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Epic Games is behind North Dakota’s anti-App Store bill
Lobbyists working for Epic Games are behind North Dakota's anti-App Store bill.
Tracking down unexpected sources of light pollution
Light pollution is the bane of stargazers, which is why you need to get out of the city to make the best use of your telescope. However, even in the middle of nowhere, your observations might still be disrupted by stray light sources. That prompted a budding astronomer, Alex Altair, to investigate exactly what was producing US light pollution in places with nary a city or town in sight.
North Dakota cops will be first in nation to use weaponized drones
North Dakota's Bill 1328 was supposed to be cut and dry. "In my opinion there should be a nice, red line: drones should not be weaponized. Period," Rep. Rick Becker (R-Bismarck), the bill's original sponsor, told a committee hearing back in March, per The Daily Beast. That was going to happen too, at least until an industry lobbying firm got involved. Now, law enforcement agencies in North Dakota are legally allowed to arm their UAVs with any manner of weapons, so long as they aren't "lethal".
Verizon finally introduces iPhone to areas with no AT&T coverage
Up until yesterday, mobile phone customers in vast parts of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, and Nebraska had no way to get an iPhone. Why? There simply wasn't any AT&T coverage in these areas, so the customers -- who were mostly on Verizon -- had no access to the popular smartphone. The addition of Verizon as a U.S. carrier opened up doors for a lot of potential iPhone owners, and it appears that many formerly iPhone-less Verizon customers are now embracing the Apple mobile phone. According to an AP news report carried in the Huffington Post, many Verizon stores opened early yesterday in flyover country and were greeted by enthusiastic groups of buyers. While crowds weren't huge -- most Verizon store managers chalked that up to the freezing temperatures in most of this part of the country -- the stores reported brisk sales of the iPhone 4 during the day and many expected to run out of stock by the weekend. The AP report cited a 20 year-old woman in Fargo, North Dakota who said her Android-based Verizon phone had been the "next best thing in Fargo." The young woman blew her paycheck on the iPhone and said that she had been waiting "so long" for the iPhone to actually arrive in frigid Fargo. Welcome to the world of iPhone, Fargo!
Sprint losing on-network coverage in parts of Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming
If you're in the magnificent boondocks of North America and you're on Sprint, you're going to have to start to be a little more careful with your voice and data usage -- in fact, if you live in parts of North Dakota, Wyoming, or Montana, you might be forced to consider a carrier change on news that some swaths of on-network footprint are changing to roaming coverage on March 1st. The move is said to be a result of Verizon's divestiture of certain ex-Alltel markets to AT&T, and it means that if you're on Sprint and you use more than 800 voice minutes (or half your plan) in the new roaming areas in a month, the carrier's liable to suspend you; similarly, you won't be able to exceed 300MB of data. Certain device and plan features don't work in roaming areas, either -- Sprint details them on its FAQ page about the change -- so if you live in those parts, you might need to look at moving to greener pastures. [Thanks, Kenneth L.]
Amazon ranks Call of Duty-est towns in America, large dining utensils in the lead
Grand Forks, North Dakota is a small city with a population just over 51,000 -- a large portion of which are students at the University of North Dakota -- that's tucked within a much larger rural portion of the state. It's not the first city to come to mind when you think of prestigious national honors in the technology sector. However, according to online retailer Amazon, which has been vigilantly tracking the geographic location of Modern Warfare 2 pre-orderers, it's currently the Call of Duty-est town in America. Amazon will continue to rank American cities based on per capita Modern Warfare 2 pre-orders until the game is released, and has agreed to ship a $5,000 gift card to a charity of its choosing which serves the winning town. We hope Grand Forks manages to hold its top position in the rankings, if only because it desperately needs something to put on its city limits signs. You know, something more inspiring than "Welcome to Grand Forks: We've Got a Pretty Good College, Here, We Guess."
Cable One / Hoak Media strike retrans deal, get ABC and NBC back on the air
For Cable One users up in Fargo, North Dakota, you've been dealing without two of your badly-needed locals in high-def for some time now. Thankfully, the torture has come to an end, as both the cable carrier and Hoak Media Corporation have come to terms on a retransmission deal. The exact outlay wasn't disclosed, but Scott Geston, general manager for Cable One, was quoted as saying that it was "beneficial to both parties." At any rate, you folks now have your ABC and NBC back, so you should probably take the opportunity to resume your life as usual.
North Dakota students show off Mars spacesuit prototype
We had assumed that with all the robots being developed for deployment to Mars, the human astronauts would mostly be lounging around inside the comfort of their robot-built habitats and ordering drinks from their robot bartenders, but yesterday's unveiling of a prototype spacesuit for navigating the Martian terrain proves that manned missions might not be as cushy as we anticipated. The 50-pound suit (which they somehow got The Office's Steve Carell to model) was designed by students from five North Dakota colleges in a collaborative project funded by a $100,000 NASA grant, and includes at least three innovative technologies for which patents have been filed. Among the slew of sensors and communications gear designed for the harsh, low-gravity environment are oxygen and carbon dioxide detectors, GPS system, full suite of health monitors, shoulder mounted CCD cam, Bluetooth server to coordinate all the data, and a high-power transmitter for beaming info back to the mothership -- though curiously, there's no mention of an onboard weapons system that would be crucial for encounters with the occasional hostile Martian. Also, as the AP helpfully notes, even with all the research and design that went into this project, the forty-odd students seemed to neglect a key feature of any good full-body suit, which is an "escape hatch" for when the astronauts need to "jettison their waste."[Via futurismic and abc]
