Yes, yes, many posts have commented on the ease of reading paper over a monitor, and the portability, durability, disposability of paper over electronic media. If it is the case that people are printing things out to read on the bus/toilet/beach/etc., why do they not pickup their printouts? Every day when I go home I throw 10-100 pages of printouts into the recycle bin next to the printer. If I thought my computing budget would actually see any of the money, I would start lpd accounting.
I run several linux boxes headless with console output redirected to the serial port. Currently both of these boxes are using 2.0.35 with the serial console patch. Both have bioses that allow booting with no video or keyboard, but on one box Linux (the kernel) will not boot unless a keyboard is present, regardless of the bios setting.
Searches of dejanews and the kernel archive revealed (paraphrased) "yes, this has been seen before". I recall finding reference to a patch, but I either could not get it to work, or could not find the patch.
I am sure I tried and failed with a 2.1.xx kernel, but the box with trouble went into use long before 2.2 came out, and I have not bothered to upgrade it to test if it boots correctly without a keyboard because: It currently works fine; a trip would be required to disconnect the keyboard plugged into it.
I did find for sale "keyboard simulators", basically terminators to plug into the keyboard socket, but they were much more expensive than an actual keyboard.
Also, be careful with the switchbox solution. The more expensive switchboxes simulate the presence of a keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc., even when switched away from that box. However, the cheaper switchboxes do no simulation, and just have a switch with no fancy electronics. The cheap ones often work fine, though.
The moral? It might be worthwhile to test your headless setup on a prototype box, before investing in a whole set of boxes that will have issues.
BTW: My Psion S5 makes the best portable vt100 I have used. Palm Pilots can also work, but the keyboard on the S5 gives it a big advantage over the Pilots for actual work, as opposed to just monitoring output.
O.K., if I do a taste comparison between Slash-dot cola and Coca-Cola, how do I alert potential customers that Slash-dot is prefered by four-out-of-five hackers? Now I can't put "Coca-Cola" in the meta-tags even though it's a completely relevant use.
This exact situation was addressed in the decision, and is outlined in the NYT article. Under fair use you would be allowed to have Coca-Cola in your meta-tag, because on your web page you are comparing Slashdot-Cola to Coca-Cola.
Of course there is no site called "www.bombcam.com", yet. As World War II was the first war with weekly movie news reels, and current radio reports of the fighting, and Vietnam was the first televised war, with the nightly news being filled with carnage, the next step is for live pictures of bomb cameras to be broadcast on the Internet.
The military will not allow this for a variety of obvious reasons, but I am sure CNN would love to host the streaming video.
Whether you agree with NATO's actions in Kosovo, this war is not being fought for entertainment value, as it has been argued for several previous US actions. Just wait for the next "Wag the Dog" style war, and see if there is not live web updates from the (highly sanitized) "front lines".
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, yes, many posts have commented on the ease of reading paper over a monitor, and the portability, durability, disposability of paper over electronic media. If it is the case that people are printing things out to read on the bus/toilet/beach/etc., why do they not pickup their printouts? Every day when I go home I throw 10-100 pages of printouts into the recycle bin next to the printer. If I thought my computing budget would actually see any of the money, I would start lpd accounting.
Searches of dejanews and the kernel archive revealed (paraphrased) "yes, this has been seen before". I recall finding reference to a patch, but I either could not get it to work, or could not find the patch.
I am sure I tried and failed with a 2.1.xx kernel, but the box with trouble went into use long before 2.2 came out, and I have not bothered to upgrade it to test if it boots correctly without a keyboard because: It currently works fine; a trip would be required to disconnect the keyboard plugged into it.
I did find for sale "keyboard simulators", basically terminators to plug into the keyboard socket, but they were much more expensive than an actual keyboard.
Also, be careful with the switchbox solution. The more expensive switchboxes simulate the presence of a keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc., even when switched away from that box. However, the cheaper switchboxes do no simulation, and just have a switch with no fancy electronics. The cheap ones often work fine, though.
The moral? It might be worthwhile to test your headless setup on a prototype box, before investing in a whole set of boxes that will have issues.
BTW: My Psion S5 makes the best portable vt100 I have used. Palm Pilots can also work, but the keyboard on the S5 gives it a big advantage over the Pilots for actual work, as opposed to just monitoring output.
This exact situation was addressed in the decision, and is outlined in the NYT article. Under fair use you would be allowed to have Coca-Cola in your meta-tag, because on your web page you are comparing Slashdot-Cola to Coca-Cola.
The military will not allow this for a variety of obvious reasons, but I am sure CNN would love to host the streaming video.
Whether you agree with NATO's actions in Kosovo, this war is not being fought for entertainment value, as it has been argued for several previous US actions. Just wait for the next "Wag the Dog" style war, and see if there is not live web updates from the (highly sanitized) "front lines".
It actually was not too bad, as it backed up to a bakery, so the bread was at most a day old.