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Some have entire programs: check out http://www.offshore.com.ai/arms-trafficker/rsa2d.h tml

more interesting factoids at http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/stack.html

Maybe you could ask your chiefs to release more technical details, especially on the drive system and the autonomous waypoint navigation.

Unfortunately no can do... all that stuff is ITAR sensitive.

It makes a lot of what we do very difficult (some would say unnecessarily so) and keeps us from sharing some of the most awesome details with the public at large.

This is the same treaty that limits the export of strong crypto, and has experienced so much resistence from geeks around the country that there is a civil disobedence process that has been going on online. I'm not advocating this but I find it interesting that people are willing to be "arms traffickers" to stop this kind of law.

So if you want more details, you're going to have to ask your politician for it, because unfortunately it can't come from us :(.

*NOTE: This post is not a criticsm of government policies and does not in any way reflect NASA opinions, only publically stated policy.

Cheers,
Justin Wick

Mars Exploration Rovers

P.S. Good luck with your robot. I'm thinking about making my own rover sometime... hmm...

also thanks to ITAR its illegal to bring it in or out actually....

Become an International Arms Trafficing criminal and tell the US government that ITAR is wrong

1) Get a Palm SSH client.
2) Get a Palm VPN client and a Palm VNC client.
3) THis is the trickyish part. The best you can do for low-cost is have SMS_Biffsend you an SMS every time you get an e-mail. The cool part is, there's a program out there that will monitor your incoming SMS messages and do something based on the contents. Basically you could set it up so as soon as you get the SMS notification (usually within a matter of seconds), it pulls down your mail, so you'd have it from within a minute or two of when it hits your inbox.

I have a Treo 300, and I use SSH via Top Gun SSH.

I check email using Eudora. No, it won't push it, but you can run Eudora and check email just like you would on your desktop. There are also several other email clients available for the Treo.

The Treo 300 is a great device, and from what I've seen of the 600, it's even better. I will be upgrading. :)

I have a Treo 270 using a GPRS network, allowing for near ISDN speeds for network connections. Like other users that have posted, i regularly use a combination of TopGun SSH and Mergic VPN for getting into my corporate network when away from a computer.

From my experience, due to limited screen real estate, it's really hard to do very complex actions via this combination. However, in a pinch,
you can access a mission critical box and perform a restart of a service. With praticalities aside though, it's super cool to have this type of power in the palm of your hand (no pun intended).

I've also used VNC for the Treo using the same VPN tunneling and it's very hard to use due to bandwith restrictions.

I'v been running TopGun SSH for years on my 3Com Palm Pilot. Originally, I ran it over CDPD with a Minstrel, although entering shell commands via Grafiti was painful. With my Treo 300, I now have a "real" keyboard and unlimited data so I can use it without worrying about how many packets are sent back and forth.

Palm VNC client and TopGun SSH are a bit of a strain on the phone's CPU, but still usable -- even over a dialup connection. It comes in handy if I need to access my servers when I'm away from my desk.

There's always TopGunSSH . Its a old-school Palm SSH program, so you can get the command line on Palm. When I connect to my Mac OS X box with it (over TCP/IP mind you, though i think it can still do serial communication. Check out TopGunTelnet for pure-serial emulation.), tcsh by default has problems, most noticeably it seems to not to be able to run Pico or Vi (let alone Emacs).
I havn't messed around with it enough; i've only used it in cases where i need to a little command line hacking from my Treo.

Handspring is rumored to have a new device coming out RSN. It's supposed to be smaller than the old style Treo devices. Since it's been said that it runs Palm OS 5, that would mean that it can run Top Gun SSH, though that only supports ssh version 1.

It has a thumb keyboard, but I'd rather Graffiti my way in.

Until they have SSH clients and proper wireless access, the point is moot anyway.

Huh? how many SSH clients do you need?

It isn't enough that the offer GSM, CDMA, Bluetooth, and 802.11? What other form of wireless are you looking for -- telepathy?

Also, check out Top Gun SSH for Palm OS.

I have a Handspring Treo that I really get a kick out of. It works as a regular (although larger) flip phone when I need a phone, and as a PDA when I need a PDA. Today I was waiting at the salon to get my hair done, and while I was waiting, I was surfing Google and trying to find a good software package for one of my clients.

The Treo has AIM/Yahoo/MSN support thanks to VeriChat, which I highly recommend. I also use Top Gun SSH to SSH into my servers from anywhere.

Treo Central is the hookup for new software, and is also a good site for ringtones (if you're into them -- I like the wide selection of ringtones that come by default.)

Also, PalmNet lets you connect your Treo to your laptop and get 10K/sec Internet access wherever you can find a Sprint PCS connection.

All in all, if you need more than just a phone, the Treo is a winner. If you want just a phone, get just a phone... but even my boyfriend, who has one of those LG phones that you get for free with Verizon, gets jealous of me surfing around the Internet, playing games, and chatting when we're waiting in line for something.

The Treo is $149 right now. If you are a current Sprint PCS customer and you sign another 1-year Advantage agreement, you may be able to receive a service credit. I got a $200 credit [4 1/2 months free] just for signing up for another year, but I had to negotiate heavily.

Hope this helps...

There are already several remote access solutions for PDA users. Best of all they're freeware and cross platform.

Using the VNC graphical protocol (servers for Linux, Solaris, Windows, Mac, Dec Alpha):

• PalmVNC for Palm OS.
• VNC Viewer for PocketPC (a version for Windows CE is also available on the official site.

Text remote access using SSH (which may be all you need if you want access to the command line and to, for example, send/read email with something like PINE):

• Top Gun SSH for Palm OS.
• SSH (port of BSD SSH) for the PocketPC (aka: Windows CE).

You should know this before buying an expensive commercial solution that may not be what you really want. The only advantage the article's commercial solution is that I think VNC doesn't include encryption by default (although I bet it wouldn't be difficult to add).

Top Gun SSH is open source, but it's for the Palm - I don't know if it'd be a good starting point for what you're looking for, but it works.

Because software is evil. Where have you been? Stand back as I release munitions from my brain to my fingers and into vi, which then goes into gcc and reveals great desctructive powers! Behold the bits that are evil! In short time I shall destroy commerce and freedom! I am the ultimate terrorist -- I can code!

If you're lazy, you can illegally export munitions simply by clicking the submit button on this page.

SSH client (SSH v1 only, unfortunatly): Top Gun SSH

There's no terminal services client that I know of, but there *is* a VNC client

Provided you don't mind Sprint PCS (I don't).

You have to pay the cost of a service plan, but Sprint is offering such plans that include unlimited after-hours voice and unlimited data for $40 a month.

Yes, by default mail must be routed through their equipment. But likely for mass-market easy use. You're quite free to install your own software that can do anything you want.

You can install your own stuff onto the regular phones if you do a bit of hackery - but if you get a phone that is sufficiently advanced - a Palm (Handspring Treo) or PocketPC phone (Toshiba 2032), then you can load your own software easily. With the right software (eg Qualcom's Eudora) you can access whatever email you want - you can even SSH into remote computers from your phone (with Top Gun SSH).

Hell, Microsoft even has a *full* copy of Visual C++ for embedded devices (Pocket PC, Smartphone) available for download from their website - for free! Same is possible with Palm (although I've not done it). How's that for making your own wireless crap you to run on your phone!

I could do without the dropped calls,but my list is similar (plus SSH client, amortization calculator). I have been using a kyocera QCP 6035 Smartphone for over a year, and have enjoyed all of the above functionality. Its NOT just a phone, its a unified device which relieves me from carrying a laptop. Did I mention that it has an ssh client? I'll race you to the parking lot, and we'll see who can login to work first ;)

I understand the desire for mobile administration, however, I do not understand the desire to use AIM as the carrier.

I have a Handspring Visor with a Visorphone attachment. In conjunction with a dial-in ISP, I can obtain a nice little internet connection. Now that I'm online with my Visor, I can use the spiffy little Palm OS SSH client. It's a breeze to setup and would provide you with a *cough* secure hand-held remote administration tool. I've used it and it works great for commands and returns, and so-so for things like mutt and vi. For anything else, you have to play with your terminal modes on your *NIX box, though this is not a difficult task.

Hope this helps.

*cough*: 'secure' is a relative term here

There are alot of PalmOS applications that you will find on the net that will turn your palm/visor into a little workstation.

lftp- Ftp client for the palm.
Torpedo - html editor (use lftp to upload these pages)
mMail - the best pop3 email client for the palm
ptelnet - telnet client
PalmIRC - Palm irc client
TopGun ssh - ssh client
Palm httpd - httpd for palm

There is a large number of palm apps at http://palmgear.com if you are in search of some.

Visorcentral.com has alot of good info regarding handspring visors.

Consider this a plug for Vince Cate and Offshore Information Services. For a reasonable price, he'll run your webserver and set up your anonymous Anguilla corp. You have to comply by his TOS, but that should be pretty easy if you're not planning to host pr0n or defraud people.

(Disclaimer: Vince is a friend of a friend, so I'm not entirely free of bias here. He renounced his US citizenship a few years ago to make all this easier, which was deemed sufficiently noteworthy that the New York Times ran a piece about it.)

..unsustainable! Intelligence is likely route around it.. Vince Cate has a lot of info on this overall thread:

"The IRS says that a US citizen who is out of the country for 330 days or more of the year does not owe any taxes on his first $70,000 earned outside the country. Clearly, you want to incorporate your business in some tax haven country and pay yourself less than $70,000 per year. By doing this, you can then travel around as a "PT" and legally avoid taxes."

"The consumer gets the best deal in terms of products, service, and price when there is competition. If people move freely between countries, governments that do not provide good service at a reasonable price will loose people to those that do. Countries will start to compete for people, or they will loose people. This will make governments provide better services with less taxes. Governments will have to be more efficient."

No, in the Commonwealth, we are a Commonwealth of the US. Civil disobedience is the best way to get this law overturned I would say. Have everyone on /. and a few other places export a single line of code with the number of the line in the subject header to be rebuilt by a script outside the country. Or just have everyone here export the code with a cc to president@whitehouse.gov. There is already a website somewhere (its several years old) that allows you to do that...http://online.offshore.com.ai/arms-t rafficker/.

Or anyone whose out there in the development of such software should simply leave the US and develop outside. I don't think anything would scare the US government more then a brain drain.