You don't understand it, do you? If pirated MP3 were not available, iTunes would have sold it's 500 TRILLIONTH song last year. Not only that, but various other MP3 stores would sell a lot of music too. People would have bought every single track they (now) have downloaded for free, everyone would pay thousands of dollars each month for music (doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).
Same with games, if pirated copies were not available, then Sony would not need to shut down its CD factory, it would need to open a new one.
Also, now that it is possible to pirate PS3 games, nobody will be buying them, anybody actually buying a PS3 game is an illusion and does not really exist. After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.
That's why it's only a replacement for non-animated GIF. If you want everyone to see the animation, you would have to have both GIF and PNG or just GIF since it's supported in any browser.
Well, if somebody can inject whatever they want into the main bus of the car, I'd say it's a problem.
Also, not everything you listed depends on the car having a common bus for everything, for example - I could install the back-up camera in my car and it would not require rewiring the entire car to use a common bus for everything I could just run a video cable from the camera to some small LCD screen in my car and control it by connecting the camera to the back-up light. The frame of the car also does not depend on how the electrical signals are passed inside the car.
Also, if it is simpler to have a main bus instead of a lot of cables, how about firewalls? A computer network is also common for the entire building or whatever, but if the sysadmin does his job then somebody even with access to the LAN port cannot impersonate a server or some user. Why can the tire pressure sensor impersonate the airbag sensor (as in your example), when they should not have access to each other.
Also, my classic car was good enough 28 years ago when it was new and it is good enough now, while a 28 year old PC is crap now, why? Because the roads did not change much during that time. The speed limits were even lowered in some areas where I live (most notably the default speed limit in the city was lowered from 60km/h to 50km/h). OTOH, we are now using computers for things that not anybody could imagine in the past (nobody would have believed you if you told them that while the shiny new 286 is too slow for that, a few decades later people would be watching HD (higher resolution than on TV) videos on their computers over the internet and would not need to wait a few months for those videos to be downloaded).
The only problem with my car is that it is old, so some stuff rusts and so on, but that is not the problem with its design, after all, I doubt that many cars made in 2010 would be drivable in 2038.
The key has two independent RF behaviors. One is the active transmitter, which sends the ordinary "door lock" types of signals, and is not the issue here. The other acts like an RFID card. It is always on, passively looking for a signal from the car, at which point it will respond with its coded info. This signal must be responsive at all times when the car is operating, or otherwise the car thinks the key isn't present and shuts the engine off. A momentary switch will not work. It would have to be a toggle.
Simple - the RFID "switch" is actually two pieces of wire that are shorted when the key is inserted into ignition.
The convenient appeal of these keys is that you just keep it in your pocket or purse, and you don't have to touch it at all. If the driver's door RF reader senses the key, it unlocks the driver's door. If the start button is pressed, and the interior RF reader senses the key, it starts the motor. Flipping a switch on the remote would counter the ease of use, and would not be used by the general public who buy these cars. They would just leave it toggled on 100% of the time.
Well, it amazes me that people still drive cars - all that steering, braking, changing gears is much more inconvenient than putting the key into ignition and turning it. But yea, if you want your car to work without the key, then don't be surprised when it works without the key.
I would also suggest fingerprint authentication, but I guess that would also be even more inconvenient, since you would have to authorize everyone who should be able to drive the car.
That's exactly the kind of thinking that leads to security holes. If you assume they have no reason to be connected, you wouldn't suspect them. Yet they are both connected to the car's bus.
And that's stupid. My car does not have a bus and guess what, it works - the lights turn on when I switch them on, I can see the speed on my speedometer, I can also see the coolant temperature, oil pressure and fuel level too.
But what if there's a buffer overflow mistake in the tire pressure data RF receiver?
Maybe the manufacturer should test the software of the car just as well as they test the hardware (I mean the engine usually works OK without any "engine randomly blows up" bug).
There are from 50 to 70 tiny computers hanging off the bus interconnecting the computers on a modern car...
That's why I like my old car - it only has a few "computers" and most of them consist of a few transistors and electromechanical relays.
You can always leave your keys inside the car in a visible place so any thief can take them if he wants to.
As I said to almost everyone about the hidden button in my car (if you don't press it, the engine does not get fuel) - yes, a smart thief wold be able to figure it out (the car is old, it does not have complicated electronics), but some junkie or kid might not, which means that I have reduced the number of people who can steal my car. And even the smart thief (who would know how to find or bypass the button if he knew what he was looking for) may be fooled by the system to think that the car just does not start (car is old, stuff happens).
The attack concept was very simple: extend the range of the normal keyfob RF communications with a pair of radio repeaters, one of which is presented to the car as a surrogate, and the other is hidden near the victim's real key fob (perhaps a disguised repeater is hidden in their shopping cart while they were in a store.)
Low tech solution - put a switch on the key fob that disables the communications unless you press it. If the owner does not have a habit of constantly pressing the button then this sort of attack won't work.
And then some kid comes around and pops the locks by hacking a tire pressure monitor with an Arduino.
Why would a car lock and tire pressure monitor be connected in any way?
That's a stupid system, why would anyone design a system like that? It looks to me that it would be possible to fix the system by making the key send a signal only when someone is pressing a button on it. Then the key and the car can use whatever technology to prevent replay attack and relay attacks won't really work because if the owner is pressing the button then he most likely is near the car.
How about using an actual lock that you need to insert the key into, you know, like it is on older cars both to get into the car and for ignition. Sure, the thief can connect the wires to start the car, but it involves a bit more work, also, in the case of my car, the thief would also have to find and turn on some other switch (unofficial mod) to turn on the fuel.
If I was building a new computer today, I would probably use Windows 7, however, I built my computer in 2007 and at that time it was either XP or Vista, I chose XP. Now that I have it, Windows 7 is not that much better to justify spending so much time reinstalling Windows and all of my apps even if I downloaded a pirate copy.
SMS is reliable, well, at least to me all the time except a few hours around January 1st, 00:00 when everybody (including me) is DDoSing the cell network by sending "Happy New Year" messages to all of their friends. For the rest of the year SMS is very reliable (again, at least where I live, I do not know how it is in the US or some other country).
My phone can also use email, but email is worse than SMS, because I do not get instant notifications about the received message. I can set the phone to check the mailbox every so often, but it still is not instant like with SMS. I could use some app (gmail's app probably can do that) to always stay connected and notify me instantly, but that would drain the battery much faster than SMS. Combined with the fact that most of my friends do not have internet connection of their phones, do not have email set up for the phone or have phones that do not support email, SMS is better, even though it is more expensive.
Yes, just like hitting a target with a sniper rifle from 10km away. It probably is possible for a small number of individuals, but everyone else will fail.
Also, the "well, we can patch it later" idea makes the programmers debug less. On older devices, where the control software was in ROM (or (E)PROM, a bug in the software meant a costly reprogramming (and a PR hell, since those devices would be "broken" until the users brought them to a repair shop, if the repair (reprogramming) also cost money for the user, the opinion about the manufacturer wold take a big hit) or even the manufacture of a new ROM. Now that it is possible to update over the internet, the firmware became more buggy, I mean I do not need to update the firmware on my VCR or (CPU controlled) tape deck. Or even my old cellphone or PDA (closest thing to an actual computer).
Depends on other things at the time, what my salary would be, how much I'm driving etc. Currently, the price where I live is ~$6.26/gal (converted to USD and gallons) for gasoline.
Also, it would also depend on what the alternatives would be. I doubt that the price of electricity would stay the same for example.
The absolute limit would of course be the price of going by taxi. Taxi is more convenient than driving myself so there would be no point in driving if taxi was cheaper. I also think that there would be another, lower, limit where I would start trying to make my car use less fuel or trying to find a new car that uses less fuel and has the features I want. Then I would start dropping the features in favor of fuel efficiency.
However, energy efficiency is not my primary concern. I use a CRT monitor because I like its features, even if it uses more power. I use a dual socket desktop PC instead of a netbook again, because of the features (for example gaming). My portable music player is a cassette walkman even though it uses a bit more power (I guess) than a solid state player. The lamp in my room is incandescent because I like its color, even though it uses more power.
Yes, a car that burns more fuel will be more expensive to use, I know that. I also understand that an electric SUV will use more power than an electric small car and thus it will cost more to use. If I have the money, I think I should be able to pay for the fuel or electricity to drive the car that I want.
Now, if you want to say that the technology of electric cars is not there yet to make an electric SUV (or a car that does not look like a space pod) possible, I agree with you. Let's hope that the technology will be possible in time. Gasoline powered cars also sucked in the first decades.
Also, any new car (internal combustion or electric) is very expensive, if I have a working car (or one that can be easily repaired) I could buy a lot of fuel for it just on the price of the new car alone (and the new car will still need fuel or electricity (which is not free)).
For now, though, I will continue to use the car that I have and burn LPG and gasoline. Well, until the car wears out past the ability to repair it. Then I'll think about buying a used ~10 year old car (new cars are way too expensive), whatever energy source it happens to use and will choose it based on other features (looks, capacity, acceleration etc.) before thinking about the energy source.
Instead of making smaller and lighter cars, how about making an electric car that is as big as the gasoline or diesel powered cars and has a decent range?
My car was modified to burn LPG as well as gasoline (originally it was gasoline only), my experience in driving it did not change much (it's a bit more difficult to use LPG), however, I can use cheaper fuel now (where I live, LPG costs about half of what gasoline costs, so even though my car burns more of it, in the end it's still cheaper to use LPG), but I would not want a small car that looks like it was designed purely for aerodynamic properties and not aesthetics (I like corners). Even if my car ran on electricity, my experience with it would not change much (I guess) as long as it had a decent range (or could be recharged in a few minutes).
I'm sure that a lot of people would not about the internal workings of the car (how many people care whether the car has a carburetor is fuel injection just for the sake of the device, not the results of having it), so I think that people would not care that their SUV or the "chrome-plated luxury tank" runs on electricity instead of gasoline or diesel.
What you want is for me (and almost everybody else) to abandon whatever reasons I used to choose my car and get a car that you think will be better for me, or actually, it won't be better for me, but maybe better for the environment. I guess that you also want me to pay for it too.
I do not really care about boot time (after all, the phone does not turn on instantly too), however, software andoperating systems did get slower over time with not much improvement to justify the slowness.
For example, Windows Vista and 7 require much better hardware than Windows XP, but apart from the changes in GUI it's not much different. So, where do the clock cycles and memory go? Windows 2003 (fresh install) runs quite fast inside a VM on one of my PCs (3x Xeon 700MHz, 3GB RAM) with one CPU and 256-384MB RAM given to it. Windows 7 runs slow even with 1GB RAM given to it.
Over time, electronic devices got more power efficient, even for the same type of device (cell phone, amplifier). Also, in a device, you can usually tell where the power is wasted - some component gets hotter. OTOH, software over time gets less efficient and needs more processor power to do the same thing that the previous version did.
Hmm... Where I live (somewhere in Europe), the company that owns the underground channels must lease then at a price set by law to anyone who asks. A company that has a radio tower must allow other companies to place antennas on it (again, the price is set by law), so that different companies do not have to dig parallel channels or build separate towers within 200m of each other (like they were before that law was passed).
The result is that in a bigger city, especially if ou live in a multiple flat building (as opposed to a individual house) you have at least 3 options for wired internet connection - the telephone company (DSL or FTTH), some sort of LAN (Cat5 or fiber, may be more than one), the cable TV company (may be more than one, coax cable). You can also get your connection from one of the three cellphone providers (almost anywhere in the country) or the WiMAX provider (not everywhere).
The result of that is that you can get a 200/200/80/80 mbps (200 up/down inside the country, 80 up/down to other countries) unlimited* for a bit less than 29EUR/month.
* you can saturate the connection fr the entire month, nobody will say anything. The speed, though, is "up to", so it may not always achieve 80mbps (and in my experience the upload speed drops to about 10mbps in the evening). I manage to upload 7-10TB/month and the ISP does not care.
Wel, a siren may be difficult to locate, especially if there are more than one siren of the same frequency, however, a complex sound, like the sound of an internal combustion engine can be located more easily, even when there is more than one car near you.
When you hear a sound, you know where it is coming from with enough accuracy to know where the car is. The electronic detector would either have to have multiple directional antennas or it would just alert that a car is nearby. It would not be of much help near an intersection or between two parallel roads.
Visual and audio are not mutually exclusive. You can have visual (for example, in my country you have to have your headlights on even during the day) and audio (engine noise - real or simulated) on the same car.
What I always liked about Opera is that I can customize the UI to be whatever I want (in my case it's a modified version of Opera 7 UI and "Opera Standard" skin) instead of being stuck with Chrome UI (and Firefox, now that FF4 is copying Chrome UI). I have a big monitor (21", 4:3) with resolution high enough that I do not need to maximize the browser window (1600x1200) and I do not really care about saving 16 pixels by eliminating the menu bar or whatever. The menu bar (for example) is useful to me and I want to keep it.
I agree with you on the render time though - I don't really care if the browser renders the page in 5 or 4.9 seconds, as long as it does that fairly quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, even if I leave my car with the keys in the ignition, it's illegal to use it without my permission.
OTOH, if I ever left the keys in and my car got stolen, I would be considered an idiot by almost everyone.
I assume you are in sarcasm mode, right?
Yes, here's the proof:
After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.
(doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).
After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.
(doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).
You didn't read attentively.
You don't understand it, do you? If pirated MP3 were not available, iTunes would have sold it's 500 TRILLIONTH song last year. Not only that, but various other MP3 stores would sell a lot of music too. People would have bought every single track they (now) have downloaded for free, everyone would pay thousands of dollars each month for music (doesn't matter if you make $500/month, you would have bought every single track that you have pirated).
Same with games, if pirated copies were not available, then Sony would not need to shut down its CD factory, it would need to open a new one.
Also, now that it is possible to pirate PS3 games, nobody will be buying them, anybody actually buying a PS3 game is an illusion and does not really exist. After all, nobody buys PC games (where DRM makes the legit copy worse then the pirated one) for quite some time now.
Might depend on your browser.
That's why it's only a replacement for non-animated GIF. If you want everyone to see the animation, you would have to have both GIF and PNG or just GIF since it's supported in any browser.
In that case, if you want your car to work without the key, then don't be surprised if it works without the key.
Well, if somebody can inject whatever they want into the main bus of the car, I'd say it's a problem.
Also, not everything you listed depends on the car having a common bus for everything, for example - I could install the back-up camera in my car and it would not require rewiring the entire car to use a common bus for everything I could just run a video cable from the camera to some small LCD screen in my car and control it by connecting the camera to the back-up light. The frame of the car also does not depend on how the electrical signals are passed inside the car.
Also, if it is simpler to have a main bus instead of a lot of cables, how about firewalls? A computer network is also common for the entire building or whatever, but if the sysadmin does his job then somebody even with access to the LAN port cannot impersonate a server or some user. Why can the tire pressure sensor impersonate the airbag sensor (as in your example), when they should not have access to each other.
Also, my classic car was good enough 28 years ago when it was new and it is good enough now, while a 28 year old PC is crap now, why? Because the roads did not change much during that time. The speed limits were even lowered in some areas where I live (most notably the default speed limit in the city was lowered from 60km/h to 50km/h). OTOH, we are now using computers for things that not anybody could imagine in the past (nobody would have believed you if you told them that while the shiny new 286 is too slow for that, a few decades later people would be watching HD (higher resolution than on TV) videos on their computers over the internet and would not need to wait a few months for those videos to be downloaded).
The only problem with my car is that it is old, so some stuff rusts and so on, but that is not the problem with its design, after all, I doubt that many cars made in 2010 would be drivable in 2038.
No, the website runs on a javascript emulator of a 6502...
... on a 6502
The key has two independent RF behaviors. One is the active transmitter, which sends the ordinary "door lock" types of signals, and is not the issue here. The other acts like an RFID card. It is always on, passively looking for a signal from the car, at which point it will respond with its coded info. This signal must be responsive at all times when the car is operating, or otherwise the car thinks the key isn't present and shuts the engine off. A momentary switch will not work. It would have to be a toggle.
Simple - the RFID "switch" is actually two pieces of wire that are shorted when the key is inserted into ignition.
The convenient appeal of these keys is that you just keep it in your pocket or purse, and you don't have to touch it at all. If the driver's door RF reader senses the key, it unlocks the driver's door. If the start button is pressed, and the interior RF reader senses the key, it starts the motor. Flipping a switch on the remote would counter the ease of use, and would not be used by the general public who buy these cars. They would just leave it toggled on 100% of the time.
Well, it amazes me that people still drive cars - all that steering, braking, changing gears is much more inconvenient than putting the key into ignition and turning it. But yea, if you want your car to work without the key, then don't be surprised when it works without the key.
I would also suggest fingerprint authentication, but I guess that would also be even more inconvenient, since you would have to authorize everyone who should be able to drive the car.
That's exactly the kind of thinking that leads to security holes. If you assume they have no reason to be connected, you wouldn't suspect them. Yet they are both connected to the car's bus.
And that's stupid. My car does not have a bus and guess what, it works - the lights turn on when I switch them on, I can see the speed on my speedometer, I can also see the coolant temperature, oil pressure and fuel level too.
But what if there's a buffer overflow mistake in the tire pressure data RF receiver?
Maybe the manufacturer should test the software of the car just as well as they test the hardware (I mean the engine usually works OK without any "engine randomly blows up" bug).
There are from 50 to 70 tiny computers hanging off the bus interconnecting the computers on a modern car...
That's why I like my old car - it only has a few "computers" and most of them consist of a few transistors and electromechanical relays.
You can always leave your keys inside the car in a visible place so any thief can take them if he wants to.
As I said to almost everyone about the hidden button in my car (if you don't press it, the engine does not get fuel) - yes, a smart thief wold be able to figure it out (the car is old, it does not have complicated electronics), but some junkie or kid might not, which means that I have reduced the number of people who can steal my car. And even the smart thief (who would know how to find or bypass the button if he knew what he was looking for) may be fooled by the system to think that the car just does not start (car is old, stuff happens).
The attack concept was very simple: extend the range of the normal keyfob RF communications with a pair of radio repeaters, one of which is presented to the car as a surrogate, and the other is hidden near the victim's real key fob (perhaps a disguised repeater is hidden in their shopping cart while they were in a store.)
Low tech solution - put a switch on the key fob that disables the communications unless you press it. If the owner does not have a habit of constantly pressing the button then this sort of attack won't work.
And then some kid comes around and pops the locks by hacking a tire pressure monitor with an Arduino.
Why would a car lock and tire pressure monitor be connected in any way?
That's a stupid system, why would anyone design a system like that? It looks to me that it would be possible to fix the system by making the key send a signal only when someone is pressing a button on it. Then the key and the car can use whatever technology to prevent replay attack and relay attacks won't really work because if the owner is pressing the button then he most likely is near the car.
How about using an actual lock that you need to insert the key into, you know, like it is on older cars both to get into the car and for ignition. Sure, the thief can connect the wires to start the car, but it involves a bit more work, also, in the case of my car, the thief would also have to find and turn on some other switch (unofficial mod) to turn on the fuel.
If I was building a new computer today, I would probably use Windows 7, however, I built my computer in 2007 and at that time it was either XP or Vista, I chose XP. Now that I have it, Windows 7 is not that much better to justify spending so much time reinstalling Windows and all of my apps even if I downloaded a pirate copy.
SMS is reliable, well, at least to me all the time except a few hours around January 1st, 00:00 when everybody (including me) is DDoSing the cell network by sending "Happy New Year" messages to all of their friends. For the rest of the year SMS is very reliable (again, at least where I live, I do not know how it is in the US or some other country).
My phone can also use email, but email is worse than SMS, because I do not get instant notifications about the received message. I can set the phone to check the mailbox every so often, but it still is not instant like with SMS. I could use some app (gmail's app probably can do that) to always stay connected and notify me instantly, but that would drain the battery much faster than SMS. Combined with the fact that most of my friends do not have internet connection of their phones, do not have email set up for the phone or have phones that do not support email, SMS is better, even though it is more expensive.
Yes, just like hitting a target with a sniper rifle from 10km away. It probably is possible for a small number of individuals, but everyone else will fail.
Also, the "well, we can patch it later" idea makes the programmers debug less. On older devices, where the control software was in ROM (or (E)PROM, a bug in the software meant a costly reprogramming (and a PR hell, since those devices would be "broken" until the users brought them to a repair shop, if the repair (reprogramming) also cost money for the user, the opinion about the manufacturer wold take a big hit) or even the manufacture of a new ROM. Now that it is possible to update over the internet, the firmware became more buggy, I mean I do not need to update the firmware on my VCR or (CPU controlled) tape deck. Or even my old cellphone or PDA (closest thing to an actual computer).
Depends on other things at the time, what my salary would be, how much I'm driving etc. Currently, the price where I live is ~$6.26/gal (converted to USD and gallons) for gasoline.
Also, it would also depend on what the alternatives would be. I doubt that the price of electricity would stay the same for example.
The absolute limit would of course be the price of going by taxi. Taxi is more convenient than driving myself so there would be no point in driving if taxi was cheaper. I also think that there would be another, lower, limit where I would start trying to make my car use less fuel or trying to find a new car that uses less fuel and has the features I want. Then I would start dropping the features in favor of fuel efficiency.
However, energy efficiency is not my primary concern. I use a CRT monitor because I like its features, even if it uses more power. I use a dual socket desktop PC instead of a netbook again, because of the features (for example gaming). My portable music player is a cassette walkman even though it uses a bit more power (I guess) than a solid state player. The lamp in my room is incandescent because I like its color, even though it uses more power.
Yes, a car that burns more fuel will be more expensive to use, I know that. I also understand that an electric SUV will use more power than an electric small car and thus it will cost more to use. If I have the money, I think I should be able to pay for the fuel or electricity to drive the car that I want.
Now, if you want to say that the technology of electric cars is not there yet to make an electric SUV (or a car that does not look like a space pod) possible, I agree with you. Let's hope that the technology will be possible in time. Gasoline powered cars also sucked in the first decades.
Also, any new car (internal combustion or electric) is very expensive, if I have a working car (or one that can be easily repaired) I could buy a lot of fuel for it just on the price of the new car alone (and the new car will still need fuel or electricity (which is not free)).
For now, though, I will continue to use the car that I have and burn LPG and gasoline. Well, until the car wears out past the ability to repair it. Then I'll think about buying a used ~10 year old car (new cars are way too expensive), whatever energy source it happens to use and will choose it based on other features (looks, capacity, acceleration etc.) before thinking about the energy source.
Instead of making smaller and lighter cars, how about making an electric car that is as big as the gasoline or diesel powered cars and has a decent range?
My car was modified to burn LPG as well as gasoline (originally it was gasoline only), my experience in driving it did not change much (it's a bit more difficult to use LPG), however, I can use cheaper fuel now (where I live, LPG costs about half of what gasoline costs, so even though my car burns more of it, in the end it's still cheaper to use LPG), but I would not want a small car that looks like it was designed purely for aerodynamic properties and not aesthetics (I like corners). Even if my car ran on electricity, my experience with it would not change much (I guess) as long as it had a decent range (or could be recharged in a few minutes).
I'm sure that a lot of people would not about the internal workings of the car (how many people care whether the car has a carburetor is fuel injection just for the sake of the device, not the results of having it), so I think that people would not care that their SUV or the "chrome-plated luxury tank" runs on electricity instead of gasoline or diesel.
What you want is for me (and almost everybody else) to abandon whatever reasons I used to choose my car and get a car that you think will be better for me, or actually, it won't be better for me, but maybe better for the environment. I guess that you also want me to pay for it too.
I do not really care about boot time (after all, the phone does not turn on instantly too), however, software andoperating systems did get slower over time with not much improvement to justify the slowness.
For example, Windows Vista and 7 require much better hardware than Windows XP, but apart from the changes in GUI it's not much different. So, where do the clock cycles and memory go? Windows 2003 (fresh install) runs quite fast inside a VM on one of my PCs (3x Xeon 700MHz, 3GB RAM) with one CPU and 256-384MB RAM given to it. Windows 7 runs slow even with 1GB RAM given to it.
Over time, electronic devices got more power efficient, even for the same type of device (cell phone, amplifier). Also, in a device, you can usually tell where the power is wasted - some component gets hotter. OTOH, software over time gets less efficient and needs more processor power to do the same thing that the previous version did.
Hmm... Where I live (somewhere in Europe), the company that owns the underground channels must lease then at a price set by law to anyone who asks. A company that has a radio tower must allow other companies to place antennas on it (again, the price is set by law), so that different companies do not have to dig parallel channels or build separate towers within 200m of each other (like they were before that law was passed).
The result is that in a bigger city, especially if ou live in a multiple flat building (as opposed to a individual house) you have at least 3 options for wired internet connection - the telephone company (DSL or FTTH), some sort of LAN (Cat5 or fiber, may be more than one), the cable TV company (may be more than one, coax cable). You can also get your connection from one of the three cellphone providers (almost anywhere in the country) or the WiMAX provider (not everywhere).
The result of that is that you can get a 200/200/80/80 mbps (200 up/down inside the country, 80 up/down to other countries) unlimited* for a bit less than 29EUR/month.
* you can saturate the connection fr the entire month, nobody will say anything. The speed, though, is "up to", so it may not always achieve 80mbps (and in my experience the upload speed drops to about 10mbps in the evening). I manage to upload 7-10TB/month and the ISP does not care.
Wel, a siren may be difficult to locate, especially if there are more than one siren of the same frequency, however, a complex sound, like the sound of an internal combustion engine can be located more easily, even when there is more than one car near you.
When you hear a sound, you know where it is coming from with enough accuracy to know where the car is. The electronic detector would either have to have multiple directional antennas or it would just alert that a car is nearby. It would not be of much help near an intersection or between two parallel roads.
Visual and audio are not mutually exclusive. You can have visual (for example, in my country you have to have your headlights on even during the day) and audio (engine noise - real or simulated) on the same car.
What I always liked about Opera is that I can customize the UI to be whatever I want (in my case it's a modified version of Opera 7 UI and "Opera Standard" skin) instead of being stuck with Chrome UI (and Firefox, now that FF4 is copying Chrome UI). I have a big monitor (21", 4:3) with resolution high enough that I do not need to maximize the browser window (1600x1200) and I do not really care about saving 16 pixels by eliminating the menu bar or whatever. The menu bar (for example) is useful to me and I want to keep it.
I agree with you on the render time though - I don't really care if the browser renders the page in 5 or 4.9 seconds, as long as it does that fairly quickly.