1) In telecom [telegraph, telex, telephone] "sender pays" has been the rules on settlements. Just like a sender pays to put a stamp on a letter. Even when a customer of a CLEC 1 initiates a call to another CLEC 2 through an ILEC, CLEC 1 pays ILEC, ILEC pays CLEC 2. This is why there were many of these free teleconference systems, they are run by CLECs trying to get settlements by having more people call them long distance.

2) There was a brief period of the Internet where "no one paid" for the Internet because of government support, and the result was a typical tragedy of the commons - horrible congestion (the 56K NSFNet). Eventually the NSFNet had to classify traffic into high-priority terminal sessions and lower priority traffic like FTP.

3) The CIX came along to interconnect large commercial networks. These networks were generally exchanging equal amounts of traffic. Once you bought into CIX, you peered without settlements.

No-Pay peering with others that exchange equal amount of traffic with you in both directions makes technological sense due to symmetric bandwidth capacities of interfaces.

For example, a network service provider's 100 Mbps FDDI connection at the MAE-EAST provides 100 Mbps in both directions. It doesn't make sense to peer with someone who sending you 100 Mbps and only receiving 1 Mbps of your traffic.

Peering and/or settlement agreements between networks have evolved over time to balance the real-world business situation. For example, you might not want to charge as much to a customer that runs a huge, dependable software archive that your other customers benefit from. Similarly, today's cable providers probably should make Netflix pay less, but Netflix should still pay something.

I feel this is something the market should work out.

In the meantime, we need to figure out how to enhance competition in the local ISP market. A Federal law to make local monopoly franchises granted by government illegal would be a good start...

the rules have always been that if you have roughly the same amount of traffic inbound and outbound, peering has no charge.

I'm curious why this was the rule - is it because most network interfaces are inherently bi-directional? Or was it a feeling that information is valuable, so if your network absorbs valuable information from the outside, it should provide an equivalent amount of valuable information back out?

How is this the worse industrial disaster in US history, compared with the Texas City Disaster that killed 581 people, injured more than 5,000 people, and destroyed 500 homes, 1100 vehicles, and 362 rail cars due to an explosion of 2.9 kilotons TNT equivalent energy?

This is what economists call a Coasian Solution to a problem of externalities. Coase's Theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are sufficiently low transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property.

Oh, and before you say "that's why college is stupid" it's also a good indicator of job success. No matter what your job, you're going to have to do things you don't want to.

You would think we could come up with a test cheaper than a $100K+ college education to determine if people are willing to do things they don't want to - perhaps it would be like that reality show "Fear Factor"...

I thought the goal of the SAT was to predict performance in college, not to gauge "important academic skills".

I suspect actual college performance is best predicted by having the students drink, do drugs, and have sex all night - then have a high-stakes test at 6AM in the morning! (You score some for just making it out of bed BTW)

OK so we're talking S-band, 256bps FSK uplink with CP. Is that really "old fashioned"?

What are these "old-fashioned transmitters" that are not available any more? What frequency, bandwidth, and power are required?

For chicken, I feel Gardein is pretty much already there with soy protein isolate. No real need to culture animal cells.

Steak & Fish a bit more challenging to pull off though...

The article mentions Parrot's Ethernet AVB connected systems. The carriage of audio/video media over AVB has been standardized by the AVB Transport Protocol in IEEE 1722, and yes, it is just Ethernet, no IP.

The theory is that your car is a LAN, and does not need to have Layer 3.

I think there is a difference between nuclear power plant operators and nuclear power plant engineers. Kind of like the difference between people that use software and people that write software.

AM broadcast spectrum is about 1 MHz, or about 3.5 Mbps using typical digital modulations. AM antennas need to be very long to be very efficient, so realistic mobile devices may only get 1 Mbps or less. Also AM propagates easily, so it will be tough to have small cells with reasonably powered transmitters.

FM is about 20 MHz, or about 70 Mbps theoretically. They also have a long wavelength, but not anywhere as bad as AM, but worse than TV channels 7-13.

First stage reverses direction and comes back. Very fuel expensive, I'd be amazed if they're planning this.

I suspect parachute braking with fuel only used in the last few feet.

Can't They just live and work in India?

Why can't we all be able to live and work wherever we want?