Paco

In my neighborhood, sometimes the transformer is too far from the house, and the secondary distribution line is run between the poles before dropping to the house. This makes for runs as long as 200'. The distribution line is run below the neutral line. However, in one case (about 100') there is no neutral, and I assume the strength member which carries the distribution line wrapped around it functions as a neutral. I feel that this could be dangerous if lightning strikes.

What are the proper distance from pole mount transformers to a house? We have three homes tied to one transformer, two are 100' away and the third is 300' away. The third house uses two intermediate utility poles.

Should it have it's own transformer? What are the regulations? Could this be dangerous? As there are high voltage lines right there I assume that this was done to save money.

The question is NOT do you believe there is a problem. The question is DO YOU THINK there will be enough people that schedule their flights on Dreamliners to avoid any long range aircraft that taps Bleed Air?

I was looking at word frequency in KJV bible and Shakespeare compared to modern English and found some surprises.

The verb "get" (get, gets, got, gotten, getting) is the 5th most common verb in present day use. Of course, archaic forms like "getteth" are in KJV.

But the frequency of appearance of this verb is very low in KJV. In particular "got", does not appear once in 3/4 million words in KJV. But "gotten" appears 50 time,

Shakespeare was just the opposite. The word "got" appears 120 times, but "gotten" appears only 5 times.

It makes me think that "got" might have been considered poor English.

Other verbs like "think", "want", and "use" are also relatively rare in KJV, but very common in modern usage.

Insignia (Best Buy house brand) makes one model TV 22" with 1080p resolution. All other models below 32" are 720p. Does this make sense? Surpsingly it is the second cheapest TV model they sell. How can that be?

The 5 day miniseries done in the summer of 2009 was brutal and gut wrenching. Is this common in British TV?

The word "irascible" is the first word I have discovered that has identical spelling in Spanish and English without being a loan-word like "chocolate". It has the same meaning in both languages. In English it is not a common spoken word, but is used as a more colorful way to say "prone to anger" in writing. I am told that native Spanish speakers do not use it as often. Do you know any other words (not loan words like "rodeo") with this property? Am I wrong about the use of irascible, do educated people use the word in conversation?

I was told that the VOIP you purchase through a cable company is fundamentally different from the VOIP from a 3rd party source (like Vonage, BasicTalk, or Magic Jack). It is not a part of the internet service flow. It's a dedicated network for providing phone service. Can someone point me to some technical documentation describing this system?

Why were two Dr Who specials missing from USA Netflix that I wanted to see.

"Planet of the Dead" Easter special (11 April 2009)

"A Christmas Carol" Christmas special (25 December 2010)

I assume that season 7 will be released in plenty of time before the 50th anniversary special.

My mother hurt her should and watched TV while laying on her side for 2-3 days. Now she is suffering from constant dizziness. The doctor said she developed this problem while watching TV. I can't find this on the internet anywhere. Can someone tell me what it is called so I can research treatment?

Carmike Cinemas is the 4th largest cinema circuit in the USA, although it is considerably smaller than Regal or AMC.

In their annual report of last year they give the following information out of 50 million ticket sales.

$6.85 Average admission per patron

$3.69 Film exhibition costs

$4.20 Other theater operating costs

Resulting in an average loss of $1.05 per ticket

From concession sales the Carmike corporation makes up the above loss, pays for the cost of the candy, general and administrative expenses (front office expenses),severance agreement charges, depreciation and amortization, loss on sale of property and equipment, impairment of long-lived assets.

Most people understand that a business has overhead, and the candy sales are what pays the front office, the other business expenses and makes the company profitable.

Why would it make any difference if a cable company revealed their costs to the networks over the last 10 years? Perhaps they could bill double the transmission costs plus a small customer fee of about $10/month.

The advantage is that it might make some customers sympathetic to the cost of providing cable service if they see how much syndication fees increase every year. Instead I think that keeping customers in the dark, makes them angry. Some customers are perpetually changing their service looking for the best teaser rates.

Someone said to me they would be happy to take off the "over the air"channels from their cable if they could get a $25/month discount on their bill. It would be worth the money to put up an antenna. My guess is that your average basic cable subscription (mine is about 70 HD channels and 40 STD channel) plus 43 music channels. Costs the cable company roughly $25/month in subscription and retransmission fees (per household). I know that ESPN and ESPN2 alone are about $5. Any thoughts? Has anyone ever seen anything in a report?

If I understand it correctly, the DVR records all the primetime hours of 4 over the air networks. Now does it actually not record the commercials, or do you just fast forward through them?

This question also applies to Verizon Home Phone Connect.

The Straight Talk advertisement indicates that you can plug in two phones as their are two jacks. But I have 14 phones (many are powered). Can I plug it into the wall jack and run all those phones? I do that with my cable telephony modem. Is there something different about these systems?

Is there any problem with using Google Chromecast and a monitor (which may have a DVI input instead of HDMI)

Some TV's are advertised as 720p resolution. I assume this means it will also handle those stations broadcast in 1080i (interlaced), Am I correct?

It seems like the modem supplied by my cable company is inherently inefficient. Because the signal goes in through a coaxial and doesn't come out, you must split the signal as it comes into the house. So even if you only have one TV you lose 3 dB. If you have 2-3 televisions you must lose at least 6 dB, and even more if you have more televisions. Am I missing something, or can you design a lossless cable modem.

Slot machines come from the manufacturer with various possible settings for expected returns. From loosest to tightest for one actual machine they are 85.0%, 87.5%, 90.0%, 92.5%, 94.0%, 95.0%, 96.2%, and 97.4%. Casinos in Vegas almost never ever use the loosest possible setting, and the worst ones like the airport and the Venetian uses the tightest possible setting. If you are after a lot of repeat business, the slot master chooses looser settings. Now these returns are averages over long term play, and each individual will have huge variations in how much he wins or loses. Normally in a financial transaction you must reveal the terms of the transaction in advance. Do you think casinos should be required to reveal expected returns on slot machines?

My TIVO and 4 year old TIVO suddenly stopped talking via HDMI. I get a message that says the HDCP is not enabled. Both the TIVO and TV representatives assure me that the respective devices are working. Could it be the cable? It says version 1.3 on the cable. Do I need to upgrade to a 1.3a or 1.3b version?

For people familiar with craps (dice game), the average number of rolls a dice before people "7-out" in craps is just over 8. What are the odds of passing 30 rolls? 50 rolls? or 100 rolls?