VoIP quality -- 911 reliability (Bill Horne)

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Bill Horne writes:
>   B. Coupled with the shift to wireless, the Cellcos are trying to avoid
>       - or at least delay for yet-another-fiscal-year - any added invest-
>      ments in E911. However, since they're still tied to Ma Bell's old
>      methods - but not its unionized workforce - they are schizophrenic
>      about the best way to avoid paying for it. GPS is nice in theory,
>      but terrible in fact, with all the other players pushing back -
>      hard - to try to avoid shouldering any more of the cost.

Amen.  Has anyone who has ever pushed for GPS-enabled devices ever actually
used one?  The technology is not ready for prime-time, at all.  You can take a
$400 Garmin handheld out into the woods on a cloudy day and not get enough of
a signal to track your hike.

There's that local case of a lady who died of an asthma attack after the fancy
new E-911 system failed to report her address.  That had nothing to do with
the limitations of GPS, but it does highlight how society gets royally pissed
off and disappointed whenever a company blows a wad of money on new technology
that doesn't work.

Now they expect a $40 add-on to a cell-phone to work better than a $400
handheld, well enough to make sure no old ladies die of a heart attack without
getting a fast ambulance dispatch.  It boggles my mind.

Two other applications are worth mentioning:  tracking vehicles (like snow
plows and school buses), and keeping sex offenders away from little kids. 
Vehicles operate outdoors without trees or tunnels above them too much of the
time, so GPS should work OK.  Sex offenders do their deeds indoors (most of
the time, I would guess) so seeing officials blow my tax dollars in a futile
attempt to track crooks offends *me*.

Back to Linux... still fine-tuning email servers, SQL tricks, figuring out
TLS, SPF, DomainKeys, etc.

-rich