> 
> an interesting side note to this would be the use of a 
> secured linux box as a black box recording the vehicles
> various sensors. could prove very useful in accident

Well, on a slightly different note, there is something called
APRS - amateur position reporting system.  (Its a ham radio
thing.)  What it does is use a gps receiver, a ham packet
controller, and a ham transciever to report, once per
minute, your position.  (To the world)  There are web sites
where you can go look at the APRS activity in an area,
including locations of various hams.  (Search for APRS
or Amateur Position REporting System in your favourite
search engine)

I recently bought a truck.  My plan is to install such a system,
with a couple of small modifications:

	1 - I will monitor the horn and the doors.  If the horn
		goes off, or a door opens, I will IMMEDIATELY
		update my position info along with status 
		indication that the door or horn has triggered.
	2 - I will have a system on the 'net at home watching
		for that status (or missing data), and it will
		send me a page on my alpha pager to notify me
		of that status.

(Yes, this means that every time I open the door, or lock or
unlock the truck I'll get paged - but I've decided to consider
that a feature ;-)  (I'm testing the funtcionality every time
I use the truck ;-)

So, if I ever get a page that I did not trigger, I know to call
the police and alert them to my stolen vehicle, along with
directions on how to track where it is....

And, just to get it somewhat back on topic, at least ONE of the
machines in the above sequence will be running linux (at the
very least, my page handler will.  One day I'll probably 
get the computer in the car running linux also)

rc