If you're ambitious you tell your boss "Here's what I came up with to save time and money, and it's so awesome I went ahead and installed it and everyone that uses it loves it.". If you're not ambitious then just piddle on the side lines and cry about FLSA while people that are ambitious pass you by and impress the boss with innovative solutions. Your call.

I have been using this stand-up desk for the past eight months. http://www.ergodesktop.com/content/kangaroo-0 I am basically a middle-aged guy that doesn't exercise much, and has been sitting at my desk job for nearly 30 years. Even when I did exercise regularly it helped some but not a lot, even after going to a trainer. Before I switched I was starting to feel like my body was turning into Jello(tm). I noticed things going down hill at age 25, but those last few months before switching were like I was melting away into a heap of goo (insert dramatic sound). As all this research shows the sitting all day long sabotages anything you do in gym. Anyway, I am not going to claim it has turned me into Charles Atlas, but I do feel much better at the end of the day. Sure, I am tired but it's a good sort of tired. It's not a substitute for exercise, you should still work out. The first month was hard but it got easier over time as leg and back muscles started to work more and more efficiently. One interesting side effect is I really have come to dislike sitting anywhere, on the couch, even lying in bed. After I'm awake I'm outta there. My cholesterol numbers have improved a lot, even on top of the statin, and triglycerides have improved, basically everything is working better. Another interesting side effect is my biceps have gotten noticeably larger, go figure. I haven't lost any weight, I probably just ate more to make up for the increase in metabolism. Just do it.

Sure, but if friends/family are in the targeted alert area they'll get the alert if they phone is new enough, etc. etc. Inbound phone calls to a disaster area are unlikely to work due to network throttling, and so on.

As I mentioned before a few months ago when this first popped up in the news I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T VZW and others. What do you want to know ? I have to leave for work right now so I'll get back to this later tonight but you can "leave your questions in the box below".

That's correct, it's done geographically, there is not a big federal list of each person's phone number. For example, take a look at 3GPP TS 25.419 (SABP). This is the interface between the CBC and an RNC (UMTS). http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/specs/html-info/25419.htm The broadcast request message is called Write-Replace. There are similar protocols between the CBC and BSCs (GSM).

Test messages will not display on phones other than test sets owned by the phone company.

Lucent did not exist in 2007, maybe you meant Alcatel-Lucent. I have been working on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by AT&T, Sprint, VZW, and others since day one. It can indeed target down to individual cells, or areas as large as geocodes, polygons, circles, etc. I'm not familiar with the CDMA work you are discussing. The trials we have done with Sprint and FEMA prove this works well with CDMA. There are prototype CDMA broadcast capable phones we have been testing with. Same for UMTS and GSM phones from various manufacturers. I won't name names but they are the usual suspects.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T, VZW, and others. I've been on it since day one. A friend asked me today if there are any privacy concerns with these broadcast messages. It would depend on the phone implementation, but you know how that goes. Here's one way this could be abused. The fed.gov sends a broadcast message once a day and has it repeat say once a minute for the entire day in some large area. Phones pick up the broadcast message and save everything associated with the broadcast, but do not display it to the subscriber. This could be an innocuous "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System" message that you wouldn't think anything of. The data saved includes the date/time, cell identification, the broadcast message itself, signal power, whatever. Basically you're location gets saved once a minute. Then if the fed.gov gets a hold of your phone they could grab all that data and see approximately where your phone was and when. Then your phone will upload it automagically to the NSA. Get out your tinfoil hats.

SMS is too slow, and logistically backwards. The idea is to reach all the phones in a targeted area immediately, not to send an SMS to each and every phone one by one that signed up for notifications. Even if they did sign up they might be hundreds of miles away where the alert is not relevant.

It's a different broadcast message signal from the usual SMS message you can get now, so it requires different hardware to pick up.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T, VZW, and others. I've been on it since day one. Take a look at 3GPP TS 25.419 (SABP for UMTS), this is the interface from the CBC to the RNC. There are other standards for the radio interface, sorry i don't know about those, but they are published 3GPP standards.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T, VZW, and others. I've been on it since day one. Yes, CDMA supports this broadcast capability. In some ways I think CDMA supports this better than GSM / UMTS.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by AT&T, VZW, Sprint, and others. I've been involved with this product since day one. Alert areas can be as small as one cell, or it can be the entire United States. Target areas can be based on geocodes (states, counties, some cities, FEMA regions, NWS regions, and some others), polygons, circles. How FEMA and NWS end up using it is an open question, but I get the impression most of the alerts they will generate will go out at the county level. Just like the "tornado sirens" now. This may get refined over time to smaller areas as they gain experience with the system.

I assume you meant the broadcast channel / categories the phone is capable of receiving. The CMAS broadcast channels, also known as message identifiers, are relatively new. They do fall within the range of public warning system categories which have been around a while. Phones on the market in the US typically haven't needed to pick up broadcast signals since there was no one broadcasting on them. Phone manufacturers are working on their phones to pick up broadcast signals, and deal with the CMAS requirements. Over time as subscribers change out their phones to newer models and network operators add this capability more phones will be getting this new signal. Which broadcast categories you receive theoretically can be done independently of the network operator. They may want to program your phone in a way they prefer and you may or may not be able to change it, it will depend on the carrier and phone, etc. I suppose there is an opportunity for smart-phones to do something interesting with CMAS messages.

That's exactly what happens. The warning is sent to cell antennas, then any phone covered by that antenna picks up the signal. It's not one-to-one, it's one-to-many, and the sender doesn't know who the receivers are. Now if your cell tower falls over because of the earthquake it's not going to be broadcasting anything.