In other words, when he said there was a cop up ahead, there was, and no, there were not false positives either and these would be in situations where it was impossible to see the cop, for example around a blind curve. As for psychics... they have about as much credibility with me as the Flat Earth Society.
A friend of mine could detect radar. At one point he was working on a radar unit when it was activated and he survived. After that point he claimed to be sensitive to it. The funny thing was that when driving with him he was an awesome radar detector. It was uncanny how he would say there's a cop with a radar ahead on roads he'd never been on and he'd always be right. I'm still somewhat skeptical myself though.
This reminds me of when I had a new furnace installed. One of the installers doing the wiring for the thermostat was colorblind and was having a very difficult time of it until I offered to do it. I can only imagine how difficult it would be in electronics when so much can depend on color. Though today most PCBs are surface mount and through-hole resistors are less and less common, but there's still plenty of places where color is used.
The data appears to be encrypted. You can configure it to allow only certain phone numbers. It supports up to 3 calls simultaneously and reserves a 4th for 911. If you restrict it then the only way someone else can use it is they receive no signal at all from my understanding.
I get terrible reception inside my house so I ended up getting a Verizon wireless extender. So far it's worked quite well except all location stuff is screwed up due to a bug. It has to sit near a window for GPS reception but now I no longer get dropped calls. Later this year they're coming out with a new one that also supports 3G.
Verizon offered me a discount but it was still $200. I also can take it with me when I travel. All it needs is an Ethernet connection.
I take exception to that. Kaiser might be better now, but I have horror stories I can tell you about Kaiser from personal experience.
For example, when I was a kid in the late 1970s I had planter warts on my foot which became quite painful and made it difficult for me to walk. I went in to Kaiser and they said it would be six months until I could see the podiatrist. After complaining a lot they handed me two scalpels and told me to remove them myself.
I was awake when they took my tonsils out. It took them years before they even agreed to take them out (after going through 6 pediatricians). I also should have had tubes in my ears which again they refused to do.
They would refuse to do anything unless it was life threatening, and even then they'd frequently screw up.
They refused to treat my sister, for example, after she had a grand mal seizure, telling my mother that she was just being over anxious when she rushed my sister in.
They also ruined the health permanently for another relative where it took them many years to diagnose something that should have been easily diagnosed. They then screwed up the surgery resulting in pain and other health problems that cannot be fixed.
I understand they may be better now, but they were totally incompetent when I was with them.
Unfortunately, the way Kaiser is set up there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.
I hope it fixes the problems I've been having, especially with Wireless and VPN. PPTP on the Droid is broken if encryption is enabled and at this point my Droid does not see any wireless networks at all now. Sometimes I run into other quirks as well, like Bluetooth not connecting or the GPS not getting a signal (until I power cycle the phone).
Actually there's nothing special about the band used in microwaves. It's not tuned for water, since that would be a *much* higher frequency. They chose that frequency since it was in an unlicensed part of the spectrum so it wouldn't interfere with anything. Of course this was well before 2.4GHz started to be used for everything like it is now.
Also speaking as someone with a computer engineering degree I have found just the opposite. My skills in developing embedded systems are in demand. My EE skills have been helpful many times since I can see the system from both the software and hardware perspective. While I mostly focus on software, I have also been able to diagnose and fix numerous hardware issues. At my previous job, the biggest problem I had was convincing hardware to give me a schematic. They don't seem to realize that I often require it to see how the hardware is hooked up. I think they just think of me as a software only person.
Don't talk about Blue Cross. They went for profit several years ago and at least here in California they're increasing rates this year by up to 39%. By law in California insurance companies must spend a minimum of 70% on benefits, meaning that they can keep up to 30% for profit, a nice fat profit margin. They made this big rate increase even though they're doing well financially.
I have found that there's little reason to root my Android phone. Background apps? No rooting required. Bluetooth file transfer? The app works just fine without root. Even for tethering there's at least one app that does not require root (though you have to bypass the app store in the US).
There are a few times when root access is useful. There are some tethering apps that do require root and if you want to access some of the system files you need to be root. In general though, it's not required because there's a lot fewer restrictions for non-root users.
There's almost no restrictions on what apps can be in the app store either. The only cases of apps not allowed are tethering apps in the US and apps that have been found to be malicious. I have even downloaded apps from the store that can take advantage of the root access.
I have the same printer I bought years ago at an electronics swap meet. Later I found a cheap duplex unit and extended paper tray at a different swap meet. The only thing I have had to replace was the fuser (found cheap online) and the toner, plus I had to eventually rejuvenate the rubber parts, but it still works like a champ. At a previous job I had to use it to print out a lot of large PDF documents on it because the newer printer they had (HP LJ 4200) would crash on the Postscript and there was no way to not use Postscript (didn't matter what PDF reader I printed from).
According to Verizon this is a known problem of the femptocell and the cell phone. It shows my location to be almost 400 miles north. Verizon claims it is due to the fact that the femptocell does not handle EVDO and that my Droid is also picking up an EVDO signal. The engineer said that they are working on adding EVDO support to the femptocell, possibly with a firmware upgrade, which would solve that problem (and give the advantage of EVDO as well). Weatherbug, for example, will often show that I'm in Crescent City. Surprisingly when I used my femptocell 15 miles south of my home it still showed Crescent City. Again, at that location I could pick up EVDO as well.
It should, but the signal in my house is almost useless with many dead spots. Outdoors I have no problems. Having a steel roof might be part of the problem.
Anyway, the network extender solved that problem. It's also nice in that I can take it with me if I travel to places where I know I'll get poor to no cell coverage and have Internet access.
I have the same device for Verizon. My house is basically a Faraday cage since I have a steel roof and chicken wire in the outside walls.
My only issue is that the location based services on my Droid get all screwed up and think I'm a couple hundred miles from where I'm at. I just got a callback from Verizon on this about 30 minutes ago. Apparently this is due to the fact that the network extender only does 1x and not EVDO, but he also said they're looking into enhancing the firmware so that it will support EVDO as well (crosses fingers) which would be nice.
A full nmap scan of my extender does not report any responding ports.
Pedal based parking brakes have been around forever. The 1966 Pontiac Tempest LeMans I learned to drive on had one. That car was a death trap compared to today's cars. I've had a stuck throttle cable on that car as well as two other cars I've owned, and those cars were purely mechanical. I drove a rental Dodge Charger in November where the anti-lock brakes failed. Does that make me think my current Toyota Prius is a death trap? No more than any other car. If anything, it's the safest car I've ever owned by far. The 1966 Pontiac is a death trap by today's standards. It only has lap belts (which were optional at the time), the factory brakes faded like crazy and it lacked a dual brake cylinder, so if there were a brake failure all four brakes would fail.
If you've never encountered a pedal parking brake before then you haven't driven many cars. My parent's Mercury Sables also had parking pedals.
As for driving a Prius, it's not much different than driving any other car. Other than the shifter having fewer positions (and a dedicated park button) and a power button it drives like any other car. If anything, I had a little re-learning to do when I went to the Dodge Charger since I got so used to my Prius automatically putting itself into park when I turn it off.
I would like to see DisplayPort become more popular. It has a number of distinct advantages over HDMI.
1. The connector is designed to latch into place so it's more robust. The latching method is a lot better. 2. Multiple display support. 3. It's AC coupled instead of DC coupled. This is useful in large installations (I've dealt with installations where DC coupling was quite challenging due to power issues). 4. Higher data rate. 5. No licensing fees. 6. It's micro packet based and can do things like update only specific regions on a display. It allows for more flexibility in what type of data is sent over it. For example, it shouldn't be difficult to add an alpha channel without breaking the existing spec. 7. Each channel is independent, not dedicated R, G or B like HDMI. Each channel has its own clock. As more bandwidth is needed, more channels can be added.
With the Kindle you can just set the font size to enormous and get the same thing for free, as far as enlargement goes. As for the text to speech, Amazon has already said they're working on making the menus voice accessible, now as to whether the book can be converted to speech or not is in the hands of the publisher, not Amazon. Perhaps the ADA should focus on the publishers and their DRM rather than the technology that stands to make disabled people's lives better. After all, if eBooks didn't have DRM it would be even easier for blind students who could use a variety of devices to read the books, but DRM is required by the publishers.
I can understand why they don't do it. The micro SDHC card is just formatted with FAT32 and when you mount it via USB you're just mounting the filesystem. As far as I know, FAT32 doesn't support encryption.
I can also remove the micro SD card and plug it into my computer and access it as well. While encryption through Linux would be nice, it would not be compatible with other platforms that don't support the same methods.
Actually there are replacements for many of the apps. For example, I have two alternative browsers installed, one of which, Dolphin, I like because it can emulate a desktop browser for sites that are broken with mobile browsers (Picasa, I'm looking at you!). It's not an iPhone so you're free to replace Google's apps. I even have a replacement rotary dialer that replaces the Google dialer, and there's numerous 3rd party camera and GPS apps. I haven't checked email, but I'm sure there's replacements for just about everything (including the keyboard).
Vaccines are very different than antibiotics. Basically a vaccine is a killed or weak version of a virus to train your immune system to recognize it so when the real thing tries to infect you your immune system has already created antibodies and is ready to fight it off. Otherwise it takes a while for your immune system several days to find an effective antibody, during which time your body has limited defense against the virus.
As for the "scare mongering" for flues like the H1N1, a friend of several of my friends recently died from complications to H1N1. He wasn't that old either. It's scare mongering until it becomes personal.
I don't know about you, but I would much rather endure the slight sting of getting a vaccine once or twice a year rather than to suffer the effects from the flu as well as missing work.
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In other words, when he said there was a cop up ahead, there was, and no, there were not false positives either and these would be in situations where it was impossible to see the cop, for example around a blind curve. As for psychics... they have about as much credibility with me as the Flat Earth Society.
A friend of mine could detect radar. At one point he was working on a radar unit when it was activated and he survived. After that point he claimed to be sensitive to it. The funny thing was that when driving with him he was an awesome radar detector. It was uncanny how he would say there's a cop with a radar ahead on roads he'd never been on and he'd always be right. I'm still somewhat skeptical myself though.
This reminds me of when I had a new furnace installed. One of the installers doing the wiring for the thermostat was colorblind and was having a very difficult time of it until I offered to do it. I can only imagine how difficult it would be in electronics when so much can depend on color. Though today most PCBs are surface mount and through-hole resistors are less and less common, but there's still plenty of places where color is used.
The data appears to be encrypted. You can configure it to allow only certain phone numbers. It supports up to 3 calls simultaneously and reserves a 4th for 911. If you restrict it then the only way someone else can use it is they receive no signal at all from my understanding.
I get terrible reception inside my house so I ended up getting a Verizon wireless extender. So far it's worked quite well except all location stuff is screwed up due to a bug. It has to sit near a window for GPS reception but now I no longer get dropped calls. Later this year they're coming out with a new one that also supports 3G.
Verizon offered me a discount but it was still $200. I also can take it with me when I travel. All it needs is an Ethernet connection.
I take exception to that. Kaiser might be better now, but I have horror stories I can tell you about Kaiser from personal experience.
For example, when I was a kid in the late 1970s I had planter warts on my foot which became quite painful and made it difficult for me to walk. I went in to Kaiser and they said it would be six months until I could see the podiatrist. After complaining a lot they handed me two scalpels and told me to remove them myself.
I was awake when they took my tonsils out. It took them years before they even agreed to take them out (after going through 6 pediatricians). I also should have had tubes in my ears which again they refused to do.
They would refuse to do anything unless it was life threatening, and even then they'd frequently screw up.
They refused to treat my sister, for example, after she had a grand mal seizure, telling my mother that she was just being over anxious when she rushed my sister in.
They also ruined the health permanently for another relative where it took them many years to diagnose something that should have been easily diagnosed. They then screwed up the surgery resulting in pain and other health problems that cannot be fixed.
I understand they may be better now, but they were totally incompetent when I was with them.
Unfortunately, the way Kaiser is set up there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.
I hope it fixes the problems I've been having, especially with Wireless and VPN. PPTP on the Droid is broken if encryption is enabled and at this point my Droid does not see any wireless networks at all now. Sometimes I run into other quirks as well, like Bluetooth not connecting or the GPS not getting a signal (until I power cycle the phone).
Actually there's nothing special about the band used in microwaves. It's not tuned for water, since that would be a *much* higher frequency. They chose that frequency since it was in an unlicensed part of the spectrum so it wouldn't interfere with anything. Of course this was well before 2.4GHz started to be used for everything like it is now.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Power
Also speaking as someone with a computer engineering degree I have found just the opposite. My skills in developing embedded systems are in demand. My EE skills have been helpful many times since I can see the system from both the software and hardware perspective. While I mostly focus on software, I have also been able to diagnose and fix numerous hardware issues. At my previous job, the biggest problem I had was convincing hardware to give me a schematic. They don't seem to realize that I often require it to see how the hardware is hooked up. I think they just think of me as a software only person.
Don't talk about Blue Cross. They went for profit several years ago and at least here in California they're increasing rates this year by up to 39%. By law in California insurance companies must spend a minimum of 70% on benefits, meaning that they can keep up to 30% for profit, a nice fat profit margin. They made this big rate increase even though they're doing well financially.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/09/business/la-fi-anthem-obama9-2010feb09
I have found that there's little reason to root my Android phone. Background apps? No rooting required. Bluetooth file transfer? The app works just fine without root. Even for tethering there's at least one app that does not require root (though you have to bypass the app store in the US).
There are a few times when root access is useful. There are some tethering apps that do require root and if you want to access some of the system files you need to be root. In general though, it's not required because there's a lot fewer restrictions for non-root users.
There's almost no restrictions on what apps can be in the app store either. The only cases of apps not allowed are tethering apps in the US and apps that have been found to be malicious. I have even downloaded apps from the store that can take advantage of the root access.
I have the same printer I bought years ago at an electronics swap meet. Later I found a cheap duplex unit and extended paper tray at a different swap meet. The only thing I have had to replace was the fuser (found cheap online) and the toner, plus I had to eventually rejuvenate the rubber parts, but it still works like a champ. At a previous job I had to use it to print out a lot of large PDF documents on it because the newer printer they had (HP LJ 4200) would crash on the Postscript and there was no way to not use Postscript (didn't matter what PDF reader I printed from).
What it doesn't say is whether it's host mode or not. My guess is it does not do host mode since it is designed to plug into a computer.
According to Verizon this is a known problem of the femptocell and the cell phone. It shows my location to be almost 400 miles north. Verizon claims it is due to the fact that the femptocell does not handle EVDO and that my Droid is also picking up an EVDO signal. The engineer said that they are working on adding EVDO support to the femptocell, possibly with a firmware upgrade, which would solve that problem (and give the advantage of EVDO as well). Weatherbug, for example, will often show that I'm in Crescent City. Surprisingly when I used my femptocell 15 miles south of my home it still showed Crescent City. Again, at that location I could pick up EVDO as well.
It should, but the signal in my house is almost useless with many dead spots. Outdoors I have no problems. Having a steel roof might be part of the problem.
Anyway, the network extender solved that problem. It's also nice in that I can take it with me if I travel to places where I know I'll get poor to no cell coverage and have Internet access.
If you already have a cell phone, why have a land line at all? It can be cheaper to add another cell phone to a plan rather than add a land line.
In my case I like having a land line as well since the voice quality is much better.
I have the same device for Verizon. My house is basically a Faraday cage since I have a steel roof and chicken wire in the outside walls.
My only issue is that the location based services on my Droid get all screwed up and think I'm a couple hundred miles from where I'm at. I just got a callback from Verizon on this about 30 minutes ago. Apparently this is due to the fact that the network extender only does 1x and not EVDO, but he also said they're looking into enhancing the firmware so that it will support EVDO as well (crosses fingers) which would be nice.
A full nmap scan of my extender does not report any responding ports.
Pedal based parking brakes have been around forever. The 1966 Pontiac Tempest LeMans I learned to drive on had one. That car was a death trap compared to today's cars. I've had a stuck throttle cable on that car as well as two other cars I've owned, and those cars were purely mechanical. I drove a rental Dodge Charger in November where the anti-lock brakes failed. Does that make me think my current Toyota Prius is a death trap? No more than any other car. If anything, it's the safest car I've ever owned by far. The 1966 Pontiac is a death trap by today's standards. It only has lap belts (which were optional at the time), the factory brakes faded like crazy and it lacked a dual brake cylinder, so if there were a brake failure all four brakes would fail.
If you've never encountered a pedal parking brake before then you haven't driven many cars. My parent's Mercury Sables also had parking pedals.
As for driving a Prius, it's not much different than driving any other car. Other than the shifter having fewer positions (and a dedicated park button) and a power button it drives like any other car. If anything, I had a little re-learning to do when I went to the Dodge Charger since I got so used to my Prius automatically putting itself into park when I turn it off.
I would like to see DisplayPort become more popular. It has a number of distinct advantages over HDMI.
1. The connector is designed to latch into place so it's more robust. The latching method is a lot better.
2. Multiple display support.
3. It's AC coupled instead of DC coupled. This is useful in large installations (I've dealt with installations where DC coupling was quite challenging due to power issues).
4. Higher data rate.
5. No licensing fees.
6. It's micro packet based and can do things like update only specific regions on a display. It allows for more flexibility in what type of data is sent over it. For example, it shouldn't be difficult to add an alpha channel without breaking the existing spec.
7. Each channel is independent, not dedicated R, G or B like HDMI. Each channel has its own clock. As more bandwidth is needed, more channels can be added.
It has DRM support.
With the Kindle you can just set the font size to enormous and get the same thing for free, as far as enlargement goes. As for the text to speech, Amazon has already said they're working on making the menus voice accessible, now as to whether the book can be converted to speech or not is in the hands of the publisher, not Amazon. Perhaps the ADA should focus on the publishers and their DRM rather than the technology that stands to make disabled people's lives better. After all, if eBooks didn't have DRM it would be even easier for blind students who could use a variety of devices to read the books, but DRM is required by the publishers.
One feature of the Kindle is that you can set the text size so there's no need to copy it. I know a number of people who love that feature.
I can understand why they don't do it. The micro SDHC card is just formatted with FAT32 and when you mount it via USB you're just mounting the filesystem. As far as I know, FAT32 doesn't support encryption.
I can also remove the micro SD card and plug it into my computer and access it as well. While encryption through Linux would be nice, it would not be compatible with other platforms that don't support the same methods.
Actually there are replacements for many of the apps. For example, I have two alternative browsers installed, one of which, Dolphin, I like because it can emulate a desktop browser for sites that are broken with mobile browsers (Picasa, I'm looking at you!). It's not an iPhone so you're free to replace Google's apps. I even have a replacement rotary dialer that replaces the Google dialer, and there's numerous 3rd party camera and GPS apps. I haven't checked email, but I'm sure there's replacements for just about everything (including the keyboard).
Vaccines are very different than antibiotics. Basically a vaccine is a killed or weak version of a virus to train your immune system to recognize it so when the real thing tries to infect you your immune system has already created antibodies and is ready to fight it off. Otherwise it takes a while for your immune system several days to find an effective antibody, during which time your body has limited defense against the virus.
As for the "scare mongering" for flues like the H1N1, a friend of several of my friends recently died from complications to H1N1. He wasn't that old either. It's scare mongering until it becomes personal.
I don't know about you, but I would much rather endure the slight sting of getting a vaccine once or twice a year rather than to suffer the effects from the flu as well as missing work.