I feel the same way. I am 40 and believe me it is a huge difference from even 35... In the past 5 years I have noticed many changes, not the least of which that my athletic endurance and strength have declined noticeably. It is also much much harder to keep weight off - MUCH harder.

I've always had good nutrition habits, and I honestly don't know what I could do without getting on drugs to make up for the loss...

I really don't want to be old, but I am sure attitudes change along with the body, even if they're lagging. My dad is 75 and still has a very active and full life, but just in different ways that he had in his younger years.

I hate the thought of being dependent upon others just as much as you, though, and honestly I can't understand why we don't accept allowing people to determine when they check out.

We could be having lavish parties and celebrating our lives with our loved ones and then take a nice, painless trip to the grave. Instead, we have to hide our emotional turmoil from those who love us, and ultimately go somewhere and take our own lives by monumental force, and put our loved ones through their own turmoil, and all because we have a big overbearing government that doesn't want to lose tax revenue.

And...

Any lobbyist or employee of a regulated firm cannot serve as a government regulator for 10 years after the last day on which they acted as a lobbyist or an employee of a regulated company.

I'm sure they're probably using Baofengs like everyone else who likes to freeband.

Packet radio is done every single day on HF on up. With APRS, you can get messages from one coast to the other and back again without any internet or phone connection.

If you DO have an Internet connection, http://www.aprs.fi/ even shows you where all of the beacons, digipeaters, and stations are at a given time, and allows you to see all of the packets that are sent.

I hate to say it, but I told you so. I said it then, and I'll say it now. The moment Obama appointed yet... another... lobbyist to head the FCC, one who spent years as a cable company and telecom lobbyist:

Net... Neutrality... Was DEAD... PERIOD.

Need I remind all of you Obama-lovers of this little tid bit from no other website but ethics.change.gov:

http://change.gov/agenda/ethic...

"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists â" and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."

-- Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA
November 10, 2007

I informed you thusly...

For accessing sequential data, serial interfaces do pretty well. You send an address once, and just keep on clocking out (or in) high speed serial data and the flash controller in the card increments the address automagically.

The problem comes with XIF implementations that are highly random, and change access addresses often. That is not fast on a serial flash where address setups take a long time.

There is actually no right of an accuser to remain anonymous in the United States. The 6th Amendment gives the right of the accused to confront his/her/its accuser in open court. "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." I would argue that the person who first provided "evidence" is a witness against, and must be produced by the State in open court. Of course, there is probably already SCOTUS precedent saying otherwise...

Congress can impeach Supreme Court justices just like they can impeach the President.

MicroSD uses a cheap n-wire serial interface. Embedded FLASH, especially that which is used for XIF, is parallel and much much faster, and more expensive owing to the larger packages with higher numbers of pins for parallel interfaces.

It's being sold direct by the Chinese manufacturer:

OnePlus
Unit B 9/F. Lockhart Centre
301-307 Lockhart Road Wanchai
Hong Kong Central
Hong Kong

Cutting out markups by US retailers can only lower the final consumer price. Units will ship directly from China most likely, and most US consumers will be surprised when they receive bills from the shipper for US Customs clearance. It's unlikely they will be able to get away with checking the "Gift" box on the customs forms for 10 million phones.

OnePlus
Unit B 9/F. Lockhart Centre
301-307 Lockhart Road Wanchai
Hong Kong Central
Hong Kong

I did the same thing. I cut the cord when I bought my first home, since at the time I couldn't afford the $200/month Comcast wanted for Cable, Internet, and Phone (which they all but demanded you bundle by charging twice as much for any one of them without the other two).

I got DSL from a CLEC (because you could still do that at the time) for $25/month, and got Fios internet-only when that came around about 5 years later.

I've moved since then, and I sold my TVs in the process. I don't have a TV in my house, now, and it has been absolutely liberating for the last 3 years.

Human beings are terrible at planning ahead. Just look at the financial condition of just about any modern nation. Knee deep in debt with only plans to spend more money without thinking about how to pay it off. It takes bankruptcy for them to change their ways.

Same goes for renewable energy - yeah there is some token adoption as long as it is heavily subsidized. It will take actual depletion of the current resource to drive full-scale adoption.

IPv4 is just another example of human-driven resource exhaustion with immense resistance to the future plan until the current resource is actually completely exhausted.