I think we're not entirely communicating. The suggestion was to run a thin client at home. The only thing being communicated is changes to the screen. I realize this won't accommodate streaming media, but I wouldn't sell my house over lack of YouTube or Netflix. It may be against one's company's policy to run a thin client.

I'm still lost as to why wireless service isn't viable.

Couldn't one keep the development boxes remoted somewhere, and just access them through remote terminal over LTE? The latency is okay, and even a lot of remote access isn't going to blow through a 15GB data plan.

CF cards are IDE, but with a smaller pin-out. If you have an adapter between the laptop IDE and the CF form factor you might be able to either plug the HD into a newer box with a CF adapter or plug a CF card directly into the laptop (assuming there's a second slot... or possibly even slaved on to a single cable if there isn't).

Personally I'd try PCMCIA ethernet because I still have a card or two in my basement, but who knows what crap you have.

Really, though, I just want to say thank you to the poster for a problem that Slashdotters really care about.

If any of you kiddies are interested in technology the NSA will have trouble getting at, I know of someone with a Contura laptop to sell you...

If I'm reading the comments section correctly, they might as well be magicians.

Shannon's theorem is true for a single channel. Eventually, cramming in more bits into one channel becomes power-prohibitive, because one must double power for each new bit added in. The benefits from adding power diminish even further when a system is widely deployed, as power from one system shows up as noise in the next, and SNR in all systems hits an interference limit.

To get around these limits, two related techniques are used
1) adding more antennas, to create more channels which are separated in space
2) coordination techniques that reduce interference from one spatial channel to another

If 2) is done well, then 1) can provide the kind of linear benefits you'd hope for - each new channel contributes its share to the sum data-rate. As you might imagine, building very parallel radio systems and coordinating what's sent over them presents its share of challenges.

For those of you looking to try it at home, there is at least one Software Defined Radio platform that will drive the ~1000 spatial streams you would need for this:

http://nutaq.com/en/products/titanmimo/titanmimo-6

Secretly, for years, store employees have used advanced evolutionary facial recognition algorithms to identify customers. Where has the public outcry been?

"leaving law enforcement a way in" like a rubber hose?

FTFY.

Obama puts it another way, more bluntly: "There's no scenario in which we don't want really strong encryption." However, the president says the public itself is driving concern for leaving criminals no way in: "The first time that an attack takes place on millions of bank accounts in which it turns out that we could have prevented it with encryption, the public's going to demand answers."

Existing cars are pervasively computerized. We seem intent on hooking them, along with everything else, up to the Internet because the immediate cost of hooking things up to the Internet is low and decreasing and there are promised benefits of convenience, efficiency, or safety. Control does not make the list.

My choice of "timebomb" was poor. I meant only that something complex, valuable, and easy to connect to would be in danger of getting compromised, and that being able to receive patches OTA would mitigate this threat better if it didn't make the thing even easier to connect to.

There is some risk of seeing manufacturers ship (literally) cars that are half-baked, but there are still consequences to messing up. While the prohibitive costs of a recall force some more attention to detail during design, they also can act to discourage manufacturers from acknowledging and fixing things. There's moral hazard either way -- it's difficult to design one's way out of sloth and risk. From a security perspective, cost / benefit analysis and "appropriate" security is often emphasized over defense in depth, so there's risk that resources spent on, eg, private cellular access are resources taken away from other system hardening efforts rather than something layered on top. It's often the case that the defender isn't really playing to win.

If you don't allow updates, then a drive-by-wire car with a bunch of wireless systems (keyless entry, keyless starter, bluetooth, cellular, 802.11p (DSRC), ... ?) connected to its bus is a timebomb. If updates are allowed, at least there is a way to fix problems on a larger scale. If that update mechanism is the open Internet, then it presents an attractive large-scale, low-risk target. An OTA update mechanism that is privately networked (eg, dedicated cellular APN) might at least make mass attacks by relatively unsophisticated attackers unlikely. If that means building in two cellular radios, one that's for dedicated use by the car and another that's completely isolated that's for "apps", it's a small cost delta.

The open Internet isn't necessarily the one that is most suited to things.

Other side effects include aggression and being banned from sports competitions.

The person who brought the challenge to the regulator's attention was a graduate student. I don't think he has very much money, just training and time.

We know it's you, Linus!