I manage an electronics recycling company. We are all hand disassembly, but even we have seen lithium battery fires. The companies which switched to shredding (to reduce labor costs) have had a serious and growing problem with fires from charged lithium batteries exposed to oxygen.
We use this youtube video for staff training
If Earth launched a satellite precisely enough at the direction of the HD164595, and sufficient time elapsed for the distance to make earth's solar orbit fall in the range of the satellite's broadcast, and the satellite was sending communications back towards earth in its trail, could we not prank some future generation by not recording the launch? And how exactly do we know that wasn't done to us? Soviet Russia would have valued being the only ones to know that a signal wasn't coming from aliens, for example. Or some USA billionaire could have planned it, or rogue NASA could have calculated its eventual transmission would increase NASA funding...
If we translate the signal and it says that a Kardasian Prince needs us to transfer money in order to release millions of dollars from his account, it's a bad sign.
Lads, this is the free market at work. Verizon is using stockholder investments to hire people to scope out the next sector. So long as they have competition, they will raise data caps to account for the new bandwidth (unless it's a total fail - no one finds it adds value, and the stock will drop). All the analog spectrum formerly used to send TV shows like "Beverly Hillbillies" and "Gilligan's Island" could perhaps be better managed, but probably not better managed by cantankerous commenters who see every investment by every mulitinational corporation to be doomed from the start.
Anticipating the curmudgeon lad who says that the bandwidth will increase exponentially more for the 1%, I say I care about MY bandwidth yesterday, today, and tomorrow, more than I care how much faster someone else obtains it.
The "most onerous portions of USA copyright law" are tiddlywinks compared to the "most onerous portions" of Japanese copyright law (citation Fuji vs. Jazz Camera, Lexmark vs. Arizona Cartridge Manufacturers). Unfortunately, Japan's interpretation of protecting OEM rights internationally ("e-waste" takeback laws were invented in Japan for reasons having NOTHING to do with environmental destiny and EVERYTHING to do with re-manufacture and reverse-engineering) seems to have metastasized in Asia. EFF is on the right side of this, but pulling TPP's finger from the hole in the dike may result in "the perfect is the enemy of the good", ie if the USA was the strongest proponent to protect copyright - Disney lobbyists aside - then it's speculation whether TPP "could have done more".
I'm not an expert in TPP, or what concessions USA made or even brought to the table to protect USA lobbyists. But I'm above average as expert in the fact that trade is generally anti-protectionism, and protectionism is generally anti-trade, and TPP, NAFTA, TAP, etc. are generally trying to remove barriers. Glad EFF is there, but when I interviewed them about Chinese and Japanese law they said they didn't have enough bandwidth to be experts in that, and since the point of TPP is to leverage Japan vs. China (which despite certain idiot comments is NOT PART OF TPP), we had to find common ground, ie try to compromise with Japan.
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. -- A.H. Weiler
