You'll never find this reply because you're posting as AC, but...

- Laser pointers are cheap, and the spotting scope was purchased for the endeavor and then returned to get the money back (yes, lame, but there you go)

- FRS/GMRS radios are cheap and have a range of several miles, and when I say we were 'poor', I don't mean 'destitute', but in 2003 it wasn't common for lower-middle-class 20-year olds to have mobile phones

- Almost all the equipment used came from the company we worked for (a tech company - and not in secret, our boss knew what we were doing and didn't object), and it indeed had its facility at the foot of a mountain ridge. Yes, we ran power and backhaul up the mountainside, but keep in mind we only had to go a hundred feet up the hill or so, being a mile away - it's not like the stuff was at the crest of the ridge.

  And it wasn't 'all by its lonesome'. Hills and mountains aren't exclusive to the remote corners of the globe. This took place in Knoxville, TN, which has a population roughly the size of Fort Lauderdale, and is bisected by several mountainous ridgelines. Take a look on a topo map sometime.

Sequoyah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"In 1821 he completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible. This was the only time in recorded history that a member of a non-literate people independently created an effective writing system.[1][4] After seeing its worth, the people of the Cherokee Nation rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825. Their literacy rate quickly surpassed that of surrounding European-American settlers.[1]"

  So, yes, it's remotely plausible, in the sense that it's absolutely happened (at least) once.

LTE-Advanced will save us.

Did this once! 2003 or so. Had a workplace with a bitchin' high-speed internet backbone situated at the bottom of a mountain ridge about a mile away from where I lived. My roommate and I we were poor 20-year-olds and wanted fast internet without the cost. We climbed the foothills of the mountain and affixed an antenna on the mountainside using highly directional antennas to give us free high-speed internet at home. We used fancy stuff like spotting scopes and lasers to help us align the two antennas. The antenna on the house was lashed to the fireplace with aluminum bands.

It was a lot of fun to set up, but it didn't work very well. No matter how we tried to stabilize the setup, weather fucked with us. High winds caused things to wobble, which meant packet loss, and slowdowns. And when it would go down completely, one of us would have to - with an exasperated sigh - get in the car and drive a mile away and climb a hillside and check out the setup while the other person climbed on the roof... while communicating to each other with walkie-talkies because it was 2003 and we were poor. We eventually ended up springing for some DSL provider, I don't even remember which.

All that said... I cherish the memories.

Do you think *he* is jealous too?

Nah. His house is 6,000 square feet.

From what I can tell, this works by syncing with a mobile phone. It appears to be an optional package when buying the car, too.

Just don't get the optional sync/navigation system, and put in your own head unit for navi, etc instead.

Why not a small fireproof safe in your own home, with the key kept on your key ring?

A little fireproof safe with a key that you keep on your key ring should suffice.

Get amnesia, don't know your passwords. Hey, what's in this box? Lemme see if one of my keys will open it.

Hey presto! A book with my usernames and passwords! Thanks, past-me!

I went on a vacation to the UK a few months ago. After two weeks I was real tired of always having a pound of coins (pound as in weight, not pounds sterling) sloshing around loudly in my left pocket.

Coins everywhere. There's a one pound coin, a two pound coin, a fifty pence, a twenty pence, a ten pence, a five pence, a two pence, and a penny. Whenever I'd buy anything I'd thrust my hand into my pocket and pull out a massive fistful of coins, and it was a pain in the ass to try to sort out the best combination among the 8 coins available to hit the total (I'd always try to get rid of as many coins as possible in one transaction).

I'd MUCH rather stick with our (US) paper and 4 coins.

The average IQ is 100, after all...

Heh. Gotta ask... have you looked into putting CM on it? Because I'd wager that 80% of people that use Cyanogen are those who can't wait for official updates.

Yeah, that's pretty much just my best guess...

If I'm reading this correctly - you stopped trusting Cyanogenmod because you apparently accidentally tried to use your Gmail credentials to log at the Cyanogenmod account login prompt? That's like accidentally putting in your Gmail login info at the Facebook login screen. Why would that make you trust CM less?

For anyone who's interested, here's a rundown on the Cyanogenmod account stuff:

http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/cyanogenmod-account

They don't necessarily have to make their revenue all from ads.

They can provide a polished, stable version of Android that is in many ways better than the original and provide support to the phone manufacturers (perhaps more cheaply than Google?), directly getting a cut from handset sales.

They could start and manage their own app store and take a cut if app purchases.

By working directly with manufacturers, they can spend less time hacking/reverse engineering stuff in order to get it to work with the hardware and instead focus on making their flavor of Android better and therefore desirable on handsets. Cyanogenmod has always been about being cutting-edge - pioneering many features long before AOSP. And not just 'fun' features but really important stuff like fine-detailed app permissions management (which has been WAY overdue). If they can now have a say in hardware design, I say, hell yes, bring it on. I hope to see cutting-edge badass smartphones with easy root access, high customize-ability/theming, and bleeding edge features.

Lately I've been keeping an eye on the Sailfish project, but this news has refreshed my interest in the future of Android in general. Let's not be too cynical and assume it's all going to be about advertising. And even if there are ads, does anyone really think the ads could be any worse or more intrusive than the current state of Android in general?

Maybe Canonical has spoiled everyone's attitudes toward the idea of monetizing open source. There's certainly a comparison to be made here. I'm not well-versed enough in the behind-the-scenes stuff to compare, but I wonder what the degree of impact Cyanogen has had on the Android world is, compared to Ubuntu's contribution to Linux, and what lessons we can take from the latter and apply to the former?

Doesn't even have to be something as complicated as CAD. Even something basic like dealing with word documents or spreadsheets is a royal pain on mobile.