<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/1/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">James Buchanan</b> <<a href="mailto:z.b.longladder@gmail.com">z.b.longladder@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<span class="q"><snip></span><span class="q"><br><br></span>Your're assuming an awfully clever thief here...I guess it's possible that someone who pickpockets cell phones might know to flash the firmware, but it's probable that most don't--I shouldn't think the majority of common thieves would even be aware of the open nature of the OpenMoko--they'd just think it a shiny, expensive cell, prime for a new SIM.
<br><br><snip></blockquote></div><br>well, they won't know of the open nature unless that other thread with the TV ads kicks in and we splash the thing around the interblogosphereweb....<br><br>but seriously, it's not the thief that you really need to worry about being clever... it's his fence, and yeah, some of those guys are clever enough to flash a phone, or know someone who is, so don't assume this, what I'd think about is integrating this functionality into u-boot, where it's harder to get to, then altering the u-boot upgrader to require a password: no password, no flashy. We're talking about reading then sending one line commands to UARTs for a GPS fix, then an sms, I don't see anything that couldn't easily be handled by the bootloader each time the phone is turned on, especially since both the GPS and GSM hardware are separate subsystems
<br><br>I would really hate for anyone to be a tester, but I think it would be interesting to gather data from multiple tracking methods(u-Boot, userland, k-space)-- we could implement all of them easily and then see, as phones were (god forbid) stolen(knock on wood just in case)
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Jeff<br>O|||||||O