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So they didn't phase out the tandems, they just appended the name compaq to them. They still run mips and they still run tandems os. When they bought tandem, they did screw it up, but the architecture of the tandems wasn't changes. See Here for more info on the s-series, runnign mips 12000 processors.

Gerhardt S. did in fact say he wanted to move the himalaya to the alpha, but lacked the proper focus inside the company to accomplish that. The tandem os is very very cleverly designed, as is the hardware, but not trivial to port to new architectures. The tandem processor to mips conversion took years of development, and the conservative nature of tandems customer base meant that only in the late 90's did most customers upgrade.

I could go on forever about the acquisition of tandem and compaq, how compaq under Schroeder screwed up the culture, engineering and drove gobs of key engineers into the waiting arms of the .coms, but I won't. So, yes, the tandem acquisition was screwed up, btu no, the hardware wasn't molested.

Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Co-Editor, Open Sources

In particular this quote

"As an independent Alpha architecture licensee, Alpha Processor, Inc. engineers microprocessors, Alpha platforms and leading-edge system logic."

So it seems like API only license the Alpha technology, they don't own it.

In particular this quote

"As an independent Alpha architecture licensee, Alpha Processor, Inc. engineers microprocessors, Alpha platforms and leading-edge system logic."

So it seems like API only license the Alpha technology, they don't own it.

I think it was during the 90s that Locus was bought by Platinum. A few years later, Computer Associates bought Platinum, but the SSI technology was sold to Tandem. It was around this time that the port began to UnixWare 2.1.

After Compaq bought Tandem, the SSI code was brought up to UnixWare 7.1 and released as NonStop Clusters for Unixware 7.1.0 in late '99. SCO sold it under their name and Compaq hoped to make money from increased sales of servers. Compaq retained ownership of the NSC code, of course.

It was around this time that I joined the development team. We went through a few more iterations on UnixWare, merging with the UW 7.1.1 code base, adding support for TCP/IP interconnects as an alternative to ServerNet, and fixing bugs.

Early in the year 2000, Bruce (my boss) decided that we should port NSC to Linux. Later that year, he and some other managers decided that we should also open-source the technology.

Now here we are halfway through 2001. We've cleaned up alot of the code (more important for open-source than proprietary), adapted much of it to the implementation of Linux, and just released a major piece (Cluster Infrastructure). Hopefully, an initial release of the full SSI code will be ready soon.

BTW, the article says that we're releasing the SSI code under Yet Another Open-Source Licence. There was some miscommunication here. We're releasing it under the plain vanilla GPL version 2.

Brian Watson
Linux Kernel Developer
SSI Clustering Laboratory
Compaq Computer

I think it was during the 90s that Locus was bought by Platinum. A few years later, Computer Associates bought Platinum, but the SSI technology was sold to Tandem. It was around this time that the port began to UnixWare 2.1.

After Compaq bought Tandem, the SSI code was brought up to UnixWare 7.1 and released as NonStop Clusters for Unixware 7.1.0 in late '99. SCO sold it under their name and Compaq hoped to make money from increased sales of servers. Compaq retained ownership of the NSC code, of course.

It was around this time that I joined the development team. We went through a few more iterations on UnixWare, merging with the UW 7.1.1 code base, adding support for TCP/IP interconnects as an alternative to ServerNet, and fixing bugs.

Early in the year 2000, Bruce (my boss) decided that we should port NSC to Linux. Later that year, he and some other managers decided that we should also open-source the technology.

Now here we are halfway through 2001. We've cleaned up alot of the code (more important for open-source than proprietary), adapted much of it to the implementation of Linux, and just released a major piece (Cluster Infrastructure). Hopefully, an initial release of the full SSI code will be ready soon.

BTW, the article says that we're releasing the SSI code under Yet Another Open-Source Licence. There was some miscommunication here. We're releasing it under the plain vanilla GPL version 2.

Brian Watson
Linux Kernel Developer
SSI Clustering Laboratory
Compaq Computer

I think it was during the 90s that Locus was bought by Platinum. A few years later, Computer Associates bought Platinum, but the SSI technology was sold to Tandem. It was around this time that the port began to UnixWare 2.1.

After Compaq bought Tandem, the SSI code was brought up to UnixWare 7.1 and released as NonStop Clusters for Unixware 7.1.0 in late '99. SCO sold it under their name and Compaq hoped to make money from increased sales of servers. Compaq retained ownership of the NSC code, of course.

It was around this time that I joined the development team. We went through a few more iterations on UnixWare, merging with the UW 7.1.1 code base, adding support for TCP/IP interconnects as an alternative to ServerNet, and fixing bugs.

Early in the year 2000, Bruce (my boss) decided that we should port NSC to Linux. Later that year, he and some other managers decided that we should also open-source the technology.

Now here we are halfway through 2001. We've cleaned up alot of the code (more important for open-source than proprietary), adapted much of it to the implementation of Linux, and just released a major piece (Cluster Infrastructure). Hopefully, an initial release of the full SSI code will be ready soon.

BTW, the article says that we're releasing the SSI code under Yet Another Open-Source Licence. There was some miscommunication here. We're releasing it under the plain vanilla GPL version 2.

Brian Watson
Linux Kernel Developer
SSI Clustering Laboratory
Compaq Computer

Or, heck, maybe Compaq could. Since they have the advantage of manufacturing the iPaq to begin with, it could be easier than waiting for HP to fix it... ;^)

...and may take a long time to complete: according to their paper here, the port to Linux is not finished since "Problems with thread suspend and continue have been encountered, and are as yet unresolved".
It is no easy task, because the handling of SIGSTOP and SIGCONT under Linux does not follow POSIX. Hope they'll succeed anyway.

STL was originally developed as part of the Solaris Compatibility Libraries (SCL) [5] for the Compaq Tru64 UNIX operating system. SCL was developed to ease the porting of Solaris applications to Tru64 UNIX.

The joystick and buttons are crap. Not only are they useless for games (see earlier post), they aren't very robust feeling.

Compaq has sealed up the hole in the stylus silo in later models 3650 and all 3670s. They will fix any dusty screen problems by warranty for free regardless of how long you've had it.

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

When I got my server at home, I needed something that didn't occupy a lot of space and really didn't need it to be beefy at all. I decided to get a Compaq iPaq desktop, but Compaq only provided Windows 95/98 or Windows NT with it. I got the one with Windows 95, wiped it, and put FreeBSD on it. You can read the little paper on it here.

Purple underline eh? That'll go nicely with my site colours.

Seriously ... purple wiggly lines are a stupid idea. Here are some reasons:

• Is it purple? Not everyone can see colour as well as the next blue-eyed cloned Aryan. People reading the web right now have disabilities that don't let them tell whether than link is purple or grbleen.
• On the web, someone could have trashed it with CSS. (As parent post noted.) How many times have you seen a fresh, un-visited link, and it is the purple "you just clicked me" colour? Colours don't mean anything. Wiggly lines, straight lines, kinky lines, no lines. What does it matter? It's a link.
• People don't understand. Already any features past left-click, reload, stop, and back are boggling people's brains. Do you think they can handle another feature? (Personally I think reload and stop are advanced features, seeing the way newbies don't use them.) Folks look at the wiggly underlines in Word and say "HEY! I didn't underline that!". Wait until a Frontpage user previews his website and sees all these MSSmartTags(TM) on his document. Won't he be confused?

Friends don't let friends do Microsoft.

See here.

Jim Getty sounds like a great guy and great designer. I know a few people really respect his work. However, I wonder how much attention he pays to usability. That is one of the key problems with Open Source in general. Designs look great but are not always functional, especially to novice users. Some day, usability will be seen as being more important than raw functionality, right?

By the way, you might be interested in this set of slides. They are from Linux Expo '99 where Jim is doing a demo of Itsy. (Was that an early version of the iPaq?)

Here are a couple links to the now dead FX!32.

--

Here are a couple links to the now dead FX!32.

--

I'm pretty sure that other manufacturers have similar products.

Oh, really? Tell me, Jonny, from which orifice did you so casually pull that statement?

Allow me to present 78 examples of companies that are each dominating an even more enormous part of the country's economy at this very second.

...and this list doesn't even take historical cases into consideration.

...and, hey! I'll be damned. There are even a few tech companies on that list.

Of course, I realize that the Fortune 500 is not a foolproof, catch-all guide to measuring a company's worth. You'll understand, though, if I have a tad more faith in it than in baseless rantings...

Actually, the true RMS only runs under VMS as far as I know. Check out the documentation here.

Actually, the Compaq Test Drive program allows you to not only try out Compaq Tru64 Unix, but also Compaq OpenVMS, a variety of Linux distributions, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Microsoft Windows. We've got these operating systems (and other software as well) running on a variety of Compaq platforms, from the StrongARM in the iPAQ to the x86 in our ProLiant line, to the Alpha in our AlphaServers, to the IA-64 we have running Linux. We're still going strong, we're still adding new Test Drives to the program, and feel free to stop by and check us out at http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/. You can find a full list of what we have running on which hardware on our current systems table.

Actually, the Compaq Test Drive program allows you to not only try out Compaq Tru64 Unix, but also Compaq OpenVMS, a variety of Linux distributions, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Microsoft Windows. We've got these operating systems (and other software as well) running on a variety of Compaq platforms, from the StrongARM in the iPAQ to the x86 in our ProLiant line, to the Alpha in our AlphaServers, to the IA-64 we have running Linux. We're still going strong, we're still adding new Test Drives to the program, and feel free to stop by and check us out at http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/. You can find a full list of what we have running on which hardware on our current systems table.

But what might seem like a grand experiment is also a shrewd marketing move by IBM, echoing a similar program at its server rival Compaq Computer.

Many years ago, Digital did this with their Alphas when they first came out around 1990. They did everything they could to bring attention to these fast guys, including putting out a number of white papers detailing its architecture and core design. Somehow they still could not break the Intel barrier despite their speed.

They gave logins to anyone who asked for one in order to see what could be done with the systems. They were always overloaded and it seemed like there was great interest in the machines, but eventually $$$ and non-native Intel compatibility limited them. Good luck to IBM.

But what might seem like a grand experiment is also a shrewd marketing move by IBM. None of IBM's server competitors--such as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard or Compaq Computer--has offered similar programs.


ZDnet seem to be avoiding the fact that Compaq have their huge TestDrive program. They let anybody (currently)access:

Beowulf Cluster on AlphaServers
Caldera OpenLinux on ProLiants
Tru64 on various AlphaServers
TruCluster server on several AlphaServers
OpenVMS on AlphaServer
Debian on AlphaServer
Debian on ProLiant
FreeBSD on AlphaServer
FreeBSD on ProLiant
Kondara Linux 2000 on AlphaServer
Kondara Linux 2000 on ProLiant
Linux64 on Blazer Itanium
Mandrake on Proliant
NetBSD on on AlphaServer
RedHat on many ProLiants
RedHat on even more AlphaServers
SuSe on ProLiants
SuSo on AlphaServers
TurboLinux on ProLiant

Plus numerous databases...
Lots of toys... all for free...

You can usually find the boxes on ebay for not-too-much money. If you have a Tru64 machine, you can get sort-of support for an SGI Dial and Button box on your machine.

I am said "cluck" (odd term).

I don't know about old (I'm 33), but I am a bitter VMS system manager. As I've repeated on this forum many times before (just about any time a story about Beowulf or AppleSeed is posted), that bitterness stems from usage of the word "cluster" in contexts which fall far afield from the original usage of the term by the inventors of clustering, DIGITAL's VMS Engineering team, thus diluting the meaning of the term. The casual application of the term to distributed parallel computation arrays, web server farms, or other RAICs (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Computers) incorectly leads many computing neophytes to believe that simply setting up a Beowulf array (much better term for this than cluster) or something similar gives them the same level of technological functionality as that provided by a state-of-the-art OpenVMS cluster. Nothing could be further from the truth!

"What's missing?", one might ask. Here is what I feel constitutes a cluster. (Note -- none of this is meant as flame-bait - just trying to rectify some misinformation which has become pervasive over the last few years. I regard Beowulf and AppleSeed as useful tools. I simply feel that it is inappropriate to refer to them as clusters.)

• A Distributed Lock Manager, critical for much clustering functionality. All file operations, regardless of whether using standard C I/O routines or OS-specific I/O APIs, should automatically and transparently be mediated by the DLM. Without this functionality, one is left with a so-called "share-nothing" cluster, such as that available from Microsoft, thus limiting one to simple failover operation.
• Cluster-wide File System. No file server such as NFS, SMB, or AppleShare involved here. All nodes in the cluster should be able to directly access any disk or tape drive in the cluster. The DLM is critical here for mediating simultaneous accesses.
• Cluster-wide process control, either directly spawing processes on other nodes or through a batch queue system.
• A Connection Manager to ensure that nodes correctly enter or leave the cluster. The CM manages the Quorum mechanism and keeps cluster transition times to a minimum.
• Shared System Disk. Multiple nodes should be able to boot from a common system disk. This greatly simplifies management.
• Single security and management domain. NT almost got that right, except for the dependance upon domain controllers and that domain database replication nonsense. Many flavors of *nix can be configured to get into the ballpark on this with add-on tools. If one can't transparently manage any node in the cluster from any other node, you don't have a cluster (and I'm not talking about something as trivial as spawning a new Telnet session).
• Cluster-wide Process Control API. At least Beowulf and AppleSeed provide this much, which is a step in the right direction, although the API used is a bit primative.
• Mixed Architecture Support. Shouldn't matter what hardware a given node is running on, as long as it is supported by the OS and the applications. All cluster communications protocols should be platform-neutral. Just out of curiosity, can one mix ix86, Alpha, and PPC nodes in a Beowulf array, thereby giving one the ability to divy up processing chores based upon which processor is best suited to a given task (Floating Point vs. Integer speeds for instance) or for gradual migration of the array to a different platform? (This isn't flambait -- I'm honestly curious.)
• Rolling Upgrade Support. It should be possible to configure a cluster such that one can perform OS or application upgrades some number of nodes at a time, thus negating the need to bring down the entire cluster.
• Parallel I/O support. All nodes can issue I/O requests to storage devices at the same time. This ties back in with the DLM and Cluster-wide file system.
• Interconnect failover. All cluster communications traffic should route itself through whatever interconnect pathway has the lowest latency. (Hmmm, FiberChannel is a bit congested right now. Time to route through the 100baseT connection.)
• High-end scaling. This is where I snicker at NT's so-called clustering solution. Two nodes only? Hah? (That is finally improving, but they still have a long way to go.) Beowulf and AppleSeed do okay in this department, although they have nothing that compares to the Galaxy Software Architecture.
• Load Balancing. Generically available to most server operating systems these days, although usually through a separate hardware based unit.
• Cluster Alias. Can be faked for any OS with DNS tricks or by sticking the cluster or array behind a NAT router.

AOL's mail system, much like their own web server, is in house proprietary (no surprise there).

The bigger surprise is that the servers are Tandem. That's right, Tandem (now a div. of Compaq). Because of the select clientele that can afford to have one computer but 2 or more of everything, it (supposedly) provides unheard-of availability records.

The only bummer is that there isn't much software or the proprietary Non-Stop kernel, but you do get a decent C development environment and can port your Unix applications over to it, much like how EMX for OS/2 Warp goes about it.

AOL's decision to use such an odd choice for an email server probably stems from the infamous outages early in AOL's history when it was duking it out with CompuServe (which H&R Block later dim-wittingly sold to AOL to boost its stock price and focus on the oversaturated financial-planning market).

When you consider that most of America's unwashed heathenlive off of AOL's mail system to swap massive amounts of pr0n, spam, and other senseless drivel, there is no way that a featureful groupware system can be added to the service easily and cope with the transaction load that the service currently endures.

Should AOL mail be scrapped? Probably not. Since AOL'ers are paying a fortune anyway for a shabby product, why not charge them a small convienence fee to "enrich" their email and and scheduling, database, forms, etc? Just build a seperate system or a small farm of Notes-Domino/390 and you got yerself uh system.

AOL might even rake in those mindless corporate druids by cooking up some synch tools for PalmOS, ActiveSync, AvantGo, whatnot.

And added bonus would be getting rid of that damned AOL Adapter &%^*(%^%&^%)%.

I'm currently doing this, and it works pretty well. I use pstotext run by a perl script of my creation that makes sure that every .pdf file has a corresponding .pdf2.html file (html, txt, doesn't matter -- both are easily indexed.)

I then use glimpse to index the .html (or .txt, again, doesn't matter) those. Once I have the search results, a perl script merely replaces .pdf2.html with .pdf, and it all works fine. Yes, there's an extra file on the file system, one for each pdf file, but nobody notices.

Just so there's no confusion, glimpse is a tool for indexing text files on a file system. webglimpse is a tool for indexing a web site -- and it uses glimpse in the `back end'. Ultimately, since a web site often looks like a file system, the two problems -- indexing a file system and indexing a web site -- are very similar.

glimpse is not free for commercial use, so you may want to use another tool. swish++ comes to mind, but I've not done much with it.

The Tru64 UNIX operating system is a 64-bit advanced kernel architecture based on Carnegie-Mellon University's Mach V2.5 kernel design, with components from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) 4.3 and 4.4, UNIX System V, and other sources.

There's this paper proposing structural proofs (http://www.research.compaq.com/SRC/personal/lampo rt/pubs/lamport-how-to-write.ps) that might be a good read.
In short what the paper proposes is to write proofs in a top-to-bottom tmaner so that you can easily see the outline of the proof without going into details unless you need them to understand it. He also says the method should better prevent errors. (And every self respecting mathematician and computer scientist should know who Leslie Lamport as well as Donald E. Knuth are.)

The story submitter states:
Do you want to know where OO languages like Java, Ruby, Squeak, and SmallScript come from?

Although it is true that Java is heavily influenced by Smalltalk, there are also distinctive parts of Java that are based on Modula. Most prominent of which are the Exception handling mechanism and threading model based on Monitors.

--

Back when computers were sold to engineers, they came with a spec sheet with the environmental specs: allowable ranges on power, temperature, air pressure, and humidity. Compaq still provides them. Here are the numbers for a PIII desktop machine:

• Temperature Range
  • Operating 50 to 93F/10 to 35C
  • Shipping -22 to 140F/-30 to 60C
• Relative Humidity (non-condensing)
  • Operating 20% to 80%
  • Non-operating 5% to 90%

Note that any environment that isn't air-conditioned and humidity-controlled will probably go outside those ranges at some point in the year. So some form of overheat protection is essential to prevent component damage. A slowdown is better than a shutdown, which is better than a crash, which is better than a meltdown. You want thermal throttling, fan speed control, and emergency overtemp shutdown on anything used for more than Quake. Fortunately, those features only add a few dollars today.

Surprisingly, Compaq's laptops have a 95F temperature limit, which is on the low side for a portable device.

There used to be a saying in railroading: "Never buy equipment from a supplier who's in a better climate than yours". All the good railroad suppliers were in places like upstate New York, where they experienced snow, ice, rain, heat, and thunderstorms. Computing could use more of that attitude.

Compaq actually gives the information needed, so that you can build your own Itsy. Maybe a group of Linux hackers could put together a site that would take orders for the Itsies, and once they reached enough requests, they could start building them and selling them to those who placed an order (and put down a deposit).

Anyway, I am sure some of the more hardware skilled peeps that read slashdot could put together an Itsy, if they had the resources.

I've found that a PDA works well for storing my private key. I never let it out of my sight and and I only copy it to my workstation when I need it. When I'm done, I delete it (and I usually zero the sectors).

If you want pre-built, check out Compaq's small form factor and slim desktop PC's. They aren't much larger than a laptop, weigh just a little more, but have a few slots for upgraded components (like video card) and are affordable.

http://www.compaq.com/products/desktops/index.shtm l

Ooops. Sorry for the formatting error...

You'll also want to spring for a 15" LCD screen, I think.

Dell's GX150 SF can be seen here .

Compaq's EN SFF can be seen here.

It's a pity that the Itsy was never released (AFAIK) to the public. Although current PDAs offer similar specs, the design was cool back then.

As the rumors I've heard go, there are no plans to fix the button problems on the 3670. They might possibly be fixed in the 3690(?), but there are no official reports that I've seen about them.

their parallelism expands infinitely to meet your needs

The new BubbleServer GS320 is the industry's fastest NP Solution server, with up to thirty two Glass EV67 plastic rods, the highest levels of availability, and an innovative architecture for managing massive systems in record time. A modular structure allows you to purchase only currently needed glass and rods -- and still be prepared for explosive growth. With upgrades, expect a 20-fold increase in application performance over the lifetime of the system.

The BubbleServer GS320 is ideal for NP-business and other critical enterprise applications with high or unpredictable growth rates -- and as a replacement and growth extension for BubbleServer GS140 customers. A system configured with as little as one glass plate and one rod will be able to grow to a fully loaded 32-way system without operational disruption.. Single system management lets you add capacity and applications without adding people. Unique partitions allow mixed NP systems on the same server, facilitating workload management and server consolidation.

[From the Compaq AlphaServer Site]

While I'm sure this bill will get a lot of press, the simple fact is, it has very little chance of passing, much less getting out of committee and to the House floor. Why? Well, there's a lot of problems.

First, the Texas Legislature only meets every 2 years (and only meets for about the first 5 months of the year, at that). And while a lot of people want to change this, dumb bills like this are the perfect reason[1]. This is clearly a reaction to an annoyance. Once the author goes home, the bill dies and he'll never re-file it. Meanwhile, the important bills get through because there's political pressure to move them.

Second, this would, of course, drive 2 of the state's largest employers nuts, as well as annoy the oddly powerful ISP lobby (ISPs hate nothing more than to have to support Censorware. It seems to cause nothing but complaints.)

Third, and most important, the bill (as written) is simply NOT enforceable. Under certain readings of the bill, I could say that EVERY operating system has Cencorware built in. All you have to do is remove the default gateway, and there you go no more access to porn sites. Further, what about machines bought out of state and shipped in? What about machines built in state and shipped out of state? Do these have to have the Censorware included?


[1] How many times and your state assembly done something dumb? It happens less often here.

I thought the Zaurus was sweet (and it is) but this has got to be the ultimate A/V package for now

Please compare versus: Compaq iPaq H3635 (64MB coming soon) & the Casio's E125 This Sony device comes close - but IMNSHO dosnt measure up.

Ive said this a thousand times: What we need in the PDA 'industry' is an uncoupling of OS & Hardware. People have a hard time arguing that the Casio/HP/Compaq devices aren't better hardware; its simply that people don't want to buy into a(nother) M$ product. I had a hard time deciding to buy my E100 (I got it shortly after release) because M$ was 'inside'... what I want to be able to do is get it out!

The PDA industry needs to form a 'standards' body of some kind. Once this occurs I would hope to see 3Com, PocketLinux(Transvirtual), M$, Qt, Yopy, Agenda, RIP, SHARP and others write their OSs to that standard! Let the Hardware people compete on hardware (and drive features up/prices down) and let the Software Compete on Software (and drive the features up/price down). What we have here is a mess of compromise when choosing PDAs. I would have loved my Casio to come with a LinuxPDA distro of some kind, or maybe PalmOS - but the E100 had their features beat hands down.

Can someone direct me to an effort, mailing list, website of some group/person who also sees this major flaw in the direction of the PDA world? What we need is a de-coupling, witness the result of the PC world when IBM opened the PC, contrast this with the direction that Apple took. Not to slight the Apple camp, but the diversity, power, price, ubiquity, 'openness' of the PC and its model would be a good idea for the PDA world.

I must say though, I own the iPaq - and it's a great product. But this new iPaq seems to only differ in the base size of RAM. mine has 32 megs, the new one is 64 megs. Every other feature listed, wireless, expansions etc... all are already available for the original iPaq pocket pc, including dual pc card expansion sleeves.

So basically they're upgrading the onboard RAM from 32 megs to 64. Remember that the OS is on a seperate flashable drive. that 32/64 number is the total free RAM when you get the device, although you'll use up a big chunk installing software - 10megs for quake. ;)

By the way, the ipaq is a nice size until you put a expansion sleeve on it - like the popular compact flash sleeve so you can have more storage space. Once you add the sleeve the iPaq won't fit nicely in your pocket, unless you've got cargo pants. So you'll need a bag for it - so you might as well be carrying a laptop, that'll have about the same battery life. ;)

Joseph Elwell.

To expand your pathetic little horizon a bit, I go to class and I administer computer systems -- and I need to be contacted when systems need help. That's why I pay for the cell service. If my phone vibrating, and my taking it out of my pocket to read the message

And I hope someday the doctor YOU need for some emergency is in class where his phone has been blocked.

My take: Hitachi has an expensive (and therefore slow-selling) product called the E-Plate. So, someone gets the bright idea to repackage this bad boy with an even more expensive and power-hungry display solution.

And this improves on the iPaq how?

-Mr. Cranky (dvd_tude)

Where I work I have a couple extra accounts in AD for support people for some of our custom software. Whenever I need to show them what's going wrong, I have them login via Citrix and shadow their session. Works rather well. When their done, the AD account is disabled. TO ensure they use the correct settings (128bit SSL encryption) I have the java client installed as an applet. Overall pretty slick. (Keep everything properly firewalled...)

This soultion from Compaq looks interesting, but I don't see enough advantages to make it useful for UNIX. For NT though...

iPAQ is name for entire line of products, not just for handhelds. This could be compared to iPaq desktop, see http://www5.compaq.com/products/internetdevices/iP AQ_Desktop.html

Try this instead. Dunno who you think I am, but you are mistaken... About a great many things.

For keyboards with USB, the Evil Empire offers

• Internet Keyboard Pro
• Natural Keyboard Pro
• Natural Keyboard Elite

Logitech offers:

• iTouch Keyboard

For systems with USB, IBM offers:

• Netvista small business range

Compaq offers:

• Presario range

Compaq hot-swap drivers? See opensource.compaq.com, under "PCI Hot Plug for Linux".

Not just IBM, but SGI, CRAY, Compaq, VA and Penguin are all hardware vendors putting serious resources to making linux better.