On Feb 20, 12:06 am, Neal McLain wrote:
Speaking of digit absorbtion, this was a major step as part of DDD. In this way a town could have an addressable 10 digit nationally unique phone number. However, locally residents would continue to dial 5 digits. More importantly, Bell did not have to install more switches in the chain to handle 7 digits, which would have been a huge expense.
As an aside, an employer once had digit absorbtion in their centrex which I discovered by accident. Their number was nnx-3000 (no longer used for that organization today) and all extensions were 3xxx. I was curious as to other access codes (8-n accessed various tie lines), so I experimented. It turned out that the first 3 was absorbed. That is, to call ext 3256 one needed to dial only 256. My co-workers thought that discovery was pretty neat. BTW, the attendant switchboard was a cord board, not a console; I thought consoles were standard with Centrex.
Was it the city govt that did it or a private transaction between the owner of the farm and the developer?
In developing areas, the price offered to farmers for their land is very, very generous. It's far more than they can earn farming the land. It's really a no-brainer for them -- take a bundle of money and then not have to do anything, or keep working their tails off for very little.
A second consideration is that after an area develops, the new residents don't like the farms and give them grief. That is, they discover that farming is not quaint like "Pepperidge Farm" covers or Currier & Ives, but rather quite noisy and smelly, with slow farm vehicles blocking the roads and chemicals in the air. The new residents go to court and pass nuisance laws effectively shutting the farms down. Further, the farmers get vandalized and robbed. It's no wonder farmers sell out.
Oddly, the new residents don't want that either. They want the farmer to hold onto the land so it isn't developed, but not earn any money from it. (Yes, people actually say this at public meetings).
As to local jails, in NYC the big stores have their own private jails (big article in the NYT on that.) Apparently legal.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Skokie did it with 'emminent domain', which was the same thing here when Walmart had their eyes set on the West Main Street property they eventually took over. Apparently the theory of emminent domain can be liberally interpreted. At one point, there had to be some _specific government use_ for property in order for the government to condemn it and obtain it. Not so any longer; the fact that some corporation merely _claims_ that their acquisition of a piece of property will 'eventually' benefit the city or town is a good enough reason. Old Orchard is all pretty much ancient history now, and I cannot say what was on the mind of the original primary tenant, Marshall Field and Company, when they moved in out there. I know at the time, it was just barely outside the city limits of Skokie in an unincorporated area of Cook County and just barely -- in the opposite direction -- outside the requirements that another village (in that instance, Golf, Illinois) had to give permission. Since that point in time, Skokie has grown by leaps and bounds between Church Street (formerly north end) and Golf Road (new north end) and going west to the edge of the village of Morton Grove -- which we sometimes call MORON Grove; remind me, I will tell you why sometime -- and the village of Glenview's southeast corner where the Glenview Country Club sits and the tiny, exclusive village of Golf, Illinois is located. Back in the 1940-50's all the land between (the old edge) of Skokie and Golf/Morton Grove/Glenview was farmer's fields.Ditto with Independence: the city ended well before the point where Walmart is located; there were a couple of farmers out there on the south side of Main Street, which by that point geographically was being referred to as US Highway 75 and 160. By jerry-rigging the city boundary lines with a dip here and a slash there, the city eagerly got the proposed property within -- barely -- the 'new' city limits in order to benefit from all the sales tax Walmart would be producing. It was the big issue here in 1999-2000; whether or not to 'allow' Walmart to come into our town. The city renamed a couple of county roads in the vicinity with 'street names' and arbitrarily numbered those 'streets' sort of in line with existing street numbers. As an example, although Walmart should logically be the 3000 block of West Main Street, they decided it would be known as '121 South Peter Pan Road' and to hell with the other businesses close by. Instead of being some number on County Road whatever, you will now be numbered on Peter Pan Road; that's how Walmart wants it. What city did not know was the amount of expense (versus the relatively little income from sales tax) the area would bring in. Having city out there means sewer and water are out there now, as well as police and fire. And if the police are out there once per day, they are out there five or six times per day, always for shoplifting, etc. And now they are talking about possibly a _new_ Walmart store, the other side of town, but I do not think the city will roll over for them as easily as they did five years ago when the first store opened. We'll see if Walmart tries the old 'emminent domain' trick again: 'our store will such a benefit for your town'. PAT]