My Little Corner : PV Lounge

[Palo Verde]

With blessings from the mods, I am able to leave this thread on a trial basis for all sorts of nick knacks, info interesting bits and pieces that is totally not related to Jamie at all. Sort of like a perpertual OT thread all in one spot, saves having to look for so many threads when all the interesting trash you need is just here. And sometimes, trash to one person is absolutely treasure for another and vice versa.

This makes it easy for members to look up anything not Jamie related in one simple thread.

As this is, as stated, a trial so we shall see if it garnish enough fans to keep it on for a little while more.

members are free to add in bits of other newsies so it will not just be me looking for newsies...

Anyways, I just cound not resist telling peeps about this first mobile phone company of Finland even before Nokia. Nokia used to make all sorts of things from tissue papers to furniture.

Glad they found a niche and made mobile phones instead.

Back to the topic, the company name is benefon of Finland and they now use a brand name "TWiG"

I just thought this little gizmo they make for car theft prevention is pretty nifty
for 399 Euros plus shipping


Check it out : The TWiG Locator, becos you never know if your car will be stolen...

CLICK LINKY


I will continue to bring newsies of interesting products as I discover them...otherwise, it will just be some rant and whatever...

[Palo Verde]

Hmmm it would appear my "lumps of clay" thread generated more interest than this little corner as suggested by the mods...but still.... you cannot say i did not try....

[crackman]

so does this twig work underground or in tunnels? most GPS devices fail there

[punkpapa]

Hey PV - considering your well thought out posts, one dedicated to you is a great idea!! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!!

[3PEAT]

yeah pv... i dont' always post replies to your extremely interested product threads, but keep them coming. its always a good read for me!

[punkpapa]

Back to the topic, the company name is benefon of Finland and they now use a brand name "TWiG"

I just thought this little gizmo they make for car theft prevention is pretty nifty
for 399 Euros plus shipping


Check it out : The TWiG Locator, becos you never know if your car will be stolen...

hey PV - I have seen these things around - a lot of fleet operators are looking at them. This one seems more like a personal version?

[Palo Verde]

this is a personal version if you cherish your car, also I am sure you get insurance discount when u have a tracking device, this item sends 2 sms immediately once the car has been moved from your usual routes, you set it, the idea is that u take immediate action when u receive the sms, not until the car goes into the tunnel and it cannot stay in the tunnel that long whilst driving so it gives u an idea where your car is, not too bad if u ask me.

[melbastina]

Wonder if it can alert you if your car alarm goes off as well, could be a great little all in one device!

[Palo Verde]

don't know about that more for theft than vandals, but maybe the manufacturers can answer that, thing is the sms sent includes exact GPS location, I believe it not only sends you an sms but also a co ordinate, map of where exactly your car has been moved from the usual route, it is a pretty sophisticated piece of instrument hence almost Aus $850 for it, insurance will then discount you as you have a tracking devise for your car if it was ever stolen, something like u can call the police right away as well when you get the sms/ coordinates....

[Palo Verde]

well, moving on to the next topic of discussion,

there's news now that Ford Motors ( co owner of Mazda is losing ground ) [even losing to Toyota]
Apparently, Jaguar and LandRover, 2 brands that Ford Motor now hold control, according to financial experts in Wall Street that the only company that is capable and have the resources to take control of jaguar and land Rover is none other than Tata motors of India.

So what's new? Lotus is Malaysian owned.
Nissan is French owned can peeps think of any car companies that is foreign owned?
The Germans are smart, they never let foreigners take control of their proud heritage. No matter how tempting.

now Jaguar and Land Rover will be Indian after all.

Let's hope Mazda stays in Japanese hands and not some non car expert countries like Mexico or something.

[waymoz]

haha PV keep ur posts coming. i too like others have mentioned, read all your posts. i just don't reply because i don't know what to say without looking stupid. HAHA!

[Palo Verde]

I am glad I have such a faithful following, of course some response would be nice...

BTW, panasonic have come up with a Blu ray disc player with 1 tera byte of HDD for recording as well and it is only 59mm thick!!!!! Big in Japan of course. Oh it takes up to 8 gigs SDHC as well. marvellous! I will see if I can point peeps to a link.

[Palo Verde]

well peeps, I just read this article about Nokia putting free Wi Fi in buses in Singapore!

yes, can you imagine, free wi fi on a moving bus and nothing to pay absolutely free! And do you think Nokia will do the same here in Sydney or melbourne, of course not, peeps might recall all the excuses we thought of why the cities are not wired becos there is so much bush land here etc etc, well how about wifi the buses in the major cities? Again there's excuses, Telstra will not wire the copper POT lines to the buses etc etc...

Linky here : here, not there

[alanngli]

About your previous post, actually, as you said yourself, even Mazda is in foreign ownership (Ford). But they were pretty lucky that they got quite a big degree of self management, and rarely Ford intervenes with anything even during the hard time of Mazda.

You can say Renault owns Nissan, but Nissan is also the equal biggest shareholder of Renault, so you can say it is more like a merger but unfinished, and each gets each other's share of good job.

German's manufacturers got law to protect and restrict the nationality of the ownership, and it also puts restriction on the lowest amount of share the government has to hold, thus the unlikelyhood for a German car brand to be owned by someone else.

VW was recently in danger of being owned by someone else, since it was having problem to remain liquid. Porsche, after years of difficulties, but regained profitability after Cayenne, slashed out and bought big portion of VW to protect their supply line as VW is their biggest supplier. They even went to the court with the government to challenge the government ownership law, and won, to ensure their shareholding remains the biggest chunk of VW.

After all, Porsche is still German, so they got nothing to worry about.

[punkpapa]

I wonder what portion of a car is actually "made" by a manfucturer at any rate? For e.g. the parent company I work for makes very well known turbos. Considering that they are branded differently, and you wouldn't know who the parent company is, it would be interesting to see who puts what in and where it came from.

[melbastina]

Free WiFi in busses would be awesome, I heard rumors about it going in on some trains here, but it was not free, and it will probably never happen.

[TIMU5]

Originally Posted by melbastina

Free WiFi in busses would be awesome, I heard rumors about it going in on some trains here, but it was not free, and it will probably never happen.

If i was on a sydney bus or train .. i wouldnt be pulling out my Laptop or whizz bang gizmos .... might get mugged !!

[Palo Verde]

the thing is Timmeh, those new Nokia n series gizmos are small and discreet and now all the latest Nokia phones come standard with Wi Fi so you are not stuck with criminally greedy telcos like the ones in Australia using GPRS instead u cn also use Wi Fi, supposedly, Wi Fi is either free or very cheap but then just look at Big Pawn.

interesting opinions and info from Allangi about the foreign ownership and punkpapa feedback also....

BTW PV now in Singapore, sadly Swissotel charges me Singapore $ 29 for a 24 hour high speed LAN access. But then I would have missed omc too much not to log on and being so late at night, I would not be haulling the ASUS eee PC outside hence staying in my hotel room. Peeps in sydney who want to mug a ASUS eee PC ought to have their brains autopsy examined.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moving on to another discussion, becos this could happen to anyone, someday you will be visiting America and you are most likely to bring your little ASUS eee PC as there are so many free Wi fI access in America so you would want to take advantage of the free service anyways, read this very interesting article, not that you have dirty secrets in your laptops but then , you could have things highly confidential you sdo not want just any peeps to look at it, least of all, governments.

U.S. courts consider legality of laptop inspections
By Adam Liptak
Monday, January 7, 2008

A couple of years ago, Michael Arnold landed at the Los Angeles International Airport after a 20-hour flight from the Philippines. He had his laptop with him, and a customs officer took a look at what was on his hard drive. Clicking on folders called "Kodak pictures" and "Kodak memories," the officer found child pornography.

The search was not unusual: The government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer's hard drive, the government says, is no different from looking through a suitcase. One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit.

There is one lonely voice on the other side. In 2006, Judge Dean Pregerson of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles suppressed the evidence against Arnold.

"Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory," Pregerson wrote, in explaining why the government should not be allowed to inspect them without cause. "They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound."

Computer hard drives, Pregerson continued, can include diaries, letters, medical information, financial records, trade secrets, attorney-client materials and information about reporters' "confidential sources and story leads."

But Pregerson's decision seems to be headed for reversal. The three judges who heard the arguments in October in the appeal of his decision seemed persuaded that a computer is just a container and deserves no special protection from searches at the border. The same information in hard-copy form, their questions suggested, would doubtless be subject to search.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Virginia, took that position in a 2005 decision. It upheld the conviction of John Ickes Jr., who crossed the Canadian border with a computer containing child pornography. A customs agent's suspicions were raised, the court's decision said, "after discovering a video camera containing a tape of a tennis match, which focused excessively on a young ball boy."

It is true that the government should have great leeway in searching physical objects at the border. But the law requires a little more - a "reasonable suspicion" - when the search is especially invasive, as when the human body is involved.

Searching a computer, said Jennifer Chacon, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, "is fairly intrusive." Like searches of the body, she said, such "an invasive search should require reasonable suspicion."

An interesting supporting brief filed in the Arnold case by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said there had to be limits on the government's ability to acquire information.

"Under the government's reasoning," the brief said, "border authorities could systematically collect all of the information contained on every laptop computer, BlackBerry and other electronic device carried across our national borders by every traveler, American or foreign." That is, the brief said, "simply electronic surveillance after the fact."

The government went even further in the case of Sebastien Boucher, a Canadian who lives in New Hampshire. Boucher crossed the Canadian border by car about a year ago, and a customs agent noticed a laptop in the back seat.

Asked whether he had child pornography on his laptop, Boucher said he was not sure. He said he had downloaded a lot of pornography but had deleted child pornography when he found it.

Some of the files on Boucher's computer were encrypted using a program called Pretty Good Privacy, and Boucher helped the agent look at them, apparently by entering an encryption code. The agent said he had seen lots of revolting pornography involving children.

The government seized the laptop. But when it tried to open the encrypted files again, it could not. A grand jury instructed Boucher to provide the password.

But a federal magistrate judge quashed that instruction in November, saying that requiring Boucher to provide it would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Last week, the government appealed.

The magistrate judge, Jerome Niedermeier of U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont, used an analogy from Supreme Court precedent. It is one thing to require a defendant to surrender a key to a safe and another to make him disclose its combination.

The government can make you provide samples of your blood and handwriting and the sound of your voice. It can make you put on a shirt or stand in a lineup. But it cannot make you testify about facts or beliefs that may incriminate you, Niedermeier said.

Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami, writing about the Boucher case on his Discourse.net blog, said, "The core value of the Fifth Amendment is that you can't be made to speak in ways that indicate your guilt."

But Orin Kerr, a law professor at the George Washington University, said Niedermeier had probably gotten it wrong.

"In a normal case," Kerr said in an interview, "there would be a privilege." But given what Boucher had already done at the border, he said, making him provide the password again would probably not violate the Fifth Amendment.

There are all sorts of lessons in these cases. One is that the border seems be a privacy-free zone. A second is that encryption programs work. A third is that you should keep your password to yourself. And the most important is that you should leave your laptop at home.


this publicly available article can be accessed on the International Herald Tribune website

and now for something a little more related to our site here, remember I mentioned tata motors in India can buy out Jaguar and LandRover from Ford? Read on ...

India's Tata Motors to display US$2,500 ultracheap car at auto show next month

The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 19, 2007

NEW DELHI: India's Tata Motors plans to unveil its new ultracheap car at an auto show here next month, the company said Wednesday.

Tata Motors says the model will sell for just 100,000-rupees (US$2,500; €1,735), and analysts say the car could force other manufacturers to lower their own pricing.

While the price has created a buzz, critics say the vehicle will lead to millions more cars hitting choked Indian roads, adding to mounting air and noise pollution problems. Others have said Tata will have to sacrifice quality and safety standards to meet the price tag.

The four-door car, which will have a rear engine and seat at least four passengers, is expected to go on sale in the later part of 2008, the company said in a statement.

Company chairman Ratan Tata has said the car will be the least polluting vehicle on the Indian roads and meet necessary safety standards.

Initially, the company plans to make between 250,000 to 500,000 units a year, Tata told The Associated Press in a recent interview. While the base model will cost 100,000 rupees, the company will offer two variants with added features, he said.

German auto consulting firm CSM Worldwide has said the new car could help Tata Motors emerge as the country's largest manufacturer of cars and light commercial vehicles by 2013.

Currently, Tata Motors has a 17 percent share of the passenger car market and trails Korean auto maker Hyundai Motor Co. and Maruti Suzuki Ltd. The latter is the market leader, in which Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp. owns a controlling stake.

Besides the ultracheap car, Tata Motors will also display several new cars that it plans to bring to the Indian market in collaboration with Italian auto maker Fiat Spa., the statement said. The auto show in New Delhi opens Jan. 9.

The company is also in the running to acquire the loss-making Jaguar and Land Rover businesses of Ford Motor Co. Media reports have said Ford may name Tata as the preferred bidder for the luxury brands.


this publicly available article can be accessed on the International Herald Tribune website

[Palo Verde]

ok peeps,


Just thought you might like to look at this
it is called the earth watch and costs about Aus$585 and available only and made in Japan, apparently the earth spins on your wrist.


Check it out here------> Earth Watch

Also check out this German watch company that never saw the light of day in Australia. But it is very and every bit German. Not many peeps have German watches so take a look see what the people who brought you BMW and Posche have to say about watches designs.


check it out here------> Made in Germany

[crackman]

that looks neat PV! but more gimicky than useful though.