As far as I know, the ELF transmitters to communicate with the USN submarine force are located at Laurentian Shield, WI; and Clam Lake, WI. I haven't heard anything about Gertrude, though. Is this system currently operational? --
MySQL excels in heavy read environments. Web content management for example. No other database can compare to it.
Oh, really? Do you mean it's silly to use Oracle 8i Enterprise Server for managing data warehouses with more than 500 million rows; since no other database compares to MySQL?
MySQL is a good, free RDBMS without any of the nifty features that come with the likes of Oracle. It's very good for a lot of purposes, but claiming that "no other database compares to it" will be, umm, unintelligent. Did you spend any time with a real RDBMS, say, Oracle? Feel free to download and install it on a Linux box, and marvel at the cost based optimizer, materialized views, snapshots, and a host of other features that MySQL does not, and most probably will never have. --
If Linus walks away from Transmeta, he will very likely not wind up employed by a US company, as he would be asked, fairly shortly, to return to Finland.
Wrong. Having an H-1B doesn't mean that you're a poor peon at the mercy of your current boss.(I'm an H-1B myself) H-1B visas can get transferred between companies, and the process is relatively hassle-free. The only catch is that this has to be done in 10 days, and there are a lot of workarounds to remedy this, which I will not mention here.(Hint: How hard do you think it is to get a student visa?)
Linux wanting to work and not getting a job offer is quite simply impossible as you will very well know. Bay Area phone switch systems will come crashing down the minute he lets his availability be known.
You do have a genuine need for multiple server architectures run the same code, when your Internet start-up starts working as a 5-person company with a handful of clients and all you can afford is a bunch of Linux x86 rackmount servers on the co-lo facility; and grows to a 120-person company with 400 clients, and x86 doesn't cut it anymore; as it happened to us.
Had we used some other language, we probably wouldn't be able to move to Solaris on SPARC easily. When our Sun Enterprise boxes are here, all we will have to do is to move our servlets. With Java servlets, you can go all the way from your puny AMD box to RS/6000s. When you're not a college kid designing a Web page for fun; and you're building a mission-critical Web application for a business; this really matters. The last thing you want to do is rewrite your application because ASP does not run on the new Solaris box you're getting.(To nitpickers: Yes, I do know that Cobalt bought ChiliSoft, and ASP does run on Solaris. It's just not the same thing unless you can port your accompanying COM objects to Solaris as easily)
We have thousands of lines of code working for a mission critical application, all written in Java. It's very fast and responsive, and a lot of very big, new sites are using servlets.
PHP and ColdFusion really do not stand up against Java servlets. These are server-side scripting tools for minor applications and Web designers. I don't mean to say that it's impossible to create big, extensive sites with these tools, since there obviously are a lot of such implementations. With PHP/CF you get the convenience of integrating the business logic and presentation logic in the same layer for easy maintenance (which is something you can not do with Java servlets unless you're using some kind of template engine like WebMacro, FreeMarker or an application server infrastructure like WebSphere, Enhydra or WebLogic); but you don't get the power of using Java, and a bunch of very well designed class libraries, RMI, JSSE, JavaSpaces, etc.
Java is really the best server-side Web development tool out there for big applications, when used as part of a well-designed application server platform. When we started out there weren't any application servers, so we ended up writing a lot of stuff for database connection pooling, template engines etc., but now this stuff is available. I recommend you throw away your prejudice, and give a serious consideration to Java servlets. --
Only that the X-Box has the backing of the company with the highest valuation in the US stock market, and with billions of cash at the bank; and "Tight" is coming from a company which nobody has heard of.
Wake up. I'm not a fan of Microsoft either, but the cash they have is very real. I'm pretty sure they have mobilized a lot of people for X-Box, and they should be able to pull it off rather easily. The problem is whether the consumers will like the thing or not. --
"Web clipping" is nonstandard, and simply sucks. Palm should provide standard TCP/IP and/or WAP; and a lot of very innovative applications will pop up in no time.
The success of wireless Internet is pretty much a given, considering the success of i-mode in Japan and the WAP wave hitting Europe as we speak. I hope Palm chooses a better technology this time around, rather than the lame "Web clipping" that I could only stand using for about two weeks. --
I fail to understand the relevance of this to my post, which was a humorous follow-up to humorous analogy. Nevertheless, what Amnesty International is claiming is bullshit, but I don't see the point of continuing this offtopic thread for any longer. --
When you take a tour of a Istanbul, do they show you what goes on in a Turkish prison? I'm sure it's a fine place to visit if they want something from you
Similarly I haven't been able to hear any mention of US prisons during my life here. On the other hand, I've had the chance to see a Turkish prison for a LAN installation, and I can assure you it's a much neater place than the movie depictions of US prisons. --
Yes, a lot. A whole bunch of peripherals that are not available for USB are available for PCMCIA, plus if they opt to implement a CardBus interface at relatively low additional cost, it's a huge bandwidth improvement over USB as well. I don't see why anyone would want to connect an IEEE 1394 adapter to a thin client, but it's possible with PCMCIA, not USB (at least not at the maximum transfer rate).
The lack of a PCMCIA port is the only reason why I didn't rush out to Circuit City and buy an i-opener that same day when this hack was announced on Slashdot-I wouldn't be able to put a wireless LAN adapter into it.
talk in the article about how the entire system is digital - i.e. you don't have a spinning disk or any mechanical pieces.
Sorry for being a nit-picker, but "digital" does not mean "without mechanical pieces". I assume you mean solid-state, or completely electronic in some other way.
One can always devise a digital device which is entirely mechanical. --
The military is more concerned with TEMPEST than they are with "anti-magnetic field" protection. The electromagnetic shielding on military comms and computing gear is a) protection against EMP, or electromagnetic pulse; b) protection against remote eavesdropping. --
You really don't think that a wireless LAN standard that would support 3-4 nodes would be ratified by the IEEE, do you?
IEEE 802.11 comes in two flavors: DSSS, and FHSS; which stand for direct sequence and frequency hopping spread spectrum, respectively. Both are very efficient methods of utilizing narrow bandwidth, and the bandwidth is divided into channels which are controlled by the protocol and the MAC in these cards. The WaveLAN (Orinoco) cards use DSSS, and my favorite cheap IEEE 802.11 card, Webgear Aviator 2.4 uses FHSS.
You can precisely calculate the number of simultaneous nodes with help from a grad level telecommunications textbook, but you can be sure that it's much higher than 3 or 4; or 50 for that matter, which I know the Aviator supports.
On a seperate note, few people know that spread spectrum, the technology that enables the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN, was invented by the Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, one of the most beautiful women of her time. --
I also have an extensive Aviator 2.4 setup at home.
If I were trying to hide my SMB traffic from the NSA, then I'd be out of luck without WEP, though;-)
You can tunnel SMB over SSH between two Linux boxen. I understand your Windows system mounts the SMB shares directly from the Linux box, and since there are no SSH SMB clients for Windows easily available, you're right. In my setup, I have a Windows box upstairs which needs to access the Linux box downstairs, but there also happens to be a Linux box upstairs too. The Linux boxes are connected with a wireless link, and all SMB traffic is tunneled over SSH, with sslproxy. The connection between the Linux and Windows boxes is plain Ethernet, so no unencrypted SMB traffic goes over the wireless line.
I'm pretty sure this will not thwart the NSA, but if you want to secure your SMB traffic from the other %99.9 of the population, you might just slap a cheap Linux box next to your Windows system, connect them via Ethernet, and install sslproxy. Then you can tunnel your Samba traffic with SSH.
Not that there's anything wrong with being non-white, but "white" people do not stand out in Istanbul, or in any Turkish city for that matter, for the simple fact that Turks who live in Turkey are Caucasian.
As for clean underwear, I have no clue, since I don't go checking people's underwear around. People with a nice smell, however, stand out in the Washington D.C. metro too, which I have to ride every morining in wee hours. --
Kurzweil has always written stuf like that, but seems like Bill Joy has a lor of spare time on his hands in Aspen recently. After the Wired article, he has instantly been transformed into an expert on the subject. --
He has a new company called Loudcloud which is getting a lot of positive buzz. I also believe he's overrated, but his name means money to VCs. If you don't like Andreessen, sorry; you will have to go through the pain of seeing him become even richer in a couple of years when Loudcloud has its own IPO or is acquired. --
There is no way Netpliance can ever be driven out of business by this. i-opener is only sold in the US, and I don't think more than a thousand people will actually bother buying one and hacking it.
Nobody complained when Microsoft had to give away $400 to a lot of people in California and Oregon in MSN rebates because of their careless lawyers. Netpliance's selling these devices at a loss is not a lesser screw-up, especially considering that their technical people should have definitely known that the i-opener could be easily hacked.
But let's assume that the numbers are greater, and the loss from hacked i-openers is hurting Netpliance's bottom line. Is the Linux community to blame?
IMHO, the company's business model is totally flawed and they have made some critical mistakes, and as long as what we do is legal, I wouldn't feel any guilt destroying their business. Some of these mistakes are:
They decided to stick with the x86 and proven PC architecture to cut down their costs. So far, great. But the IDE port is plainly out there on the board, and it seems they wanted to have the possibility of adding IDE peripherals in the future. What's wrong with opening one up and adding a hard drive?
They decided to resort to "security through obscurity" by devising an idiotic "mirrored IDE port" scheme(read the hack page if you don't know what this is) What a strike of genius. I would like to hereby congratulate the Netpliance engineer who invented this. It would be too bad if he went back to flipping burgers just weeks before the IPO.
I understand Netpliance's original business model was to sell the idea to big ISPs. Now they are trying to operate their own ISP, which gives me the impression that they failed in their original attempt. This business model sucks, and they would probably have survived until AOL came up with their own appliance. MSN's appliances are coming soon.
It has to be admitted that trying to sell these devices at a huge loss is not a good idea, especially when there is nothing but a flipped IDE port to stop knowledgeable people from hacking the system. Just because of this screw-up and their bad business model, I guess the financial loss will just serve Netpliance very well.
They have recently filed for their IPO. Now if they are smart, they can perhaps show some wisdom and jump on the speeding Linux bandwagon by offering the same or similar appliances for a reasonable price ($200-250) with a custom Linux version that will allow the use of any ISP; or bundling the device with home gateways or any other appliances they might have in the pipeline.
I'm glad this became an article today. I was one of the posters who suggested this should be an article yesterday, on Microsoft X-box thread.
My plan is to hack one into a wireless LCD screen Linux system for less than $200. I believe this can be done, but I will need some help. Here is the known specs:
The box uses a Winchip 180MHz processor.
The chipset consists of Trident Cyberglade i7, which is a mobile version of VIA's MVP4 northbridge + integrated UMA video chip. It's fully supported by XFree86, and the person who hacked the i-opener first was kind enough to email me the Xconfig file. The other component of the chipset is a VIA southbridge. The northbridge has the PCI bus interface, and the southbridge has an ISA bus.
The modem is an add-on daughterboard, and sits on an interface that nobody has been able to identify yet. If I were one of the engineers of i-opener, I would have used the ISA bus along with a PC/104 type connector. I haven't seen the board myself yet, but I'm hoping it is either some kind of custom connector for the ISA bus, or PC/104, or some kind of PCMCIA connector.
If the modem is really on an ISA bus, the modem daughterboard can be removed, and an ISA PCMCIA adapter card can be connected here with the help of a custom cable assembly/an ISA slot from an old motherboard. My plan is to use the card that comes with the Webgear Aviator 2.4 IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN kit. Then you can plug any PCMCIA card to this adapter, Ethernet, your choice of a IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN card, etc. (I recommend the $70 Aviator 2.4)
If the modem is connected to a PCMCIA connector(which doesn't make any sense really-the ISA bus is already there, and if they really wanted ISA extensibility, why didn't they just add a proper PCMCIA connector?); then provided that the PCMCIA controller is supported by Linux, it should be easy to connect your choice of PCMCIA card there.
Will anyone who has seen the actual board, or who knows anything about it, please comment on my idea? If anyone can identify the connection of the modem daughterboard to the motherboard, it's even better. Some people suggested that it was PCMCIA, in this case, does anyone know which PCMCIA controller is used?
If this can be done, and we have access to the ISA bus or a PCMCIA connector on the i-opener, possibilities are endless. The i-opener has barely enough space inside to house a small ISA card with the metal bracket removed. With an ISA Ethernet board with a boot ROM, you can build a diskless X terminal; or you can try adding a wireless LAN card like me.
If I can pull this off, I will post it as an article on my Bluetooth Central to share.
I would have moderated this post up, but I already posted. Why isn't this a Slashdot article? Or did I miss it? I think this hack deserves to be a seperate Slashdot article more than the Promise UltraATA/RAID hack.
If only the i-opener had a PCMCIA slot! An i-opener for $99 + a $70 Aviator 2.4 IEEE 802.11 wireless card + a small 2.5" laptop HD = wireless LCD net terminal running Linux for under $300!! If any parallel-to-Ethernet adapters are working well with Linux, I will buy one and give this a try. --
Can you post some pointers to info on running Linux with the i-opener? I-opener comes with the service, and I believe you have to pay the monthly fee to be able to keep the system.
If this is true, I would gladly pay $99 to get an LCD X-terminal of sorts. --
So you have doubts about plausibility of Internet access with cell phones? Go to Japan to see what they have been doing with i-mode. It's a craze sweeping the country, and there are many useful applications, along with lots of utter stupidity.
Similarly, WAP is going to be a huge success in Europe. Access to corporate e-mail or other corporate resources will be a killer-app. I don't get your point about "text links not good ROI", too. WAP phones can display small bitmaps (WBMP), and it's quite possible to make interesting ads for use with WAP-even if you only have to use text.
I strongly recommend you to go read the Independent WAP FAQ. Europeans were ahead of US with the GSM technology, they are still ahead with WAP. My digital cell phone here in the US still can't do many of the cool stuff I had on my GSM phone back in Turkey three years ago. --
>It just isn't practical to come up with a type >of memory that is based on storing light.
No, it is practical to come up with the idea. It's just not practical building and using it effectively.
Researchers at University of Colorado, Boulder designed an optical computer several years ago. There are several systems in existence where computation is partially or fully done optically, but this was the first (and the only, if memory serves me right) system to do everything optically-i.e. it had a memory system based on storing values optically.
The system essentially stored pulses in a loop of fiber optic cable several miles long. I think the principle is analogous to very early electronic memory systems were bits were stored in forms of waves on tanks of mercury.
Extensive info on this was published in some IEEE publications back then. I don't have the time to look for the URL now, but it will be helpful if someone can find the reference to it.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I know, the ELF transmitters to communicate with the USN submarine force are located at Laurentian Shield, WI; and Clam Lake, WI. I haven't heard anything about Gertrude, though. Is this system currently operational?
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Both phones are GSM phones, and are available for sale in Europe. The phone in Matrix is even an outdated model (Nokia 8110, I believe).
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
MySQL excels in heavy read environments.
Web content management for example. No other database can compare to it.
Oh, really? Do you mean it's silly to use Oracle 8i Enterprise Server for managing data warehouses with more than 500 million rows; since no other database compares to MySQL?
MySQL is a good, free RDBMS without any of the nifty features that come with the likes of Oracle. It's very good for a lot of purposes, but claiming that "no other database compares to it" will be, umm, unintelligent. Did you spend any time with a real RDBMS, say, Oracle? Feel free to download and install it on a Linux box, and marvel at the cost based optimizer, materialized views, snapshots, and a host of other features that MySQL does not, and most probably will never have.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
If Linus walks away from Transmeta, he will very likely not wind up employed by a US company, as he would be asked, fairly shortly, to return to Finland.
Wrong. Having an H-1B doesn't mean that you're a poor peon at the mercy of your current boss.(I'm an H-1B myself) H-1B visas can get transferred between companies, and the process is relatively hassle-free. The only catch is that this has to be done in 10 days, and there are a lot of workarounds to remedy this, which I will not mention here.(Hint: How hard do you think it is to get a student visa?)
Linux wanting to work and not getting a job offer is quite simply impossible as you will very well know. Bay Area phone switch systems will come crashing down the minute he lets his availability be known.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
You do have a genuine need for multiple server architectures run the same code, when your Internet start-up starts working as a 5-person company with a handful of clients and all you can afford is a bunch of Linux x86 rackmount servers on the co-lo facility; and grows to a 120-person company with 400 clients, and x86 doesn't cut it anymore; as it happened to us.
Had we used some other language, we probably wouldn't be able to move to Solaris on SPARC easily. When our Sun Enterprise boxes are here, all we will have to do is to move our servlets. With Java servlets, you can go all the way from your puny AMD box to RS/6000s. When you're not a college kid designing a Web page for fun; and you're building a mission-critical Web application for a business; this really matters. The last thing you want to do is rewrite your application because ASP does not run on the new Solaris box you're getting.(To nitpickers: Yes, I do know that Cobalt bought ChiliSoft, and ASP does run on Solaris. It's just not the same thing unless you can port your accompanying COM objects to Solaris as easily)
We have thousands of lines of code working for a mission critical application, all written in Java. It's very fast and responsive, and a lot of very big, new sites are using servlets.
PHP and ColdFusion really do not stand up against Java servlets. These are server-side scripting tools for minor applications and Web designers. I don't mean to say that it's impossible to create big, extensive sites with these tools, since there obviously are a lot of such implementations. With PHP/CF you get the convenience of integrating the business logic and presentation logic in the same layer for easy maintenance (which is something you can not do with Java servlets unless you're using some kind of template engine like WebMacro, FreeMarker or an application server infrastructure like WebSphere, Enhydra or WebLogic); but you don't get the power of using Java, and a bunch of very well designed class libraries, RMI, JSSE, JavaSpaces, etc.
Java is really the best server-side Web development tool out there for big applications, when used as part of a well-designed application server platform. When we started out there weren't any application servers, so we ended up writing a lot of stuff for database connection pooling, template engines etc., but now this stuff is available. I recommend you throw away your prejudice, and give a serious consideration to Java servlets.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Only that the X-Box has the backing of the company with the highest valuation in the US stock market, and with billions of cash at the bank; and "Tight" is coming from a company which nobody has heard of.
Wake up. I'm not a fan of Microsoft either, but the cash they have is very real. I'm pretty sure they have mobilized a lot of people for X-Box, and they should be able to pull it off rather easily. The problem is whether the consumers will like the thing or not.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
"Web clipping" is nonstandard, and simply sucks. Palm should provide standard TCP/IP and/or WAP; and a lot of very innovative applications will pop up in no time.
The success of wireless Internet is pretty much a given, considering the success of i-mode in Japan and the WAP wave hitting Europe as we speak. I hope Palm chooses a better technology this time around, rather than the lame "Web clipping" that I could only stand using for about two weeks.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
I fail to understand the relevance of this to my post, which was a humorous follow-up to humorous analogy. Nevertheless, what Amnesty International is claiming is bullshit, but I don't see the point of continuing this offtopic thread for any longer.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
When you take a tour of a Istanbul, do they show you what goes on in a Turkish prison? I'm sure it's a fine place to visit if they want something from you
Similarly I haven't been able to hear any mention of US prisons during my life here. On the other hand, I've had the chance to see a Turkish prison for a LAN installation, and I can assure you it's a much neater place than the movie depictions of US prisons.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Yes, a lot. A whole bunch of peripherals that are not available for USB are available for PCMCIA, plus if they opt to implement a CardBus interface at relatively low additional cost, it's a huge bandwidth improvement over USB as well. I don't see why anyone would want to connect an IEEE 1394 adapter to a thin client, but it's possible with PCMCIA, not USB (at least not at the maximum transfer rate).
The lack of a PCMCIA port is the only reason why I didn't rush out to Circuit City and buy an i-opener that same day when this hack was announced on Slashdot-I wouldn't be able to put a wireless LAN adapter into it.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
talk in the article about how the entire system is digital - i.e. you don't have a spinning disk or any mechanical pieces.
Sorry for being a nit-picker, but "digital" does not mean "without mechanical pieces". I assume you mean solid-state, or completely electronic in some other way.
One can always devise a digital device which is entirely mechanical.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
The military is more concerned with TEMPEST than they are with "anti-magnetic field" protection. The electromagnetic shielding on military comms and computing gear is a) protection against EMP, or electromagnetic pulse; b) protection against remote eavesdropping.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
You really don't think that a wireless LAN standard that would support 3-4 nodes would be ratified by the IEEE, do you?
IEEE 802.11 comes in two flavors: DSSS, and FHSS; which stand for direct sequence and frequency hopping spread spectrum, respectively. Both are very efficient methods of utilizing narrow bandwidth, and the bandwidth is divided into channels which are controlled by the protocol and the MAC in these cards. The WaveLAN (Orinoco) cards use DSSS, and my favorite cheap IEEE 802.11 card, Webgear Aviator 2.4 uses FHSS.
You can precisely calculate the number of simultaneous nodes with help from a grad level telecommunications textbook, but you can be sure that it's much higher than 3 or 4; or 50 for that matter, which I know the Aviator supports.
On a seperate note, few people know that spread spectrum, the technology that enables the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN, was invented by the Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, one of the most beautiful women of her time.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
I also have an extensive Aviator 2.4 setup at home.
;-)
If I were trying to hide my SMB traffic from the NSA, then I'd be out of luck without WEP, though
You can tunnel SMB over SSH between two Linux boxen. I understand your Windows system mounts the SMB shares directly from the Linux box, and since there are no SSH SMB clients for Windows easily available, you're right. In my setup, I have a Windows box upstairs which needs to access the Linux box downstairs, but there also happens to be a Linux box upstairs too. The Linux boxes are connected with a wireless link, and all SMB traffic is tunneled over SSH, with sslproxy. The connection between the Linux and Windows boxes is plain Ethernet, so no unencrypted SMB traffic goes over the wireless line.
I'm pretty sure this will not thwart the NSA, but if you want to secure your SMB traffic from the other %99.9 of the population, you might just slap a cheap Linux box next to your Windows system, connect them via Ethernet, and install sslproxy. Then you can tunnel your Samba traffic with SSH.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Not that there's anything wrong with being non-white, but "white" people do not stand out in Istanbul, or in any Turkish city for that matter, for the simple fact that Turks who live in Turkey are Caucasian.
As for clean underwear, I have no clue, since I don't go checking people's underwear around. People with a nice smell, however, stand out in the Washington D.C. metro too, which I have to ride every morining in wee hours.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Kurzweil has always written stuf like that, but seems like Bill Joy has a lor of spare time on his hands in Aspen recently. After the Wired article, he has instantly been transformed into an expert on the subject.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
He has a new company called Loudcloud which is getting a lot of positive buzz. I also believe he's overrated, but his name means money to VCs. If you don't like Andreessen, sorry; you will have to go through the pain of seeing him become even richer in a couple of years when Loudcloud has its own IPO or is acquired.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
The VIA chipset used in i-opener doesn't have provision for AMR. It is either ISA or PCMCIA; or connected directly to a serial port.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Nobody complained when Microsoft had to give away $400 to a lot of people in California and Oregon in MSN rebates because of their careless lawyers. Netpliance's selling these devices at a loss is not a lesser screw-up, especially considering that their technical people should have definitely known that the i-opener could be easily hacked.
But let's assume that the numbers are greater, and the loss from hacked i-openers is hurting Netpliance's bottom line. Is the Linux community to blame?
IMHO, the company's business model is totally flawed and they have made some critical mistakes, and as long as what we do is legal, I wouldn't feel any guilt destroying their business. Some of these mistakes are:
It has to be admitted that trying to sell these devices at a huge loss is not a good idea, especially when there is nothing but a flipped IDE port to stop knowledgeable people from hacking the system. Just because of this screw-up and their bad business model, I guess the financial loss will just serve Netpliance very well.
They have recently filed for their IPO. Now if they are smart, they can perhaps show some wisdom and jump on the speeding Linux bandwagon by offering the same or similar appliances for a reasonable price ($200-250) with a custom Linux version that will allow the use of any ISP; or bundling the device with home gateways or any other appliances they might have in the pipeline.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
My plan is to hack one into a wireless LCD screen Linux system for less than $200. I believe this can be done, but I will need some help. Here is the known specs:
Will anyone who has seen the actual board, or who knows anything about it, please comment on my idea? If anyone can identify the connection of the modem daughterboard to the motherboard, it's even better. Some people suggested that it was PCMCIA, in this case, does anyone know which PCMCIA controller is used?
If this can be done, and we have access to the ISA bus or a PCMCIA connector on the i-opener, possibilities are endless. The i-opener has barely enough space inside to house a small ISA card with the metal bracket removed. With an ISA Ethernet board with a boot ROM, you can build a diskless X terminal; or you can try adding a wireless LAN card like me.
If I can pull this off, I will post it as an article on my Bluetooth Central to share.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
I would have moderated this post up, but I already posted. Why isn't this a Slashdot article? Or did I miss it? I think this hack deserves to be a seperate Slashdot article more than the Promise UltraATA/RAID hack.
If only the i-opener had a PCMCIA slot! An i-opener for $99 + a $70 Aviator 2.4 IEEE 802.11 wireless card + a small 2.5" laptop HD = wireless LCD net terminal running Linux for under $300!! If any parallel-to-Ethernet adapters are working well with Linux, I will buy one and give this a try.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Can you post some pointers to info on running Linux with the i-opener? I-opener comes with the service, and I believe you have to pay the monthly fee to be able to keep the system.
If this is true, I would gladly pay $99 to get an LCD X-terminal of sorts.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
So you have doubts about plausibility of Internet access with cell phones? Go to Japan to see what they have been doing with i-mode. It's a craze sweeping the country, and there are many useful applications, along with lots of utter stupidity.
Similarly, WAP is going to be a huge success in Europe. Access to corporate e-mail or other corporate resources will be a killer-app. I don't get your point about "text links not good ROI", too. WAP phones can display small bitmaps (WBMP), and it's quite possible to make interesting ads for use with WAP-even if you only have to use text.
I strongly recommend you to go read the Independent WAP FAQ. Europeans were ahead of US with the GSM technology, they are still ahead with WAP. My digital cell phone here in the US still can't do many of the cool stuff I had on my GSM phone back in Turkey three years ago.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Here is the link to the optical computer that I mentioned. The paper has a description of the optical memory system and logic structures.
Stored Program Optical Computer(SPOC)
--
BluetoothCentral.com
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>It just isn't practical to come up with a type >of memory that is based on storing light.
No, it is practical to come up with the idea. It's just not practical building and using it effectively.
Researchers at University of Colorado, Boulder designed an optical computer several years ago. There are several systems in existence where computation is partially or fully done optically, but this was the first (and the only, if memory serves me right) system to do everything optically-i.e. it had a memory system based on storing values optically.
The system essentially stored pulses in a loop of fiber optic cable several miles long. I think the principle is analogous to very early electronic memory systems were bits were stored in forms of waves on tanks of mercury.
Extensive info on this was published in some IEEE publications back then. I don't have the time to look for the URL now, but it will be helpful if someone can find the reference to it.
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