or if your lazy to click on the link: The Little Engine That Could
How Linux is Inadvertently Poised to Remake the Telephone and Internet Markets
By Robert X. Cringely
One of the cheapest Linux computers you can buy brand new (not at a garage sale) is the Linksys WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless access point and router that includes a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can be bought for as little as $69.99 according to Froogle. That's a heck of a deal for a little box that performs all those functions, but a look inside is even more amazing. There you'll find a 200 MHz Intel processor and either 16 or 32 megs of DRAM and four or eight megs of flash RAM -- more computing power than I needed 10 years ago to run a local Internet Service Provider with several hundred customers. But since the operating system is Linux and since Linksys has respected the Linux GPL by publishing all the source code for anyone to download for free, the WRT54G is a lot more than just a wireless router. It is a disruptive technology.
A disruptive technology is any new gizmo that puts an end to the good life for technologies that preceded it. Personal computers were disruptive, toppling mainframes from their throne. Yes, mainframe computers are still being sold, but IBM today sells about $4 billion worth of them per year compared to more than three times that amount a decade ago. Take inflation into account, and mainframe sales look even worse. Cellular telephones are a disruptive technology, putting a serious hurt on the 125 year-old hard-wired phone system. For the first time in telephone history, the U.S. is each year using fewer telephone numbers than it did the year before as people scrap their fixed phones for mobile ones and give up their fax lines in favor of Internet file attachments. Ah yes, the Internet is itself a disruptive technology, and where we'll see the WRT54G and its brethren shortly begin to have startling impact.
You see, it isn't what the WRT54G does that matters, but what it CAN do when reprogrammed with a different version of Linux with different capabilities.
Yes, smartypants, I know that other wireless access points and routers run Linux or can be made to run Linux. It didn't take long for hackers to figure out that Apple's original AirPort access point used a version of the 486 processor and could be convinced to speak Linux. But the WRT54G is different. This is a $70, not a $299 box and its use of Linux is no secret. Linksys, now owned by Cisco, not only doesn't mind your hacking the box, they are including some of those hacks in their revised firmware.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
Probably the most popular third-party firmware you can get for the WRT54G comes from Sveasoft, a Swedish mobile phone software company. Actually, Sveasoft is only kinda-sorta Swedish since the head techie (and for all I know the company's only employee) is James Ewing, a former contract programmer from California. Ewing took time off to visit Honduras where he met a woman from Sweden, and a decade ago moved with her back to Scandinavia, where they live three kilometers from the mainland on an island without broadband Internet service. Looking for a cheap wireless connection much like the one I had a few years ago in Santa Rosa, Ewing discovered through the Seattle Wireless Group web site the amazingly adaptable WRT54G, and has devoted much of his time since to improving the little box's firmware.
If you have a WRT54G, here's what you can use it for after less than an hour's work. You get all the original Linksys functions plus SSH, Wonder Shaper, L7 regexp iptables filtering, frottle, parprouted, the latest Busybox utilities, several custom modifications to DHCP and dnsmasq, a PPTP server, static DHCP address mapping, OSPF routing, external logging, as well as support for client, ad hoc, AP, and WDS wireless modes.
If that last paragraph meant nothing at all to you, look at it this way: the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac's
A good idea would be a harddware site like tigerdirect, but one of the main features of the site is that is has a lot of people's opinions on whether its good or not, does that exist?
I would like to see it there, but if the costs is like 3 times than a normal ticket, I'll just go to a normal theater. Does anyone know how prices compare?
sorry to be a jerk but the answer to this question:
Why does Microsoft refuse to give Linux a legitimate license for use? (Yes, the ultimate "MS Answer" was obvious, but I wanted to irk her...)
is that Microsoft could probably give a rat's ass fuck less about linux on xbox. Here is an analogy, "why doesn't sony sell PS2s with a refrigerator." the question makes no sense at all. Just by reading your post before you mentioned your age, it was obvious to tell that you are a young kid. Linux is not needed everywhere.
"Given the right ideas from input from others, I might be able to come up with my own device or start an open project geared towards it."
May I ask what kind of open device you would start? Just becuase this is slashdot. Are you an engineer or in the PDA business? If so, you s\wouldnt be asking about PDAs here.What kinfd of Open project are you going to do for a PDA?
I'm inside circuitcity writing this form their unix terminals with netscape. I saw this article and said to myself, wasn't i just playing with this e740 one minute ago. I wen tback to the pda section and saw it. This model doesn't seem to have wifi though, it says "WiFi ability" though. I'll ask in a minute to see if they have these with wifi now. It looks nice, but I would never buy a ppc, palm is better for me.
Actually vi is on OS X, not vim. Also, a good unix is definetely NOT defined by having bash. Bash is actually not a good shell. OS X comes with sh,tcsh, zsh, and csh. I'm pretty sure "elite" UNIX users DO NOT use bash. Please try running sh and bash and run some basic commands and see which shell is hogging the CPU. I think you meant to say, linux doesn't make a good linux. You are right, becuase OS X is based off BSD. BSD doesn't have bash, vim, or other unnecessary stuff.
you have to admit, these ibooks make pretty nice unix boxes. The nice graphics of OS X(not ugly graphics of Xfree) with the power of unix. I just bought an ibook a few months ago as my entry into macs to try out the BSD derived OS X, and so far its been a grear ride. I recommend for your next laptop to try out an ibook or powerbook and if you don't like OS X, you can always install OpenBSD or some linux distro
oops, the code didnt come out, here it is again:
table align=right>tr>td>messed up text/td>/tr>/table>
Right align is messed up!!!!!!!!
I removed the left side brackets to show the code
kde is doing great....
on
KDE Wins 3 awards
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I rcently came back to using X from the command line(although its stil my favorite work place). The last time I had used kde was the kde 1.x days. Now I am using kde 2.2.1 and let me tell you, it is a thousand times better. Konqueror already beats the crap out of Netscape, I don't even see how people can call Netscape an alternative now. I also jsut bought a MAC to try out the "other" *BSD and to me, kde2 is still better than all the "eye candy" at OS X.
There are a few small bugs I do notice sometime.
Try to view a table with a left align in konqeuror and see the result. This 1 line of code will be messed up:
messed up column
Its pathetic that you mark this as a troll because I said BSD is better than Linux. Have you even used BSD you horrible moderator? Also, please tel me your definition of a troll.
I tried it a couple of days ago. I have 1.07 for starcraft. Diablo 2 isn't out yet. Beta diablo 2? Can I have the URL that you heard battl.net code has been updated? On battle.net, mutiple people can play, but not in the same game. I'm also using the latest ipchains with ipmasqadm. So.... I don't think that sc is working with ipmasq correctly yet.
Actually, more people in China speak English, than people in America. Check the numbers and do the math and you'll see(If you are Chinese, you can do the math in your head now). Their accents might not be the best thoughRed flag Linux
Slashdot Mirror
fp bitches!!
I'm sure this is all important for "news for nerds"
http://jtoy.net/ipod/index.html
feeds for arstechnica forums:
http://jtoy.net/ars/ars.htm
mine is usually just a bunch of random characters edning with a .com
or if your lazy to click on the link:
The Little Engine That Could
How Linux is Inadvertently Poised to Remake the Telephone and Internet Markets
By Robert X. Cringely
One of the cheapest Linux computers you can buy brand new (not at a garage sale) is the Linksys WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless access point and router that includes a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can be bought for as little as $69.99 according to Froogle. That's a heck of a deal for a little box that performs all those functions, but a look inside is even more amazing. There you'll find a 200 MHz Intel processor and either 16 or 32 megs of DRAM and four or eight megs of flash RAM -- more computing power than I needed 10 years ago to run a local Internet Service Provider with several hundred customers. But since the operating system is Linux and since Linksys has respected the Linux GPL by publishing all the source code for anyone to download for free, the WRT54G is a lot more than just a wireless router. It is a disruptive technology.
A disruptive technology is any new gizmo that puts an end to the good life for technologies that preceded it. Personal computers were disruptive, toppling mainframes from their throne. Yes, mainframe computers are still being sold, but IBM today sells about $4 billion worth of them per year compared to more than three times that amount a decade ago. Take inflation into account, and mainframe sales look even worse. Cellular telephones are a disruptive technology, putting a serious hurt on the 125 year-old hard-wired phone system. For the first time in telephone history, the U.S. is each year using fewer telephone numbers than it did the year before as people scrap their fixed phones for mobile ones and give up their fax lines in favor of Internet file attachments. Ah yes, the Internet is itself a disruptive technology, and where we'll see the WRT54G and its brethren shortly begin to have startling impact.
You see, it isn't what the WRT54G does that matters, but what it CAN do when reprogrammed with a different version of Linux with different capabilities.
Yes, smartypants, I know that other wireless access points and routers run Linux or can be made to run Linux. It didn't take long for hackers to figure out that Apple's original AirPort access point used a version of the 486 processor and could be convinced to speak Linux. But the WRT54G is different. This is a $70, not a $299 box and its use of Linux is no secret. Linksys, now owned by Cisco, not only doesn't mind your hacking the box, they are including some of those hacks in their revised firmware.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
Probably the most popular third-party firmware you can get for the WRT54G comes from Sveasoft, a Swedish mobile phone software company. Actually, Sveasoft is only kinda-sorta Swedish since the head techie (and for all I know the company's only employee) is James Ewing, a former contract programmer from California. Ewing took time off to visit Honduras where he met a woman from Sweden, and a decade ago moved with her back to Scandinavia, where they live three kilometers from the mainland on an island without broadband Internet service. Looking for a cheap wireless connection much like the one I had a few years ago in Santa Rosa, Ewing discovered through the Seattle Wireless Group web site the amazingly adaptable WRT54G, and has devoted much of his time since to improving the little box's firmware.
If you have a WRT54G, here's what you can use it for after less than an hour's work. You get all the original Linksys functions plus SSH, Wonder Shaper, L7 regexp iptables filtering, frottle, parprouted, the latest Busybox utilities, several custom modifications to DHCP and dnsmasq, a PPTP server, static DHCP address mapping, OSPF routing, external logging, as well as support for client, ad hoc, AP, and WDS wireless modes.
If that last paragraph meant nothing at all to you, look at it this way: the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac's
A good idea would be a harddware site like tigerdirect, but one of the main features of the site is that is has a lot of people's opinions on whether its good or not, does that exist?
I would like to see it there, but if the costs is like 3 times than a normal ticket, I'll just go to a normal theater. Does anyone know how prices compare?
From the looks of his "trail", it doesn't look like he goes out too often
Sorry, but the AMD chips will still win.
Please read teh chip specs at http://arstechnica.com
this is a little to ridiculous. You can't charge for abbreviations like that.
SCO must be a partner with this company
sorry to be a jerk but the answer to this question:
Why does Microsoft refuse to give Linux a legitimate license for use? (Yes, the ultimate "MS Answer" was obvious, but I wanted to irk her...)
is that Microsoft could probably give a rat's ass fuck less about linux on xbox. Here is an analogy, "why doesn't sony sell PS2s with a refrigerator." the question makes no sense at all.
Just by reading your post before you mentioned your age, it was obvious to tell that you are a young kid. Linux is not needed everywhere.
holy sh*t!!!!!
Before I thought they had a chance they might get what they want, but this is a little too ridiculous now
I forgot my password for a sec, the above coment is mine
nidump passwd .
not very secure
"Given the right ideas from input from others, I might be able to come up with my own device or start an open project geared towards it."
May I ask what kind of open device you would start? Just becuase this is slashdot. Are you an engineer or in the PDA business? If so, you s\wouldnt be asking about PDAs here.What kinfd of Open project are you going to do for a PDA?
I'm inside circuitcity writing this form their unix terminals with netscape. I saw this article and said to myself, wasn't i just playing with this e740 one minute ago. I wen tback to the pda section and saw it. This model doesn't seem to have wifi though, it says "WiFi ability" though. I'll ask in a minute to see if they have these with wifi now. It looks nice, but I would never buy a ppc, palm is better for me.
Actually vi is on OS X, not vim.
Also, a good unix is definetely NOT defined by having bash. Bash is actually not a good shell. OS X comes with sh,tcsh, zsh, and csh. I'm pretty sure "elite" UNIX users DO NOT use bash. Please try running sh and bash and run some basic commands and see which shell is hogging the CPU. I think you meant to say, linux doesn't make a good linux. You are right, becuase OS X is based off BSD. BSD doesn't have bash, vim, or other unnecessary stuff.
wow, looks like cowboy neal is trying to get off the lame and old "cowboy neal" poll options, and actually do some articles.
you have to admit, these ibooks make pretty nice unix boxes. The nice graphics of OS X(not ugly graphics of Xfree) with the power of unix. I just bought an ibook a few months ago as my entry into macs to try out the BSD derived OS X, and so far its been a grear ride. I recommend for your next laptop to try out an ibook or powerbook and if you don't like OS X, you can always install OpenBSD or some linux distro
oops, the code didnt come out, here it is again:
table align=right>tr>td>messed up text/td>/tr>/table>
Right align is messed up!!!!!!!!
I removed the left side brackets to show the code
I rcently came back to using X from the command line(although its stil my favorite work place). The last time I had used kde was the kde 1.x days. Now I am using kde 2.2.1 and let me tell you, it is a thousand times better. Konqueror already beats the crap out of Netscape, I don't even see how people can call Netscape an alternative now. I also jsut bought a MAC to try out the "other" *BSD and to me, kde2 is still better than all the "eye candy" at OS X.
There are a few small bugs I do notice sometime.
Try to view a table with a left align in konqeuror and see the result. This 1 line of code will be messed up:
messed up column
Its pathetic that you mark this as a troll because I said BSD is better than Linux. Have you even used BSD you horrible moderator? Also, please tel me your definition of a troll.
I tried it a couple of days ago. I have 1.07 for starcraft. Diablo 2 isn't out yet. Beta diablo 2? Can I have the URL that you heard battl.net code has been updated? On battle.net, mutiple people can play, but not in the same game. I'm also using the latest ipchains with ipmasqadm. So.... I don't think that sc is working with ipmasq correctly yet.
Actually, more people in China speak English, than people in America. Check the numbers and do the math and you'll see(If you are Chinese, you can do the math in your head now). Their accents might not be the best thoughRed flag Linux