USB FlashDrives The New PC? 305
olddotter writes "Yahoo has an article about how large capacity USB drives might be redefining the concept of the personal computer. The article is windows specific, but think knopix on a flash drive." From the article: "When you check into an average hotel room and find -- alongside the alarm clock, hair dryer and DVD player that once were bring-your-own items but now are as standard as the furniture -- a cheap PC for guests to plug into, as our truly personal computing environment travels with us."
Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
Subnotebooks ... (Score:2, Interesting)
vmware with no HD image perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then how do you know it's not a virtual machine that's emulating a diskless PC?
Predicted about 10 years ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flash drives don't last forever (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent talks about "wear balancing" - interesting concept though I have not heard of it used on flash drives before... would be a nice idea but not too fun to implement.
I use my flash drive several times a day at least, it's a 4gb SanDisk Cruzer Mini. Perfect for hauling around all the maintenance, repair, and update software that I use daily. I don't know why people buy those giant drives that don't fit well in a pocket and block adjacent USB ports. SanDisk also has a lifetime guarantee on their drives, so if mine ever does use up all its spares, I'll just trade it for a new one. Lacks a write protect switch though, which would kinda be nice.
Also a less known factoid about USB drives... the fast ones - USB 2.0 "High Speed" (not to be confused with the "Full Speed" snails) only work in powered USB hubs. Can't plug them into the keyboard ports. I wish they'd fix that. I'm tired of having to crawl behind a computer to jack into one of the powered ports. Thankfully most manufacturers are placing a powered usb port on the front of their machines nowadays. (sometimes two)
Would be nice too if Apple would fix OS X so it didn't reset all the #@*& USB buses 1.5 seconds into boot, so we could boot X off our flash drives.
Look at Internet Suspend/Resume (Score:3, Interesting)
the NeXT big thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Direction? (Score:3, Interesting)
The article assumes that the processor/memory etc are bulky by definition. Movement towards miniturization and disposable computing mean that having an entire system may become nearly as cheap and small as the stick of memory you are booting off of.
The only way to be truly secure is to have full control over the system you are using, so bringing your own entire machine will be a necesity for the crowd for whom inovations in hotels are usually designed for: business people.
Also a USB key with an OS compiled for an alternative archetecture would be useless in a hotel box.
The only two things which a handheld device cannot offer are a full sized display and interface. Why not just make everyone's handheld device interface with a monitor/keyboard/mouse console? Leave architecture compatibility issues to the user. Leave security to the user. Just provide a pleasant work environment.
You are talking about trust. (Score:2, Interesting)
That's why I'm going to keep carrying my laptop. I don't trust non-free software, especially Microsoft junk. I'll use a windoze box in a pinch, but I won't put a password into it. There are just too many key loggers out there and the platform is too open to abuse. As long as there's a network, I have full OpenSSH access to my data from my cable box. It's rare that I need all of it, but what I need is unpredictable. That's not something the average Windoze box can do and I would not trust it if it could.
Would I trust a free computer? That depends on my trust of the owner. I trust my friends and their computers. Do I know a hotel chain? No, and so the laptop saves the day again.
My trust in businesses has been shattered by the last decade of data mining they have done. The grocery store tracks my spending and spits out coupons. The credit card company tracks my spending even the gas station want's a piece of the "action". This is only the tip of the database nation iceburg.
Re:I like this concept (Score:1, Interesting)
I've also found that Java, yes, the jre and the JDK can run off a portable drive. As a result i can also take "heavy" apps such as Jedit with me.
i also have GAIM, gimp, opera openoffice and some utils such as erunt running from there
Re:Oh? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, Knoppix doesn't mount any foreign disk by default. Second, if it was a drive that was "interupting" my keydrive, knoppix would likely see that and tell me. No such drive exists today, writing the code to view it would be very trivial, its hardware and knoppix reads ALL the hardware on every boot.
I would be more worried that they have cameras in the smoke detectors and watching your keystrokes. THIS would actually be easier to pull off because the gear exists to do it.
Ironically, I will bet you anything the majority of people who are being all paranoid about this 1) Dont travel anyway 2) Use wireless routers, no password and/or 3) Use Windows XP and the free version of Zone Alarm.
So pardon me if I'm a bit nonplussed by all the "security experts" posting their invalid concerns. Most of these concerns can be easily overcome with about 10 seconds of thought. There ARE some potential issues, but not a single valid one is expressed in the comments.
I have... (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox (portable version prepared by John Haller)
Thunderbird (also Haller's prepackage)
7-Zip (cause my flash drive is only 256MB)
NetRadio (simple Shoutcast player/ripper)
XMPlay (for other audio files)
Miranda IM (would use GAIM, but don't want to install GTK and the autologging is so useful)
BitComet (more features and half the disk size of the official BitTorrent client)
WinMTR 0.8.7 (if only the Windows shell had this built in)
SSH Secure Shell (there's a free-for-non-commercial-use licensed version somewhere)
Re:Oh? (Score:4, Interesting)
When I pay $300-$500 a night to stay at the Sheraton in Brussels, I'm pretty sure they aren't just a front for a credit card fraud ring. After all, I have already GIVEN them a scan of my credit card to put on file during my stay. This is the kind of hotel that would be offering computers. Better quality business class hotels near major airports and travel destinations.
The Model 6 on the edge of town where the crack whores stay isn't gonna start having free computer access anytime soon.
Come on, a little perspective goes a long way folks. You guys must not travel much.
Re:Trust? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice idea. Wouldn't be it much easier to just use a USB keylogger? However, keystrokes (i.e. username and password combinations) are probably not that valuable information so that the earnings would cover your expenses.
How about this: knock at an occupied hotel room (preferably dressed like the hotel staff) and say that you have to take the PC to do some maintenance work. Take one of those WiFi devices with two USB ports and put it inside of the computer's case. Replace the PC's USB connectors so they lead to your WiFi box and attach the second USB port to a "real" port.
If the WiFi box is running a customized kernel that simply routes the USB communication to the PC, you could sniff the traffic. Even better would be to read out the whole USB disk and send it over the wireless link to a machine that stores all the data. Do that for every room and you recieve all confidential data from every person that uses one of these PCs
Re:Right... (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget the sheets - think about the fact you're reusing the blankets from the previous parties (and the previous parties' leftovers).
Speaking of the drives, Best Buy just finished having a sale of Memorex 2G sticks (retail $199) for $159 at the cash register, then another $30 for the rebate. Granted, you're looking at $10+ in taxes at each level, but it's still a heck of a discount. Not much more than some of the stores' retail prices for 1G, although I don't think anyone is going to pay the upper end of a 1G price scale. Those things were nearly impossible to find using the StoreFinder Inventory. I didn't want to order one and was going to my doctor's office in Chicago a couple of days after they sold out here in Indy, so I placed a pickup order there.
Then, I happened to be picking up some laptops for our DARPA team from a repair shop, and when I went back to my car, there was a Best Buy sack (this was on the far side of the BB parking lot) which was on the passenger side of my car, so I opened it up. There was a 2G stick in it. Unopened. So I figured I'd do the nice nerd thing and track down the new owner. If they paid via credit card or cheque, it shouldn't have been a problem to track them down. Unfortunately, they paid in ca$h???? So I sat there for another hour, sitting & reading, sans A/C as it was fixed, then stopped working and I hadn't had time to take it back to be re-repaired. I don't tolerate heat very well, but I felt it was the decent thing to do. After an hour, I wasn't sure what to do, so I ended up putting it onto my lanyard, feeling badly for not having another way to find the owner.
BTW, it's said you can't (or shouldn't) format NTFS, but both of mine seem to be working fine. I had the handle (which holds it on the lanyard) break off and had to finagle a fix, but also contacted Memorex. They told me to file it as a warranty issue to get a replacement cap. (???)
One of my friends, who has a 512M stick, asked me what I was going to do with 4G of stick memory and I asked him what he did with 512M. He said he rarely comes close to capacity. I thought about marking one of them with tiny lettering: ICE (In Case of Emergency), sort of like the fad with cell phones, but a text file with the important info, in addition to the usual phone numbers (a list, and who they are - more options than a cell phone) as I usually have them around my neck; e.g. I'm allergic to morphine; my pain receptors have been exposed weekly exclusively to methadone for nearly ten years, so other pain meds may not work correctly; what other meds I'm taking; why all of this is so; etc.
Here's an article [pcmag.com] from PC Magazine detailing how to stock up on what you can carry around, bootable, as well as what utilities you can tote about worrying about (on the Windows side) things which have to have components in specific directories, entries in the registry, etc.
Windows driver issues (Score:3, Interesting)
Knoppix, I can see...
Re:Oh? (Score:3, Interesting)
You, and others that can afford to stay there, are the perfect people to collect private data from. Credit card numbers, passwords to corporate accounts, banking information, whatever. The person doing the collecting doesn't have to tell Sheraton he's doing he, does he? He just has to impose his malware into the system you're going to be using while fat, dumb, and happy (it's an expression - don't take it personally). Somebody, somewhere, will be happy to collect and somebody else, somewhere, will be happy to buy that data, and somebody, somewhere, will be happy to put that data to use in subtle and Step 3 (profit!) manners, all facilitated at the whatever the cracker equivalent of ebay is.
Security is not just your pendrive - it's also your OS and your hardware, and your data connection and whatever man-in-the-middle setups may have been quietly arranged. Unless you know it's safe - and a little misdirection can mislead even the otherwise competent - treat it like it's compromised.
pretty cool... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Doubletree I've been staying at for the past million months recently replaced all the regular clock radios with new ones that, in addition to four other preset "memorised" stations, has a button designated to an input jack -- so that MP3 players can be connected.
Re:Oh? (Score:2, Interesting)
I would assume that this could be done semi-automaticly with IT staff only needed when something goes wrong
Re:We used to do that with floppy disks (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, with over 8 MB of the 10 MB dedicated to file areas for the BBS, 8 MB across 2400 baud is a slow transfer, particularly at long-distance rates. So how did we swap files?
Every 2-4 weeks, us sysops would all meet someplace, usually a state park where we would grill some dogs and shoot the crap. We would all put in requests to each other, spend a few evenings before each get-together copied to disk, and you would show up with a box of floppies. I mean a long cardboard box with 100 floppies, not a box of 10 here.
100 1.44 MB floppies driven 1 hour across the state line - I couldn't touch that kind of bandwidth online.
Re:vmware with no HD image perhaps? (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, that's how I'd do it anyway. I'd have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and USB port on the keyboard or monitor, and nothing else visible. Stick the computer up in the ceiling or behind a wall or something.
If they were intelligent, there'd be the end of a USB KVM laying out, so people could plug laptops into the keyboard/monitor, or flip a switch to use the build-in computer, including booting off a USB stick if there is one. (Or a basic install of Windows if not.) Use repeaters to go to a rack in the basement.
And if you do that, you can even charge people for computers, and have less than one a room. Free for laptops, or they can pay to have one of the hotel computers hooked to their room.
If they were really clever, these 'racks' in the basement would actually be VMs. Not for spying, but simply for cost. Sadly, at that point, you're off standard hardware, even standard rack hardware.
And, like I said, if they want to spy on you, getting a USB drive/keyboard/mouse dump via a hacked hub (residing inside the computer) might be easier and more useful. (Have it write to, heh, a second hard drive that's hooked up via said hub. You know, there has to be some 'drive imager' type thing that does this already.)