I believe that the W3C have depreciated HTML and are encouraging web development utilizing XML and XSLT, for exactly this reason.
Simply put, the content, meaning the stuff you are really there to get, is encoded as XML.
The fluff, or eye candy part, meaning the way the content appears to the viewer is controlled by the XSLT style sheet.
The same content is presented in one flashy format, for highbandwidth, big screen clients, and a different format for low bandwidth, small or tiny screen clients.
This solves the problem quite well, and is why HTML has reached the end of it's development cycle, as it does not support this functionality easily.
Fine.. but how did the accountant do it?
Did he fudge your medical expenses?
Did he find that you didn't deduct your 401K?
Or did he find an obscure law that says that one legged people with a degree in programming get a $4000.00 credit?
What is it that the accountant found that got you that windfall?
I dunno if I agree.
I used to do my taxes by hand, the hard way, before there was a TurboTax. I did not have many complications, no home etc. but back then, there were alot of exemptions and special credits, that it took quite a few hours each year.
About 10 years ago, I began using TurboTax, and based on my experience of DIY prior to that, I found TurboTax to be very thorough and much easier.
Now, 10 years later, I have a home, and a side business and I still use TurboTax. I believe I have enough experience and I do make some effort to follow the tax law changes, that I am comfortable that TurboTax is getting me what I deserve in a lower tax bill.
People who claim... "My refund always exceeds what I would pay the accountant" are misleading. If I prepare my W-4 properly, and make lean estimated tax payments, I can target my refund to be Zero dollars (in theory).
Your refund is your money to begin with. The size of your refund is simply the error that was made in calculating your estimated tax. You can make it bigger or smaller by changing your W-4.
Some accountants may find money in obscure deductions, like child care payments, that the average user may not know about. Or they might accellerate your depreciation on a depreciating asset, but this is just robbing peter to pay paul, because in future years, you will get a smaller or no deduction because of the accelleration!
I have seen the returns prepared by some "Accountants", and they were done by a tax prep program. So why pay them to plug the numbers into TurboTax?
I realize that I am more detail oriented, and a perfectionist too. And a DIY kind of guy. Doing my own taxes has never been an issue. I honestly do not see how an accountant can "lower my tax bill", which is different from "increasing my refund". I already reap the benefits of tax deductable mortgage interest, Child care deductions and 401K deposits. My medical expenses do not exceed 10% and I don't give to charities.
What else is there?
I would like to hear... What "tricks" were used to get you that bigger check? Or is it that you didn't know that you could deduct 401K payments in the first place?
I have a home, and a business. I use TurboTax standard, not the premium edition (I don't have stock options). State forms are free with a mail in rebate. This year, my taxes cost me $29.00 plus about 3 hours pulling the numbers together, which by the way, I would have to do for an accountant anyway...
I jumped on VOIP by starting up with Vonage
I signed up. Free Router!
$30 Activiation fee -- Surprise
OK, so the router wasn't really FREE. Whatever.
I did not receive the router for 3 weeks. But, I was charged for that 3 weeks of service. Huh?
Then I discovered Asterisk. Got the Digium Card. Got a voicepulse number and all is good. But what to do with Vonage?
Surprise.. Vonage is NOT usable with Asterisk.
OK... I don't need Vonage. So cancel Vonage...
Surprise... $40 Cancellation charge. Which will be refunded, if you return the router IN THE ORIGINAL BOX. Well geez. I threw out the box..
Net result. About 45 days of Vonage service cost me over $100.00, and 21 of those days, I did not even have equipment!
The quality was good, but their service sucks, probably because they are growing so fast. But still.
If you choose Vonage, make sure you're not going to cancel, and be forwarned of those surprise charges.
Synopsis of an Asterisk Install
on
Build Your Own PBX
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have wanted a home PBX for a long time. I looked at Asterisk once, a while back but could see it was too green.
About a month ago, I took the plunge. I bought the Digium Card with 1 FXS and 3 FXO ports (~$300). I had a running Redhat 9.0 system that was doing nothing.
I installed the Digium Card, and installed the stable 1.0 release of Asterisk in about an hour.
It took me about a day, to figure out the "world of telephony". The telephone people in general have built a world of acronyms that are confusing to the non-initiated. But after some study, and reading the WIKI, I had a fully functional PBX system.
I purchased a number through connect.voicepulse.com and set that up easily. I kept one land line, for 911 calls, my DirectTivo, free local calls, and because everyone still calls us on that land line (10 years+).
EVERYTHING WORKS!
I now have true "extensions" in the house. My wife can now call me when I am out in the shop via the extension. The kids now get calls directed to their phone, so I am no longer picking up their phone calls. Voicemessages delivered via email.
But the best feature of all is: Because the initial voice menu requires you to enter a one(1) or a two(2) this puts a stop to the telemarketers and wrong numbers and the midnight faxes!!!
Another great feature of connect.voicepulse.com is that you get 4 simultaneous incoming/outgoing calls. This means that with one account, and one number, we can all be making outbound calls at the same time!
If someone calls in on our number, and another call comes in at the same time. Asterisk handles it. Up to 4 calls in a row. This feature I like!
Finally, I bought a second Digium card (works great btw) and now we have 7 independent extensions in the house. Overkill, I know, but it is extremely convenient!
I do not work for Digium, I have no reason to give them a good review, except that I have bought their product, been very pleased with the quality, and I am a very happy user of Asterisk.
$7.99 a month for the number, plus $0.02 per minute.
With Asterisk, you can keep your land line (for the directv) and have it route local calls via the landline for the unlimited free local calling your teenagers need.
Asterisk is like linux, Sipx is like Windows
on
New Open Source VoIP PBX
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I recently deployed asterisk in a few locations. It was admitedly tough. I was unfamiliar with the world of telephony, and new to VOIP. I read lots of wiki pages, and read through the extremely detailed configuration files, and with some trial and error, I now have a fully fledged PBX in my home, and my workplace.
I have never sought out a GUI interface for asterisk.
If I wanted a GUI interface, I would have looked for a MS based solution. Isn't that obvious?
From what I have read, and experienced, IAX is a superior protocol to SIP, principally due to it's handling of NAT and firewall issues. It just works, and it works well.
I can send an IAX adapter to the far side of the world, and have the user plug it in. Without the need to add rules to their router, I can connect and Voila, they are talking.
I am very pleased with Asterisk. I have only begun to utilize it's vast capabilitites.
It appears that SIPX is targeting the user who wants simplicity. Most windows users are attracted to simplicity. Ergo: Asterisk is like linux, manually configured and extremely powerful. Sipx is like windows, give me a dialog box to type in my phone number, and that is all I want.
DISCLAIMER: I have never used SIPX, but a quick look at the website, and pulling up blank pages for the readme's tells me alot!
I posted a while back, that I suspected that the SSH client that T-Mobile was offering was deceptive.
It did not appear to me that the handset had the power to encrypt the transmissions, and I assumed at that time that the policy was to communicate via radio, unencrypted, and then encrypt the transmission with SSH where it enters the public Internet.
I would suspect that anyone who relied on the SSH client for T-Mobile for privacy, may find their information compromised.
I have built Solaris based hosting infrastructures for a very big entertainment company. And the machines/OS are the very best.
But the cost was astronomical.
I believe that I could have done as well with a cluster of Linux boxes for 1/100th the cost.
By achieving graduation, and receiving a diploma, in anything, you will have met countless deadlines, forced yourself to learn unwanted material, and pushed yourself to the limit. Sometimes on a weekly basis.
Hiring a person who has met this standard, gives the hiring manager at least a hope that his new hire will perform.
Without a diploma, I have found, not that people are lazy and or incompetent, but lacking in confidence and the drive to take a project to completion.
I usually don't care if the diploma is from an Ivy League or a State College. If you got the sheepskin, then you know how to work.
Too many people were lured away from College during the dot com boom... And now, post bust, the lack of that diploma is hurting them.
I hire diploma'd people because they perform better, they strive for goals, not just a paycheck, and when they are finished, they find something for their next assignment without my need to find something for them.
I recently got tagged with a BHO spyware infection. Initially, it annoyed me by changing my browser homepage to a search website, but appeared to do little else.
This bugger was really tough to remove. I tried the adaware and Panda and any other "auto removal" tools that I could find. These efforts got me to the point where the homepage was no longer being affected
But through the process, I got introduced to "HijackThis" and "FindNFix" which is (or was at the time) more of an analysis tool than a repair tool. Using these tools, I was able to see that my efforts were only partially successful. Even though my homepage was no longer changing, I continued to have a persistent BHO that I could not get rid of. Or rather, once removed, it would re-appear on each reboot, usually with a different name.
I came to the realization that I was infected by a dormant bot. And that any time I started my browser, the bot would "phone home" and receiving no instructions, would do nothing. I knew that the day was coming when this bot would be instructed to do something besides nothing, and my computer would be enlisted as a soldier in a "drone army".
Because the "phone home" occurs as an http request via port 80, it occurs almost undetectably (I could see it happening via tcpdump on my firewall) and it is essentially impossible to block, unless you block web browsing to your user population.
This is the new evil..
I don't know that we have seen these drone armies put to use yet. The possibilities are frightening.
I see many posts, by the uninformed, that say.. Patch em up. Scan em thouroughly and run your adaware. You'll be safe then. Don't be misled. This is infection is more stealthy than that.
In the end, it took me several hours to learn how to remove this infection. I used the tools listed above, and some procedures I found documented in the news groups. I had to disable recovery, boot into safe mode, move (rename) the file three times and only then did my diagnostics come up clean.
I don't want to needlessly frighten anyone, but this one really scares the bejeesus out of me.
The framers of our constitution were careful to protect our rights in the context of the day. The right to freedom from unlawful search and seizure, the right to free speech and the right to lawful assembly.
Obviously missing is the right to privacy, which in my opinion is right up there with the aforementioned rights. And had our forefathers had the vision to see the present abuse of privacy, the right to privacy might have been included in the original Bill of Rights
Should the people of the United States be offered the opportunity to vote on a new constitutional ammendment that would guarantee the right to privacy. Personal information gathered for any purpose must be held in confidence and may not be used or disseminated without explicit written permission.
This would quickly reduce the amount of Junk Mail (snailmail kind) that fills my homes mailbox because my mortgage company is selling my name and address. It would also go along way to help stop spammers if everyone of us has a constitutional ammendment to use in a civil claim. Granted, it may not do much for the random spam, but I am really tired of every online business taking my email address and using for their own internal advertising, until I go to their webpage and Opt Out.
What is your opinion of Personal Privacy, and is it time for a New Constitutional Ammendment?
When I started learning (Unix at UCSB) in '81, a printout of the UNIX man pages was about all there was. Plus the Richie "C" book and some Guides.
Start with the basics. Learn vi and shell scripting. Read every (basic) man page you can find. Try all the options. Then try to accomplish something with what you have learned.
Give yourself a few years to come up to speed. It won't happen overnight.
The great part was being able to have 4 movies sitting in my living room waiting for me to watch them (for $14.95), and I did not have to pay anything extra to keep them there.
The turnaround was fast, and in the begining, you could go online and click that you were sending it back, and they would send you a new one that day. So turnaround could be as short as two days.
Then they got popular, and the delay became 6 days for a new flick, then they eliminated the "click and get a new movie" and made it.. "You get a new one when we get your old one back".
It got hard to view 4 movies a month, and at that rate, I said ferget it!
I hear the service is now better. but the rate is higher and the movies are fewer.
All the slick features are nice, but I need a phone that will work on the fringes.
I have an associate who lives on a hilltop. His daughters phone works great in the house. His wife's works sometimes, and he has to go out back and stand on the brick wall and face southwest to get a signal.
The kicker is that they all have the SAME PROVIDER! Different phones...
Nowhere can I find a listing of phones that work in the fringe areas! It is a very important parameter that never gets mentioned.
Oh, and I will take a second sim card too!
About a year ago, I noticed that most probes for Matt's formmail script were coming from an ISP located in the Southeastern US. I blocked a couple of Class C addresses and I saw my SPAM traffic drop by more than 50%.
I would name names... But I would be afraid he would change IP's and my block would be no good anymore.
Trinux has been around a long time. (preceeds Knoppix by a long shot)
A complete Linux system that boots from floppy, or even a CD-ROM.
I use it for quick and easy Network sleuthing (boot any windows machine into Linux with network tools).
I use it for cloning hard disks.
Trinux uses a package repository that is hosted on http or ftp, so an internet connection is preferable.
Slashdot Mirror
Simply put, the content, meaning the stuff you are really there to get, is encoded as XML.
The fluff, or eye candy part, meaning the way the content appears to the viewer is controlled by the XSLT style sheet.
The same content is presented in one flashy format, for highbandwidth, big screen clients, and a different format for low bandwidth, small or tiny screen clients.
This solves the problem quite well, and is why HTML has reached the end of it's development cycle, as it does not support this functionality easily.
The second listing gets about 20% of the traffic.
The third and lower listings get single digit traffic.
A popular keyword will always have paid listings for the top two or even three in the list.
Using SEO, your top position will be third or less
Given, this third place is free (unless you are paying an SEO consultant to get you the spot), the best you will get is single digit click thrus.
From a gross traffic standpoint, you must pay for listings to get the bulk of the click thrus.
Scrap the SEO, and pay the price.
Sad but true.
I did my taxes and got a $1200 refund
I took it to an accountant and he got me $4800.00
Fine.. but how did the accountant do it?
Did he fudge your medical expenses?
Did he find that you didn't deduct your 401K?
Or did he find an obscure law that says that one legged people with a degree in programming get a $4000.00 credit?
What is it that the accountant found that got you that windfall?
I really want to hear.. What are those tricks?
So far, no-one can say what it is....
I used to do my taxes by hand, the hard way, before there was a TurboTax. I did not have many complications, no home etc. but back then, there were alot of exemptions and special credits, that it took quite a few hours each year.
About 10 years ago, I began using TurboTax, and based on my experience of DIY prior to that, I found TurboTax to be very thorough and much easier.
Now, 10 years later, I have a home, and a side business and I still use TurboTax. I believe I have enough experience and I do make some effort to follow the tax law changes, that I am comfortable that TurboTax is getting me what I deserve in a lower tax bill.
People who claim... "My refund always exceeds what I would pay the accountant" are misleading. If I prepare my W-4 properly, and make lean estimated tax payments, I can target my refund to be Zero dollars (in theory).
Your refund is your money to begin with. The size of your refund is simply the error that was made in calculating your estimated tax.
You can make it bigger or smaller by changing your W-4.
Some accountants may find money in obscure deductions, like child care payments, that the average user may not know about. Or they might accellerate your depreciation on a depreciating asset, but this is just robbing peter to pay paul, because in future years, you will get a smaller or no deduction because of the accelleration!
I have seen the returns prepared by some "Accountants", and they were done by a tax prep program. So why pay them to plug the numbers into TurboTax?
I realize that I am more detail oriented, and a perfectionist too. And a DIY kind of guy. Doing my own taxes has never been an issue. I honestly do not see how an accountant can "lower my tax bill", which is different from "increasing my refund". I already reap the benefits of tax deductable mortgage interest, Child care deductions and 401K deposits. My medical expenses do not exceed 10% and I don't give to charities.
What else is there?
I would like to hear... What "tricks" were used to get you that bigger check? Or is it that you didn't know that you could deduct 401K payments in the first place?
I have a home, and a business. I use TurboTax standard, not the premium edition (I don't have stock options). State forms are free with a mail in rebate. This year, my taxes cost me $29.00 plus about 3 hours pulling the numbers together, which by the way, I would have to do for an accountant anyway...
Just my two cents...
I signed up. Free Router!
$30 Activiation fee -- Surprise
OK, so the router wasn't really FREE. Whatever.
I did not receive the router for 3 weeks. But, I was charged for that 3 weeks of service. Huh?
Then I discovered Asterisk. Got the Digium Card. Got a voicepulse number and all is good. But what to do with Vonage?
Surprise.. Vonage is NOT usable with Asterisk.
OK... I don't need Vonage. So cancel Vonage... Surprise... $40 Cancellation charge. Which will be refunded, if you return the router IN THE ORIGINAL BOX. Well geez. I threw out the box..
Net result. About 45 days of Vonage service cost me over $100.00, and 21 of those days, I did not even have equipment!
The quality was good, but their service sucks, probably because they are growing so fast. But still.
If you choose Vonage, make sure you're not going to cancel, and be forwarned of those surprise charges.
About a month ago, I took the plunge. I bought the Digium Card with 1 FXS and 3 FXO ports (~$300). I had a running Redhat 9.0 system that was doing nothing.
I installed the Digium Card, and installed the stable 1.0 release of Asterisk in about an hour.
It took me about a day, to figure out the "world of telephony". The telephone people in general have built a world of acronyms that are confusing to the non-initiated. But after some study, and reading the WIKI, I had a fully functional PBX system.
I purchased a number through connect.voicepulse.com and set that up easily. I kept one land line, for 911 calls, my DirectTivo, free local calls, and because everyone still calls us on that land line (10 years+).
EVERYTHING WORKS!
I now have true "extensions" in the house. My wife can now call me when I am out in the shop via the extension. The kids now get calls directed to their phone, so I am no longer picking up their phone calls. Voicemessages delivered via email.
But the best feature of all is: Because the initial voice menu requires you to enter a one(1) or a two(2) this puts a stop to the telemarketers and wrong numbers and the midnight faxes!!!
Another great feature of connect.voicepulse.com is that you get 4 simultaneous incoming/outgoing calls. This means that with one account, and one number, we can all be making outbound calls at the same time!
If someone calls in on our number, and another call comes in at the same time. Asterisk handles it. Up to 4 calls in a row. This feature I like!
Finally, I bought a second Digium card (works great btw) and now we have 7 independent extensions in the house. Overkill, I know, but it is extremely convenient!
I do not work for Digium, I have no reason to give them a good review, except that I have bought their product, been very pleased with the quality, and I am a very happy user of Asterisk.
But the wiki looks promising:_ the_sipX_Voicemail_and_Auto-attendant_system&actio n=edit
How to use the sipx Voicemail and autoattendent system:
http://wiki.calivia.com/index.php?title=HowTo_use
How to configure the sipx call routing engine:f igure_the_sipX_call_routing_engine&action=edit
http://wiki.calivia.com/index.php?title=HowTo_con
Where does one go to learn about Sipx? The screenshots of the GUI interface?
Thanks anyway....
http://scm.sipfoundry.org/rep/sipXvxml/main/README
Not much to it.. eh?
$7.99 a month for the number, plus $0.02 per minute. With Asterisk, you can keep your land line (for the directv) and have it route local calls via the landline for the unlimited free local calling your teenagers need.
I have never sought out a GUI interface for asterisk.
If I wanted a GUI interface, I would have looked for a MS based solution. Isn't that obvious?
From what I have read, and experienced, IAX is a superior protocol to SIP, principally due to it's handling of NAT and firewall issues. It just works, and it works well. I can send an IAX adapter to the far side of the world, and have the user plug it in. Without the need to add rules to their router, I can connect and Voila, they are talking.
I am very pleased with Asterisk. I have only begun to utilize it's vast capabilitites.
It appears that SIPX is targeting the user who wants simplicity. Most windows users are attracted to simplicity. Ergo: Asterisk is like linux, manually configured and extremely powerful. Sipx is like windows, give me a dialog box to type in my phone number, and that is all I want.
DISCLAIMER: I have never used SIPX, but a quick look at the website, and pulling up blank pages for the readme's tells me alot!
If the average user will not miss it, then leave it out.
If I want a bloated Browser. I will use Internet Explorer..
It did not appear to me that the handset had the power to encrypt the transmissions, and I assumed at that time that the policy was to communicate via radio, unencrypted, and then encrypt the transmission with SSH where it enters the public Internet.
I would suspect that anyone who relied on the SSH client for T-Mobile for privacy, may find their information compromised.
Can anyone confirm or contest this suspicion?
It is still true today.
I have built Solaris based hosting infrastructures for a very big entertainment company. And the machines/OS are the very best.
But the cost was astronomical.
I believe that I could have done as well with a cluster of Linux boxes for 1/100th the cost.
I love Sun/Solaris..
I can afford Linux.
Sometimes on a weekly basis.
Hiring a person who has met this standard, gives the hiring manager at least a hope that his new hire will perform.
Without a diploma, I have found, not that people are lazy and or incompetent, but lacking in confidence and the drive to take a project to completion.
I usually don't care if the diploma is from an Ivy League or a State College. If you got the sheepskin, then you know how to work.
Too many people were lured away from College during the dot com boom... And now, post bust, the lack of that diploma is hurting them.
I hire diploma'd people because they perform better, they strive for goals, not just a paycheck, and when they are finished, they find something for their next assignment without my need to find something for them.
Just my two cents...
The Monty Python clip is included, and will play upon delivery of your email..
Maybe you already knew that..
This bugger was really tough to remove. I tried the adaware and Panda and any other "auto removal" tools that I could find. These efforts got me to the point where the homepage was no longer being affected
But through the process, I got introduced to "HijackThis" and "FindNFix" which is (or was at the time) more of an analysis tool than a repair tool. Using these tools, I was able to see that my efforts were only partially successful. Even though my homepage was no longer changing, I continued to have a persistent BHO that I could not get rid of. Or rather, once removed, it would re-appear on each reboot, usually with a different name.
I came to the realization that I was infected by a dormant bot. And that any time I started my browser, the bot would "phone home" and receiving no instructions, would do nothing. I knew that the day was coming when this bot would be instructed to do something besides nothing, and my computer would be enlisted as a soldier in a "drone army".
Because the "phone home" occurs as an http request via port 80, it occurs almost undetectably (I could see it happening via tcpdump on my firewall) and it is essentially impossible to block, unless you block web browsing to your user population.
This is the new evil..
I don't know that we have seen these drone armies put to use yet. The possibilities are frightening.
I see many posts, by the uninformed, that say.. Patch em up. Scan em thouroughly and run your adaware. You'll be safe then. Don't be misled. This is infection is more stealthy than that.
In the end, it took me several hours to learn how to remove this infection. I used the tools listed above, and some procedures I found documented in the news groups. I had to disable recovery, boot into safe mode, move (rename) the file three times and only then did my diagnostics come up clean.
I don't want to needlessly frighten anyone, but this one really scares the bejeesus out of me.
Obviously missing is the right to privacy, which in my opinion is right up there with the aforementioned rights. And had our forefathers had the vision to see the present abuse of privacy, the right to privacy might have been included in the original Bill of Rights
Should the people of the United States be offered the opportunity to vote on a new constitutional ammendment that would guarantee the right to privacy. Personal information gathered for any purpose must be held in confidence and may not be used or disseminated without explicit written permission.
This would quickly reduce the amount of Junk Mail (snailmail kind) that fills my homes mailbox because my mortgage company is selling my name and address.
It would also go along way to help stop spammers if everyone of us has a constitutional ammendment to use in a civil claim. Granted, it may not do much for the random spam, but I am really tired of every online business taking my email address and using for their own internal advertising, until I go to their webpage and Opt Out.
What is your opinion of Personal Privacy, and is it time for a New Constitutional Ammendment?
Start with the basics. Learn vi and shell scripting. Read every (basic) man page you can find. Try all the options. Then try to accomplish something with what you have learned.
Give yourself a few years to come up to speed. It won't happen overnight.
The great part was being able to have 4 movies sitting in my living room waiting for me to watch them (for $14.95), and I did not have to pay anything extra to keep them there.
The turnaround was fast, and in the begining, you could go online and click that you were sending it back, and they would send you a new one that day. So turnaround could be as short as two days.
Then they got popular, and the delay became 6 days for a new flick, then they eliminated the "click and get a new movie" and made it.. "You get a new one when we get your old one back".
It got hard to view 4 movies a month, and at that rate, I said ferget it!
I hear the service is now better. but the rate is higher and the movies are fewer.
Not worth it in my opinion....
All the slick features are nice, but I need a phone that will work on the fringes.
I have an associate who lives on a hilltop. His daughters phone works great in the house. His wife's works sometimes, and he has to go out back and stand on the brick wall and face southwest to get a signal.
The kicker is that they all have the SAME PROVIDER! Different phones...
Nowhere can I find a listing of phones that work in the fringe areas! It is a very important parameter that never gets mentioned.
Oh, and I will take a second sim card too!
My question is, where is the encrytion done?
Does the SideKick encrypt?
Or does it communicate with a server that does the encryption?
Terribly misleading if it is the latter! How would we know?
I would name names... But I would be afraid he would change IP's and my block would be no good anymore.
Check your snort/web logs for FormMail probes.
The losers in this war are the American (as in US) companies and civilians.
Microsoft will chew us up, while the rest of the world takes over with OSS.
Trinux has been around a long time. (preceeds Knoppix by a long shot)
A complete Linux system that boots from floppy, or even a CD-ROM.
I use it for quick and easy Network sleuthing (boot any windows machine into Linux with network tools).
I use it for cloning hard disks.
Trinux uses a package repository that is hosted on http or ftp, so an internet connection is preferable.
All of the handhelds that I have evaluated do not have a long enough battery life to be useful.
A full time radio connection (wifi is an example) requires significant power resources.
Handhelds don't have the power.
The small Sony laptops are more appropriate. They have a useable keyboard, and they almost fit in a jacket pocket