Only 12 of Africa's 54 countries are linked  to Internet,
says Lawrence Landweber, president of the Internet
Society.
My mail from Farm & Country readers tells me he could
have been describing rural Ontario.
The following excerpt, from Coldwater area hobby-farmer
Brian Binns' letter, typifies comments I've received from
farmers whose modems are all lit up, but have no place to
go. Stuck with party lines, they are the clichˇd road
kill on the information highway.
"After setting up and familiarizing myself with a
bewildering number of options and programs, I cautiously
ventured out onto the merge lane of the highway. This
resulted in an instant wreck", Binns reports.
Binns says a friend, who is a retired Bell Canada
technician, spent a week tinkering with computer
equipment and a calculator before concluding Binns' brand
new Aptiva Pentium 75 would never get past Bell's area
switching system. Technicians I've spoken with say
obstacles may vary among phone companies, but could
include different grounding as well as phone company
software and switching standards for party lines.
Although I've seen several warnings in farm media,
including this publication, about mixing party lines and
computers, the problem doesn't seem to be going away. At
least four eastern Ontario computer dealers are still
swearing about one gentleman, who since  Christmas, 1994
made repeated rounds of their shops with his computer in
tow.
Occasionally, it seems, after returning from a trip to
the shop with a replacement modem or card installed, or
his system re-configured, he actually logged on to a few
BBSs for a day or two before things crashed again.
Each dealer eventually gave up in frustration after
throwing large amounts of what proved to be unbillable
time and replacement equipment at the problem.
 Unbeknownst to the stressed-out dealers, their unlucky
customer was using a party line. He figured that detail
wasn't worth mentioning because it was only a two-party
system and both phones were in his house.
This ever-hopeful net surfer was seen earlier this month
heading up the stairs of a computer dealer who had just
opened for business.
 Binns' story has a happy ending. He says he had been
assured by Bell that he wasn't among the chosen few in
his area entitled to a private line. However, at press
time, he had just jumped at a surprise phone company
offer of a private line for an extra $10 per month.
...With all the recent publicity about illegal
cheese-making, I almost hesitate to mention a highly
creative site devoted to cheese. But if you are involved
in the dairy industry you'll be glad you stopped by
CheeseNet 95. http://www.efn.org/~kpw/cheesenet95/
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