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Linus himself had something to say on the very subject in a recording of an interview I have, I think from Cebit 2001:

"They had to learn Windows to do their job, but they don't want to learn anything new... they know that Windows crashes, but they don't care because they just think that the machine is evil.

"They install Linux and they sit at the computer and they think 'well, what do I do now?' And if you're that kind of person, you'll be disappointed. It's not about enjoying the operating system, it's about what you do with it."

(I've put the whole interview up if you wanna hear the rest.)

Please, be gentle to this mirror I made of the pictures as well.

By a striking coicidence, I've actually been working on something similar, albeit not for a desktop machine, but for my car computer.

I don't have pictures or anything up because it's only half finished, but the basic are simple enough to understand. I bought some scrap parts from a fighter jet (at a place that buys military scrap), and among them was the small overhead toggle panel from some sort of aircraft, probably a transport jet, though most of the labels are worn off so I can't really read the markings on it. I've been trying to wire up the toggle and guard switches and use them to, at least partly, control the computer and other things in the car.

*click* Power On

*click* headlights

*click-click* defroster on 'high'

Okay, here is where I gloat about scooping everyone. When the iPod was first announced, I did my homework and figured it the hard drive used was the Toshiba MK5002MAL, and it turned out to be the HDD1242 which are, in fact, the same drive.

Here is where I get to gloat about being ahead of the curve for once! Yippie!

a friend of mine and I did this a while ago kinda, but not nearly as cool as you're saying (we weren't moving, etc).

We took two Acer Warplink cards and hacked together a basic client-server system (one of us was set as the service, one client, but if we had continued work on it there would probably have been some kind of election process, etc). When I went over to his place I'd leave my laptop based MP3 player running (as did he) and our music would synchronize between each other, not too hard.

The problems in extenting the capabilities are great, though. One, if you want to use wireless like this, you either need to use something like TCP/IP and be on the same subnet, use netbeui and deal with "chatter" or write some new protocol. DHCP is a distinct possibility, though the clients would probably have to tell their rigs to refresh addresses explicitly.

The cards we used were slow... sloowww.... like 100-125 kbps if we were lucky and they didn't suffer distances over 300 feet and didn't seem to deal with Doppler shifts very well.. but then again, these cards are shite and can be had on ebay for 40 bucks (I DO NOT recommend them). 802.11b/a are probably better.

Due to the limited range of ye olde average wavelan card, I'd say transfering music while driving isn't a possibility for a few more years unless you were willing to maintain a static speed while transfers were taking place. If 802.11 in cars becomes more prevalent you could institute a routed/ping-pong system, but that would max out the effective bandwidth pretty fast. But it would be damn cool to transfer files over a relay-p2p highway network.

It could work with a request/response system (human-wise, I;m talking) where the cars co-pilot would send a message to a vehicle near them asking for them to stay stationary relative to them while they traded songs, but I'm not sure people are that social.

For now the best way would be to have servers set up near places like parking lots, etc, where people can stay still for long periods of time.

(if you wanna see my car as it is now (sans wireless networking), go here.

Although I'm still a fan of the T900 and have been for some time, I've had reliability problems. I purchased mine from Metrocall, and while the service was great, I went through 3 replacements before I just gave up on it. They always broke the same way - one day they ust stopped powering up when I flipped open the screen. And I treated these things gingerly too! If you choose it, I hope you'll have better luck than I.

The RIM Blackberry is another popular option in the pager department.

The option I'm with now is Wireless internet from At&t -- for 15/mo on top of any plan you have unlimited WAP, etc, and the R289LX Phone has an optional clip-on keyboard too (though I chose the T250 myself)

Another cheaper cell-phone option is Voicestream who offers 5mb of WAP data across any of their iStream Phones for $5/month.

And Depending on range, you could even go with some wireless toy like the Cybiko, too.

Are you sure? Generally, for 'blogs especially, it's automatic. For my site, my software updates the RDF every time an article is added, removed or modified.

The only time you'd see a not up to date backend would be if they're managing their site by HAND -- just modifying an HTML page. I don't think many sites do that. At least, I HOPE not.