The horror, the horror

Sometimes you wake up remembering a dream.  Sometimes you wake up with an idea or an insight.  Sometimes you wake up with nothing particular at all.

This morning, I woke up with an earworm of Vogon poetry.

Must apply brain bleach now....

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about area codes

From a discussion elsewhere on telephone systems and possible ways to let you dial a logically "nearby" phone using less keystrokes:

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Remember, enough of the phone number space is full that there are essentially no un-issued numbers in existing area codes any more.  ALL "new" phone numbers in existing area codes [with the probable exception of some recently-allocated area codes and some rural area codes] have been previously used, and we've gone from each town having a single exchange and big cities having several, to even smallish towns having multiple exchanges and major metropolitan areas having multiple area codes each, to parts of some major metropolitan areas having overlaid area codes because there aren't enough phone numbers in a single area code and they don't want to split the same area code again.  The pool of available-but-unused area codes itself is rapidly shrinking.

A little research yields:

"The format of an area code is NXX, where N is any digit 2 through 9 and X is any digit 0 through 9.  Initially, the middle digit of an area code had to be "0" or "1". When this restriction was removed in 1995, additional area code combinations became available.  There are 800 possible combinations associated with the NXX format.  Some of these combinations, however, are not available or have been reserved for special purposes."

Among these special purposes, it is noted that 37X and 96X have been "set aside by the INC for unanticipated purposes where it may be important to have a full range of 10 contiguous codes available", and the entire range of N9X has been "reserved for use during the period when the current 10-digit NANP number format undergoes expansion".  Codes with matching final digits (including N11) are reserved for special services.

That leaves 620 usable area codes.  By my best count, 384 of those are currently in use.  33 more have been planned but are not yet in service, for a total of 417 allocated area codes, leaving 203 available area codes for future expansion before they have to increase the number space.  Note that the N[01]X restriction in place up until 1995 limited the area code space to 160, minus the special area codes; subtracting N00 and N11 codes leaves 144 total available area codes prior to 1995.  In other words, in the 12 years since 1995, we have allocated twice as many new area codes as the total number of area codes available in 1995.  If we continue to allocate new area codes at that rate, even assuming a merely linear usage rate, we will exhaust the entire usable ten-digit space by about 2016; and if we make a real-world reasonable assumption about the probable shape of the usage curve, then 2012-2013 is a more likely estimate.

Extra-solar solar system

Extra-solar planets are old news these days.  So how about a complete extra-solar solar system?

Turns out astronomers using the Keck Observatory have now determined that 55 Cancri, a star 41 light-years away, has a system of five planets.  At least one is within what we consider the "habitable zone", though that planet is a medium-sized gas giant and is considered unlikely to support Earth-like life.  One other four-planet system is known, and several stars with three detected planets are known; with five detected planets, 55 Cancri is the current record-holder.

Why the writers' guild is on strike

Thanks to dafydd, a very clear explanation of the problem.

Capsule summary of the video he embeds: 

Many years ago, after a long- protracted fight, Hollywood finally agreed to pay writers a "residual" fee of 2.5% when something they wrote was re-broadcast on network TV.  The agreement applied only to material written after the agreement, so Hollywood has never paid a writer a cent for reruns of, for example, I Love Lucy, which has been rebroadcast continuously for fifty years and made hundreds of millions of dollars for the studios ... of which no writer ever saw a single cent.

22 years ago, Hollywood asked writers to accept a "temporary" 80% pay cut on that 2.5% residuals fee, for programming released on VHS tape, "for promotional purposes".  Unwisely, the writers agreed.  That "temporary" cut is still in effect, and applies to DVDs as well now, despite the burgeoning market that doesn't need any further "promotion".  And if you watch something on streaming video, Hollywood doesn't pay the writer anything at all.

So when you spend $20 on a movie or TV show on DVD, the writer gets ... four cents.  Watch the same show on streaming video, with no manufacturing, shipping or warehousing cost for the studio, and the writer doesn't make a cent — just like before the broadcast residuals agreement.

So what are the writers asking for?  They're asking for another four cents per DVD — in other words, they're asking for one quarter of that "temporary" pay cut back, after more than twenty years — and they're asking to be paid for streaming video reruns at the same rate as syndicated network reruns.

Not much to ask, is it?  But you can guess what Hollywood answered.

And that's why the writers are on strike.