Alexey Feldgendler wrote: > On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:03:05 +0200, Raphaël Jacquot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > >> The problem was that their three Iphones were racking up a bill for >> data charges using foreign phone charges. The Iphone regularly updates >> e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be >> available when the user turns it on. > > This not because Apple or AT&T are evil. It's actually a bug (or call it > a design shortcoming) and could happen to anyone. OpenMoko should > probably include some system-wide network access management that avoids > huge roaming bills. Applications will normally assume that if they CAN > establish a TCP connection, then it's OK to do so, and it's better to > allow them think this way rather than have every application care about > possible roaming. Otherwise one of the application developers will > forget about it once, and we'll have a problem like Jay Levy's.
This made me think that it would be great to have a GUI in which to set data preferences. I'm imagining a simple view where you could easily pick from several profiles. Some reasonable ones would be defined on a fresh install with a reasonable default. (Maybe all off, or all off for Cellular, all on for wifi/BT.) Profiles should be customizable in two levels, a simple category based level, and a fine grained individual application level (the advanced settings mode) with a catchall/undefined category in both versions. Profile application: There should be a map screen where you could define different profiles for different geographic regions by drawing them. (This would allow you to prevent international roaming data charges easily) With an advanced mode for defining different profiles at different times as well as physical location and possibly carrier. Profile customization: In the simple mode, allow on/off by application category, physical location, GSM carrier, non-cellular data connection. In advanced mode, allow on/off/rate limit (IE 200K/day) by category, individual application, location, GSM carrier, wifi, and BT. Questions: Should the time/location/carrier be part of the profile, part of the application of the profile, or both? (Both would likely be confusing) Should the profile control everything and not have a separate application of profiles step? (I think the separate step makes it easier for lay people, while the part of me editing config files in /etc doesn't want it.) Is there too much in the simple mode? How is this done technically? (I agree that trusting each application to follow the rules is probably a bad idea. Especially since we let anyone install anything. This could be done with SE Linux, but there's probably a better way.) Notes: It should be easy for a novice user to pick up the phone and turn data usage completely on and off at will, at least for cellular. -Steve _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community