You may want to check the exact wording of the franchise agreement. Depending on how it's worded, if they are required to provide you free access to basic cable and they no longer offer that option, you may have some leverage with them.
You may be well served to get your city attorney
(or whatever the city uses for legal counsel)
involved as well.
What you or I think a phrase in a contract means,
and what the courts have decided that it means in cases over the years,
are often two entirely different things.
In addition,
the FCC has a relatively new rule that sharply limits the power of local franchising authorities,
and which may nullify some of the terms of the agreement.
For example,
in-kind services
(eg, free cable)
now count against the FCC's cap on franchise fees;
depending on the amount of cash fees Comcast pays the city,
they may no longer owe you free cable service,
no matter what the agreement says.
The new rule also allows things like state-wide franchise agreements;
you'll want to know whether your state
has done anything that affects your old agreement.
Comcast is currently asserting that a Michigan state law nullifies
the part of their 1980s franchise agreement with Detroit
that requires them to provide free cable service to the city.
This Slashdot thread discussed some of the possible nuances in that situation.
So our analog TVs are going to stop working soon? Why haven't we heard about this? It seems like they would have talked about it in the press or something.
Can't speak for the rest of the country, but in the Denver area, it was covered by the press, and every customer was notified more than once by mail. Of course, the notice would have gone to the billing address, so it probably never got passed along to the people in charge of communications.
Amount and substantiality: Ok, I can see a case here.
If the claim in the complaint letter is accurate --
that they had simply mirrored the entire site --
then it's an open-and-shut case on substantiality.
With a few fairly obvious exceptions
like an individually copyrighted image,
reproducing an entire work is essentially never allowed under fair use.
The questions I always ask myself are
Is it clear that it's an excerpt?
Is it clearly embedded in a larger work of my own creation?
Fair use covers excerpting for a number of purposes,
but there are limits to how much can be used.
The complaint in the letter is not that they excerpted from her Web site,
it is that they mirrored the entire thing.
That's not in any of the gray areas where there are
disagreements about whether you've used to much or not;
it's an open-and-shut case of copyright infringement,
should the copyright holder decide to pursue it.
The Nevada Democratic party clearly isn't going to fight this.
The link provided in the complaint letter
now redirects to a different site
that does not appear to be a copy of the original site.
Interesting that so many have asserted that the purpose for these large-scale mergers and/or acquisitions is to produce value for the shareholders.
Any number of economic studies have shown that after a few years, the majority of such result in reduced shareholder value.
A handful of executives make a lot of money;
the investment bank(s) that orchestrate the acquisition make money;
the shareholders on either side, not so much, if at all,
unless they cash out quickly.
Having seen several from the inside,
there's a secret code.
When they say "synergy", they mean they're going to fire a whole bunch of engineers.
To expand slightly for those not familiar with how bookies work. This is US-centric, as betting arrangements vary from country to country...
You have to bet $110 to win $100.
A loser loses $110, a winner gets $210 back
(the original $110 plus the $100 winning).
The bookies' goal is to have exactly the same number of bets on both sides,
so that they can use $100 from each of the losing bets to pay the $100 to the winners,
and pocket the $10 "vigorish" or "vig" from the losing bets as their profit.
The adjustments you see to the point spread (handicap) over time tells you which way the betting is running,
and reflect the bookies' efforts to attract more bets on one side or the other.
More bets mean more profit,
so long as the bookies can keep the bets balanced.
The occasional differences in the point spread at the different casinos in Las Vegas
don't reflect the casino's opinion about the game,
they simply indicate that the betting has been somewhat different
at the different locations.
In sports which use odds instead of point spreads,
the same basic approach is used.
Odds are initially set and adjusted over time to balance the betting
so that the bookie is guaranteed a profit.
Alright,
I'll add one word:
any valid federal rule takes precedent over any provision in a state constitution.
The Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2),
plus 100 years of SCOTUS case law on Congressional delegation of rule-making authority
have settled the issue completely.
If a state challenges a federal rule in court
on the sole grounds that the rule conflicts with the state constitution,
the federal government will ask for, and get, a summary judgment tossing the case.
There are basically three ways to get a rule invalidated:
Congress does not have authority to legislate in a particular area.
The current state challenge to the health care reform act is an example.
If the states prevail,
any rules issued by the federal DHHS under the authority of that act
will be invalidated.
Congress has not delegated the appropriate authority to the agency.
The recent SCOTUS decision on net neutrality was made on this basis.
Note that that decision did not say that Congress could not authorize
the FCC to enforce network neutrality,
only that Congress had not yet done so.
The agency making the rule has not followed the rule-making procedure specified by Congress.
This is pretty rare, as bureaucrats are good at procedure.
The vast majority of federal rules that conflict with state constitutional provisions are never challenged.
The rule is followed and the state constitution ignored because
precedence is a settled matter.
The National Constitution grants no power to the national government to regulate cable lines *inside* a state, or inside a city (Detroit), so the Feds have no power in this matter.
Nonsense.
The FCC has been regulating cable service in a wide variety of ways for decades.
It doesn't matter whether you or I think
the 10th Amendment reserves such regulatory authority to the states;
the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld both
Congress's authority to regulate cable television services and
its ability to delegate that authority to the FCC.
Including many cases where FCC actions modify or even nullify
contract terms between the cable company and the local franchising authority.
The recent ruling was extremely narrow:
it held that the FCC had failed to tie its network neutrality action
to specific statutory authority.
It did not say that Congress didn't have
the authority to require network neutrality;
it did not say that Congress couldn't delegate
such authority to the FCC;
it said that Congress had not currently
provided the FCC with statutory authority to require network neutrality.
And the ruling applied only to internet access services,
not to voice or video.
Inasmuch as this Detroit/Comcast case appears to be purely about video service,
the recent Supreme Court opinion has exactly zero bearing.
The relevant paragraph of the state constitution also grants certain powers to the local franchising authority that are denied to them by FCC rules adopted in the last few years.
Specifically, under the FCC rule, there are conditions under which video services can be provided without a local franchise.
In the case of such conflicts, federal rule trumps state constitution (the Supremacy Clause, as interpreted by federal and state courts).
In effect,
the FCC rule tacks a sentence onto this paragraph of the Michigan constitution that says, "But this paragraph does not apply to the provision of video services."
Whether that's enough to allow state-wide franchising of video services is an open issue.
The Michigan Supreme Court might decide that the constitutional language forbids the state from doing franchising at all.
OTOH, they might decide that state-wide franchising is fine for situations in which the local authority is unable to act due to federal rule.
Depending on other language in the state constitution, the decision could go either way.
In some places like my home town it's actually "illegal" for me to start my own cable company as it is in the franchise contract.
Such provisions are now null and void.
The latest FCC rules on the matter
require that the city allow competing networks and
that they negotiate with you on franchise terms.
If you and the city do not reach an agreement
within a specified period of time,
you're allowed to go ahead and build your network.
The city is not allowed to discriminate against you
on things like fees for opening the street;
ie, they have to charge you the same rate they would charge the incumbent.
If your city's franchise agreement follows the standard model,
somewhere in the contract is language that says
the terms and conditions can be changed to conform to
federal statutes,
and also that sections are "severable":
that if one section has to be changed or dropped to conform,
the other sections remain in force.
This is probably what is happening in Detroit with respect to
the free service for schools and municipal buildings.
New FCC rules state that such service cannot be used to
circumvent the federal cap on local franchise fees for video services.
If the cash franchise fees Comcast pays
are at the federal maximum,
then they can't be required to provide any free service.
At least not as I read the rules, but IANAL.
They sold their water and sewer system to a neighboring county because they couldn't afford to operate it.
There is consideration being given to
filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
The mayor has seriously proposed
bulldozing a quarter of the city.
Detroit can't afford to build anything.
And, IMO, a company would be nuts to put any significant money
into infrastructure in that environment.
It will be more complicated than that.
FCC rules have the force of federal law,
so trump the Michigan state constitution.
In recent years,
the FCC has stripped local franchising authorities of
considerable authority.
At least some of the provisions in this paragraph
are clearly no longer enforceable;
eg,
under certain conditions the federal rules allow
a company to use public right of way
to provide video services
even though they failed to reach a franchise agreement with the local authority.
Since this paragraph can't apply to companies providing video services,
it is at least arguable that state-wide video service franchising is okay.
In addition,
Comcast provides communications services (voice and Internet)
over the same fiber-coax infrastructure,
and franchising authority for those kinds of services have
been outside of local control for a long time.
As for the free service for schools and municipal buildings:
the latest FCC rules nullify that if
those "in kind" services are being used to circumvent
the federal cap on franchise fees.
Possible suggestions, that lend themselves to equation form:
the fundamental theorem of calculus;
the central limit theorem;
Taylor series expansion of a function;
any of several definitions for e.
Downloaded and installed it this morning.
It's not perfect, but it does help a lot.
Still some buzzing left, but at a different frequency
that doesn't sound nearly so much like a bunch of angry bees.
Minimal impact on the announcers' voices,
and you can hear normal crowd noise.
They are only asking for 6 months, not a permanent ban.
Six months is a very long time
if you are the owner of one of the drilling rigs.
Especially since there are no guarantees about
how soon drilling might reasonably resume, or the pace of drilling when it does.
Globally,
there are other opportunities to rent out the rig.
Once activities in the Gulf are shut down,
it may take a few years to recover to the current level.
Yes.
And "undoing" the moratorium at the end of six months
may be substantially more difficult then starting it has been.
The rent on a large semi-submersible drilling rig
such as the one that burned and sank when the BP well blew out
may exceed $500,000 per day just for the rig.
The rig owners —
generally not the oil companies —
will not let these sit idle for 180 days
if there are opportunities elsewhere.
Once the rigs have been relocated to Brazil or Africa,
it may be quite expensive to entice them back.
Not to say that a moratorium is not an appropriate response.
Just that there may be long-term consequences of that decision
that do not appear to have considered.
We also have many NIMBY ("Not In My Back Yard") groups that are theoretically in favor of renewable energy, so long as it doesn't create "eyesores" that affect their property values.
Yep.
Colorado has a statutory requirement that the investor-owned utilities provide a specified level of renewable power,
with a specified contribution from solar.
The San Luis valley is the obvious place to build the generating facilities — it has the best solar resources in the state.
Grid upgrades are necessary to get the power to the population centers.
Large solar projects initially planned for the Valley are being held up by lawsuits involving all sorts of people:
the utilities, who want to site the transmission lines along a new route in order to improve geographic diverstiy;
the billionaire who bought the very large ranch in 2007 across which the new route runs;
the locals who want the Valley to be a big power exporter;
other groups of locals who want distributed solar power for local consumption only.
The portfolio requirement includes an "out" for the utilities:
they are not required to meet the targets if
the costs of generating or purchasing solar power are too high
compared to non-renewable sources.
The largest utility involved in the plan appears to be ready
to exercise that "out" and withdraw from the project.
There's plenty of battery technologies that perform well enough for cars already.... Recharging a 25kWh battery pack (corresponding to ~150km of driving)...
Indeed.
The biggest problem, I think, will be convincing the American public (in particular) that they can no longer afford a single vehicle that provides
both their routine transportation needs as well as
the infrequent extreme uses.
A small light-weight vehicle that gets most people to work and home,
or makes the swing to the grocery plus other local chores,
can probably get by on significantly less then 25 kWh
and with only overnight recharge capabilities.
Obviously,
it won't haul half the soccer team to a game 100 miles away, or
be of much use for helping your friend move.
For the 10% of the time — or less — that you need greater range or load capacity, rentals of one form or another would seem to make a lot of sense.
Rent the bigger vehicle.
Rent the tow-along 25 kW gas- or LP-fired generator for range extension.
I suspect that there will eventually be nice opportunities
in setting up services where individuals can get themselves pre-approved
for such rentals,
so it's relatively quick and painless to make the arrangements.
And people are using zinc-air fuel cells for some fairly substantial applications.
I suppose that's it's cheaper to just deliver the appropriate small zinc plates to an outlying village and let them use locally-grown vegetables as the electrolyte.
But it would seem that there are advantages to dropping off some large well-designed fully-charged fuel cells, and picking up the spent ones for recharging or recycling at a centralized facility.
Otherwise,
I have visions of every village eventually having a "zinc dump", containing hundreds of pounds of zinc and zinc oxide.
Zinc can be fairly toxic when ingested.
Re:Does it have a monitor and full-size keyboard?
on
Flight of the Desktops
·
· Score: 1
c) You can't adjust distance between screen/keys or raise/lower the screen or tweak the ergonomics in any way.
d) Nasty laptop keys vs. Model M... you decide.
Yep.
But it's pretty much the same lesson the telephone companies had trouble learning once cellular technology became available:
the majority of people will give up a lot of other things
in exchange for mobility.
Today's cell phones' voice quality sucks compared to 1970s landline phones
using any of several metrics.
But the cell phone handset is mobile.
Intellectually, I realise there's only so much the proverbial tubes can handle at once; however the rest of me thinks, why weren't larger 'tubes' built in the first place?
Cable architecture carries an enormous amount of historical baggage.
Generally speaking,
the "tubes" were built as large as they could be,
given the restrictions of the technology of the day,
the requirements imposed by various government regulations, and
the revenues that could be extracted from the customers.
Add in that it was almost always necessary
to maintain a considerable degree of backwards compatibility
whenever the system was upgraded.
Even today the cable companies are required to deliver
a certain number of NTSC analog video signals
using VHF carriers at 6 MHz spacing,
based on standards set in the early 1940s.
That requirement alone imposes serious limitations on
the overall capabilities of the system.
Yes, finally a cult that I belong to.
At least off and on.
And got in on fairly early (66650).
I am, however, disappointed that neither article lists the cult of APL.
Now, there's a proper group of fanatics.
And I can say that, since I'm one of them.
That's a valid complaint, however... Some of the improved methods for detecting different bacterial species suggest that the answer to the question "How many species are there on the planet?" is "However many species of bacteria there are, plus a small percentage for everything else." Examples of some of the new results:
New techniques applied to seawater samples found 10,000 bacterial species where previous methods found only 1,000.
A small soil sample from Alaska yielded 4,000 species, another sample from Minnesota yielded 10,000, but the overlap was only a few hundred. No one has a clue as to what the geographical patterns of diversity might be.
The new work suggests we should have been asking "How many non-bacterial species are there?" all along.
Seven or so years ago, before I retired from one of the large cable companies, CDNs were hosting the relatively static parts for a surprisingly large number of broadly popular sites. I had an opportunity to see the list when we were approached by the then-largest CDN, who wanted to place servers in many of our head-end locations for the obvious performance benefit. I was the one who pointed out that all of our internal DNS requests were routed to one of two data centers, one on the East Coast and one on the West, creating exactly the situation described in the OP: the CDN would have no idea where the original request came from, so would be unable to direct the end user to the appropriate server.
I was one of the few engineers who argued for less centralization in our network. I wanted broader distribution for reliability purposes: at that time, the massive centralized mail servers had a tendency to fail at the drop of a hat. But it would also have given us the ability to work with companies like the CDNs in order to provide better service.
Slashdot Mirror
You may be well served to get your city attorney (or whatever the city uses for legal counsel) involved as well. What you or I think a phrase in a contract means, and what the courts have decided that it means in cases over the years, are often two entirely different things. In addition, the FCC has a relatively new rule that sharply limits the power of local franchising authorities, and which may nullify some of the terms of the agreement. For example, in-kind services (eg, free cable) now count against the FCC's cap on franchise fees; depending on the amount of cash fees Comcast pays the city, they may no longer owe you free cable service, no matter what the agreement says. The new rule also allows things like state-wide franchise agreements; you'll want to know whether your state has done anything that affects your old agreement. Comcast is currently asserting that a Michigan state law nullifies the part of their 1980s franchise agreement with Detroit that requires them to provide free cable service to the city. This Slashdot thread discussed some of the possible nuances in that situation.
Can't speak for the rest of the country, but in the Denver area, it was covered by the press, and every customer was notified more than once by mail. Of course, the notice would have gone to the billing address, so it probably never got passed along to the people in charge of communications.
If the claim in the complaint letter is accurate -- that they had simply mirrored the entire site -- then it's an open-and-shut case on substantiality. With a few fairly obvious exceptions like an individually copyrighted image, reproducing an entire work is essentially never allowed under fair use. The questions I always ask myself are
Fair use covers excerpting for a number of purposes, but there are limits to how much can be used. The complaint in the letter is not that they excerpted from her Web site, it is that they mirrored the entire thing. That's not in any of the gray areas where there are disagreements about whether you've used to much or not; it's an open-and-shut case of copyright infringement, should the copyright holder decide to pursue it.
The Nevada Democratic party clearly isn't going to fight this. The link provided in the complaint letter now redirects to a different site that does not appear to be a copy of the original site.
Interesting that so many have asserted that the purpose for these large-scale mergers and/or acquisitions is to produce value for the shareholders. Any number of economic studies have shown that after a few years, the majority of such result in reduced shareholder value. A handful of executives make a lot of money; the investment bank(s) that orchestrate the acquisition make money; the shareholders on either side, not so much, if at all, unless they cash out quickly.
Having seen several from the inside, there's a secret code. When they say "synergy", they mean they're going to fire a whole bunch of engineers.
To expand slightly for those not familiar with how bookies work. This is US-centric, as betting arrangements vary from country to country...
You have to bet $110 to win $100. A loser loses $110, a winner gets $210 back (the original $110 plus the $100 winning). The bookies' goal is to have exactly the same number of bets on both sides, so that they can use $100 from each of the losing bets to pay the $100 to the winners, and pocket the $10 "vigorish" or "vig" from the losing bets as their profit. The adjustments you see to the point spread (handicap) over time tells you which way the betting is running, and reflect the bookies' efforts to attract more bets on one side or the other. More bets mean more profit, so long as the bookies can keep the bets balanced.
The occasional differences in the point spread at the different casinos in Las Vegas don't reflect the casino's opinion about the game, they simply indicate that the betting has been somewhat different at the different locations.
In sports which use odds instead of point spreads, the same basic approach is used. Odds are initially set and adjusted over time to balance the betting so that the bookie is guaranteed a profit.
Alright, I'll add one word: any valid federal rule takes precedent over any provision in a state constitution. The Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2), plus 100 years of SCOTUS case law on Congressional delegation of rule-making authority have settled the issue completely. If a state challenges a federal rule in court on the sole grounds that the rule conflicts with the state constitution, the federal government will ask for, and get, a summary judgment tossing the case. There are basically three ways to get a rule invalidated:
The vast majority of federal rules that conflict with state constitutional provisions are never challenged. The rule is followed and the state constitution ignored because precedence is a settled matter.
Nonsense.
The FCC has been regulating cable service in a wide variety of ways for decades. It doesn't matter whether you or I think the 10th Amendment reserves such regulatory authority to the states; the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld both Congress's authority to regulate cable television services and its ability to delegate that authority to the FCC. Including many cases where FCC actions modify or even nullify contract terms between the cable company and the local franchising authority.
The recent ruling was extremely narrow: it held that the FCC had failed to tie its network neutrality action to specific statutory authority. It did not say that Congress didn't have the authority to require network neutrality; it did not say that Congress couldn't delegate such authority to the FCC; it said that Congress had not currently provided the FCC with statutory authority to require network neutrality. And the ruling applied only to internet access services, not to voice or video. Inasmuch as this Detroit/Comcast case appears to be purely about video service, the recent Supreme Court opinion has exactly zero bearing.
The relevant paragraph of the state constitution also grants certain powers to the local franchising authority that are denied to them by FCC rules adopted in the last few years. Specifically, under the FCC rule, there are conditions under which video services can be provided without a local franchise. In the case of such conflicts, federal rule trumps state constitution (the Supremacy Clause, as interpreted by federal and state courts). In effect, the FCC rule tacks a sentence onto this paragraph of the Michigan constitution that says, "But this paragraph does not apply to the provision of video services." Whether that's enough to allow state-wide franchising of video services is an open issue. The Michigan Supreme Court might decide that the constitutional language forbids the state from doing franchising at all. OTOH, they might decide that state-wide franchising is fine for situations in which the local authority is unable to act due to federal rule. Depending on other language in the state constitution, the decision could go either way.
Such provisions are now null and void. The latest FCC rules on the matter require that the city allow competing networks and that they negotiate with you on franchise terms. If you and the city do not reach an agreement within a specified period of time, you're allowed to go ahead and build your network. The city is not allowed to discriminate against you on things like fees for opening the street; ie, they have to charge you the same rate they would charge the incumbent.
If your city's franchise agreement follows the standard model, somewhere in the contract is language that says the terms and conditions can be changed to conform to federal statutes, and also that sections are "severable": that if one section has to be changed or dropped to conform, the other sections remain in force. This is probably what is happening in Detroit with respect to the free service for schools and municipal buildings. New FCC rules state that such service cannot be used to circumvent the federal cap on local franchise fees for video services. If the cash franchise fees Comcast pays are at the federal maximum, then they can't be required to provide any free service. At least not as I read the rules, but IANAL.
Detroit is b-r-o-k-e, broke.
They sold their water and sewer system to a neighboring county because they couldn't afford to operate it. There is consideration being given to filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The mayor has seriously proposed bulldozing a quarter of the city. Detroit can't afford to build anything. And, IMO, a company would be nuts to put any significant money into infrastructure in that environment.
It will be more complicated than that. FCC rules have the force of federal law, so trump the Michigan state constitution. In recent years, the FCC has stripped local franchising authorities of considerable authority. At least some of the provisions in this paragraph are clearly no longer enforceable; eg, under certain conditions the federal rules allow a company to use public right of way to provide video services even though they failed to reach a franchise agreement with the local authority. Since this paragraph can't apply to companies providing video services, it is at least arguable that state-wide video service franchising is okay. In addition, Comcast provides communications services (voice and Internet) over the same fiber-coax infrastructure, and franchising authority for those kinds of services have been outside of local control for a long time.
As for the free service for schools and municipal buildings: the latest FCC rules nullify that if those "in kind" services are being used to circumvent the federal cap on franchise fees.
Possible suggestions, that lend themselves to equation form: the fundamental theorem of calculus; the central limit theorem; Taylor series expansion of a function; any of several definitions for e.
Downloaded and installed it this morning. It's not perfect, but it does help a lot. Still some buzzing left, but at a different frequency that doesn't sound nearly so much like a bunch of angry bees. Minimal impact on the announcers' voices, and you can hear normal crowd noise.
Six months is a very long time if you are the owner of one of the drilling rigs. Especially since there are no guarantees about how soon drilling might reasonably resume, or the pace of drilling when it does. Globally, there are other opportunities to rent out the rig. Once activities in the Gulf are shut down, it may take a few years to recover to the current level.
Yes. And "undoing" the moratorium at the end of six months may be substantially more difficult then starting it has been. The rent on a large semi-submersible drilling rig such as the one that burned and sank when the BP well blew out may exceed $500,000 per day just for the rig. The rig owners — generally not the oil companies — will not let these sit idle for 180 days if there are opportunities elsewhere. Once the rigs have been relocated to Brazil or Africa, it may be quite expensive to entice them back.
Not to say that a moratorium is not an appropriate response. Just that there may be long-term consequences of that decision that do not appear to have considered.
Yep. Colorado has a statutory requirement that the investor-owned utilities provide a specified level of renewable power, with a specified contribution from solar. The San Luis valley is the obvious place to build the generating facilities — it has the best solar resources in the state. Grid upgrades are necessary to get the power to the population centers. Large solar projects initially planned for the Valley are being held up by lawsuits involving all sorts of people: the utilities, who want to site the transmission lines along a new route in order to improve geographic diverstiy; the billionaire who bought the very large ranch in 2007 across which the new route runs; the locals who want the Valley to be a big power exporter; other groups of locals who want distributed solar power for local consumption only.
The portfolio requirement includes an "out" for the utilities: they are not required to meet the targets if the costs of generating or purchasing solar power are too high compared to non-renewable sources. The largest utility involved in the plan appears to be ready to exercise that "out" and withdraw from the project.
Indeed. The biggest problem, I think, will be convincing the American public (in particular) that they can no longer afford a single vehicle that provides both their routine transportation needs as well as the infrequent extreme uses. A small light-weight vehicle that gets most people to work and home, or makes the swing to the grocery plus other local chores, can probably get by on significantly less then 25 kWh and with only overnight recharge capabilities. Obviously, it won't haul half the soccer team to a game 100 miles away, or be of much use for helping your friend move.
For the 10% of the time — or less — that you need greater range or load capacity, rentals of one form or another would seem to make a lot of sense. Rent the bigger vehicle. Rent the tow-along 25 kW gas- or LP-fired generator for range extension. I suspect that there will eventually be nice opportunities in setting up services where individuals can get themselves pre-approved for such rentals, so it's relatively quick and painless to make the arrangements.
And people are using zinc-air fuel cells for some fairly substantial applications. I suppose that's it's cheaper to just deliver the appropriate small zinc plates to an outlying village and let them use locally-grown vegetables as the electrolyte. But it would seem that there are advantages to dropping off some large well-designed fully-charged fuel cells, and picking up the spent ones for recharging or recycling at a centralized facility. Otherwise, I have visions of every village eventually having a "zinc dump", containing hundreds of pounds of zinc and zinc oxide.
Zinc can be fairly toxic when ingested.
Yep. But it's pretty much the same lesson the telephone companies had trouble learning once cellular technology became available: the majority of people will give up a lot of other things in exchange for mobility. Today's cell phones' voice quality sucks compared to 1970s landline phones using any of several metrics. But the cell phone handset is mobile.
Cable architecture carries an enormous amount of historical baggage. Generally speaking, the "tubes" were built as large as they could be, given the restrictions of the technology of the day, the requirements imposed by various government regulations, and the revenues that could be extracted from the customers. Add in that it was almost always necessary to maintain a considerable degree of backwards compatibility whenever the system was upgraded. Even today the cable companies are required to deliver a certain number of NTSC analog video signals using VHF carriers at 6 MHz spacing, based on standards set in the early 1940s. That requirement alone imposes serious limitations on the overall capabilities of the system.
Yes, finally a cult that I belong to. At least off and on. And got in on fairly early (66650). I am, however, disappointed that neither article lists the cult of APL. Now, there's a proper group of fanatics. And I can say that, since I'm one of them.
That's a valid complaint, however... Some of the improved methods for detecting different bacterial species suggest that the answer to the question "How many species are there on the planet?" is "However many species of bacteria there are, plus a small percentage for everything else." Examples of some of the new results:
The new work suggests we should have been asking "How many non-bacterial species are there?" all along.
Seven or so years ago, before I retired from one of the large cable companies, CDNs were hosting the relatively static parts for a surprisingly large number of broadly popular sites. I had an opportunity to see the list when we were approached by the then-largest CDN, who wanted to place servers in many of our head-end locations for the obvious performance benefit. I was the one who pointed out that all of our internal DNS requests were routed to one of two data centers, one on the East Coast and one on the West, creating exactly the situation described in the OP: the CDN would have no idea where the original request came from, so would be unable to direct the end user to the appropriate server.
I was one of the few engineers who argued for less centralization in our network. I wanted broader distribution for reliability purposes: at that time, the massive centralized mail servers had a tendency to fail at the drop of a hat. But it would also have given us the ability to work with companies like the CDNs in order to provide better service.
But when will I be able to buy a reasonable-size and reasonable-price display that uses OLEDs? Lab toys are cute, but real products are sexy.