A power conditioner includes power converters for supplying power to a load, a set of selection switches corresponding to the power converters for selectively connecting the fuel-cell stack to the power converters, and another set of selection switches corresponding to the power converters for selectively connecting the battery to the power converters. One or more conditions associated with a data processing system are detected. The gateways carry the media exchanged during the call in the compressed digital format in order to avoid tandem transcoding. One application of elastics is with respect to text blocks where preferred width and compressibility of each text block is a function of the amount of text in the text block. For embodiments for use with a coaxial cable, the conductive arms are insulated from the electrical conductive pin and the pointed ends of the conductive arms can be shaped relative to one another to pierce the outer insulation and the conductive sheath of the cable without contacting the center conductor.