New codecs were developed for 3G service and *supposedly mobile calling has gotten better.

The GSM codec is AMR-WB and the CDMA codec is called EVRC-NW.
Some networks aren't going to switch over until LTE (aka real 4G) is fully deployed and it requires both ends of the call to support the codec.

YMMV

*depending on whether or not it's been enabled in your area/on your provider.

Oh, I bring that up everytime somebody says that term and applies it to a black man only. There are also plenty of brown skin there from India, pakistan, etc who have since moved to America. i.e. they are also African-American.

Personally, I am tired of it all. We are just Americans here.

Robert, That is all going to change in 2015. We have solar city on our house. I was gripping about the use of Chinese panels, and several of the engineers indicated that Solar City has been waiting for Solar to get cheap enough so that they can bring it in-house along with a large amount of automation.
BTW, when we buy our tesla (waiting to see the model X, and will then decide which), it will be integrated with the solar system so that if we lose electricity, then during the daytime, we will have 2-3 circuits on it, as well as charging the Tesla, and then at nighttime, it will borrow from the car. Pretty cool.
You will also like that SOlar City is going to expand beyond solar. They are going into energy, including geo-thermal.
In fact, I talked to one of their engineers about how to modify fracking to make it useful for geo-thermal. Basically, the standard approach is vertical down to the same levels within the reservoir, turn horizontal, frack and then pump it in. BUT, if you do not do a LARGE frack, and add one more line that goes down deeper (below the reservoir), frack that one hard, and then use that to force the oil/gas into the upper piping, you can use this once the well is dry, for geo-thermal. And the nice approach is that the collectors are not fracked hard, so it will not force other elements into the aquifers.

Regardless, one thing about Musk, that man is damn exciting.

What makes you think they want to ship it back north as a refined product?
The point of getting oil to the gulf is that the refined byproducts can easily be put on a boat to China.

Gas & Oil in the midwest is already cheaper than the national average, because they don't have any pipelines to move it somewhere with a higher profit margin.

Not only do the Chinese want it, they'll pay more for it than we will.
This isn't about the domestic priorities of the USA, it's about multinational oil companies trying to figure out where their next few decades of profits will come from.

OSC being a real player? Not even close. They own NO ip related to launching. And even in sats, they are only SO-SO.
To even think that they are a real player is a total joke.

Nope. He was born South African but he gave that up, since he really wanted to be an American.
He had Canadian, but I am not sure whether he gave that up.

Actually, Robber Barons of today would be GE, Comcast, IBM/MS, etc. NONE of them are good for America (or where they are moving to). And the Robber Barons of the past were Robber Barons because once they had monopolies, they threw their weight around and destroyed innovation. That, in no small part, lead to the great depression. Once sanity returned, they passed 3 important legislation:
1) regulate banks so that access to money was guaranteed, which CONgress destroyed.
2) disallow executives of public companies from owning stock in the company. That kept them from looking for short-term deals. This was killed by reagan, and is the at the core of offshoring important jobs.
3) disallowed monopolies since these destroyed innovative. Again, this was destroyed by reagan.

All 3 of these things need to be restored.

No, America is LOADED with forward thinkers. The problem is, that many of them step aside for MBA's to take over, who run for the SURE short-term dollar, rather than the LIKELY long-term dollars.

Yeah, since the neo-cons created tax benefits to send our manufacturing out of the nation, the MBA's have been doing that. Of course, those companies are being gutted by their host nations.
And you will note that SpaceX, Tesla, And Solar city have less than 10 MBA amongst the 3 companies. Does that tell you something?

IOW, these 3 companies will continue to exists for a LONG LONG time. Even now, Tesla is pulling battery manufacturing back to America and Solar City is getting ready to announce a NEW solar plant that will be heavily automated and cheaper costs than what China can produce.

First, quit thinking VASIMR. It will NEVER power ppl from one planet to another. The fact is, that it requires a lot of electricity and even with solar cells from 10 years out, or with nuke technology, the craft will be too heavy to carry ppl efficiently to another planet. Do note that VASIMR COULD work going towards the sun with solar, and it deliver cargo around as well.

Secondly, had you read the article, you would know that MCT is Mars Colonial Transport and supposedly will hold around 100 ppl. They will use raptor engines, though Musk is begging CONgress and Obama to restart NERVA.
Sadly, we have the neo-cons/tea* fighting against private space, and dems fighting against nuke engines. What a sad joke.

zero chance. Mars one is talking about putting individual dragons connecting together, on the surface. There is little chance of that really working for ppl and dealing with the constant radiation.
In addition, Mars one talks about sending 6 ppl at a time. SpaceX is doing 100 at a time.
What Mars one is, is a back-up plan IFF SpaceX fails. Otherwise, SpaceX will be on mars BEFORE Mars-one launches a mission with the robots (though they MIGHT be able to launch one or two exploratory missions.

Keep in mind that the Air France 447 flight was intact when it hit the ocean(in fact aside from the blocked pitot tubes the airplane was almost certainly completely functional). The events that led to the crash unfolded over several minutes, giving plenty of time for ACARS data to be transmitted. A sudden breakup of the plane would preclude any ACARS data indicating distress from being sent from the plane.

We do it now. What is NaN/NaN? NaN.

Why would you say that they are NOT viable? Seems like Tesla has proven that electricity is viable for cars, Burlington northern is converting their diesel engines to LNG, and I noticed that my WM garbage truck is now LNG. More importantly, businesses are screaming that NG is viable, and car owners are screaming for electric cars.

One warning: Unity, with the need to get the mouse into a very small strip down the left side of the screen to get to menus, is not at all "Parkinson's friendly." After several months of struggling with it, my older sister let me install Xfce on her Ubuntu desktop, and she's found it much easier. And, when she got a laptop, we started off with Xubuntu because we knew that was what she wanted. You may not find Xfce as comfortable as we do, (I use it on Fedora.) but if you're setting up a computer for somebody who has difficulties with small, precise hand motions, pick a DE that doesn't require them, and you'll all be better off.