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$100 Linux Wall-Wart Now Available
nerdyH sends us to LinuxDevices for a description of a tiny Linux device called the Marvell SheevaPlug. "A $100 Linux wall wart could do to servers what netbooks did to notebooks. With the Marvell SheevaPlug, you get a completely open (hardware and software) Linux server resembling a typical wall-wart power adapter, but running Linux on a 1.2GHz CPU, with 512MB of RAM, and 512MB of Flash. I/O includes USB 2.0, gigabit Ethernet, while expansion is provided via an SDIO slot. The power draw is a nightlight-like 5 Watts. Marvell says it plans to give Linux developers everything they need to deliver 'disruptive' services on the device." The article links four products built on the SheevaPlug, none of them shipping quite yet. The development kit is available from Marvell.
Is it possible to also have the ethernet for this device go over the power lines like so many home networking devices? Then you could literally plug it and and have it running.
All you need to do is wrangle yourself an "interview" with a company, plug one of these unobtrusive babies into a wall outlet, attach a short patch cord to the nearest RJ45 data jack and you're off to the highest (competitor) bidder!
Sounds like a nice box to use as a NAS, just hook up a fast USB 2.0 drive and you're set. With a 1.2ghz CPU and all that RAM it should fly. Meh, my 2TB professional Raid 5 NAS only has a 400mhz CPU and IIRC 32mb of RAM.
It looks pretty awesome.
Maybe I can use one with an USB cam to implement some cheap security cameras.
I can put a daemon on there to only start emailing images on movement. :)
Bseacue, evoneyre kwons taht you olny need to hvae the fisrt and lsat leettr rghit to be readlbae. I secsupt you see Wal-Mrat in prnit mroe oeftn tahn Wlal-Wrat.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Actually, he's got a point. If you can infiltrate the janitorial staff and can plug a two-ethernet-port version of this in between an important computer and a switch, you can sniff/analyze/record all unencrypted traffic until you run out of RAM.
Just be sure to remove it the next day before anyone notices.
Then again, an audio-recording device that recorded keystrokes or a keystroke-interceptor on the USB or PS2 ports is probably smaller.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It might be heresy, but I'm seriously considering using this instead of my Linux box at home... IF it can run rtorrent and hellanzb and handle the load of streaming to my Windows PC in the living room.
Software and CPU power are the only problems I foresee. (And CPU power is probably enough.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Yes, because I participate. A whole lot of slashdot's readers are in the income bracket that has $100 as a toy price cut off. Over $100 and something may actually have to be sacrificed. At or under $100, the budget can absorb. Eight years ago I wanted to get away from my dependency on a single computer in the house. I got tired of being totally cut off and having to drag an old system out of the closet when my desktop suffered some sort of failure. So I bought three used PIIs. For $100 each. Two of the three have suffered hard drive failures in the intervening years, but aside from that, they've kept right on working. One of them is the NAT/firewall machine for the whole house.
Looks like I finally have a candidate for a replacement. With gigabit ethernet. And its CPU is 200 MHz faster. Gotta love progress.
Yesterday I bought two used APC 1000XL UPSs. For $100 each. The one I had already could hold up my desktop with a 21" CRT for 27 minutes. One of those 5 watt warts should be able to run on battery for, what, a month? GOTTA love progress.
Nope, it's that Wall-Wart is too close to our conditioned recognition of Wal-Mart. Your brain has too much crap to do to read every letter of every word, and try to puzzle things out...It uses a sort of constant shape/context interpolation. That's why misspelled words don't prevent you from understanding what the word is supposed to be.
If they'd spelled it correctly (e.g. "wall wart") without the caps and hyphen, it wouldn't have fallen into the same framework, and everyone wouldn't have read it and gone, "Linux Wal-Mart? WTF?"
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Imagine a beowolf cluster of...
No joke. If they come out with a Gig of memory, I'll buy 20 or so and set up my own compute farm. I'd really like to get my hand on a sample and a cross-compiler to see what 1.2 GHz ARM means for my application...
Stephan
The only hard part would be is figuring out how to efficiently plug in your "beowart" cluster into power strips.
Oh no, I wasn't saying torrenting is sneaky. It isn't.
I was suggesting other nefarious uses. Like an open proxy that doesn't keep logs. Or a server for eMule. Or an icecast server with a public uploads folder - the modern day equivalent of pirate radio, just with audience participation. Or some other such thing.
Not that I'd ever advocate such behavior. Oh heavens no.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.