How do you compress data stored in a palm? I'm trying to write an app for palm that stores a huge database of information. Maybe 1.6 megs. How can I compress this data so it is inflated on the fly when it is needed?
I am working on a project where I need to take an entire reference book currently in framemaker format and put it on the web. The book needs to be searchable, and results should limitable by by chapter and even sections/sub-chapters. I want to write code to parse the entire framemaker file and load the book into a database, separated by it's chapters/sections into a tree-like hiearchy. Then I will use PHP/SQL to make the library searchable from a website. What I am considering now is converting the framemaker file into postscript, and then using available tools to parse the postscript. Any ideas which tools/libraries can do this? Is there anything to parse the framemaker file directly? Is the framemaker format open or documented?
Below is the data your windows machine returns to IIS or any machine making this sort of a request:
C:\>nbstat -A 10.10.10.6
NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table
Name Type Status
---------------------------------------------
LINDSAY <00> UNIQUE Registered
LINDSAY <20> UNIQUE Registered
HOUSE <00> GROUP Registered
LINDSAY <03> UNIQUE Registered
HOUSE <1E> GROUP Registered
ADMINISTRATOR <03> UNIQUE Registered
MAC Address = 00-E0-29-6F-0D-48
Where LINSDAY is your computer name, HOUSE is your workgroup and ADMINISTRATOR is the current user logged in(often a real name in Win9x!). MAC address too! I've used this to nab trolls on IRC when they've come in with a new IP and nickname. It's a lot more specific and persistent than an ip address. In fact, it's a 100% unique key that doesn't ever change. At least the MAC and almost always the rest. I'm surprised more websites haven't begun doing this to track users. Or are they using it?
He is not exculpating the internet. Where do you see that? He is pandering to the uninformed, but without any reliable data to back up his claim about the internet, he moves on to another argument. That argument doesn't follow the initial premise about the internet. He did say "as a result of being on the Internet" after all. People who don't listen carefully will now associate the internet with these horrible things.
The things you've said about the Gore camp are true, but your comments prop Bush too high, their both horrible canidates. Makes me wish Bill Bradley had won the democratic primary. *sigh* Looks like Nader will be getting my vote now, though he seems a little too socialist, has an agenda of his own and is way too cynical. He is the best of the three though.
Another poster already said this, but I think it's worth repeating because it's a great point and is also a premise for my post -
All the net really provides is another medium for communications, one that is not quite as good as conventional methods, but the key is that it provides anonymity. The poster compared this to the French idea that masks during sex are erotic because they provide anonymity. There's some sort of excitement in this risk-free form of erotic play. It's all fun and no danger, with no fear of rejection or failure.
In the case of sex using masks, the anonymity is there but the difference is that there's some passionate love going on there. The two lovers are responding to each other at a level below cognition. Their not overtly thinking about what their doing so much, they just act. It's more instinctual.
On the other hand, erotic play online is very cognitive event. i.e. "Marsha551 pulls l33thax0r towards her". l33thax0r would have to visualize this event and then be aroused. It's totally different. The source of arousal is in fact l33thax0r himself. He'd have to think about it, determine that the act is erotic based on his subjective tastes and then consciously arouse himself. At least much more so than in a real life encounter. To me, the world of online eroticism seems to be a cross somewhere between fantasy and reality. If your not one to fantasize, it won't really appeal to you.
Maybe as techology evolves the medium for communication will become more effective. Like in some sci-fi flics where you plug your nervous system into a network of some sort. Then online encounters could get closer to the reality. The only thing that would keep people from pursuing a real encounter in this case would be the anonymity. The author was sort of getting at this but kept using stupid euphamisms like "boundaries between our technologies and ourselves continue to implode". WTF is that?? Sounds like a bad verzion commercial. The author also claims that as more technology develops, we will be "become creatures that we cannot now even imagine." We'll still be human, we aren't going to morph into some other "creatures" too quickly. Human nature will still dicate how we behave. We'll be as human as ever, but will have some more tools to work and communicate with. Sure this will change how we do things, but not fundamentally who we are. Katz and the a Mrs. Stone need to get out of their fantasy worlds and start giving us readers something that pertains more to our common reality.
To do this would be be difficult, considering you must get your pppd server to pick up the phone on demand without a ring. Can windows ppp servers do this? What about Linux pppd? Can dreamcast bypass dialtone detection? It's all simple with two terminals, but we have much less control of pppd and DC software. Basically you'd have time things within a few a seconds to get this right:
1) Dreamcast dials, bypassing dialtone
2) User runs to PC and tells ppp server to accept a phone connection on demand
Whether both of these things can be done is questionable. With hacked software on both ends yes, but it'd still be a pain.
If someone can come up with a device that puts out a dialtone, listens for dialing, shuts off the dialtone, and then simulates a ring all would be solved. Here is the scenario:
1) Dreamcast gets dialtone, dials and waits for modem
2) Device detects dialing and issues a ring, or the device can kill the dialtone and issue a ring at the press of a button
3) pppd server picks up
I believe a ring is simulated by a large voltage increase on the line, but that information was from a text file from like 1988. I think it is correct though. I'm sure someone with an EE background could come up with something like this for us. Very cheaply too if ring is initiated by a button press rather than detection. The user would just have to wait till the DC finished dialing and then push a button. This would work with virtually all pppd servers.
There are really two approaches to this problem. You can put a PC in every room or use one PC and run speaker cables to the extra rooms. Let me explain.
For the first approach you would likely need ethernet wiring for the whole house and a PC in every room. This is not very practical and causes a lot of clutter. I do this with 4 PCs. I have samba or windows servers running on every machine so mp3s from any machine can be accessible from all over the place. Samba really ties things together, I recommend it if you will be mixing operating systems. I'd also recommend getting a mini-keyboard and trackball for every room. Or, if your a programmer, download IBM's ViaVoice SDK and whip up some voice control software, it's not that hard and you could hide the PC in a closet. Very nifty
Even niftier - use one main server and run speaker cables to every room from your amplifier. You will need to devise some kind of central control mechanism of course. Here's where my kinda but not so far-fetched idea for a dream setup comes in. I'm not sure what the wireless networking options are for the palm and visor, but this idea could really use such a thing. You'd basically write some software for the Palm that talked over the network to your server, which would play the mp3s. Palm apps are written in GNU C, so it would be pretty simple to whip up this little app. The wireless ethernet card is the only missing linked. Anyone know if such a product exists? There's always the Palm Ethernet Cradle. Someone would have to write a daemon that would listen in for play requests. Some commands the daemon might listen for from palms:
"ls"
"cd/home/emice/mp3/Cake - Motorcade of Generosity"
"!play |(Cake) - Ain't No Good.mp3| zone4"
"!stop zone4"
"master volume 233 zone1"
"status zone3"
etc.. You could even telnet to the servers port and issue these commands from anywhere:-).
For multi-zone use you could easily rig up a really up your parallel port with a relay controller to switch zones among the multiple sound cards. A relay is simply electronically controlled magnetic switch. A darlington transistor followed by a relay on each pin of your parallel port would allow for 13 electronic switches. Switching a relay is too much load for your parallel port, so it would switch the darlington using a small current and then the darlington would switch the relay since it requires a larger current. You can get cheap $2 IC chips with 8 darlingtons in them. And programming the parallel port for this kind of application is pretty simple too, it's just a matter of setting the right bits to put a voltage difference on a particular pin. Check the Linux Howtos, there is one on Parallel Port Programming.
This project could get pretty interesting. If I had a palm and the time, I'd already be working on this, but like many people here I've got a lot more ideas than time to work on all of them. I'd love to see something like this pursued though.
This is for all you posters who are coming in defense of Rambus. Please PLEASE read the @#! article before making generalized comments. And these articles are being modded up. Yeash.
1. Rambus joined JEDEC, a consortium of companies devoted to sharing R&D work and forming industry standards to keep costs down for everyone
2. Rambus files for patents after joining the JEDEC, without disclosing the fact. These patents go directly against the industry standards the JEDEC is trying to establish.
3. Rambus is now using this information learned at meetings to "extend and prosecute pending applications to target the latest industry standards proposed in these meetings."
Rambus, while doing nothing illegal, acted in a very misleading way. It sat at these JEDEC meetings, when in fact it had conflicting interests which are now being used to undermine the whole market and open standards.
I see two products made specifically for 3.5" drives. Both let you mount a 3.5" drive in a 5.25" bay and are specifically made to absorb and distribute shock.
The first product is a thick rubber rail. Two rubber rails screw into each side of the 3.5" drive. The rubber rails are then screwed into a 5.25" bay. Part #MS-NFP-XTR
The second product is a metal chassis that fits into a 5.25" bay, but another 3.5" chassis floats inside it. The 3.5" chassis is connected to the 5.25" chassis by some sort of suspension system. There could be metal and rubber in there. I can't tell from the picture. Part #SHK-MT-K
One problem is I don't see any prices, they may only sell to big distributors. I got their catalog at the PC Expo in NYC this summer.
If these DVDs can be cracked individually, why not post the correct key for each DVD to usenet, keeping something consistent in the message so that it is easily findable via deja?
Then write a DVD player client that searches deja for the key and uses it to decode the DVD? When new DVDs come out, individuals can brute force it and post the key. The player should cache keys it gets.
Maybe key hacking groups can even write an rc5 like client to collectively crack new DVDs quickly. How processor intensive is this brute force method?
Why not make an open source media player that accepts a variety of input, decoder and output plugins? These plugins could connect in certain orders for different tasks. Say:
Disk (input) -> video decoder -> screen (output)
\-> audio decoder -> speakers (output)
Basically someone would have to write a realmedia decoder plugin and realmedia server input plugin. Then one could theoretically do the following.
Realserver (input) -> real decoder (outputs separate video/audio streams) ->
mpeg encoder (accepts separate audio and video streams) -> disk (output)
Of course the realmedia decoder would come separate from the disk writing plugin, which could be have thousands of uses. Ideally the disk writing plugin should come with the player and someone independently needs to write the realmedia plugins. Neither plugin would violate the DMCA on its own.
Here in the US when you don't pay your "property taxes", you lose exactly that. The land you live on and anything on it, presumably your house. Makes you realize just how little we actually "own". Our ability to own any physical object is dependant on forces largley outside our control, unless you believe the common man actually has much say in our government. As I result I try to look for security in knowledge instead of material things.
They were also demoing a new webpad at the Transmeta/Crusoe booth. It was running linux. I asked about DVD playback and the demo man told me someone within the company(I forgot the name) is working on a software DVD player for linux. He said the webpad has plenty power to play DVD via software. Something to look forward to. Apparently a new company designed this webpad, a new one, not the IDEO model we all saw on the web. The guy demonstrating told me they were under agreement to not name the manufacturer, which released the prototype to them two days ago. It wasn't as sleek as the IDEO model, but had all kinds of ports and looked like it was somewhat expandable. He browsed over to Slashdot for me on netscape using the stylus. Very sleek. I can't wait. He says they may be out by the 4th Quarter of 2000. Expected price ~$1400. =)
The above is a link to a software program that identifies and removes a particular program that loads when Windows starts. The program is made by Aureate/Radiate. It comes piggybacked onto shareware/adware programs downloaded from places like Tucows. It sends your browsing habits and other information back to a central server even when the programs they came with are not active. To make matters worst it is known to increase the frequency of browser crashes and tries to only be active when you are sending/receiving data to disguise itself. They sneak an agreement to allow this into the EULA. All of my machines were "infected" when I checked. Kinda scary.
I've been planning and working on a very similar open-source system for over a year, I think lots of us are. I still haven't found a good GPS program for linux, so if you guys know of one please send the info this way.
One problem with creating a system like this is having a good user interface that one can easily add functionality to. I am hoping that Mozilla will have some sort of independant HTML rendering engine for Linux, much like IE has for windows. If anyone has word on this please let me know. Hard coding the interface in C will create hassles when it comes to making changes.
Another problem is getting output to an LCD screen. I am currently using an LCD that takes TV out from a video card. The problem is that text becomes unreadable when output via the TV out. The problem is that TV pixels are taller than computer pixels and the video card squishes the computer image to make the aspect ratio look somewhat normal on a TV and has to throw out pixels. If we could turn this feature of the card off, the graphics could be designed pre-squished and optimized so that they would look squished on the PC but normal on the TV, with the card running at 720x480. I wonder how the TiVo handles this. Also, it is important to find a TV out card for Linux which has the most support, maybe even the option to turn the pixel squishing off. Any suggestions on this? I'm using a Matrox Mystique 220 with a Rainbow Runner daughterboard right now and haven't played with the TV out in Linux yet.
I was also very happy to hear about the IBM Via-voice release for Linux, this ought to make certain aspects of the interface much easier. The only problem is I am not sure how using Via-voice will effect open-source software. Is there something decent and open sourced for recognition? Another college student and I are coding this right now and would like to release this to the community once the bulk of the code is laid down. It will be a modular system that will support plugins for new functions, interfaces and input, giving it potentially many uses, even out of the car. There seem to be many open-source license out there though. Is there a page that explains the various open source licences available in plain english? Particularly the BSD'ish license vs. GPL.
I'm shopping for DSL service right now and I've found www.dslreports.com pretty useful. If you have DSL try and leave some feedback there. It'll help those of us who are still looking. I've decided to go with PhoenixDSL after reading the page. It's a national company and the president himself goes out and investigates Quake 3 ping times and even responds to user posts about the quality of service. Can't beat that.
From my knowledge of routing IP and how things work, I can't conceive how 10.0.0.0 packets are routed. Or any spoofed IP for that matter. All the networks I've been on have never allowed me to send packets outside my assigned range of IP addresses. At what point does someone sneak a 192.x.x.x, 10.x.x.x or spoofed, non-reserved IP packet into a backbone? There must be a serious breach of policy somewhere. Also, when a router at the provider gets a packet, doesn't it know the range of IPs of those it is providing service too? Shouldn't it block transmission from other addresses it is not servicing? It seems natural that this should happen at every route point along the way. At what level do routers stop caring what IP the packet is coming from and just routes everything? Is it the circular, interconnected nature of the internet makes it so the highest level routers must route anything? It seems like a string of downstream routers need to be horribly misconfigured to allow a packet to reach a high level router that doesn't care about source IP. I have heard of selectively routing a packet through certain hosts, but I still don't see how a spoofed IP can leave the provider and it's routers in the first place in order to spoof via the selective routing. The whole issue of spoofing has bugged me for years but I can find no definitive explanation of how this kind of breach could be allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you compress data stored in a palm? I'm trying to write an app for palm that stores a huge database of information. Maybe 1.6 megs. How can I compress this data so it is inflated on the fly when it is needed?
I am working on a project where I need to take an entire reference book currently in framemaker format and put it on the web. The book needs to be searchable, and results should limitable by by chapter and even sections/sub-chapters. I want to write code to parse the entire framemaker file and load the book into a database, separated by it's chapters/sections into a tree-like hiearchy. Then I will use PHP/SQL to make the library searchable from a website. What I am considering now is converting the framemaker file into postscript, and then using available tools to parse the postscript. Any ideas which tools/libraries can do this? Is there anything to parse the framemaker file directly? Is the framemaker format open or documented?
Below is the data your windows machine returns to IIS or any machine making this sort of a request:
C:\>nbstat -A 10.10.10.6
NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table
Name Type Status
---------------------------------------------
LINDSAY <00> UNIQUE Registered
LINDSAY <20> UNIQUE Registered
HOUSE <00> GROUP Registered
LINDSAY <03> UNIQUE Registered
HOUSE <1E> GROUP Registered
ADMINISTRATOR <03> UNIQUE Registered
MAC Address = 00-E0-29-6F-0D-48
Where LINSDAY is your computer name, HOUSE is your workgroup and ADMINISTRATOR is the current user logged in(often a real name in Win9x!). MAC address too! I've used this to nab trolls on IRC when they've come in with a new IP and nickname. It's a lot more specific and persistent than an ip address. In fact, it's a 100% unique key that doesn't ever change. At least the MAC and almost always the rest. I'm surprised more websites haven't begun doing this to track users. Or are they using it?
Bob just posted this to the piclist, a mailing list for PIC microcontrollers:
---------
Subject: [OT]: Alright, who told them?
Aargh, my web site has been slashdotted, I certainly hope it wasn't someone
here who told them, or I'll return the (questionable) favor.
---------
Hehe, =)
He is not exculpating the internet. Where do you see that? He is pandering to the uninformed, but without any reliable data to back up his claim about the internet, he moves on to another argument. That argument doesn't follow the initial premise about the internet. He did say "as a result of being on the Internet" after all. People who don't listen carefully will now associate the internet with these horrible things.
The things you've said about the Gore camp are true, but your comments prop Bush too high, their both horrible canidates. Makes me wish Bill Bradley had won the democratic primary. *sigh* Looks like Nader will be getting my vote now, though he seems a little too socialist, has an agenda of his own and is way too cynical. He is the best of the three though.
Another poster already said this, but I think it's worth repeating because it's a great point and is also a premise for my post -
All the net really provides is another medium for communications, one that is not quite as good as conventional methods, but the key is that it provides anonymity. The poster compared this to the French idea that masks during sex are erotic because they provide anonymity. There's some sort of excitement in this risk-free form of erotic play. It's all fun and no danger, with no fear of rejection or failure.
In the case of sex using masks, the anonymity is there but the difference is that there's some passionate love going on there. The two lovers are responding to each other at a level below cognition. Their not overtly thinking about what their doing so much, they just act. It's more instinctual.
On the other hand, erotic play online is very cognitive event. i.e. "Marsha551 pulls l33thax0r towards her". l33thax0r would have to visualize this event and then be aroused. It's totally different. The source of arousal is in fact l33thax0r himself. He'd have to think about it, determine that the act is erotic based on his subjective tastes and then consciously arouse himself. At least much more so than in a real life encounter. To me, the world of online eroticism seems to be a cross somewhere between fantasy and reality. If your not one to fantasize, it won't really appeal to you.
Maybe as techology evolves the medium for communication will become more effective. Like in some sci-fi flics where you plug your nervous system into a network of some sort. Then online encounters could get closer to the reality. The only thing that would keep people from pursuing a real encounter in this case would be the anonymity. The author was sort of getting at this but kept using stupid euphamisms like "boundaries between our technologies and ourselves continue to implode". WTF is that?? Sounds like a bad verzion commercial. The author also claims that as more technology develops, we will be "become creatures that we cannot now even imagine." We'll still be human, we aren't going to morph into some other "creatures" too quickly. Human nature will still dicate how we behave. We'll be as human as ever, but will have some more tools to work and communicate with. Sure this will change how we do things, but not fundamentally who we are. Katz and the a Mrs. Stone need to get out of their fantasy worlds and start giving us readers something that pertains more to our common reality.
I see no prices. Amptron is a manufacturer right? Then who actually sells these boxes? The $130 box is pretty sweet just what I am looking for.
emice
To do this would be be difficult, considering you must get your pppd server to pick up the phone on demand without a ring. Can windows ppp servers do this? What about Linux pppd? Can dreamcast bypass dialtone detection? It's all simple with two terminals, but we have much less control of pppd and DC software. Basically you'd have time things within a few a seconds to get this right:
1) Dreamcast dials, bypassing dialtone
2) User runs to PC and tells ppp server to accept a phone connection on demand
Whether both of these things can be done is questionable. With hacked software on both ends yes, but it'd still be a pain.
If someone can come up with a device that puts out a dialtone, listens for dialing, shuts off the dialtone, and then simulates a ring all would be solved. Here is the scenario:
1) Dreamcast gets dialtone, dials and waits for modem
2) Device detects dialing and issues a ring, or the device can kill the dialtone and issue a ring at the press of a button
3) pppd server picks up
I believe a ring is simulated by a large voltage increase on the line, but that information was from a text file from like 1988. I think it is correct though. I'm sure someone with an EE background could come up with something like this for us. Very cheaply too if ring is initiated by a button press rather than detection. The user would just have to wait till the DC finished dialing and then push a button. This would work with virtually all pppd servers.
emice
There are really two approaches to this problem. You can put a PC in every room or use one PC and run speaker cables to the extra rooms. Let me explain.
/home/emice/mp3/Cake - Motorcade of Generosity" :-).
For the first approach you would likely need ethernet wiring for the whole house and a PC in every room. This is not very practical and causes a lot of clutter. I do this with 4 PCs. I have samba or windows servers running on every machine so mp3s from any machine can be accessible from all over the place. Samba really ties things together, I recommend it if you will be mixing operating systems. I'd also recommend getting a mini-keyboard and trackball for every room. Or, if your a programmer, download IBM's ViaVoice SDK and whip up some voice control software, it's not that hard and you could hide the PC in a closet. Very nifty
Even niftier - use one main server and run speaker cables to every room from your amplifier. You will need to devise some kind of central control mechanism of course. Here's where my kinda but not so far-fetched idea for a dream setup comes in. I'm not sure what the wireless networking options are for the palm and visor, but this idea could really use such a thing. You'd basically write some software for the Palm that talked over the network to your server, which would play the mp3s. Palm apps are written in GNU C, so it would be pretty simple to whip up this little app. The wireless ethernet card is the only missing linked. Anyone know if such a product exists? There's always the Palm Ethernet Cradle. Someone would have to write a daemon that would listen in for play requests. Some commands the daemon might listen for from palms:
"ls"
"cd
"!play |(Cake) - Ain't No Good.mp3| zone4"
"!stop zone4"
"master volume 233 zone1"
"status zone3"
etc.. You could even telnet to the servers port and issue these commands from anywhere
For multi-zone use you could easily rig up a really up your parallel port with a relay controller to switch zones among the multiple sound cards. A relay is simply electronically controlled magnetic switch. A darlington transistor followed by a relay on each pin of your parallel port would allow for 13 electronic switches. Switching a relay is too much load for your parallel port, so it would switch the darlington using a small current and then the darlington would switch the relay since it requires a larger current. You can get cheap $2 IC chips with 8 darlingtons in them. And programming the parallel port for this kind of application is pretty simple too, it's just a matter of setting the right bits to put a voltage difference on a particular pin. Check the Linux Howtos, there is one on Parallel Port Programming.
This project could get pretty interesting. If I had a palm and the time, I'd already be working on this, but like many people here I've got a lot more ideas than time to work on all of them. I'd love to see something like this pursued though.
emice
This is for all you posters who are coming in defense of Rambus. Please PLEASE read the @#! article before making generalized comments. And these articles are being modded up. Yeash.
1. Rambus joined JEDEC, a consortium of companies devoted to sharing R&D work and forming industry standards to keep costs down for everyone
2. Rambus files for patents after joining the JEDEC, without disclosing the fact. These patents go directly against the industry standards the JEDEC is trying to establish.
3. Rambus is now using this information learned at meetings to "extend and prosecute pending applications to target the latest industry standards proposed in these meetings."
Rambus, while doing nothing illegal, acted in a very misleading way. It sat at these JEDEC meetings, when in fact it had conflicting interests which are now being used to undermine the whole market and open standards.
The following company's catalog features a few products designed just for shock mounting hard drives.
PS Solutions
411 Interchange
McKinney, Texas 75069
Tel: (972) 548-8080
I see two products made specifically for 3.5" drives. Both let you mount a 3.5" drive in a 5.25" bay and are specifically made to absorb and distribute shock.
The first product is a thick rubber rail. Two rubber rails screw into each side of the 3.5" drive. The rubber rails are then screwed into a 5.25" bay. Part #MS-NFP-XTR
The second product is a metal chassis that fits into a 5.25" bay, but another 3.5" chassis floats inside it. The 3.5" chassis is connected to the 5.25" chassis by some sort of suspension system. There could be metal and rubber in there. I can't tell from the picture. Part #SHK-MT-K
One problem is I don't see any prices, they may only sell to big distributors. I got their catalog at the PC Expo in NYC this summer.
If these DVDs can be cracked individually, why not post the correct key for each DVD to usenet, keeping something consistent in the message so that it is easily findable via deja?
Then write a DVD player client that searches deja for the key and uses it to decode the DVD? When new DVDs come out, individuals can brute force it and post the key. The player should cache keys it gets.
Maybe key hacking groups can even write an rc5 like client to collectively crack new DVDs quickly. How processor intensive is this brute force method?
Why not make an open source media player that accepts a variety of input, decoder and output plugins? These plugins could connect in certain orders for different tasks. Say:
Disk (input) -> video decoder -> screen (output)
\-> audio decoder -> speakers (output)
Basically someone would have to write a realmedia decoder plugin and realmedia server input plugin. Then one could theoretically do the following.
Realserver (input) -> real decoder (outputs separate video/audio streams) ->
mpeg encoder (accepts separate audio and video streams) -> disk (output)
Of course the realmedia decoder would come separate from the disk writing plugin, which could be have thousands of uses. Ideally the disk writing plugin should come with the player and someone independently needs to write the realmedia plugins. Neither plugin would violate the DMCA on its own.
Here in the US when you don't pay your "property taxes", you lose exactly that. The land you live on and anything on it, presumably your house. Makes you realize just how little we actually "own". Our ability to own any physical object is dependant on forces largley outside our control, unless you believe the common man actually has much say in our government. As I result I try to look for security in knowledge instead of material things.
They were also demoing a new webpad at the Transmeta/Crusoe booth. It was running linux. I asked about DVD playback and the demo man told me someone within the company(I forgot the name) is working on a software DVD player for linux. He said the webpad has plenty power to play DVD via software. Something to look forward to. Apparently a new company designed this webpad, a new one, not the IDEO model we all saw on the web. The guy demonstrating told me they were under agreement to not name the manufacturer, which released the prototype to them two days ago. It wasn't as sleek as the IDEO model, but had all kinds of ports and looked like it was somewhat expandable. He browsed over to Slashdot for me on netscape using the stylus. Very sleek. I can't wait. He says they may be out by the 4th Quarter of 2000. Expected price ~$1400. =)
http://grc.com/optout.htm
The above is a link to a software program that identifies and removes a particular program that loads when Windows starts. The program is made by Aureate/Radiate. It comes piggybacked onto shareware/adware programs downloaded from places like Tucows. It sends your browsing habits and other information back to a central server even when the programs they came with are not active. To make matters worst it is known to increase the frequency of browser crashes and tries to only be active when you are sending/receiving data to disguise itself. They sneak an agreement to allow this into the EULA. All of my machines were "infected" when I checked. Kinda scary.
I've been planning and working on a very similar open-source system for over a year, I think lots of us are. I still haven't found a good GPS program for linux, so if you guys know of one please send the info this way.
One problem with creating a system like this is having a good user interface that one can easily add functionality to. I am hoping that Mozilla will have some sort of independant HTML rendering engine for Linux, much like IE has for windows. If anyone has word on this please let me know. Hard coding the interface in C will create hassles when it comes to making changes.
Another problem is getting output to an LCD screen. I am currently using an LCD that takes TV out from a video card. The problem is that text becomes unreadable when output via the TV out. The problem is that TV pixels are taller than computer pixels and the video card squishes the computer image to make the aspect ratio look somewhat normal on a TV and has to throw out pixels. If we could turn this feature of the card off, the graphics could be designed pre-squished and optimized so that they would look squished on the PC but normal on the TV, with the card running at 720x480. I wonder how the TiVo handles this. Also, it is important to find a TV out card for Linux which has the most support, maybe even the option to turn the pixel squishing off. Any suggestions on this? I'm using a Matrox Mystique 220 with a Rainbow Runner daughterboard right now and haven't played with the TV out in Linux yet.
I was also very happy to hear about the IBM Via-voice release for Linux, this ought to make certain aspects of the interface much easier. The only problem is I am not sure how using Via-voice will effect open-source software. Is there something decent and open sourced for recognition? Another college student and I are coding this right now and would like to release this to the community once the bulk of the code is laid down. It will be a modular system that will support plugins for new functions, interfaces and input, giving it potentially many uses, even out of the car. There seem to be many open-source license out there though. Is there a page that explains the various open source licences available in plain english? Particularly the BSD'ish license vs. GPL.
Lindsay
I'm shopping for DSL service right now and I've found www.dslreports.com pretty useful. If you have DSL try and leave some feedback there. It'll help those of us who are still looking. I've decided to go with PhoenixDSL after reading the page. It's a national company and the president himself goes out and investigates Quake 3 ping times and even responds to user posts about the quality of service. Can't beat that.
From my knowledge of routing IP and how things work, I can't conceive how 10.0.0.0 packets are routed. Or any spoofed IP for that matter. All the networks I've been on have never allowed me to send packets outside my assigned range of IP addresses. At what point does someone sneak a 192.x.x.x, 10.x.x.x or spoofed, non-reserved IP packet into a backbone? There must be a serious breach of policy somewhere. Also, when a router at the provider gets a packet, doesn't it know the range of IPs of those it is providing service too? Shouldn't it block transmission from other addresses it is not servicing? It seems natural that this should happen at every route point along the way. At what level do routers stop caring what IP the packet is coming from and just routes everything? Is it the circular, interconnected nature of the internet makes it so the highest level routers must route anything? It seems like a string of downstream routers need to be horribly misconfigured to allow a packet to reach a high level router that doesn't care about source IP. I have heard of selectively routing a packet through certain hosts, but I still don't see how a spoofed IP can leave the provider and it's routers in the first place in order to spoof via the selective routing. The whole issue of spoofing has bugged me for years but I can find no definitive explanation of how this kind of breach could be allowed.