Well, sure. Congress gave him the power to do what he did: they could have reined him in, but they chose to go along for the ride.

Double-whoosh. The second poster caught the original poster's drift, and merely expanded upon it. Apparently you missed that.

I'd go further and say that extracting wealth from the honest/competent/responsible segment of the population is the real goal.

I think "believe in evolution" would be better phrased as "accept the scientific validity of evolution."

The whole point of this discussion is that belief is not sufficient.

Some thirty years ago, I was doing software development for a number of research outfits (neurological data acquisition, that sort of thing.) I recall one conversation between a lead research scientist and his division chief. They were working on a rather large grant proposal at the time. The dialog revolved around a key dataset that had some points that didn't support their conclusions. The chief was suggesting that they simply remove the (ahem!) "bad" data from the proposal. The scientist, who was becoming visibly upset has his boss went on, finally exploded with "you can't just throw away data you don't like!"

The resulting argument was Biblical. One the one side was the bureaucrat wanting to make sure that they had enough funds to continue their research (and remember, the institution took 80% right off the top.) On the other was a topnotch scientist only concerned with the quality of his work and that he not be subject to charges of fraud.

I was just a fly on the wall but I learned a lot that day.

True, although after my back surgery last year I was left feeling a little flat.

Well, I won't argue with your need to go to places that you detest, but I agree about phone navigation. I just stuff it in my shirt pocket once I'm on the road: I have the turn-by-turn coming out of my car's speakers. Works very well, and it's only the occasional situation (maybe an odd intersection with streets coming in a funny angles) where I need to look at the display.

And maybe that's true for him, although I doubt it. And if you were to present a video of his minimally-affected driving to him, he would probably be, well ... surprised. In reality, most people believe that whatever stupid things they habitually do behind the wheel have a "surprisingly minimal effect" on their driving, and will defend their opinion of themselves and their supernatural abilities to the death.

Literally.

Boggles the mind. Truly, it does.

3. I'm from the government ... and I'm here to help you.

I pipe the audio output of my smartphone through my car's speakers. I also use it to listen to music on occasion: the music is automatically paused while the GPS is talking so there is no confusion. As it happens, I normally use Google Nav, and the voice works well enough that I rarely need the display. So well, in fact, that I usually just leave the phone in my pocket. If you do need to constantly look at the screen, it probably means your navigation system is poorly designed, or perhaps you are just a very insecure person. My girlfriend has dedicated GPS from Magellan, and it's turn-by-turn likewise works very well (somewhat better than Google's system in many cases.)

I agree with some other posters: get the units with low-quality software off the market. The government would do better mandating improved functionality rather than imposing arbitrary (and fundamentally dangerous) restrictions, restrictions which serve only to demonstrate how out-of-touch that particular bureaucracy is with this technology.

So, I think the NHTSA is a barking up the wrong tree. Mandate GPS use training in driver education and be done with it. Penalizing the bulk of the population that has no problem using GPS successfully for the misdeeds of the few is just bad lawmaking. It will, however, be profitable for the locales that implement such regulation, so I have no doubt that many will.

Yep. That sucks, assuming he was on Sprint to begin with, which is why I asked.

That's odd: most Android people I know (myself included) don't waste much time in conversation discussing phones, especially with members of the opposite sex, much less something such as the iPhone that we simply could not care less about. It's iUser arrogance to believe that all of us Android users care about the iPhone, feel threatened by it in some way. We don't, and we look down at people who so willingly allow themselves to be technologically shackled. But hey, to each their own.

Matter of established fact, it's the Apple crowd that has always been by far the most vocal. I've been in this business for a long time, before there was an Apple ][. And, since the advent of the Mac, and Jobs' deliberate efforts to encourage class envy to increase sales, it's always been the Apple people that are constantly deriding those using competing products. In the old days, tell a Mac user that his machine is limited because it didn't have any peripheral slots and he would say, "Why would you need them?" Today, ask an iPhone user why his phone won't support tethering, why it is limited to a single GUI, why it won't allow installation of non-Market apps, and he'll say, "Why would you want to do that?" Nothing changes but their underwear, I guess.

I dislike Apple intensely because at one point (decades ago) I made my living coding for Apple systems, and Apple truly was about freedom, openness, and the spirit of the personal computing revolution. Granted, that was Wozniak's influence: Jobs always was a dick. But today they pay lip service to freedom while doing their level best to turn you into a mere consumer of paid media, bought solely from Apple. No thanks.

Who's your provider? I would say come over to T-Mobile (they'll let you just buy a SIM and drop it in) but I don't think your spectrum will match.

Actually, you'll find that the stock Android experience is a. more popular among most users than the likes of Sense and Touchwiz, and b. is becoming more available as carriers are starting to pick up on that. Not to mention that replacing the entire GUI in Android is trivial: go to the Market (pardon me, "Play Store") and pick any one of a dozen or more different user interfaces. Most of them are free, and several simply blow away the stock interface (my Android phone has six different GUIs available at a touch.) You have exactly ONE: the one that Apple gives you. I hope you like it, because that's all you'll ever have.

So far as I'm concerned, that makes you the one stuck with the "crap device", one that is deliberately and with malice aforethought severely limited in scope. You are an Apple user, so I don't expect you to be able to remotely comprehend that, but there it is. You know, in the world of desktop operating systems most people are very open to the idea of choice, of being able to choose from a variety of options. Put an iPhone or Mac in their hands, and suddenly "there can be only one." If that's not a tribute to the power of marketing and general gullibility I don't know what is, but it's entertaining at least. To my fellow Android users, here's something you can try: point out to one of your iPhone-using friends something that Android does better (and there are many.) Watch their eyes bulge as they try to find a way to dispute your claims. Then laugh when they finally come back with, "Okay, so fine it does that ... but why would you want to?" Never fails.

Your problem, as with most iUsers, is that you just don't grasp that there is an entire spectrum of Android devices out there, from crap to awesome, rather than just the few models of iPhone with which you are comfortable. You want to make simple, easy comparisons but you just can't do that. All cars are not Lamborghinis you know, and all Android phones are not top-of-the line. From my perspective, that's a good thing because unlike you, I get to pick the features and functions that I want, not what Apple thinks I want.

In any event, because there are so many different Android devices available, you simply cannot make sweeping statements about them without coming off as something of an idiot, as Dr. House would no doubt say if he were here right now.

What?