Comment Forced to sit with Bennett Haselton (Score 1) 349
KI
"I don't want cast aspersions unnecessarily on Abu Dubai — but they're not Canada," said Adams
I think you're okay... They'll both assume you must be talking about the other one.
I don't know what it is, but slashdot editors just LOVE the hell out of cell phone tracking. I mean, there has probably been a story or two on the subject before now:
http://slashdot.org/story/05/1...
http://slashdot.org/story/05/1...
http://slashdot.org/story/05/1...
http://slashdot.org/story/05/1...
http://slashdot.org/story/02/1...
http://slashdot.org/story/02/0...
http://slashdot.org/story/06/0...
http://slashdot.org/story/07/0...
http://slashdot.org/story/12/1...
http://slashdot.org/story/06/1...
http://slashdot.org/story/02/1...
Everyone go out and find all the cell phone tracking stories you can, and submit every one to
What are the odds your family isn't all on a single cellular carrier, making you unable to take advantage of such redundancy?
Verizon and Sprint are compatible, while AT&T and T-Mobile are compatible. And with them all switching to LTE, it's likely they will all be mutually compatible in a few more years, when manufacturers start selling multi-band LTE phones.
Most every post-paid cellular plan includes voice roaming. Even if you're not paying for roaming normally, when you dial 911, all restrictions are dropped, and your cell will connect to any available tower from any provider that it can.
Balloons cost a million to launch, and stay up a couple weeks. I could see drones having a real advantage. Then again, geostationary satellites have an even bigger advantage.
In FIOS areas, it's no longer possible to get a POTS landline. You can get a phone service over FIOS, but it's subject to wall-power being available, and you're using the same E-911 system as normal VoIP or cell phone services, anyhow. It's the FCC that's to blame for me not having a landline.
Also, there's no reason cellular 911 service shouldn't be ultra-reliable. There are 4 different nationwide carriers in the US. What are the odds that all 4 of them will have ALL their overlapping cell towers in an area knocked-out? That does happen, today, but ONLY because the FCC pussied-out on requiring them to have backup generators in each cell tower, and lets them just keep a few backup batteries in there for short power outages.
And if some event damages the fiber-optic line to my house, there's no chance I'm fixing it... At least with a cell phone I have the option of climbing onto higher-ground and trying to get a signal from a more remote tower, or even just SMS texting emergency services (coming real-soon-now) and hoping.
With ad-hoc WiFi in cell phones, people may soon be able to self-assemble into their own wireless network that spans whole cities, after a disaster knocks-out all other local service. Try that with your land-line.
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