Slashdot Mirror

Imagine that! Video cameras more expensive than still cameras!

Incidentally, timholman, I recommend you invest in a quality still-picture digital camera if you want an economic solution for high quality digital imaging.

I'd take a look at buying one of the cheaper Canon Powershot cameras between $100 and $200 for which there exists open source firmware. For networking, you might explore whether or not the USB mechanism in the camera can be coerced into the host role (as opposed to acting as a device) which has been accomplished in similar situations for devices such as the BlackDog and many iPods with Linux installed. With USB device hosting capability in hand, you could then easily connect it to a USB Ethernet NIC for a little over $20.

With your own firmware installed, you might even do something really novel and program the camera to do something that will get the intruder's attention before snapping a photo so that they are sure to be looking right at it, giving you an excellent shot of his or her identity.

Let us know how it goes!

It seems to me that a Blackdog http://www.projectblackdog.com/ might help get around at least some of this problem given the right setup. Think about this scenario; You walk up to the public terminal and plug in the Blackdog into the USB port and it boots up a X-Terminal session on the host, and from there you use ssh and port forwarding to proxy your web traffic to a trusted host at home/work through its ssh VPN. The authentication is done via a secret key stored on the Blackdog and unlocked via something like s/key or a keyring stored on the blackdog, and subsequent passwords could be either injected into the session by the Blackdog processor environment, or stored in a Firefox browser running from the dongle itself. Keystrokes might be visible but if the Blackdog can supply the authentication where needed then the crooks can't reconstruct enough of the session to do or learn anything. Sure they might log a bunch of mouse movements and a few key strokes but they would not even know what application those keystrokes were going to much less what sites you visited.

Good luck getting it to boot reliably. I tried making a Linux on USB system and found that, even though it would technically support the hardware, many PCs just didn't have the option to boot it.

The only way to get a reliable PC boot media is to use CD/DVD but then writing persistent data and maintenance become a pain.

"Most people"? I have never once, in my 12 years of PC tech experience, seen someone use such a setup on with a PC.

If it is so simple to setup, why does every Windows tech I hve ever known use a DOS boot disk/CD to run virus scanners, Ghost, and the like?

For "most people," a portable, bootable "Windows" system means a DOS floppy image with an NTFS driver or the XP install media...

Maybe in theory you can get Windows to to boot on a significant subset of PCs off of USB, but only in the Mac world is it common practice.

Also, did you know that you can boot one Mac off of another Mac acting as as an external Firewire drive?

You can't do anything even remotely like this on a PC without physically moving drives around.

And even then, there is a good chance that Windows will simply refuse to boot on anything but the machine it was installed on.

WTF are you talking about? What does you rusting Amiga have to do with anything?

And why would I want to boot Intel OS X on a PC when I have a workplace and home full of Macs?

Yes, but it is mostly a utility, not a general pupose computing device.

Cool, hopefully it's like http://www.projectblackdog.com/ but on an iPod with Mac OS X. That would be fabulous.

Netstix seem good for taps, on demand server functionality, and testing scenarios. But would you really want to run heavy things on it?

Not trying to be a downer on this, since Gumstix are cool, but if you want a portable device with more functionality, you need to look elsewhere.

Now a BlackDog, there's something with potential.

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

Now if they could just get their next hardware revision out the door...

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

This is similiar. I bought one but haven't had much time to play with it.

http://www.projectblackdog.com/ - A very mobile desktop.

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

Carry it with you wherever you go.
Plug it in via USB.
Athenticate using your fingerprint.
Use it on the most comprimised public terminal.

I've never used one.

Maybe not what you're looking for, but something to keep in mind:

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

The BlackDog, by Realm systems isn't that bad of an option. It's a portable embedded Linux server with an integrated PPC processor, 64MB RAM, and thumbprint scanner. They should have some new units in a couple of months.

I use it to VPN from any box. There's no install necessary from XP. Plug it in, and your server's running. X11 starts automatically. It's not powerful enough to compile on the device (and flash-based), but it's a great for scripted development.

I use it to show off PHP code running off of local PostgreSQL instances. For me, it's a better alternative than punching a hole in my VPN... and I can text-edit develop. Great for Perl too.

Portable OS/Software?

Seen this yet?

If I had the spare cash I'd have one now.

I'm waiting for the bootable 1GB thumbdrive with a mini-distro of Slackware

Ask and ye shall receive (sort of).
http://www.projectblackdog.com/

http://dogpound.projectblackdog.com/forum/forum.ph p?thread_id=14&forum_id=1 is the active link. Obviously I don't know much about these types of things, but I do have some observations from my experience that might lend themselves to your questsions. I'm interested to hear how some interestingly compiled programs from a memory stick would work in both Linux and Windows (like the blackdog does). What OS can you plug the gumstix into and interact with it? ahhhhh. None? After looking at your post, I think you have a point. There really isn't a comparison between the BD and Gumstix. Gumstix is a science project. No one will carry any types of settings or other items with them on it. On the other hand, the BD was built as a development platform to enable just that. You can carry your email, settings and other data with you and keep it safely separate from the system you plug it into without having to be administrator or do any crazy configurations. So I hope you're satisfied that you might be right. The Gumstix has a strong use in robotics, while the BD might not have a strong use there, there are after only a couple of months almost 500 developers who have captured the dream of carrying my settings, programs and data with me and being able to plug it into any system.

If you're only doing to be doing a robotics project and want to be constrained to having to supply strong power that is the size of a brick, then gumstix is great! BlackDog on the other hand is being used for a breadth of things ranging from remote work to audits. Below is a link to their forum on this topic. http://dogpound.projectblackdog.com/forum/forum.ph %5Bprojectblackdog.com%5Dp?thread_id=14&forum_id=1

the following is a link to the BlackDog forum in which discussions are made about how many things the BlackDog is being used for after just a couple of months of being in existance. http://dogpound.projectblackdog.com/forum/forum.ph p?thread_id=14&forum_id=1 Seems to me that someone has BlackDog envy. Just buy one to upgrade that old Gumstix of yours to make feel the real capabilities instead of just being able to be used for robotics.

I have a BlackDog device and particpate in the contest. You most definately don't require adminstrator access. Just because some followers happen to click yes when Windows says to reboot, doesn't mean you need to do anything. I've plugged mine into family machines, work machines and others with no problems at all. I think the best example of how the BlackDog's capabilities are far stronger than just the robotics use of the gumstix product is the following forum link which talks about all the uses some 15 people are using their BlackDogs for. http://dogpound.projectblackdog.com/forum/forum.ph p?thread_id=14&forum_id=1

Unless you get one of these servers built into a USB key with fingerprint scanner. Not too expensive, either -$200 / 256MB or $240 for 512MB flash. They're also good for taking over other people's computers, too.

H: .50" W: 1.75" L: 3.5" / 1.6 ounces
400Mhz PowerPC Processor / 64MB RAM
MMC Expansion Slot
Debian-based Linux / 2.6.10 Kernel
USB-powered

It may have been already said...
But what happened to Black Dog Linux which does exactly this?

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

There is actually a product called the Black Dog which is apparently somewhat similar: A Linux distro (Debian-based in this case) on a USB drive, except that the Black Dog acts as the computer, and when you plug it in it essentially turns the host into a dumb terminal (assuming it's running GNU/Linux, Windows or Mac OS X), presumably running an X server via the autorun feature on Windows or manually on GNU/Linux and MacOS X. I'm somewhat interested in one of these things (it'd be very useful!), but there doesn't seem to be any reviews for them on the web (there's a bunch of introductory-type things, but they're just regurgitating the same hype-info distributed by the company).

From what I can see, the major differences appear to be that one is just GNU/Linux on a USB drive, whereas the other is a portable screenless, keyboardless computer; and that one has a big hard drive whereas the other has a smaller, flash-based drive. I'd be somewhat wary about running an OS running of a flash drive (I understand they have a fairly limited number of reads/writes you can do), and also even 512 MB doesn't sound like nearly enough space to do anything on it.

Seriously, it's not that much more of a leap dollarwise to a BlackDog.

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

$240 gets you the 512MB version and you can swap out additional storage through the MMC slot. Now if someone would just get around to making an iso scanner for LiveCD's hiding out on MMC cards, then presenting the iso to the host PC, you could do the LiveCD boot dance as well. Best of both worlds. Heck, there's usually somebody selling 4GB MMC cards on the cheap on ebay, so you could do a LiveDVD if you really needed to...

Doesn't the Blackdog Server do it even better?

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

Which, notably, is more expensive. Nevertheless, check it out.

Best place to get a PPC would be in an embedded device ... unfotunately not a lot of people [re: any] make desktop computers based on the PPC.

It's one of those chicken an egg problems. It would likely cost a good $100,000 or so [if you paid yourself nothing] to develop a desktop kit based on the PPC on your own. Who has that money? And since the mass public are so blinded by mindless advertisement they're not seeking alternatives.

"will this PC run my win3.1 programs?" etc...

I got my PPC from http://www.projectblackdog.com/ but it's not a desktop. It's just a USB powered device you can ssh into. I use it to test and benchmark my crypto libraries [which are getting faster by the day :-)].

I think this sort of thing would just need a petition of sorts. E.g. get a good thousands or so people to petition IBM to design a desktop mobo with a PPC 440 in it.

I'd say reasonable specs would be

- 667 Mhz PPC 440
- 256MB of ram [if at all possible make it use DIMM or SODIMM DDR memory]
- PCI bus with a couple slots
- onboard IDE [ATA133], Ethernet [10/100], Sound [AC'97 compliant], VGA [SiS?], PS/2 and USB 2.0 ports
- mini-atx form factor

I'd suspect such a motherboard would competently sell for around $200 USD. Add a $50 case, $80 HD, $30 DVD/CDRW and you have a desktop box for $360. It'd be dead silent [except for the HD], really small and take little power.

Make it Linux compatible and voila.

Tom

Your first paragraph shows your complete lack of understanding.

First off ... I DO develop algorithms and perform research.

Second ... There is more to a secure cryptosystem than just "coding". Cryptographers are responsible to glue the entire system together.

By your logic a bridge engineer must develop new design concepts before he's an engineer. Otherwise he's a lowly construction grunt. I'd like to think the person who designs a bridge to withstand nature, loads, etc is more than a tool swinging grunt.

Third ... There is more to developing than just "coding". You have to know what algorithms to use and when/why. You have to be able to work with them with the utmost flexibility [e.g. you don't always get ideal situations, etc].

As to the whole FPGA vs. ASIC vs. whatever.

I may have mispoken but I know of designs that use FPGAs in fielded products, for example this is one. In things like gameboys and what not they use ASICs but they also produce MILLIONS of gameboys.

In short runs it's actually cheaper to plug in a small FPGA then get real ASICs made. If you think otherwise it's because you're a fucking moron and you have no clue whatsoever.

Tom

Here is what i found a few weeks ago - future is now. There is a project call blackdog. Here you can get an usb based embedded pc with linux on it. Power supply comes by usb. Check it. You'll plug the device in and it will take control over the host.

[1] http://www.projectblackdog.com/

the polarizer

http://www.projectblackdog.com/

400 Mhz PowerPC ok?

Check out this one Project Black Dog a cigarette pack sized computer that plugs via USB into an existing WinBox the using biometrics allows the user to run their apps, do what they need to do, and then disappear without affecting or changing the host OS.

The blackdog USB computer solves this problem.

http://www.projectblackdog.com/product.html

Its security is as good as a fingerprint and SSH encryption.
You can even use it on a host machine with a keyboard logger
as long as you are accessing stuff that accepts your SSH key
-- you wouldn't want to ever have to type in your password
for a remote service.

HOW IT WORKS
BlackDog is a fully self-contained computer with a built-in biometric reader and a host of other powerful features. Unlike any other computing device, BlackDog is completely powered off of the USB port of your host computer - no external power adapter required!

To access and use your BlackDog, you merely plug it in to your host computer's USB port* and BlackDog takes over! Your host machine's monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Internet connection are taken over by BlackDog for the duration of your session, when you are done, you simply remove BlackDog and everything on the host is returned to its original state.

BlackDog datasheet

Looking at the website, I don't think it's really intended to be used as a server - at least not primarily. It is, however, an amazingly cool little portable PC - powered over another PC's USB, steals the host's input/output devices - how cool is that! I'm quite tempted to buy one myself. Just a pity that it only has 64Mb onboard RAM....

Blackdog I mean, tell us its great but show us some piccies

Here's a picture of blackdog. Couldn't find a better one.

That Blackdog is amazing for just $200. I want one!

http://www.projectblackdog.com/site/index.html

http://www.projectblackdog.com/site/index.html

Here's the product website: Project Blackdog

Seems there's a nice, hefty prize for the person who comes up with a good use for it.

And don't forget the movie starring John Lovitz of SNL fame: Spy Another Day

It feels like the late 90's again ...