I had spent the last three years fighting AT&T for its rotten coverage at my home, so I switched immediately to Verizon, only to get the same or worse coverage, even though I have line of sight to UTC here in San Diego (CDMA should rock that).

So courtesy of +Kevin Kelly ’s CoolTools (http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/005370.php), I heard about Wilson Electronic’s cell phone booster. First day of use, 0 dropped calls. Normal probability of dropped calls, >50%.

According to the product lit, I am right at the edge of max radiated power (30dbi) but then it’s up to the CDMA network to tell the phone to turn it down (which it does quite nicely).

Thanks +Kevin Kelly . You’ve always been a great asset to the tech community, and this is just another example.

(from The Inquirer via Boing Boing)

SGI – Press Releases: SGI Unveils Octane III Personal Supercomputer.

An $8000 box that exceeds the Crays, Big Blues, and all the other super iron of my misspent youth. Up to 80 cores, up to 1 terabyte of memory, this is the kind of hacking tool angels and miscreants dream about. The weather systems to model, passwords to crack (um, check for strength and advise owners of weaknesses), the stocks and bond prices to analyze, and network simulations to run. To say nothing of the rendering, shading, and world building this sucker could do.

Wow, we are past the edge and well into the world of Something Big.