Your opinion of your Palm will change drastically from the first moment you combine it with a cell phone for wireless data.
Movie listings, TV listings, email (Thanks to spam, usually just sending a quick note and not receiving), weather, phone directory lookups - Everything changes when the Palm can connect to the outside world.
My Palm sat idle for 2-3 years in college. Eventually, I got a data cable for my cell phone and hooked it up to my Palm - From then on, I used it a lot more. (Unfortunately, not as convenient as an IR-capable phone)
Eventually, I upgraded my Palm and phone at the same time to an integrated device - It's impossible to beat the convenience of a good convergence device. (The key here is GOOD. Many of the integrated devices such as all the CE-based phones and the Samsung I300 had severely crippled phone capabilities. I think even Treos require you to dial on the screen.) I have a Kyocera 6035, which is the only integrated Palm/phone to have a numeric keypad on the face of the flip so you can easily dial your phone without loading a dialer app or even opening up the PDA. It's *wonderful*. Yes, it's large for a phone, but considering it replaced two devices I was carrying around before with only one, it's taking less space than seperate phone/PDA.
Sounds like the RIM BlackBerry, which apparently is nicknamed CrackBerry by users.:)
As to phones stealing some of Palm's sails - Well, the Palm's revenge is coming. The latest trend is integrated PDA/phone combos. It's amazing how much more useful a Palm is when it has a built-in wireless modem.
Yes, most such combos suck. The Samsung I300 series and Handspring Treo Palm-based phones all require you to dial on the screen. This is a Bad Thing. No tactile feedback, and inconvenient. All of the CE devices have the same problem, and they have horrible battery life too.
There's one exception: The Kyocera 6035. It was designed to be a phone first, and then a PDA. I've had one for 4-5 months and it ROCKS. I didn't use my Palm very often before I got it, but the ability to do quick phone number lookups and check movie schedules/weather/TV listings when on the go is wonderful. PDA-wise it's about equivalent to a Palm IIIxe - OS 3.5, 8M RAM, greyscale screen.
The next two convergence devices to look out for are the Samsung I500 and Kyocera 7135. Both are "clamshell" style phones, with numeric dialing. (Samsung fixed their biggest flaw) Color screen, 16M RAM each. The Samsung has a size advantage (smaller) and a faster CPU, the Kyocera has the advantage of an SD expansion slot and MP3 capability.
For more on the Kyoceras, check out http://www.smartphonesource.com/
Sadly, the one thing lacking in most Palm PDAs is a more scratch-resistant coating. I suggest you get a screen protector.
You have two options: Cheapo screen protectors (CompanionLinks, WriteRights) - Most people I know prefer the former, because the WriteRights don't have very good transparency. CLs don't last as long but are dirt cheap.
Do a search for "G2" screen protectors. These are thicker and stiffer than the "held-on-by-static" cheapo protectors. One side has a scratch-resistant coating. (There's a person on the Kyocera 6035 user boards that doesn't bother with those dual-function pen/stylus devices - He just retracts his pen and uses the tip, no scratches yet.) It's transparency is great - It's almost impossible to tell that it's there. I bought mine 5 months ago and the only scratch visible is the one on the Graffiti area that was there before I was able to get the protector.
I used to have a Palm Pro and later a Palm III (Both obtained for very little - One was a hand-me-down, the other was a garage sale bargain) - Most of the time they amounted to toys.
Eventually, I got a serial cable for my cell phone that allowed me to use it as a modem. I started using my Palm III a lot more. Unfortunately, it was a bulky and unreliable (The Palm III connector design is crap...)
Halfway through the summer I bought a Kyocera 6035. Combination of PDA and CDMA cell phone.
I now use my PDA all the time - And not as a phone. The utility of a Palm increases drastically once you have a wireless modem for it. WAP on small-screen phones sucks for "wireless Internet", but PQAs and EudoraWeb (At least for mobile-oriented sites or ones that naturally have clean HTML anyway) are wonderful.
I also find the ability to set arbitrary alarms (i.e. meeting at 9:30 AM on Nov. 26, as opposed to "start beeping at 9:30 AM every day") to be indispensable, since I easily lose track of time.
I also use my Kyo for jotting down quick notes, as I'm more likely to have it with me wherever I go at work than a pen and paper.
Thanks to spam, I can't read email from my phone yet - I just need to find a good web-based IMAP email solution that cooperates with mobile devices. (IMP is wonderful, but is WAY too bloated HTML-wise, and SquirrelMail makes Apache go postal on my machine. ThinAir can't retain user settings reliably, and GopherKing also goes postal when trying to contact my IMAP server.)
Either that, or it is and he's severely misinformed as to its capabilities.
Specifically, " "This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything. "
Past firewalls? I don't think so... Definately not Windows Messenger Service.
In general, no client-side filtering is a solution.
IT STILL USES MY BANDWIDTH TO DOWNLOAD.
This isn't a problem with broadband, but for those who can't get broadband, spam takes too long to download before filtering.
The problem is magnified massively by wireless devices - It's almost impossible to buy a phone/get cellular service that doesn't allow you to check your email from your phone.
The problem is, thanks to the small screen of the phone, you *can't* check your email.
If you have an integrated PDA phone like mine (Kyocera 6035), you're somewhat better off. Theoretically you could do client-side filtering.
Problem is: a) 14.4 connection b) None of those solutions exist for PalmOS.
Some mics do this mechanically also - They have a port on the reverse side of the mic element so it only detects pressure differences between the two sides of the mic, i.e. only nearby sounds coming from one side of the mic (your mouth). Plantronics has plenty of these - Such NC headsets are common thanks to cellular telephone handsfree kits being required by law in some states, and they are quite good. (I love my Plantronics headset.)
You raised one of the two issues here: Trojaned software.
The other problem: What if KaZaA itself turned out to have an exploitable vulnerability and became infected?
Or if a virus deliberately infected KaZaA after coming into the system another way? (Note: Making the speed limit exceptions port-based would eliminate this, leaving only a vulnerability in KaZaA itself.)
In fact, port-based limit settings would be an excellent solution to a number of the issues of machines which have legit reasons to be opening lots of outgoing connections, like mail servers. Allow a high speed limit on outgoing SMTP, but throttle anything else. (Why would a mail server make numerous HTTP contacts?) Too bad that vulnerable MTAs are probably the second most common virus vector... But at least a mailserver could still be throttled against spreading an IIS worm.
Last but not least - How long until we see an implementation of this for Linux, possibly at the firewall level? (i.e. to restrict outgoing connections at a NAT server. Of course, such a server would inherently make it harder for a virus/worm to enter in the first place.)
99% or more of the machines infected by Nimda and Code Red had NO need whatsoever to open multiple connections. Viruses DON'T all reside in major servers. In fact, that's the LEAST likely place for them to reside, as such machines will be the most well-maintained and patched against security holes/checked thoroughly for improper activity. Nimda and CR were hitting mostly machines that were never configured as a server but happened to be running IIS because of MS stupidity in default configurations.
Even if 10% of infected machines are unthrottled because they need to be for normal use, we've severely reduced the capability of 90% of the transmission vectors of a virus. This scheme isn't about black and white winning/losing - It's about simply slowing the damn things down so they're less of a threat.
The nice thing about this is that *even if it doesn't improve detection*, it' slows down viruses a large amount. So the virus writer has rewritten his virus to avoid detection by throttling its own connections.
Guess what? We've forced that virus writer to cripple his virus' ability to spread in order to avoid detection. Yes, the virus can spread undetected. No, it can't spread as rapidly as Nimda or Code Red did.
If virus writers restrict outbound connections to 1 per second, while we lose the detection advantage of this scheme, we've STILL slowed the virus down. A virus opening a new connection per second can't spread nearly as fast as one that can open up hundreds.
There isn't any user intervention involved in the actual operation of the throttling system. It's automated. Basically, once you connect to a machine, it's whitelisted for a period of time.
The only "user intervention" is the fact that once a virus starts opening outgoing connections like crazy, the user will perceive severely reduced system performance.
Not even a Gnutella client starting up and searching for other hosts can come close to the number of connections many virii open up. (Although it may be useful to whitelist certain apps as having permission to connect faster - They still should be throttled, but maybe 1 second for all apps but you can give Kazaa permissions for a.1-second delay instead. Much faster for KaZaA, but still a major slowdown for viruses.)
The history list is automatic - There is no actual direct user intervention, it just happens that throttling makes it painfully obvious to the user that something has gone horribly wrong.
The throttle rules are most likely something like this:
Have I connected to this host in the past x minutes? Yes -> Originate as many new connections to that host as I want, as fast as I want. No -> Have I made a connection to a new machine in the last second?
Yes -> Wait 1 second.
No -> Go ahead, make a connection and put this host in history list.
Anything else would cause a problem even in normal usage.
Note: This is only applied to outgoing connections, not incoming connections (So servers wouldn't be affected unless they were infected and suddenly tried to make lots of outgoing connections.)
Interestingly, this would put a major damper on spammers abusing open relays. One would probably have to increase the speed limit for normal mailserver operation, but even "sane" speeds would be enough to severely retard spammers except for the largest of mailservers.
It wouldn't work if the spammer had control over the machine doing the worst of the gruntwork, though - He could just kill the throttle. But most of the time the dirty work is done by some unsuspecting open relay.
It's a Lv15 item which means that stats-wise, it sucks.
The thing is: a) It's RARE. Doesn't drop often, and only drops from mobs that people rarely hunt. b) It is treated by the game as a staff (equippable by casters), but it looks like a mace. As a result, it's often referred to as the "caster mace" - It is the ONLY non-staff weapon that a caster can equip.
As a result of its rarity and uniqueness, people have paid 2-4 platinum (A LOT of money in DAoC, which doesn't have the economy exploits that EQ does) for one of these maces, simply because it's a status symbol.
They really should think about the balance between realism and gameplay - IIRC, one of the big rants I've heard about Everquest is travel time. It's also a rant to some degree in Dark Age of Camelot, which isn't as bad, but is bad enough, especially for one realm. (A key part of DAoC is realm vs. realm combat - It happens that one realm (Albion) has their best XP location at the *EXACT OPPOSITE* end of the realm from the RvR frontiers, while the other realms have good XP spots right near or in the frontiers, meaning Alb is severely disadvantaged in response time.)
The 4200s are probably close to $100 even right now (Were $125 2-3 months ago). They will probably drop down even more by Xmas.
I would strongly suggest waiting for reports of driver quality before jumping to ATi because of this release - Their track record as far as drivers go is not very good... (I've been burned by ATi products not living up to their claims and crashing my machine due to bad drivers too many times to ever touch them again.)
But cars are mostly sheet metal except for the windows. That blocks a lot of lines of sight from the car, and even 800 MHz signals have pretty stringent LOS requirements. Also, glass isn't fully RF-transparent, especially to 1900 MHz PCS signals. (Some types of glass are worse than others - Many have impurities added to improve their durability and/or block UV, or other things. Many such impurities reduce the material's ability to pass RF.)
It's a fact - Unless signal strength is EXTREMELY strong, you're guaranteed to lose a bar or two of signal strength indication if you go inside the metal box that is your car. This is why external antennas for cell phones and WLAN cards give so much improvement even if their gain is not much higher than the phone/WLAN card's built-in antenna and is offset by cable losses.
While the economy in general is in a downturn, one of the few areas that's doing well is the housing market. The housing market is *hot* and demand/prices are insane. (One of the reasons I'm staying at my parents house for a year or two - To save money and hope the housing market slows down.)
Average sell time in my area is less than a week from listing to sale.
A house up the street from me sold *the same day* as it went on the market. It hadn't even been listed in the paper yet.
Been there, done that, none of this J2EE, Tomcat, JBoss (read simply: Java bloat) BS. Just some small applications that can fit in an 8-bit microcontroller such as a PIC or an AVR (Tracker side) and a single floppy on the server/gateway side.
It just happens that in that one case, the company's contract didn't explicitly mention fines for GPS-based tracking.
While some might want to point out that the rental car company has no right to act as the police: It's called Terms of Service. Lots of ISPs use this to enforce rules of theirs that have nothing to do with the law.
All the rental car company has to do is say in legalese, "We reserve the right to charge you $n if our GPS tracking system indicates that you drive over x miles per hour."
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Your opinion of your Palm will change drastically from the first moment you combine it with a cell phone for wireless data.
Movie listings, TV listings, email (Thanks to spam, usually just sending a quick note and not receiving), weather, phone directory lookups - Everything changes when the Palm can connect to the outside world.
My Palm sat idle for 2-3 years in college. Eventually, I got a data cable for my cell phone and hooked it up to my Palm - From then on, I used it a lot more. (Unfortunately, not as convenient as an IR-capable phone)
Eventually, I upgraded my Palm and phone at the same time to an integrated device - It's impossible to beat the convenience of a good convergence device. (The key here is GOOD. Many of the integrated devices such as all the CE-based phones and the Samsung I300 had severely crippled phone capabilities. I think even Treos require you to dial on the screen.) I have a Kyocera 6035, which is the only integrated Palm/phone to have a numeric keypad on the face of the flip so you can easily dial your phone without loading a dialer app or even opening up the PDA. It's *wonderful*. Yes, it's large for a phone, but considering it replaced two devices I was carrying around before with only one, it's taking less space than seperate phone/PDA.
Sounds like the RIM BlackBerry, which apparently is nicknamed CrackBerry by users. :)
As to phones stealing some of Palm's sails - Well, the Palm's revenge is coming. The latest trend is integrated PDA/phone combos. It's amazing how much more useful a Palm is when it has a built-in wireless modem.
Yes, most such combos suck. The Samsung I300 series and Handspring Treo Palm-based phones all require you to dial on the screen. This is a Bad Thing. No tactile feedback, and inconvenient. All of the CE devices have the same problem, and they have horrible battery life too.
There's one exception: The Kyocera 6035. It was designed to be a phone first, and then a PDA. I've had one for 4-5 months and it ROCKS. I didn't use my Palm very often before I got it, but the ability to do quick phone number lookups and check movie schedules/weather/TV listings when on the go is wonderful. PDA-wise it's about equivalent to a Palm IIIxe - OS 3.5, 8M RAM, greyscale screen.
The next two convergence devices to look out for are the Samsung I500 and Kyocera 7135. Both are "clamshell" style phones, with numeric dialing. (Samsung fixed their biggest flaw) Color screen, 16M RAM each. The Samsung has a size advantage (smaller) and a faster CPU, the Kyocera has the advantage of an SD expansion slot and MP3 capability.
For more on the Kyoceras, check out http://www.smartphonesource.com/
As to screen getting scratched with Graffiti
Sadly, the one thing lacking in most Palm PDAs is a more scratch-resistant coating. I suggest you get a screen protector.
You have two options:
Cheapo screen protectors (CompanionLinks, WriteRights) - Most people I know prefer the former, because the WriteRights don't have very good transparency. CLs don't last as long but are dirt cheap.
Do a search for "G2" screen protectors. These are thicker and stiffer than the "held-on-by-static" cheapo protectors. One side has a scratch-resistant coating. (There's a person on the Kyocera 6035 user boards that doesn't bother with those dual-function pen/stylus devices - He just retracts his pen and uses the tip, no scratches yet.) It's transparency is great - It's almost impossible to tell that it's there. I bought mine 5 months ago and the only scratch visible is the one on the Graffiti area that was there before I was able to get the protector.
I used to have a Palm Pro and later a Palm III (Both obtained for very little - One was a hand-me-down, the other was a garage sale bargain) - Most of the time they amounted to toys.
Eventually, I got a serial cable for my cell phone that allowed me to use it as a modem. I started using my Palm III a lot more. Unfortunately, it was a bulky and unreliable (The Palm III connector design is crap...)
Halfway through the summer I bought a Kyocera 6035. Combination of PDA and CDMA cell phone.
I now use my PDA all the time - And not as a phone. The utility of a Palm increases drastically once you have a wireless modem for it. WAP on small-screen phones sucks for "wireless Internet", but PQAs and EudoraWeb (At least for mobile-oriented sites or ones that naturally have clean HTML anyway) are wonderful.
I also find the ability to set arbitrary alarms (i.e. meeting at 9:30 AM on Nov. 26, as opposed to "start beeping at 9:30 AM every day") to be indispensable, since I easily lose track of time.
I also use my Kyo for jotting down quick notes, as I'm more likely to have it with me wherever I go at work than a pen and paper.
Thanks to spam, I can't read email from my phone yet - I just need to find a good web-based IMAP email solution that cooperates with mobile devices. (IMP is wonderful, but is WAY too bloated HTML-wise, and SquirrelMail makes Apache go postal on my machine. ThinAir can't retain user settings reliably, and GopherKing also goes postal when trying to contact my IMAP server.)
There are a number of services that will send someone a box of poo for you, for a price. :)
Either that, or it is and he's severely misinformed as to its capabilities.
Specifically, " "This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything. "
Past firewalls? I don't think so... Definately not Windows Messenger Service.
In general, no client-side filtering is a solution.
IT STILL USES MY BANDWIDTH TO DOWNLOAD.
This isn't a problem with broadband, but for those who can't get broadband, spam takes too long to download before filtering.
The problem is magnified massively by wireless devices - It's almost impossible to buy a phone/get cellular service that doesn't allow you to check your email from your phone.
The problem is, thanks to the small screen of the phone, you *can't* check your email.
If you have an integrated PDA phone like mine (Kyocera 6035), you're somewhat better off. Theoretically you could do client-side filtering.
Problem is:
a) 14.4 connection
b) None of those solutions exist for PalmOS.
Some mics do this mechanically also - They have a port on the reverse side of the mic element so it only detects pressure differences between the two sides of the mic, i.e. only nearby sounds coming from one side of the mic (your mouth). Plantronics has plenty of these - Such NC headsets are common thanks to cellular telephone handsfree kits being required by law in some states, and they are quite good. (I love my Plantronics headset.)
You raised one of the two issues here: Trojaned software.
The other problem: What if KaZaA itself turned out to have an exploitable vulnerability and became infected?
Or if a virus deliberately infected KaZaA after coming into the system another way? (Note: Making the speed limit exceptions port-based would eliminate this, leaving only a vulnerability in KaZaA itself.)
In fact, port-based limit settings would be an excellent solution to a number of the issues of machines which have legit reasons to be opening lots of outgoing connections, like mail servers. Allow a high speed limit on outgoing SMTP, but throttle anything else. (Why would a mail server make numerous HTTP contacts?) Too bad that vulnerable MTAs are probably the second most common virus vector... But at least a mailserver could still be throttled against spreading an IIS worm.
Last but not least - How long until we see an implementation of this for Linux, possibly at the firewall level? (i.e. to restrict outgoing connections at a NAT server. Of course, such a server would inherently make it harder for a virus/worm to enter in the first place.)
99% or more of the machines infected by Nimda and Code Red had NO need whatsoever to open multiple connections. Viruses DON'T all reside in major servers. In fact, that's the LEAST likely place for them to reside, as such machines will be the most well-maintained and patched against security holes/checked thoroughly for improper activity. Nimda and CR were hitting mostly machines that were never configured as a server but happened to be running IIS because of MS stupidity in default configurations.
Even if 10% of infected machines are unthrottled because they need to be for normal use, we've severely reduced the capability of 90% of the transmission vectors of a virus. This scheme isn't about black and white winning/losing - It's about simply slowing the damn things down so they're less of a threat.
Those users you mention were hopeless anyway.
The nice thing about this is that *even if it doesn't improve detection*, it' slows down viruses a large amount. So the virus writer has rewritten his virus to avoid detection by throttling its own connections.
Guess what? We've forced that virus writer to cripple his virus' ability to spread in order to avoid detection. Yes, the virus can spread undetected. No, it can't spread as rapidly as Nimda or Code Red did.
It's not a limit of one new connection per second, but a new connection to an UNKNOWN HOST per second.
i.e. if you've opened an outbound connection to that host already in recent history - No speed limit.
If virus writers restrict outbound connections to 1 per second, while we lose the detection advantage of this scheme, we've STILL slowed the virus down. A virus opening a new connection per second can't spread nearly as fast as one that can open up hundreds.
There isn't any user intervention involved in the actual operation of the throttling system. It's automated. Basically, once you connect to a machine, it's whitelisted for a period of time.
.1-second delay instead. Much faster for KaZaA, but still a major slowdown for viruses.)
The only "user intervention" is the fact that once a virus starts opening outgoing connections like crazy, the user will perceive severely reduced system performance.
Not even a Gnutella client starting up and searching for other hosts can come close to the number of connections many virii open up. (Although it may be useful to whitelist certain apps as having permission to connect faster - They still should be throttled, but maybe 1 second for all apps but you can give Kazaa permissions for a
The history list is automatic - There is no actual direct user intervention, it just happens that throttling makes it painfully obvious to the user that something has gone horribly wrong.
The throttle rules are most likely something like this:
Have I connected to this host in the past x minutes?
Yes -> Originate as many new connections to that host as I want, as fast as I want.
No -> Have I made a connection to a new machine in the last second?
Yes -> Wait 1 second.
No -> Go ahead, make a connection and put this host in history list.
Anything else would cause a problem even in normal usage.
Note: This is only applied to outgoing connections, not incoming connections (So servers wouldn't be affected unless they were infected and suddenly tried to make lots of outgoing connections.)
Interestingly, this would put a major damper on spammers abusing open relays. One would probably have to increase the speed limit for normal mailserver operation, but even "sane" speeds would be enough to severely retard spammers except for the largest of mailservers.
It wouldn't work if the spammer had control over the machine doing the worst of the gruntwork, though - He could just kill the throttle. But most of the time the dirty work is done by some unsuspecting open relay.
The item in the subject is an item in DAoC.
It's a Lv15 item which means that stats-wise, it sucks.
The thing is:
a) It's RARE. Doesn't drop often, and only drops from mobs that people rarely hunt.
b) It is treated by the game as a staff (equippable by casters), but it looks like a mace. As a result, it's often referred to as the "caster mace" - It is the ONLY non-staff weapon that a caster can equip.
As a result of its rarity and uniqueness, people have paid 2-4 platinum (A LOT of money in DAoC, which doesn't have the economy exploits that EQ does) for one of these maces, simply because it's a status symbol.
Just to cross Mos Eisley
What about reaching another planet?
They really should think about the balance between realism and gameplay - IIRC, one of the big rants I've heard about Everquest is travel time. It's also a rant to some degree in Dark Age of Camelot, which isn't as bad, but is bad enough, especially for one realm. (A key part of DAoC is realm vs. realm combat - It happens that one realm (Albion) has their best XP location at the *EXACT OPPOSITE* end of the realm from the RvR frontiers, while the other realms have good XP spots right near or in the frontiers, meaning Alb is severely disadvantaged in response time.)
Should've thought of this before hitting submit.
Doom 3 won't be out for another few months. Recycle your old video card and don't buy a video card for Doom 3 until the game comes out.
The 4200s are probably close to $100 even right now (Were $125 2-3 months ago). They will probably drop down even more by Xmas.
I would strongly suggest waiting for reports of driver quality before jumping to ATi because of this release - Their track record as far as drivers go is not very good... (I've been burned by ATi products not living up to their claims and crashing my machine due to bad drivers too many times to ever touch them again.)
Um, unless you're running a kernel from the Stone Age, no patch is needed to use any 3DNow! optimized applications.
3DNow! support goes back at LEAST to kernel 2.2, as I remember using gogo on a K6-2/300 3-4 years ago to rip MP3s. No kernel patch needed.
Sedan.
But cars are mostly sheet metal except for the windows. That blocks a lot of lines of sight from the car, and even 800 MHz signals have pretty stringent LOS requirements. Also, glass isn't fully RF-transparent, especially to 1900 MHz PCS signals. (Some types of glass are worse than others - Many have impurities added to improve their durability and/or block UV, or other things. Many such impurities reduce the material's ability to pass RF.)
It's a fact - Unless signal strength is EXTREMELY strong, you're guaranteed to lose a bar or two of signal strength indication if you go inside the metal box that is your car. This is why external antennas for cell phones and WLAN cards give so much improvement even if their gain is not much higher than the phone/WLAN card's built-in antenna and is offset by cable losses.
While the economy in general is in a downturn, one of the few areas that's doing well is the housing market. The housing market is *hot* and demand/prices are insane. (One of the reasons I'm staying at my parents house for a year or two - To save money and hope the housing market slows down.)
Average sell time in my area is less than a week from listing to sale.
A house up the street from me sold *the same day* as it went on the market. It hadn't even been listed in the paper yet.
This is the most elaborate troll I've ever read...
See other posts in this article about APRS.
Been there, done that, none of this J2EE, Tomcat, JBoss (read simply: Java bloat) BS. Just some small applications that can fit in an 8-bit microcontroller such as a PIC or an AVR (Tracker side) and a single floppy on the server/gateway side.
It just happens that in that one case, the company's contract didn't explicitly mention fines for GPS-based tracking.
While some might want to point out that the rental car company has no right to act as the police: It's called Terms of Service. Lots of ISPs use this to enforce rules of theirs that have nothing to do with the law.
All the rental car company has to do is say in legalese, "We reserve the right to charge you $n if our GPS tracking system indicates that you drive over x miles per hour."