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Draft Horses Used To Lay Fiber-Optic Cable
mysqlrocks writes "In Vermont, FairPoint Communications has enlisted draft horses to help lay fiber-optic cable in remote locations. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has pledged to bring broadband to every last mile by 2013, including many remote areas that have been neglected in the past. Private companies have been unwilling to invest in the expensive infrastructure needed to reach these areas. However, Vermont's congressional delegation helped to secure $410 million in federal money earmarked for broadband development and Vermont has partnered with private companies, like FairPoint, to bring high-speed Internet access to all Vermonters. From the article: 'The difficulty of getting cable to "every last mile," is where Fred, the cable-carrying draft horse, comes in. "Hopefully it pays off," says Hastings. "We could maybe get a four-wheeler in here," he continues, gesturing to the cleared swath of boggy, fern-studded terrain that he's working in today. But definitely not a truck, and Fred's impact is nearly invisible. Residents rarely complain about a draft horse tromping through their yards.'"
It turns out that a horse is a self-replicating semi-autonomous rover optimized for negotiating tough terrain, and it was developed without DARPA assistance. It is powered by biofuels that can be produced using COTS technologies, but which for which no DOE research is required. Its waste stream is biodegradeable, and in the quantities generated by a single horse, facilities for the storage and processing of the waste pending biodegradation do not require EPA approval.
No wonder nobody uses the damn things anymore!
Well, they've only just recently begun breeding horses that poop fiber optic cable. The price will come down soon enough.
I find this article depressing. Not because of the draft horses. It's just that it's pretty much a given that these lines paid for by public money will subsequently be given to some monopolistic telecom which, when confronted with concepts like net neutrality will come back with indignant replies about how the lines are their property and they can do what they like with them. The world sucks.
I am sure that there will be those that will say this is a waste of government resources but I would disagree. One of the things that government should do is build out public infrastructure to areas that the private sector won't serve or wouldn't be feasible without the government doing it. Here is hoping that the current providers there don't file lawsuits preventing the state from laying fiber like they do to proposed municipal ISPs.
Time to offend someone
I've heard of people using ferrets to lay cables http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/582123.stm but horses? How do you get them into the trunking?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No.
Fred is 14, and he’s been laying line for five years. Desmarais, who lives in Westmore, has laid line with draft horses for 31 years, and he learned to drive a team on his father’s farm in Barton when he was young. He travels to Amish country in the Midwest at least once a year to appraise new equipment and buy a horse, if one catches his eye–as Fred did one year while Desmarais was in Indiana. Desmarais has four draft horses, another Belgian and two Percherons: a second team lays line for FairPoint elsewhere in the state.
Had to be said.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Spoken like someone who never had a neighbor with inadequate fencing.
My back of the envelope calculations tell me that situations like this are why you keep old ideas around. If you don't know what an envelope is, or how it could be used to perform calculations, there may come a time when that causes problems.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
How the hell are they going to grip fiber with their hooves?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I saw a show one time in Tijuana where they used a donkey to lay some pipe!
Hey-o!
Back about 20 years or so ago I worked for a Bell Atlantic subsidiary. Everyone in the company got a little cast resin model of a mountain with telephone poles going over it in commemoration of them replacing the last Party Line. The cable was pulled over the mountain (in Kentucky IIRC) by mules.
Time's fun when you're having flies. - Kermit the Frog
Look at my horse, my horse is amazing!
Feed it some glass, mmm it's currently lasing!
It transmits frames, an optical backplane!
Ping it again and again and all its lights go blinky!
Be relentless!
Wildlife: Check
Fairly well worn t-shirt for press photos: Check
Tin of chew in front pocket: Check
We're good to go!
That's what a high fiber diet will do to you.
Living in Vermont, we had DSL from Verizon, and then Fairpoint, for a number of years. Then we made the mistake of moving...next door. It was a legitimate god-damned nightmare, I tell you. We wanted to have internet up and running in the new place by the time we moved in, and they said no problem. They get the address, and give us a date to expect it by... The date comes, nothing happens. We call, they give us some excuse about a workorder error, and we go through the whole thing again.
The next date comes, nothing happens. We call and they tell us that they couldn't find the service address. We work that out. Next date comes around, NOTHING HAPPENS. It turns out there's NO WIRING IN THE PLACE, and they say they can't install. At this point, we've paid for an extra month on the old apartment, as well as rent on the new apartment. (Something that, frankly, we were not financially capable of doing.)
We actually do the line installation from the box to the apartment ourselves, and get back to Fairpoint. Oh but what's this? The workorder has been cancelled and we have to start all over again. (And yet, for some reason, two days later we receive the DSL starter kit at the new apartment.)
The majority of our problems stem from the fact that they swear up and down that the building only has one unit. (Number TWO, no less. Did that not seem a little STRANGE?) So we gave up and called Comcast. Gave them the address, and they asked "Apartment 1 or Apartment 2?" and we had cable internet and digital voice service a week later. The DSL we had been getting from Fairpoint was 3 megabits down, and 768kbits up...with the wind. The phone service sounded like shit, and both were prone to strange failures on a near-constant basis.
Our Comcast cable is 1.5 megabytes down (with boosts up to 2.4), and 1 megabit up on a bad day. The digital voice service is crystal clear, and we get more services than we did from our traditional carrier...including nationwide free long distance and the whole nut. And it is even CHEAPER than Failpoint's fail-ass DSL and phone service.
So, I guess what I'm saying is, FUCK FAILPOINT.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Usually an apple or carrot will entice them. If that fails, you will need a barrel of lube and a large hydraulic press. Oh, and a large funnel.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Ping it again and again and all its lights go blinky!
Ooh, that's nerdy!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you think so? Well I better not show you the throughput of the gateway
Default gateway, mmm default gateway
Default gateway, yeah default gateway
Get on my horse, I'll route you round the IP space! With version 6 included too!
Be relentless!