So you're going to make other parts of the Internet who want to do business with you follow your laws for businesses? I'm not really sure why thats supposed to be a bad thing.
Honestly, I'd be fine with that for the US really. 99.9% of the population would be fine with it, not that many people buy outside the country anyway, and you'd drastically cut down on the usefulness of spam links to exploiting websites since they are either easy to cut off if they are repeat offenders or simply go after if they are in the country.
Personally, I'd love for several countries to disconnect from the Internet. You realize how much spam alone would go away if China not only restricted access to what they could view from the rest of the world, but also restricted what they could SEND to the rest of the world?
What drugs are you taking that make you think your country is vastly different than the US? It may be different, it may have some situations that are better, but it'll have some that are worse.
'Freedom' in most of the 'free world' is roughly the same, just different benefits and restrictions, but overall the same.
The problem I have with your post is you act like the US is horrible and that some other country is far better in this respect. Go ahead, pick a country, point out all the ways its 'better' and I'll turn around and point out an equal number of ways its worse.
I'll start to believe America is horrible when people start leaving, which last I checked, was not one of America's 'problems'.
I would imagine 3g coverage in well-covered high-density cities would be even better.
Not for AT&T customers:/ Verizon is a bunch of douche bags, but their commercials about AT&T are nice in my opinion.
I made the trip from Raleigh NC, to San Antonio Tx, then Dallas and then back. EDGE coverage was everywhere. 3G was available in the major cities (Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Waco, Raleigh) but no where along the Gulf cost on I10, which isn't that surprising as it was only a year or so after Katrina so I'm not surprised cell networks weren't back to 100% capacity there, but on the way back we took I20, Well away from the coast and the shitty coverage was FREAKING ANNOYING AS SHIT:)
In Raleigh, a 'well covered 3G area' according to AT&T, I've found its far faster to browse on edge than 3g.
Wifi is no help for anything you would provide the driver in that manner since wifi isn't going to get you connected to the Internet while driving around town in less you happen to live in that 0.0001% of the villages/towns/cities in the world that have public wifi blankets.
The USB dongle would be useful for that however, with or without a WAP
The problem with your radio is that your alternator works at frequency ranges that are audible. Hence they put electrical 'chokes' on the power lines feeding the radio in order to filter out the noise to the point that you can't hear it. Its still there, just the alternator noise has been suppressed to the point that you can't hear it.
Wifi operates in the microwave region and above. There isn't anything in your car that naturally operates at this frequency, so all you have to worry about would be sideband generation from other equipment. Since anything capable of generating these side bands SHOULD be required to carry proper shielding its probably a non-issue.
Your home wifi screwing up because of your microwave is likely. Your furnace or TV is extremely unlikely. The furnace doesn't have anything in it generally that will produce frequencies in the range that wifi uses, its not your problem unless you have a microprocessor controlled thermostat or controlling system that is somehow generating extremely powerful (relatively) side band interference 1000 times its base frequency, which is EXTREMELY unlikely.
Do you or your neighbors have a cordless phone in the 2.4 ghz range? Those are a problem, their quality is typically sub par and they are sharing the same band as wifi. You're neighbors wifi or microwave could also be a problem. How far away is your WAP from the device having connection issues? To close can be a problem, my laptops for instance will not communicate AT ALL with the WAP if they are within 5 feet of the device. They'll see it, they'll 'connect' but no data will flow. One of the two is borking up when it gets a signal thats too high. You also have to pay attention to the orientation of your antennas on your wifi device. Most if not all are designed to radiate the signal horizontally. If your access point is on the second floor, with the antenna's configured to radiate horizontally, and you move your laptop or PC directly under it, theres a good chance you're signal is going to suck or be unusable.
If you view available wifi networks, how many do you see in your list? There are only 11 channels in standard A/B/G. More than 11 networks and you are already sharing bandwidth someone else regardless of what you do. With less than 11, theres still a good chance you're sharing with someone else since most WAPs are too stupid to pick a clean channel initially, and even if yours did, it didn't get any help when someone else plugged in a cheap WAP that used your channel as well.
View available networks with a wifi browser, find out if there are any channels that aren't in use, those are the first ones to switch to. If I recall correctly, 1, 6, and 11 are good ones to use to avoid microwave interference
Answer to your question: Nothing. The power supply for the radio will inherently be rather well isolated, as it's very easy to do in the conversion from 12V that the car produces to the 5V that the USB radio uses.
Easy to do, but often overlooked. The cheapest way to do it is a resistor voltage divider which does no filtering and is extremely common in electronics because they expect to already be powered from a reliable clean source, which of course, is probably true for any factory installed device designed to power a USB port as well:)
What you'll find that doesn't do it is all the cheapass lighter plug USB ports to charge cell phones in cars. These things you buy at radio shack, walmart and the Apple store have very little filtering, and the lighter outlet in most cars has no filtering since lighters themselves don't really need any and they generally draw a heavy load, which would require an expensive filter for a device that doesn't need a filter.
Alternators do not power your car, they recharge your battery using AC current and a rectifier, your electrical equipment would absolutely HATE being powered by the alternator. Its not even like AC in your house, which is a constant 50/60hz pretty much all the time. AC from your car alternator varies with your engine RPMs. In short, both Alternators and generators are EXTREMELY DIRTY power sources, especially when you consider most of them are directly connected, unfiltered to the battery, which also directly connects, unfiltered to the ignition system, which generates MASSIVE amounts of noise as it generates thousands of volts of energy for your spark plugs 2-80k times a minute or more, depending on engine configuration and operating range.
Generators could be used to power your car electronics because they produce DC current straight out, but generators are extremely rare since an alternator can be controlled far easier as to what kind of output current it provides. I.E. an alternator requires external power to power electromagnets in it, which in then are used in conjunction with the mechanical rotating energy provided from the engine to produce more electrical output. By varying the input energy to the electromagnets the voltage regulator can charge your battery as needed without over charging and frying your battery. This can be done easily with a mechanical device for very little cost and an extremely high reliability. Doing so with a generator either requires high current capacity resistors to shunt the excess energy to the ground or to limit the flow to the battery. Because of the load potential, these resistors (or now days large power FETs are more efficient and reliable) have to be rather large and capable of dealing with dumping MASSIVE amounts of heat when the current is high.
Generators provide an advantage in one case because you can still push start your car with a completely dead or missing battery. An alternator on the other hand MUST have external power to work, even if its just a little, so a battery is required.
Back to the point, either way, you never power any devices directly from the generator or alternator because the voltage and current output from these devices is unreliable. Do you want everything in your car to stop working when a belt breaks or the generator/alternator or voltage regulator fail while you're driving? Do you want all the electronics in your car dealing with unpredictable voltage levels, like sitting at a stop light where most will not actually produce enough energy to sustain ALL the electrical requirements in your car if you use EVERYTHING at once. At this point your battery fills in the gap and drains slowly, but thats no big deal because you drive off shortly afterwords and the charge is replaced.
Seriously, what good is this to anyone? if you're in the car you would just use your SIM-locked USB modem that you pay 59.99 a month for and if you are outside the car then you would hardly stay connected long enough to send an email before the car you are stealing bandwidth from goes out of range.
Because everyone else in the car can also use your SIM locked USB dongle via wifi? Because instead of one laptop using the dongle at a time, everything in the car can? And you're not going to have an unsecured hotspot in your car accessing your cell phone data plan, so no one is leeching off you.
I never quite understood this idea behind putting the latest technological gimmick into a car. 802.11g will be obsolete in a few years, 802.11n soon after. The car should last 20 years so that means half way through its expected service life the wifi, the USB connection and the built-in GPS will be almost completely worthless.
Simply put, no, it won't. Wifi will still be used, as will USB, hell I've been using Firewire for at least 15 years and its far less popular than USB or wifi.
If i want my car to have a Wifi AP I will throw my own wifi equipment in the back. same with phones, GPS, all that stuff. Give me a bare minimum car such as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrightspeed_X1 [wikipedia.org]Wrightspeed X1 but with the most efficient power system, the best batteries available and the highest quality components that won't break. Not putting worthless consumer electronic gimmicks onto a chassis that is supposed to last 20 years.
Go ahead... do it... tell us how nicely integrated into the car you can get it, and tell us about all your issues with power controllers, inverters for power, wiring it all up without making a mess. Then tell me how long it lasts. Go ahead, get whatever you want for car computer hardware and put it in your dash... Give it 2 years then tell us about how its working for you. Made it 2? Okay, give it 5.
The car computer environment is far different than you think it is. The software sucks ass, feels like a kludge across the board because well, it is. The hardware is over priced and unreliable when you stuff it in a car that ranges between well below freezing in the winter to 150 degrees in the summer in a unshaded parking lot or under your dash taking heat off the firewall (The real one in your car, not software for networking).
You aren't going to go buy anything that has the same level of ruggedness as the hardware they install at the factory, nor are you going to find anything that feels nearly as natural or looks nearly as good. I've been futzing with mine for the last 3 years as indash GPS wasn't an option for my car from the factory. Yes I can do wifi over cell, voice guided GPS, voice activated control of the PC, watch movies on the indash display, all sorts of shit you couldn't possibly imagine. You know what, I'd still rather have a factory system rather than the hacks I've put together based on someone elses shitty hacks.
Nor are you going to have your car for 20 years. If you're following all the latest and greatest geek tech, theres a good chance you aren't still driving a 20 year old car, with the exception of maybe a classic, in which case this doesn't apply to you anyway, you're already accepting that you're going out of normal bounds. Likewise, if you are driving a 20 year old car, theres a good chance your computer hardware isn't bleeding edge either.
Your post wreaks of someone who has no idea what he/she is talking about, or has even looked into at all.
All the stuff you listed for Sync is basically available on every OnStar equipped car in the world except for maybe stereo bluetooth, which is okay since anytime bluetooth is involved you're just talking different levels of shitty.
The SDK for Sync already available for the previous 'versions' of sync under a different name.
Sadly, just like the desktop market, for the same reasons you just said, FOSS apps will be crappy on the phone too, since it'll just be people scratching an itch with very little motivation to make a good general product for others.
IE still has over 50% of the market, so firefox isn't exactly the most popular browser. Firefox is at 30% and Chrome is already at 5% and its still an infant.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad IE's share is getting smaller and smaller, but Firefox still isn't the most popular browser out there, lets actually accomplish it before we tell everyone we've accomplished it by messaging the data.
Yea, and keniston locks are a pretty effective measure as well.
But seriously, how many PCs a year get stolen by an employee? And of those that get stolen, how many of those employees are going to realize that its a thin client before they get it home?
Desktop breaks? Ship out a new box, they plug it in and away they go. You don't need to worry about what software they need as it's all on the server.
You can do this with disk images and a standard hardware package.
Security - no hard drives on desktop which can be stolen.
I've never heard of a hard drive being stolen. If you're refering to data theft, that still happens on the flash drive or the encrypted zip they email out of the office.
Patching/maintenance. Would you rather maintain patches on 1000 desktops or 10 big boxes in the data centre?
When you have 1k machines you are maintaining you have automation for patching, you don't patch by hand. If you keep your systems consistent its no different patching one or 100k.
Power/cooling/noise at sites. A "real" thin client (as opposed to a PC masquerading as a thin client) will have minimal power requirements which leads to less cooling and noise (no fans or crunching hard drives)
The most expensive components from a power perspective are CPU and video. Fans and hard drives are trivial in the grand scheme of things, and the performance increase you get from havin ga local system far outweighs anything you're going to shave off here.
Portability. I don't care which desk I sit at, my virtual desktop will automatically have all my apps. If you have a solution like Sun's Sunray, you can even log out of your Sunray half way through writing a document, move to another desk (possibly in another city) and pick up the doc where you left off.
What OS can you not do that with? What OS doesn't support networked home directories?
High bandwidth apps run in the same data centre as the database server/whatever and you only get the screen updates down the wire which can be more efficient.
You haven't actually used this stuff have you? What takes longer to get, several megabytes of pixels or the first few rows of a cursor on a database?
I sit at home, using a database 1300 miles away, using a local app because its FAR more responsive and FAR less annoying than the lag of doing a remove viewing session.
Nothing you've specified is actually a benefit. Its not that you've stated anything untrue, its just that everything you've said really doesn't actually apply when you compare to a standard desktop.
while there may be little legal recourse to issuing invalid DMCA notices
Not sure what world you live in, but there have been more than a few lawsuits against people issuing malicious/bogus DMCA notices, and they've not went the way the original issuer wanted.
Short version of how it works: Company sends notice to your ISP ISP/whatever shuts you off You send a counter notice ISP turns you back on You both sue each other and fight it out.
Its slashdot, every angsty 15 year old in his basement screens 'OPEN SOURCE IT!!@$!@$!@$', or 'GPL IT!@$!@$!@$!@$' or 'THATS CENSORSHIP!@%!@%!@%' after every discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're going to make other parts of the Internet who want to do business with you follow your laws for businesses? I'm not really sure why thats supposed to be a bad thing.
Honestly, I'd be fine with that for the US really. 99.9% of the population would be fine with it, not that many people buy outside the country anyway, and you'd drastically cut down on the usefulness of spam links to exploiting websites since they are either easy to cut off if they are repeat offenders or simply go after if they are in the country.
Personally, I'd love for several countries to disconnect from the Internet. You realize how much spam alone would go away if China not only restricted access to what they could view from the rest of the world, but also restricted what they could SEND to the rest of the world?
Really, you'd rather live in China than the US?
What drugs are you taking that make you think your country is vastly different than the US? It may be different, it may have some situations that are better, but it'll have some that are worse.
'Freedom' in most of the 'free world' is roughly the same, just different benefits and restrictions, but overall the same.
The problem I have with your post is you act like the US is horrible and that some other country is far better in this respect. Go ahead, pick a country, point out all the ways its 'better' and I'll turn around and point out an equal number of ways its worse.
I'll start to believe America is horrible when people start leaving, which last I checked, was not one of America's 'problems'.
Male children are not preferred. They WERE. The skew has changed the preference so that now girls are preferred.
I should point out however, driving across the state of Michigan isn't exactly a cross country trip :)
Not for AT&T customers :/ Verizon is a bunch of douche bags, but their commercials about AT&T are nice in my opinion.
I made the trip from Raleigh NC, to San Antonio Tx, then Dallas and then back. EDGE coverage was everywhere. 3G was available in the major cities (Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Waco, Raleigh) but no where along the Gulf cost on I10, which isn't that surprising as it was only a year or so after Katrina so I'm not surprised cell networks weren't back to 100% capacity there, but on the way back we took I20, Well away from the coast and the shitty coverage was FREAKING ANNOYING AS SHIT :)
In Raleigh, a 'well covered 3G area' according to AT&T, I've found its far faster to browse on edge than 3g.
Wifi is no help for anything you would provide the driver in that manner since wifi isn't going to get you connected to the Internet while driving around town in less you happen to live in that 0.0001% of the villages/towns/cities in the world that have public wifi blankets.
The USB dongle would be useful for that however, with or without a WAP
The problem with your radio is that your alternator works at frequency ranges that are audible. Hence they put electrical 'chokes' on the power lines feeding the radio in order to filter out the noise to the point that you can't hear it. Its still there, just the alternator noise has been suppressed to the point that you can't hear it.
Wifi operates in the microwave region and above. There isn't anything in your car that naturally operates at this frequency, so all you have to worry about would be sideband generation from other equipment. Since anything capable of generating these side bands SHOULD be required to carry proper shielding its probably a non-issue.
Your home wifi screwing up because of your microwave is likely. Your furnace or TV is extremely unlikely. The furnace doesn't have anything in it generally that will produce frequencies in the range that wifi uses, its not your problem unless you have a microprocessor controlled thermostat or controlling system that is somehow generating extremely powerful (relatively) side band interference 1000 times its base frequency, which is EXTREMELY unlikely.
Do you or your neighbors have a cordless phone in the 2.4 ghz range? Those are a problem, their quality is typically sub par and they are sharing the same band as wifi. You're neighbors wifi or microwave could also be a problem. How far away is your WAP from the device having connection issues? To close can be a problem, my laptops for instance will not communicate AT ALL with the WAP if they are within 5 feet of the device. They'll see it, they'll 'connect' but no data will flow. One of the two is borking up when it gets a signal thats too high. You also have to pay attention to the orientation of your antennas on your wifi device. Most if not all are designed to radiate the signal horizontally. If your access point is on the second floor, with the antenna's configured to radiate horizontally, and you move your laptop or PC directly under it, theres a good chance you're signal is going to suck or be unusable.
If you view available wifi networks, how many do you see in your list? There are only 11 channels in standard A/B/G. More than 11 networks and you are already sharing bandwidth someone else regardless of what you do. With less than 11, theres still a good chance you're sharing with someone else since most WAPs are too stupid to pick a clean channel initially, and even if yours did, it didn't get any help when someone else plugged in a cheap WAP that used your channel as well.
View available networks with a wifi browser, find out if there are any channels that aren't in use, those are the first ones to switch to. If I recall correctly, 1, 6, and 11 are good ones to use to avoid microwave interference
Easy to do, but often overlooked. The cheapest way to do it is a resistor voltage divider which does no filtering and is extremely common in electronics because they expect to already be powered from a reliable clean source, which of course, is probably true for any factory installed device designed to power a USB port as well :)
What you'll find that doesn't do it is all the cheapass lighter plug USB ports to charge cell phones in cars. These things you buy at radio shack, walmart and the Apple store have very little filtering, and the lighter outlet in most cars has no filtering since lighters themselves don't really need any and they generally draw a heavy load, which would require an expensive filter for a device that doesn't need a filter.
Alternators do not power your car, they recharge your battery using AC current and a rectifier, your electrical equipment would absolutely HATE being powered by the alternator. Its not even like AC in your house, which is a constant 50/60hz pretty much all the time. AC from your car alternator varies with your engine RPMs. In short, both Alternators and generators are EXTREMELY DIRTY power sources, especially when you consider most of them are directly connected, unfiltered to the battery, which also directly connects, unfiltered to the ignition system, which generates MASSIVE amounts of noise as it generates thousands of volts of energy for your spark plugs 2-80k times a minute or more, depending on engine configuration and operating range.
Generators could be used to power your car electronics because they produce DC current straight out, but generators are extremely rare since an alternator can be controlled far easier as to what kind of output current it provides. I.E. an alternator requires external power to power electromagnets in it, which in then are used in conjunction with the mechanical rotating energy provided from the engine to produce more electrical output. By varying the input energy to the electromagnets the voltage regulator can charge your battery as needed without over charging and frying your battery. This can be done easily with a mechanical device for very little cost and an extremely high reliability. Doing so with a generator either requires high current capacity resistors to shunt the excess energy to the ground or to limit the flow to the battery. Because of the load potential, these resistors (or now days large power FETs are more efficient and reliable) have to be rather large and capable of dealing with dumping MASSIVE amounts of heat when the current is high.
Generators provide an advantage in one case because you can still push start your car with a completely dead or missing battery. An alternator on the other hand MUST have external power to work, even if its just a little, so a battery is required.
Back to the point, either way, you never power any devices directly from the generator or alternator because the voltage and current output from these devices is unreliable. Do you want everything in your car to stop working when a belt breaks or the generator/alternator or voltage regulator fail while you're driving? Do you want all the electronics in your car dealing with unpredictable voltage levels, like sitting at a stop light where most will not actually produce enough energy to sustain ALL the electrical requirements in your car if you use EVERYTHING at once. At this point your battery fills in the gap and drains slowly, but thats no big deal because you drive off shortly afterwords and the charge is replaced.
Settle down fanboy, nobody cares about you and your gay ass Focus.
Because everyone else in the car can also use your SIM locked USB dongle via wifi? Because instead of one laptop using the dongle at a time, everything in the car can? And you're not going to have an unsecured hotspot in your car accessing your cell phone data plan, so no one is leeching off you.
Simply put, no, it won't. Wifi will still be used, as will USB, hell I've been using Firewire for at least 15 years and its far less popular than USB or wifi.
Go ahead ... do it ... tell us how nicely integrated into the car you can get it, and tell us about all your issues with power controllers, inverters for power, wiring it all up without making a mess. Then tell me how long it lasts. Go ahead, get whatever you want for car computer hardware and put it in your dash ... Give it 2 years then tell us about how its working for you. Made it 2? Okay, give it 5.
The car computer environment is far different than you think it is. The software sucks ass, feels like a kludge across the board because well, it is. The hardware is over priced and unreliable when you stuff it in a car that ranges between well below freezing in the winter to 150 degrees in the summer in a unshaded parking lot or under your dash taking heat off the firewall (The real one in your car, not software for networking).
You aren't going to go buy anything that has the same level of ruggedness as the hardware they install at the factory, nor are you going to find anything that feels nearly as natural or looks nearly as good. I've been futzing with mine for the last 3 years as indash GPS wasn't an option for my car from the factory. Yes I can do wifi over cell, voice guided GPS, voice activated control of the PC, watch movies on the indash display, all sorts of shit you couldn't possibly imagine. You know what, I'd still rather have a factory system rather than the hacks I've put together based on someone elses shitty hacks.
Nor are you going to have your car for 20 years. If you're following all the latest and greatest geek tech, theres a good chance you aren't still driving a 20 year old car, with the exception of maybe a classic, in which case this doesn't apply to you anyway, you're already accepting that you're going out of normal bounds. Likewise, if you are driving a 20 year old car, theres a good chance your computer hardware isn't bleeding edge either.
Your post wreaks of someone who has no idea what he/she is talking about, or has even looked into at all.
A couple notes:
All the stuff you listed for Sync is basically available on every OnStar equipped car in the world except for maybe stereo bluetooth, which is okay since anytime bluetooth is involved you're just talking different levels of shitty.
The SDK for Sync already available for the previous 'versions' of sync under a different name.
Sadly, just like the desktop market, for the same reasons you just said, FOSS apps will be crappy on the phone too, since it'll just be people scratching an itch with very little motivation to make a good general product for others.
Maybe you should upgrade people soft to something from this decade then?
I'm not sure what you mean, if 'few' have upgraded, then considering the OS statistics, why is IE 7 and 8 doing well, and 6 not?
IE still has over 50% of the market, so firefox isn't exactly the most popular browser. Firefox is at 30% and Chrome is already at 5% and its still an infant.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad IE's share is getting smaller and smaller, but Firefox still isn't the most popular browser out there, lets actually accomplish it before we tell everyone we've accomplished it by messaging the data.
A robotic aircraft crossed over a year ago
http://tam.plannet21.com/
Yea, and keniston locks are a pretty effective measure as well.
But seriously, how many PCs a year get stolen by an employee? And of those that get stolen, how many of those employees are going to realize that its a thin client before they get it home?
You can do this with disk images and a standard hardware package.
I've never heard of a hard drive being stolen. If you're refering to data theft, that still happens on the flash drive or the encrypted zip they email out of the office.
When you have 1k machines you are maintaining you have automation for patching, you don't patch by hand. If you keep your systems consistent its no different patching one or 100k.
The most expensive components from a power perspective are CPU and video. Fans and hard drives are trivial in the grand scheme of things, and the performance increase you get from havin ga local system far outweighs anything you're going to shave off here.
What OS can you not do that with? What OS doesn't support networked home directories?
You haven't actually used this stuff have you? What takes longer to get, several megabytes of pixels or the first few rows of a cursor on a database?
I sit at home, using a database 1300 miles away, using a local app because its FAR more responsive and FAR less annoying than the lag of doing a remove viewing session.
Nothing you've specified is actually a benefit. Its not that you've stated anything untrue, its just that everything you've said really doesn't actually apply when you compare to a standard desktop.
1970 called, ditto for everything you've said.
Not really, the more you pay for a bikini, the more everyone else gets :)
Not sure what world you live in, but there have been more than a few lawsuits against people issuing malicious/bogus DMCA notices, and they've not went the way the original issuer wanted.
Short version of how it works:
Company sends notice to your ISP
ISP/whatever shuts you off
You send a counter notice
ISP turns you back on
You both sue each other and fight it out.
Its slashdot, every angsty 15 year old in his basement screens 'OPEN SOURCE IT!!@$!@$!@$', or 'GPL IT!@$!@$!@$!@$' or 'THATS CENSORSHIP!@%!@%!@%' after every discussion.
If a few people in one department took down the entire company, it was NOT an otherwise well run company.
'A few people' do not take down a company unless you're talking about the execs.
Why exactly would you not run your C code in process? Just to give PHP a chance at an advantage or something?