Actually, about one day in Iraq at the peak of the war. Closer to 2 days in Iraq now.

I think AT&T's network issues must be highly localized in the northeast, because I've been an AT&T user since before they were using GSM, and I've never had an unexplainable dropped call anywhere I've traveled. My cell is and has always been my only phone; I don't have a landline. However, I keep hearing about all these dropped calls on AT&T.

Sure, if I'm way out in the woods and I lose signal, it drops. If I go through a deep tunnel and lose signal, it drops. But if I've got signal, the call goes through and the line stays open.

I've never used anything but a free-with-contract handset with the service, either. I HAVE developed a deep loathing for LG handsets, though. My first 3g handset was a free Cu575 that was absolute shit - laggy buggy interface, OS crashes, strange "call failed" messages, etc.. I actually went back to using my old 2g Motorola rather than wait out the 2 year contract with that thing. I could not replace it fast enough when the contract expired. My fiance had similar problems on her Verizon LG handset.

I've primarily used my phone in Seattle.

According to the linked PDF from the FTC, about 2,500 of the 35,000 made enough payments to get a computer.

This form of financing is actually legit, and a common practice. It's been dying out as credit got cheaper and easier to get, but has been starting to make a comeback recently.

The scam part is where they didn't actually send out the computer after the 13th payment. And the part where they charge thousands of dollars for a bottom-of-the-line dell.

Of course, it's foolish to get a computer on layaway - by the time you've made the payments and recieved the computer, it's probably outdated. Not like a vacuum cleaner or something.

Having worked in retail and foodservice industry, I hate checks. I'm flabbergasted that any retail outlets still take them.

The rate of fraudulent checks accepted at retail is astronomical; in foodservice it's even worse. The last check-accepting restaurant I worked at that had nearly a 50% rate of fraud on them; mostly from checks being written against closed accounts. The vast majority of these bad checks we never saw a cent from.

The corporate office required that we accept checks as a form of payment; they were located in some rural ghost town, where debit card use still hasn't caught on, and set national policy based on that. In a modern urban area, Visa/MC logo'd debit cards have all but replaced paper checks, and the only people who still use them are the fraudsters.

Checks are terrible, for both those using them and those accepting them.

Because it would also require them to insure the sick. It would end lifetime benefit caps, too. Go ahead and get cancer right now, then see how fast you hit the lifetime cap on your insurance policy. If you're lucky it might take a few years. If your unlucky, they'll just drop your coverage before you can start racking up the bills.

Insurance companies discovered a long time ago that their product is only profitable to sell if they target the healthy and exclude the sick.

Or one of the unwashed masses who is not a radio enthusiast, and only owns a CB radio for emergency purposes. Many people purchase handheld CB's just so they can call for help on channel 9 in an emergency.

You are assuming that the oil company executives do not believe their own propaganda about how oil will never run out.

Given their recent behavior, and the ultra-slim portion of their R&D budgets that goes into green fuel, I'm starting to fear that they believe their own bullshit.

moot has posted the details on status.4chan.org.

Basically he confirms all the speculation that AT&T blocked 4chan because of ACK bouncebacks from a DDOS. Real /b/tards probably already had off-network proxies at the ready to deal with it.

Also, being on AT&T and unable to access 4chan doesn't necessarily mean that it's been blocked. 4chan is up and down all the time, because they're under constant DDOS attacks, at pretty much all times, from various sources. It seems that DDOSing 4chan is a basic holding pattern for botnets that aren't otherwise occupied.

IIRC, Google doesn't use top-end "server" chips in their servers. They use consumer grade, midrange chips that they can get at cheap commodity prices, and load balance everything across a ton of machines.

He implies the problems are due to Intel and AMD not delivering with their server chips; these are not the chips that Google is using.

In the automotive industry, where they have been dealing with 12vdc power in long cable runs for a century, they have dealt with that by having the voltage regulator sense and adjust the voltage based on reading taken at the largest load, rather than at the source. Thus the voltage drop in long, thin cable runs is automatically compensated for. The alternator just puts out more voltage.

Here in the US, public schools are typically surrounded by barbed wire, and not a small number have metal detectors at the doors. There's typically even a local police officer patrolling the halls in addition to the hired security.

The general perception of a school in the US as a locked-down secure facility really blurs the line. "Reasonable" persons have a completely different frame of reference over here than they do over there..

Or are your schools just as fucked up as ours? If they are, my hypothesis is totally wrong.

And they both cost <$5 to produce.

I remember when people with Fords were hacking the "proprietary" OBD-1 service connector on the newfangled fuel injected cars with the EEC-IV.

People just jammed jumpers and multimeters in the connectors and figured out how to make it output the codes.

Of course, it helped that the super-secret Ford diagnostic tool was a push button connected to two pins, and a lamp connected to the another two pins. Service technicians pushed the button, and counted the flashes.

Of course, Ford didn't raise a stink when people published instructions on how to read the codes without buying the tool. And third parties make boxes that just display the number, which Ford continues to allow.

But that may have simply been a marketing decision, made in a day when a lot of mechanics mistrusted electronic engine management. However, nowadays it's an assumption; no one wants to go back to fiddling with carburetors and distributors. Manufacturers can start to lock them down and try to wrangle more money from the independent mechanics.

If the mix is rich, and the computer KNOWS that the mix is rich, that narrows it down quite a bit. Then the only possibilities are the airflow sensor, or possibly the fuel pressure regulator. (Of course, if it's a car without an airflow sensor, it could potentially be the throttle position sensor or maybe the manifold air pressure sensor. But most cars rely on a MAF sensor nowdays.)

If the mix is rich, and the computer claims "fuel mixture lean" or believes nothing at all is wrong, the problem is most likely the O2 sensor, and the computer is being fooled into enriching the mix.

I think the codes are quite useful. They let you know what the car is thinking.