Avgas in France has reached $7.50/gal !

Move to the city - then there'll be plenty of nearby kids. That will
always be a problem in a rural area. If you live in high-density housing
in a large city, there will always be random outdoor activities for
groups of kids.

We live in a city of 65,000, in a metropolitan area of over 120,000.

True, it's not "high density housing" -- something most of us fight all of
our lives to escape, at least in the Midwest. Having worked for the
Chicago Tribune, there is no way I would live in a big city -- not for all
the money in the world.

My regular gaming friends live in
England, Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, ping
times are too bad to the US, I'd like to be able to play games with
friends over there.

For those of us past 45, can you please explain what that phrase means?
What's a "ping time"?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article SK5ae.8698$NU4.1859@attbi_s22, Jay Honeck wrote:
My regular gaming friends live in
England, Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, ping
times are too bad to the US, I'd like to be able to play games with
friends over there.

For those of us past 45, can you please explain what that phrase means?
What's a "ping time"?

Think of a submarine's SONAR. It goes 'ping'. The ping bounces off
another submarine, and back to a transducer on the submarine that did
the pinging. You can measure your distance to the other sub by measuring
this time. The ping time is the round-trip time it took for the
ping to go from your sub, be reflected off the other sub, and get back
to your sub. Or think of how DME measures distances - by sending a
signal to the DME station, which then returns it, and then the box in
your panel works out the distance to the station from the round trip
time.

On the internet, your ping time is how long the round trip is from your
computer to a remote computer. On a LAN, ping times are measured in
fractions of milliseconds. On the internet, on hosts within a few
hundred miles, ping times will be in tens of milliseconds. On the
internet, to a host that's thousands of miles away, the ping time will
be in hundreds of milliseconds. Over a satellite link, ping times may be
in excess of a second. (Ever seen those live satellite linkups on TV
where there's quite an obvious pause from when the interviewer finishes
asking the question, to when the interviewee starts responding?)

On the internet, ping time (or latency) is affected by many factors,
such as how full your internet pipe is, what the transfer speed of the
internet pipe is, how big the packet is you send etc. It is also
affected by the speed of light through fibreoptics and the number of
routers and repeaters the data must pass through. Therefore, ping times
between Europe and the US - although more than adequate for web
browsing, chatting on IRC etc. are often not good enough for fast-paced
action games.

To play a highly interactive 3D game, which simulates some real world
situation, having a low ping time is important, because the actions of
the different players must be reasonably synchronized for the game to
make sense. For some online games, ping time is less important - think
of a turn-based strategy game.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Jay Honeck wrote:




We live in a city of 65,000, in a metropolitan area of over 120,000.

Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".

"Newps" wrote

Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".

Think again. In Iowa, and other Midwest and plains states, that is a
downright huge metro area. Such as are the wide open spaces in the US.
--
Jim in NC

"Morgans" wrote in message
...

"Newps" wrote

Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".

Think again. In Iowa, and other Midwest and plains states, that is a
downright huge metro area. Such as are the wide open spaces in the US.
--
The feds consider a "Metro Area" to be 1 million population or more and have
since the 60's I think.

Ahem...120,000 is not now and never will be a "metro area".

Think again. In Iowa, and other Midwest and plains states, that is
a
downright huge metro area. Such as are the wide open spaces in the
US.
--
The feds consider a "Metro Area" to be 1 million population or more
and have
since the 60's I think.

In the Midwest, where towns can be separated by vast distances, a
metropolitan area is quite different from the traditional "big city"
metro area. Yet, because of the distances involved, you will often
find all of the things normally associated with larger cities in a
(relatively) small group of communities.

I'm always surprised to find communities like Iowa City (or places like
Rapid City, SD and Lincoln NE, to name a couple of others) that have
amenities that you just would not expect to find outside major metro
areas.

Iowa City's "hook" is our 600 pound gorilla, the University of Iowa --
but many other small Midwest communities have "Big City fare" simply
because of their isolation. They thus have a "Big City feel" combined
with all the advantages of small town life -- a perfect combination,
IMHO.

I often wonder how the internet will affect this phenomenon. Now that
it is possible to have "next-day-air" delivery virtually anywhere, and
you can order anything instantly off the internet, how long will it be
until people REALLY disperse all over the countryside, completely
dispensing with the rudiments of what we consider "community"...?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 23 Apr 2005 19:21:13 -0700, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

I often wonder how the internet will affect this phenomenon. Now that
it is possible to have "next-day-air" delivery virtually anywhere, and
you can order anything instantly off the internet, how long will it be
until people REALLY disperse all over the countryside, completely
dispensing with the rudiments of what we consider "community"...?

Well, speaking in terms of states (rather than dispersal within
states), OpinionJournal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006596 has a chart of
projected population growth by 2030.

The fastest-growing states by 2030 are shown as Nevada, Arizona,
Florida, Texas, Utah, Idaho, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington, and
Oregon.

Except for New Hampshire (15th: ugh!), the Northeast is essentially
irrelevant.

The top ten states in 2030 are shown are California, Texas, Florida,
New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina (!), Georgia, Ohio,
and Arizona.

Florida displacing New York at 3! North Carolina displacing Ohio at 7!

Don't give all the credit to the internet. UPS has a lot to do with
it, too



-- all the best, Dan Ford

email (put Cubdriver in subject line)

Warbird's Forum: www.warbirdforum.com
Piper Cub Forum: www.pipercubforum.com
the blog: www.danford.net
In Search of Lost Time: www.readingproust.com

Cub Driver wrote:

The fastest-growing states by 2030 are shown as Nevada, Arizona,
Florida, Texas, Utah, Idaho, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington, and
Oregon.

Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida get most of their growth these days from
retirees. I suppose most of the rest are mainly attracting businesses? Georgia
certainly is.

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...

The fastest-growing states by 2030 are shown as Nevada, Arizona,
Florida, Texas, Utah, Idaho, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington, and
Oregon.

Except for New Hampshire (15th: ugh!), the Northeast is essentially
irrelevant.

The top ten states in 2030 are shown are California, Texas, Florida,
New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina (!), Georgia, Ohio,
and Arizona.

Florida displacing New York at 3! North Carolina displacing Ohio at 7!

Don't give all the credit to the internet. UPS has a lot to do with
it, too

I knew their drivers could be promiscuous, but I had no idea....

Jay Honeck wrote:

I often wonder how the internet will affect this phenomenon. Now that
it is possible to have "next-day-air" delivery virtually anywhere, and
you can order anything instantly off the internet, how long will it be
until people REALLY disperse all over the countryside, completely
dispensing with the rudiments of what we consider "community"...?

A long time I hope. It is usually pretty easy around here to tell the
"flat landers" (no offense Jay) from the locals. Just last weekend our
church group went rafting down a local gorge. When we ferried the
vehicles to the downstream end, we had to drive down a dead-end road to
turn the trailer around to park it at a camp on this same road that is
owned by one of our church members. After turning around and starting
back, an older guy stops us and starts complaining about people who
drive down "his" road and turn around in front of his camp. This is
pretty odd behavior for this area, but I just brushed him off and went
on my way. Later, we stopped for coffee at a local general store on our
way back to launch the rafts. This same old man comes into the store.
At that time, one of the men in our group said he recognized him. He
used to live near him in downstate PA (where the flat landers live). At
that point it all clicked. The folks from Philly come up to northern PA
to "get away from it all", but then bring their nasty and unfriendly
attitudes right along with them.

Matt