Ok everybody's occupied with surreal suggestions, but anyway: *UDF* is quite awesome as a on disk format for LinuxOSX data exchange, because it has a file size limit around 128TB, supports all the posix permissions, hard and soft links and whatnots. There is a nice whitepaper summing it all up: http://www.13thmonkey.org/documentation/UDF/UDF_whitepaper.pdf
If you want to use UDF on a hard disk, prepare it under linux: 1) Install uddftools 2) wipe the first few blocks of the hard disk, i.e. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1k count=100 3) create the file system : mkudffs --media-type=hd --utf8/dev/sdb (that's right, UDF takes the whole disk, now partitions)
If you plug this into OSX, the drive will show up as "LinuxUDF". I am using this setup for years to move data between linux and OSX machines.
I'm using a USB Disk formatted under linux with UDF (yep, it's not limited to DVDs, there is a profile for hard disks). It can be used without problems under OSX (even Snow Leopard)
Actually, this thing is a biometric super-smartcard with optional root access from anywhere. This means, that you can load trusted applications into the device and have trusted access to the device from everywhere.
If a couple of posters wondered about the uses of such a device, I have some immediate ideas (other from a 100mA cluster node):
Secure access to corporate network. The blackdog would install a vpn tunnel between the blackdog device itself and the corporate network, i.e. tunneling the host completely, running the corporate apps via the blackdog. This means you can access data from an untrusted and definitely virus infested host (Internet cafe, Windows XP). keyloggers shouldn't be able to log anything interesting, because authentification is done on the blackdog.
actually safe online banking/credit card transactions. This currently requires an external card reader and software installation. This device would allow me to make secure payments from almost everywhere, using the same kind of tunnel scheme as above. Remember all the sci-fi movies where you can pay with a fingerprint? Why should you trust their fingerprint reader, when you can have your own?
for the overcautious: you should be able to boot from the thing, right? Into the apps!
It would make an excellent and cheap solution for network licencing. The blackdog runs a FlexLM kind of licence monitor, licences can be upgraded through trusted channels, usage conditions could be freely programmed. Administrators are not harmed, they just plug the thing into a machine with a network connection and are done.
An external virus scanner/a plug in remote debugger.
Plug the device in, it starts a program that loads the current routing table into the blackdog, disables access to every network device on the host, (except for the blackdog which installes a kernel driver) and sets the default route to a blackdog controlled usb network device. What have you got? A hardware firewall.
You can encrypt your harddisk with a really long key
In the past time time I've read the PR for at least a dozen Linux PDA's and none of them had ever made the way to the stores (at least in Germany). I stopped waiting for the Yopy already, and I'm waiting for the Zaurus (available in Europe & available as a Consumer Product) now.
This isn't leading to anything. In the first place, they're using similar hardware (I bet ARM has a reference PDA design for download). On the other hand everyone is brewing their own mix of a more of less current linux kernel, with custom adaptions to the target platform and a GUI layer that is sufficient to run demos.
Given that half of these designs are eventually be sold one day, I bet that writing software for a Linux PDA will mean port this software to at least 6 different {GUI-API, libc-version, FHS}.
The problem is: A Linux PDA may have great hack-value, but commercial success will hang on the fact, that 3rd-party apps are "ready to run" for the standard guys & gals, i.e. you install a binary & it runs. It don't see this with a situation where everyone's making up their own PDA.
My suggestion:
The companies who wish to sell Linux PDA's should develop a common standard, a common distribution (or simply they could d'accord on Midori) and common hardware requirements (Flashable-ROM for example). This "standard PDA-GNU-Linux-Gestalt" has not to be the optimum (unless you hack it), it has to be usable and deterministic.
This was previously a problem with some manufactures (CASIO for example), that they needed to replace the device for upgrade.
But this could also mean, than a new generation of Palm-Size devices will roll out, that can be upgraded to a/different/ OS. Given, that Palm also moves to ARM (which is the only supported CPU for PocketPC 2002) and the various succesful *NIX ports to the ARM/Palm platforms (iPAQ as reference), we can probably hope to have choices which OS we want to run on our devices.
Comeau Computing (http://www.comeaucomputing.com) has a C++ compiler which is of very high quality (in terms of standards compliance). It is available for a quite large scale of platforms (Many Unix'es & Windovs). They also have a porting offer for custom platforms at reasonable prices. I haven't had any experience with this product yet, but the people at comp.lang.c++.moderated are often naming it as a reference.
In German TNEF pronounciates as Tinnef which means worthless, tacky stuff, but I don't want you people to make cheap fun with MS standards!!
I don't understand why some people associate plain text with ASCII? MIME defines a character set attribute for plain-text mails & most mail clients understand and display them (given that you set it up correctly). So, unless I want to receive EMail bugs from EMail buggers, I don't why I would need tinnef.
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I'm using UDF for my LinuxOSX setting and it's awesome.
Ok everybody's occupied with surreal suggestions, but anyway:
*UDF* is quite awesome as a on disk format for LinuxOSX data exchange, because it has a file size limit around 128TB, supports all the posix permissions, hard and soft links and whatnots. There is a nice whitepaper summing it all up:
http://www.13thmonkey.org/documentation/UDF/UDF_whitepaper.pdf
If you want to use UDF on a hard disk, prepare it under linux: /dev/sdb (that's right, UDF takes the whole disk, now partitions)
1) Install uddftools
2) wipe the first few blocks of the hard disk, i.e. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1k count=100
3) create the file system : mkudffs --media-type=hd --utf8
If you plug this into OSX, the drive will show up as "LinuxUDF". I am using this setup for years to move data between linux and OSX machines.
I'm using a USB Disk formatted under linux with UDF (yep, it's not limited to DVDs, there is a profile for hard disks). It can be used without problems under OSX (even Snow Leopard)
This isn't leading to anything. In the first place, they're using similar hardware (I bet ARM has a reference PDA design for download). On the other hand everyone is brewing their own mix of a more of less current linux kernel, with custom adaptions to the target platform and a GUI layer that is sufficient to run demos.
Given that half of these designs are eventually be sold one day, I bet that writing software for a Linux PDA will mean port this software to at least 6 different {GUI-API, libc-version, FHS}.
The problem is: A Linux PDA may have great hack-value, but commercial success will hang on the fact, that 3rd-party apps are "ready to run" for the standard guys & gals, i.e. you install a binary & it runs. It don't see this with a situation where everyone's making up their own PDA.
My suggestion:
The companies who wish to sell Linux PDA's should develop a common standard, a common distribution (or simply they could d'accord on Midori) and common hardware requirements (Flashable-ROM for example). This "standard PDA-GNU-Linux-Gestalt" has not to be the optimum (unless you hack it), it has to be usable and deterministic.
http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/pocketpc/pocketpc2 002/upgrade.asp
This was previously a problem with some manufactures (CASIO for example), that they needed to replace the device for upgrade.
But this could also mean, than a new generation of Palm-Size devices will roll out, that can be upgraded to a /different/ OS. Given, that Palm also moves to ARM (which is the only supported CPU for PocketPC 2002) and the various succesful *NIX ports to the ARM/Palm platforms (iPAQ as reference), we can probably hope to have choices which OS we want to run on our devices.
doxygen can do that: Is has an option to emit class graphs for the dot graph layouter.
Comeau Computing (http://www.comeaucomputing.com) has a C++ compiler which is of very high quality (in terms of standards compliance). It is available for a quite large scale of platforms (Many Unix'es & Windovs). They also have a porting offer for custom platforms at reasonable prices. I haven't had any experience with this product yet, but the people at comp.lang.c++.moderated are often naming it as a reference.
I'd better drink a service pack.
I don't understand why some people associate plain text with ASCII? MIME defines a character set attribute for plain-text mails & most mail clients understand and display them (given that you set it up correctly). So, unless I want to receive EMail bugs from EMail buggers, I don't why I would need tinnef.
No, excuse me: TNEF