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Sony Combines Pocket Drive with 802.11
Ernest writes "They presented this at Net&Com 2003 in Tokyo. I've found this announcement in German at ComputerWoche
Sony selected Linux as the file server's operating system. They'll start selling this little 390 gram thing on the japanese market at the end of March for 585$. Inside is a 20GB 2.5" disk of which (only) 17GB will be available for files."
I had the pleasure of obtaining the early post. Thank you very much, I'll be here all week.
We needs to know!
Here's the babelfish translation
Sony announces WiFi Fileserver in the milling one format 05.02.2003 at 11:00 o'clock MUNICH (COMPUTER WEEK) - Japanese electronics company Sony has a portable file server presented which, which kommunziert over Wireless LAN with PCS and PDAs. The "Fsv-pg1" works with a Linux based operating system and contains a 20-GB-Festplatte in the 2,5-Zoll-Format, 17 GB of it is available for user data. The equipment fits with masses of 83 x 155 x of 31 millimeters loosely into a hand and weighs 390 gram. For the enterprise all thing a power pack is necessary, the internal Akku serves only for baking UP purposes. The inserted ACCESS POINT (IEEE 802.11b) can serve according to manufacturer up to 250 users at the same time. Access to the stored files is possible over ftp, CIFS (Common InterNet file system) or NFS. By a Ethernet Cradle available as accessories the equipment can connect accessing Clients by WLAN in addition with the InterNet. As safety functions the Fsv-pg1 incoming inspection coding with alternatively 64 or 128 bits offers, stored files can by password be protected. On the Net & Com 2003 in Tokyo the equipment is presented today to the public for the first time. It is to come at the end of March for converted 585 dollar on the Japanese market, the Cradle costs again scarcely 60 dollar. Whether and when the equipment appears also in this country, is not well-known. (tc)
Hack = Sony iPod?
R4NT.com - A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
Looks neat, maybe a good iPod alternative... hard to say if there is anything to it because I DON'T SPEAK GERMAN!
Sounds cool, but I'm not sure it'll get by on just "cool" if they decide to release it in North America...
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Is that 17 gig's of porn on a 2.5" form-factor harddrive in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
BUT linux is not all that. It's a Unix clone and not a great one at that. It's just decent. What about all those security holes ? Seems to be getting slower year by year. It was never built for security. It's a clone OS and not anything revolutionary like PLAN 9. BSD is the better os.
Mac freaks have been speculating that the iPod will get 802.11 for a long time now... and sony beats them to it.
I wonder how customizable the Linux install is. This type of device will be very usefull with ZeroConf. Any services it provides (mp3, divx streaming...) will automagically appear as soon as it joins the network. yippee.
What could possibly take up 3 gigs? C'mon, it's not the OS, they're using Linux. What else are they hiding on that drive that's using so much space?
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Watch me do it with my real name.
FOURTH POST!!!!
What's installed on the thing anyway? I doubt a simple file server takes up 3 GB of space...
"new to area...horny, very....need to spread a smooth hispanic or white ass and slip some hot black cock into it and pump a poz load in it....."
http://cp.barebackcity.com/showmessage.asp?2573
=======
P.S. Bite! You've been bitten by the Original AIDS Monkey! You have AIDS now!
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
This article was originally published on The Times Online
/. readers (copyright of The Times, contains some compelling arguments):
You can read it at Common Dreams website
I am copying and pasting the text here for benefit of
Published on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 by the Times/UK
The United States of America Has Gone Mad
by John le Carré
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer's pocket? At what cost -- because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people -- in Iraqi lives?
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another's, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that "somebody" was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried to kill my Daddy." But it's still not personal, this war. It's still necessary. It's still God's work. It's still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil -- but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.
If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day -- think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us -- to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can't. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can't get out.
It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair's best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world's greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant's head to wave at the boys?
Blair's worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it's a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect's sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can't explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
"But will we win, Daddy?"
"Of course, child. It will all be over while you're still in bed."
"Why?"
"Because otherwise Mr Bush's voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him."
"But will people be killed, Daddy?"
"Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people."
"Can I watch it on television?"
"Only if Mr Bush says you can."
"And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?"
"Hush child, and go to sleep."
Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: "Peace is also Patriotic". It was gone by the time he'd finished shopping.
Copyright 2003 Times Newspapers Ltd
Now, if we could get these things with rendezvous up and working, so they just automagically work with MacOS X (and eventually everything else).
:^)
That'd be nice, to have a portable scratch-space drive or something like that, that you just plug in and suddenly it works for everyone
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
This is great -- basically a network storage appliance, without the wires. I wonder how the battery life is, although I suspect it's good for a few hours (similar to iPod).
... or in a location that hasn't been fully wired.
I'm definitely interested. I work with lots of people who are WiFi capable and need storage larger than CF cards. It seems like this could be a very handy device for independent consultants and developers on the move
Hmm. I'd like to see this in the US.
Here's the Sherlock Translation, for those who can't read German: Sony quits WiFi Fileserver in the milling one format at 05.02.2003 at 11:00 o'clock MUNICH (COMPUTER WEEK) - Japanese electronics company Sony has a portable file server presented which, which kommunziert over Wireless LAN with PCS and PDAs. The "FSV-PG1" operates with a Linux based operating system and contains a 20-GB-Festplatte in the 2,5-Zoll-Format, 17 GB of it is available for user data. The device fits with masses of 83 x 155 x of 31 millimeters loosely into a hand and weighs 390 gram. For the operation all thing a power pack is necessary, the internal Akku serves only for baking UP purposes. The inserted ACCESS POINT (IEEE 802.11b) can serve according to manufacturer up to 250 users at the same time. Access to the stored files is possible over ftp, CIFS (Common InterNet file system) or NFS. By a Ethernet Cradle available as accessories the device can connect accessing Clients by WLAN additionally with the InterNet. As safety functions the FSV-PG1 incoming inspection encoding with alternatively 64 or 128 bits offers, stored files can by password be protected. On the Net&Com 2003 in Tokyo the device is presented today to the public for the first time. It is to come at the end of March for converted 585 dollar on the Japanese market, the Cradle costs again scarcely 60 dollar. Whether and when the device appears also in this country, is not well-known. (tc) Evaluate this contribution after school notes
-Phil "Got Rice?"
The corrected post is as follows:
PO5T3D 8y cHr1$d ON thur5d4Y pheBrU@ry 06, @12:08@M
phrom Th3 CUtE-4$-@-Bu++0N D3Pt.
3RN3$+ WRI+35 "+HEy pRE$3n+ED +H15 a+ NET&cOm 2003 iN t0kyo. I'v3 fOund +Hi5 @NN0unCEMen+ iN 9ERM4n 4+ comPUtERw0cH3 50ny 53L3C+3d LINUx @5 th3 phIle $3rVer'5 0pER4+in9 5Y$T3m. +HEY'll 5t4r+ $3lL1nG th15 Lit+Le 390 9r4m +H1Ng on T3H j4p4ne53 m@RKE+ @+ Teh 3Nd oF m@RcH f0R 585$. IN5idE I5 @ 20G8 2.5" d15k oPH wH1ch (oNlY) 17G8 wiLL 8E @V4IL4Bl3 f0r ph1lE$."
Cape Town Women Give Peace Their Pants
Image is here
the default redhat install, yes it needs two cds now.
it'd be very cool to setup a whole network of these guys and run fully off of these. imagine the space and electricity companies could save. imagine the nfs shares you could setup for mp3s in your bathroom on your laptop. mmm.. the possibilities.
I write code.
It's a repurposed toy.
I think that sony has jumped the gun, they choose a technology limited to 11mbps. if anyone would try and do large transfers they are going to take a really long time. I hope that sony starts looking to add either 802.11a or 802.11g
A Beowulf Cluster Imagines YOU!
You know what that site is, right? I read about this in Rolling Stone magazine. All these gay dudes are totally stoked with the idea of getting AIDS they they are trying to infect themselves. I shit you not. They're called 'bug chasers' and their lifelong dream is to get AIDS and die in some super erotic fucking glory.
Umm, most of us like to format our hard disks, unless u got a better idea . .. .
oh, and chances are it's a FAT 32 partition (seems that many, many portables still use it).
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
This would be a great accessory to a PDA with an 802.11(a/b/g) card.
;) music without even using so much space as a hardcover book.
Imagine plugging setting it up at a hotel or on a train and streaming your (legal
This might entice me to actually get a PDA, if the proce drops.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
you bsd facts are pure bs. BSD is reliable and more secure than clonelinux. Netcraft facts are meaningless since bsd is not forced onto people like microshit. Linux is used by nontechnical people that don't know better. linux=security hole. Not the future
expensive
easily lost or stolen
why not connect to your pc with your wireless devices, easier to back up, maintain, expand, view files,
and did i say stupid?
sony has lots of littel stupid things that go unnoticed and die
ummm, you stupid, just get a 2.5 drive for your pda anyway
and ummm stupid, conenct to your pc
did i say you are stupid?
Peepoh:One hot dog in a bun, comin' right up!
YourMissionForToday:Go and steal stuff now!
YourMissionForToday:with a forklift!
Peepoh:Yes, Master of Forkliftery! I must obey!
YourMissionForToday:but don't get it too heavy, or it could weigh down your forklift!
Peepoh:Not the Power Jackoff 2000! Let's get a bunch of blow up dolls and dress them up in graduation robes, and leave them in Church!@
Peepoh:then we steal the stations of the cross with our forklifts!
YourMissionForToday:Yeah, then we blame it on the blowup dolls!
Peepoh:yeah! and it'll work because the night before we'll replace their security tapes with tapes we've edited of the dolls perpetrating the crime!
YourMissionForToday:Yeah, with zombies dressed up as Lenin and Stalin helping them!
Peepoh:no, the zombies ARE Lenin and Stalin!
YourMissionForToday:Great idea, but they wear party hats and the blow up dolls only get to wear graduation hats
Peepoh:yeah, at first.
YourMissionForToday:and there's a jesus piñata!
Peepoh:but then we DRILL the fuck out of their zombie asses with our big industrial drills!
YourMissionForToday:right, and then we look like the heroes!
YourMissionForToday: (we have to dress like mexican peasants)
Peepoh:yeah, because the cops would arrive on the scene just in time to witness us spraying zombie innards all over the tabernacle!
YourMissionForToday:Yeah, and then we just post like mexican construction workers who stopped by to pray to our lady of guadalupe on our way home after the night shift!
Peepoh:oh good thinking! that explains why we have the big industrial drills at church!
YourMissionForToday:That, and cause we were going to get them blessed for St. Blaises' Day!
Peepoh:When we drill into people's throats!
YourMissionForToday:And then we claim that we're Michael the Archangel after we do that...no, wait, you're Michael the Archangel and I'm Captain America!
Peepoh:no, you're Leonardo the Archangel, John's Donatello the Archangel, and Robert is Raphael the Archangel!
YourMissionForToday:Cowabunga, d00d! You're right!
I ask this question because it is going to be very, very tricky for Sony to pack much of a battery into the case with the size specs given (especially when using a 2.5" drive) and 802.11b is not exactly the most power-efficient spec. I guess that Sony was between a rock and a hard place on this particular choice, 802.11g is too new and there are not going to be any low power chips any time soon while bluetooth is too slow. By eating up the battery with a wireless link you are going to increase the number of charge cycles on the battery and decrease the lifespan of this battery.
See here.
TECHNOLOGY !
While the thought of this little baby makes me drool, Sony's history on DRM is enough to make me sit back and wait for the new and inevitable Apple risponse with .11g. There's been so much talk of new iPods with 40G Tosh drives, Bluetooth, WiFi etc that something mighty fine must be imminent.
is it offered?
Pocket-sized, battery-powered Linux box w/20G hard drive, 802.11b port, small screen "console", and a way to attach (at least) an ethernet.
Add a GPS and you've got a warhiking setup.
Add intrusion tools plus automation and you've got an industrial espionage device, too. (Bad guy goes to an interview, hangs out in a waiting room, lobby, or parking lot, or hikes by on the sidewalk, while the pocket-sized box sucks down everything of interest on the internal net, or just sniffs packets for a while. 20G leaves plenty of room for netstumbler to crack the WEP.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First, it's absurdly big. Either that's a really small hand in the picture, or it's huge.
Second, $585?!? Get outta here.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Only with GNU/Linux could such a device be made.
The high-quality freely open source code available at zero cost.
Carry it around as a mobile classroom: serve up notes, audio, video of your presentation when and where you give it. No more "I'll email you my presentation when I get back to the office" stuff.
You could hide one of these things in an airport or some other public place and use it to broadcast advertisements in the form of SSID and/or a 192.168.*.* intranet web site to anyone stumbling for accesspoints. Imagine a bus or taxicab service giving out dispatcher phone numbers or transportation rates. Suddenly advertising in an airport terminal isn't quite so expensive.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Yeah. What about it?
Get a life, Nerd!
I'm really sick of this idiocy when a company announces a product and some broke nitpickers come out of the woodwork and say "But does it do XYZ?".
Jesus Christ, get a grip. Technology will finally catch up. If Sony or any other company for that matter, created a killer product that did everything in one small package, there wouldn't be much competition left, or companies wouldn't be able to make any money.
It's called steady progression. Suppy and demand. Simple case of Macroeconomics. Your opinion is utterly useless and insignificant in this case. If you're too eager to possess such a small toy with 802.11b AP built in, with 17Gigs of storage and have SSH, make one yourself and quit wasting slashdot's bandwidth with useless crap like feature suggestions only 0.001% of people would use.
Realisticly speaking, how many businesspeople do you personally know who have the slightest fucking clue about SSH? I would guess none. Simple authentication is enough. This is not geared towards companies like Lloyds of London or Dell R&D Division who have valuable company secrets. This is geared towards people in SOHO, and we all know what they use these types of gadgets for.
No self-respecting cracker would bother sniffing packets coming from a company who's annual budget is 10,000,000 or less.
You're a poser.
Google's attempt
Beware if you live or work near Muslims! They are all terrorists! We must protect ourselves from them, and get rid of them! Muslims are evil!
Cool! Now I won't have to worry about that suspicious-looking firewire cable coming out of my pocket when I visit my favorite computer store.
-
IA-32 processor, about 2Ghz or so. 512MB of RAM. Hard drive. Ethernet and FireWire. No display.
-
Very rugged, suitable for mounting in an offroad racing truck.
-
Automotive temperature range.
-
Powered from the vehicle 12V supply.
-
Size and weight not too critical.
Any suggestions?after "3 gigs for linux?", my next realization was price, yes. that seems absolutely ridiculous for 17 useable Gigs! but that's probably why it's being sold in Japan, where i'm told size/useability take precedent over cost.
in America, we like things big and cheap. Japan likes things small, regardless of price.
now here's a question: how much would it cost a do-it-yourself'er to make a comparable product, but more useable?
5.25" 90 Gig HDD, SBC with 802.11b and IDE controller... it would be more of a backpack or fanny pack (child of the 80s) device, but portable and far more useable!
basic boot sequence with nfs? oooh! or portable internet proxy!?! lots of fun can be had!
You could hide one of these things in an airport or some other public place...
You want to hide one in an airport???!!! Are you just begging to be on CNN for a week as the new terrorist threat?
17gbytes of space ~= 136000000000 bits.
11000000 bits/sec (half duplex).
is about 3.4 hours max. How good is this battery?
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
This is great. Now I can ask for a copy of their code and sell it to the Taiwanese.
don't need to read the text and you can guess what it's all about:
http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/PGX/
...in an easy-to-use package. Warsharing for the masses!
The license for Apple's Rendezvous implementation is unacceptable to many people. I wouldn't be surprised if the license alone would keep Sony from using this. Furthemore, no major Linux distribution has packaged it up. So, in effect, there is no usable Linux implementation of Rendezvous. Also, since only a tiny fraction of all machines use Rendezvous yet, there isn't much incentive for Sony to expend any effort on this.
Here's a Sony press release about a "giga vault" handheld 40Gb hard drive gizmo, with USB2 and Firewire but no 802.11. They do seem to be getting into the portable storage biz.
If it's a file server you use much, it's nice to have it on a UPS. (Also, if it's a DNS server or DHCP server, you really want it on a UPS as well.) For a low-end device, laptop-style batteries are fine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The other 3Gb must contain DRM AND SPYWARE!!! Sony is EVIL!!!!!
Is that a hard drive in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?
Auf deutsch? Spiel mit linux. der Affe ist unter dem Schreibtisch, den der Hund im Baum ist, der an deutsche Kategorie sich erinnert, dieser für Ihre Unterhaltung ist.
SimonTek
UGH! That's all we need... ad-pods hiding
everywhere.
On the plus side, seeing the Imperial Enforcers
strip-searching advertiseniks *would* be amusing.
And the courts have ruled that discarded items
are fair game.. *thinks longing thoughts about
a couple dozen de-added fileservers stuffed into
his pockets.*
Sony delivers a walkman format WiFi-Fileserver
Munich(ComputerWoche) - Sony, the Japanese electronics firm have demonstrated a portable fileserver, that can connect to PCs and PDAs using Wireless LAN (protocol). The FSV-PG1 works with a linux based operating system, and has a 2.5 inch 20 GB harddrive, 17 GB of which are available to the user. The device , which is 83x155x31 millimeters fits neatly in your hand, and weighs 390 Gramms. It requires an external powersupply - the internal battery is only for backup use.
The built in access point (IEEE 802.11b) can, according to sony, server up to 250 users at a time. Access to the data is possible via FTP, CIFS or NFS. There is also an ethernet-cradle available as an accessory which enables standard ethernet connections. Security is dealt with via 64 or 128 bit WEP. Saved data is protected via passwords.
The devices will be publicly presented for the first time at the Net&Com 2003, Tokyo show. It should be available in Japan at the end of March for approximately 585 dollars, the Ethernet-Cradle costing approximately 60 Dollars. If and when the device will be available here (Germany) remains to be seen.
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
I had a Japanese girlfriend once.
:-)
I have never seemed bigger.....
This is how you sound:
1in()x 15 743 sux045! 65D is 73h r0x045!
Bsd this, Linux that. Can' you OS trolls just accept that they are all good in their own right?
BSD is the better OS...maybe, but can you shut up about it?
But I'm waiting for some truly inspired 802.11
applications. For example:
A wristwatch that downloads your schedule, events,
meetings, what's for lunch that day, etcetera when
you walk into your school, uni, campus, job, etc.
Receivers in your home stereo, shelf system at
work, car stereo, etc. that automatically grab
the playlist off a drive and play songs when
you issue the verbal "play, repeat, random"
command without it ever leaving your pocket.
and of course,
Vib*cough**cough* personal massagers! Imagine
the possibilities!
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Honestly, I don't see a lot of uses for this thing...although it would make a great autonomous packet sniffer. Place it near an interesting target location (i.e. WLAN enabled company, coffehouse, etc.) and let it sniff away. With that 20 Gb hard drive, I bet it could store quite a few interesting tid-bits. Drop by a couple of days later and pick it up...wah lah!
hmmmm..... small *and* wireless.
"Honey have you seen the server?"
"Did you check in the sofa?"
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Product/Pserver/Fsv-pg x1/index.html
Now we only need a transparent (protocol-wise, not visually, before somebody makes the obvious joke) CompactFlash/Memorystick/Smartmedia/etc. 802.11 card for our digital cameras, and we never have to swap cards again! :)
Carry one in your backpack, with batteries, even put it in waterproof container, and your photos are safe. I wander how little energy 802.11 card can get away with for 1 meter distance? Hmm....
J.
Think about also having multiple connection types. Don't have a firewire cable handy? Well, most everybody who's anybody today has 802.11 and soon will have bluetooth, plus you would even have to touch the back of a computer or string cables out onto the desk.
The unit looks to be as big as it it is because it uses a standard notebook drive, I imagine all these functions could fit in a device like the iPod with it's 1.8" drive.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
A battery would make it heavier, but since I wouldn't need to take it out of my backpack/briefcase during the day, that's less of an issue.
Okay, now we have a reasonable Portable Storage Device ("PSD"). Make sure the interface is a well-documented standard, of course. Now any manufacturer can design and sell:
PSDs with different size disks, as the technology becomes available
PDAs with differing features/pricepoints, all of which store their data on the PSD -- in a format I can access/update directly from my PC
MP3 players which can play music from the PSM; and maybe some that can record to it as well
cellphones (preferably just the headset) that can dial from the PDA database, and save voicemail messages to the PSD
cameras that can download/upload images to the PSD
...profit!
11Mbps should make most of these feasible, but as with any bandwidth, more is better.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
I think the main reason we haven't seen a wireless iPod yet is speed: the iPod's built in Firewire gets 400m/s while you're lucky to sqeeze 10m/s out of 802.11b (Airport) believe me this makes a BIG difference: I keep my iTunes library on a fileserver which (as yet) has no Firewire, so I sync the iPod with my PowerBook (usually connected via Airport)
Transfering the volumes of data that the iPod does over 802.11b sucks: it can take hours to sync up, whereas when the music was stored locally I'd be ready to go in minutes if not seconds (needless to say a Firewire card is on its way for the server!)
Hopefully now that Apple have adopted 802.11g (Airport Extreme) we might see the option for a wireless iPod soon, though it'd still be pretty slow compared to the cabled version, especially if they also update the Pod's Firewire hardware to the new 800m/s version.
This sounds like a very cool product. I've already replaced the back-breaking labor of shlepping my laptop into work every day with a pocketec 20g USB2 hard drive. I just work directly off the drive now, and since I mirror it to my home machine with rsync every now and then I've improved my backup strategy as well. Adding 802.11 support and a battery is a natural extension of this great tech.
Here's what I would add (down the road) to make this Sony thing a killer product:
- Bluetooth (duh)
- Some sort of powerline networking that provides 10M or better throughput (I guess this becomes less important as 802.11g becomes more ubiquitous). BUT, if you are going to need to plug it in anyway to recharge the battery why not add another networking strategy while you're at it?
- I wouldn't mind seeing this thing built into a backpack or bicycle messenger bag with a retractable cord built right the bag itself (kinda like the souped-up iPod that is built right into a purse). The thing provides wireless networking, right? Why would I ever want to pull it out of my bag, plug in a power adapter, plug it into the wall or a port on computer, etc? Dumb!
ps. As this kind of product adds features like the ones above, I see the form factor being less important. I mean, what do I care if it is the size of a deck of cards if I never pull it out of my backpack anyway? I would pay $500 for the device above even if it weighed 2 lbs and was triple the size of the Sony product.
Has anyone hooked up a toshiba 1.8 drive to a PDA just wondering if possible and where to buy one. like 10 gig or 20 and what about power usage is it workable.
uhm, netstumbler doesn't crack WEP. Airsnort does.
Oops. My bad.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
ummm soho is in new york?
SOuth of HOuston street...
this is a test i dont know if this will work right blah blah blah blah blah blha.
Life in Orange County
An interpretation _I satisfies a sentence in the table language if and only if
each entry in the table designates the value of the function designated by the
function constant in the upper-left corner applied to the objects designated
by the corresponding row and column labels.
-- Genesereth & Nilsson, "Logical foundations of Artificial
Intelligence"
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