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Most of Maine suffered a massive ice storm in 1998. I was without power in Souther Maine for 11 days. My sister in Coastal Maine was without power for 17 days.

Verizon succeded in maintaining telephone service wherever there were wires up by swapping batteries in the SLCs and recharging them as needed.I wrote about this here.

Even a VOIP system requires wiring. Battery *could* be provided, since PoE is used successfully, but frankly the telephone company is probably glad to get rid of battery. Hey, if you're devious, this would be a way to take advantage of that battery voltage, another reason for telcos to get out of the DC business. ps- If you're thinking of converting your datacenter to DC voltage, ask the telcos how large-scale DC voltage service works. pps- I wonder how hard it would be to rig a cell phone charger like that? Not too hard, I think.

But VOIP could be supported during power outages. It would take cooperation and better hardware from the telco, and they would need to be prodded. Is the FCC considering this as a solution to lost 911 service in outages? Is the FCC considering this at all?

Me, I think I could keep a VOIP phone going for a while with a decent UPS. A 600VA unit should do for a while. Might be a nice business to get into.

As a Maine resident, I hear about Fairpoint quite a bit. Never in a good light.

To put it in perspective, Fairpoint brings us such blunders as 911 outages and Horrible Customer Service which has prompted Investigations by local governments.

In short Fairpoint is horrendous!

Wow. Here in Maine 4.2 million (yes million!) credit/debit cards were compromised by Hannaford Brothers, a grocery store chain. The company knew about for months, but never told their customers. Here's the latest news: http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=183060&ac=PHnws

I'm of mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I'm all for ways to help spread information and help make things safer. OTOH, I'm fortunate to now be living in one of 4 states in the USA which ban billboards. (The four states are: Maine, Vermont, Alaska, and Hawaii.)

It was hard to fathom just how "noisy" every place else was until I experienced it first hand. I've lived and traveled in other places where billboards were seemingly everywhere. (e.g. NYC, Boston, San Jose) A trip down any major road, especially near a large city, felt like an assault of advertisements screaming for my attention. (Hmmm. I wonder if that has anything to do with the prevalence of road rage?)

Send them out over radio and TV (ala National Weather Service weather alerts) or cell phones or ultra-mobile PCs or mobile GPS units. I'm sure you can think of others approaches.

BTW, I'm curious to see how long it'll take for MIT or Caltech to implement one of their infamous hacks on these?

It doesn't matter if you lump them together or not. Quite literally, the rotten apples spoil the barrel. If the threat of lawsuits grows large enough, investors will back away from putting money into wind farms, just like with what happened to nuclear plants.

http://www.windaction.org/
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2005/10/69177
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1189201220164870.xml&coll=1
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=135298&ac=PHnws

Want more examples? Wind power actually does kill thousands of birds every year (many of which are endangered). Not that I think the outrage against wind farms is pretty ridiculous -- a stable and cheap energy supply is a necessary requirement of modern society. Even the most atavistic of greens will be as lost as the rest of us when their local REI store can't open because there's no power in the city.

"Lobbyists" are the guys who attempt to persuade politicians directly. This is about persuading voters. Shouldn't there be a difference?

Indeed, someone who persuades voters should be called a campaigner.

-FL

This post ignores the reality that Americans are not losing their jobs because there is anything wrong with their skills or education, but because of relative salary factors. The international exchange rate for one, the fact that H-1bs and others are underpaid (contrary to law) [see: http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/immigration /060925imm.html, http://www.lieffcabraser.com/lawsuitagainsttata.ht m ], and the lobbying by India and Nasscom in a bald-faced bid to replace us. There's LOTS more going on than any clear-headed comparison of relative value. It's a completely tilted playing field that Americans feel themselves slipping on.

I personally think that educating people about WPA/2 and curbing WEP is must. Of course WPA/2 is not compatible with first generation WAPs, but they will be obsolete soon enough. I do not think the Police should be involved. Maybe the lazy ISPs should get off their rear end and make sure people are securing their networks or at least provide some assistance. Some ISPs provide some help with configuring your router, but it is usually an online source that is not really geared toward the general user. As much as I would like to think that most people are computer or internet savvy this is not the case. The general population is either complete luddites toward computer technology or luddites about the inner workings of a computer. From my experience most people just want to click a button and be ready to go and not have to worry about connection issues or whatever issue they may be having. It is always interesting to help people that cannot even compose an email or save a document. As it is I try to help my neighbors with securing their WAPs by connecting to their connection and accessing their printer, if they have one, to print out instructions for them on how to secure their signals. In any case keep the PoPos out of it so they can continue to chase stolen Dunkin Donut trucks on slow speed chases. http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/06060 5dispatches.shtml

Read Kerry's site and look for the portion on election reform where he tells America how he will push for instant runoff voting, public funding of elections, open debates, campaign finance reform. There is none. Kerry and Edwards are U.S. senators! If they wanted Nader not to be a spoiler, they could sponsor bills for any number of reforms, but they DON'T WANT THIRD PARTIES to compete. If they wanted to reform campaign finance, they could at least use their positions to try.

This election, sworn statements were given in court by the Maine Democratic chairwoman and others saying that their national party PAID both volunteers and lawyers for the official duty of removing Ralph Nader from the state ballots. She admitted in court that volunteers called Nader petition signatories and begged them to remove their names during the grace period on signatures asking them if they were certain they wanted to do so and hurt Kerry.

Less than wealthy Democrats should just whine about Nader.

Maine has started a program giving iBooks to 7th graders. Their goal is to eventually loan one to EVERY middle school student in the state. I did a quick google search and here's the first article I found.

• 
  Public Citizen reported that the pharmaceutical industry spent $177 million on lobbying, $65 million on issue ads and $20 million in campaign contributions in the last two-year election cycle.
  
  But the industry keeps its research figures secret. Public Citizen based its review on a 1991 Tufts University study that estimated research costs at $500 million to develop each new drug. Public Citizen said the figure was before taxes, ignoring that businesses could deduct one-third of the cost of research.