Slashdot Mirror

http://mars.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/images/department-of-defense.png

I got my XO laptop.

I have ported Ubuntu Hardy on it. It easily runs Firefox and OpenOffice.org.

I am working on an easy to install version, and missing controls for screen/power/...

I went as far as making a Ubuntu-ish green gtk and icons theme to match UI colors with laptop controls.

I am going to add a way to easily switch between screens running Sugar and "mainstream" window manager.

This is pretty much the most "mainstream" laptop configuration imaginable. For any practical use on this laptop, educational or otherwise, it is already superior to anything that would involve Windows. Heck, I am POSTING FROM IT!

If the goal is anything other than spreading the disease that is Windows, they can just take this configuration -- and I am willing to help in improving it.

It took me years to get to this point: http://mars.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/images/td 44-testing/td44-assembled-pipes-1.jpg

I don't have a single desktop in this configuration, as in Xinerama-style single X screen, however I had at some point single kayboard and mouse, and the same computer running applications displayed on three physical screens, mapped to two or three X screens. This is how it looked (laptop's keyboard and trackpad work but aren't used), and this is how it was done. Two monitors are handled by a dual-monitor nvidia card, and can be configured either as two or a single screen spanning both.

This configuration doesn't allow windows to span between "local" and "remote" screens, however for many purposes this is useful -- in a different setup I often run 3D CAD on one screen, and 2D CAD an the other one, and obviously there is little point in mixing those two. Separate virtual desktops on all monitors also help -- I usually have 4x3 viewports in Sawfish, so with three monitors that would be 36 semi-independent viewports.

There are plenty of local linux user groups that do similar things in the States, but not on as grand a scale of course.

For example, there is the Colorado Linux Users & Enthusiasts group here that did an installfest a few months ago.

Do a bit of searching and see if you can find one in your area.

There are plenty of local linux user groups that do similar things in the States, but not on as grand a scale of course.

For example, there is the Colorado Linux Users & Enthusiasts group here that did an installfest a few months ago.

Do a bit of searching and see if you can find one in your area.

mentally deficient?

You are a retard.

My setup that I have made a year ago, is relatively cheap (the only non-computer expensive component is Proxima Ovation, an old LCD projection panel) and nice enough to displace a TV from my living room. Original version used composite video from PS2 to the TV capture board instead of S-Video, and image quality was pretty terrible. VCR's tuner happened to be better than one built into the capture board, and I didn't care much for improving audio quality beyond a reasonable level, so audio goes through rather cheap components.

LCD panel, projector and PC produce more noise than what I would prefer, and adjusting image on a projector was a pain in the neck (Proxima's bit depth sucks), but in the end image quality ended up being far superior to a TV. I have found out that in this configuration xawtv works better with Xv disabled, and many games look terrible if blown to a full 1024x768 screen, so I keep them at the NTSC resolution. DVDs are played with Ogle on a computer.

Proxima Ovation has S-Video and composite inputs, however the scaling algorithm that it uses for them, is absolutely horrible.

I see, people don't remember this and this (or this if you use MSIE or Lynx, or PDA-based browser)?

Second camera is gone for now (until I'll place it in another room) but both camera and controls are working perfectly after years of being in use, and relocation from California to Colorado.

I use this a lot from a regular computer, or PDA, with a web browser and all kinds of wireless setups, including 802.11b, and this thing was up and running for more than four years.

I see, people don't remember this and this (or this if you use MSIE or Lynx, or PDA-based browser)?

Second camera is gone for now (until I'll place it in another room) but both camera and controls are working perfectly after years of being in use, and relocation from California to Colorado.

I use this a lot from a regular computer, or PDA, with a web browser and all kinds of wireless setups, including 802.11b, and this thing was up and running for more than four years.

I see, people don't remember this and this (or this if you use MSIE or Lynx, or PDA-based browser)?

Second camera is gone for now (until I'll place it in another room) but both camera and controls are working perfectly after years of being in use, and relocation from California to Colorado.

I use this a lot from a regular computer, or PDA, with a web browser and all kinds of wireless setups, including 802.11b, and this thing was up and running for more than four years.

I had no difficulties in getting the Riccochet GS working in either Linux or OpenBSD (2.8) via USB. Admittedly though, it was a little more work in Linux (it just worked right out of the box in OBSD with the GENERIC kernel, once PPPD was set to use the right device).

I needed USB support in my kernel (2.4, or later 2.2), and I needed to make sure that ACM modem support was compiled in. Once that was done, I had to make sure that a couple of device nodes got created, modprobe, and away I went. Couldn't give you exact instructions at this point, but Google is your friend -- There's at least one page out there with some pretty comprehensive instructions (you might start here)

Alex Belits, a true Metricom packet radio fan, has lots of information on this at http://phobos.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/metrico m/.

I have mixed feelings about the demise of Metricom, myself. Properly used, the technology could have had great benefits. However, the company was arrogant and poorly managed. At one time, K N Energy (the local gas company) announced that they were going to deploy Metricom in our town. Neither they nor Metricom had given consideration to the fact that a wireless WAN serving many community organizations and some of the schools ran on the same frequency band. (The Metricom equipment -- dozens of transmitters running at the maximum legal output -- would have blown the other users right off the air.) The existing users made a reasonable request before the City Council: If Metricom was going to monopolize a public resource -- the 900 MHz band -- they should pay at least some of the cost of moving the schools and small business users to another band. But Ralph Derrickson of Metricom (the CEO until the bankruptcy) arrogantly refused to make any such concession. Fortunately, K N Energy's management was not so coldhearted, and agreed to help the community network move to another band if Ricochet was to be deployed in our city. (The network was never deployed, however, as K N Energy dropped its Ricochet franchise shortly thereafter.) The story is at http://www.lariat.org/metricom.html.

It may have been a similar lack of consideration for others (prices too high for the market; poor customer service) that led to Metricom's recent economic problems. $80 per month for 128 Kbps or less simply wasn't competitive with DSL, and there are not enough mobile users to support such a system by themselves. $29.95 per month would be more like it.

I am sure everyone reading this thread is trying to get onto Alex Belits web page (link doesn't work, hence this post) as it is linked multiple places in this thread, and every webpage worth it's weight is linking to his page (he added support for the Richochet GS/128 k modems to STRIP). Unfortunately his page is inaccessible; however, and I know this is not really kosher; GOOGLE has an archived copy of this page, allowing you to read up on the support, and get a better feeling of where the project is now, as well as the support for the USB modems and 2.x kernel, straight through support and patches for the 2.4.1 kernel. Hope this helps everyone, this sounds like a very interesting technology, it's too bad it didn't fly.
-OctaneZ

The "modems" can be used for point to point links without retransmitters, however the distances that I have observed were much less than a mile -- apparently long distances are achievable only if there is a cleat line of sight between transmitter and receiver, and in those conditions 2.4GHz wireless stuff makes at least as muhc sense, plus it's faster.

The information about ricochet modems and their use in both "normal" and point to point mode under linux is at this page that I maintain.

According to Alex Belitis's Metricom-on-Linux web page, there was no hardware change. It's just that the Metricom pole top units were no longer programmed to forward peer-to-peer "star mode" packets for modems registered after December 23, 2000. If you have two modems talking directly to each other rather than through a pole top unit, then there shuld be no problem.

On the other hand, six months ago I tried and failed to get my Merlin Metricom card to talk my external USB metricom modem in star mode.

According to Alex Belitis's Metricom-on-Linux web page, there was no hardware change. It's just that the Metricom pole top units were no longer programmed to forward peer-to-peer "star mode" packets for modems registered after December 23, 2000. If you have two modems talking directly to each other rather than through a pole top unit, then there shuld be no problem.

On the other hand, six months ago I tried and failed to get my Merlin Metricom card to talk my external USB metricom modem in star mode.

Alex Belits, a true Metricom packet radio fan, has lots of information on this at http://phobos.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/metrico m/.

I have mixed feelings about the demise of Metricom, myself. Properly used, the technology could have had great benefits. However, the company was arrogant and poorly managed. At one time, K N Energy (the local gas company) announced that they were going to deploy Metricom in our town. Neither they nor Metricom had given consideration to the fact that a wireless WAN serving many community organizations and some of the schools ran on the same frequency band. (The Metricom equipment -- dozens of transmitters running at the maximum legal output -- would have blown the other users right off the air.) The existing users made a reasonable request before the City Council: If Metricom was going to monopolize a public resource -- the 900 MHz band -- they should pay at least some of the cost of moving the schools and small business users to another band. But Ralph Derrickson of Metricom (the CEO until the bankruptcy) arrogantly refused to make any such concession. Fortunately, K N Energy's management was not so coldhearted, and agreed to help the community network move to another band if Ricochet was to be deployed in our city. (The network was never deployed, however, as K N Energy dropped its Ricochet franchise shortly thereafter.) The story is at http://www.lariat.org/metricom.html.

It may have been a similar lack of consideration for others (prices too high for the market; poor customer service) that led to Metricom's recent economic problems. $80 per month for 128 Kbps or less simply wasn't competitive with DSL, and there are not enough mobile users to support such a system by themselves. $29.95 per month would be more like it.

--Brett Glass

Looks like there are SOME interesting uses for these old Metricom modems in Linux. STRIP looks pretty interesting. Still, I'm seeing articles like this that make me think that the newer, faster modems are going to be useless.

Anybody have any more info relating to using these new GS models in peer-to-peer? I just bought a GS model, and I'm looking to get another. I'm seeing people posting on here that the modems are trash now-- but I'm not so sure that's the case.

I forgot -- there are hostnames and IP addresses in the body of the virus, however they are of the destination or a mailserver, not the originator (see my report about it). Headers are more useful.

I have received the first email sent by that thing three days ago and reported some brief analysis to bugtraq, got a "rejected, send to incidents" response, sent to incidents, and apparently there is still nothing in the archives -- I have no idea why, incidents list posts all kinds of "I have seen a big spider hanging over my keyboard, I think he tried to hack me" stuff.

For everyone interested, messages with virus and extracted infected documents are here.

I have received the first email sent by that thing three days ago and reported some brief analysis to bugtraq, got a "rejected, send to incidents" response, sent to incidents, and apparently there is still nothing in the archives -- I have no idea why, incidents list posts all kinds of "I have seen a big spider hanging over my keyboard, I think he tried to hack me" stuff.

For everyone interested, messages with virus and extracted infected documents are here.

I am with you on this one. As a 6 year Slack user, I have little need for more package management.

I have been working on our new web server for our LUG. The box is RHAT and I had to set up Apache, PHP, and MySQL. I found it to be far easier to install tar balls than binary only RPMS that were installed by the SysAdmins. Of course, the binary only package of Apache had PHP, but the binary only PHP package did not have MySQL. Recompile of PHP (to include MySQL drivers) forced recompile of Apache. In short, it took me 1 hour to do this on my Slackware workstation (for test purposes), but 3 hours on RHAT (mostly spent trying to figure out why the source of Apache and PHP was not around and a half-hearted attempt to use rpm -rebuild (or whatever) instead of the standard configure && make && make install).

BTW - I ended up installing tar balls in /usr/local on the RHAT box and configured it using the standard configure && make && make install.

--

A prototype, that I have hacked together in php is at http://www.illtel.denver.c o.us/~abelits/floor/floor.php3" (see source.

Images are produced from xfig diagram (in this example very primitive one) cut into 200x200 squares, and php script displays them in 3x3 "tiled" maps in "zoomed" mode, or another image produced from the same diagram in the "whole floor" mode. "Whole floor" image could be generatred with less details, however I was too lazy to do that -- in this example it's just all tiles, scaled down.

In both modes clicking on any area on the map leads to tiled 3x3 "zoomed" image with the clicked tile in the center. Images are never re-downloaded if they fit in the cache, and only html is generated dynamically.

Of course, this is a proof-of-concept prototype, and any real design can feature additional scrolling controls, additional areas on the imagemap that lead to objects displayed on them (say, clicking on the room with known detailed description and map shows that map instead). Also 3x3 tiles per "viewport" can be too small, real map probably should be displayed with more tiles. Still, it works, displays well in all browsers (including lynx, if it can call image viewer to view images separately), and can be extended to more zooming levels "recursively".

A prototype, that I have hacked together in php is at http://www.illtel.denver.c o.us/~abelits/floor/floor.php3" (see source.

Images are produced from xfig diagram (in this example very primitive one) cut into 200x200 squares, and php script displays them in 3x3 "tiled" maps in "zoomed" mode, or another image produced from the same diagram in the "whole floor" mode. "Whole floor" image could be generatred with less details, however I was too lazy to do that -- in this example it's just all tiles, scaled down.

In both modes clicking on any area on the map leads to tiled 3x3 "zoomed" image with the clicked tile in the center. Images are never re-downloaded if they fit in the cache, and only html is generated dynamically.

Of course, this is a proof-of-concept prototype, and any real design can feature additional scrolling controls, additional areas on the imagemap that lead to objects displayed on them (say, clicking on the room with known detailed description and map shows that map instead). Also 3x3 tiles per "viewport" can be too small, real map probably should be displayed with more tiles. Still, it works, displays well in all browsers (including lynx, if it can call image viewer to view images separately), and can be extended to more zooming levels "recursively".

Netscape implements "the original" server push using MIME multipart (see http://www1.netscape.com/as sist/net_sites/pushpull.html, section about server push). Even though no other client understands it, plugins or applets can just use the same protocol for this purpose, and it's possible to make server use internal support for it when the client understands it.

I use this in my webcam and X-10 devices control form -- compare form without server push (you have to press "Send" to get the updated status) and the same form with server push -- if you use Netscape (or recent builds of Mozilla), every change in the state of devices causes form to be updated at the time when it happened, and if some command is sent, first response represents the status after command is received (but not executed yet -- X-10 is slow), then after some time (can be half a second for simple on/off or few seconds for brightness change) when command is sent and confirmed, status updates using the server push. If someone else (or the same user from another browser, or me using "physical" control panel) sends some commands, status updates by itself without any interaction with the user or requests sent by a browser.

Netscape implements "the original" server push using MIME multipart (see http://www1.netscape.com/as sist/net_sites/pushpull.html, section about server push). Even though no other client understands it, plugins or applets can just use the same protocol for this purpose, and it's possible to make server use internal support for it when the client understands it.

I use this in my webcam and X-10 devices control form -- compare form without server push (you have to press "Send" to get the updated status) and the same form with server push -- if you use Netscape (or recent builds of Mozilla), every change in the state of devices causes form to be updated at the time when it happened, and if some command is sent, first response represents the status after command is received (but not executed yet -- X-10 is slow), then after some time (can be half a second for simple on/off or few seconds for brightness change) when command is sent and confirmed, status updates using the server push. If someone else (or the same user from another browser, or me using "physical" control panel) sends some commands, status updates by itself without any interaction with the user or requests sent by a browser.

Netscape implements "the original" server push using MIME multipart (see http://www1.netscape.com/as sist/net_sites/pushpull.html, section about server push). Even though no other client understands it, plugins or applets can just use the same protocol for this purpose, and it's possible to make server use internal support for it when the client understands it.

I use this in my webcam and X-10 devices control form -- compare form without server push (you have to press "Send" to get the updated status) and the same form with server push -- if you use Netscape (or recent builds of Mozilla), every change in the state of devices causes form to be updated at the time when it happened, and if some command is sent, first response represents the status after command is received (but not executed yet -- X-10 is slow), then after some time (can be half a second for simple on/off or few seconds for brightness change) when command is sent and confirmed, status updates using the server push. If someone else (or the same user from another browser, or me using "physical" control panel) sends some commands, status updates by itself without any interaction with the user or requests sent by a browser.

PalmIII works with Ricochet modem -- I use it with proxiweb and TG ssh. Ricochet also can work as a poor man's GPS -- the procedure is described at http://phobos.illtel.denver.co. us/~abelits/map.php3

I maintain our LUG web site. The ratio of constructive criticism to kudos is actually about 1:1. It's actually scary that I receive so few comments either way, given the relatively large number of LUG meeting attendees (average 60-70 / month). Another intersting point is that although I give instructions (on the site) on how to build the site and contribute to development, rarely am I approached or do I receive patches or contributions.

--

With the number of phrases directed to computers that are usually mentioned in Star Trek, ViaVoice should be enough. Heck, I probably should make a ViaVoice interface to my X-10 stuff with startrek-style commands.

Yes, I have a sense of humor.

Sounds cool [NOT]. Try to type kill -9 (or perl )on your silkscreen. They must be masochistic.

I often use my PalmIII with Ricochet as a terminal to read mail at home or build software at work. Typing "kill -9" never was a problem with graffitti.

PalmIII + Ricochet modem on the belt on the right side (my celphone, leatherman-like tool and flashlight are on the left side). No integration though.

...is here: http://phobos.illtel.denv er.co.us/~abelits/apartment.php3.

It takes about up to 1 fps at 320x240, 24-bit color or up to 4 fps 6-bit B&W of the same size, has parallel interface (I was able to use up to 3 per box with additional parallel interfaces on the card), and it works with Linux and FreeBSD. See http://www.fhttpd.org/pub/qcwebcam/R EADME.html, http://phobos.illtel.denv er.co.us/~abelits/apartment.php3 for an example and http://phobos.illtel.denver.co.us/qca m-config for controls page.

It's possible to modify the code to increase the resolution, however this kind of camera has twice higher resolution for green component than for red and blue ones, so even though picture will be 640x480 it won't be the same thing as real 640x480.

It takes about up to 1 fps at 320x240, 24-bit color or up to 4 fps 6-bit B&W of the same size, has parallel interface (I was able to use up to 3 per box with additional parallel interfaces on the card), and it works with Linux and FreeBSD. See http://www.fhttpd.org/pub/qcwebcam/R EADME.html, http://phobos.illtel.denv er.co.us/~abelits/apartment.php3 for an example and http://phobos.illtel.denver.co.us/qca m-config for controls page.

It's possible to modify the code to increase the resolution, however this kind of camera has twice higher resolution for green component than for red and blue ones, so even though picture will be 640x480 it won't be the same thing as real 640x480.

Do what this poor sucker's done, and let complete
strangers annoy you from far away:

http://phobos.illtel.denver.co.us/~abelits/apart ment.php3?camera=3

My apartment is visible at http://phobos.illtel.denv er.co.us/~abelits/apartment.php3 -- two webcams and x-10 devices that can be controlled through HTTP.

Everything runs on one linux box, camera is qcwebcam, and x-10 software soon will be released. x-10 hardware is a bit strange -- it's TW-523 and " TWO-WAY" serial to interface.

I will close the access to this when blinking will become too annoying.

But two years from now, MP3 will be as dead as push technology is today.

Excuse me? What is used in my webcam then? "Server push" was used as "umbrella" name for a lot of different, unrelated and often poorly thought out technologies, but the original Netscape server push exists.