By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Tom Waits’s raggedly majestic Mule
Variations:
In this week’s Terrible Horrible Awful Weather Disaster
Which Is Going To Cause A Lot of Damage And Trouble As Terrible Horrible Awful
Weather Disasters Have Done Since God Created Water But Which The MSM And Other Assorted Moonbats Are
Going To Blame On President Bush (Instead Of Completely Incompetent Blithering-Blathering
Idiots Like Ray Nagin), Hurricane Wilma is going to see what damage it can do
to southwest Florida.
If there’s anywhere in America which should know what to do
when a hurricane hits it’s Florida, just as if there was one unorganized,
incapable, corrupt, fat, lazy indolent city incapable of taking responsibility
for its own safety in the face of a disaster it was New Orleans; as First
CoffeeSM explained to friends here on the Mediterranean coast there
was no worse, more incompetently administered city in the United States for a
hurricane to hit than New Orleans.
Florida, however, by now should be as adept at handling
hurricanes as Disney World is of handling kids who throw up corn dogs on the
rides. Wireless providers have learned a thing or two from Hurricane Charley,
as well as Katrina and Rita. Verizon Wireless is already “mobilizing efforts throughout the entire
southern peninsula to ensure reliable wireless phone coverage to residents
and emergency agencies across the state before, during and after the storm.”
One thing they’re doing is arranging fuel delivery to the
company’s network switching facilities in Southwest Florida and other key
areas, and to generators at permanent cell sites to keep the network operating
at full strength even if power is lost for an extended period of time.
Nearly 80 percent of the individual transmission sites
operated by Verizon Wireless have their own on-site generators. This capability
is critical when power goes out and if roads are impassable.
They’re also positioning mobile generators, with ready
access to roof-top cell sites along the state’s Southwestern and Eastern
coasts. In Florida, for some reason known only to God and Carl Hiaasen permanent
generators are not allowed on roof-top cell sites.
Verizon Wireless also has dozens of Cells on Wheels (love
that acronym) on standby statewide, including many at the company’s Fort
Lauderdale and Jupiter network switching facilities. These self-powered mobile
cell sites are to be deployed immediately in any hard-hit areas that need extra
network capacity.
Engineers have spent a lot of time fine-tuning the company’s
digital network across the state, maximizing call capacity where needed in
threatened areas before the storm hits. During the most recent storm seasons,
call traffic spiked dramatically on the day before a hurricane’s landfall, and
continued to be heavy on the Verizon Wireless network as other communications
networks failed.
Ray Nagin’s been issued a court injunction to stay at least
300 miles away.
Teams of “test men” from across the state are getting ready
to roll in specially-equipped vehicles to test the network in the wake of Wilma
anywhere the storm might pass.
Mike Lanman, Florida region president of Verizon Wireless confirms that much of
what they’re doing is a response to problems encountered in recent hurricanes. “We
learned so much during Charley and the subsequent storms about how to prepare
and respond successfully,” he says.
Verizon urges Floridians to please, please, pretty please send
brief text messages rather than voice calls, to “conserve battery power and
free-up wireless networks for emergency agencies and operations.” Text messages
also queue up if the wireless system is unavailable, and will be delivered as
soon as possible. In other words, there’s no need to re-send.
Good luck, Florida. It’ll be tough, but at least you don’t have Ray Nagin in charge of anything, so you’ve got an advantage over New Orleans right there.
…
Cisco Systems officially broke ground today on a one-million square
foot campus in Bangalore that will support staff from Cisco’s Research and
Development, IT, Sales and Customer Support teams in India. The company will
spend approximately $50 million to build the new integrated campus, which is
expected to be completed by June 2007 and accommodate 3,000 staff.
Cisco President and CEO John Chambers is currently on a swing through India,
talking up the company’s $1.1 billion commitment over the next few years to the
country. He officially launched the new facility at a groundbreaking ceremony
conducted at the site of the new campus on the Outer Ring Road in Sarjapur.
Cisco first established R&D facilities in India in 1998. It is the largest
development center for the company outside of the United States.
…
Here’s Toshiba’s Official Statement on Warner Bros.,
keen to avoid another Betamax dud, throwing
its lot in with the Sony-backed Blu-ray Disc Association instead of Toshiba’s
rival technology HD DVD:
“Toshiba and Warner Bros. continue to collaborate closely
toward the commercial launch of HD DVD. We understand Warner Bros. continues to
strongly support HD DVD, due to its outstanding features, cost structures, and
market readiness.
“We recognize Warner Bros.’s participation in the Blu-ray Disc Association
represents the studio’s understandable commitment to listen to a broad array of
opinions and to continue to make technical evaluations of each format, and we
are more than confident this will not affect timely introduction of HD DVD content
to the market.
“Toshiba strongly believes the HD DVD format will eventually win broad support
as the more superior format, and in cooperation with our partners, we are
committed to bringing HD DVD products first to market early next year in the
U.S.”
How polite. Forrester
thinks Blu-ray will win out of the incompatible technologies, since evidently
they can’t agree on a compatible version, the scoundrels. Warner Bros. had
originally said they’d go with HD DVD, and they’ll release some titles in that format.
HD DVD will be to market sooner than Blu-ray – by March, according to best
industry guesses.
Support from the six major Hollywood movie studios is the
deciding factor in which one will become the standard, and right now Paramount
and Warner have said they’ll release movies in both formats. Naturally the
studios want to standardize on one format, and it looks like the current
momentum’s with Blu-ray, despite HD DVD’s earlier-to-market position: Companies
committed to HD DVD, such as Warner Bros., have started offering both formats,
companies committed to Blu-ray have not included HD DVD.
Looks like HD DVD is sharpening the seppuku knives.
…
In good news, Cellnet Technology, Inc. has begun a Wi-Fi initiative for the City of
Madison, Wisconsin. Cellnet will build and manage a Wi-Fi network in
Madison.
First CoffeeSM is a supporter of municipal wi-fi,
and is heartened that starting this fall, Cellnet will begin deployment of
phase one of a Wi-Fi network to support users in the downtown region of the
City of Madison. The network will be installed at no cost to the city, and
Cellnet has secured its initial revenue from service agreements with Internet
Service Providers.
Cellnet is partnering with WFI, a network engineering and technical services
provider to design and deploy the network that Cellnet will own and operate.
The network is being “designed and built with multiple applications and service
providers in mind,” according to Louis Kek, Cellnet CIO.
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for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
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