Recent Comments:
BMW Concept X1 arrives early on web {Autoblog}
Oct 1st 2008 12:25AM "Hard core BMW fans only."
Not quite. BMW CCA member here, multiple BMW owner, and this ... thing ... is an insult to the brand. The last thing we need is another soft semi-ute. The X3 isn't even selling well so who will buy this thing? Posers. Daddy-bought-my-BMW sorority broads. Yecht.
Ultimate Driving Machine? Not quite. Not anymore. I'll stay with my old E30s, E36s, and E46s.
T-Mobile soft capping 3G data at 1GB per month {Engadget Mobile}
Sep 23rd 2008 9:08PM How can you POSSIBLY use that much data? I struggle to make it through the work day on a single battery charge with my moderate use, 3G off, wifi off, just using email and some things like Evernote, Loopt, weather, news (RSS), and normal phone usage. I do ~150MB/mo on the cellular network. How can you spend that much time away from a Wifi hotspot? How do you get the battery to work long enough to transfer that much data? It is painful for me to watch a single Youtube video over Edge or even 3G with the constantly buffering. And, I have 12GB of music on my iPhone to listen to so I don't need to stream Pandora. Your usage isn't anything remotely normal, or even sane.
T-Mobile soft capping 3G data at 1GB per month {Engadget Mobile}
Sep 23rd 2008 4:08PM I bought an iPhone 3G the week it launched. I just looked at my "Usage" screen and it shows I last reset the counters on 7/17/08, so this is 2 full months of data plus a couple of days. Guess how much data transfer I have used? 260 MEGABYTES downloaded, 41 MB uploaded. Maybe its because I have wifi at home and half-dozen computers at work and home so I don't stream music or watch video on the tiny little screen. I do use Apps when I'm on the go, especially sports scores and maps/GPS, but mainly its a push email device and a PHONE (replacing a Verizon Blackberry which replaced a Motorola Q which replaced a Treo -- and I never went over 100MB/month on those either)
I just can't see this being an issue, since the G1 includes wifi. Who wants to transfer gigabytes of data over a wireless connection? I have a laptop 3G data card and I probably don't go over a couple GB/month using it frequently. I just really have to question how you use that much data over a smartphone, unless you're doing something stupid (and laptop tethering doesn't count, because it isn't allowed on either the iPhone or the G1) - the average user (and I'm definitely more of a power user) will never touch 1GB per month, and the abusers of the service are the same ones that complain about how expensive their data plan is. I'm paying for the Enterprise data plan (with a heavy corporate discount), so I don't want to hear it.
T-mobile has cheap, CHEAP service and is consumer oriented. For the bargain prices they offer, 1GB is reasonable. If you use more, pay more.
AT&T now hawking iPhone 3Gs online to biz customers {Engadget Mobile}
Aug 14th 2008 1:50PM Absolutely not news. I ordered mine on July 11 (launch day) from AT&T Premier online - 1 8GB and 1 16GB black models, they arrived via FedEx overnight.
Report: Ferrari wants Alonso and Kubica for 2010 {Autoblog}
Aug 14th 2008 10:45AM No. Ferrari CANNOT have Kubica. I simply won't allow it. Kubica is a fan favorite at BMW and good for the team, and a good driver like him encourages the team to build a better car to keep their driver at the sharp end.
I'm a huge BMW Sauber fan and a huge Kubica fan, so I don't want him to go join those tifosi wankers from Italy!
Roger Goldammer: Official World Champion of Custom Bike Building {Autoblog}
Aug 9th 2008 5:59PM That is very much an awesome bike. Looks old school and futuristic at the same time.
Put it into production for a reasonable price and I'll buy one!
Tether your iPhone, wirelessly. Maybe. (updated with video) {Engadget Mobile}
Aug 1st 2008 11:54AM From the video "Only Safari works, Firefox doesn't work" -- actually it would but you have to manually edit the proxy information in Firefox. Safari uses the settings from the OS, but Firefox uses its own settings. If you put in the same proxy info into FF, it should work. Of course then you have to disable it again when you connect to another network, so its a hassle.
I gave up on tethering anyway and just bought an aircard for my laptop...
Craigslist Find of the Day: "Boss" Audi A4 Avant {Autoblog}
Jul 31st 2008 3:45PM Its a rad rod Audi!
I actually like it ... except for the rear bumper which rather belongs on a pirate ship.
I think I saw that car on the hoodride site a LONG time ago, or maybe it was a VW wagon with the rusty hood. I'm strangely attracted to it... My track rat E36 BMW was going that direction (not necessarily on purpose) until a deer completely took care of it at high speed.
Nissan offering buyouts to Tennessee workers {Autoblog}
Jul 30th 2008 11:20PM Granted that a lot of the employees at these plants have done nothing but build Nissans since high school, some of them may have limited marketable skills to transition, but I think Nissan is offering enough time and money to allow at least time to get a quick technical degree if not finish up college for those that had started.
I worked in Systems Maintenance through a contractor at Decherd up until last fall when I migrated myself to AL and took a job more suited to my IT background, so I know a lot of the guys affected by this. A good friend from high school that has been at Decherd's Nissan plant for several years called me this afternoon as soon as his shift ended to tell me about it. I think he'll probably take the buy out and finish up his degree, but some of these guys are making 50-60k or more as line workers -- that can be hard to match in middle TN even as a professional, much less a blue collar job. Time to move to Nashville or Huntsville for a lot of them I think. Overall the buyout offer is more than fair and much more lucrative than the one previously offered while I was still at the plant.
AT&T tells the FCC it'll cut off wireless P2P users {Engadget Mobile}
Jul 30th 2008 3:17PM My reading of my wireless contracts on both AT&T and Verizon appear to indicate that ANY "streaming media" is explicitly disallowed, as well as P2P. I'm not sure how Pandora is getting around that, other than the fact that you can't really use it on the iPhone for an extended period (it doesn't run in the background like the iPod app)
As much as I'm against ISP's monitoring and filtering and terminating service, the ONLY case where I can somewhat empathize is with cellular providers, because they clearly have underbuild and oversold their data capacities and its just not meant for extended or "primary" internet connections. Getting Exchange mail pushed to your smartphone or using the aircard to check email and download a document from the office is one thing, but BitTorrent on a cellular data connection? Why would you even want to do that?!? If I need to download something, I'll find a wifi spot or just wait till I get to the home/office/hotel to suck bandwidth.
