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Analog Cellular Shutdown To Hit Built-In Devices
Nick Kilkenny sends us an AP article on the imminent shutdown of the US analog cellular network, now 24 years old. The network is scheduled to go dark on Feb. 18, 2008; some users, such as OnStar, are stopping analog service at the end of this year. Here's a list of devices and industries that will be affected by the shutdown. (Cellular telephony won't be affected much.) "The shutdown date has been known years in advance, but some industries appear to have a had a problem updating their technologies and informing their customers in advance... General Motors Corp., which owns OnStar, started modifying its cars after the 2002 decision by the Federal Communications Commission to let the network die, but some cars made as late as 2005 can't use digital networks for OnStar, nor can they be upgraded. For some cars made in the intervening years, GM provides digital upgrades for $15." Update: 12/22 22:25 GMT by KD : Replaced two registration-required links.
It's an iCar
Brilliant user interface, hailed as the best car ever. Inexplicably it has only one door, no reverse gear and the hood is welded shut.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Reasonable Person: "we have this indoor toilet, it's a convenient way to eliminate waste, but there are small water and sewer costs..."
Grishnakh: "why would I want to pay water and sewer fees associated with an indoor toilet when I can just use my outhouse?"
And regarding the key in the wallet move, most car keys nowadays have integrated fob-type plastic bulbs that do not work well on your wallet. Unless, that is, you keep your wallet in one of those manpurse fannypack fagbag things, which I suspect could be a possibility. But after reading your post, I think it more likely that you're probably just too cheap to buy a vehicle manufactured within the past 15 or 20 years and wouldn't have had to deal with the fob-type keys. So just go upstairs and look at your mom's keys, you'll see what the rest of us use.
You can pry my Zach Morris out of my cold, dead hands.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
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> I work at GM/OnStar
Most of your points are all well and good -- I'm not in OnStar's target market, but you addressed the tinfoilers pretty nicely. But... dude... seriously. There are some ideas that didn't need to be thought up. And that was one of them. And you just thought it. Worse, you posted it publicly to a website. Now, please, please, please swear to all of us that you'll never utter that phrase, even in jest, among your co-workers. Banner ads on an automotive heads-up display is an idea so infuriatingly intrusive, dumb, and annoying that you have a moral obligation to prevent the guys in marketing from ever hearing of it, because you know goddamn well what'll happen if they do.
I bought a Saab in 04 (?), GM had just added OnStar to the Saab line and was bundling the first year free. Saab's are built in Sweden, they do not have Onstar in Sweden. So they weren't really able to test it at the factory. IT WAS BUGGY AS HELL. The state I lived in had a lemon law which stated, that if a new car went into the shop 4 times for the same thing, it was by the state's definition "A Lemon". Well OnStar got my car labelled as a Lemon and GM had to buy it back. I got the next years model, went up a trim line and kept the same car payment. I think I used OnStar once. (In relation to this story) The primary reason that OnStar was flaking out, was b/c it was the first revision of units using the Digital Cell System vs Analog.
Where do you think I got it from?