Slashdot Mirror
The Grid, Our Cars, and the Net
Wired is running a piece on the big idea of Robin Chase — the founder of Zipcar — that we need to build our smart power grid on open standards and include cars as nodes in a mesh network. "'Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and tanks and airplanes are running around using mesh networks,' said Chase. 'It works, it's secure, it's robust. If a node or device disappears, the network just reroutes the data.' And, perhaps most important, it's in motion. ... Build a smart electrical grid that uses Internet protocols and puts a mesh network device in every structure that has an electric meter. Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform. Add a mesh router. A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network. It's cooperative gain gone national, gone mobile, gone open."
It is true. Phones are NEVER off, they are in sleep mode.
If by "sleep mode" you mean:
The most important bit there, of course, is "radio turned off". If the radio weren't off, your battery would go dead in a matter of days even when the phone is off, just as it does when the phone is on. It might last a couple days longer off than on, but that's all.
Since that doesn't happen -- turn the phone off with a full battery and turn it on a month later and you'll still have most of a full charge -- that means the radio is off. And if the radio is off, then the FBI can't send your phone any signals telling it to turn anything on.
The CPU being off and the RAM refresh off, by the way, are the reasons that when you turn your phone on it takes anywhere from 20 to 60 seconds to become functional. It's gotta boot.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.