For the same reason Ascend wanted Stratus' technology, Lucent is also interested,

The trend in the technology sector has been very, very heavily weighted on the downside, and until there's some reason to make it stop we're not going to be seeing anything different.

The United States is a concept that works very well, even in bad times. But that's no reason to think its structure can be superimposed with success on any other part of the world, particularly when times are terrible.

The reason for that logic and rationale is that technology costs continue to fall every year, and as a result, you get more buying power.

People don't throw out technology for no reason.

All kinds of technology has been brought to the North Slope, and the way it was actually found was that someone heard a gurgling noise, put some lights on it, and saw it.