Just off the top of my head, the already-mentioned Linux Router Project, the freesco project, Tom's (very cool) rtbt, etc. I use tomsrtbt all the time as an emergency rescue floppy, and I can only imagine all the cool stuff he could do with ~16-18 times more disk space (the level of functionality already acheived in 1.7Mb is amazing)...
Heck, imagine having a floppy-based install where you don't have to disk swap for more drivers to enable networking? Slackware might actually be able to use disk sets other than A and N again on floppies... (not that I hold that against them, trying to fit things like X onto floppies is just silly in a masochistic sense) And I don't think it'd be too long before somebody makes a ZipSlack analog for this new tech.
And all the ram-based/cdrom-based distros (i.e. ones that load into ram off a floppy like LRP or the demo linux projects) would have a cool new way to enable persistant storage of more than the smallest things (e.g. logging in HD-less LRP systems).
DirectX is an absolute piece of shit from a programmer's standpoint. The API could only be described as "grotty" on the inside (c.f. library versions and context pointers, or the gawdawfulisms that are inherent in win32 to begin with like the code needed to open the simplest window). By comparison OpenGL's api is incredibly well laid-out. The two offer a similar set of features (OpenGL works just was well with 2d or isomorphic setups, linear transformations being what they are), but DX puts you through a lot more pain to get at them. If you were a programmer and you just had to use a DirectX-like API to feel happy, see SDL, which provides many of the gruntwerk features of DX and is much cleaner (and is cross platform). (NB: SDL doesn't do 3d or drawing primitives itself but there are many, many addon modules to accomplish this stuff; OpenGl rendering contexts are provided, see the SDLization of the NeHe tutorials on the sdl site.)
WRT speed, well, OpenGL on linux is an interesting question. At best it's second fiddle to mature OpenGl platforms like SGI. But if you have an NVIDIA card or one of the DRI-supported cards you're probably set to play most games. True, many games are coded in DX, but OpenGL is far from dead (Q3 is native opengl, as are all the Q3-engine-using games; UT works very well in opengl mode, etc. (I like FPS games so that's where my examples are coming from.)).
Anyway, linux already has the beginnings of pretty good DirectX support in the form of the recent developments from the Wine camp. For me the litmus test is "can I play StarCraft on Linux?", and the answer is "yes.":-) (Now if I could just find my fscking StarCraft disk:-/ moving sucks.)
--
Fuck Censorship.
Re:10K fps... Fastest conventional is around 4500f
on
DIY Railgun Projects
·
· Score: 2
IIRC the Russian WWII-era anti-tank rifle called the PTRSh-41 (or somesuch, basically a bolt-action rifle chambered to fire their 14.5mm round) is the largest-calibered weapon designed to be fired by an infantryman (excepting rockets, guided missiles, and grenade launchers). Apparently the firer usually received a substantial amount of blunt trauma from the recoil, including a high incidence of broken shoulders. But then since that one shot also typically neutralized a German tank and crew... (yeah probably not a Tiger but still the lighter armored vehicles as well as the weakly armored portions of heavier ones would have been vulnerable, the round also had a significant powder charge in addition to having a really big bullet).
The least of which is khttpd, which (like IIS) handles static web requests in kernel space
That's right, it is the least. In fact, you will never, ever, find a web server in a bsd kernel
because bsd developers have the proverbial clue about them.
Did you bother to read the guy's post? Apparently not, so let's have try #2 at sticking a clue into your head: tux is userspace. khttpd is kernel space. It handles file transmission, static only.
For webservers that only do static (like image machines, mostly), this is a definite performance increase. I don't know enough about Tux to comment on it. I use apache for dynamic stuff.
Conceptually khttpd is no different than NFS code ("Youse wan' de bits? OK, youse got de bits..."),
and for the uses outlined above it's a real performance win. Heaven forbid the BSD devel crowd take good ideas from outsiders...
If they did include a tux in the kernel, it would spank linux, sure, but that spanking linux is easy and worth anyone's time.
The heartwarming combination of stupidity, bias, and my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours so common online.
Use the right tool for the right friggin' job. I use openbsd for all my security infrastructure, and linux on the desktop level. Linux and *bsd are effectively the same for most server usage, so pick which ever one you're most familiar with.
Tux is useless overkill for anything but benchmarks.
See above. Have you every run Tux, or even thought about how it might be useful? From the abject lack of supporting material for your claim I'd guess not. You have the freedom to say whatever you want on the internet, you also have the freedom to back up what you say...
"[cdrom.com] runs its FTP server, which is the
world's largest and busiest, on FreeBSD. The Walnut Creek
server downloads 750 GB a day and can maintain 3,600
simultaneous connections on a single 200-MHz Pentium Pro
machine with 1-GB RAM and 500 GBs of RAID storage."
Umm, didn't they pass the TB/day mark a while back (or at least go past it once)? Further, I could have sworn they did a hardware upgrade too (to a SMP Xeon box IIRC). FreeBSD is cool, but 1 TB/day is pushing a ppro 200/1G ram system a little hard for any OS... --
Fuck Censorship.
T-1s are, in general, fuckin' expensive. You may wish to look at SDSL or some other form of xDSL for that amount of bandwidth for (again, generally) much, much less cost. True the T-1 can be more reliable, but since the only things you should be sending out across the wire are non-critical things like "hello bob, your appt. is at 11 am tomorrow" you can probably deal with some downtime. Another alternative is to get something cheap for the officewan bandwidth like a cable modem (hey, free waiting room cable), or low end xDSL, and do your serving from colocation. Especially if the local hospital has a server room you could cut a deal with.
The unix corollary would be CGI/PHP/JSP and a databse (for something simple like a timesheet a perl cgi system or PHP is probably the least pain, combine with free RDBMS like postgresql or mysql and yer done, with $0 software cost). Both perl and PHP have interfaces to PDF for printing out the final schedule (or just make a web page that
views a table in the DB for sched, presumably your cow-orkers are smart enough to use a web browser instead of looking at a printed sheet).
I think the spreadsheet thing comes from the fact most office drones automatically reach for Excel when they're looking at tabular data, regardless if the data requires calculation.:) Of course if you _do_ need calculation (like salary byb hours worked or something), that's just a few more rows or maybe a new table and some simple programming logic to calc and then a bit more formatting to put the result on the output.
Has anyone actually been able to buy one of these Agenda things? I've been hearing off and on about it since fall of '99, always it's "coming soon" or "prerelease" or "blah". Screw that, tell me about it when it's shipping. All the linux-running coolness doesn't count for Jack Shit if you can't actually, physically, right-now-not-next-quarter-or-"soon" buy the thing.
Side notes to some previous posters: why linux instead of (PalmOS/WinCE/other-commercial-OS): because we said so.;-) Why linux instead of BSD? difference is epsilon small, so if you don't like linux, quitcherbitchin' and port. whining = less time to code! (the NetBSD port proliferation in particular seems a likely avenue for a BSD-on-PDA approach)
Well, I've tried Irex for E, and it's pretty good (there is a gtk+ partner theme). Also just now while googling for a cache'd page of the very slashdotted 5dwm.org site, I ran across an IMD clone done using FVWM2. Note that I have only the most cursory user experience with SGIs (too po' to afford one of them on my own:-( ), so I can't comment on exactingly true either one is to the IMD. --
Fuck Censorship.
Well the other poster replying is definitely right on the standard point (I've yet to see a commercial unix that didn't come with a motif runtime). On the price point, you do realize that you can get both the runtime and development packages for the latest Motif for free? I can never remember if it's www.openmotif.(com|org|net?) or www.motifzone.(com|org|net?). Sorry to be so fuzzy-headed about the URL, but I know it's there.
Heh. Actually I was annoyed enough with my lack of memory to go check and all of the URLs above (both openmotif and motifzone, each with all three gTLDs) work. So "quitcherbitchin" as my mom would say, and go download the stuff...;-)
Well, there are cards already that have the entire OpenGL pipeline in silicon. Most workstation cards do, for example the 3dlabs Oxygen series. I think that with the addition of T&L the current gen of gaming cards comes close to full opengl-in-silicon if not completely attaining it (NB: these cards of course are not optimized for professional opengl work since they typically focus on speed over correctness).
Also, AFAIK most graphics cards today DO have operations to supprt windowing environment primitive drawing acceleration (things like quick rectangles, etc.). It's my impression that usually these are tailored to support the Windows GDI. Still I suspect that an enterprising wm author for another system could take advantage of common tasks if they had access to the asm calling specs.
You're definitely right about the more is good thing. Let a thousand different flowers bloom!:)
Coupla bits o' info: Houdini was ported some time ago (a year? maybe more?). The latest linux journal has an entire article on how some folks ported a large Irix-based system to Irix (or something like that, maybe it was moving parts of the system to linux, but I do recall a section on prting irix code to linux). Sorry if this is hyperlink poor, but I just woke up...:)
> How many java apps have you downloaded and run lately. [sic, use a frickin' ? dude]
argoUML just yesterday. works pretty good (argouml.org) I _think_ JBuilder 4 is all java.
It works great.
10megs is _nothing_ for a commercial distribution, considering that today a multi-cd application is normal. further, in an intranet environment, I can have total control over what is installed.
> I will NEVER buy a shrink wrapped java app.
OK, well, since you're the ultimate expert on the entire IT industry, you're opinion becomes fact and invalidates everything Java. Riiiiiiiight.
Java has a bad rap for being slow and bloated, held over from the 1.0 days when, being honest, it was pretty shitty. If you actually take the time to learn the language and the dev environment, esp. jdk 1.2+, it's not so bad.
Keep in mind that the greatest software engineering travesties to date have been done in compiled languages (*cough*any MS op.sys.*cough*), so being compiled is no insurance against bloat or sluggardliness.
This is not to say that Kylix isn't cool. Just don't go a-slamin' java if you don't know it.
Re:you can do this with very little hardware
on
Cheap POP-In-A-Box?
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· Score: 3
Good suggestion, but I think the poster is in a rural area, where I imagine this service may not be offered. Then again maybe I'm reading too much into the "small communities" part. And heck, for all I know the big guys do offer this to every nook and cranny of $COUNTRY.:-)
To the original poster: if you do end up having to get your own equipment, check eBay for used netowrking gear. I've heard good things about Livingston's Portmaster series of dialup access routers (they got absorbed into Lucent, so the Lucent site is the place to go for support and product docs). One of those guys may be all you need for network connectivity. If you need to offer DNS (maybe upstream provider will offer it) look to eBay again for cheap x86 machines to run a linux or BSD name service off of. One of those machines could also run mail in a pinch. (of course if your users are anemiable to the idea, having them all use webmail providers like yahoo equals one less thing to mess with... put it to them as "less hassle == lower cost == lower monthly membership dues";) )
As another poster mentioned, there is a HOWTO on setting up an ISP (you'll also want to reference the PPP howto and a few others more than likely; also note that the 2nd edition of the linux network admin guide (covering all sorts of handy info) is available online at the linux documentation site (& mirrors)).
--
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Re:bottleneck is probably the compression
on
MP3 Recorders?
·
· Score: 2
No, I'd guestimate that it takes about 6-8 minutes to encode a 5 minute track on my machine.
So I'm not quite to the real-time level yet. Partially I think this is because the FPU on my proc (a celeron 300a that's been running @ 464 for about 18 months now) isn't as good as a normal p2 and it's cache isn't as big.:-) But it was cheeeep, and that's real good if you're a po' college student.
My point was that it would take a pretty powerful CPU to encode to mp3 in real time. Namely a cpu you aren't likely to find in an embedded device due to cost, power, thermal, and space constraints...
yes, anyone can encode to mp3 given patience, but the problem is that data collection has to be in real-time (i.e. you can't tell the frog to shut up for a sec while your recorder chugs away...).
Well, JBuilder 4 (free version on linux w/ sun jdk 1.3, or is it using it's own internal ibm 1.3?) is pretty dang nice.:-) So if you like java, it's a good option. (Forte by Sun is pretty cool too, but it feels kinda sluggish compared to JBuilder. On the third hand I haven't tried it since 1.0, and it's at 2.0 now I think.)
Of course if you don't like java... Well, there is CodeWarrior for (c|c++|java) I think.
I've never tried it but it is out there.
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bottleneck is probably the compression
on
MP3 Recorders?
·
· Score: 2
It seems on the face of it that the thing keeping an embedded device from recording straight to mp3 would be the cpu required to do so. I'm basing this on the amount of time it takes my p2-450 equivalent machine to encode from.wav (uncompressed sound, basically what you're friend would be getting) to.mp3. Of course, yes, I'm going to 128+kbps, but still, there is only so much cpu you can cram into a portable the size of a pack of cigs.
Naturally take my suspicious as to the unfeasibility of this with a grain of salt as I'm just a sysadmin/desktop/server-type person, not an embedded hardware designer (maybe there is some uber-l33t way of using a custom chip to do this). I'd have to cast my vote for minidisc too, it sounds quite nice (a friend of mine uses his portable MD recorder/player to sample stuff for his electronica band).
I'm a scientist-type and as such have had to way too much statistical analysis for a healthy mind to endure. I'm also a fairly average deviant (black clothing, anarchistic political views, loud goth and industrial music, some BDSM mixed in with my otherwise average heterosexual sex life (come on, who hasn't wanted to tie up their (boy|girl)friend and whip the bejezzus out of them? if roleplaying is deviant, why is the phrase "who's yer daddy!?" so common?), etc.). So: standarddeviant (one possessing an average amount of deviation).
Of course, as my.sig said for a while, deviancy depends on how you define the norm. As an example, according to some studies, if you haven't "experimented" with recreational drug use at some point in your life, you're in the minority of Americans.
My current signature is a Cohen v. California-inspired take on the current climate of information control by the Powers That Be.
I too made the RH 7.0-inspired switch to debian. It's OK, but it's starting to annoy me as much as RH did (specifically the mess that is their init scripts, but then I think that SysV-style init is just beginning to annoy me in general[1]). I think my next distribution for my main workstation will be Slack 7.2 when it comes out, becuase I'm beginning to appreciate the simplicity and elegance therein (been using Slackware off and on since 3.0; mainly for servers).
[1]why on earth do people feel the need to keep screwing with init scripts, adding layer upon layer of complexity and indirection? It's not like changing runlevels, starting up, or shutting down is all that complicated! Baaaaaaaaah! It's enough to make me want to strip naked and curse.
Well, IMHO Slackware is pretty non-commercial, even if it's slackware.com and not.org.;-)
Slackware is interesting from the standpoint that it has been around a loooong time on the Linux scene, but most people don't think to list it when they talk about distributions (i.e. usually they break it down into RH, RH derivatives, and Debian). Wonder why?
Personally, although package managers can be OK, I've been screwed around by them often enough (yes, dpkg and friends too) that Slackware just seems to be my friend more than any other distro. Plus compiling from source means the highest degree of binary optimization for my machine... Oh, and having to dig through a ton of SysV initscripts is a huge PITA. Augh, I'm turning into a moss-backed old-timer!:-) YMMV, IANPV (I am not Patrick Volkerding).
Yeah, I doubt that he'll have much problem.:-) I can only imagine what his resume looks like (not that he'd probably need one).
Seriously, just for starters I imagine IBM would hire him (and the rest of the kernel bigwigs) in a heartbeat, as would Intel, as would AMD, as would Motorola, as would any of the big linux solutions providers, as would any of the national laboratories in several countries (educational or "other"), as would the technical branches of several government's intelligence agencies, etc. etc. etc.
So yeah, I don't think that any of these folks would be out beer money if {Transmeta|VALinux|redHat|whatever} fell over and died tomorrow.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Just off the top of my head, the already-mentioned Linux Router Project, the freesco project, Tom's (very cool) rtbt, etc. I use tomsrtbt all the time as an emergency rescue floppy, and I can only imagine all the cool stuff he could do with ~16-18 times more disk space (the level of functionality already acheived in 1.7Mb is amazing)...
Heck, imagine having a floppy-based install where you don't have to disk swap for more drivers to enable networking? Slackware might actually be able to use disk sets other than A and N again on floppies... (not that I hold that against them, trying to fit things like X onto floppies is just silly in a masochistic sense) And I don't think it'd be too long before somebody makes a ZipSlack analog for this new tech.
And all the ram-based/cdrom-based distros (i.e. ones that load into ram off a floppy like LRP or the demo linux projects) would have a cool new way to enable persistant storage of more than the smallest things (e.g. logging in HD-less LRP systems).
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Wouldn't eating something count? (heh: consumption with intent to digest, public mastication, etc.).
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Fuck Censorship.
DirectX is an absolute piece of shit from a programmer's standpoint. The API could only be described as "grotty" on the inside (c.f. library versions and context pointers, or the gawdawfulisms that are inherent in win32 to begin with like the code needed to open the simplest window). By comparison OpenGL's api is incredibly well laid-out. The two offer a similar set of features (OpenGL works just was well with 2d or isomorphic setups, linear transformations being what they are), but DX puts you through a lot more pain to get at them. If you were a programmer and you just had to use a DirectX-like API to feel happy, see SDL, which provides many of the gruntwerk features of DX and is much cleaner (and is cross platform). (NB: SDL doesn't do 3d or drawing primitives itself but there are many, many addon modules to accomplish this stuff; OpenGl rendering contexts are provided, see the SDLization of the NeHe tutorials on the sdl site.)
WRT speed, well, OpenGL on linux is an interesting question. At best it's second fiddle to mature OpenGl platforms like SGI. But if you have an NVIDIA card or one of the DRI-supported cards you're probably set to play most games. True, many games are coded in DX, but OpenGL is far from dead (Q3 is native opengl, as are all the Q3-engine-using games; UT works very well in opengl mode, etc. (I like FPS games so that's where my examples are coming from.)).
Anyway, linux already has the beginnings of pretty good DirectX support in the form of the recent developments from the Wine camp. For me the litmus test is "can I play StarCraft on Linux?", and the answer is "yes." :-) (Now if I could just find my fscking StarCraft disk :-/ moving sucks.)
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IIRC the Russian WWII-era anti-tank rifle called the PTRSh-41 (or somesuch, basically a bolt-action rifle chambered to fire their 14.5mm round) is the largest-calibered weapon designed to be fired by an infantryman (excepting rockets, guided missiles, and grenade launchers). Apparently the firer usually received a substantial amount of blunt trauma from the recoil, including a high incidence of broken shoulders. But then since that one shot also typically neutralized a German tank and crew... (yeah probably not a Tiger but still the lighter armored vehicles as well as the weakly armored portions of heavier ones would have been vulnerable, the round also had a significant powder charge in addition to having a really big bullet).
--
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Did you bother to read the guy's post? Apparently not, so let's have try #2 at sticking a clue into your head: tux is userspace. khttpd is kernel space. It handles file transmission, static only. For webservers that only do static (like image machines, mostly), this is a definite performance increase. I don't know enough about Tux to comment on it. I use apache for dynamic stuff. Conceptually khttpd is no different than NFS code ("Youse wan' de bits? OK, youse got de bits..."), and for the uses outlined above it's a real performance win. Heaven forbid the BSD devel crowd take good ideas from outsiders...
The heartwarming combination of stupidity, bias, and my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours so common online. Use the right tool for the right friggin' job. I use openbsd for all my security infrastructure, and linux on the desktop level. Linux and *bsd are effectively the same for most server usage, so pick which ever one you're most familiar with.
See above. Have you every run Tux, or even thought about how it might be useful? From the abject lack of supporting material for your claim I'd guess not. You have the freedom to say whatever you want on the internet, you also have the freedom to back up what you say...
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This caught my eye:
Umm, didn't they pass the TB/day mark a while back (or at least go past it once)? Further, I could have sworn they did a hardware upgrade too (to a SMP Xeon box IIRC). FreeBSD is cool, but 1 TB/day is pushing a ppro 200/1G ram system a little hard for any OS...--
Fuck Censorship.
T-1s are, in general, fuckin' expensive. You may wish to look at SDSL or some other form of xDSL for that amount of bandwidth for (again, generally) much, much less cost. True the T-1 can be more reliable, but since the only things you should be sending out across the wire are non-critical things like "hello bob, your appt. is at 11 am tomorrow" you can probably deal with some downtime. Another alternative is to get something cheap for the officewan bandwidth like a cable modem (hey, free waiting room cable), or low end xDSL, and do your serving from colocation. Especially if the local hospital has a server room you could cut a deal with.
Good luck!
--
Fuck Censorship.
The unix corollary would be CGI/PHP/JSP and a databse (for something simple like a timesheet a perl cgi system or PHP is probably the least pain, combine with free RDBMS like postgresql or mysql and yer done, with $0 software cost). Both perl and PHP have interfaces to PDF for printing out the final schedule (or just make a web page that views a table in the DB for sched, presumably your cow-orkers are smart enough to use a web browser instead of looking at a printed sheet).
I think the spreadsheet thing comes from the fact most office drones automatically reach for Excel when they're looking at tabular data, regardless if the data requires calculation. :) Of course if you _do_ need calculation (like salary byb hours worked or something), that's just a few more rows or maybe a new table and some simple programming logic to calc and then a bit more formatting to put the result on the output.
--
Fuck Censorship.
Has anyone actually been able to buy one of these Agenda things? I've been hearing off and on about it since fall of '99, always it's "coming soon" or "prerelease" or "blah". Screw that, tell me about it when it's shipping. All the linux-running coolness doesn't count for Jack Shit if you can't actually, physically, right-now-not-next-quarter-or-"soon" buy the thing.
Side notes to some previous posters: why linux instead of (PalmOS/WinCE/other-commercial-OS): because we said so. ;-) Why linux instead of BSD? difference is epsilon small, so if you don't like linux, quitcherbitchin' and port. whining = less time to code! (the NetBSD port proliferation in particular seems a likely avenue for a BSD-on-PDA approach)
--
Fuck Censorship.
Well, I've tried Irex for E, and it's pretty good (there is a gtk+ partner theme). Also just now while googling for a cache'd page of the very slashdotted 5dwm.org site, I ran across an IMD clone done using FVWM2. Note that I have only the most cursory user experience with SGIs (too po' to afford one of them on my own :-( ), so I can't comment on exactingly true either one is to the IMD.
--
Fuck Censorship.
Well the other poster replying is definitely right on the standard point (I've yet to see a commercial unix that didn't come with a motif runtime). On the price point, you do realize that you can get both the runtime and development packages for the latest Motif for free? I can never remember if it's www.openmotif.(com|org|net?) or www.motifzone.(com|org|net?). Sorry to be so fuzzy-headed about the URL, but I know it's there.
Heh. Actually I was annoyed enough with my lack of memory to go check and all of the URLs above (both openmotif and motifzone, each with all three gTLDs) work. So "quitcherbitchin" as my mom would say, and go download the stuff... ;-)
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Well, there are cards already that have the entire OpenGL pipeline in silicon. Most workstation cards do, for example the 3dlabs Oxygen series. I think that with the addition of T&L the current gen of gaming cards comes close to full opengl-in-silicon if not completely attaining it (NB: these cards of course are not optimized for professional opengl work since they typically focus on speed over correctness).
Also, AFAIK most graphics cards today DO have operations to supprt windowing environment primitive drawing acceleration (things like quick rectangles, etc.). It's my impression that usually these are tailored to support the Windows GDI. Still I suspect that an enterprising wm author for another system could take advantage of common tasks if they had access to the asm calling specs.
You're definitely right about the more is good thing. Let a thousand different flowers bloom! :)
--
Fuck Censorship.
Coupla bits o' info: Houdini was ported some time ago (a year? maybe more?). The latest linux journal has an entire article on how some folks ported a large Irix-based system to Irix (or something like that, maybe it was moving parts of the system to linux, but I do recall a section on prting irix code to linux). Sorry if this is hyperlink poor, but I just woke up... :)
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Fuck Censorship.
> How many java apps have you downloaded and run lately. [sic, use a frickin' ? dude]
argoUML just yesterday. works pretty good (argouml.org) I _think_ JBuilder 4 is all java.
It works great.
10megs is _nothing_ for a commercial distribution, considering that today a multi-cd application is normal. further, in an intranet environment, I can have total control over what is installed.
> I will NEVER buy a shrink wrapped java app.
OK, well, since you're the ultimate expert on the entire IT industry, you're opinion becomes fact and invalidates everything Java. Riiiiiiiight.
Java has a bad rap for being slow and bloated, held over from the 1.0 days when, being honest, it was pretty shitty. If you actually take the time to learn the language and the dev environment, esp. jdk 1.2+, it's not so bad.
Keep in mind that the greatest software engineering travesties to date have been done in compiled languages (*cough*any MS op.sys.*cough*), so being compiled is no insurance against bloat or sluggardliness.
This is not to say that Kylix isn't cool. Just don't go a-slamin' java if you don't know it.
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The most bugs!
;-)
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Fuck Censorship.
Good suggestion, but I think the poster is in a rural area, where I imagine this service may not be offered. Then again maybe I'm reading too much into the "small communities" part. And heck, for all I know the big guys do offer this to every nook and cranny of $COUNTRY. :-)
To the original poster: if you do end up having to get your own equipment, check eBay for used netowrking gear. I've heard good things about Livingston's Portmaster series of dialup access routers (they got absorbed into Lucent, so the Lucent site is the place to go for support and product docs). One of those guys may be all you need for network connectivity. If you need to offer DNS (maybe upstream provider will offer it) look to eBay again for cheap x86 machines to run a linux or BSD name service off of. One of those machines could also run mail in a pinch. (of course if your users are anemiable to the idea, having them all use webmail providers like yahoo equals one less thing to mess with... put it to them as "less hassle == lower cost == lower monthly membership dues" ;) )
As another poster mentioned, there is a HOWTO on setting up an ISP (you'll also want to reference the PPP howto and a few others more than likely; also note that the 2nd edition of the linux network admin guide (covering all sorts of handy info) is available online at the linux documentation site (& mirrors)).
--
Fuck Censorship.
No, I'd guestimate that it takes about 6-8 minutes to encode a 5 minute track on my machine. So I'm not quite to the real-time level yet. Partially I think this is because the FPU on my proc (a celeron 300a that's been running @ 464 for about 18 months now) isn't as good as a normal p2 and it's cache isn't as big. :-) But it was cheeeep, and that's real good if you're a po' college student.
My point was that it would take a pretty powerful CPU to encode to mp3 in real time. Namely a cpu you aren't likely to find in an embedded device due to cost, power, thermal, and space constraints...
yes, anyone can encode to mp3 given patience, but the problem is that data collection has to be in real-time (i.e. you can't tell the frog to shut up for a sec while your recorder chugs away...).
--
Fuck Censorship.
Well, JBuilder 4 (free version on linux w/ sun jdk 1.3, or is it using it's own internal ibm 1.3?) is pretty dang nice. :-) So if you like java, it's a good option. (Forte by Sun is pretty cool too, but it feels kinda sluggish compared to JBuilder. On the third hand I haven't tried it since 1.0, and it's at 2.0 now I think.)
Of course if you don't like java... Well, there is CodeWarrior for (c|c++|java) I think. I've never tried it but it is out there.
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Fuck Censorship.
It seems on the face of it that the thing keeping an embedded device from recording straight to mp3 would be the cpu required to do so. I'm basing this on the amount of time it takes my p2-450 equivalent machine to encode from .wav (uncompressed sound, basically what you're friend would be getting) to .mp3. Of course, yes, I'm going to 128+kbps, but still, there is only so much cpu you can cram into a portable the size of a pack of cigs.
Naturally take my suspicious as to the unfeasibility of this with a grain of salt as I'm just a sysadmin/desktop/server-type person, not an embedded hardware designer (maybe there is some uber-l33t way of using a custom chip to do this). I'd have to cast my vote for minidisc too, it sounds quite nice (a friend of mine uses his portable MD recorder/player to sample stuff for his electronica band).
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Fuck Censorship.
Dude, that would be a cool hack.
Be kinda hard to download a tar.bz2 full of gears and stuff though... ;-)
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Fuck Censorship.
I'm a scientist-type and as such have had to way too much statistical analysis for a healthy mind to endure. I'm also a fairly average deviant (black clothing, anarchistic political views, loud goth and industrial music, some BDSM mixed in with my otherwise average heterosexual sex life (come on, who hasn't wanted to tie up their (boy|girl)friend and whip the bejezzus out of them? if roleplaying is deviant, why is the phrase "who's yer daddy!?" so common?), etc.). So: standarddeviant (one possessing an average amount of deviation).
Of course, as my .sig said for a while, deviancy depends on how you define the norm. As an example, according to some studies, if you haven't "experimented" with recreational drug use at some point in your life, you're in the minority of Americans.
My current signature is a Cohen v. California-inspired take on the current climate of information control by the Powers That Be.
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Fuck Censorship.
(Sorry, bad pun, couldn't resist :-) )
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Fuck Censorship.
I too made the RH 7.0-inspired switch to debian. It's OK, but it's starting to annoy me as much as RH did (specifically the mess that is their init scripts, but then I think that SysV-style init is just beginning to annoy me in general[1]). I think my next distribution for my main workstation will be Slack 7.2 when it comes out, becuase I'm beginning to appreciate the simplicity and elegance therein (been using Slackware off and on since 3.0; mainly for servers).
[1]why on earth do people feel the need to keep screwing with init scripts, adding layer upon layer of complexity and indirection? It's not like changing runlevels, starting up, or shutting down is all that complicated! Baaaaaaaaah! It's enough to make me want to strip naked and curse.
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Fuck Censorship.
Well, IMHO Slackware is pretty non-commercial, even if it's slackware.com and not .org. ;-)
Slackware is interesting from the standpoint that it has been around a loooong time on the Linux scene, but most people don't think to list it when they talk about distributions (i.e. usually they break it down into RH, RH derivatives, and Debian). Wonder why?
Personally, although package managers can be OK, I've been screwed around by them often enough (yes, dpkg and friends too) that Slackware just seems to be my friend more than any other distro. Plus compiling from source means the highest degree of binary optimization for my machine... Oh, and having to dig through a ton of SysV initscripts is a huge PITA. Augh, I'm turning into a moss-backed old-timer! :-) YMMV, IANPV (I am not Patrick Volkerding).
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Fuck Censorship.
Yeah, I doubt that he'll have much problem. :-) I can only imagine what his resume looks like (not that he'd probably need one).
Seriously, just for starters I imagine IBM would hire him (and the rest of the kernel bigwigs) in a heartbeat, as would Intel, as would AMD, as would Motorola, as would any of the big linux solutions providers, as would any of the national laboratories in several countries (educational or "other"), as would the technical branches of several government's intelligence agencies, etc. etc. etc.
So yeah, I don't think that any of these folks would be out beer money if {Transmeta|VALinux|redHat|whatever} fell over and died tomorrow. ;-)
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Fuck Censorship.