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A joint statement from those in our federal delegation not named Judd Gregg:
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Representatives Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter today announced that Network New Hampshire Now has been awarded $44.5 million to expand broadband services throughout New Hampshire. Led by the University of New Hampshire, the initiative will build a high speed network to connect schools, hospitals, police stations, homes, and businesses.
The delegation released a joint statement praising the funding: "We need to make affordable, high speed internet available in every community across New Hampshire so that businesses can grow and create jobs. Network New Hampshire Now will create new opportunities for distance learning, health care delivery, and economic development, while connecting many homes and business to high speed internet for the first time. This is a great day for our state."
Currently, New Hampshire ranks in the bottom tier of states in broadband capacity and capability, and compared to the country at large, New Hampshire residents, businesses, and institutions have access to lower broadband speeds that are less available and less affordable. This funding, made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will address these challenges. This funding will be used to build a high speed network, the New Hampshire Fiber Network, between population centers; connect homes to the network, including extending service to residents and businesses in the Monadnock region; and develop a Microwave Wireless Network so that first responders and public safety officials can more easily communicate.
The paucity of high-speed internet in our otherwise beautiful state is a direct threat to our economic growth potential. Small businesses in rural states must have access to broadband to survive, period. This much needed funding, which, if you compare to the average amounts awarded to other, bigger states, is really substantial, will go a long way towards rectifying this vulnerability.
Various surveys, the most recent from last year, show that of the 250 thousand households in the state with internet service, half of them are on dial-up.
If New Hampshire is looking to lose out on economic prosperity in the 21st century, we are on the right track with our broadband percentage.
I always assumed our rural state had a hard time keeping up with internet service compared to the nation and world. But half on dial-up? That is completely unacceptable in 2010.
How do we fix this? Because the consequences of being okay with that will not be pretty.
The Telegraph is one of several newspapers in the state and many more nationwide gearing up to launch a "metered" payment system for online content. Some features, like breaking news updates, will remain free and unrestricted. But for most content, visitors to the site will be limited to a certain number of page views per month before they're asked to register and a higher threshold before they're asked to pay.
Besides The Telegraph, New Hampshire papers with plans to roll out metered payment systems this year include the Concord Monitor, the Portsmouth Herald (Seacoast Online), and The Conway Daily Sun.
(boldface mine.)
Look, I don't have the bills to pay at a newspaper company, so I can't fault them for trying to figure out a way to stay afloat.
The idea is fundamentally flawed. It might bring in some needed web revenue, though if I had to guess I'd say it really won't bring in enough.
But what it will do is dramatically limit the power and influence of those papers over time.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has obviously taken to heart that looking for needles in haystacks that haven't yet been built is a fruitless endeavor. Instead, the people at DARPA seem to have decided to try modeling hay stacks a-building on the internet by getting people to hunt for and electronically report on ten red balloons DARPA dispersed (with monitors) around the country. Of course, that's not the announced agenda. The press releases for this apparently frivolous exercise claim it's to celebrate the anniversary of the internet, an original DARPA contribution to the global information system, which, perhaps inadvertently, escaped agency control.
Not since John McCain educated us about teh Google, has so much comedy come out of the internet. And all unintentional. (I think)
As I was surfing around some news sites, I came across this article from Columbia J-School's Daniel Sinker.
This was what got me:
My personal favorite part of the site? When Tiny Michael Steele comes strolling out from the right side of your browser window.
"Notice Anything Different?" he cries out, tiny hands pumping this way and that.
Why no, Mike, I didn't. Thanks for pointing it out.
I had to, absolutely had to have my own little Michael Steele prancing around my browser window. So I went here and there he was, although I had to press the "message from Michael Steele" button.
There was a photo of a young woman in June Cleaver pearls that changed into an Eva Longoria look-alike (kind of), then into other 20-something looking women.
In his Top Ten Reasons Why the GOP Weblaunch Site Is Fizzlin'" Marc Ambinder points out that the last GOP accomplishment on their accomplishments page was in 2004. And it was vouchers in DC. But before that,it lists "Operation Iraqi Freedom", the war based on lies that is still going on, the tax cuts for the rich that along with the war created ballooning debt and deficits, um, and "Operation Enduring Freedom" when we went into Afghanistan afer 9/11. And Osama Bin Laden was...where?
Then there's the historical snafu of claiming Jackie Robinson was a Republican when he was an Independent.
Sinker notices the graphics of "ethnics" atill have their clip-art "beta" on them
Techies will have even more fun exploring the site.
UPDATE (Dean): Did you know "Lt. Governor Tom Eaton" is a Democrat? The new GOP does. Hilarious! (a really good catch by Pindell, who also has a screenshot for posterity).
It has been an amazing week in Iran, and you are no doubt seeing images that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago.
For most of us, Iran has been a country about which we know very little...which, obviously, makes it tough to put the limited news we're getting into a proper context.
The goal of today's conversation is to give you a bit more of an "insider look" at today's news; and to do that we'll describe some of the risks Iranian bloggers face as they go about their business, we'll meet a blogging Iranian cleric, we'll address the issue of what tools the Iranians use for Internet censorship and the companies that could potentially be helping it along, and then we'll examine Internet traffic patterns into and out of Iran.
Finally, a few words about, of all things, how certain computer games might be useful as tools of revolution.
In case you missed it this week, please take the time (54 minutes) to view this wide-ranging Charlie Rose interview with Marc Andreessen, one of the most important Internet pioneers of our time (from Netscape to ning). While this discussion is certainly not political, nor necessarily Blue, it is nonetheless totally relevant to this online community in terms of the future of the virtual world and its effects on the real world.
Toward the end of the program, they discuss President Obama's understanding of technology and its implications, further qualifying it for inclusion here.
Just about every report on this event uses the same headline, so I guess that defines it. The specific notice for it read:
Boston FCC Hearing on the Future of the Internet
The Federal Communications Commission is coming to Boston to hold a public hearing about the future of the Internet.
In recent months cable and Internet companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have repeatedly been caught blocking, filtering, and spying on consumers' Internet activities. The FCC is responding to the hundreds of thousands of people who have expressed their outrage over the anti-competitive practices by holding a hearing in Boston, Massachusetts.
UPDATE ON PUBLIC TESTIMONY: While there won't be an open mic for the public at the event, the SaveTheInternet coalition will be on hand to video tape your comments to the FCC. These video-testimonies will be submitted the FCC and help make the case for a free and open Internet for all.
WHAT: A Public Hearing on the Future of the Internet
WHEN: Monday, Feb 25, 2008
TIME: 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
WHERE: Harvard Law School, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall
1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
Update: Apparently I wasn't far off with my translation (below); Newt also spent some time cheerleading Wayne's World with this exhortation:
"I'd start talking about them [Hodes & Shea-Porter] right now," Gingrich said. "Are they going to be for tax increases? Are they going to be for accepting defeat in the Middle East? Are they going to actually be for real change, or are they only going to be for taking care of the unions? And I would stay on them right now."
It must be gettin' on primary season, because the lizards are starting to show up. Newt finds it fun to bash the first amendment at an event intended to highlight it:
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.
"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.
Here's my translation of what he really might be getting at:
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce progressive bloggers' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit candidates and money and get out their message.
"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose the presidency along with both houses of Congress, which I think could happen in the next two Novembers," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.
And I've got news for Newt. We already lost a city due to the corruption, incompetence and venality of your political party. Heckuva job your Contract breakers did on that one, Newtie.
Part of the cost of the pleasure of our primary is suffering fools such as this. To come to the Granite State and proclaim that we must curtail freedom of speech in the guise of terrorist fear-mongering, well, let's just say he's made it that much easier for the Democrats to hold onto the Libertarian vote.
Limiting our freedom of speech is one way to fight terrorism, but I have another: not invading Islamic countries for false reasons. Please, Mr. Gingrich, please run for president. Pretty please?
