[James @ Oct 22nd 2007 3:20PM]

Everybody read Jesse's link (from tinyurl) -- it goes to an NYT article by a NY cabbie about what a bad idea these things are.

In short. They're really expensive, and they do nothing to benefit the consumer that they don't already get. It's an *unfunded mandate*, the worst sort of regulation. Pretty much any NY cab already takes credit cards, and the *market* lets them decide what merchant service provider to go through. This would lock everybody into the same provider, and force them to whether they want to or not. It doesn't give directions, and if an individual cab line wants to track their drivers, they could make that part of the contract to use any system they (the company) chose, and there are several "fleet trackers" on the market. This is one-size-fits all fiat, and the primary beneficiary is neither the customer nor the cabbie nor the cab company, but the people that make this bloated POS console.

At least, that's what I've seen every time I go looking for any sort of detail on the subject.