramatically in the past 5 years. Vail has basically been absorbed into Tucson (greater area pop: 1,000,000+) by a series of newly built housing communities. http://www.city-data.com/city/Vail-Arizona.html -- Tucson Native

Next time *I* introduce an ostensibly high-tech product, I won't be naming it after some podunk town in Mississippi: http://www.city-data.com/city/Scooba-Mississippi.h tml/ What's next, a Kiln-er robot? What a Picayune company!

I checked the stats on Dover.

Population (year 2000): 1,815, Est. population in July 2002: 1,878 (+3.5% change)
Males: 902 (49.7%), Females: 913 (50.3%)

This isnt even a meaningful population count for discussion.

Its nearest city is Lancaster a town famous for its Amish community.

Nearest city with pop. 50,000+: Lancaster, PA (37.5 miles, pop. 56,348).

Thanks. That region is quite red now and voted for Bush unanimously. For all I care it is as good as Kansas. Move on to the next meaningful discussion.

Melbourne, Florida looks pretty much on the Atlantic.

http://www.city-data.com/city/Melbourne-Florida.ht ml

I thought all of Detroit was Africa town. According to http://www.city-data.com/city/Detroit-Michigan.htm l, Detroit is 82% black. This data is no doubt a few years old, so the percentage might be higher now.

If you are too lazy to google for information and such.

3. You'll pay whatever we want to charge you for whatever service we feel like providing, and you'll like it, since you're prevented from defending yourselves by organizing your own public service to compete with us when we ream you.

You seem to be avoiding the fact that the government is the people. That's the way our pseudo-democracy works. Nothing is stopping a group of people in a city from getting together and offering it.

My neighbourhood in Cincinnati consistently gets together to offer public works projects to the neighbourhood. We have two parks and two green areas that are landscaped and maintained by the neighbourhood. Recently (a year ago) we decided it would be nice if we had large decorative pots that had small shrubs and greenery in them, so we rallied funds for them.

This is my zip code.

According to this and this, NYC housing prices, on average, are not much different from LA. I know NYC has some very expensive areas (like Manhattan) but so do LA, OC, SF, and SD... You have to make sure you're comparing apples to apples here...

According to this and this, NYC housing prices, on average, are not much different from LA. I know NYC has some very expensive areas (like Manhattan) but so do LA, OC, SF, and SD... You have to make sure you're comparing apples to apples here...

The movie showed network footage of George W. Bush holding hands with Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. Why was he doing that, aside from the fact that men sometimes hold hands in Saudi Arabia? Why are they so warm with each other that they hold hands in public? One clue: I think we can rule out any idea that Prince Bandar actually likes George W. Bush; that would be very much against Saudi culture.

I was hoping for better than the Fifteen Hundredth Post to make this suggestion, but it goes with your comment. Plus, I need to make my crystal-ball prediction before it comes true.

I've believed, and have since early this summer (when I almost had to pay $2.00 a gallon for regular unleaded in Texas), that the Saudis are planning to play an active role in George Dubya's re-election. How can they do that, when election laws expressly forbid foreign contributions? Simple: adjust the price of oil.

Right now, I see $1.719 and think "wow, what a bargain!" But the night of 9/11, when gas lines were around the block at every station, the same price was absolutely absurd. It's only a bargain compared to the $1.80 I was paying two weeks ago, and the $1.90 I was paying earlier this year.

Now the price is dropping. Here's my prediction: prices will continue to drop right through the election, regardless of world events (short of a 9/11-style cataclysm). When Biff drives his H2 to the polls in Highland Park, he'll be thinking of how nice it is to have cheap gas again, not the 1000+ troops sent to die in Biff's name for that cheap gas.

"However, Arpaio has a high approval rating, is regularly re-elected and his endorsement is sought by nearly all politicians."

They love him down here. He talks a good game. The Mexicans think he is a Mexican (and the county does take a hands-off approach toward places like the city of Guadalupe),

He has the right-wing tough-on-crime angle down pat. He has *charisma*. And questionable policies, for instance, homeless people picked up and sent to Pima County (Tucson). One way to solve the problem, I guess. If you're not familiar with the region, it's important to note that liberal types tend to be *much* more comfortable in Tucson than in Phoenix.

He's still on the defensive it seems after the fiasco of his honeymoon in "Paris".

"But honey, I never said France, now did I!"

Verizon already uses a larger version of the system known as a Cell On Wheels (or COW; gotta love these acronyms), but as it takes three trucks and the better part of a day to deploy, nimbleness of response has apparently been an issue."

I can still remeber that awful day like it was yesterday. I'm sure anyone in the new york area can, unfortunately. I was going into work late that day. The first thing I did when I realized what was going on was to call my boss to see how everyone at the company was doing. But I found it very interesting that after the first tower fell, I still had spotty cell coverage. This was before the second tower fell. After the second tower fell, cell coverage went out for everyone in the new york area. Coverage still hasn't returned to where it was before the towers fell in my town. I could see the smoke from "ground zero" from my apartment for a long, long time afterward. A very weird, very sad, very unfortunate time to remember. But I found this fact interesting from a technical standpoint. Especially how cell coverage never quite went back to where it was beforehand.

Huh? I spent lots of time wandering around downtown Portland at all hours of the night and day (and lived at 16th and Yamhill for a year) in the early ninetees, and can't think of anything that would prompt this comment. It didn't look much different when I visted there last summer.

I can't find an article reference to it on google news (might be too long ago), but a few months back there was an incident where a guy jumped off a Tri-Met bus and shot someone in broad daylight downtown.

My sister lives downtown near PSU, and she feels pretty safe in that area, and I agree that Portland isn't the most dangerous city around, but it's still a rough city.

According to city-data.com's Portland info Portland has a pretty high crime rate, the index being 569.9 (~330 is average for a U.S. city). Someone in another part of the thread mentioned feeling much less safe in Seattle. Seattle's crime index is about 580, not much higher than Portland. The murder rates of Portland and Seattle are essentially the same (about 4 per 100,000). Portland has a higher crime index than Los Angeles (553.3), but it's a lot lower than Oakland, CA (657.9).

Manalapan has a population of 321. It's probably just some guy with a pair of binoculars.

What about those folks that live in Dildo, Newfoundland?

Never mind the fact that it's located right next to Spread Eagle...

Spread Eagle, Wisconsin doesn't need a Dildo nearby because there is a Goodman just down the road.

I wonder if the people living in Santa Claus, Indiana would be able to counter-sue Santa Claus Operations, since they had the name first.
Or would Kris Kringle (formerly named Darl McBride) attempt to use that town's existance as proof in such a case?

A fews years ago, a few friends and I decided to mark this occasion in what we thought was a pretty interesting manner. We, being native Jerseyites, took a trip out to the location where the "meteor" (sparking the invasion and spooking the local population) originally impacted - Browns Mills, NJ - and making some of our own "crop circles". We were drunk and not very skilled at this endeavor, but the end result turned out pretty nicely we thought. We kept at it while too and make them farily large and noticable. We did this in the dead of night, and whether or not the farmer in question caught the meaning of what we did, I'm fairly certain we gave him something to scratch his head over and ponder the next morning.

Personally I would be suspect the second that someone touted a "beautiful timeshare right on the beach" in Ritzville.

according to this, the avg heigh of a human, in 1996, was 70.1 inches.

google tells me that 1 inches = 0.0254 meters.

population of new york city is 8,008,278 people (in 2000).

so we have 8,008,278 people * 70.1 inches * 0.0254 = 14,259,059.31012 metres ...

so, sadly, thats 14,259.059 km, which is a lot more than the wifi run.

cheers.