Just to check out the feasibility of something like this, after seeing all the cost speculation on here, I decided to give a call to the local Sprint office. Here's what I've found:
Full T1 line, terminating in my residence, I provide CSU/DSU and routing equipment:
Installation Fees waived with a 12 month contract, unlimited IP addresses assigned from Sprint pool. Total Monthly recurring cost is $300 for the local loop and $881 for the T1 port fee.
So, compare this with my cable modem at $50 a month, and I'd need 24 users to break even- if I don't provide equipment, beyond the AP and antennas I already own. But to get to 24 people, I'm going to need a few thousand dollars worth of investment to set up the infrastructure to provide for a wider service area.
Tower space can be expensive if you don't know where to look. In the small town I live in, people needed TV towers to get anything back in the pre-cable days. This included alot of businesses that felt the need for some type of communications. There are alot of bars, auto parts stores, empty buildings, etc. with some pretty hefty structures attatched. I have had success in negotiating near-free installation of equipment on those towers (I pay their electric bill one month out of 12.. In one case, I'm pretty sure they're losing money on the deal, because I'm using way more than 1/12 of the electricity to keep my boxen running)
Of course, as long as you only need a little lift - say under 200 feet - you can legally fly a balloon with a few tight moorings and any equipment you need. (If you live too close to an airport, the legal limit is lower than 200 feet.)
That could be a maintenance un-friendly installation though. It'd be a hell of alot of fun to try though.. Think Helium line running up alongside coax and power feeds. Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
Much more reliable a method would be to use a traceroute and look at suffixes until a 'listed' suffix appeared. Just set it up to trace to a few different hosts, and see where the routes begin to diverge.
This has been quite useful for air based wireless-
The theory behind it is even a standard part of amateur packet radio. When your using typically 50 watts (or even 1500 watts, legally) you tend to connect to some interestingly distant stations that you'd have no idea where they were if they didn't leave a little identifying information in their 'hostname'
Ah, yes. Manual routing of packets. Really makes one appreciate all the neat tools we use now..
I have been asking, pleading, begging palm for a model that's a little more "industry friendly" which I would certainly pay a pretty penny for. I guess being able to "hear" this thing go off while trying to program a machine that is stamping out oil filters will be enough to get that old palm up on Ebay.
My only question now is when are they going to make one that vibrates, is in a mil-spec casing, and will make a small fire if I'm trapped in the wilderness?
PPINZ you ask? Philosophy Paper In The Zip.
Pretty good read, if you ask me. An Excerpt-
Making a copy of an item doesn't in any way remove that item from the original possessor, so "theft" is clearly an inaccurate terminology. However, the publishers' insistence on using that word, and the public's acceptance of it, means that a much more negative light is cast on an action that, while wrong, is nowhere near the severity of a true "theft."
After reading this I feel I owe the world an apology.
Dear World.
I am profoundly sorry for 'stealing' all that music. I am not a selfish person, but apparently I am an ignorant one. Here, all this time I thought I was copying all that music, not moving it. And to think, all those songs I have on my hard drive are no longer held by the publishers and radio stations. I was beginning to wonder if the worlds tastes were suddenly changing, as all I heard were boy bands and implanted teenage girls on the radio. Now, I come to find, that I am the reason for this trend. All the good songs are on my hard drive, and this is all the publishers had left. They even went to the extent of "manufacturing" artists to compensate for all those I have stolen from them. For this as well, I apologize. I know this music sucks, and nobody should have to listen to it, but in my ignorance I thought the old standbys would remain, even if I downloaded them. And to think of the moral implications of downloading the music of deceased artists. Never again will these songs be heard! I will be burning all of these songs to CDR and mailing them to the RIAA, so that we may have the beautiful music of our culture again. Sorry O-town, I have a feeling you'll be the first to go.
At most it raises your body temperature one or two degrees.
Whoa, hold on here. We are not talking about your standard 100 watt microwave transmitter here. To be useful, we would need many thousand watts of energy actually making it to the earth, which in turn, means many many thousand watts of energy transmitted. Have a discussion with a military RADAR operator of days gone by, and I'm sure you'll hear all kinds of wonderful stories that include "yeah, it only penetrates about an inch, but once that inch has been turned to plasma, it just starts on the second inch"
The microwave beam does not disrupt any planes, etc. because they are made of metal
Ok, experiment for you then. Put your favorite pet in your microwave. Wrap it in aluminum foil first. Set it for 5 minutes and walk away. That's a person in a plane- thickness of metal shield compensated for by miniscule amount of power transmitted. Now, remove the carcass, and try wrapping your, oh, GPS in the foil and repeat. Take out the GPS, stand on your roof, and see what kind of elevation it returns. Huh? It doesn't work? Why jeepers.
Microwaves are not fun things. For those of you interested, take a look at some of the questions on RF safety on the Ham Radio Exam. These can be dangerous, very dangerous. Especially to sensitive tissues like the eyes.
So when the heck is Mavis beacon going to get off her butt and teach me how to type with my thumbs?
Seriously, maybe this new thumbing keyboard style that has emerged will open the door to a new keyboard layout. QWERTY is just about as bad for thumbing as it is for typing. The only thing that's easy to type on QWERTY is the word QWERTY.
Between the two-way pager, the bluetooth devices, and now this, I think my poor thumbs are going to start longing for "the old days" when all they had to do was occasionally pick up a writing instrument or fork..
In such a short time, we've gone from the days where 80m long radio waves were considered "shortwave" and anything over 100 Mhz was "unusable" to our new modern dreams of Multi Ghz signals and waves getting so short that we are tempted to measure them in millimeters. Lo! What brave new world is this?
The great thing about really, really tiny waves is the antenna size. While nobody would want to venture the project of making a 24dbi parabolic dish for use with AM radio signals at 500kHz, $80 will get one to your doorstep ready for 2.4Ghz. Now that we are in the upper 5Ghz range, it will finally be feasible to build a mega-super dish where the actual radiated power is in the mega-super-ka-jigga-trilla-watt range. Maybe we could get rid of that whole line of sight problem with Moonbounce communications. Of course the ping time would be seriously worse than the average satellite... The "big sattelite" is just a little outside of geosync orbit..
Stimpy, you idiot!
Actually, the range of these devices, if matched with similar power output and similarly sized antennas, will actually be greater than an 802.11b device. These proxim boxim are fully 802.11a compliant as well, so you never know when some interesting integration to Bluetooth devices.
He and Marina Sirtis were the main contributors to the cut-aways for the Star Trek, TNG marathon on TNN a couple weeks ago. It was nice to not have to be up at 1AM to see re-runs...
Here's a question though:
Do you find it ironic that your "revival" in the public eye is, yet again, due to TNG?
Many have posted comments with regards to the need for Hydrogen making this unusable. However, keep in mind that this engine will still run on gasoline, however, probably about as efficient as my Cadillac, if I forget to put in the 91 Octane stuff. Dang GM Engineers, why did I ever become one of them?
But seriously, with a washing machine size device able to "insert" the energy into the water, this device is ultimately powered by electricity, just in a very small and lightweight battery design. The only flaw I can see is having all of that wonderful explosive gas sitting in the car.
Perhaps the trend of power supply failures which tend to be in a somewhat "flammable" failure-mode should indicate that better standards should be set by the certification angencies. Maybe UL should start denying seal rights to designs not able to function under rated load at a lower temperature.
I wonder if there is a trend that would show up if we looked at all the 3rd party manufacturers of these adapters. I know that the AC adapter for my Thinkpad was proudly made in China by Astec electronics. Well, at least the third adapter I received from IBM.:) The other two really didn't last very long. I don't think they were meant for continuous duty for some reason. Maybe they expect the laptop to be used in more than one location..
For those of you who wish to keep using your adapters, I would suggest using a fused power strip, with an easily accessable switch. Oh yeah, and seal the rectifier in a large concrete bunker.
Anyone know of any web sites that quote the bullshit from movies?
IMDB usually has a pretty good selection of factual errors listed on each movies page. You can't exactly set imdb to search all movies for factual errors that are +3, Highest Scores First, but if you just guess a couple of movies that were fairly "technical" in nature, you can find some pretty funny stuff.
It's easier to detect the authenticity of a finger than one might think.
After being unable to activate my touchpad with anything other than my finger, my curiosity had been captured. After a great deal of experimentation, and actually getting 5 other engineers running around looking for something to fool the touchpad, we finally resorted to technical support. Here was my letter:
I have a prosthetic limb which I am unable to use
the synaptics touchpad with. I am unaware of the type of touch sensing it uses, and have been unsuccessful in my attempts to 'simulate' a fingertip on my prosthesis.
I even bought a rubber hand and cut the finger off
and stuck it to my prosthesis, but to no avail.
I have also tried heating the prosthesis to my body temperature.
The pad works fine for the other engineers in the
group with real fingers, so I don't believe there is a problem with the pad itself.
Do you have any suggestions for a tip I can use to
properly activate the touchpad?
If not, do you plan on releasing something I would
be able to activate
with a prosthesis?
And their reply was:
Hi Chris,
Unfortunately, as you have discovered, our touchpad uses finger-sensing technology. Basically, the touchpad determines that a touch is made through the capacitance of the human body.
I'm very sorry to say that we cannot recommend a
product you can use to activate it at this time.
Best regards,
So what have we learned other than how fun messing with tech support can be? Even a heated pulsing finger isn't going to work if the electrical properties aren't right. Capacitance is a tough thing to trick. Try putting probe leads on two parts of a finger, and plot the voltage / current patterns. Very, very difficult to duplicate.
Of course, medical science will always find a way to stick severed fingers on hands, and we know that your average bin Laden follower won't scoff at the replacement of one of his fingers with a victims...
Ahh, come on. Let's just quit spending our money on it, and let the Japanese finish up. They've got a ton of patents already, right? Why do we need to do anything? I mean, we did all that R&D for the VCR, and we just gave it up anyhow....
Whatever new legislation gets bought by the corporate money machine, it still doesn't trump a constitutional guarantee. Even if this law passes, an ex posto facto conviction could never stand up on appeal. I'd be surprised if it would make it to trial in the first place.
A few things to keep in mind-
1. The extension of the 5 year statute of limitations only means that crimes committed more than 5 years ago (instances of breaking laws that existed AT THE TIME that the criminal activity ocurred) can still be prosecuted. Normally, these crimes have to be prosecuted within 5 years of the criminal act, or any case is immediately thrown out.
2. Raising of sentencing guidelines is not subject to the ex posto facto guarantee, but any reasonable lawyer could argue a sentence beyond the maximum at the time of act to be a violation.
3. The security focus article also points out a few instances that "would have been" considered federal terrorism offences. This may imply to some that these people, if entered into trial after the passage of this law, would be subject to prosecution under it. It does not, however, state that implicitly. See #1 for an explanation of why not..
What really concerns me is the "advice or assistance" statement. This exposes anyone with an open Wireless Access point, an anonymous remailer, etc. to this same life w/o parole sentence.
Do we really want to see hacking given a more aggressive sentence than some murders? Should it really be up there in the list with assassination of public officials and bombings?
This almost looks like an opportunistic attempt to squeak something by congress making one of their more difficult "new problems" a little easier to attack.
Actually, if the CDs ever turn out to be anything like the Michael Jackson ones where it prevents the average listener from playing it on his/her computer CD-ROM drive, then Yes, Joe Public WILL care.
And on top of that, I think Gateway, Compaq/HP, and Dell might also care. Just think of the technical support costs!
User: "My CD-ROM doesn't work"
Technical Support: "What seems to be the problem? User: "Well I've placed the CD in the drive, and it won't play. My machine is still under warrantee, and I want it replaced!"
IF $TECH_SUPT.IQ >= AVG($TECH_SUPT.IQ) THEN
Technical Support: "You don't happen to have a Universal/Vivendi CD, do you? Why don't you try another, older CD"
ELSEIF $TECH_SUPT.IQ Technical Support: "Alrighty, your RMA is XXXXXXX, and you'll receive your CD-ROM in two days with a pre-paid UPS box to send back the old one."
Two Days Pass....User: "I think it's my sound card now..."
Well, you get the idea.
It's not just the CD-ROM manufacturers, MP3 player manufacturers, and similar software/hardware vendors that might get a little upset. There are some big-name hardware people that might get stung by this if they aren't kept on their toes....
-Got Class-Action?
Well... Quite a few people are already doing it in a homebrew fashion: check out this site for details on one of the common configurations.. Also, some high-end machines come liquid cooled right out of the box, er.. truck.
The most direct quote I've heard so far that gives some indication that our privacy and liberty are at stake was from CNN last night. If I could find a link, I'd post it. Anyhow, Dick Gephardt made a statement that we needed to "rebalance" our freedoms in the wake of the attack.
For those of you who don't think there will be any long term ramifications of the hysteria caused by these terrorists, assume the position!
Slashdot Mirror
Just to check out the feasibility of something like this, after seeing all the cost speculation on here, I decided to give a call to the local Sprint office. Here's what I've found:
Full T1 line, terminating in my residence, I provide CSU/DSU and routing equipment:
Installation Fees waived with a 12 month contract, unlimited IP addresses assigned from Sprint pool. Total Monthly recurring cost is $300 for the local loop and $881 for the T1 port fee.
So, compare this with my cable modem at $50 a month, and I'd need 24 users to break even- if I don't provide equipment, beyond the AP and antennas I already own. But to get to 24 people, I'm going to need a few thousand dollars worth of investment to set up the infrastructure to provide for a wider service area.
Tower space can be expensive if you don't know where to look. In the small town I live in, people needed TV towers to get anything back in the pre-cable days. This included alot of businesses that felt the need for some type of communications. There are alot of bars, auto parts stores, empty buildings, etc. with some pretty hefty structures attatched. I have had success in negotiating near-free installation of equipment on those towers (I pay their electric bill one month out of 12.. In one case, I'm pretty sure they're losing money on the deal, because I'm using way more than 1/12 of the electricity to keep my boxen running)
Of course, as long as you only need a little lift - say under 200 feet - you can legally fly a balloon with a few tight moorings and any equipment you need. (If you live too close to an airport, the legal limit is lower than 200 feet.)
That could be a maintenance un-friendly installation though. It'd be a hell of alot of fun to try though.. Think Helium line running up alongside coax and power feeds. Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
Much more reliable a method would be to use a traceroute and look at suffixes until a 'listed' suffix appeared. Just set it up to trace to a few different hosts, and see where the routes begin to diverge.
This has been quite useful for air based wireless-
The theory behind it is even a standard part of amateur packet radio. When your using typically 50 watts (or even 1500 watts, legally) you tend to connect to some interestingly distant stations that you'd have no idea where they were if they didn't leave a little identifying information in their 'hostname'
Ah, yes. Manual routing of packets. Really makes one appreciate all the neat tools we use now..
The T415 also has a built-in vibrating alert.
For great justice!
I have been asking, pleading, begging palm for a model that's a little more "industry friendly" which I would certainly pay a pretty penny for. I guess being able to "hear" this thing go off while trying to program a machine that is stamping out oil filters will be enough to get that old palm up on Ebay.
My only question now is when are they going to make one that vibrates, is in a mil-spec casing, and will make a small fire if I'm trapped in the wilderness?
PPINZ you ask? Philosophy Paper In The Zip. Pretty good read, if you ask me. An Excerpt- Making a copy of an item doesn't in any way remove that item from the original possessor, so "theft" is clearly an inaccurate terminology. However, the publishers' insistence on using that word, and the public's acceptance of it, means that a much more negative light is cast on an action that, while wrong, is nowhere near the severity of a true "theft." After reading this I feel I owe the world an apology. Dear World. I am profoundly sorry for 'stealing' all that music. I am not a selfish person, but apparently I am an ignorant one. Here, all this time I thought I was copying all that music, not moving it. And to think, all those songs I have on my hard drive are no longer held by the publishers and radio stations. I was beginning to wonder if the worlds tastes were suddenly changing, as all I heard were boy bands and implanted teenage girls on the radio. Now, I come to find, that I am the reason for this trend. All the good songs are on my hard drive, and this is all the publishers had left. They even went to the extent of "manufacturing" artists to compensate for all those I have stolen from them. For this as well, I apologize. I know this music sucks, and nobody should have to listen to it, but in my ignorance I thought the old standbys would remain, even if I downloaded them. And to think of the moral implications of downloading the music of deceased artists. Never again will these songs be heard! I will be burning all of these songs to CDR and mailing them to the RIAA, so that we may have the beautiful music of our culture again. Sorry O-town, I have a feeling you'll be the first to go.
At most it raises your body temperature one or two degrees.
Whoa, hold on here. We are not talking about your standard 100 watt microwave transmitter here. To be useful, we would need many thousand watts of energy actually making it to the earth, which in turn, means many many thousand watts of energy transmitted. Have a discussion with a military RADAR operator of days gone by, and I'm sure you'll hear all kinds of wonderful stories that include "yeah, it only penetrates about an inch, but once that inch has been turned to plasma, it just starts on the second inch"
The microwave beam does not disrupt any planes, etc. because they are made of metal
Ok, experiment for you then. Put your favorite pet in your microwave. Wrap it in aluminum foil first. Set it for 5 minutes and walk away. That's a person in a plane- thickness of metal shield compensated for by miniscule amount of power transmitted. Now, remove the carcass, and try wrapping your, oh, GPS in the foil and repeat. Take out the GPS, stand on your roof, and see what kind of elevation it returns. Huh? It doesn't work? Why jeepers.
Microwaves are not fun things. For those of you interested, take a look at some of the questions on RF safety on the Ham Radio Exam. These can be dangerous, very dangerous. Especially to sensitive tissues like the eyes.
So when the heck is Mavis beacon going to get off her butt and teach me how to type with my thumbs? Seriously, maybe this new thumbing keyboard style that has emerged will open the door to a new keyboard layout. QWERTY is just about as bad for thumbing as it is for typing. The only thing that's easy to type on QWERTY is the word QWERTY. Between the two-way pager, the bluetooth devices, and now this, I think my poor thumbs are going to start longing for "the old days" when all they had to do was occasionally pick up a writing instrument or fork..
In such a short time, we've gone from the days where 80m long radio waves were considered "shortwave" and anything over 100 Mhz was "unusable" to our new modern dreams of Multi Ghz signals and waves getting so short that we are tempted to measure them in millimeters. Lo! What brave new world is this?
The great thing about really, really tiny waves is the antenna size. While nobody would want to venture the project of making a 24dbi parabolic dish for use with AM radio signals at 500kHz, $80 will get one to your doorstep ready for 2.4Ghz. Now that we are in the upper 5Ghz range, it will finally be feasible to build a mega-super dish where the actual radiated power is in the mega-super-ka-jigga-trilla-watt range. Maybe we could get rid of that whole line of sight problem with Moonbounce communications. Of course the ping time would be seriously worse than the average satellite... The "big sattelite" is just a little outside of geosync orbit..
Stimpy, you idiot! Actually, the range of these devices, if matched with similar power output and similarly sized antennas, will actually be greater than an 802.11b device. These proxim boxim are fully 802.11a compliant as well, so you never know when some interesting integration to Bluetooth devices.
From his BBSpot Interview: He's got a P-II with 128MB RAM, running Windows 2K, although he really wants to learn linux someday.
He and Marina Sirtis were the main contributors to the cut-aways for the Star Trek, TNG marathon on TNN a couple weeks ago. It was nice to not have to be up at 1AM to see re-runs...
Here's a question though:
Do you find it ironic that your "revival" in the public eye is, yet again, due to TNG?
Many have posted comments with regards to the need for Hydrogen making this unusable. However, keep in mind that this engine will still run on gasoline, however, probably about as efficient as my Cadillac, if I forget to put in the 91 Octane stuff. Dang GM Engineers, why did I ever become one of them? But seriously, with a washing machine size device able to "insert" the energy into the water, this device is ultimately powered by electricity, just in a very small and lightweight battery design. The only flaw I can see is having all of that wonderful explosive gas sitting in the car.
Perhaps the trend of power supply failures which tend to be in a somewhat "flammable" failure-mode should indicate that better standards should be set by the certification angencies. Maybe UL should start denying seal rights to designs not able to function under rated load at a lower temperature.
:) The other two really didn't last very long. I don't think they were meant for continuous duty for some reason. Maybe they expect the laptop to be used in more than one location..
I wonder if there is a trend that would show up if we looked at all the 3rd party manufacturers of these adapters. I know that the AC adapter for my Thinkpad was proudly made in China by Astec electronics. Well, at least the third adapter I received from IBM.
For those of you who wish to keep using your adapters, I would suggest using a fused power strip, with an easily accessable switch. Oh yeah, and seal the rectifier in a large concrete bunker.
Anyone know of any web sites that quote the bullshit from movies? IMDB usually has a pretty good selection of factual errors listed on each movies page. You can't exactly set imdb to search all movies for factual errors that are +3, Highest Scores First, but if you just guess a couple of movies that were fairly "technical" in nature, you can find some pretty funny stuff.
It's easier to detect the authenticity of a finger than one might think.
After being unable to activate my touchpad with anything other than my finger, my curiosity had been captured. After a great deal of experimentation, and actually getting 5 other engineers running around looking for something to fool the touchpad, we finally resorted to technical support. Here was my letter:
I have a prosthetic limb which I am unable to use
the synaptics touchpad with. I am unaware of the type of touch sensing it uses, and have been unsuccessful in my attempts to 'simulate' a fingertip on my prosthesis.
I even bought a rubber hand and cut the finger off
and stuck it to my prosthesis, but to no avail.
I have also tried heating the prosthesis to my body temperature.
The pad works fine for the other engineers in the
group with real fingers, so I don't believe there is a problem with the pad itself.
Do you have any suggestions for a tip I can use to
properly activate the touchpad?
If not, do you plan on releasing something I would
be able to activate
with a prosthesis?
And their reply was:
Hi Chris,
Unfortunately, as you have discovered, our touchpad uses finger-sensing technology. Basically, the touchpad determines that a touch is made through the capacitance of the human body.
I'm very sorry to say that we cannot recommend a
product you can use to activate it at this time.
Best regards,
So what have we learned other than how fun messing with tech support can be? Even a heated pulsing finger isn't going to work if the electrical properties aren't right. Capacitance is a tough thing to trick. Try putting probe leads on two parts of a finger, and plot the voltage / current patterns. Very, very difficult to duplicate.
Of course, medical science will always find a way to stick severed fingers on hands, and we know that your average bin Laden follower won't scoff at the replacement of one of his fingers with a victims...
Ahh, come on. Let's just quit spending our money on it, and let the Japanese finish up. They've got a ton of patents already, right? Why do we need to do anything? I mean, we did all that R&D for the VCR, and we just gave it up anyhow....
Hey now, hey now...
Whatever new legislation gets bought by the corporate money machine, it still doesn't trump a constitutional guarantee. Even if this law passes, an ex posto facto conviction could never stand up on appeal. I'd be surprised if it would make it to trial in the first place.
A few things to keep in mind-
1. The extension of the 5 year statute of limitations only means that crimes committed more than 5 years ago (instances of breaking laws that existed AT THE TIME that the criminal activity ocurred) can still be prosecuted. Normally, these crimes have to be prosecuted within 5 years of the criminal act, or any case is immediately thrown out.
2. Raising of sentencing guidelines is not subject to the ex posto facto guarantee, but any reasonable lawyer could argue a sentence beyond the maximum at the time of act to be a violation.
3. The security focus article also points out a few instances that "would have been" considered federal terrorism offences. This may imply to some that these people, if entered into trial after the passage of this law, would be subject to prosecution under it. It does not, however, state that implicitly. See #1 for an explanation of why not..
What really concerns me is the "advice or assistance" statement. This exposes anyone with an open Wireless Access point, an anonymous remailer, etc. to this same life w/o parole sentence.
Do we really want to see hacking given a more aggressive sentence than some murders? Should it really be up there in the list with assassination of public officials and bombings?
This almost looks like an opportunistic attempt to squeak something by congress making one of their more difficult "new problems" a little easier to attack.
Actually, if the CDs ever turn out to be anything like the Michael Jackson ones where it prevents the average listener from playing it on his/her computer CD-ROM drive, then Yes, Joe Public WILL care.
And on top of that, I think Gateway, Compaq/HP, and Dell might also care. Just think of the technical support costs!
User: "My CD-ROM doesn't work"
Technical Support: "What seems to be the problem?
User: "Well I've placed the CD in the drive, and it won't play. My machine is still under warrantee, and I want it replaced!"
IF $TECH_SUPT.IQ >= AVG($TECH_SUPT.IQ) THEN
Technical Support: "You don't happen to have a Universal/Vivendi CD, do you? Why don't you try another, older CD"
ELSEIF $TECH_SUPT.IQ Technical Support: "Alrighty, your RMA is XXXXXXX, and you'll receive your CD-ROM in two days with a pre-paid UPS box to send back the old one."
Two Days Pass.... User: "I think it's my sound card now..."
Well, you get the idea.
It's not just the CD-ROM manufacturers, MP3 player manufacturers, and similar software/hardware vendors that might get a little upset. There are some big-name hardware people that might get stung by this if they aren't kept on their toes....
-Got Class-Action?
Well... Quite a few people are already doing it in a homebrew fashion: check out this site for details on one of the common configurations.. Also, some high-end machines come liquid cooled right out of the box, er.. truck.
The most direct quote I've heard so far that gives some indication that our privacy and liberty are at stake was from CNN last night. If I could find a link, I'd post it. Anyhow, Dick Gephardt made a statement that we needed to "rebalance" our freedoms in the wake of the attack.
For those of you who don't think there will be any long term ramifications of the hysteria caused by these terrorists, assume the position!