The first project they discuss is using everyone's existing access points to effectively form a municipal wifi network. The paper linked from the article talks a lot about the security concerns, etc. It's an interesting concept, and I've thought about trying to use the fairly dense wifi network access outdoors in an effort to move data (GPS, etc) between my vehicle and my home.
However, based on my experience with wifi, there seem to be one major problem here: interference effects. I already have problems that I can see about 6 different access points from my desk... on four different networks and SSIDs. The 802.11 spec only allows for three non-overlapping channels (in the US frequency bands, anyway). This problem gets worse as the capacity utilization factor approaches 100%, as it's more and more likely that two packets will happen to collide. This might be a huge problem for this kind of large-scale wifi, as 802.11b/g isn't really designed to operate well when you can see so many APs at once.
In any case, I wonder if they're also overestimating the infrastructure deployment costs. One of the most amazing things to me was how, within a decade, everyone suddenly had wireless in their home and workplace. In fact, in urban areas, it wouldn't surprise me if there were 1 private access point for every 10 or 20 people. People aren't afraid to pay to get cool technology -- although it's a bit different when the government does it.
Finally, someone understands that the times when we've got time to watch old TV episodes, we're not likely to have internet access! I've often found myself traveling (train/plane) and it's been a perfect time to watch, but have been thwarted because of streaming-only services.
Of course, the Windows-only DRM makes this totally useless to me at the moment. Actually, can anyone think of any examples where a service promised Mac/Linux versions "coming soon" and it actually happened? I sure can't... That's DRM for you.:-(
I had the pleasure of working with several of the core Terrafugia team, particularly Anna and Carl Dietrich, when they were getting their Ph.D.'s at MIT. This group grew out of the MIT Rocket Team, which was working heavily on liquid-fueled engines (ethanol/kerosene and liquid oxygen). They're an experienced bunch, with particular experience exploring the rocket scientist's perpetual tradeoff between the need for power and the need for low weight.
I can tell you that this is a group of bright engineers who really are in love with flying -- just as are thousands of other private pilots around the world. I think many Slashdotters misunderstand their target market. The Transition requires both a pilot's license and a driver's license, so it's aimed at people who are already private pilots but want the convenience of not having to find a ground vehicle once they've landed at their destination airport. The listed price of their vehicle is comparable to other small planes like those from Cessna, and the extra convenience they're able to provide private pilots may be game-changing.
Not the least of which is the fact that it costs a lot more to get the computing power of 20 cheap desktops in 1 mainframe type machine.
But really, how much of the CPU time on your desktop do you use at any given time? Computing power has advanced dramatically since the days of the mainframe, and right now, most of the clock cycles are wasted on your average desktop. You no longer need the full computing power of one computer for one desktop user with basic needs. (Games, development, etc, are another story.) It's a lot more cost efficient to use 50% of one CPU than 5% of 10 CPUs. That's why projects like these are beginning to make sense once again.
They made sense long ago, when everything was CLI, and you didn't need all that much processing power to check your e-mail, so sharing CPU time was feasible. Now, many people use GUIs, so why not use all the proccessor time you're wasting with your Athlon 2GHz with a gig of RAM? I've said it before... but this is the reason why projects like the Linux Terminal Server Project exist.
The Linux Terminal Server Project is exactly what you're talking about. I've been using it at home here to play around with for a few months now. It's really slick. I have a bunch of my old computers that would otherwise be in the dumpster that are right now serving as terminals. And they're pretty fast, since all the apps run on my big Athlon box.
It works by netbooting from your server. Some kind of bootrom code, either on your network card or on a floppy disk, initalizes the network card. It uses DHCP to find its own IP address, and then it uses TFTP to download a small Linux kernel over the network. This loads up and uses an NFS-mounted root to run an X server on the local computer. The X server connects back to the main server by XDMCP, and you get your XDM/GDM/KDM login window.
The LTSP guys have done a great job packaging this all up. Take a look. And as for your requirement of running it on a Windows box, see Cygwin's XFree86 port to Windows. You can use it to connect with XDMCP. Of course, I don't know why you wouldn't just pop in a bootdisk...
The biggest drawback to this approach is remote access security. Look at that paragraph and how many daemons and services you need to have running. But I imagine that if it was secured well enough, it'd be fine. Actually, there is a way to make this all go over VNC (or VNC with compression). It's not as fast, but at least that's only one TCP port and a lot easier to get by firewalls.
There's a great bunch of guys working on this project. And its nice to be able to connect to #ltsp on irc.openprojects.net and get the lead developers to answer your questions.
To all you commenting that a laptop wouldn't be 50 pounds:
How many of you slashdotters have actually seen a bicycle? Thats right, its an athletic event. (Oh the horror!) I just want to point out, that a bicycle has wheels. So, a 50 lb bicycle wouldn't be that hard to move.
Take a look at this thread from the Philadelphia Linux User Group. It sounds like the new software update that Comcast has asked its users to install contains spyware and changes internet settings...
So now they can track you from your own (Windows) machine, and also through their transparent proxy.
I'm running RH 7.1, which has LPR with Printtool by default, but after many wasted hours trying to get it to print reasonably well with any of my three printers, I finally found a solution that works.
The solution? CUPS with XPP. This basically gets me all the functionality I need, with compatibility in most apps. All of my KDE apps use CUPS's LPR emulation to print. StarOffice, Mozilla, and other X apps use XPP, in which the program sends the postscript data to XPP and XPP lets me select a printer, printing options, and sends it to cupsd. If any console apps want to print, they just use CUPS's LPR emulation. Samba also integrates with CUPS, letting me share my printers.
Setting up my printers was also a piece of cake. Downloaded & extracted the CUPS printer definitions from the website. Went to my nice CUPS admin page (http://localhost:631/) and went through the setup under "Add Printer." No config files to mess with or anything...
The only thing I could wish for is for RedHat to use CUPS as the default printing system, as other distros like Mandrake have done. It was really a pain to rip out printtool and all the crap it leaves behind.
A few months ago, I had an issue with sound under the latest 2.4 series kernels. This was with the trident driver and an ALi 1535+ southbridge. I have been using Linux as my sole desktop operating system for a while, and sound is very important for desktop/gaming use. This bug caused an OOPS when the module was loaded, which became a serious problem.
I read Documentation/oops-tracing.txt, and I submitted my report with whatever information I could figure out. What did I get in response? Within four days, 7 people were talking on this thread, including kernel giants Alan Cox and RML. Within four days, I had a patch that made this problem go away. (turned out to be bigger than just my card)
Do you really think that I could have gotten that kind of support from Microsoft? You might say that four days is a lot. But do you think I'd have ever gotten anywhere with MS? Even if I could get the level of debugging as I did from ksymoops, I'd have gotten shoved around. Microsoft would claim that its the manufacturer's responsibility, and the manufacturer would certainly not be receptive to any kind of technical description of a problem from a customer.
We're the guys who call the DSL company and have to say "Your access concentrator is sending a PADT packet to terminate the session," with the only response being "Sir, can you tell me if your modem is on?" I've actually tricked at least 2 of their techies into believing that I'm running Windows.
Verizon: Now open up Network Neighborhood. Me: Hold on a second. It's still warming up... Oh damn, it hung. Let me reboot.
I didn't pay a cent for support. In exchange for a few minutes of my time learning to use ksymoops, I got replies from some of the top kernel developers, and got the problem fixed. Beat that, Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
The first project they discuss is using everyone's existing access points to effectively form a municipal wifi network. The paper linked from the article talks a lot about the security concerns, etc. It's an interesting concept, and I've thought about trying to use the fairly dense wifi network access outdoors in an effort to move data (GPS, etc) between my vehicle and my home.
However, based on my experience with wifi, there seem to be one major problem here: interference effects. I already have problems that I can see about 6 different access points from my desk... on four different networks and SSIDs. The 802.11 spec only allows for three non-overlapping channels (in the US frequency bands, anyway). This problem gets worse as the capacity utilization factor approaches 100%, as it's more and more likely that two packets will happen to collide. This might be a huge problem for this kind of large-scale wifi, as 802.11b/g isn't really designed to operate well when you can see so many APs at once.
In any case, I wonder if they're also overestimating the infrastructure deployment costs. One of the most amazing things to me was how, within a decade, everyone suddenly had wireless in their home and workplace. In fact, in urban areas, it wouldn't surprise me if there were 1 private access point for every 10 or 20 people. People aren't afraid to pay to get cool technology -- although it's a bit different when the government does it.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
Finally, someone understands that the times when we've got time to watch old TV episodes, we're not likely to have internet access! I've often found myself traveling (train/plane) and it's been a perfect time to watch, but have been thwarted because of streaming-only services.
:-(
Of course, the Windows-only DRM makes this totally useless to me at the moment. Actually, can anyone think of any examples where a service promised Mac/Linux versions "coming soon" and it actually happened? I sure can't... That's DRM for you.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for a digital generation.
I had the pleasure of working with several of the core Terrafugia team, particularly Anna and Carl Dietrich, when they were getting their Ph.D.'s at MIT. This group grew out of the MIT Rocket Team, which was working heavily on liquid-fueled engines (ethanol/kerosene and liquid oxygen). They're an experienced bunch, with particular experience exploring the rocket scientist's perpetual tradeoff between the need for power and the need for low weight.
I can tell you that this is a group of bright engineers who really are in love with flying -- just as are thousands of other private pilots around the world. I think many Slashdotters misunderstand their target market. The Transition requires both a pilot's license and a driver's license, so it's aimed at people who are already private pilots but want the convenience of not having to find a ground vehicle once they've landed at their destination airport. The listed price of their vehicle is comparable to other small planes like those from Cessna, and the extra convenience they're able to provide private pilots may be game-changing.
--
Educational microcontroller kits for a digital generation.
- Sales revenue: 22,636.0
So where does the money go?- Manufacturing costs: 6,001.1
- Marketing & adminstrative costs: 8,165.4
- R&D: 4,782.9
Only 20% of the price of each pill goes toward future research and development... Marketing & administrative costs are double that. Ouch.But really, how much of the CPU time on your desktop do you use at any given time? Computing power has advanced dramatically since the days of the mainframe, and right now, most of the clock cycles are wasted on your average desktop. You no longer need the full computing power of one computer for one desktop user with basic needs. (Games, development, etc, are another story.) It's a lot more cost efficient to use 50% of one CPU than 5% of 10 CPUs. That's why projects like these are beginning to make sense once again.
They made sense long ago, when everything was CLI, and you didn't need all that much processing power to check your e-mail, so sharing CPU time was feasible. Now, many people use GUIs, so why not use all the proccessor time you're wasting with your Athlon 2GHz with a gig of RAM? I've said it before... but this is the reason why projects like the Linux Terminal Server Project exist.
All they have is an EXE file so far. What good is that for those of us who want to make crossplatform mods?
The Linux Terminal Server Project is exactly what you're talking about. I've been using it at home here to play around with for a few months now. It's really slick. I have a bunch of my old computers that would otherwise be in the dumpster that are right now serving as terminals. And they're pretty fast, since all the apps run on my big Athlon box.
It works by netbooting from your server. Some kind of bootrom code, either on your network card or on a floppy disk, initalizes the network card. It uses DHCP to find its own IP address, and then it uses TFTP to download a small Linux kernel over the network. This loads up and uses an NFS-mounted root to run an X server on the local computer. The X server connects back to the main server by XDMCP, and you get your XDM/GDM/KDM login window.
The LTSP guys have done a great job packaging this all up. Take a look. And as for your requirement of running it on a Windows box, see Cygwin's XFree86 port to Windows. You can use it to connect with XDMCP. Of course, I don't know why you wouldn't just pop in a bootdisk...
The biggest drawback to this approach is remote access security. Look at that paragraph and how many daemons and services you need to have running. But I imagine that if it was secured well enough, it'd be fine. Actually, there is a way to make this all go over VNC (or VNC with compression). It's not as fast, but at least that's only one TCP port and a lot easier to get by firewalls.
There's a great bunch of guys working on this project. And its nice to be able to connect to #ltsp on irc.openprojects.net and get the lead developers to answer your questions.
Michael F. Robbins
To all you commenting that a laptop wouldn't be 50 pounds:
How many of you slashdotters have actually seen a bicycle? Thats right, its an athletic event. (Oh the horror!) I just want to point out, that a bicycle has wheels. So, a 50 lb bicycle wouldn't be that hard to move.
Take a look at this thread from the Philadelphia Linux User Group. It sounds like the new software update that Comcast has asked its users to install contains spyware and changes internet settings...
So now they can track you from your own (Windows) machine, and also through their transparent proxy.
I'm running RH 7.1, which has LPR with Printtool by default, but after many wasted hours trying to get it to print reasonably well with any of my three printers, I finally found a solution that works.
The solution? CUPS with XPP. This basically gets me all the functionality I need, with compatibility in most apps. All of my KDE apps use CUPS's LPR emulation to print. StarOffice, Mozilla, and other X apps use XPP, in which the program sends the postscript data to XPP and XPP lets me select a printer, printing options, and sends it to cupsd. If any console apps want to print, they just use CUPS's LPR emulation. Samba also integrates with CUPS, letting me share my printers.
Setting up my printers was also a piece of cake. Downloaded & extracted the CUPS printer definitions from the website. Went to my nice CUPS admin page (http://localhost:631/) and went through the setup under "Add Printer." No config files to mess with or anything...
The only thing I could wish for is for RedHat to use CUPS as the default printing system, as other distros like Mandrake have done. It was really a pain to rip out printtool and all the crap it leaves behind.
Michael F. Robbins
A few months ago, I had an issue with sound under the latest 2.4 series kernels. This was with the trident driver and an ALi 1535+ southbridge. I have been using Linux as my sole desktop operating system for a while, and sound is very important for desktop/gaming use. This bug caused an OOPS when the module was loaded, which became a serious problem.
I read Documentation/oops-tracing.txt, and I submitted my report with whatever information I could figure out. What did I get in response? Within four days, 7 people were talking on this thread, including kernel giants Alan Cox and RML. Within four days, I had a patch that made this problem go away. (turned out to be bigger than just my card)
Do you really think that I could have gotten that kind of support from Microsoft? You might say that four days is a lot. But do you think I'd have ever gotten anywhere with MS? Even if I could get the level of debugging as I did from ksymoops, I'd have gotten shoved around. Microsoft would claim that its the manufacturer's responsibility, and the manufacturer would certainly not be receptive to any kind of technical description of a problem from a customer.
We're the guys who call the DSL company and have to say "Your access concentrator is sending a PADT packet to terminate the session," with the only response being "Sir, can you tell me if your modem is on?" I've actually tricked at least 2 of their techies into believing that I'm running Windows.
Verizon: Now open up Network Neighborhood.
Me: Hold on a second. It's still warming up... Oh damn, it hung. Let me reboot.
I didn't pay a cent for support. In exchange for a few minutes of my time learning to use ksymoops, I got replies from some of the top kernel developers, and got the problem fixed. Beat that, Microsoft.
Michael F. Robbins