Category Archives: Internet access speed

Videos: Appointment to Tourism Authority, Roads and Towers @ LCC 2018-09-24

“You have an appointee information sheet in your packet,” said County Manager Joe Pritchard, and that’s all we learned about Michael Smith, who did not appear to speak, either, at yesterday morning’s Work Session. County Chairman Bill Slaughter did encourage the Commissioners to send in information sheets on any other nominees they might come up with for the Tourism Authority before tonight’s 5:30 PM voting Regular Session. He did not encourage the public to apply. But if you want to, here is the application form.

Also apparently the Internet really is made of pipes. It’s durious how the county can help a private company with television (that was the longest item at just under 2 minutes) but can’t use its plethora of towers to help with citizen Internet access.

And the county discussed in executive session buying real estate. The whole meeting before that took just under 8 minutes.

Below are Continue reading →

Appointment to Tourism Authority, Roads and Towers @ LCC 2018-09-24

Why does the county leave us guessing and not just name who resigned, and say who Michael Smith is? Maybe they’ll say at the Lowndes County Commission Work Session this morning at 8:30 AM, or maybe when they vote tomorrow at 5:30 PM.

“Mr. Michael Smith has expressed interest in being appointed to” the Valdosta-Lowndes County Conference Center And Tourism Authority, says Continue reading →

Why Bezos started Amazon

Jeff Bezos sent his biographer to find the graphs; that’s when I learned about this. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Paperback, August 12, 2014, by Brad Stone (PDF, google book)

Intrigued by Shaw’s conviction about the inevitable importance of the Internet, Bezos started researching its growth. A Texas-based author and publisher named John Quarterman had recently started the Matrix News, a monthly newsletter extolling the Internet and discussing its commercial possibilities. One set of numbers in particular in the February 1994 edition of the newsletter was startling. For the first time, Quarterman broke down the growth of the year-old World Wide Web and pointed out that its simple, friendly interface appealed to a far broader audience than other Internet technologies. In one chart, he showed that the number of bytes—a set of binary digits —transmitted over the Web had increased by a factor of 2,057 between January 1993 and January 1994.

Internet Resource Discovery Services by Bytes
Internet Resource Discovery Services by Bytes, John S. Quarterman, Matrix News 4.2, MIDS, February 1994.

Another graphic showed Continue reading →

A Naive Projection of the Growth of the Internet

Just as four years ago I projected solar growth ten years ahead, a quarter century ago I projected Internet growth ten years into the future:

A Naive Projection of the Growth of the Internet
Graph: A Naive Projection of the Growth of the Internet, John S. Quarterman, Matrix News 2.2, MIDS, February 1992.

From 7.7 million Internet users in 1992, I projected the exponential growth of the previous few years ahead a decade, to about 3.8 billion people in 2002.

How close was that estimate? Continue reading →

Videos: Retreat was good, DBHDD appointment, computers * 4, utilities trucks @ LCC 2018-02-26

Chris Yarborough resigned from the Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities Board (DBHDD) and Kelley Saxon has applied; she spoke about her qualifications. There are For Consideration four computer purchase items and only one bid for two 1 Ton Dual Wheel Truck with Service Body for the Utilities Department.

Below are links to each LAKE video of yesterday morning’s Work Session, with a few notes, followed by a LAKE video playlist. See also the agenda. Gretchen is on her way with the LAKE video camera to the 5:30 PM voting session. Continue reading →

Agenda: DBHDD appointment, computers * 4, utilities trucks @ LCC 2018-02-26

The missing agenda finally showed up sometime around when the Work Session started yesterday.

Chris Yarborough resigned from the Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities Board (DBHDD) and Kelley Saxon has applied. There are four computer purchase items and one bid for two 1 Ton Dual Wheel Truck with Service Body for the Utilities Department.

LAKE videos of the Work Session will follow shortly, and Gretchen is on her way with the LAKE video camera to the 5:30 PM voting Regular Session.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, February 26, 2018, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, February 27, 2018, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

Continue reading →

No agenda and no Lowndes County Commission website @ LCC 2018-02-26

They published no agenda for their recent planning session, and today their website is down before their 8:30 AM Work Session, so if there’s an agenda on it, nobody can see it. Gretchen is going there anyway, to see if they are doing anything.

no logo

Five years ago, Industrial Authority Executive Director Andrea Schruijer said:

It’s not that we’re saying we don’t have broadband. We have connectivity; that’s not the issue. We have great partners that help us with that.

The next week, February 25, 2013, lowndescounty.com was down. Just like today.

In October 2013, County Chairman Bill Slaughter said,

We have broadband!

One year ago, he said:

We can’t wait on someone else to do something, we are going to have to move forward.

So far this forward motion is hard to see.

-jsq

Investigative reporting costs money, for open records requests, copying, web hosting, gasoline, and cameras, and with sufficient funds we can pay students to do further research. You can donate to LAKE today!

Videos: Lowndes County Commission Goals @ LCC 2017-03-27

The Chairman confirmed that yesterday’s “Lowndes County Commission Goals” was a continuation of the rather testy goals discussion at their February planning session, in which they disagreed on things such as whether to hold Work Sessions at times when working people could attend. And ten days later held a three-minute Work Session. There’s still no agenda for that 9:30AM to 10:30AM Goals meeting on the county’s website, even though it appears they had one.

They declared Solid Waste Management accomplished, yet they spent even more time discussing Litter Control and Beautification and kept that on their short-term goals. Later they seemed to decide to make a special class of ongoing issues, including litter and Moody AFB.

The elephant in the room is that tax revenue is down and inconsistent.

Below are links to each LAKE video of that Goals meeting, with a few notes, followed by a video playlist. Continue reading →

Videos: Annual Planning Meeting Day 2 @ LCC 2017-02-17

We learned why Lowndes County has gotten religion about Internet access and speed: Moody AFB wants it.

Commissioner Scottie Orenstein made the case for board packets and agendas in electronic form instead of the paper packets they currently use. Maybe they’ll even reveal them to the public before their meetings, like real MSAs do. Meanwhile, Community Engagement means marketing, as in telling people what the county did, not listening to the citizens.

They talked about interconnecting (almost) all of the county’s water systems, about routes to get trucks out of downtown Valdosta. The water-sewer ordinance is in ten or twelve pieces, and the county is all for expanding water and sewer throughout the county as long as it doesn’t cost developers money.

There’s a regional T-SPLOST meeting in Waycross by SGRC Feb 28 2017, but Lowndes commissioners and staff said nothing Continue reading →

Videos: Annual Planning Meeting Day 1 @ LCC 2017-02-16

Two newly-elected officials spoke at the Thursday session: new Tax Commissioner Rodney Cain who was full of praise for his staff, and new-old Sheriff Ashley Paulk, who said he had more important things to do than to go get undocumented workers out of the fields. “I tell ICE come show me a warrant.” Here are LAKE videos of that day, and stay tuned for Day 2!

Total 2016 revenue was Continue reading →