they would add a receiver in their repair trucks / vans and as they cruise the neighborhoods on their daily business they would note the network being broadcasted.
But this would in effect ban using 802.11 at home, something I doubt the ISPs are itching to do. And to find out which ISP you are tied to they would HAVE to log into your freenet to do it - its not trivial.
who's responsible? The person
providing the access point, of course
Er, funny I don't recall ISPs being sued successfully for a hacker using their network to attack. If you were alerted and didn't cut their line - OK maybe then, but I doubt you'd be responsible though life would get interesting.
Obviously these articles are light on the details. I've seen descriptions of setups many of these freeneters use and they aren't just plugging an AP into their LAN. They are proxying the access and restricting bandwidth. They are also logging IPs and such to give to the authorities if necessary.
So setting something like this up properly takes time to avoid or at least deter hackers. So I'm curious - though many of the packages out there exist in pieces, is anyone looking at a 'freenet' package that makes setting up and administering a fre network easier? i.e. providing a setup GUI or script to help restrict access to godo guys or at least reduce the chance of some idiot grabbing all your bandwidth.
Just curious - I know I could hack together a system out of existin gpackages - but it might be neat to see a project started that tied it all together.... Kind of aLinux freenet-proxy or something liek that (freenet NOT meaning the real freenet - but parasite net just sounds nasty:) )
Expect a law to be passed soon prohibiting this type of action.
You're probably right since the braindead politicians don't understand technology. But how would this law be enacted? They can't ban wireless - it would never fly. OK - so they try and write it to say you have to take steps to secure your wireless access to only those on your property - IE SSIDs, WEP, MAC addr vlaidation. OK. SO what if someone does those things but the IDs 'slip' into the wild. How do you pin that on the person? You risk making it very risky to even use 802.11 for your own purpose . Besides - you go into court and say 802.11 can easily be hacked - sorry, I did what I could (makes WEP's problems seem like a good thing:) )
Plus if you are using NAT - how would they know you're doing it and not just downloading lots of family pictures? They can't. Unless they ran around the city sendign requests to their own servers and trying to link the IP address with teh request and the time. But again all this proves is they found an open net and if you have an SSID, well how do they make the case.
For example, all teh freeneters agree to use an SSID of NYC in New York City. Whats a telco to do then? You complied - used an SSID. Are you going to make it illegal for the person leeching? How the heck would you FIND them to even prosecute them? Use a court order to grab the logs from a hoemowner's firewall - yeah good luck.
Trying to legislate this would be more troubl ethan its worth. I'm sure they will try, but the first time something like this was tried in court it would be a defense lawyers field day.
I think that this will merely speed up a shift away from paying for access and towards paying for bandwith.
I think that some ISPs will try this no doubt. But the uproar among users will be immense given the sharp rise in big ads on sites. SO more and more users install ad blocking software to block those ads to save bandwidth which in turn kills revenue on sites relying on ad revenue and those sites disappear, and - oh it coudl get ugly.
But I have to wonder if metered bandwidth is going to fly. They tried and failed to do it with local phone service. Same for dialup.
Besides, when we have something liek 95% of the fiber underground sitting dark - at some point the upstream costs HAVE to go down and bandwidth at that level becomes less of an issue. Besides - I'd expect the ultimate result of this - slower throughput for users as the LOCAL backbones of a network load up and they refuse to upgrade their upstream pipe. IN a way - thats the best option. I'd rather see a telco slow down the upstream throughput vs going out of bsiness paying for never ending upstream upgrades OR trying metered service.
Only time will tell. Right now I pay for 384kbps SDSL and its pretty much ensured bandwidth to the telco (via DSLAM ratios of customers to the backend T1) So any bottleneck I'd face won't be my pipe - it'll be their upstream connection. BUt you cna bet I'm gonna use that 384kbps for whatever i please:)
OK - so they must have slipped on the number keys, but the Linksys WAP11 can be had for < $200 after rebate! Granted, the Linksys sucked on early firmware versions - I had to powercycle mine often. But with 1.4f, its been a dream.
Actually the small footprint of IE is a lie. IE is actually fairly large but a lot of it's code is integrated into the OS
Amen to that! I kept having problems with IE 5.5 and 6 in Win 98 - a page would load but the window was locked up - the progress bar got all the way across and stayed there. Bringing up the file explorer - same problem.
Eventually (after 15 or 30 seconds) the windows would unfreeze and all was fine till I loaded the next page - starts all over.
Problem? A permanently mounted disk on a server that had been shutdown. I delete the drive map and the problem goes away. I'm sorry but a mapped drive to a shutdown server should NOT cause a browser to lockup on page loads. Integration is BAD!
You sound like the people who say that there's no reason for anyone to buy anything over 1GHz because there isn't any software to take advantage of it
What I may sound like and what I am are two totally different things. I've already got a 1GHz server in my house and bought a 700MHz AMD Athlon when they first came out. I tend to be an early adaopter. But even so, there are some things that , to me, are overkill. And Pentium III processors running non Real-time OSes in appliances just don't get me excited. No thanks. Embedded devices have to start fast but they also have to be super stable. In teh embedded arena - simple is best to avoid getting burned later (I do embedded design) I'm perfectly happy with my Microwave - its 10 years old and works just fine. My chicken isn't rubbery cause I don't cook in my Microwave. I have an oven, stove, and Weber grill to do that. My microwave is for reheating leftoves and well, leftovers never taste like they did when tehy were cooked.
The point here is that just because you think some things are overkill doesn't mean you have no imagination. Hell, I've designed home automation gear - and I still think the idea of networking all your appliances together is looney. Scanning items in my fridge? Yeah - that's gonna happen - talk about a waste of time! But hooking up an central controller to your house systems (HVAC
So don't be so quick to judge next time. I'll probably buy the first 0.13 micron Athlon that comes out. But a Microwave running a PC based controller - gack - no thanks.
Quick boot time for embedded devices is a nice thing. The last thing you want is to have your microwave take 15 minutes to boot.
The last thing I want is my Microwave running a Pent anything and some variant of Windoze. When that happens I'll be out back with some wood, rock, and flint to cook my meals:)
I thought your prototype chips looked like they had Microchip logos on them. Very sweet. I wasn't saying it was a walk in the park, but my point was it was doable and many have done it, even with PICs - though an assmebler stack - now that's impressive. It was by no means fake:)
Keep up the great work - can't wait till you guys are ready to ship - I'm into embedded design myself (and have also spent many hours in the sldering sweatshop station:) ) and would love to get my hands on one of these babies:)
Its actually not impossible. SMD chips come with solder coated pins. The PCBs have a coat of solder on the pads as well. You spary flux on the board and heat the pins to join the pins and pad together. They make special heads for soldering irons to fit various SMD package types so you can heat all the pins at once.
Its not easy but it can be done. If enough folks order them, however, it'll make economic sense for them to get them made in a fab facility.
And I'm sure its not a fake. Embedded devices have gotten very powerful. You can fit an entire ethernet capable Java computer with its own embedded JVM, filesystem, etc on a SIMM size card. An MP3 player that just reads a socket stream, decodes the MP3 and outputs audio is not super complex. Its not childs play but its certainly something an embedded system could do. Can't wait to get mine - gonna be fun to finally hook up my stereo to my RAID5 MP3 array:)
That is one sweet little device! Nice to see someone go with a flourescent display instead of backlit LCD - they are more expensive, but so easier to read!
Man - hand soldering SMD board s- not a fun task! More power to these guys! I'm signing up for one for sure - my MP3 server is screaming for something like this!
The more of us that sign up and buy - the sooner they'll get ne in a nice box:)
These guys really thought this out!
on
Data Mining?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I have to say I'm impressed!
First off though - the line "it has a virtually unlimited supply of free, humid, 50-degree Fahrenheit air. USDCO simply hooks up two large fans in each room" Humid? Err - isn't that a BAD thing for a data center? I know it was when I managed one. But man - 50 degrees abient temp would be sweet! The 10K sq ft data center I used to manage had like 5 Liebert cooling towers and it STILL seemed to get too warm at times!
I love how they know they'll be back on-grid quickly because of the food storage - and hey - you don't have to go up to the surface to eat lunch! Sweet!
How nice to see a tech company say "We've had VC offers because our business plan is obviously good and obviously different, but we want to grow organically. Alsoâ"it may be a Western Michigan thingâ"but we believe in something called 'service.' We don't want to expand too fast." If only more tech companies had realized that the VC money was a bad thing!
I wish them the best of luck! Course it would suck working there - man talk about being a pasty white geek!
Time to invest in some fiber to pipe in sunlight:)
Man cut them some slack!
on
Budget Satellite
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I can't believe that/.ers are being so negative about this! Cut them some slack! I think its a really neat project. All I see is "It'll never last/work" or "What about the launch costs"
Hell, I wish them the best of luck. I hope the satellite lasts them 5 years instead of one. The idea here ISN'T making satellites out of cheap parts, its coming up with less expensive ways to accomplish the tasks needed to operate a saltellite. Sure using a tape measure for an antenna sounds hokey, but maybe it'll give the professionals some ideas for the future (gee antennas that unroll on their own instead of requriing some advanced deployment system that only gets used once) etc.
For as much as folks bitch about the gov't here, I think if a few students decide to show that a satellite CAN be constructed cheaply - more power to them. The information they gather will be very useful. Yes, sure, the launch costs aren't part of the $50K, but that wasn't part of the equation. Most satellites themselves WITHOUT launch costs are millions and millions of dollars. Nobody said they could launch it and build it for < $50K. So they hitch a ride on a rocket going up anyway. Remember, this thing is pretty small and it probably is tucked into the payload bay where a normal size satellite wouldn't fit.
But even if it isn't. I'd think geeks like us would be proud that some students got laughed at when applying for the grant and managed to pull it off through some everyday common sense and ingenuity. I say good luck and I hope everything works as planned!
Re:The solar panels?
on
Budget Satellite
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· Score: 2, Informative
One of my favorite web stores is a place called ALF Enterprises. They have all sorts of stuff, FRS radios, alternate power systems, etc. And they sell all sorts of solar panels, some for $25. Neat place and always very helpful when I've ordered from them
He liked MySQL until he heard that it couldn't do two things: stored procedures and subselects. He said "I don't see how it could be useful without those things." All of the database apps he's ever written use those
Well if he needs those two things, why not mention PostgreSQL to him? It can do both things - its a more feature complete DB than MySQL though in SOME cases its slower. But it all depends on teh application and just like WIndows vs Linux you'll see lots of MySQL vs Postgre flame wars too. I use both. I use MySQL for web based apps that have fairly simple backend needs and PostgreSQL for more complex setups.
My question: Sure you did this for fun and it is a beautiful OS. But as it gains attention and user interest, do you have a target audience in mind? Who do you think should use AtheOS - who will derive the most benefit?
Records being available in the Internet is very important.
I agree. Public records are just that - PUBLIC. Lets be realistic people - if someone really wants to know something about you they are going to find out and public records online aren't going to change that. Sure it saves a would be psycho some time, but thats about it. The good thing about these records going online and the CHicken Littel media these days is it'll raise awareness to records that have ALWAYS been public. People need to know what stuff about them is public and what type of opt out programs there are.
Who said/. had to only publish recent news? This is a really cool technology - news for geeks. I doubt many/. readers even knew these existed - so it IS news. That's why I'm an avid/. fan - not that they are one of the first with the 'latest' news (though they often are), but that they publish links to more obscure news/info I might never come upon in my daily net travels.
I mean we all know you'd have ot be brain dead to use windows anyway - this just takes it a stpe further.
Of course I gotta find out what technology they are using so I can send letters supporting Linux when I'm dead and gone too:)
On a more serious note (not really) you have to wonder what brainiac came up with this - can you imagine the brainstorming session?
"Bill! We need to get citizens to send letter lobbying the gov'ts to drop the lawsuits"
BG: "Good idea - lets get all our customers on board"
"Um, most of our customers hate our software - it crashes too much - that whole Blue Screen of Death thing"
BG: "Thats it! Genius - Who better to lobby for the software that brought the world BSODs than dead people! Get on it!"
OK - so I'm still on my first cup of coffee:)
Re:economic slowdown
on
The New Athlons
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Oh please - so are you sayign AMD is going to be 'weeded out' as you say? Hardly. Not only are they grabbing market share from INtel with superior products, they are also on of the TOP producers of Flash memory - that's the cash cow that is helping keep Athlon development going. So I wouldn't count out AMD just yet. Its pretty impressive for a company like AMD to grab SIGNIFICANT market share from INtel during terrible economic times. Thats a big accomplishment and shows that the Athlon is a seriosu competitor and that it IS being purchased by people. Its not going to happen overnight, but AMD is here to stay and while they may never unseat Intel as CPU king, they are here for the long run to help keep Intel on their toes.
I meant wire count going to the PC itself - the whole rats nest is that fact that everything home runs to the PC itself and the cables are all different sizes, widths, there are power cables, etc. USB allows you to daisy chain some stuff, eliminate wall wart power supplies, use thinner wires, etc. So by reducing the # of wires going to your PC, you reduce the rats nest. I know it would for me.
Look I never said that USBs only benefit was reducing the rats nest fo wires. My point was USB, along with many other benefits was supposed to reduce the rats nest of wires coming out of your PC and that acceptance has been slow. I imagine it'll be even slower with Bluetooth given its imapct on 802.11 networks, thus the point of my original post. My dream desktop is one where I have a bare minimum of wires going down to teh box itself - Video, Power, Ethernet, and a single USB cable. On my desk, I have a hub (either in the monitor or not) with my camera, scanner, keyboard, and other stuff plugge dinto it. My mouse plugs into my keyboard. Nice neat, simple to wire, etc.
Ummm, no it wasn't! How exactly would USB reduce the rats nest (i.e. lots of wires) around your PC, when it, too, uses wires?
Um, I didn't say eliminate, I said reduce. The idea was, instead of having wires all over for the peripherals, you'd daisy chain them. One USB cable to your monitor with built in USB hub, with the keyboard and mouse plugged into that. Things like scanners, cameras, etc would plug into your monitor or a desktop hub, etc. This way you didn't have to home run every single freaking wire back to the beige box like you do now. Also, since USB can provide limited power, some devices could lose their wall wart power supplies and leech off the USB power bus. No more 25 conductor serial or SCSI cables, - instead a nice flexiable and thin USB cable.
So yes, one of the advantages of USB was to reduce the tangle/rats nest of wires - in theory there should have only been 2 wires going from your desk surface to the box on the floor with everything else plugging into the hub which might even be in your monitor, etc. I look at my desktop now and there are 9 wires plugged into the back excluding power. These 9 could easily be gone - instead plugged into a more localized USB hub on my desk or into other USB devices (USB frmo PC to monitor. Keyboard, scanner, printer plugged into monitor hub, mouse plugged into keyboard with small hub in it, etc.) To me reducing my PC wire count by 8 would be huge.
I'd say that we need a new wireless standard altogether.
Well, the problem isn't really 802.11 (in terms of the cordless problem) Its the fact that 802.11 uses a public band which means other stuff can use it too (and interfere with it) But if you move wireless LAns into a non public radio band, the cost goes way up as now you have to deal with the FCC and licenses. Honestly I have no idea why they even make 2.4GHz cordless phones - I mean do you REALLY need your cordless to work a mile from your home (hint - it's called cellular - get one:) ) So the bottom line is if you want inexpensive wireless gear, its gonna use a public spectrum slice and you're always going to have to deal with other devices in it.
I think folk shave been giving 802.11 a bad rap. it does a very good job. Sure WEP can be broken, but that can be fixed. I love my wireless gear and have no complaints so far! Considering you can get APs < $200 and PCMCIA cards < $99, thats pretty good! Throw in a fix for WEP and I honestly coudl care less if 802.11 kills Bluetooth:)
Bluetooth doesn't stand a chance. Why? Because it interferes with 802.11 802.11 throughput drops like a stone when a Bluetooth piconet is active. Many corporations have banned Bluetooth devices (before they were even available) to avoid this.
There are ways around it - by having APs that can handle both protocols and thus can deal with both protocols being active at once. But given teh amount of 802.11 equipment out there already, I expect many places will resist Bluetooth devices since they don't want to have to buy new APs. Thus Bluetooth will have a tough time gaining ground.
I think its a neat idea, but heck - USB was supposed to reduce the rats nest around my PC too and hasn't so far - I'm still waiting for monitors with USB ports that your keyboard and mouse connect to - I knwo they exist, but its not widely done (nor are keyboards and mice over USB)
Slashdot Mirror
But this would in effect ban using 802.11 at home, something I doubt the ISPs are itching to do. And to find out which ISP you are tied to they would HAVE to log into your freenet to do it - its not trivial.
Er, funny I don't recall ISPs being sued successfully for a hacker using their network to attack. If you were alerted and didn't cut their line - OK maybe then, but I doubt you'd be responsible though life would get interesting.
Obviously these articles are light on the details. I've seen descriptions of setups many of these freeneters use and they aren't just plugging an AP into their LAN. They are proxying the access and restricting bandwidth. They are also logging IPs and such to give to the authorities if necessary.
So setting something like this up properly takes time to avoid or at least deter hackers. So I'm curious - though many of the packages out there exist in pieces, is anyone looking at a 'freenet' package that makes setting up and administering a fre network easier? i.e. providing a setup GUI or script to help restrict access to godo guys or at least reduce the chance of some idiot grabbing all your bandwidth.
Just curious - I know I could hack together a system out of existin gpackages - but it might be neat to see a project started that tied it all together.... Kind of aLinux freenet-proxy or something liek that (freenet NOT meaning the real freenet - but parasite net just sounds nasty :) )
You're probably right since the braindead politicians don't understand technology. But how would this law be enacted? They can't ban wireless - it would never fly. OK - so they try and write it to say you have to take steps to secure your wireless access to only those on your property - IE SSIDs, WEP, MAC addr vlaidation. OK. SO what if someone does those things but the IDs 'slip' into the wild. How do you pin that on the person? You risk making it very risky to even use 802.11 for your own purpose . Besides - you go into court and say 802.11 can easily be hacked - sorry, I did what I could (makes WEP's problems seem like a good thing :) )
Plus if you are using NAT - how would they know you're doing it and not just downloading lots of family pictures? They can't. Unless they ran around the city sendign requests to their own servers and trying to link the IP address with teh request and the time. But again all this proves is they found an open net and if you have an SSID, well how do they make the case.
For example, all teh freeneters agree to use an SSID of NYC in New York City. Whats a telco to do then? You complied - used an SSID. Are you going to make it illegal for the person leeching? How the heck would you FIND them to even prosecute them? Use a court order to grab the logs from a hoemowner's firewall - yeah good luck.
Trying to legislate this would be more troubl ethan its worth. I'm sure they will try, but the first time something like this was tried in court it would be a defense lawyers field day.
I think that some ISPs will try this no doubt. But the uproar among users will be immense given the sharp rise in big ads on sites. SO more and more users install ad blocking software to block those ads to save bandwidth which in turn kills revenue on sites relying on ad revenue and those sites disappear, and - oh it coudl get ugly.
But I have to wonder if metered bandwidth is going to fly. They tried and failed to do it with local phone service. Same for dialup.
Besides, when we have something liek 95% of the fiber underground sitting dark - at some point the upstream costs HAVE to go down and bandwidth at that level becomes less of an issue. Besides - I'd expect the ultimate result of this - slower throughput for users as the LOCAL backbones of a network load up and they refuse to upgrade their upstream pipe. IN a way - thats the best option. I'd rather see a telco slow down the upstream throughput vs going out of bsiness paying for never ending upstream upgrades OR trying metered service.
Only time will tell. Right now I pay for 384kbps SDSL and its pretty much ensured bandwidth to the telco (via DSLAM ratios of customers to the backend T1) So any bottleneck I'd face won't be my pipe - it'll be their upstream connection. BUt you cna bet I'm gonna use that 384kbps for whatever i please :)
OK - so they must have slipped on the number keys, but the Linksys WAP11 can be had for < $200 after rebate! Granted, the Linksys sucked on early firmware versions - I had to powercycle mine often. But with 1.4f, its been a dream.
Amen to that! I kept having problems with IE 5.5 and 6 in Win 98 - a page would load but the window was locked up - the progress bar got all the way across and stayed there. Bringing up the file explorer - same problem.
Eventually (after 15 or 30 seconds) the windows would unfreeze and all was fine till I loaded the next page - starts all over.
Problem? A permanently mounted disk on a server that had been shutdown. I delete the drive map and the problem goes away. I'm sorry but a mapped drive to a shutdown server should NOT cause a browser to lockup on page loads. Integration is BAD!
What I may sound like and what I am are two totally different things. I've already got a 1GHz server in my house and bought a 700MHz AMD Athlon when they first came out. I tend to be an early adaopter. But even so, there are some things that , to me, are overkill. And Pentium III processors running non Real-time OSes in appliances just don't get me excited. No thanks. Embedded devices have to start fast but they also have to be super stable. In teh embedded arena - simple is best to avoid getting burned later (I do embedded design) I'm perfectly happy with my Microwave - its 10 years old and works just fine. My chicken isn't rubbery cause I don't cook in my Microwave. I have an oven, stove, and Weber grill to do that. My microwave is for reheating leftoves and well, leftovers never taste like they did when tehy were cooked.
The point here is that just because you think some things are overkill doesn't mean you have no imagination. Hell, I've designed home automation gear - and I still think the idea of networking all your appliances together is looney. Scanning items in my fridge? Yeah - that's gonna happen - talk about a waste of time! But hooking up an central controller to your house systems (HVAC So don't be so quick to judge next time. I'll probably buy the first 0.13 micron Athlon that comes out. But a Microwave running a PC based controller - gack - no thanks.
The last thing I want is my Microwave running a Pent anything and some variant of Windoze. When that happens I'll be out back with some wood, rock, and flint to cook my meals :)
Keep up the great work - can't wait till you guys are ready to ship - I'm into embedded design myself (and have also spent many hours in the sldering sweatshop station :) ) and would love to get my hands on one of these babies :)
Its not easy but it can be done. If enough folks order them, however, it'll make economic sense for them to get them made in a fab facility.
And I'm sure its not a fake. Embedded devices have gotten very powerful. You can fit an entire ethernet capable Java computer with its own embedded JVM, filesystem, etc on a SIMM size card. An MP3 player that just reads a socket stream, decodes the MP3 and outputs audio is not super complex. Its not childs play but its certainly something an embedded system could do. Can't wait to get mine - gonna be fun to finally hook up my stereo to my RAID5 MP3 array :)
Man - hand soldering SMD board s- not a fun task! More power to these guys! I'm signing up for one for sure - my MP3 server is screaming for something like this!
The more of us that sign up and buy - the sooner they'll get ne in a nice box :)
First off though - the line "it has a virtually unlimited supply of free, humid, 50-degree Fahrenheit air. USDCO simply hooks up two large fans in each room" Humid? Err - isn't that a BAD thing for a data center? I know it was when I managed one. But man - 50 degrees abient temp would be sweet! The 10K sq ft data center I used to manage had like 5 Liebert cooling towers and it STILL seemed to get too warm at times!
I love how they know they'll be back on-grid quickly because of the food storage - and hey - you don't have to go up to the surface to eat lunch! Sweet!
How nice to see a tech company say "We've had VC offers because our business plan is obviously good and obviously different, but we want to grow organically. Alsoâ"it may be a Western Michigan thingâ"but we believe in something called 'service.' We don't want to expand too fast." If only more tech companies had realized that the VC money was a bad thing!
I wish them the best of luck! Course it would suck working there - man talk about being a pasty white geek! Time to invest in some fiber to pipe in sunlight :)
Hell, I wish them the best of luck. I hope the satellite lasts them 5 years instead of one. The idea here ISN'T making satellites out of cheap parts, its coming up with less expensive ways to accomplish the tasks needed to operate a saltellite. Sure using a tape measure for an antenna sounds hokey, but maybe it'll give the professionals some ideas for the future (gee antennas that unroll on their own instead of requriing some advanced deployment system that only gets used once) etc.
For as much as folks bitch about the gov't here, I think if a few students decide to show that a satellite CAN be constructed cheaply - more power to them. The information they gather will be very useful. Yes, sure, the launch costs aren't part of the $50K, but that wasn't part of the equation. Most satellites themselves WITHOUT launch costs are millions and millions of dollars. Nobody said they could launch it and build it for < $50K. So they hitch a ride on a rocket going up anyway. Remember, this thing is pretty small and it probably is tucked into the payload bay where a normal size satellite wouldn't fit.
But even if it isn't. I'd think geeks like us would be proud that some students got laughed at when applying for the grant and managed to pull it off through some everyday common sense and ingenuity. I say good luck and I hope everything works as planned!
One of my favorite web stores is a place called ALF Enterprises. They have all sorts of stuff, FRS radios, alternate power systems, etc. And they sell all sorts of solar panels, some for $25. Neat place and always very helpful when I've ordered from them
Well if he needs those two things, why not mention PostgreSQL to him? It can do both things - its a more feature complete DB than MySQL though in SOME cases its slower. But it all depends on teh application and just like WIndows vs Linux you'll see lots of MySQL vs Postgre flame wars too. I use both. I use MySQL for web based apps that have fairly simple backend needs and PostgreSQL for more complex setups.
My question: Sure you did this for fun and it is a beautiful OS. But as it gains attention and user interest, do you have a target audience in mind? Who do you think should use AtheOS - who will derive the most benefit?
I agree. Public records are just that - PUBLIC. Lets be realistic people - if someone really wants to know something about you they are going to find out and public records online aren't going to change that. Sure it saves a would be psycho some time, but thats about it. The good thing about these records going online and the CHicken Littel media these days is it'll raise awareness to records that have ALWAYS been public. People need to know what stuff about them is public and what type of opt out programs there are.
Who said /. had to only publish recent news? This is a really cool technology - news for geeks. I doubt many /. readers even knew these existed - so it IS news. That's why I'm an avid /. fan - not that they are one of the first with the 'latest' news (though they often are), but that they publish links to more obscure news/info I might never come upon in my daily net travels.
Of course I gotta find out what technology they are using so I can send letters supporting Linux when I'm dead and gone too :)
On a more serious note (not really) you have to wonder what brainiac came up with this - can you imagine the brainstorming session?
OK - so I'm still on my first cup of coffee :)
Oh please - so are you sayign AMD is going to be 'weeded out' as you say? Hardly. Not only are they grabbing market share from INtel with superior products, they are also on of the TOP producers of Flash memory - that's the cash cow that is helping keep Athlon development going. So I wouldn't count out AMD just yet. Its pretty impressive for a company like AMD to grab SIGNIFICANT market share from INtel during terrible economic times. Thats a big accomplishment and shows that the Athlon is a seriosu competitor and that it IS being purchased by people. Its not going to happen overnight, but AMD is here to stay and while they may never unseat Intel as CPU king, they are here for the long run to help keep Intel on their toes.
ROFLMAO! They need to mod your post to +5 Funny! By far the funniest post I've read today :)
Look I never said that USBs only benefit was reducing the rats nest fo wires. My point was USB, along with many other benefits was supposed to reduce the rats nest of wires coming out of your PC and that acceptance has been slow. I imagine it'll be even slower with Bluetooth given its imapct on 802.11 networks, thus the point of my original post. My dream desktop is one where I have a bare minimum of wires going down to teh box itself - Video, Power, Ethernet, and a single USB cable. On my desk, I have a hub (either in the monitor or not) with my camera, scanner, keyboard, and other stuff plugge dinto it. My mouse plugs into my keyboard. Nice neat, simple to wire, etc.
Um, I didn't say eliminate, I said reduce. The idea was, instead of having wires all over for the peripherals, you'd daisy chain them. One USB cable to your monitor with built in USB hub, with the keyboard and mouse plugged into that. Things like scanners, cameras, etc would plug into your monitor or a desktop hub, etc. This way you didn't have to home run every single freaking wire back to the beige box like you do now. Also, since USB can provide limited power, some devices could lose their wall wart power supplies and leech off the USB power bus. No more 25 conductor serial or SCSI cables, - instead a nice flexiable and thin USB cable.
So yes, one of the advantages of USB was to reduce the tangle/rats nest of wires - in theory there should have only been 2 wires going from your desk surface to the box on the floor with everything else plugging into the hub which might even be in your monitor, etc. I look at my desktop now and there are 9 wires plugged into the back excluding power. These 9 could easily be gone - instead plugged into a more localized USB hub on my desk or into other USB devices (USB frmo PC to monitor. Keyboard, scanner, printer plugged into monitor hub, mouse plugged into keyboard with small hub in it, etc.) To me reducing my PC wire count by 8 would be huge.
Well, the problem isn't really 802.11 (in terms of the cordless problem) Its the fact that 802.11 uses a public band which means other stuff can use it too (and interfere with it) But if you move wireless LAns into a non public radio band, the cost goes way up as now you have to deal with the FCC and licenses. Honestly I have no idea why they even make 2.4GHz cordless phones - I mean do you REALLY need your cordless to work a mile from your home (hint - it's called cellular - get one :) ) So the bottom line is if you want inexpensive wireless gear, its gonna use a public spectrum slice and you're always going to have to deal with other devices in it.
I think folk shave been giving 802.11 a bad rap. it does a very good job. Sure WEP can be broken, but that can be fixed. I love my wireless gear and have no complaints so far! Considering you can get APs < $200 and PCMCIA cards < $99, thats pretty good! Throw in a fix for WEP and I honestly coudl care less if 802.11 kills Bluetooth :)
There are ways around it - by having APs that can handle both protocols and thus can deal with both protocols being active at once. But given teh amount of 802.11 equipment out there already, I expect many places will resist Bluetooth devices since they don't want to have to buy new APs. Thus Bluetooth will have a tough time gaining ground.
I think its a neat idea, but heck - USB was supposed to reduce the rats nest around my PC too and hasn't so far - I'm still waiting for monitors with USB ports that your keyboard and mouse connect to - I knwo they exist, but its not widely done (nor are keyboards and mice over USB)