5:11 PM
http://www.asd-network.com/press_detail_B.asp?ID=23818&NID=284998
Fuel-cell powered UAV completed a record-long 23 hour, 17 minute flight:
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/pressRelease.php?Y=2009&R=99-09r
The Virtual Fence received a large amount of funding during the Bush Administration and was supposed to be completed by early 2009. Now, Boeing hopes to get it to work by 2016. Even worse than going way over budget, significantly underperforming, and being way behind schedule is that there have been 3,300 breaches in the border fence that uses plain old fencing, and each breach costs taxpayers about $1,300 to repair...that is a huge waste of money, but Boeing's SBINet isn't going to be ready anytime soon to replace it:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/virtual-fence-real-disaster/
Verizon and Sprint support the legislation that wants to ban texting or e-mailing while driving:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-supports-text-ban/2009-10-13?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal
Maria Shriver (wife of California's governor) has apparently been caught on film twice recently driving while talking into a cell phone she was holding...even though her husband signed the law banning that over a year ago:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/14/maria.shriver.cell.phone/index.html?eref=rss_latest
WalMart is launching an exclusive no-contract prepaid cellular service that provides unlimited voice, texting, and web access for $45 per month and a huge bucket of minutes/texts/web access for $30 per month. This service uses TracFone Wireless, which runs on Verizon's network:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/walmart-launch-straight-talk-exclusively-nationwide?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal
The BlackBerry Storm 2 will apparently be released this week and is getting a lot of praise for the improvements they have made since they released the first Storm:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/technology/companies/14rimm.html?_r=1&ref=technology
Apple is now shipping iPhones that are apparently jailbreak-proof:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/new-iphone-3gs-may-be-jailbreak-proof-871?source=IFWNLE_nlt_mobilehdwr_2009-10-14
Article about the problems that T-Mobile (with the Sidekick fiasco), Apple (Snow Leopard wiping out user data), and Facebook (losing about 150,000 user profiles) have had with data loss this week. Interesting theory about how a disgruntled employee (Microsoft laid off a batch of employees at its Danger subsidiary who was in charge of keeping the data safe) could have caused the Sidekick user data to be lost:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/2009-year-your-data-died-897?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2009-10-14
15-year-old boy was doused in rubbing alcohol and set on fire (he has burns over 80% of his body!) by 5 middle-school boys about his age who went to the same school as him. They apparently were upset about money owed for a video game and how the boy stopped them from stealing his father's bike...the boys look so young in the photos!
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/story/1281802.html