[FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again

Sat Jan 28 21:50:19 EST 2017

Ah, here's a way to throw sand in the gears:

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/28/512096744/as-trump-reboots-pipeline-expansion-an-unexpected-delay-emerges

The FERC has to approve interstate pipelines and energy transfer
infrastructure.  It was down to 3 of 5 members when Trump elevated one of
the existing members to be the new chair, so one of the other members
promptly resigned.  (in a snit? can't tell).  The commission no longer has
a quorum to do its business, and it could take months to get a new member
appointed and approved by the senate.  Who knows how long it could take if
someone put their mind to it.

I wonder how many other federal commissions might be similarly poised to
grind to a halt?

-- rec --

On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:

> https://x.company/loon/
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 8:46 PM, Gary Schiltz <gary at naturesvisualarts.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I don't have much experience with the GEO providers, e.g. Hughes, but I
>> seem to remember that the minimum latency of about a quarter second round
>> trip imposed by the speed of light makes them very unpleasant to use for
>> VOIP, otherwise they are okay. Still, fiber is so much cheaper up until the
>> "last mile" (in urban areas), which more or less equates with the "last ten
>> miles" in rural areas. I have the impression that a lot of highways have
>> fiber optic along them, as the easements are already in place and they
>> connect urban areas capable of using the bandwidth from the fiber. But many
>> rural roads extend for many miles or tens of miles, with a few houses
>> widely scattered along them, so the cost of fiber is harder to justify
>> there. On flat land, microwave works very well with little investment in
>> towers, but the hillier the land is, the more towers and repeaters are
>> necessary. So something like Facebook's drone idea seems quite attractive:
>> use the drones as if they were extremely high towers, capable of relaying
>> signal from fiber optic connections along the highways down to those widely
>> scattered rural houses. One of the problems is keeping the antennas
>> aligned, since the airfoil-design drones need to keep moving to stay in the
>> air. I wonder if they have looked at using helium balloons for the lift,
>> and only use drone technology to stabilize them. That should work if the
>> wind is minimal at extremely high altitudes.
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 7:06 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps a hybrid GEO/LEO could be made?   The bandwidths are not bad for
>>> the existing satellite internet solutions.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Gary
>>> Schiltz
>>> *Sent:* Saturday, January 28, 2017 11:55 AM
>>>
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That's cool, but this type of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites seem to
>>> me more sutible for ubiquitous low bandwidth communication, e.g. satellite
>>> phones. I don't know how well it would scale - for example, I doubt that
>>> millions of people could simultaneously get their full megabit from a small
>>> LEO constellation. One alternative that looks intriguing to me is
>>> Facebook's Aquila drone, that flies at about 20km altitude - still low
>>> enough for microwave broadband communication, but high enough to avoid
>>> commercial air traffic.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Space X just launched the first 10 (of 70) of Iridium NEXT low-earth
>>> satellites.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.iridium.com/company/industryleadership/iridiumcertus
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It’s not high bandwidth (about a 1MB/sec), but should be lower latency
>>> than HughesNet, Wildblue, etc.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson <
>>> nickthompson at earthlink.net>
>>> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Date: *Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 11:13 AM
>>> *To: *'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> No BroadBand at my farm in Central Massachusetts.  Awaiting Gary’s
>>> International Assistance.  Remember a few years back when Venezuela was
>>> supplying cut-rate oil to low income people in New England?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Just Sayin’
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Gary
>>> Schiltz
>>> *Sent:* Saturday, January 28, 2017 10:43 AM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have been working here in Ecuador to provide internet access to poorly
>>> served areas, and it is a challenge, albiet not an insurmountable one.
>>> Wireless technology from smallish companies like Ubiquiti, Mikrotik, and
>>> Mimosa to name a few, is pretty inexpensive, even here where import duties
>>> are high. The big challenge where I'm working is getting line-of-sight
>>> between nodes, where there is a lot of dense forest cover over 20 meters
>>> high.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> One thing that I found interesting in the article that Jochen linked to
>>> is that the US FCC defines broadband as 25mbps down / 3mbps up. Maybe I'm
>>> just used to it, but I find about 2up/1down plenty even for video
>>> streaming. More is always better, of course :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Santa Fe, and New Mexico in general, is interesting in that regard.
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> But then there is a lot of the countryside that is left out of this. I
>>> really like the idea of making the Country(side) important. In NM there
>>> issues with the tribal lands which are poorly served, but it's getting
>>> better.
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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>>
>
>
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