Um... "GPS" doesn't mean what you think it does in this context. To most consumers, "GPS" has come to mean any location-aware device, regardless of the methodology of geolocation.
Most cell phones, especially smart ones like Android and iOS based phones, are able to provide disturbingly precise fixes without using the satellite constellation. It is completely possible to get a reasonable fix from cell tower triangulation.
Even then, cell phone GPS chips have gotten pretty good at scraping the signal out of the noise. With assistance from the tower triangulation, it is possible to get a fairly precise fix with only one or two GPS satellites visible. Add to that a possible WiFi signal location, and you've got many ways to get a fix indoors good enough for 911.
The problem is (at least in the United States) is that it would be impossible to cover the entire nation with a workable transit system.
I live in Oregon City, OR: a Portland exurb of about 25,000 people. Yes, we're the place you're trying to desperately get to in the game Oregon Trail.
We are blessed to be close enough to Portland to have decent access to TriMet's bus system. From where I live (the McLoughlin neighborhood) I can hop a bus and be in downtown Portland in 45 minutes. I can walk a few blocks and take the Elevator and be near another bus that takes me to the mall.
However, this is a very sparse city. There are three little suburban cores (downtown, the college, and Molalla Ave.), the rest is sprawling. Some of that is design: much of those sprawl areas were built during the last 40 years, full of ranch-style homes on large lots. But some of that is terrain as well. Oregon City is built on hilly bluffs, overlooking the Willamette and Clackamas rivers. Even if you were to try to "densify" Oregon City, you'd still have areas that could only have small populations in them.
Transit is only effective when you can serve large numbers of people going to common destinations. Only a handful of American cities were built with that in mind, and most of them were constructed before the birth of the automobile. How do you propose people who live in places like Havre, MT live their lives when even providing transit to an exurb of 25,000 people would look problematic? Who pays to run buses to the remote corners of America?
In some cases, individual automobile ownership IS the most energy efficient and practical way for people to get around. Yes, we as a nation could improve transit access to a large percentage of the population.. however, we're always going to have private citizens driving private automobiles. There's just no practical way to live any kind of livable lifestyle without a certain population having this kind of mobility.
... and just like smog equipment, there will be people with the technical skill to disable it in such a way that it can be quickly enabled for such inspections.
How about we start with "no more warrantless wiretaps" and by having the Executive Branch's own agencies reversing their insistence that America's telecom infrastructure be inherently snoopable by the spooks?
It's even more annoying when you are somewhere you know you won't get good GPS information and have intentionally turned it off. Groupon's applet is particularly annoying in this regard. Dammit, just load and log me in to my account and give me the deals for the city I told you I was in.. don't sit there and freeze while you try to get a GPS fix that may never happen because I'm in the subway.
At least on any Android device I've ever used the Google Voice app does not deliver calls to your handset over VoIP, it delivers it by making a phone call from your handset to a special phone number (or by delivering a call to your handset FROM a special number).
I will debate the "not cutting in to Apple's iPhone user base" statement.
I know of three different "non-geeks" who had second and third generation iPhones who have switched to Android handsets. Two have switched to the Sprint EVO, one to a Verizon Droid handset (I don't remember which) in the last 30 days.
In all three cases, the reasons were simple. Their contracts with AT&T were up, and they were irritated at AT&T's issues so they went looking. In all three cases, they found features present in the Android handsets that were compelling (4G coverage, while spotty on the Sprint EVO with the tethering capability in one case, Verizon's rock-solid coverage in the other).
It's a bit early for the media and consulting houses to have picked up yet, but I suspect the story is the same: Apple introduced people to smartphones, and now that the market is ready a lot of non-techie types are frustrated with AT&T and looking for alternatives. And Android handsets are in a very good position right now to put the hurt on, and I think it is starting to happen.
Hell, even T-Mobile is beating off potential Android customers with a stick, if my recent visit to a local T-Mobile store to handle a customer service issue with my handset is any indication.
So... you do know how Sprint has this 4G network, right? They haven't built it, this little company Sprint invested in called "Clearwire" actually built and maintains the 4G network Sprint handsets use.
Guess who else is a minority owner of Clearwire? Comcast.
Do you really believe that Sprint and Comcast view each other as competitors?
I was just noticing in my web logs that small, out of the way sites that I host that used to get 1,000 hits a month were suddenly getting 1,000 hits PER DAY. Sure enough, anybody care to guess what netblock the 26,000 hits came from?
If you are selling yourself as some kind of system administrator or alpha geek, you damn well better not have an E-mail address that ends in @aol.com, that's for darn sure.
Oddly enough, gmail.com doesn't have the same stigma.. but I'm still going to be more impressed by somebody who has a "me@me.com" address (or as others have pointed out, a "me@acm.org" address associated with a well-respected professional organization).
You could also say that AT&T doesn't support the handset's band. From the specs, it seems like the Nexus One would work in every major cellular market on any GSM provider available EXCEPT AT&T in the US..
Oh, and it's worth pointing out (as AT&T insists in their commercials against Verizon) that 2G should be good enough for anybody, and the Nexus One will work on AT&T's 2G network that they think is so awesome.
As somebody who's volunteered at FreeGeek, please don't do this unless you absolutely have to. Printers are extremely difficult for them to recycle: they have to break it down into the various types of plastic, then circuit boards, then metal parts.
Best to not buy these products: second best is to suck it up and buy the ink, even if it is expensive.. and chalk it up to a learning experience. Making it "somebody else's problem" just plain sucks.
The reality of the situation is one $15/hour NOC monkey can effectively be "hands on" support for hundreds.. if not thousands.. of machines. Concentrating machines in one place has a lot of advantages of scale, including security, power, and cooling savings. The costs saved can easily pay for 24 hours of cheap "hands on."
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Um... "GPS" doesn't mean what you think it does in this context. To most consumers, "GPS" has come to mean any location-aware device, regardless of the methodology of geolocation.
Most cell phones, especially smart ones like Android and iOS based phones, are able to provide disturbingly precise fixes without using the satellite constellation. It is completely possible to get a reasonable fix from cell tower triangulation.
Even then, cell phone GPS chips have gotten pretty good at scraping the signal out of the noise. With assistance from the tower triangulation, it is possible to get a fairly precise fix with only one or two GPS satellites visible. Add to that a possible WiFi signal location, and you've got many ways to get a fix indoors good enough for 911.
So, yes, "GPS" does work indoors now.
The problem is (at least in the United States) is that it would be impossible to cover the entire nation with a workable transit system.
I live in Oregon City, OR: a Portland exurb of about 25,000 people. Yes, we're the place you're trying to desperately get to in the game Oregon Trail.
We are blessed to be close enough to Portland to have decent access to TriMet's bus system. From where I live (the McLoughlin neighborhood) I can hop a bus and be in downtown Portland in 45 minutes. I can walk a few blocks and take the Elevator and be near another bus that takes me to the mall.
However, this is a very sparse city. There are three little suburban cores (downtown, the college, and Molalla Ave.), the rest is sprawling. Some of that is design: much of those sprawl areas were built during the last 40 years, full of ranch-style homes on large lots. But some of that is terrain as well. Oregon City is built on hilly bluffs, overlooking the Willamette and Clackamas rivers. Even if you were to try to "densify" Oregon City, you'd still have areas that could only have small populations in them.
Transit is only effective when you can serve large numbers of people going to common destinations. Only a handful of American cities were built with that in mind, and most of them were constructed before the birth of the automobile. How do you propose people who live in places like Havre, MT live their lives when even providing transit to an exurb of 25,000 people would look problematic? Who pays to run buses to the remote corners of America?
In some cases, individual automobile ownership IS the most energy efficient and practical way for people to get around. Yes, we as a nation could improve transit access to a large percentage of the population.. however, we're always going to have private citizens driving private automobiles. There's just no practical way to live any kind of livable lifestyle without a certain population having this kind of mobility.
What if you are a passenger on a city bus or train? Or even a back-seat passenger of an automobile?
... and just like smog equipment, there will be people with the technical skill to disable it in such a way that it can be quickly enabled for such inspections.
How about we start with "no more warrantless wiretaps" and by having the Executive Branch's own agencies reversing their insistence that America's telecom infrastructure be inherently snoopable by the spooks?
This.
It's even more annoying when you are somewhere you know you won't get good GPS information and have intentionally turned it off. Groupon's applet is particularly annoying in this regard. Dammit, just load and log me in to my account and give me the deals for the city I told you I was in.. don't sit there and freeze while you try to get a GPS fix that may never happen because I'm in the subway.
At least on any Android device I've ever used the Google Voice app does not deliver calls to your handset over VoIP, it delivers it by making a phone call from your handset to a special phone number (or by delivering a call to your handset FROM a special number).
I will debate the "not cutting in to Apple's iPhone user base" statement.
I know of three different "non-geeks" who had second and third generation iPhones who have switched to Android handsets. Two have switched to the Sprint EVO, one to a Verizon Droid handset (I don't remember which) in the last 30 days.
In all three cases, the reasons were simple. Their contracts with AT&T were up, and they were irritated at AT&T's issues so they went looking. In all three cases, they found features present in the Android handsets that were compelling (4G coverage, while spotty on the Sprint EVO with the tethering capability in one case, Verizon's rock-solid coverage in the other).
It's a bit early for the media and consulting houses to have picked up yet, but I suspect the story is the same: Apple introduced people to smartphones, and now that the market is ready a lot of non-techie types are frustrated with AT&T and looking for alternatives. And Android handsets are in a very good position right now to put the hurt on, and I think it is starting to happen.
Hell, even T-Mobile is beating off potential Android customers with a stick, if my recent visit to a local T-Mobile store to handle a customer service issue with my handset is any indication.
Interesting.
Isn't the stance of the Libertarian party that such laws are a violation of people's freedom of speech and "robocalls" should be legal?
He's also wrong on the size of cell sites.
In most metro areas, a cell site would probably cover an area equal to about 5,000 handset users.
So... you do know how Sprint has this 4G network, right? They haven't built it, this little company Sprint invested in called "Clearwire" actually built and maintains the 4G network Sprint handsets use.
Guess who else is a minority owner of Clearwire? Comcast.
Do you really believe that Sprint and Comcast view each other as competitors?
Archos 5 Internet Tablet. Runs Android. Been on the market for about 6 months.
They can't legally say you can't jailbreak your phone,
Actually, legally in the United States under the DMCA, they can. Apple asserts that it is a "circumvention" under the DMCA, and therefore is illegal.
.. is, by in large, they're shite.
I suspect the pico-projector will suffer the same fate. Not good enough to be anything more than an executive toy.
Wow, this article is prescient.
I was just noticing in my web logs that small, out of the way sites that I host that used to get 1,000 hits a month were suddenly getting 1,000 hits PER DAY. Sure enough, anybody care to guess what netblock the 26,000 hits came from?
Microsoft.com just earned a ban.
For all this handwringing, I've never seen this feature on my Comcast account. Yes, I live in Portland.
Maybe it's because I pay for the higher tier?
... especially for an IT job.
If you are selling yourself as some kind of system administrator or alpha geek, you damn well better not have an E-mail address that ends in @aol.com, that's for darn sure.
Oddly enough, gmail.com doesn't have the same stigma.. but I'm still going to be more impressed by somebody who has a "me@me.com" address (or as others have pointed out, a "me@acm.org" address associated with a well-respected professional organization).
It can. There are GSM cards that work with Asterisk.
You could also say that AT&T doesn't support the handset's band. From the specs, it seems like the Nexus One would work in every major cellular market on any GSM provider available EXCEPT AT&T in the US..
Oh, and it's worth pointing out (as AT&T insists in their commercials against Verizon) that 2G should be good enough for anybody, and the Nexus One will work on AT&T's 2G network that they think is so awesome.
AT&T isn't a member of the Open Handset Alliance. T-mobile is.
And this is the core issue.
I don't know how comfortable I'd be putting my money in a bank that can't even operate a charity vote above the table, in the light of day.
Makes one wonder what they're doing with depositor assets.
As somebody who's volunteered at FreeGeek, please don't do this unless you absolutely have to. Printers are extremely difficult for them to recycle: they have to break it down into the various types of plastic, then circuit boards, then metal parts.
Best to not buy these products: second best is to suck it up and buy the ink, even if it is expensive.. and chalk it up to a learning experience. Making it "somebody else's problem" just plain sucks.
One more group of women who won't have sex with me.
The reality of the situation is one $15/hour NOC monkey can effectively be "hands on" support for hundreds.. if not thousands.. of machines. Concentrating machines in one place has a lot of advantages of scale, including security, power, and cooling savings. The costs saved can easily pay for 24 hours of cheap "hands on."