God did not know that Eve will fail, so obviously He is not omniscient:
KJB, Gen.3: [8] And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
[9] And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
Hardly practical for an omniscient being to ask where his creature is, and very surprising that God even knows how to ask questions (he'd have no need for that.) In fact, God performs quite poorly in this test, being unable to locate his goal just within Adam's hearing radius. People do better than that today with wild animals who roam the whole country (a moose, a collar, a satellite...)
The switching power supplies do not run at so low a frequency, it's inefficient. The best range is somewhere between 500 kHz and 3 MHz, transformers and inductors and capacitors considered.
You sound like if there are programmers who do not consider themselves (and only themselves) perfect coders:-)
But on the subject of your comment - this is indeed a tough case when an omnipotent being fails in doing something. It's either you are not omnipotent, after all, or you haven't failed. You can't blame the tools because then you acknowledge your lack of skill in using them. And definitely you can't blame the product that you made because it was you who made it in its entirety; if the product failed then it's because you made it this way, so it's your own fault again. It's tough to be all-powerful and all-knowing, it might bite you somewhere.
I remember reading about the troubles those omni-qualities of the God caused to early religions. Basically, one of them could be told as this:
Can God create his own identical clone? (answer YES or else God is not omnipotent.)
Can then Gods fight and defeat each other?
YES: one or both die: then the defeated God was not omnipotent because he failed to win.
NO: then God is not omnipotent because he failed to overcome the opponent.
This pretty much illustrates logical impossibility of omnipotence, and kicks a major stone out of the foundation of many religions. Even Q, however powerful they were, could not deal with many aspects of themselves.
His logical argument to the children was that since scientists weren't around 4,000 years ago but god was
He knows that God was not a scientist?
He knows what God was or is, and whether He was right here exactly 4,000 years ago?
I thought that one of God's attributes is being unknowable. Unless, of course, Ken Ham is asserting that he is a God himself, and above that other God to boot. This statement, and the fact that he hadn't been smitten yet, suggest that the original God does not exist, and so the rest of his talk is irrelevant. I am unsure, though, that Ken intended to prove absence of God. But that's what he did.
Here is another example. Let's assume I am programming my new robotic dog. I explicitly code a statement that says to not bark. Then I run the code. The dog runs around and then barks. What options do I have now?
Throw the dog out of the window, declare that it knowingly offended and denied me, and make a law that all dogs of this type must be manufactured with intentionally built-in defects, from now and forever, as a punishment for the sin of this specific dog that I built myself from the ground up.
Admit that my code has a bug, find the problem, fix it and rerun the code to see if it now works properly.
A secondary test is to tell which action fits a wise man and which action fits a spoiled brat.
I can't say what a court (or a lawyer) would say about your questions, but if I were on a jury and without any other guidance, I would ask myself what role the supposed author had in creating the work.
If you are a photographer you choose the model, the place, the lighting, the film, the postprocessing... those are the tools that you wield to create your masterpiece. Now, in this scenario the supposed author only picked the angle of the camera, but had no control over other essential elements.
As a juror, I would award him a tiniest copyright on the camera position and orientation -- but only if he proves to the jury that it was his artistic vision, and not some technical necessity, that prompted him to mount the camera there. If, however, I am told that the camera was there just because there is only one suitable anchor, and the camera had to be oriented this way to get coverage of all toll booths (as it seems to be in the video) then his artistic claims disappear, replaced by a utilitarian need to record events in a specific area. There is no artistry if you are told what to do and how. An artist has to have a free will.
but they DO want us digging for change at 65 miles an hour
Is there any specific punishment these days for stopping at the booth and *only then* reaching for the coins? If a business wants my money it *will* wait while I get it out.
If I were there I would stop a good distance away because:
I should stay around in case a witness is needed, unless a police officer says otherwise.
But I should not obstruct the approach and actions of firemen and police.
And I don't want to see secondary explosions too close.
And I can't just waltz into the fire and save the people inside.
That's what I would do, and I saw in the video that the police officer was the only one who stopped close to the wreck and then approached it. Other drivers either stopped at least 100-150 ft. away, or just drove through the EZ pass because their help was *obviously* not needed (unless one of them could bring back the dead - a crash at 90+ mph is deadly enough even without the fire.)
NFL has plenty of reasons to claim copyright because the cameras are pointed at players by people, and the views from those cameras are mixed and switched by people, and all those people are trained in their art -- and it is an art to create an entertaining video show out of a general view of some people running around.
In this particular case the recording was automatically made, so no artistic factor can be claimed. Even a stupidest operator would have enough brains to zoom on the crash, or to pan to show the response from the witnesses, or to follow cars that went by the wreck without stopping - but this camera was welded to the pole and had no creativity whatsoever.
I can only conclude that hiring more wardens instead of adding cameras does not seem very economical to me.
Either Great Britain completely solved the problem of jobless people, or you need to let the job seekers decide on this. Deciding on their behalf is a little odd.
On the other hand, if by "register", you mean, that it can be read later by an observer looking at the recording, you are also wrong; the cameras most likely have far too low resolution, and low shutter speed, to capture anything but the license plate of slow-moving or still objects close to the warden, if he looks directly at it.
I wish I could memorize my university textbooks by merely looking at them... even that alone is way above what a human officer can do; however multi-megapixel cameras are common these days, so why to guess what a $2,000 camera can do?
If you feel that way in front of parking attendants, you seriously need to work on your self-esteem. How would you ever manage to talk to the waiter at an exclusive restaurant?
A waiter is your equal. A comparison of a prisoner and a prison guard would be more proper if you consider such points as responsibility, accountability and likelihood of a violent solution to a typical conflict. A slave owner could kill a slave and not be punished; it took real effort to get reprimanded by a king. A police officer can kill a suspect and get away with it (numerous examples unfortunately are available.) One who can kill you - and one who you may not kill - is not your equal. Compare that to a waiter - patron scenario.
Have you seen a mobile phone or digital camera in the last 2 years?
I haven't seen any large group of people who would be regularly and intentionally wandering the streets and recording everything in their sight, who also would be likely to use the recordings against you. Even videotaping of demonstrations does not come close; your mobile phone example is clearly not proper.
Well unless they can see through the wall of my house I can.
Unless you have a private, secure teleportation device your comings and goings, as well as your friends' and acquaintances', will be recorded once they step outside.
Good luck searching that.
I see no problem here - it's just a matter of CPU time, and you, the taxpayer will buy as much as needed.
You might also want to look up Statute of Limitations.
You can't be serious saying that these days... people rot in secret prisons for years, get their brains beaten out of them, nothing gets changed, and you are talking about some statutes??? Yeah, "a g*mn piece of paper" - that will stop them for sure!
"Nobody" here means the people who pay for the cameras - not you. The cameras do not add any quality to the warden's job, except as someone mentioned to monitor the warden. The cost of cameras does not make any sense, it would be better to just hire more wardens instead.
With regard to "only filiming what the officer can SEE", the cameras will indeed film everything that the officer can see, and also what the officer does not see. Do you register every car's license plate in your memory as the cars go by? I don't, but the camera does. Does the officer recognize every unfamiliar face? No; but a camera, combined with a complete face database, will. The addition of cameras creates an ability that the officers did not have before. I would compare it to giving officers an X-ray eyesight, where they could see through clothes - presumably to search for weapons. This helps in creating the class of enforcers who are legally and physically stronger than you, who are better organized and supported, who see more and know more... and who would be you to them? Anything but an equal citizen; a lowly plebeian, to be abused in any way. Police are already top dogs, unaccountable and unreachable and always right; the society does not need to elevate them any further.
I'm sure that if you are given a fine with evidence on camera, then the reason can't be that frivolous.
I'm sure nobody cares about you littering or antisocially behaving; that is just an excuse. Much more ominous, though, is the fact that a number of mobile cameras are deployed where they can observe people - who they are, what they are doing, who they are talking to, and so on. Fixed cameras are easy to avoid if you want to, just go around the corner. But when cameras become mobile and can be anywhere where a man can be, you can't hide. The video will be permanently stored, and can be used against you many years later; your entire life can be reconstructed by a supercomputer in, say, 2020 from the images taken in 2007. They are simply gathering the raw data.
I haven't missed the main point, I just don't know the answer:-( I could only enumerate specific reasons why things are as they are, and then hope that anyone from Europe shows that these reasons are not valid there.
Well, as you say older people have the following problems:
House prices go up all the time. This means that your new house will cost more than your current house.
House prices depend on the area. If you consider moving into some area, chances are other people want to do the same, this drives prices up even further. Similarly, if you are leaving then chances are other people are leaving too, and the value of your old house is further reduced.
When you sell your house you lose some part of its value, even if we ignore the inflation. Some appliances need replacement, the roof leaks, the driveway has cracks... you either patch it up (costs money) or sell as is (costs money.) But if you don't move then you can keep living in this house making no repairs, as long as you have workarounds for whatever minor defects there are.
A lot of people will want to be paid by you:
The city, the county, the state - for the ownership paperwork
The lawyer - for checking the contract, so that you don't end up living under a bridge
The realtor - for selling your old house and for finding you another one
The bank - for converting your old mortgage into a new one; the market - for closing an older, cheaper mortgage and buying into a newer, more expensive one.
The movers - for relocating tons of your junk from one house into another.
Moving, especially coupled with selling the house, is a very difficult experience. You need to do so many things just right... it's a serious distraction from your regular job for several months. Such a distraction has a cost attached to it, whether you use your vacation time (2 weeks max) or ask for a leave without pay.
What if the job is not to your satisfaction after some time? What if job changed, or your manager changed? It is difficult to look for a new job if that may incur $10K-50K losses on moving.
Younger people can move easier because they have very few things, and they usually rent. However when a couple marries and settles down (which can be as early as 25 y/o) they fall into the category of homeowners, and into the worst corner of it - people who barely can afford the house. In such a situation they have no spare cash to throw around, and there are no bankers eager to burden them with more mortgage. Bankers these days are very concerned about defaults, because there are too many already.
I should do that someday and see how the comparison works out.
It doesn't work out at all. There are few riders on public transit, and those are practically captive audience, so the fare costs as much as necessary to meet the numbers that city planners came up with. Riding a bus is a slow, horrible experience, unless one enjoys stopping on every corner and taking the longest, winding path through the area (which makes sense to people who need bus there, but not to you who just needs to get somewhere.)
If $6/gallon were levied as a gas tax in all counties with a population density over a certain threshold, to pay for a public transport system for that county. To make it faster, cleaner, safer and more convenient. I'd gladly pay $9 a gallon to gas my car up then.
What planet are you from, dreaming about anything that is efficiently operated by a government, that is faster, cleaner and convenient??? If you get your wish you'd be paying $9/gal and your money will be wasted, misdirected, and otherwise lost to you, and all you'll get for the trouble would be that broken old bus that comes every two hours between 9 and 5, government holidays excluded. As a bonus, $0.50/gal will be earmarked for riot squads, to beat you senseless if one day you decide to object to this arrangement.
Indeed. A typical one way commute from San Jose to Gilroy (a popular, affordable[*] living location) is 40 miles. A one way commute from San Jose to San Francisco is 46 miles. Moving as you change jobs is rarely an option because your losses on the sale of the house can easily exceed your salary for the few years you stay at one job.
Dell was also burned by Windows Mobile 5 which has quite a few problems. I have the previous model, Axim X50V, with Windows Mobile 2003. That works. But I also got the WM5 upgrade CD, tried it, and reverted back - it was that bad. However I had a choice; many happy Axim owners bought it with WM5 and they had no way back.
I just want to be sure that when I call 911 for my heart-attack, I get a connection.
Since it's not such a great idea to walk to a telephone if you have a heart attack, the best you can do for yourself is to have a cell phone always on your belt, with a single key programmed as a speed dial for 911. This will also cover a highly likely case when the heart attack occurs when you are not at home (there your chances of reaching your home phone are simply zero.) Since most (if not all) cell phones have GPS built in (as well as other ways to determine your position) the medical help has a good chance of finding you before Thanatos does, even if you are not able to describe where you are.
and for your phone to Just Work when you want it to (rather than being dependent on how the ionosphere's behaving today and battery charge), there are still good reasons for holding onto a landline.
Ionosphere has nothing to do with 1,850 MHz signals of modern phones. The phones won't even reach it, let alone bouncing back. And besides, anything above 30 MHz won't be bouncing back in any case.
With regard to battery charge, you can't be serious. A modern phone can service you for more than you need to talk daily, and if you drop it into a charger at night it will be as good as new next morning. I still charge my phone when it asks me to, but I have easy access to power at home, at work and in between (such as in my car), so there is no problem.
On the other hand, a landline phone works for you only if you sit near it. But I don't sit at home most of the time - when I do it's usually very late (1-2am) and I am not likely to talk to anyone at that time. So what's the point of having a phone where nobody is around to use it?
But I have and use a landline more often, because I've come to depend on the features it offers... and which wireless does not.
Wireless services always offered more features than wired ones, and they still do. Voice mail is probably the most important one, and it is included on cell phones; but you need to purchase it separately on landlines. Caller ID is included. Phone book with contacts and speed dials is part of the phone. Camera and voice recorder are also there; and a calendar, and alarm clock (which I use as my main alarm clock); games even are available, and I have a few included with the phone. So what are those other features that you were referring to? A typical landline phone can't even adjust the volume (I point to your comment about poor hearing of some people) - but a cell phone has this adjustment, and can take a high quality headset (my phone has the jack, and I have a few headsets, a light one for in-car use and a larger one for higher quality.)
I got rid of my landline phone in 1998, I think. Almost 10 years ago. Since then I went through 3 cell phones, which all served me just fine. I don't talk much, but when you need to call (or to receive a call) it's essential - like when you need to call someone from the car and ask for directions. A landline phone would be a waste of money. Same applies when I travel; I can be reached wherever in the country I happen to be; when people call me they usually have a reason. And quite importantly, sales droids are prohibited from calling cell phones.
Also, someone mentioned paying $25/mo for a basic landline service. My cellular plan, acquired ages ago (in 1999) at Sprint, costs me $29.99/mo and I never run out of included airtime. I understand that modern plans are more expensive, but it's irrelevant anyway - the last suit has no pockets.
I also have a 2005 model, and your measurements match what I see. First 5 minutes (until the first bar shows up) is about 30 mph, the second may be 50, and the 3rd could be easily 75, depending on where you are. I had a whole bar stuck at 99 once, on an empty road at night, at 40 mph. The whole bar was done with ICE off.
You'd need to better define 'less time' and 'more money' to get a valid answer. However I know many people who live in large cities where public transportation is available in plenty (a bus or a streetcar every couple of minutes), and for some $30/mo they can ride any of them anywhere, as much as they care.
However there is always a catch of bags, boxes and stuff that one can easily carry in a car, and not so easily in a public transport. Even a mere notebook computer, loaded with batteries and a projector and some other gear would make you very unhappy if you have to carry it in your hands all the way to the public transport and during transfers; with a car you only put it in, and take it out once there.
Another obvious issue is with short trips around the neighborhood - food, laundry, clothes, mail, movies, etc. If you don't have a universal pass, and need to pay for each trip, the costs go up fast - you can easily spend $10-15 just doing daily errands. In a car you'd travel maybe 20 miles total, at cost of 1 gallon of fuel, which would be $3.50 at most.
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KJB, Gen.3:
[8] And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
[9] And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
Hardly practical for an omniscient being to ask where his creature is, and very surprising that God even knows how to ask questions (he'd have no need for that.) In fact, God performs quite poorly in this test, being unable to locate his goal just within Adam's hearing radius. People do better than that today with wild animals who roam the whole country (a moose, a collar, a satellite ...)
The switching power supplies do not run at so low a frequency, it's inefficient. The best range is somewhere between 500 kHz and 3 MHz, transformers and inductors and capacitors considered.
But on the subject of your comment - this is indeed a tough case when an omnipotent being fails in doing something. It's either you are not omnipotent, after all, or you haven't failed. You can't blame the tools because then you acknowledge your lack of skill in using them. And definitely you can't blame the product that you made because it was you who made it in its entirety; if the product failed then it's because you made it this way, so it's your own fault again. It's tough to be all-powerful and all-knowing, it might bite you somewhere.
I remember reading about the troubles those omni-qualities of the God caused to early religions. Basically, one of them could be told as this:
This pretty much illustrates logical impossibility of omnipotence, and kicks a major stone out of the foundation of many religions. Even Q, however powerful they were, could not deal with many aspects of themselves.
I thought that one of God's attributes is being unknowable. Unless, of course, Ken Ham is asserting that he is a God himself, and above that other God to boot. This statement, and the fact that he hadn't been smitten yet, suggest that the original God does not exist, and so the rest of his talk is irrelevant. I am unsure, though, that Ken intended to prove absence of God. But that's what he did.
Here is another example. Let's assume I am programming my new robotic dog. I explicitly code a statement that says to not bark. Then I run the code. The dog runs around and then barks. What options do I have now?
A secondary test is to tell which action fits a wise man and which action fits a spoiled brat.
If you are a photographer you choose the model, the place, the lighting, the film, the postprocessing ... those are the tools that you wield to create your masterpiece. Now, in this scenario the supposed author only picked the angle of the camera, but had no control over other essential elements.
As a juror, I would award him a tiniest copyright on the camera position and orientation -- but only if he proves to the jury that it was his artistic vision, and not some technical necessity, that prompted him to mount the camera there. If, however, I am told that the camera was there just because there is only one suitable anchor, and the camera had to be oriented this way to get coverage of all toll booths (as it seems to be in the video) then his artistic claims disappear, replaced by a utilitarian need to record events in a specific area. There is no artistry if you are told what to do and how. An artist has to have a free will.
Is there any specific punishment these days for stopping at the booth and *only then* reaching for the coins? If a business wants my money it *will* wait while I get it out.
That's what I would do, and I saw in the video that the police officer was the only one who stopped close to the wreck and then approached it. Other drivers either stopped at least 100-150 ft. away, or just drove through the EZ pass because their help was *obviously* not needed (unless one of them could bring back the dead - a crash at 90+ mph is deadly enough even without the fire.)
In this particular case the recording was automatically made, so no artistic factor can be claimed. Even a stupidest operator would have enough brains to zoom on the crash, or to pan to show the response from the witnesses, or to follow cars that went by the wreck without stopping - but this camera was welded to the pole and had no creativity whatsoever.
So why do I keep reading that citizens may not film police officers, but the opposite is just peachy?
Either Great Britain completely solved the problem of jobless people, or you need to let the job seekers decide on this. Deciding on their behalf is a little odd.
On the other hand, if by "register", you mean, that it can be read later by an observer looking at the recording, you are also wrong; the cameras most likely have far too low resolution, and low shutter speed, to capture anything but the license plate of slow-moving or still objects close to the warden, if he looks directly at it.
I wish I could memorize my university textbooks by merely looking at them... even that alone is way above what a human officer can do; however multi-megapixel cameras are common these days, so why to guess what a $2,000 camera can do?
If you feel that way in front of parking attendants, you seriously need to work on your self-esteem. How would you ever manage to talk to the waiter at an exclusive restaurant?
A waiter is your equal. A comparison of a prisoner and a prison guard would be more proper if you consider such points as responsibility, accountability and likelihood of a violent solution to a typical conflict. A slave owner could kill a slave and not be punished; it took real effort to get reprimanded by a king. A police officer can kill a suspect and get away with it (numerous examples unfortunately are available.) One who can kill you - and one who you may not kill - is not your equal. Compare that to a waiter - patron scenario.
I haven't seen any large group of people who would be regularly and intentionally wandering the streets and recording everything in their sight, who also would be likely to use the recordings against you. Even videotaping of demonstrations does not come close; your mobile phone example is clearly not proper.
Well unless they can see through the wall of my house I can.
Unless you have a private, secure teleportation device your comings and goings, as well as your friends' and acquaintances', will be recorded once they step outside.
Good luck searching that.
I see no problem here - it's just a matter of CPU time, and you, the taxpayer will buy as much as needed.
You might also want to look up Statute of Limitations.
You can't be serious saying that these days... people rot in secret prisons for years, get their brains beaten out of them, nothing gets changed, and you are talking about some statutes??? Yeah, "a g*mn piece of paper" - that will stop them for sure!
With regard to "only filiming what the officer can SEE", the cameras will indeed film everything that the officer can see, and also what the officer does not see. Do you register every car's license plate in your memory as the cars go by? I don't, but the camera does. Does the officer recognize every unfamiliar face? No; but a camera, combined with a complete face database, will. The addition of cameras creates an ability that the officers did not have before. I would compare it to giving officers an X-ray eyesight, where they could see through clothes - presumably to search for weapons. This helps in creating the class of enforcers who are legally and physically stronger than you, who are better organized and supported, who see more and know more... and who would be you to them? Anything but an equal citizen; a lowly plebeian, to be abused in any way. Police are already top dogs, unaccountable and unreachable and always right; the society does not need to elevate them any further.
You are wrong, this is in Great Britain, not in Ireland
I'm sure nobody cares about you littering or antisocially behaving; that is just an excuse. Much more ominous, though, is the fact that a number of mobile cameras are deployed where they can observe people - who they are, what they are doing, who they are talking to, and so on. Fixed cameras are easy to avoid if you want to, just go around the corner. But when cameras become mobile and can be anywhere where a man can be, you can't hide. The video will be permanently stored, and can be used against you many years later; your entire life can be reconstructed by a supercomputer in, say, 2020 from the images taken in 2007. They are simply gathering the raw data.
I haven't missed the main point, I just don't know the answer :-( I could only enumerate specific reasons why things are as they are, and then hope that anyone from Europe shows that these reasons are not valid there.
Younger people can move easier because they have very few things, and they usually rent. However when a couple marries and settles down (which can be as early as 25 y/o) they fall into the category of homeowners, and into the worst corner of it - people who barely can afford the house. In such a situation they have no spare cash to throw around, and there are no bankers eager to burden them with more mortgage. Bankers these days are very concerned about defaults, because there are too many already.
It doesn't work out at all. There are few riders on public transit, and those are practically captive audience, so the fare costs as much as necessary to meet the numbers that city planners came up with. Riding a bus is a slow, horrible experience, unless one enjoys stopping on every corner and taking the longest, winding path through the area (which makes sense to people who need bus there, but not to you who just needs to get somewhere.)
What planet are you from, dreaming about anything that is efficiently operated by a government, that is faster, cleaner and convenient??? If you get your wish you'd be paying $9/gal and your money will be wasted, misdirected, and otherwise lost to you, and all you'll get for the trouble would be that broken old bus that comes every two hours between 9 and 5, government holidays excluded. As a bonus, $0.50/gal will be earmarked for riot squads, to beat you senseless if one day you decide to object to this arrangement.
[*] by local standards only.
Dell was also burned by Windows Mobile 5 which has quite a few problems. I have the previous model, Axim X50V, with Windows Mobile 2003. That works. But I also got the WM5 upgrade CD, tried it, and reverted back - it was that bad. However I had a choice; many happy Axim owners bought it with WM5 and they had no way back.
Since it's not such a great idea to walk to a telephone if you have a heart attack, the best you can do for yourself is to have a cell phone always on your belt, with a single key programmed as a speed dial for 911. This will also cover a highly likely case when the heart attack occurs when you are not at home (there your chances of reaching your home phone are simply zero.) Since most (if not all) cell phones have GPS built in (as well as other ways to determine your position) the medical help has a good chance of finding you before Thanatos does, even if you are not able to describe where you are.
Ionosphere has nothing to do with 1,850 MHz signals of modern phones. The phones won't even reach it, let alone bouncing back. And besides, anything above 30 MHz won't be bouncing back in any case.
With regard to battery charge, you can't be serious. A modern phone can service you for more than you need to talk daily, and if you drop it into a charger at night it will be as good as new next morning. I still charge my phone when it asks me to, but I have easy access to power at home, at work and in between (such as in my car), so there is no problem.
On the other hand, a landline phone works for you only if you sit near it. But I don't sit at home most of the time - when I do it's usually very late (1-2am) and I am not likely to talk to anyone at that time. So what's the point of having a phone where nobody is around to use it?
But I have and use a landline more often, because I've come to depend on the features it offers... and which wireless does not.
Wireless services always offered more features than wired ones, and they still do. Voice mail is probably the most important one, and it is included on cell phones; but you need to purchase it separately on landlines. Caller ID is included. Phone book with contacts and speed dials is part of the phone. Camera and voice recorder are also there; and a calendar, and alarm clock (which I use as my main alarm clock); games even are available, and I have a few included with the phone. So what are those other features that you were referring to? A typical landline phone can't even adjust the volume (I point to your comment about poor hearing of some people) - but a cell phone has this adjustment, and can take a high quality headset (my phone has the jack, and I have a few headsets, a light one for in-car use and a larger one for higher quality.)
I got rid of my landline phone in 1998, I think. Almost 10 years ago. Since then I went through 3 cell phones, which all served me just fine. I don't talk much, but when you need to call (or to receive a call) it's essential - like when you need to call someone from the car and ask for directions. A landline phone would be a waste of money. Same applies when I travel; I can be reached wherever in the country I happen to be; when people call me they usually have a reason. And quite importantly, sales droids are prohibited from calling cell phones.
Also, someone mentioned paying $25/mo for a basic landline service. My cellular plan, acquired ages ago (in 1999) at Sprint, costs me $29.99/mo and I never run out of included airtime. I understand that modern plans are more expensive, but it's irrelevant anyway - the last suit has no pockets.
I also have a 2005 model, and your measurements match what I see. First 5 minutes (until the first bar shows up) is about 30 mph, the second may be 50, and the 3rd could be easily 75, depending on where you are. I had a whole bar stuck at 99 once, on an empty road at night, at 40 mph. The whole bar was done with ICE off.
However there is always a catch of bags, boxes and stuff that one can easily carry in a car, and not so easily in a public transport. Even a mere notebook computer, loaded with batteries and a projector and some other gear would make you very unhappy if you have to carry it in your hands all the way to the public transport and during transfers; with a car you only put it in, and take it out once there.
Another obvious issue is with short trips around the neighborhood - food, laundry, clothes, mail, movies, etc. If you don't have a universal pass, and need to pay for each trip, the costs go up fast - you can easily spend $10-15 just doing daily errands. In a car you'd travel maybe 20 miles total, at cost of 1 gallon of fuel, which would be $3.50 at most.