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GPS for Running
One of my goals is to eventually run a marathon (not sure if this will ever happen). In my reading today, I came across a press release from Garmin announcing Mac OS X support for their products. This is pretty cool and as I was reading about their support for the Forerunner 305 training GPS, I said to myself, I have to have one of those. It's pricing ($350 on Amazon), but combined with their web site, you can overlay maps, elevation data, heart rate information, etc. Once they have OS X software, this will be killer. However, in the meantime I think it will be a decent device even if I have to hook it to my Windows box.
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Religious radicals
I'm amazed at how some people interpret religion in such a way that they believe that others should die. No, I'm not talking about conservative Christians, I'm talking about Islamic fundamentalists. I'm just not sure how being a suicide bomber helps your cause or gets you to a higher place. It is my hope that all religions value life; it is just that some extremists think that others need to die in order for them to be better people. The recent win of the Hamas party is extremely frightening as they believe in the destruction of Israel where Israel is trying to make peace and is giving up land to that end. Everyone has the right, in my opinion, to practice their own religion, but I think that this can be accomplished without others having to be killed. In the words of the great Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"
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Nickel and dimed by Sprint
I got my latest Sprint bill today and noticed it was a little higher than normal. Turns out that Sprint charged me $18 to switch handsets; this is after I paid them $350 for the new handset! Do they not get it? On other carriers such as T-Mobile and Cingular, you can pull the SIM out of one phone and put it in another...you don't even have to tell them. They don't even have to know about the change as you do it yourself. Since Sprint and Verizon don't use SIMs (or the CDMA equivalent which didn't take off), I am forced to talk to a human to change phones; Sprint used to have the ability to do it online, but they scrapped that probably so that they could try to sell you something else while you're switching handsets. Cingular is looking better and better everyday.
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Stupid Patents (including software patents)
Today I read that Cingular has patented a way of generating an Emoticon (smilies, etc.). This seems insane that a patent be granted on something that has been in use for years. Cingular may have put a slight spin on it, but the Patent and Trademark Office doesn't seem to have a clue about what constitutes a new idea. Speaking of patents, I'm not a fan of software patents as a simple idea that a developer codes up one day thinking that he is clever only to find out that he has violated a patent. If I patented every idea I came up with when writing code, I would never have time to actually write code as I solve problems and it really doesn't matter how I do it in code, so I use lots of different techniques in order to get the job done. Hopefully the Patent and Trademark Office will learn to only patent really clever ideas and not stuff made up to extort money from others.