For the love of all that is holy... why are we no longer allowed to know what we are hovering and what we are loading?
What a lovely "addition" and quite "progressive"... i'm all for progress, but come on people....

--ToO

We still have to bend over, take it, and say thank you to our local (well, heck... AT&T) phone companies for the PRIVILEGE of having 8megabit/s downstream....
Competition anyone? or are we just such mindless sheep that "it's good enough, 'cause my granddaddy only had the pony express"

Argh....

Empirical testing with wireless CELLULAR networks can be very tricky; A few things that you will need to keep in mind is that for testing, you want to make sure your transceiver setup is perfectly reproducable; Same card, same ANTENNA, same position of antenna. When performing your testing, your signal strength will depend on several factors: Distance from the site, antenna type/gain, and specifically what sector/node on the site you happen to be on. while driving in a straight line, you may find that you approach steep nulls near the border of a cells sector boundary. Alot depends on the ability of your particular card to handle the handoff between sectors/sites.

  Your latency measurements will also vary according to the individual usage of the sector/site that you are currently on, and additionally vary with time and also variable bandwidth allocation to the sites from the main switch.

There are quite a few test sets and software suited that are commercially available and are tailored for this use, and are used heavily by the mobile data/cellular industry in their drive testing and coverage verification methodologies.

Good luck to you on your testing.

--ToO

Ah, yes, but now, at least in the Great state of Mecklenburg (Charlotte...) they are again attempting to get the cameras re-instated... Their grand plan this time is to get around that pesky constitutionality issue by giving ALL of the money to the school system, and making the school system pay the fees back to the red-light camera company. But, hey, we're going to close schools, and cut teaching positions too.

--ToO

Is this where the obligatory "resistance is futile" line is supposed to go??

The homeowner didn't exactly invite the police by calling the fire department, but the docterine of
Exigent Circumstances govern this. When you call the fire department for a response, and your home or property is involved, the Fire Department becomes the owner of the involved property until such time as the last member of the department releases the property back to the owner. While it under the control of the Fire Authorities, they have the right to call any additional resources they deem necessary. While I am not in any way trying to blame this on the homeowner, it would have probably much simplified his situation if he had merely mentioned the fact that he had a basement chemistry lab. As a fire officer myself, if I was checking a structure for any additional hazards from an incident and came upon something like what was described, I certainly would be cautious. Had the owner mentioned what might be found, I would be considerably less concerned.

The age that we live in that has Methamphetamine labs being found in homes, hotel rooms, and car trunks has made all responders to emergency incidents much more skiddish about things that may have been commonplace years ago.

Again, I'm not attempting to place blame on the owner, but providing another point of view from someone who might have made a like decision to call other authorities.