Big blue and big brother.
If you don't like the thought of Big Brother knowing how fast
you drive down the open highway, you'll want to cross the United
Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates, federation of sheikhdoms (2005 est. pop. 2,563,000), c.30,000 sq mi (77,700 sq km), SE Arabia, on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. off of your list of possible retirement location choices.
That's because the Arabian kingdom may be farther along than any
other country in the widespread use of automotive data recorders A data recorder is a piece of equipment which records data, and may also be called a data logger.
Examples of data recorders are: - A flight data recorder (FDR), a piece of recording equipment used to collect specific aircraft performance data.
to
detect speeding violations. Beginning in early 2007, the UAE (Uninterruptible Application Error) The name given to a crash in Windows 3.0. In subsequent versions of Windows, a crash was called a "General Protection Fault," "Application Error" or "Illegal Operation." See crash in Windows and abend. will
phase-in a requirement that obliges every car owner in the country to
have a data recorder installed in his vehicle to track vehicle speed and
location via an embedded Inserted into. See embedded system. GPS chip. Under this mandate, the first two
violations garner nothing more than a polite warning. The third,
however, causes an automatic cellular transmission to the authorities
and a ticket soon follows in the mail. IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) designed the system, and
Erich Nickel, director of Global Telematics Solutions, says that, with a
total market of about one million vehicles, this application will be
largest of its kind in the world. That could make UAE a test bed for any
government looking to institute similar black box requirements in the
future. Nickel explains that while the clear purpose is to reduce
highway deaths, IBM is looking to expand the functionality of the boxes
beyond speeding enforcement by adding features like hands-free calling
and navigation services. The idea is to make government tracking of
private citizens a little more palatable pal·at·a·ble
adj.
1. Acceptable to the taste; sufficiently agreeable in flavor to be eaten.
2. Acceptable or agreeable to the mind or sensibilities: a palatable solution to the problem. by giving people some services
they actually want. IBM is also experimenting with a smart card
activation system that would be tied to driver's licenses, to make
it more likely that the correct person is being fined. Two versions of
the black box currently are under development: one includes a screen
that flashes a bright red warning whenever the speed limit is exceeded,
the other is a no-frills unit that only offers a warning tone.--KEW
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gardner Publications, Inc.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.
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