USB FlashDrives The New PC?

olddotter writes "Yahoo has an article about how large capacity USB drives might be redefining the concept of the personal computer. The article is windows specific, but think knopix on a flash drive." From the article: "When you check into an average hotel room and find -- alongside the alarm clock, hair dryer and DVD player that once were bring-your-own items but now are as standard as the furniture -- a cheap PC for guests to plug into, as our truly personal computing environment travels with us."

Comments

Or you can go one better...

[Afecks]

...check out VirtualPrivacyMachine. DamnSmallLinux made completely anonymous with Tor.

I like this concept

[technoextreme]

I have always been fascinated by the programs that can boot off a flash drive because I don't own a computer yet. These programs are quite useful and so far I know of three. (Open Office, Mozilla, and an HTML editor) Does anyone else know what programs can be booted off such a drive?

Flash drives don't last forever

[heptapod]

They crap out after so many read/writes. If a company can make a better flash drive all the better.

Re:Flash drives don't last forever

[big daddy kane]

With a a proper and flash specific file system the write limit problem is almost non-existant. Wear leveling can allow the memory to last for years. One of the reasons for the semi-crappy performance/dependibility of these flash drives is because they use FAT over a flash translation layer, which uses more writes than nessesary and doesnt include wear leveling. A real flash filing system such as YAFFS is far more robust. The only problem is it requires support in the OS, which isn't included by default in any popular desktop operating system.

Re:USB would need a security layer.

[misleb]

Definitly the ideal would be to run the whole OS off the flash drive and have no storage or OS on the computer itself. Of course, this would currently only work with Linux (limited by Linux hardware support) and Macs. And Macs already have a good head start by being able to boot off of USB. And they don't generally have problems booting the same OS on different hardware. There are many modern PCs that cannot boot from a USB memory stick. And even if you could, we all know how picky Windows XP is about its hardware. I once wrote DamnSmallLinux and the Debian base installer to a USB stick hoping it woudl prove to be a universal recovery/install media. I was horribly disappinted to find that most of the PCs that I tried to boot just couldn't. They didn't have the option in the BIOS. Back to static data on CDs...

-matthew

Re:I'm confused

[NapalmMan]

USB Flash Drives don't mount like say, a CD would, meaning you can't autorun anything. I believe that's what this U3 Technology does, it more or less adds autorun capabilities to the drive. I learned this tidbit about Flash Drives when my roommate and I tried to build a USB Game Controller, with a drive with some games on it. The idea was: plug it in and go. Unfortunately, we had the wrong kind of USB drive.

Bad example

[Wudbaer]

You chose a really bad example up there ;-). At least in Europe fraud using manipulated or even completely bogus ATMs is not too infrequent according to police reports. Apparently there are a lot of mostly Eastern European gangs that either "enhance" real ATM systems with add-ons for the card reader and the keyboard that, while often not discernible on even closer inspection to the non-expert, can log the users PIN codes and grab the transmitted card data. Sometimes they even use complete real-looking fake-ATMs that trick you into entering your PIN and swallowing your ATM card afterwards. Until you have contacted the bank to get your card back from the presumed read ATM they are already spending your money using your real card and the PIN you gave them.

Re:Bad example

[ScrewMaster]

Here in the U.S. it isn't exactly common, but it has been shown that a convicted felon can not only buy a real ATM from its manufacturer but (contrary to statements made by the ABA) can even get connected to the banking network! There was an ATM ring operating out of New York that got busted last year: apparently they had several hundred ATM machines dotted around the city! They were smart about it: they would capture PIN and account numbers but would only suck a little money from each account now and then. Most people never noticed an occasion $3.95 charge .. probably figured it was some kind of bank fee. I guess they took in about 4.5 million before the cops took 'em down. Nobody knows how many similar groups there are. For my part, I only use ATMs that are from my bank: the offbrand ones I avoid.

Re:Or you can go one better...except gpl violation

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually took the time to mail the company and ask them about it. When you request the source code from them they simply order it from DamnSmallLinux and remail it to you. To get the source code for DSL you have to send them $7. VPM said that they never needed the source code because their modifications are only script based which come as source code itself. They don't keep a static copy to make duplicates of because DSL releases new versions randomly and they don't want to order a new copy everytime DSL releases a new version just to have the source on-hand.

Take a look at http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ damnsmall/GPL_Sources.txt

It's not VPM, it's DamnSmallLinux.org that is making the source code hard to get. The $10 VPM charges is $7 plus the cost of remailing the CDs which is $3 for postage and an envelope. So if you want to report anybody, report DSL. Or better yet send DSL an email and ask them why they are doing it.