Slashdot Mirror

I have only _once_ seen the aftermath of a police raid - on an apartment of a friend whose boyfriend alledgedly stole $50,000 from a bank with some other guys (turns out he did - but that isn't the point of the story).

In the kitchen, I had to replace all of the hinges on the cabinets, because the doors were ripped off! I can understand the police looking for the money or goods obtained with the money, but they don't have to destroy a house to do it.

In a raid dealing with computers and electronics, if you are smart, and are doing something that may be illegal, you better have the appropriate protections in place. I would personally booby trap the machine via an iButton, so that if they powered up without it, the drive could be wiped (and the iButton would be on me as a ring on my finger). Or maybe the iButton could store the key to unlock the file encryption I would be using. Or maybe it would keep the machine from exploding via a homemade pipebomb that would encase the hard drive (personally, I wouldn't use this last one, but I am sure someone out there would/could)...

Just some thoughts...

Although it runs Java instead of Linux, TINI (see http://www.ibutton.com/TINI/) is cheaper (US$50 vs US$175 for uClinux). Like the uClinux, it has a 10BT port and a serial port, but TINI also has other interfaces. For simple embedded tasks, TINI appears to be better suited, although perhaps not as flashy or trendy as uClinux.
Final TINI hardware is supposed to be shipping this week.
I have no connection to TINI or Dallas Semiconductor, except as an interested third party (and I'm not even a customer, although I probably will be, soon).
P.S. -- Sorry about the AC, but /. appears to have lost/mangled/given away my login. I can't login, mailpasswd sends nothing, and mail to slashdot is ignored. What's a poor peon to do?

Check out Dallas Semiconductor's TINI. I want the planned single-chip version in everything electronic that involves interaction. This and an IEEE 802.11 wireless ethernet transceiver will make X10 look terribly archaic.

No, it's called TINI, by Dallas Semiconductor. (the people who made those stupid I-Buttons)

Check out their site.

Dallas Semiconductor (the folks who make the Java ring) have a product called TINI that puts ethernet and Java into this form factor. (They're working on a single-chip version.)
--

Well, people have already mentioned ethernet addresses.

What about iButtons? My dad has a weather station based on Dallas Semiconductor's iButton/1wire technology, and he's quite impressed with its usability and nifty factor. What makes it so cool is that these little disposable gate-activated switches each have a unique 64-bit serial number.

What about - get this - automobiles? I mean, they have registration numbers on all the parts, including the onboard computer...

There's just whole bunches of stuff with serial numbers. I have no problem with serial numbers in my chips, even in the CPU; it takes software to broadcast/care about the serial number, and so I just won't run software that violates my privacy by doing that. I mean, plenty of other programs do that without serial numbers in the CPUs; I've seen SNES emulators which use lots of system characteristics to determine a serial number (which, of course, breaks it when you upgrade your memory or CPU or whatever). Motherboards have serial numbers as well, but people don't complain about that.
---