If he said that to Andrew Jackson, he'd have dragged his butt out back to the Rose Garden, pistols at 20 paces.

Justice done.

Twenty five dollars for each instance that it is used, business or personal.

I'd say it government, namely Beijing. They have seen BTC as a direct threat to their banking system and have taken action in the past to minimize the damage they are doing. And now, they decided to take a cloak and dagger approach to dealing with them. No surprise.

I'd say Beijing is up to their old tricks to try to eliminate competition to their banking system?

This is one of those silent, unwritten, but well-known rule that if Beijing wants something, you comply, no questions asked. Or you wind up in a concentration camp building products out of Chinesium for us fat Yankees.

Irritating, I know, but what do you expect out of a country like that?

In Corpus Christi, the city council plans to charge 1 dollar a day for each e-scooter. So that totals up to about 365 dollars a year for EACH e-scooter. Each vendor has about 500 units in town.

Needless to say, the vendors are up in arms over it.

They still watch out for their bottom line and stock value. So, if they can save megabucks with a move towards a state that has a lower tax bracket, then they'll jump. Texas is that magnet state right now, and looking at the mass exodus from Cali to Texas, I'd say yes, they are.

The rest will be imports from Cali and overseas. The 25% would be support and/or maintenance crews, and MAYBE a smattering of B- and C- level execs to keep the masses happy.

  Apple's after the lower wage and tax brackets, so it makes sense they would make this kind of move.

The pager companies has an agreement with their clients in their Terms of Service contract to keep the pagers operating unconditionally. This is something the cell companies can not promise for their service. Their wireline services has this agreement as well, signed in stone and painted in blood of the telecoms, with the Fed and State Public Utilities. Also a reason why they are currently playing the shell game with their ILECs, selling them to each other, until the lowest operation on the totem pole (usually Centrylink or Frontier, heaven forbid) procures them and can't foist them off on anyone else. Woe to the poor bastards that require wireline or pagers for their service and the telecoms in that given area cannot furnish.

In the Pre-Harvey days, you could hear the thump down here by Rockport. After the hurricane, we have yet to hear them again. I guess they quit doing it so that any weakened structures don't fall in or windows go ahead and fail. I don't hear the pops or thumps anyplace else, including Mustang Island.

When Harvey hit Rockport, AT&T cut all caps loose, supplying support and discounts to the hurricane victims of the area. But their cell coverage is still poor, if not worse after the storm hit. The reason behind this is the only cell tower providing service in a 50 square mile area is a 200 footer that went down during the storm and has yet to be replaced. The permits with the FCC have been cleared, but no action has yet to be taken by the owner of the tower, which is not AT&T, Someone needs to dig the spurs into the fools and get something taller up than a 50 foot surrogate tower that is not doing what it's supposed to be doing.

Verizon has always had a blighted eye regarding service and support for small and rural communities, oftentimes treating them with contempt and poor QOS, both consumer and commercial. They recently have been shedding exchanges like a husky blows its pelt, selling out to cut-rate operations like Frontier. This oftentimes has a nasty effect of degrading services in these communities, or worse, services being cut due to a lack of complete information on the infrastructure. One organization needed 15Mbps MPLS, and was forced to order EIGHT T-1s to establish that service. The cards that went into the router alone cost two thousand dollars EACH. PLUS they have yet to receive any configuration data to set up the equipment for th site. And this was two+ months ago. The comment given regarding this lack of engagement Frontier has with the org, "That's Frontier for you".

Big Bell System Monopoly, anyone?

All new construction gas stations have cut off switches set up as such where they simply don't cut off the gas at the pump, but to depower the actual fuel pumping system by cutting power completely by opening an magnetic contactor.

Of course, existing gas stations usually don't have this in the first place, or else the breaker box is wired to the point of being paranoid. This code varies on strictness and/or enforcement from state to state. This is improving, but is slow.

https://forums.flightsimlabs.c...

Some of the towers I've seen are not capable of handing an offset weight like tower man toting tools and gear. The amount of corrosion on the tower will force a judgement call by the techs on if it will be scaleable or no. There's not going to be palms greased by the green stuff as incentive, this is life or death.

A 30 year old tower went down last year during Harvey. It was a 200 footer, rated for 160-180 MPH winds. Harvey sported 180 and it came down in a pile of pipes and cables. Another 175 footer that was adjacent to it still stands, but It's questionable if it is serviceable.