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Now, you do need to be close to a transmitter (kind of like with the wireless internet thing) but they are all over the world. Everywhere. It's amazing how this thing has taken off. This guy named Marconi invented the whole thing in his basement, so he should get plenty of Slashdot cred.

Heck, like TCP/IP the protocol is totally open source, and it's easy to build your own transmitter or receiver. Heck, there is even a simple encryption scheme available.

But wait, there's more. With a simple hardware add on, you can enjoy interactive events and IM.

I tell you. This technology is here, and it is here to stay. Give it a chance. You might enjoy it.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what you call Linux.
Look at the Elks Distro in 8 BIT.
ELKS

Why is it that so many sites like this one offer spreadsheets for download as "XLS" when in fact the contents of the file you receive are simply plain text? Just because PC users are too dim to load Excel themselves?

No wonder so many people think they need Office to make effective use of the web. How about if I start making all the images on my site "Gimp" images when they're really just PNGs?

Hmm. actually that's not much more mean that what I've done to my homepage. Try that in MS Win IE - oops, someone doesn't understand W3C font/charset interaction recommendations.

Well, there is always ELKS(Embedable Linux Kernal Subset) which runs on 8086, 8088 & 80286 (as well as some PDA called the Psion). While it's not a full-featured version of linux (hense the "subset" in the title) it does work on 16bit hardware.

You could always take a look at Minix...

Redhat's eCos is an embeded unixesque OS that runs on a number of 16/32/64bit architectures.

And, for another version of linux that runs on systems w/o MMUs, you can always take a look at uClinux(that u should be a mu, as in micro). It seems they've focused mostly on Motorola chips, but a few others (such as the i960) are supported as well.

I'm tired of doing your research for you, but I seem to remember something out QNX originally being targeted at embedded architectures, and being available on a some non-Intel patforms.

OMG, a quick check over at DMOZ.org's search engine on "embedded" gives me entire CATEGORIES dedicated about it, several of which involve Linux as well! Yahoo does too! How dare they make you -look- for information. I feel sorry for the engineer that's going to have to design the board, and look up the specs on EVERY component he puts on the board...

preprint. It gives a pretty good account and should be comprehensible by somone who's done even a basic QM course - ie. it uses no fancy schmancy mathematics. Mod the parent up. Or read it here: Counterfactual COmputation
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Doesn't anyone actually check these things before moderation?

This is very similar to this article from Slashdot in March. This is another form of "holey fiber" making use of photonic bandgap effects.

It's not identical is application or results, but it's similar and another use of the same basic idea, so the earlier article and posts should make good reading. The article that prompted the previous story doesn't mention the photonic band gap, but this paper from the researcher discussed in the article does.

-Puk

Britons are usually quite innovative, the problem is this pre-eminence is not usually matched with businesses prowess, most inventors usually end up dying a porper or having their invention ripped off, and not receiving any recognition... or both of the above.

Such examples include the light bulb, Joseph Swan published his work in a journal and a guy called Edison ripped him a few months later. People today still believe Edison invented the light bulb.

There was Sir Frank Whittle who created the jet engine, he had to fund his research one shoestring because the government turned their back on him for years, then US company also tried to steal his work. Anyway, he finally succeeded, he didn't make any money out of his invention, but he finally achieved the recognition he deserved. (hence the knighthood).

Other calamities include the guys at GCHQ who created public-key crypto years before it was even a twinkle in Diffie's and Hellman's eye. But they didn't see the significance of their invention, mainly because the official secrets act stopped from applying it commercially.

Donald Davies who worked at Middlesex University invented the concept of Packet Switching but couldn't receive funding from the British government at the time, he took his research to ARPA where his technology was integrated into a little known project called "APRANET"... I'm not exactly sure what became of that :)

Fibre optics and the optical amplifier also came out of British Research

Obviously there's also the likes of Alan Turing and the rest of the slightly madcap bunch who were the brains behind Bletchley Park and the WW2 code breaking.

There's countless others too, and obviously some we probably don't even know about. Above all, they failed yet succeeded in a magnificent British way, a lot didn't make much or any money out their work, but they changed things.

There's lots of innovation and pure research in the UK, however not much it carried through to commercialisation, maybe because the British are more risk adverse, there's also a deep stigma attached to failure and bankruptcy in the UK, something which is often admired in the US.

This is changing though.

Why not MS-DOS? I'm serious, 6.2 was relatively mature by microsoft standards, and god knows there are enough programs that run on it.

god knows there are enough programs that run on it.

Linux can run on the old Amigas (16bit CPU).

Not only that;

• ELKS

  The goal of the ELKS project is to create a Linux option for

  • 8086 and 80286 class PC's
  • Palmtop Computers
  • Single board microcomputers
  • Embedded controller systems
  • Other old computers
  ELKS currently runs on PC's. The ELKS kernel image needs about 200K and a full running system should require 400K-512K. Linux is used as the development platform for ELKS at the moment.

Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers

For everything else, there's elks.

There were a group called OpenSA which were distributing Apache with mod ASP as well as SSL PHP etc. Their URL doesn't seem to work anymore

http://www.opensa.org

but there is a mirror

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lcr299/opens a/

If anyone could point me at some test images I'd gladly check out the "alpha transparency" issue

Besides the page mentioned in Greg's article, there is a very nice diagnostic set of images by Nick Lamb: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~njl98r/png-test /

Also, there's my page for testing gamma support at
http://pmt.sourceforge.net/gamma_test/

ok ok I know, me stupid, should check facts on things I have absolutely no idea about.

Although for what it's worth, it means my day wasn't totally wasted, I've learned something, in fact far more about testosterone than I could ever wish. Someone actually mashed up several tons of bulls balls just for a couple of drops?? Hunter S would be proud.

And in a vain attempt to keep this on topic, one of the great advantages that open media has in allowing instant discussion is that it allows a much broader range of sources and opinion to be added via hyperlinking, creating a tree of the event rather than an isolated report.

Thanks though.

What about ELKS? It's probably the oldest of the 'embeddable' Linux projects, but you don't see any press releases mentioning it.

Here's further information on the this theory. I think it's quite good, myself. Note that New scientist barely scratches the surface of it:

www.physics.adelaide.ed u.au/ASGRG/ACGRG1/papers/cahill.ps

By the way, if one is after wild and wacky theories, as well as pretty damn good ones, you can do worse than check out the pre-print server on xxx.lanl.gov (Uk mirror at xxx.soton.ac.uk) This is one of the oldest sites on the net.

I bought this old computer (an Intel Intelic). The Thing has an 8080 P, ?16k of main memory, dual 8" floppy drives, a hard drive that holds about 1 Meg, a 12 or 13 inch CRT (white) with keyboard, and a dual PROM burner. The thing also came with the manuals. The machine was originally bought in 1976! I originally was going to try to get the thing up and running, but I've never been able to find any 8" floppies, or the original OS (ISIS II if anyone actually has a copy).

Since I can't find the original OS, and since I can't run ELKS, I'm essentially stuck with almost a quarter ton of obselete hardware. However, the cases are in good shape, I've thought of retrofitting the beast with new hardware. I should easily be able to fit a new motherboard inside the processor housing, the dual floppy case could easily hold enough hardware to completely load a couple of SCSI boards, and the HD housing should be able to hold at least two fully assembled tower cases. With some work, I could probably build enough support to put a four-node cluster inside. As for the PROM burner, since I have the schematics, I should be able to divine enough hardware specs to allow someone to write a device driver for it.

The whole mess cost me $25US, but I think it would be awsome to make this thing into a REAL computer. Check around your local junk shops and maybe you can find some old piece of electronics just begging to become your next computer case. Maybe it might be an old shipboard radio (Oh boy... hook up all those blinkinlights!). The possibilities become much better when you stop thinking about your new cases' original use.

Dunbar, R. I. M. (1993). Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4): 681-735.
The final published draft of the target article, commentaries and Author's Response are currently available only in paper.

I think there might be some debate as to whether or not that little spelling bee episode was Quayle's biggest gaff:
Quayle Quotes

Oh, and there's definitely some 'anality' going on in this post, too! :)

-beme

Well, actually the power of Linux is pretty well matched on both ends by OS/2, which has always had the fastest context switching. It even runs on a 286 (Linux won't).

Today I was in our local TV repair shop, and they had two networked OS/2 computers which they run their business on. It was nice to see that OS/2 screen again. Too bad that OS/2 is so expensive, or I'd buy a new copy.

Oh, did you know that Linux now runs on the 286? It even runs on the 8088 (OS/2 can't do that). Yep, I've done it myself. If that sort of thing interest you, please check out Linux ELKS.

And Amiga Linux is the place for those interested in Linux on the Amiga.

Everyone loves Linux ELKS for their 286.

There is no place for real discussions or peer reviews, however. Most online journals I've seen are pretty weak, just copying what a paper journal does except with lower quality and funding.

The physics archive is at http://xxx.lanl.gov/

There's no protected mode, so it would have to be an ELKS-like beast.

Heck, I could even provide archive space--how big could a distro for 64K RAM and 140K disks be?

Greg

On the one hand, Linux is adapting to Desktop computers in terms of integrated features and this is a good thing, nobody questions that, but on the other hand, Linux's size means its suitability for embeded applications becomes questionable. Not as questionable as using NT but still... (correct me if I'm wrong, and I wish I were, but I do have heard micros~1 is pushing its NT kernel (if there is such a thing...) for embeded applications)
Anybody remember this /. article about a cash machine BSODing?

Now... there is always a way to compile a custom kernel with minimal functionality, thanks god! the size of the compressed kernel source means for a great part that there are now lots of features / drivers / functionality that were just not available a couple of years ago.
However, how does a minimal 2.2.10 compares with a 1.2.13? (both considered stable if I recall correctly)

This is important, because projects like linuxrouter depend on being embedable, either on a floppy or much much more important, on devices like the diskonchip thingy. Do you see the market? routers, dns, xterms, you name it! Any of those devices could work on an embeded 486 with 8Mb or more of RAM. Is this 486/8Mb under my desk, a masquerading router/caching DNS? I thought so too.

Now... you can spit on Linux, and use QNX ( check it, QNX is the king!).
OR, because we're dealing here with a minimal Linux, actually designed for embeded applications, there is a lesser chance to get it wrong, therefore adding to security /stability / once again, you name it. Also, but some people might argue this is not the point (then please tell me what is the point about Linux), make it more attractive to hardware hackers.
Hackable alternatives to QNX might include katix, ELKS or even FreeDOS... and of course, uClinux.

Well well well,those are just some thoughts of mine, I'm nowhere involved with The Kernel, therefore I'm not in a very good position to critisize it, I just hope that the right people have reached the same conclusions or are aware of the fact that we may loose an important market if we only concentrate on desktops and above.

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