Comment Re:Other Gigabit Communities (Score 4, Informative) 80
BTV is our airport code and a common shorthand for Burlington, Vermont. It's used as the hashtag on Twitter for our city, for example.
Comment Other Gigabit Communities (Score 2) 80
While Google Fiber is getting most of the attention, Kansas City isn't the only place with gigabit Internet speeds. Chattanooga, Tennessee and Burlington, Vermont (my city) both have gigabit Internet via fiber-to-the-home as well as a few other places around the country. I've started an initiative in Burlington called BTV Gig (http://btvgig.org/) to try and bring attention to this and decide how our community is going to leverage gigabit.
Comment Citizen vs. Professional Legislature (Score 1) 245
I am a Vermont resident (although not in your district). Vermont is a state with a citizen legislature, meaning that it is comprised primarily of citizens who have jobs outside of being a legislator. From a citizen legislature, direct democracy a logical next step on the continuum of representational democracy. However, is direct democracy too much of a leap for legislative bodies that are currently made up of professional legislators? Aren't there some benefits to having a professional legislature? For example, professional legislators can spend more time understanding the domains behind individual issues. Do you agree with this assessment?
Comment Re:Specific Issues (Score 1) 93
What do you suppose the ASF would do? The Apache Software Foundation hosts projects that meet certain standards, but they do not manage any of the projects themselves.
When I said, "reach out to the Apache project itself" I meant sending an email to the CouchDB project's mailing list or otherwise contacting contributors to the Apache CouchDB project. I didn't mean contacting the ASF.
Comment Specific Issues (Score 3, Interesting) 93
It would be interesting to hear more from Canonical about what specific issues they ran into. They say that they worked with "the company behind CouchDB." While Couchbase is one company "behind" the project, CouchDB itself is an Apache project. Did they reach out to the Apache project itself? Also, why build something completely new rather than provide patches to existing software? I'm sure they had good reasons, but I'd like to hear some more details about what did and didn't work for them.
Submission + - Cars Lost In Flood—But Critical Servers Save (blogs.com)
mysqlrocks writes: "As Tropical Storm Irene swamped Vermont state offices with flooding of epic proportions, IT staff took it upon themselves to save critical servers. At the same time, their cars left in the parking lot were lost to the flooding. From the article:
"Two AHS employees —network administrator Andrew Matt and deputy chief information officer Darin Prail — parked their cars behind the AHS building at around 6 p.m. that Sunday, August 28, and rushed in to save the equipment. When they came back outside, giant trees were floating by and the entire parking lot was under water. So were their cars.
Comment Re:Felt in Vermont (Score 1) 614
Yup—felt it here in Burlington, Vermont as well. We're on the third floor of an old mill building, so really felt the swaying back-and-forth.
Submission + - Draft Horses Used to Lay Fiber-Optic Cable (vtdigger.org)
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 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:
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.
Comment Obligatory (Score 1, Funny) 213
In Soviet Russia, Submarines hunt you!
Submission + - CouchDB 1.0 Released (readwriteweb.com) 1
Bradley Holt writes: "CouchDB, an Apache project, is a free/open source RESTful JSON document (NoSQL) database with map reduce views and peer-based replication. Version 1.0 is 300% faster than the previous version and includes Microsoft Windows support, an authentication system, and flexible replicator options. ReadWriteEnterprise and InfoWorld cover the release. Couchio has a clever release announcement as well."
Comment Burlington, Vermont (Score 2, Informative) 144
Several citizens from Burlington, Vermont have contacted Google about this for our city. Someone on the City Council has asked the mayor to approach Google, as well. We actually already have a municipal fiber-optic network, Burlington Telecom. However, they are currently experiencing financial troubles and the City is considering bringing in an outside investor or partner. Google, if you want to come here we've already got the fiber in the ground. Let's talk ;)
Comment 2.7 million picocuries (Score 4, Informative) 295
Actually, the latest reading was 2.7 million picocuries:
http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/87126/
Submission + - Google's Customer Service for Businesses (blogspot.com)
Bradley writes: "Based on my experience today, it appears that Google offers little or no customer service to their business customers. One of our clients had their Google Checkout account unjustly suspended this morning and we have not been able to get a response from customer service. It has been over eight hours and seventeen emails with not a peep from a single Google representative. Read the article for details and a mind-boggling phone conversation with Google corporate."
Comment Re:California Strikes Again HOORAY! (Score 1) 481
Um, I think you meant to reply to the parent to my post (since that's where the quote you used came from).
Submission + - Zend Technologies Releases Zend Framework 1.5 (zend.com)
bradley.holt writes: "The release of Zend Framework 1.5 has officially been announced. This new release contains many new features including support for the new YouTube API, OpenID, Microsoft's InfoCard, LDAP authentication, Nirvanix media content and storage delivery support, a forms component, new layout and view enhancements, updated Lucene search engine, and extended AJAX support. It has also been announced that Zend Framework will be included in Ubuntu's Universe repository. From the announcement:
"Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, today announced the availability of version 1.5 of Zend Framework, the popular open source PHP framework. Zend Framework is an open source project best known for its support for fast, efficient creation of PHP applications. It has developed a strong community and has attracted contributions from over 400 individual and corporate-sponsored developers, including Microsoft, Fox Interactive Media, IBM and Google. Since its debut, Zend Framework has been downloaded over four million times. It can be downloaded from http://framework.zend.com/ .
