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Not everyone liked it: http://homepages.sover.net/~oz...

Did you look at Sovernet Communications?

Growing up my first ISP was SoVerNet https://corp.sover.net/site/, at the time it stood for "Southern Vermont Internet", the area they covered. Later on they changed it to "Vermont's Sovereign Internet Connection". I think at this point they've given up trying to apply meaning to it and it is just a name =]

So, using your purpose or mission as a starting point may be a better strategy than pigeon holing yourself with geography.

I live less than 20 miles from Gilsum, and about a mile from a (relatively) major regional ISP with good SDSL. I did my research before moving here. But the crisis isn't someone moving to Gilsum blindly. The crisis is that there are lots of ways that solid broadband access can give advantage to a business. Good broadband is a strong advantage for economic development. So rural areas need to find ways to develop it. It can be profitable, evidently, even for the providers. The highest DSL penetration in the country is claimed by VTel in Vermont. Meanwhile the State of Vermont is looking at ways to subsidize extending wireless access to the remotest valleys - with the Republican governor's strong support.

The crisis is that what's good for business and economic development on the whole is often not taken care of by the incumbent carriers, who have discovered ways to make more profits elsewhere without delivering particularly good or advanced services, just by squeezing customers they already have. It's not that they couldn't make real profits in rural areas, but that they'd have to do some actual work to earn them, rather than just live off the legacy of the networks they've already built.

I couldn't find active links for one or two of them myself, but here's an updated list -- in some cases these aren't the original sites, which have disappeared, so obviously it's worth being extra careful with antivirus software... apologies for the mess of links; the filter doesn't like short lines...

1by1 (play MP3s), AriskKey (recover passwords), AutoRuns (enumerate startup tasks), BurnCDCC (burn ISO images), CD (basic CD player), CDex (rip CDs + convert MP3/WAV), Copier [0X Copy Machine] (scan + print), CWShredder (clean spyware), DComBob (tame DCOM), DirLister (make quick file lists), Discover (force windows onscreen), DupeLocater (find and clean), FileRecovery [PC Inspector] (undelete), Folder2ISO (use with BurnCDCC), FoxitReader (read PDFs), GUIPDFTK (split/join PDFs), HijackThis (find spyware), HJSplit (split/join files), Identify_Boards (identify hardware), KatMouse installer (due to MS drivers), LCISOCreator (make ISO image from CD), Leaktest (test firewall), Microsoft keygen (people lose things), MultiRes (change res + force refresh), Multi Timer (stopwatch), NoteTab Light (text editor), NTest (test monitor setup), OnTop (pin windows to foreground), Process Explorer (task manager), ProduKey (recover passwords), Registry Commander (virus cleanup), ResHacker (examine executables), Rootkit Revealer (just in case) ShootTheMessenger (turn service off), Shred by AnalogX (simple filer shredder), TedNPad (unicode text editor), TFT (dead pixel locator), UNPnP (tame SSDP), UPX (compress executables), UnitConverter (what it says), utorrent (basic torrent app), VCdControlTool (mount ISO images),

Kristian Wilson clearly forgot the "oh wait..." part back then.

Here is a google cache to a different article about the project http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:1NEgZD8tfMEJ: www.sevendaysvt.com/features/

The site is down (small newspaper hosted by a small local ISP) but I do have knowledge of this project. I am local resident and have been watching this since its inception. This project has had its share of problem like any government project some budget overruns, Verizon trying to stop it in its tracks, public saying this should not happen, etc. The most interesting objection I heard was that this (including telephone service) should be done from wireless. I would love to hear the screams when a thunderstorm disrupts 911 service. The initial budget was in the low 6 figures Burlington is a relatively small under 40k people.

So far the project is already getting some use. The city and schools are now connected together by a Gig connection (many were not doing much better than dialup). The company where I am the IT person is also their first (and only?) customer. We are getting a 1.5 Mbit through a local ISP. So far no one is making money but the ISP, http://www.sover.net/ is now able to sell to other in town businesses for cheap. I pay Burlington Telecom $200/month for as much bandwidth as the ISP will give me.

This in a city where Adelphia (soon to be Comcast) has a monopoly for many parts of the city this is a very good idea. Some may say that city government should stay out of this area but I disagree. The deregulation of utilities let them do whatever they want but also assumed that the market would help with prices and quality. How many choices do you have for cable TV?

Currently, paper made with industrial hemp fiber is significantly more expensive than paper made with wood. Hemp paper pulp can cost up to $2,000 a ton versus $500 a ton for wood paper pulp. Still, there are a handful of economically feasible uses for industrial hemp paper, particularly because it would probably be feasible to produce hemp pulp at a cost well below $2,000 a ton. http://www.louisville.edu/org/sun/sustain/articles /hemp/paper.html

Perhaps with large capital investment in new plants, economy of scale in mass production, and refinement in the process, hemp fiber will be only slightly more expensive than wood fiber. I do work in the paper industry and know first hand the fear of possible plant closures due to the tight margins industry wide. If hemp looked promising as a low cost fiber source we, and every other manufacturer, would be raising a stink heard nationwide to get access.

uses less chemicals than paper made from wood

The process chemicals and energy from the spent liquor are recovered. http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transpo rt/atlas/htmlu/ppblg.html

Hemp could save some chemical usage when it comes to wet strength additives, but that is a fairly small percentage of the whole system. The majority of chemical additives required for wood fiber paper would still be required for paper with hemp fiber.

If hemp is going to use a mechanical fiber preparation system instead of a closed loop liquor system, prepare to bite the bullet for some major energy costs.

Don't think our friends at Dow Chemical didn't know this when they lobbied to make marijuana illegal.

Dow chemical does manufacture some chemicals used in the papermaking industry (coating polymers, defoamers, biocides primarily), but is far from being one of the major players in that market. I reckon using Eka as the conspiracy name does not carry the same demonizing weight.

One acre of annually grown hemp may spare up to four acres of forest from the current practice of clear-cutting

The only clear cutting that is used to supply fiber to the paper industry comes from stands of ten year old poplars on tree farms getting the whack. The other primary wood fiber sources are waste chips and sawdust from lumber mills and post consumer (recycled) fiber. The percent of virgin, natural forest fiber used in paper manufacturing is in the low single digits.

Compared to wood, fewer chemicals are required to convert low-lignin tree-free fibers to pulp

Actually we are kinda fond of the lignin in the wood fiber. That lignin is the energy source recovered in the boilers that recycle the pulping chemicals, produce steam used throughout the plant, and generate enough electricity that we actually sell back to the market.

Less bleaching results in less dioxin

Dioxin is a ghost from the past in the paper industry. Very few mills still use elemental chlorine in the bleaching process. Quite a few still use chlorine-dioxide, but even these are giving way to newer bleaching plants based on newer technologies with zero dioxin byproducts.

The cover was a picture of two camel's copulating: http://www.sover.net/~daxtell/CamelsHump.html

Anonymous Call Block--(Included with Caller ID and Caller ID on Call Waiting, and available as a stand alone feature.) This option has some notable caveats, so please understand what it will and will not do before ordering or activating. Basically, this features allows you to reject calls coming from parties who have enabled Caller ID block on their line, thus preventing the display on your ID display unit of their name and/or number (you see "Private Caller"). Such callers are redirected to a message telling them you are not accepting ID-blocked calls and that they need to remove the block and call back if they wish to each you.

Note: This means that some cellular calls and calls from business's PBX phone systems may not get through to you. Callers on those systems may not be able to remove the ID block in order to have their call ring through.

This feature will not screen out most telemarketers' calls, nor any other calls where the caller's telco does not transmit ID info or the info is not available (these display as "Unavailable," or "Unknown Caller," or similar). Again, it works only on calls where the caller has enabled their own Caller ID block ("Private Caller").

* To activate: press *77
* To deactivate: press *87

I recently signed up for phone and DSL service from a local ISP, SoverNet. They said I'd have service within three weeks. Which is crazy anyway, that's a hell of a long time! But I figured, fine, the price was right and Verizon was asking for the same amount of a wait. SoverNet gives me a due date, it comes, I still have no phone. I call them, and they say that Verizon does all the actual work on the lines because they own them. They were supposed to come to my house, but for some reason they did not, and no reason was given. SoverNet says that there's nothing they can do, considering that they're a small, local company and Verizon is a "Baby Bell" with tons of money and lawyers behind them. They are under no obligation to actually do the work that they're contracted out to do. Since I wasn't going to be paying them any money, (going through a different provider) what's the hurry in setting me up with a phone line? And SoverNet said that I wasn't an isolated case, that they've been having trouble getting Verizon to show up and do the work they're supposed to do. At the moment, I still have no phone service at my house.

In conclusion, I feel that the government is who should own the phone infrastructure. Deregulating doesn't really work because the owners of the lines can still use their muscle to squash the competitors.

Many car manufacturers are moving to using industry standard buses and protocols (CAN and a couple of SAE standards) for internal communication. There is a lot of "wiggle" room for people to come up with Gizmos that attach to this hardware and do things the manufacturer never intended. For example.. many people love to have a tach, but many dashs lack them. The tach information is available on the computer/diagnostic bus, how about designing a simple PIC circuit to read the RPM message and display it on a LED display.

Lets face it.. hardware hacking in all its forms has gotton harder and harder for the last 20 years as more custom PLC and ASIC devices appear and Surface mount becuase the standard.

If you really want a challenge, convert your old gas powered car to electric. You'll end up with an extremely simple system you can work on yourself (only one moving part in an electric motor and no need for complex computers and emission controls) as well as a car that will get you to work in the worst weather, without the need to warm it up. (Just jump in and go, heat is electric and instantanous) and DC motors can really hual ass. Oh.. and its non-polluting, so you can feel smug about never having to get a smog check again.

That's a great quote possible, and I felt I could comment a little bit more on what James said and make it a little easier to understand :)

There were many interesting studies done on people's multitasking by cognitive psychologists. Basically, the more you do/practice something, the more "automatic" it becomes to your brain/body. I.e. the more you practice guitar the easier it is to do it without thinking. This is because since you practiced guitar so much, your brain stored all of the movements and things you have to do to play guitar in your memory. So, when you play a song, you don't have to think about how to play it, your brain merely access all of the movements in your memory. Talking becomes sort of automatic also, so you can speak on the phone quite easily while doing other things. This is what the quote talks about as "automatic".

Here is a good paper that covers automaticity among other things if you're interested. I personally find cognitive psychology and science like this very interesting.
It is really interesting how right on James was, and only the language has really changed in describing what he knew on this.

Anyways since we only have one brain/cpu the article makes a lot of sense, also with keeping in mind how your multitask performance with some things is a lot better than others.

Alternative Energy Engineering
Electro Automotive
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
Home Power Magazine
innEVations
Jerry Halstead's Car
Low Rolling Resistance Tires
Phoenix EAA
Unique Mobility
Wilde EVolutions catalog

There are a lot of useful links at the bottom of the Electromagnetic Propulsion homepage about this sort of thing, but the main thing that interests me is the idea of massdrivers.

Although they're not so practical for using from the surface of the Earth to get into orbit, they'd be great for moving payloads from the surface of the Moon into Earth orbit without the use of expensive launch vehicles. Although the railgun uses an awful lot of power a variant called the coilgun uses far less power, although it costs more, and may eventually be practical for this purpose.

You wrote: "We need a way to show the oil companies that we're fed up of lining their pockets with cash" which is kind of funny since there are so many ways, and so many organisations doing so.
Rule #1: Buy NO unneccessary plastic items. I make an exception, personally, for my kids' legos. But I don't buy a new case for my computer just because the ATX form came out, I hacksaw the old one. Plastics are essentially a waste product of the petroleum industry.
Rule #2: Buy NOTHING from Exxon. Because we need to convince the Oil Barons that there are some things that don't blow over - and Exxon's had the most egregious crimes as well as being the last vestigal trace of the original Petroleum Trust (Standard Oil = S.O. = Esso = Exxon, you can confirm this easily).
Rule #3: Stop whining and do something. I am converting my truck to gas/electric hybrid ASAP. My bud Pete runs used fryer oil in his (unmodified) Mercedes diesel.

Alternative Energy Engineering
Ballard Fuel Cells
Electro Automotive
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
Greenpeace International Homepage
Home Power Magazine
Hydrogen Web (English/German)
innEVations
Jerry Halstead's Car
Low Rolling Resistance Tires
Phoenix EAA
Roofing Systems
Unique Mobility
Veggie Van (BioDiesel)
Wilde EVolutions catalog
United Solar Systems Home Page

--Charlie

Sticks and Stones may break my bones but FUD will never concern me.

Well, you and most of the others commenting on this issue are sure willing to spread the FUD around....

1) Car battery disposal is not a major pollution problem (manufacture being another issue). Those little ever-readies that you're tossing blithely into the trash are one of the most pressing ecological issues of our time, but people driving electric cars recycle ALL their batteries (the spent cores are quite valuable) and most gas vehicle batteries are also recycled.

2) Point source pollution (i.e. power plants) is easier to control/prevent than distributed pollution (cf. privately operated internal combustion engines). Gas lawn mowers are one of the principal causes of air pollution in the US, incidentally.

3) Many people are supplied power from hydro, wind, or photovoltaic sources. If you actually become a part of the electric vehicle underground you will find that many people are generating their own power, or use power from commercial "green" providers.

Your statement "yes the energy does come from some coal or oil burning plant" is thus incorrect through overgeneralization, which makes it relatively accurate compared to most of what's being posted here. Your comments on ethanol and car prices are similarly FUDular.

Alternative Energy Engineering

Electro Automotive

Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.

Greenpeace International Homepage

Home Power Magazine

innEVations

Jerry Halstead's Car

Low Rolling Resistance Tires

Phoenix EAA

Roofing Systems

Unique Mobility

Wilde EVolutions catalog

United Solar Systems Home Page

I thought this was an interesting look at electric cars . It made me think more about what we need to do to get electric cars to the stage of "It just works" that most people expect.

Of course what I'm really waiting for is the "Ford Explosion" the new electric-gas hybrid SUV from Ford. Takes up TWO whole lanes on the highway, gets great gas milage (20 mpg), and instantly kills any other cars you hit. :P

There is also another site that is worth a visit. "Since there are plans to take this company public, those of you who missed the chance to invest in cold fusion will be given another chance to become a millionaire". I missed both Linux IPOs, but this is one where I will surely take part...

Well, fair enough, though I would point out that Jon exemplifies a type of user that you- we? Linux folk are going to be dealing with. For convenience's sake: my Email but honestly, if Katz is actually _using_ linux at all, I think he's interesting and amusing to hear from. It's like a tagalong kid brother, determined to fit in, and with such a relentlessly upbeat attitude that you can't help but warm to him eventually- Katz makes Linux sound quite hard, but _cool_, because of his relentless hero worship.
I'm a different breed of Katz... er, I mean, quite another type of linux user ;) I may be fairly lost on Linux, but I've been saying all along: there are Mac hackers, too, just as there are watercolor-painting geeks and slab pottery gurus out there. Frankly, the 'hacking curve' on a Mac has discontinuities- there's a pretty sharp break between resource hacking and system comprehension, and MacOS programming, and the latter requires the skills of a guru, or the purchase of expensive software from Metrowerks that has libs which can handle much of the sheer complexity of MacOS.
I never quite got to that point, but you can't stop a hacker personality from fiddling with stuff, and so I'm currently looking at a MacOS desktop that looks like a weird NeXTStep design, with antialiased fonts, and with a desktop picture that has stuff to remember drawn on top of it like a more visually appealing 'root-tail' (meaning it's antialiased against the 2X picture and scaled back to size).
However, doing this has meant rebooting after every picture update, because Desktop Pictures seems to not appreciate having its picture changed out from under it while it's running. I can do something like this simply using root-tail- it is far less sophisticated in some ways (my alpha MacOS tool can set all entries to different sizes and you can set positions by clicking in a little window with a small representation of the resulting screen) but it is less _fragile_, and that means it's more accessible- something you can _do_ without it blowing up in your face.
THIS is what I am learning 'using the beast'.
There are things I do with MacOS that I just plain like, and that I don't see a parallel to in Linux- yet. But MacOS was never intended to be customized to the extent you can customize Linux- and this is the direction I expect to be going. And, frankly, I don't think it is appropriate for Apple to take OSX in that direction- even if they can.
I don't need a Slashdot license to write essays, for better or worse I am already doing that, perhaps in a less focussed manner because most of those essays began as my own Usenet posts- or Slashdot posts ;)
I am pleased at the kind word, AC- I'm a writer too, and we live and die by style. ;) I don't think Katz should stop doing articles. There's a place for his breathless optimism and desire to belong. My own angle is more conceptual BOFHishness and gentle cynicism, combined with simple enjoyment of computer tricks and a relentless fascination with what these things _mean_ in society- and if CmdrTaco wants to find me, he knows where to look (at least now he does, since I've posted my Email ;) )
As a final campaign promise, I assure you all that I don't own a copy of Microsoft Word and will not be generating mangled ASCII. Though I do own Excel. (c) 1985- the version that fits on an 800K floppy :) I believe I actually ran it once. For that matter, I also own Microsoft Typing Tutor- the 16K cassette tape version (seriously!) I have it on display in the customer area in the fixit shop where I work, but I think I ought to take it back home- nobody finds it as amusing as I do, and if they did, they'd probably steal it, and where am I going to get another copy, Redmond? ;)
But I digress. Am I as longwinded as Jon Katz yet? ;)

Well, fair enough, though I would point out that Jon exemplifies a type of user that you- we? Linux folk are going to be dealing with. For convenience's sake: my Email but honestly, if Katz is actually _using_ linux at all, I think he's interesting and amusing to hear from. It's like a tagalong kid brother, determined to fit in, and with such a relentlessly upbeat attitude that you can't help but warm to him eventually- Katz makes Linux sound quite hard, but _cool_, because of his relentless hero worship.
I'm a different breed of Katz... er, I mean, quite another type of linux user ;) I may be fairly lost on Linux, but I've been saying all along: there are Mac hackers, too, just as there are watercolor-painting geeks and slab pottery gurus out there. Frankly, the 'hacking curve' on a Mac has discontinuities- there's a pretty sharp break between resource hacking and system comprehension, and MacOS programming, and the latter requires the skills of a guru, or the purchase of expensive software from Metrowerks that has libs which can handle much of the sheer complexity of MacOS.
I never quite got to that point, but you can't stop a hacker personality from fiddling with stuff, and so I'm currently looking at a MacOS desktop that looks like a weird NeXTStep design, with antialiased fonts, and with a desktop picture that has stuff to remember drawn on top of it like a more visually appealing 'root-tail' (meaning it's antialiased against the 2X picture and scaled back to size).
However, doing this has meant rebooting after every picture update, because Desktop Pictures seems to not appreciate having its picture changed out from under it while it's running. I can do something like this simply using root-tail- it is far less sophisticated in some ways (my alpha MacOS tool can set all entries to different sizes and you can set positions by clicking in a little window with a small representation of the resulting screen) but it is less _fragile_, and that means it's more accessible- something you can _do_ without it blowing up in your face.
THIS is what I am learning 'using the beast'.
There are things I do with MacOS that I just plain like, and that I don't see a parallel to in Linux- yet. But MacOS was never intended to be customized to the extent you can customize Linux- and this is the direction I expect to be going. And, frankly, I don't think it is appropriate for Apple to take OSX in that direction- even if they can.
I don't need a Slashdot license to write essays, for better or worse I am already doing that, perhaps in a less focussed manner because most of those essays began as my own Usenet posts- or Slashdot posts ;)
I am pleased at the kind word, AC- I'm a writer too, and we live and die by style. ;) I don't think Katz should stop doing articles. There's a place for his breathless optimism and desire to belong. My own angle is more conceptual BOFHishness and gentle cynicism, combined with simple enjoyment of computer tricks and a relentless fascination with what these things _mean_ in society- and if CmdrTaco wants to find me, he knows where to look (at least now he does, since I've posted my Email ;) )
As a final campaign promise, I assure you all that I don't own a copy of Microsoft Word and will not be generating mangled ASCII. Though I do own Excel. (c) 1985- the version that fits on an 800K floppy :) I believe I actually ran it once. For that matter, I also own Microsoft Typing Tutor- the 16K cassette tape version (seriously!) I have it on display in the customer area in the fixit shop where I work, but I think I ought to take it back home- nobody finds it as amusing as I do, and if they did, they'd probably steal it, and where am I going to get another copy, Redmond? ;)
But I digress. Am I as longwinded as Jon Katz yet? ;)