Breaking news - Carly Fiorina announces that her Vice Presidential running mate on the "Yesterday's People Party" ticket will be Mitt - "Back From The Dead" Romney.

Fair comment, as is my comment that in some situations competition isn't the solution.

I'm sure that the telecoms on both sides of the border use that argument - and deluge regulatory authorities with detailed information whenever this (competitiveness) issue arises. Niether of us is likely to possess the resources to do that, either for the U.S. or Canada.

Can we agree that since niether uf us is going to do the research ourselves we can least rely on regulatory bodies as the "least worst" source of information? That being (hopefully) the case, the following documents are likely to be relevant. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/arch... http://www.competitionbureau.g... Apart from these documents there is a raft of information/reportage/comment/analysis expressing concern about the Canadian competitive environement in this (telecomms/ISP) sector, from the Prime Minister on down . I doubt that the Competition Bureau or the CRTC would be spending large (by Canadian standards) chunks of cash on the sector if they believed either that the competitive situation was giving Canadians value for money or that the currently inequitable situation would resolve itself without external intervention. Well established oligopolies are very hard to shift and, as I mentioned before, the Big 3 telecomms providers here have been very successful at routing outsiders, even when those outsiders have significant support http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/0... from the (competition friendly) federal government.

Karmashock, you say "I hate the big ISPs too. Everyone does. But the solution to them is competition. Not government regulation. Just remove the stupid laws that make it illegal for rival companies to lay cable in their territory". Take a look at the Canadian experience. The federal government has been trying for years to open up the market to competitors to the "Big 3" - Bell, Telus and Rogers - and its failure has been more or less total. There are some situations where competition just doesn't happen.

So here we have a group of enormous money-making machines fighting like cats in a sack over their responsibilities - and hundreds of millions of customers get screwed. Could this be a case for (Shock! Horror!) government intervention?

hlee, you are right on the money with this idea. Many years ago, specially designed mail trains had mechanisms to receive and drop off mail bags while the train was travelling at speed - at a guess, areound 60 mph. It would make a lot of sense to design a battery pack that fits on the underside of the car and is dropped out, with the momentum of the dropped battery being harvested to assist with the loading of a freshly charged battery Such a drop-and-replace system might be located on the outskirts of cities - inside, there would be no need of them as home and office charging systems would take care of demand. 60mph is unreasonable - but 15-20 might be ok - with control of the vehicle handed over to a self-driving system for the transfer to ensure that alignment of car and battery is accurate. Heck, it should be possible for the car to radio ahead to the charging station to prepare a battery and for payment to be made "on the fly".With regard to the batteries, there might need to be a record kept of their user history to ensure that mis-users of batteries were appropriately charged. Elon Musk, are you taking note of this?