Working for a home-builder using Motorola iDEN phones was a blast. Like OP, we played with the data in the field quite a bit, and ISTR it did require a DUN connection to work but it was rock-solid. Sprint screwed up our billing so badly after taking over Nextel that we wound up with two accounts -- one Nextel and one Sprint -- no longer with shared minutes or services even though we were promised that everything would remain under one account. The situation was so frustrating that the operations manager asked me to work on the issue. I wound up having several meetings with various carrier business sales teams, including the regional Sprint/Nextel reps who promised that within "a few more months" everything Sprint and Nextel would be fully combined, including plans and billing. I ended the Sprint/Nextel meeting within a few minutes and kicked them out of the office (diplomatically, of course) as I had told them we wanted to move to Exchange-compatible phones (ActiveSync) NOT BlackBerry (my exact words before the meeting were "If you come with just Blackberries, don't come at all") and they showed up with nothing but BlackBerry and another promise that we'd be able to get non-BlackBerry phones within "a few more months." (None of their promises ever amounted to anything for us.)

We couldn't wait "a few more months" so we moved people who didn't need PTT over to AT&T and just kept the Nextel service for builders in the field and their in-office managers who used the hell out of PTT. Within the year following that move we brought the builders over as well as our new building management system required Palms, while Sprint/Nextel continued to make promises of "a few more months."

The short, Sprint bungled the whole thing with Nextel so badly that we halved our account with them within four months (about 180 phones) then were completely moved off within 18 months. I have a similar story about Alltel and Verizon, but I'll save that for a "bad Verizon" story.

I recall that the EBS is to be retired from TV and radio, which are ubiquitous technologies, to cell phone communications, which are not. If that does happen then cell phones will become a safety necessity and more phones will have to be given out (subsidized.) More than likely, these won't be Android phones or iPhones but rather feature phones (which still exist in 2012 and still hold a large part of the market) which do not have full browsers built-in. To accommodate those phones and provide essential gubment services to the masses, the websites will have to offer mobile versions.

Then the masses will have quick access to features such as flag@whitehouse.gov and so on.

Thanks. That was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

That's fine. I have no love for cable TV or Internet service, let alone ComCast. I haven't had cable services for almost a half-decade and I don't miss them a bit. If Hulu adopts this measure I will just stop consuming content altogether, since Hulu is my exclusive source.

Hey, content-producer-tards! And especially ComCrap! You want people to pirate your shows and movies, you keep losing money and make more and more people hate you because of your carpet-bomb infringement lawsuits? Keep this shit up.

I'm RELIEVED to know that new systems are using XP. I can't tell you how many systems I run across still running 2000. Make me think, though, that since the Armageddon predicted over the deprecation of 2000 never materialized, perhaps we'll dodge the bullet with XP, as well.

Tried to make an acronym, but failed. My thought based upon the NASA study is, if failures could not be traced to the vehicle systems then the failure must be in the fleshy water bag behind the wheel. Given that, better training is in order.

For instance, I remember when I was about 10 my Dad installed a cruise control on our old beater station wagon. One day the chain connecting the actuator to the throttle somehow became stuck. ISTR that we we actually continuing to accelerate, as well, but that could just be a memory warped by age. In any case, my father performed a really revolutionary, non-computerized, non government-mandated action to mitigate this: he turned the ignition off. Sure, the power steering then became difficult to work, but we were able to coast off the highway and come to a stop by otherwise normal means.

I have kept that with me my entire life, and it's come in useful at least once for me: a stuck A/C open-throttle over-ride switch which prevented the throttle from returning to idle position, and another time which involved an accident and the memory is definitely warped by the situation.

Now, sudden accelerations are another point altogether, but the infrequency of those I feel do not merit a system which can not only fail and result in unintended consequences, but lend to the development of a false sense of security and a more hands-off approach to a very critical and practically dangerous activity.

Haven't looked back. After enrolling in the Hulu beta I just couldn't justify $65 per month for cable service when all I watched was History and Discovery and re-runs of "Law and Order." I don't do Netflix, and don't really have to since most of the shows I want to watch that aren't on Hulu are available directly from the producer websites. I even got to watch all five seasons of "Babylon 5" on The WB.

Not very. My Sony Ericsson "feature phone" has a built-in Facebook app that I've been trying to remove. When I have a text or media message to send to a contact, the first phuqn option in the "Send" menu is "To Facebook" or "To YouTube." Annoying as hell.

dd exists for Windows, too. And Amiga. And Atari. I think there's even a CP/M version out there.

This is the main reason I stay with XP x64. If Microsoft had not decided to give a big "fuck you" to people who would not move to Vista, it might be a bit easier for me to move from my current XP installation to 7. But as it stands I have a few choices: 1) upgrade to Vista then to 7; 2) purchase third-party software which exports the XP software and data then imports after a complete wipe and load of 7; 3) wipe and load 7 and manually reinstall software.

Secondarily is that I despise the 7 interface inherited from Vista. I do not like having to route through a phone tree to get to the advanced functions I want to use.

I would rather migrate to a different platform. I could run Solaris 10 on my machines or move to Mac. I don't like what seems to be a constantly shifting state of Linux desktops. I would be happy just to move back to my Amiga by way of MorphOS on a G4 or AROS on an x64 PC.

In the case of my customers, I have moved them to 7-64 as much as possible. It does work very well for them, and drivers are a snap for the most part. In some cases we had to upgrade a number of items, like scanners and printers, as drivers are simply not available. To be fair, a lot of that equipment is very old and, even though it worked, it was too old to be considered reliable for critical work -- mind you, I am not dealing with industrial hardware. Customers have taken very well to 7 over-all. All of the old software which will not run in 7 runs great in XP Mode, and I have been able to virtualize a Windows 98 and a DOS machine to continue running the VERY old software contained within which would not run in XP.

Facebook is, or rather people who use only Facebook are, nearly robbing me of my next high school reunion. I am not on Facebook and my reunion "committee" is solely using Facebook to disseminate information on the reunion, actually actively resisting other methods.

Ah, well, nice to see how little things change. Adult life is just as click-y as high school.

This. Encrypting email to those who don't know how to decrypt it is useless. And for those who do, email certificates in Outlook work just fine.

Although, while at a conference I came upon a really nice package call Encryptix (or Encryptics, can't recall which.) It packages up the email, including attachments, encrypts the package, then sends it as an attachment with a link to the viewer. It's trusted by government, so take that for what it's worth to you. And it's not free (yearly subscription, but reasonable) so take that for what it's worth to you.

Is PGP that easy these days? Haven't touched it in years due to reasons already mentioned.

> So, how soon will we start seeing other smartphone vendors bid for secure-communications-devices contracts?"

Was at the N.S.A. Trusted Computing Conference last month in Orlando. Saw at least one vendor with smart phones for secure use. I'm not going to dig out the paperwork to find names right now, but one company is offering secure and rugged phones. A lot of other interesting stuff there, as well -- multi-domain systems in the same box with full RF shielding between compartments, "cloud" printing for printing across domains, and a mess of other stuff.

> So, how soon will we start seeing other smartphone vendors bid for secure-communications-devices contracts?"

Was at the N.S.A. Trusted Computing Conference last month in Orlando. Saw at least one vendor with smart phones for secure use. I'm not going to dig out the paperwork to find names right now, but one company is offering secure and rugged phones. A lot of other interesting stuff there, as well -- multi-domain systems in the same box with full RF shielding between compartments, "cloud" printing for printing across domains, and a mess of other stuff.