There are many use cases where you want to change your CID -- for example, a doctor using their mobile phone to call a patient back, with the CID changed (spoofed) to show the clinic's primary phone number. And pretty much every Telehealth appointment.

The 902-928 ISM band is valuable radio spectrum and has $$$ written all over it. The FCC will auction it off to the highest bidder and leave a tiny sliver, say 902-906 MHz, for a semblance of backward compatibility with existing ISM users.

I wonder if the research paper was written by ChatGPT itself.

With the current obesity rates in the US around 42% and expected to rise to 50% in a decade or so, the problem will get much worse. Given the long timeframes for making new law regulating the seat sizes, and the even longer timeframe for implementation, I am not optimistic that we will get relief anytime soon.

Seriously, given how easy it is to get to the car's ECM, the lack of security, availability of information, and the technology, it is not surprising. A half-decent coder could probably put together the software that runs adequately on a raspberry pi, let alone a laptop -- and it would be much less conspicuous.

"The system almost doubles the number of flights that can be tracked and displayed to controllers."

Can the air traffic controllers sort them out on the display in real time?

A cheap and quick solution to keep the dust out would be to use a pantyhose on the keyboard -- does not reduce usability much and keeps most of the dust / sand particles out. --

Not all that funny. Actually, it does constitute willful interference if you are trying to tune a radio while transmitting a continuous carrier signal.

There are a number of good reasons why public agencies hesitate to upgrade. First, there are so many of them (agencies and radio systems) around. Yes, the systems are antiquated, and easy to listen or interject into, but given the many millions that are deployed out there, you will incur a huge cost for replacing the existing system. This is complicated by the fact that you often have to use a different frequency band altogether, which could require the use of new base stations, cabling, antennas, etc. If the frequencies are too far apart, you also have to replan your network to account for the gains from technology (channel planning, capacity considerations, network planning, other services you may want to add, etc.) and the losses from possibly moving to a higher frequency.

Second, you cannot compromise public safety during the transition period. This not only applies to the agency that is doing the upgrading, but also to all the others who rely on that agency to provide services. Finally, you have to contend with the chaos during the transition period, when you either have two, probably incompatible, systems in operation. There is also the problem of finding available spectrum and relocating existing users from that band you want to move into (This happened when cellular services were introduced in the US in early 90's and the existing terrestrial microwave links had to be relocated from the 2GHz band to the 6 GHz band).

Yes, many public systems live in the stone age, but it is not because they like living there. There are often very few paths available to modernize cleanly and efficiently without spending a lot of time and money and not risking public safety.

I use XP, Windows 7, and linux daily. I have to say that Windows 7 offers better usability than the other two. Having skipped Vista entirely, I won't miss it, but am thankful for the criticism it took to make Windows 7 better.

It has been mentioned before, but my vote goes to learning spoken Mandarin Chinese. I am fluent in four languages and speak a smattering of couple of others, but in my work as engineer and sometimes part of vendor qualifications/vendor audit teams/ a little Chinese goes a long way.

I learned Chinese and Spanish while commuting to work (45 min each way) with Pimsleur. You learn by listening and repeating phrases and it does not require you to be sitting at a computer.

xnok