This has nothing to do with phones, but I just posted a long rant about politics on a facebook thread and I want to preserve and share it. I was responding to a post, spurred by a discussion of the pledge of alligience, that said:

"Today's youth, has no appreciate of where we came from as a nation, or how to have pride in anything or how to respect anyone or anything. Not all of today's youth, but a vast majority that I see are like that, if and when I ever have kids I will be very, very strict as I was brought up. And I doubt that many schools make kids recite the pledge of allegiance for fear of someone sueing them, I blame the liberals for all of this, the state our country is in and the impression we give to other nations."

My response was:

Are you sure you aren't falling into the standard trap of "You kids of today -- when I was your age we walked five miles uphill in the snow to school"?

I think older people of EVERY generation throughout history have said that about the kids of their day, and especially about the clothing and music of the kids. With any sense of history and thought, you should realize that's what you are doing and think about this again with careful memory of what kids in YOUR day actually thought about. And I don't just mean the kids you knew personally, but kids all across the country. It dawns on me as I write this that the "you kids of today" syndrome comes from you knowing very few kids of your day in your own neighborhood when you were a kid, whereas today you travel and read the news and perhaps work with kids and therefore know, or know about, a far larger variety of kids of today.

What do you mean "where we came from as a nation"? Do you mean from the beginning, where only white land owners could vote, slavery was rampant, blacks were counted as 3/5ths of whites, genocide of the natives, etc.? I don't think a lot of that is stressed in history classes either now, or back when we were going to school. Actually more might be now, so maybe the kids of today might have a better sense of the truth of where we came from rather than the fiction.

Certainly the black kids of today have a good sense of how few generations they are removed from slavery, lynchings, not being allowed to vote in many places, separate schools, rampant discrimination in employment, etc. Keep in mind that the Rosa Parks incident and forced integration of schools were in the mid 1950's; not far back at all. With that in mind, in what year would you suppose black kids should have developed a sense of pride in this nation? I agree that by today they should, but not much earlier.

I have no idea what percentage of kids recite the Pledge, and I just don't see how that could possibly make any difference. If you think it's important, we should try to get statistics.

Are liberals to blame? Let's ignore the names of political parties because they have changed a lot, but talk about liberals vs. conservatives. Was it liberal or conservative to put an end to slavery? Was it liberal or conservative to get women the right to vote? Was it liberal or conservative to get blacks the right to vote and all the other civil rights laws? Was it liberal or conservative to get the Americans with Disabilities act for rights for the handicapped? I have friends who think that these advances were a bad idea. What do you think about them, and won't you agree that it was liberal forces that brought them about?

So what do you mean when you say you blame liberals for "all this"? Please define "this" and how liberals caused it.

As for the impression we give to other nations, ask absolutely anyone from any other nation and the bad impression they have of us lately was caused by George Bush. I don't think he was a liberal, although he did act like a total socialist when he handed billions of dollars from our treasury to bailout his buddies. You do remember that this happened during the Bush administration, don't you?

One other thought about those damn kids of today. In your day, there was a draft to get kids to fight in Vietnam. The kids of today are joining the military totally voluntarily to fight today's wars. Isn't that an advantage for the kids of today? Perhaps in your day they were too tired from all the hikes uphill in the snow.

I've had these two scanned pages on my hard drive for years and posted them today to show to a couple of people on twitter.  I later did a web search and found they are already posted elsewhere along with more info, so look at these pictures to get intrigued, and then click on the links for the story.  Note that this was done in 1930, took less than a month, and the building remained in service the entire time with all it's equipment and employees working!

Indiana Bell Building Move

Indiana Bell Telephone Building

Everyone is twittering and blogging today that Apple is making an exception for the Loopt app and will allow it to run in the background.  I think you are all wrong, and the app on your iPhone will have nothing to do with this.

Loopt didn't actually say the app will run in the background; all they announced at https://loopt.com/loopt/background/ was that your iPhone's location will be reported automatically from time to time.  This reporting will clearly not be done by your phone, but by AT&T based on triangulation of cell towers that see your phone.  From the FAQ:

Q: How accurate are the location updates and how often will they occur?
A: Location accuracy can vary from a few hundred yards to a few miles depending upon the distance to the nearest cell tower. Updates usually occur once every 1 to 2 hours.

If the location were coming from your phone with Loopt running in the background, then the accuracy would be far higher because Loopt uses the GPS, and I would imagine them letting you set the update time yourself, based on how often you want it to be vs. battery life.  Also if Loopt were allowed to run in the background, then this would be dependent on a new version of the iPhone OS, wouldn't it?  The announcement invites people to sign up for the service now, and doesn't mention needing to wait for 3.1.

So if the FAQ is correct about the accuracy, then there is no need for the app to run in the background because AT&T's servers can supply the location based on cell towers just as well as the app can.