If I want GSM (so that my phone will work in the rest of the world when I travel (right?)) then I either have to have AT&T, T-Mobile, or one of the MVNOs that operate on their networks. I fear if AT&T dismantles the T-Mobile infrastructure that I'll be back to not getting any signal inside my house. Is my fear justified?
Verizon has several phones with GSM (and even UMTS) for global roaming. Motorola Droid Pro and Droid2 Global come immediately to mind:
WCDMA 850/1900/2100, CDMA 800/1900, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 10.2 Mbps (Category 9/10), CDMA EV-DO Release A, EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 12, HSUPA 1.8 Mbps
There are some HTC and Blackberry options too. Global roaming isn't as big a deal as it used to be for Verizon customers.
All Android phones released in 2010 were capped at 1Ghz with chips from either Qualcomm or Samsung. The Samsung Infuse 4G is the first phone I'm aware of that at stock is greater than 1Ghz (it is 1.2Ghz).
Almost all the Motorola Android phones, and all the high-end ones currently shipping, use TI OMAP processors.
First, Droid (Milestone) in 2009 used a TI OMAP 3430
I totally understand the quality argument. Midwest Express is supposed to be quite nice in the areas they fly. On the other hand, I remember flying on some airlines in the 90s that aren't around anymore that were just horrible.
I used to fly Midwest exclusively -- they were a bit more expensive, but well worth it for the nicer cabin service and roomy "business class" style 2+2 seating in their DC9's instead of the more common 2+3 arrangement.
Now they're just another carrier squishing in cattle competing for bottom dollar. Between that and the airport hassles I usually just drive anywhere I would have taken Midwest in ~2002
The ONLY wireless OEM hack I have ever seen is the one where you blast mp3 files to bluetooth devices with the codes set to 0000 or 1234.. and that was to a BMW. Unfortunately it did not allow me to take control and steer the car or control the brakes. It did allow us to play audi adverts to the guy.
Get renter's insurance. Seriously. I don't think I ever had a policy priced at more than $100/year. If you also have a reasonably late-model car you can usually get a "multi-policy discount" that's greater than the cost of the renter's policy.
Surveillance equipment is just something else to be stolen if there's a breakin.
"dumb"phone defects are sometimes dealt with over-the-air, or the user brings the phone back into the store to re-flash or exchange it for an updated model. Returned phones are re-flashed in a distribution center and sent back to stores for exchange as refurbished models.
It's *very* rare that a phone cannot be reflashed at all - Not only would the hardware is scrap if a software defect is found, but each and every phone would have to be contracted for a specific carrier and market before it's manufactured. When was the last time you saw a model of phone that was 100% identical between two carriers?
The reason they could find your location before GPS was a thing called triangulation. They could (and still can on phones without GPS) check your signal strength to various towers to figure out where you are because they know the geographic location of all the towers.
Your description is correct, but that's not triangulation, it's trilateration. From signal strength one can derive a distance but not a direction. The technique is drawing circles of to see where they meet, rather than drawing lines to see where they cross.
Sorry buddy, but that relationship is commercial. Therefore any announcements of that relationship is an advert.
Wow. Here in the land of normal people, we *welcome* the announcement of these commercial relationships. It's called "full disclosure". Would you rather *not* know who a commentator is taking money from?
Again, last time I looked into it AT&T would detect the smart phone on their network regardless of whether it was bought separately and add the $30/month data plan to your bill for you.
I've had various unlocked smartphones on AT&T's $20 featurephone data plan for three years now. Smartphone "detection" is a myth.
AT&T enforces tethering fees on WinMo by locking the "internet sharing" app to use a different GPRS APN than the phone itself uses. No extra $, no access to the magic APN, no tethering. Of course, if you buy an unlocked (ie unbranded retail, not SIM-unlocked AT&T) WinMo phone, you can just configure internet sharing to use the usual APN, and everything is hunky dory.
With Droid I'd imagine it'll be easier. There are already several tethering solutions for G1 that should work just as well for Droid.
The ability to make anonymous phone calls shouldn't be seen as such an evil.
The way to make anonymous cellular phone calls is to pay cash up-front for a SIM, not to bypass the network's billing system. Anonymity is hardly an excuse for theft of services.
"Having that masters degree doesn't mean anything here."
This is hardly a universal policy. My employer grants an automatic pay-grade bump for a (domestic) master's in addition to a (domestic) BS. (If you have a foreign BS and domestic MS you're started even with domestic fresh-outs)
I can't imagine doing a master's out-of-pocket right out of school, especially in as vague a field as CE or EE. Get a job first, then get a master's on the company's tab when you decide to specialize.
As difficult as the problem seems, there is one energy source that is essentially infinite, is readily available worldwide, and produces no carbon byproducts. The source of that energy is seawater, and the method by which seawater is converted to a more direct fuel for use by commercial and military equipment is simple.
Sure there's tons of energy in seawater... the nuclear reactor required to extract hydrogen from it is just a minor process detail. If that's the current state of the art in Army logistics, I fear for the future:/
For Palm, and WinMob, a PC was usually necessary to install new applications. (Not sure about BlackBerry, Symbian, or the other common Phone OS environments.)
Now I'm all for bashing Windows Mobile, but let's not get too hasty. I'm on my second WinMob phone and I did all my application installs on both either over the air (download the.cab file with the browser) or from a memory card (.cab copied from PC or different phone). A PC isn't even remotely necessary to install applications.
I also signed up for the 1-DVD plan just for access to the streaming library via my Tivo HD. When it works, it looks pretty good... but maybe 20% of the titles I've tried to watch have *horrible* problems. I don't mean "zomg it's not HD" sort of problems, but things like audio and video being out of sync by multiple seconds, or the video looks like an analog-scrambled premium channel.
For DVDs they have a "Report a Problem" button right in your queue and respond very quickly to any issue, but streaming video seems to be a best-effort, take-it-or-leave-it sort of proposition. If the quality were a little more consistent maybe I'd consider dropping the DVDs by mail, even with the current limited streaming selection.
I'm not going thought the hassle of number porting.
What hassle? I've ported a few numbers now, and you just have to tell them your old provider and number and wait a few hours for the request to go through. When I did a port in person I had to sign an extra form, but adding a number port to an online cell phone order was just an extra screen to click through.
My definitely techno-phobic, working-class in-laws are all ready to go. I always kind thought that if they were on board everybody was.
They replaced their old B&W news kitchen TV with a wal-mart 15" 4:3 LCD of some kind and now watch more sub-channel weather forecasting than anything else on it. The bigger, newer (mid-'90s) CRT in the living room got a converter box.
They think it's kind of weird that they get block noise instead of snow when the antenna gets bumped, but that's about it.
3.5mm stereo minijack or stereo RCA all the way. No encryption, no DRM, just analog goodness. Sure you need an additional wire for power, but that's rarely a problem.
Don't forget line in, video out, and remote control. Maybe you like living in a cable nest, but most people would consider a single-wire/single-connector solution superior to a four+ port audio+video+power+control solution. Why else would anybody buy a laptop port replicator?
Sure a home or car stereo can just use USB Mass Storage connection to bypass the player's internal logic entirely, but what about accessories that are just dumb remote controls or repeaters? The Dock isn't just a physical & electrical spec, it's a published remote-control command set.
Are there even any other players on the market that support hard-wired remote control?
And the extendable antenna doesn't move the transmission away from your head, the antenna transmits over the entire length, not just the tip.
You'd think so, but that's not always the case. There have been plenty of phones that had a radiating element at the end of the "antenna" (actually just a rigid cable).
Internally, the phone has RF connections at the two "antenna" stops. The lower one (contacted when collapsed) was attenuated compared to the higher one (contacted when extended) because with the radiating element further from the head a higher output power was allowed.
It's the exact same price as any other 3G data plan that AT&T offers, ala Crackberry or Treo, but don't let that stop you from bashing Apple.
It's not the 3G that's expensive, it's the "smart phone" premium. The $15 featurephone ("MEdia Net") unlimited data plan works perfectly fine on 3G but AT&T has decided to charge more for devices with a touchscreen or qwerty keyboard. Nothing keeping you from pulling the SIM out of your free-after-rebate phone and popping it into your unlocked N95 but the terms of service.
The great thing about the first iPhone was that they'd let you use the normal cheap data plan with a "smart" phone. Now that they found out people really want iPhones they jacked up the plan prices back in line with competing products.
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If I want GSM (so that my phone will work in the rest of the world when I travel (right?)) then I either have to have AT&T, T-Mobile, or one of the MVNOs that operate on their networks. I fear if AT&T dismantles the T-Mobile infrastructure that I'll be back to not getting any signal inside my house. Is my fear justified?
Verizon has several phones with GSM (and even UMTS) for global roaming. Motorola Droid Pro and Droid2 Global come immediately to mind:
WCDMA 850/1900/2100, CDMA 800/1900, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 10.2 Mbps (Category 9/10), CDMA EV-DO Release A, EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 12, HSUPA 1.8 Mbps
There are some HTC and Blackberry options too. Global roaming isn't as big a deal as it used to be for Verizon customers.
Man, why is this concept so difficult to grasp? It's. Not. A. Milling. Machine.
It's an FDM
Jobs for one are rarely jobs for the other
All Android phones released in 2010 were capped at 1Ghz with chips from either Qualcomm or Samsung. The Samsung Infuse 4G is the first phone I'm aware of that at stock is greater than 1Ghz (it is 1.2Ghz).
Almost all the Motorola Android phones, and all the high-end ones currently shipping, use TI OMAP processors.
First, Droid (Milestone) in 2009 used a TI OMAP 3430
Later, Droid X in 2010 used a TI OMAP 3630 at 1Ghz
Finally, Droid 2 Global Launched on Nov 9 2001 with a 1.2 GHz TI OMAP processor
I totally understand the quality argument. Midwest Express is supposed to be quite nice in the areas they fly. On the other hand, I remember flying on some airlines in the 90s that aren't around anymore that were just horrible.
I used to fly Midwest exclusively -- they were a bit more expensive, but well worth it for the nicer cabin service and roomy "business class" style 2+2 seating in their DC9's instead of the more common 2+3 arrangement.
Now they're just another carrier squishing in cattle competing for bottom dollar. Between that and the airport hassles I usually just drive anywhere I would have taken Midwest in ~2002
The stations that switched to digital eliminated RDS to make room for HD2/HD3 subchannels.
Maybe some, but certainly not all of them. WBEZ Chicago kept its RDS when it added HD.
The ONLY wireless OEM hack I have ever seen is the one where you blast mp3 files to bluetooth devices with the codes set to 0000 or 1234.. and that was to a BMW. Unfortunately it did not allow me to take control and steer the car or control the brakes. It did allow us to play audi adverts to the guy.
Where'd you find a BMW with factory A2DP?
Get renter's insurance. Seriously. I don't think I ever had a policy priced at more than $100/year. If you also have a reasonably late-model car you can usually get a "multi-policy discount" that's greater than the cost of the renter's policy.
Surveillance equipment is just something else to be stolen if there's a breakin.
"dumb"phone defects are sometimes dealt with over-the-air, or the user brings the phone back into the store to re-flash or exchange it for an updated model. Returned phones are re-flashed in a distribution center and sent back to stores for exchange as refurbished models.
It's *very* rare that a phone cannot be reflashed at all - Not only would the hardware is scrap if a software defect is found, but each and every phone would have to be contracted for a specific carrier and market before it's manufactured. When was the last time you saw a model of phone that was 100% identical between two carriers?
The reason they could find your location before GPS was a thing called triangulation. They could (and still can on phones without GPS) check your signal strength to various towers to figure out where you are because they know the geographic location of all the towers.
Your description is correct, but that's not triangulation, it's trilateration. From signal strength one can derive a distance but not a direction. The technique is drawing circles of to see where they meet, rather than drawing lines to see where they cross.
Sorry buddy, but that relationship is commercial. Therefore any announcements of that relationship is an advert.
Wow. Here in the land of normal people, we *welcome* the announcement of these commercial relationships. It's called "full disclosure". Would you rather *not* know who a commentator is taking money from?
Again, last time I looked into it AT&T would detect the smart phone on their network regardless of whether it was bought separately and add the $30/month data plan to your bill for you.
I've had various unlocked smartphones on AT&T's $20 featurephone data plan for three years now. Smartphone "detection" is a myth.
AT&T enforces tethering fees on WinMo by locking the "internet sharing" app to use a different GPRS APN than the phone itself uses. No extra $, no access to the magic APN, no tethering. Of course, if you buy an unlocked (ie unbranded retail, not SIM-unlocked AT&T) WinMo phone, you can just configure internet sharing to use the usual APN, and everything is hunky dory.
With Droid I'd imagine it'll be easier. There are already several tethering solutions for G1 that should work just as well for Droid.
You know, I've carried a Windows Mobile phone for two years and never once used copy/paste.
The way to make anonymous cellular phone calls is to pay cash up-front for a SIM, not to bypass the network's billing system. Anonymity is hardly an excuse for theft of services.
"Having that masters degree doesn't mean anything here."
This is hardly a universal policy. My employer grants an automatic pay-grade bump for a (domestic) master's in addition to a (domestic) BS. (If you have a foreign BS and domestic MS you're started even with domestic fresh-outs)
I can't imagine doing a master's out-of-pocket right out of school, especially in as vague a field as CE or EE. Get a job first, then get a master's on the company's tab when you decide to specialize.
Wow... that's a hell of a citation you chose:
Sure there's tons of energy in seawater... the nuclear reactor required to extract hydrogen from it is just a minor process detail. If that's the current state of the art in Army logistics, I fear for the future :/
For Palm, and WinMob, a PC was usually necessary to install new applications. (Not sure about BlackBerry, Symbian, or the other common Phone OS environments.)
Now I'm all for bashing Windows Mobile, but let's not get too hasty. I'm on my second WinMob phone and I did all my application installs on both either over the air (download the .cab file with the browser) or from a memory card (.cab copied from PC or different phone). A PC isn't even remotely necessary to install applications.
I also signed up for the 1-DVD plan just for access to the streaming library via my Tivo HD. When it works, it looks pretty good... but maybe 20% of the titles I've tried to watch have *horrible* problems. I don't mean "zomg it's not HD" sort of problems, but things like audio and video being out of sync by multiple seconds, or the video looks like an analog-scrambled premium channel.
For DVDs they have a "Report a Problem" button right in your queue and respond very quickly to any issue, but streaming video seems to be a best-effort, take-it-or-leave-it sort of proposition. If the quality were a little more consistent maybe I'd consider dropping the DVDs by mail, even with the current limited streaming selection.
I'm not going thought the hassle of number porting.
What hassle? I've ported a few numbers now, and you just have to tell them your old provider and number and wait a few hours for the request to go through. When I did a port in person I had to sign an extra form, but adding a number port to an online cell phone order was just an extra screen to click through.
People who network well usually have more information than those going it alone. That's definitely an advantage for technical workers.
My definitely techno-phobic, working-class in-laws are all ready to go. I always kind thought that if they were on board everybody was. They replaced their old B&W news kitchen TV with a wal-mart 15" 4:3 LCD of some kind and now watch more sub-channel weather forecasting than anything else on it. The bigger, newer (mid-'90s) CRT in the living room got a converter box. They think it's kind of weird that they get block noise instead of snow when the antenna gets bumped, but that's about it.
Use a timebase corrector between the source and your capture card. It'll clean up garbled VHS video and accidentally strip macrovision in the process.
Don't forget line in, video out, and remote control. Maybe you like living in a cable nest, but most people would consider a single-wire/single-connector solution superior to a four+ port audio+video+power+control solution. Why else would anybody buy a laptop port replicator?
Sure a home or car stereo can just use USB Mass Storage connection to bypass the player's internal logic entirely, but what about accessories that are just dumb remote controls or repeaters? The Dock isn't just a physical & electrical spec, it's a published remote-control command set.
Are there even any other players on the market that support hard-wired remote control?
And the extendable antenna doesn't move the transmission away from your head, the antenna transmits over the entire length, not just the tip.
You'd think so, but that's not always the case. There have been plenty of phones that had a radiating element at the end of the "antenna" (actually just a rigid cable).
Internally, the phone has RF connections at the two "antenna" stops. The lower one (contacted when collapsed) was attenuated compared to the higher one (contacted when extended) because with the radiating element further from the head a higher output power was allowed.
It's the exact same price as any other 3G data plan that AT&T offers, ala Crackberry or Treo, but don't let that stop you from bashing Apple.
It's not the 3G that's expensive, it's the "smart phone" premium. The $15 featurephone ("MEdia Net") unlimited data plan works perfectly fine on 3G but AT&T has decided to charge more for devices with a touchscreen or qwerty keyboard. Nothing keeping you from pulling the SIM out of your free-after-rebate phone and popping it into your unlocked N95 but the terms of service.
The great thing about the first iPhone was that they'd let you use the normal cheap data plan with a "smart" phone. Now that they found out people really want iPhones they jacked up the plan prices back in line with competing products.