Clinton, I'm a Linux loving, Palm using, GNU C++ coder like yourself (I'm 17). I'm in a rather unique situation however. I attend the Math, Science, Computer Science Magnet Program at Montgomery Blair High School. This means that I'm around a decent amount of geeky kids like me. I've been able to set up MBLUG and I'm also a student computer operator. We've got a lot of technology available at our school, as well as adults who help us take advantage of this technology.
What is your experience in this area? Is your school technology have or have-not? Do you have a crowd of computer geeks at school or are you the solitary one? Are you shunned for your geekiness or accepted?
There are a lot of places that give away old Sun stuff. Ebay is usually good if you're willing to pay a couple hundred $ for it. Another good place to go is freeboxen.com (featured on/. a while ago) where people often give away systems, though they might not be in the best shape. It's at least good for parts.
In my experience, the best way to get old systems is to know someone who who maintains computer systems at a company where they use a lot of Sun (and can therefore help you get the stuff they throw out), which is how I got mine, or you can look around in dumpsters around high-tech companies. It might sound a little disgusting, but a lot of times people will throw out perfectly usable systems just because they're a little old.
Could your model be the ELC or SLC perhaps? These are the only models that Sun created which were all in one, IIRC. I'm currently running RH 5.1 on my ELC, which has a 33 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, and a 1 GB HD. Not bad considering it was produced 10 years ago. The one limiting factor is the B&W screen, but that just adds to the old school factor.:-)
Would this be possible? Make a processor that's around the size of 3.5 in disk, and created a drive that interfaces it to the motherboard. Then you could have removable processor slots! Want to upgrade? Just eject the old processor and stick in the new one? Eventually you'll be able to buy processors in packs, they'll come in red, green, yellow and blue. AOL will send out processor disks that render your computer useless except for connecting to AOL. Just imagine whipping out your disk holder and saying "Hey baby, check out my Beowulf cluster..."
Just wanted to point out that this story was originally posted on PalmStation, a very cool Slashdot-like site specifically for PDAs (with only a slight bias towards Palm:-)
At PalmStation recently: The Palm GamePad, an extension for your Palm that gives you standard GameBoy buttons, information on a new Swedish net-driven PDA, as well as information on the successor to the pdQ.
One of the newer technologies is SAR, synthetic aperture radar, which is mainly used to image windspeed over a body of water. Basically the way SAR works is this: The satellite transmits a beam towards the ocean surface. If the surface is smooth, it will bounce off the surface and away from the satellite. When the wind blows, the surface becomes rough, and some of the beam is bounced back at the satellite. The more that gets bounced back, the more the wind is blowing. It's a little more complicated than that, but...
As for GPS, apparently you can use GPS signals to monitor different things like this, based on how the signal is changed when it bounces off of a body of water. GPS can also be used to figure out how much moisture is in the air, etc. based on how the signal is changed from when the satellite sends to when you recieve it.
For more on SAR and Remote Sensing in general, check out some of the links on my page.
First of all, I don't think I saw this mentioned, but the "Targus" Stowaway, was originally developed by a company called ThinkOutside. Targus sells the one for the Visor, and the Palm version is sold by Palm as the Palm Portable Keyboard.
A few months ago I got to use my friend's GoType on a school field trip, which came in very handy for doing homework. So I began to do some research on keyboards for Palm.
As has been mentioned, there's the Happy Hacking Cradle by PFUCA, which allows you to plug in any PS/2 keyboard. Originally, I decided I would try to create a small PS/2 keyboard by taking a full sized keyboard and cutting the unnecessary keys off. The way a conventional keyboard works is that under the keys are two sheets of plastic with conducting material running through them so when you press a key it completes the circuit. So it's possible to take the case apart, cut the case down to only the necessary keys, but these two conducting pieces back in (fold the excess over) and have a small keyboard that works with the HHC. But it's still not as cool as having one that folds to fit in your pocket.
As for the GoType, the keys are very small making it pretty hard to type (I guess you have to get the hang of it). I had some issues with the space bar not registering unless it was pushed hard. It's also large enough to be cumbersome. It can fit in a backpack, but isn't as useful because of its size.
Then there's the PPK, which is a wonder of engineering. Just like the reviewer said, whenever I take it out, people want to play with it and see how it works. It's a full laptop sized keyboard. It's amazing how it unfolds and then slides together. Originally, I thought the stand was separate, but it also slides out from a hidden crevice in the keyboard. The people at ThinkOutside are amazing to have designed a product like this. As for price, the HHC is $50, the GoType $60-$70, and the PPK $100, so it ends up being worth the extra lawns you have to mow to buy it.:-)
I don't think Transmeta is well established enough for this to greatly affect them. When this sort of thing happens to Intel or Sun, it's a big deal. But Transmeta hasn't really gained a lot of attention (meaning the average person hasn't heard of them). I think Transmeta will still do fine out of all of this.
By the way, why is it only the NEC laptops with the problem? Shouldn't it affect all or none of the Crusoe's?
Remember the Virtual Boy? I can remember the hype when it came out, probably about 7 years ago. I remember the first (and only) time I played on one of those things was when my friend rented one from Blockbuster for his birthday party. I remember thinking it was pretty cool, even if the screen was only red, and I got a crick in the neck playing it, not to mention irreparably damaging my eyesight staring at it. We played the pinball game, and Mario Tennis. What ever happened to Mario Tennis?:-)
What's impressive about this collection is not the variety of console systems, because I'd guess there are a lot of spoiled kids who've had each one of the consoles, but the amount of games this guy has for each one.
My Atari 800, acquired a month or two ago, is my first and only gaming console, even though it qualifies as one of the original personal computers.
Yep. We got one for the website I helped create at www.mcfleet.com. Here are some big problems:
No man pages!
Non standard processor!(this means that if you want to install something on it you have to compile it yourself or hope that Cobalt has an rpm for it)
These things are really meant as appliances that run Linux in the background, but have a pretty browser config interface. Malda's probably never seen one of these things, just saw Linux somewhere on the Cobalt page. Solaris on these boxes could only help things.
Yeah! The people that I'm talking about in the post are the people who were kids when it came out, and thought it was really really mind bogglingly cool (because they were kids and Star Wars blew their minds). Now these guys have grown up and they expect Episode 1 to be as mind boggling as Star Wars was when they were kids, but it just can't be. They just expected way too much out of this movie.
On the other hand, I see little kids all the time that think Episode 1 was really cool, just like the little kids that liked the first three.
First of all, anyone who is familiar with Star Wars knows that they do an extremely thorough job of keeping things secret, and most rumors that are posted on various sites are largely untrue. The only true source of information is starwars.com or interviews with George Lucas or Rick Madsen.
As far as Episode 1 goes, I'm sick and tired of hearing people trash it. People who didn't like Episode 1 are simply not true Star Wars fans. Their either:
a)fringe fans who see Star Wars as infantile and finally have an excuse to bash it and distance themselves from it, or
b)people who were 5 years old when the old ones came out and were expecting the same magic they felt then, now.
Get a grip people! Seeing the new Episodes isn't going to be as magical as when you were 5 because you've grown up now and your tastes have changed. The same age group who liked Star Wars when it first came out is liking the new Episodes. I haven't talked to one person under 12 who didn't like Episode One. If you're just a fringe fan, bashing Star Wars doesn't make you look cool any more than liking it does. Star Wars came out before I was born, and I've only come to like in the past couple of years. I really liked Episode 1, even if Jar Jar was a little annoying. I think the people who bash Episode 1 wouldn't have been happy no matter what the movie had ended up like.
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
by Neil Sedaka
Lyrics rewritten by Justin Osborn
down dooby doo down down, comma comma
down dooby doo down down
breaking up is hard to do
You know I love my monopoly
Please don't split us up into three
But we'll appeal, it might fall through
'Cause breaking up is hard to do
Do you remember the Macintosh?
And all the startups, that we squashed?
Let's not talk about OS/2
Still breaking up is hard to do
They say we're breaking anti trust rules
The DOJ is a bunch of fools
We've got so much money to spend
Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making DOS again
We just can't beat
the guys at Palm
Our handhelds, were a bomb
Pocket PC, one more debut
While breaking up is hard to do
They say were breaking anti trust rules
The DOJ is a bunch of fools
We've got lots of money to spend
Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making DOS again
Please DOJ
Consider our request
You could just fine us to avoid distress
We'll even go open source too
But breaking up is hard to do
At my school, we have student sysops with a head administrator. The students usually specialize in one sort of task. When you do it, be careful who gets access to what. You don't want 18 kids with root to your main server, because things will go bad. By the way, has anybody noticed that nobody comes to the Ask Slashdot page? I didn't even know there was a separate page until yesterday and I've been reading Slashdot for months.
The site claims that after Ma Bell was broken up, there was much more competition and innovation. As everyone knows, it just means you have a local monopoly instead of a national one. That's beside the point. They claim that AT&T wants to create a cable monopoly and stifle innovation. What they fail to realize however, is that AT&T is trying to innovate. Right now at home you've either got DSL or slow dial up. You might have a cable modem. In any case, you have at least two sets of wires, and at most 3 or 4. What AT&T is trying to do is install fiber to the house. Fiber to the house means that you have one line, which handles voice, video, and data (with plenty of fat bandwidth). AT&T is trying to innovate, not stop innovation.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
AT&T is not a monopoly as the stopatt.com website says. The stopatt.com site is poorly informed, and their premise for stopping AT&T is purely speculative. Besides the AT&T breakup causing the Baby Bells, AT&T has a history of being a company which promotes innovation and competition. Hey, Unix came out of Bell Labs right?
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
It's not like the device is actually going to boot up with a prompt that you type commands into. It runs Linux, but all you see is the gui layer on top of it. Basically, it's WinCE that doesn't crassh as much but is still somewhat bloated. Stick with Palm.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
The newer couplers are smaller and I've seen speeds of up to 28Kbps and I haven't even looked that hard. Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
How about one of the universal phone adapters, an old modem, a null modem cable, and a Palm Pilot? There's some portable computing. Yeah baby! Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
You fail to understand. You have faith all the time. You have faith that you won't get hit by a car walking down a street. You have faith that your drinking water isn't poisoned, etc. Reason and faith are extremely closely connected.
Crusoe by Justin Osborn To the tune of: Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean
The mystic Transmeta announced it that day It was faster than Intel, as some may say Conserved batteries, gave heat the slip And everybody knew it was a superior chip - Crusoe
The folks at Transmeta had slaved day and night To make a chip that ran just right It ran on software, instructions optimized. It wasn't at all advertised - the Crusoe
A guy named Linus, from Finland they employed He made a living doing what he enjoyed Hacking the kernel, making it mobile Spewing out code and letting it compile - for Crusoe
The OEMs quickly made alliances For laptops, handhelds, and web appliances It seemed that they would rake in the dough The folks at Transmeta would get the biggest take though - from Crusoe
I walked to the store to get a laptop Crusoe was cheap, they were $2G a pop I imagined all the time from rechargin I'd save As I read the review the magazine gave - the Crusoe
I pulled out my laptop flying overseas The project wasn't finished, couldn't be at ease The hard drive clicked as I typed and typed away But the battery just didn't seem to drain away - from Crusoe
My presentation was going well but it was going long My boss began to talk, blather on and on The Crusoe made it through, and here's my one quip In the middle of my laptop is one heck of a chip - the Crusoe
We had sendmail running on one of our Linux machines in the the computer lab. A sysop came up to us and said "What? You don't need sendmail, shut that down." I said, "You gotta have sendmail, what if you forget the root password? You gotta be able to find a bug in sendmail and hack root!"
Slashdot Mirror
What is your experience in this area? Is your school technology have or have-not? Do you have a crowd of computer geeks at school or are you the solitary one? Are you shunned for your geekiness or accepted?
Best of luck,
Justin
In my experience, the best way to get old systems is to know someone who who maintains computer systems at a company where they use a lot of Sun (and can therefore help you get the stuff they throw out), which is how I got mine, or you can look around in dumpsters around high-tech companies. It might sound a little disgusting, but a lot of times people will throw out perfectly usable systems just because they're a little old.
Could your model be the ELC or SLC perhaps? These are the only models that Sun created which were all in one, IIRC. I'm currently running RH 5.1 on my ELC, which has a 33 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, and a 1 GB HD. Not bad considering it was produced 10 years ago. The one limiting factor is the B&W screen, but that just adds to the old school factor. :-)
Would this be possible? Make a processor that's around the size of 3.5 in disk, and created a drive that interfaces it to the motherboard. Then you could have removable processor slots! Want to upgrade? Just eject the old processor and stick in the new one? Eventually you'll be able to buy processors in packs, they'll come in red, green, yellow and blue. AOL will send out processor disks that render your computer useless except for connecting to AOL. Just imagine whipping out your disk holder and saying "Hey baby, check out my Beowulf cluster..."
At PalmStation recently: The Palm GamePad, an extension for your Palm that gives you standard GameBoy buttons, information on a new Swedish net-driven PDA, as well as information on the successor to the pdQ.
One of the newer technologies is SAR, synthetic aperture radar, which is mainly used to image windspeed over a body of water. Basically the way SAR works is this: The satellite transmits a beam towards the ocean surface. If the surface is smooth, it will bounce off the surface and away from the satellite. When the wind blows, the surface becomes rough, and some of the beam is bounced back at the satellite. The more that gets bounced back, the more the wind is blowing. It's a little more complicated than that, but...
As for GPS, apparently you can use GPS signals to monitor different things like this, based on how the signal is changed when it bounces off of a body of water. GPS can also be used to figure out how much moisture is in the air, etc. based on how the signal is changed from when the satellite sends to when you recieve it.
For more on SAR and Remote Sensing in general, check out some of the links on my page.
A few months ago I got to use my friend's GoType on a school field trip, which came in very handy for doing homework. So I began to do some research on keyboards for Palm.
As has been mentioned, there's the Happy Hacking Cradle by PFUCA, which allows you to plug in any PS/2 keyboard. Originally, I decided I would try to create a small PS/2 keyboard by taking a full sized keyboard and cutting the unnecessary keys off. The way a conventional keyboard works is that under the keys are two sheets of plastic with conducting material running through them so when you press a key it completes the circuit. So it's possible to take the case apart, cut the case down to only the necessary keys, but these two conducting pieces back in (fold the excess over) and have a small keyboard that works with the HHC. But it's still not as cool as having one that folds to fit in your pocket.
As for the GoType, the keys are very small making it pretty hard to type (I guess you have to get the hang of it). I had some issues with the space bar not registering unless it was pushed hard. It's also large enough to be cumbersome. It can fit in a backpack, but isn't as useful because of its size.
Then there's the PPK, which is a wonder of engineering. Just like the reviewer said, whenever I take it out, people want to play with it and see how it works. It's a full laptop sized keyboard. It's amazing how it unfolds and then slides together. Originally, I thought the stand was separate, but it also slides out from a hidden crevice in the keyboard. The people at ThinkOutside are amazing to have designed a product like this. As for price, the HHC is $50, the GoType $60-$70, and the PPK $100, so it ends up being worth the extra lawns you have to mow to buy it. :-)
By the way, why is it only the NEC laptops with the problem? Shouldn't it affect all or none of the Crusoe's?
What's impressive about this collection is not the variety of console systems, because I'd guess there are a lot of spoiled kids who've had each one of the consoles, but the amount of games this guy has for each one.
My Atari 800, acquired a month or two ago, is my first and only gaming console, even though it qualifies as one of the original personal computers.
here.
No man pages!
Non standard processor!(this means that if you want to install something on it you have to compile it yourself or hope that Cobalt has an rpm for it)
These things are really meant as appliances that run Linux in the background, but have a pretty browser config interface. Malda's probably never seen one of these things, just saw Linux somewhere on the Cobalt page. Solaris on these boxes could only help things.
On the other hand, I see little kids all the time that think Episode 1 was really cool, just like the little kids that liked the first three.
As far as Episode 1 goes, I'm sick and tired of hearing people trash it. People who didn't like Episode 1 are simply not true Star Wars fans. Their either:
a)fringe fans who see Star Wars as infantile and finally have an excuse to bash it and distance themselves from it, or
b)people who were 5 years old when the old ones came out and were expecting the same magic they felt then, now.
Get a grip people! Seeing the new Episodes isn't going to be as magical as when you were 5 because you've grown up now and your tastes have changed. The same age group who liked Star Wars when it first came out is liking the new Episodes. I haven't talked to one person under 12 who didn't like Episode One. If you're just a fringe fan, bashing Star Wars doesn't make you look cool any more than liking it does. Star Wars came out before I was born, and I've only come to like in the past couple of years. I really liked Episode 1, even if Jar Jar was a little annoying. I think the people who bash Episode 1 wouldn't have been happy no matter what the movie had ended up like.
by Neil Sedaka
Lyrics rewritten by Justin Osborn
down dooby doo down down, comma comma
down dooby doo down down
breaking up is hard to do
You know I love my monopoly
Please don't split us up into three
But we'll appeal, it might fall through
'Cause breaking up is hard to do
Do you remember the Macintosh?
And all the startups, that we squashed?
Let's not talk about OS/2
Still breaking up is hard to do
They say we're breaking anti trust rules
The DOJ is a bunch of fools
We've got so much money to spend
Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making DOS again
We just can't beat
the guys at Palm
Our handhelds, were a bomb
Pocket PC, one more debut
While breaking up is hard to do
They say were breaking anti trust rules
The DOJ is a bunch of fools
We've got lots of money to spend
Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making DOS again
Please DOJ
Consider our request
You could just fine us to avoid distress
We'll even go open source too
But breaking up is hard to do
At my school, we have student sysops with a head administrator. The students usually specialize in one sort of task. When you do it, be careful who gets access to what. You don't want 18 kids with root to your main server, because things will go bad. By the way, has anybody noticed that nobody comes to the Ask Slashdot page? I didn't even know there was a separate page until yesterday and I've been reading Slashdot for months.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
The newer couplers are smaller and I've seen speeds of up to 28Kbps and I haven't even looked that hard.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
How about one of the universal phone adapters, an old modem, a null modem cable, and a Palm Pilot? There's some portable computing. Yeah baby!
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
You fail to understand. You have faith all the time. You have faith that you won't get hit by a car walking down a street. You have faith that your drinking water isn't poisoned, etc. Reason and faith are extremely closely connected.
by Justin Osborn
To the tune of: Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean
The mystic Transmeta announced it that day
It was faster than Intel, as some may say
Conserved batteries, gave heat the slip
And everybody knew it was a superior chip - Crusoe
The folks at Transmeta had slaved day and night
To make a chip that ran just right
It ran on software, instructions optimized.
It wasn't at all advertised - the Crusoe
A guy named Linus, from Finland they employed
He made a living doing what he enjoyed
Hacking the kernel, making it mobile
Spewing out code and letting it compile - for Crusoe
The OEMs quickly made alliances
For laptops, handhelds, and web appliances
It seemed that they would rake in the dough
The folks at Transmeta would get the biggest take though - from Crusoe
I walked to the store to get a laptop
Crusoe was cheap, they were $2G a pop
I imagined all the time from rechargin I'd save
As I read the review the magazine gave - the Crusoe
I pulled out my laptop flying overseas
The project wasn't finished, couldn't be at ease
The hard drive clicked as I typed and typed away
But the battery just didn't seem to drain away - from Crusoe
My presentation was going well but it was going long
My boss began to talk, blather on and on
The Crusoe made it through, and here's my one quip
In the middle of my laptop is one heck of a chip - the Crusoe
We had sendmail running on one of our Linux machines in the the computer lab. A sysop came up to us and said "What? You don't need sendmail, shut that down." I said, "You gotta have sendmail, what if you forget the root password? You gotta be able to find a bug in sendmail and hack root!"
I said this about 8 posts ago, but the moderators aren't looking too hard.