Slashdot Mirror
Turned Off iPhone Gets $4800 Bill from AT&T
Tech.Luver writes "Jay Levy says he has been stung by Apple's iPhone pact with AT&T after he took an iPhone on a Mediterranean cruise.
They didn't use their phones, but when they got back they had a 54-page monthly bill of nearly $4,800 from AT&T Wireless.
The problem was that their three iPhones were racking up a bill for data charges using foreign phone charges. The iPhone regularly updates e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be available when the user turns it on. ""
Yes, but... 1. Medical equipment manufacturers have a lot of things to worry about already. They have tons of hoops to jump through to make sure that it never endangers people under normal operating conditions. The equipment already costs a ton, because of the amount of time that manufacturers have to sink into things like FDA approval. (I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but just that it does drive up costs.) Cell phones are the last thing they want to have to worry about. 2. Even if it was well-shielded, you'd have the airline problem. Hospitals, afraid that older or badly-designed equipment would still be vulnerable, would still put up "Please turn off cell phones" signs, just to be safe.
I'm sure in the next decade or so, this problem will be corrected. But don't expect it to happen quickly, because I don't remember hearing about any incidents where a patient was actually harmed because a machine malfunctioned in real life. (Feel free to point them out if they have happened -- I haven't looked for them at all; I just assumed it would be a big enough deal that it would receive media coverage that I'd notice.)
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Then too, a lot of the "no cellular phones" strictures are there for convenience, not necessarily patient safety. Hospitals are built like very, very few modern buildings. They use massive amounts of brick, block and structural steel compared to a standard office building, and most rooms incorporate some form of RF or radiation shielding. End result: the only place you'll get a signal will be outside the building. (This is also why it's a gold-plated PITA to deploy a wireless network in a hospital - you have to install repeaters every thirty feet instead of every seventy or so, and you still wind up with signal problems.)
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
Cell phones (at least GSM ones) *will* intefere with aircraft radios very readily. I've experienced it first hand - we were just intercepting the localiser (the horizontal component of an instrument landing system) when the pilot's cell phone started to ring as he'd forgotten to turn it off. It was his first ever night time instrument approach in the clouds for real.
As soon as his phone went off, the audio was obliterated by a very loud "B B BIP B B BIP B B BIP B B BIP BRRRRRRRRR" (which you will be familiar with if you have a GSM phone as they intefere with a lot of things) - which meant we were unable to hear any ATC instructions. Fortunately, I could take the controls and continue the approach while my friend found his phone and turned it off. However, if he had been alone in the aircraft it would have been extremely distracting, and it would have been quite easy to miss an ATC instruction.
It didn't intefere with the nav radios though.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
What was ridiculous or retarded?
... sorry, you guys haven't gotten your story straight on that one yet...
/.ers are virtually unanimous in how, duh, that violated such a basic design principle. Remembering my experience with Ubuntu, I always have to think, "Gee, a little selective with these principles?"
-Describing the specific error statement I got and asking what to do about that?
-Believing that doing the above is a better idea before finding a CD burner with a high-speed internet connection to get a CD I couldn't have known that I neeeded, now that my own is disabled?
-Following the install instructions exactly?
-Agreeing to do what was HIGHLY RECOMMENDED even though that disabled the precautions I took against critical failure?
-Installing to a secondardy hard drive, thinking I wouldn't be HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to do something that defeats this hedge?
-Not downloading the Live CD, which wasn't recommended, oops, I mean the install CD *is* the Live CD, so obivously I couldn't have had a problem, oops I mean they're separate and I should have downloaded it, oops I mean the install CD *is* the Live CD
-Believing people would read my initial post?
-Believing people would follow up after I followed their instructions?
Before you mod me off-topic, remember why I keep bringing this up. Everytime a failure because of poor design pops up,
So again, I say: it seems these principles don't apply to products I use.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.