Agree. I had a txt conversation with my father as he was sailing past Bermuda earlier this week. Voice was not available, but we could txt just fine. I believe it had everything to do with the quality of service. If voice911 is not available but I still have a minimal signal, I'd hope there was some method of calling for help beyond txt'ing a friend.

Been there. Done that. Made a website.

Http://web.archive.org/web/20021203213216/www.portlandcompany.com/z24/

This was in the late 90's and there was no such thing as portable mp3 players. In fact, the Roxio Rio with 32megs of capacity came out just as I was finishing the build.

Issues to consider:

• I blew 1 head unit ($300) while installing due to miswiring. Ow.
• MASSIVE PROBLEMS with feedback. Somehow the car-computer-stereo connections caused a constant background hum that I could only minimize. Tried induction isolators, even went to a few car stereo stores and they could only scratch their heads.
• It took me 3 months to find an ATX power supply that was designed to accept 12v DC rather than 120v AC.
• Unless you design in a battery back-up, you have to wait a few minutes getting in and out of your car while you wait for the system to start up or shut down.

This project was one of my major geek credentials, but you can see from the site that I quickly realized that I was being left in the dust when it came to my webdeveloping skills. I could talk for hours about how much fun this project was for a highschooler.

I tried driving both the gas and diesel Jetta wagons and noted a significant problem with the 0-60 acceleration time in the diesel. We wanted the diesel, but couldn't deal with unsafe acceleration.

I'm trying to find 0-60 references online but finding NOTHING. Even VW.com has a "TBA" on their website. In my opinion, they are hiding this fact.

Gas 0-60: 8.4 seconds. This is normal for sedans. Corolla: 9 seconds.
Diesel 0-60: TBA. My estimate is above 11 seconds. Those 3-5 seconds can be an eternity as you watch a semi grill rapidly approaching your rear-view mirror.

Trying to get on many US highways with that kind of acceleration is borderline suicidal. Especially in a miniwagon. we're not talking about some bus or 18-wheeler where people will get out of your (slow-to-get-up-to-speed) way.

In the end I had to move up to the Passat wagon (~7 seconds to 60) and give up having a manual transmission. I'd rather be driving a car without a soul (automatic) than a deathdrap.

THIS! A thousand times THIS! Mod parent up.

[Citation needed]

How often have you been about to change lanes and then suddenly realized there was a car there? Your comment above talks about having personal "radar" but I think this could really help in a vehicle... The problem might be the shift from the use outside your vehicle where the belt would be "compass" and your brain would get used to it, to the different inputs you would get when the belt hooks up (bluetooth?) to the additional sensors attached to the exterior of the car (plane?)... Could you somehow make the vibration/pulses different from the "compass" type so you could tell the difference? I drive a Mini and one of the many things I like about it is the 360 degree visability I get. (No blind spots at all!) I looked at a 350z, but like all coupes, those flying butresses of a C-pillar are huge, thick and make me very nervous. Also being in a Mini, I feel like i have to be much more in-tune with my surroundings, since I'm that much smaller than the ginormous Tahoe's I'm always passing... (Current inputs I have while driving beyond typical driving: [1]nav screen [2] Headset w/Trapster speedtrap warnings [3] Valentine1 radar detector. I take "situational awareness" to the next level. I'd be up for hearing additional ideas from other /.ers...)

Somebody mod this post up please...

Until this past October I would have agreed with you that calling NPR biased towards "liberal" was unreasonable.

But then I went to a live taping of NPR's version of the Daily Show: "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". This was the week of the VP debate, so politics was foremost in most of their comments. I noticed the following:

1 ) The comments the cast makes are more liberal than those that make it into the show. They cut out the more extreme/non-PC/malicious comments.
2 ) There was not a single person on stage that would consider themselves a conservative based on their comments.
3 ) The audience was OVERWHELMINGLY liberal, based on their responses to the cast. (Clapping, cat-calls, boos)
4 ) The moderator asked the crowd afterwards if they were being too hard on Palin. The entire crowd yelled out "no".

I'm using part-to-whole logic here, but this experience really makes it hard to beleive that the rest of NPR is un-biased.

If the people that listen to NPR are mostly liberal, than you can understand why the NPR managers would want to give them more "liberal" programming: It's what their listeners want.