Since you mention the magic keyword "inexpensive" I'll mention that you should factor in the cost of running a PC 24/7. I've seen estimates that put this at around $5/mo for an average PC.
You keep that running for a year, and suddenly commercial solutions like the Snap Server start making a lot of sense. They draw much less power as they are designed from the ground up to be NAS devices. Rsync the snap every few minutes and you get redundancy to boot.
By the same reasoning, many home users who roll their own firewall/router solutions with old PCs running linux completely forget the power costs and don't realize that the little $50 linksys router would pay for itself in just a few months of electricity charges for the old PC.
A few months back I searched hard for a little utility that would automatically lock my Windows PC when my bluetooth Tungsten went out of range, but had no luck after much googling. I was even willing to do some of my own coding/scripting if a program had the right hooks, but never found that program.
Firefox - the best browser Textpad - the anti-IDE I always come back to ActiveState Perl - essential. Komodo - the Perl IDE I'm learning to love Trillian - universal IM client with logging SecureCRT - SSH with lots of tunnels to protect POP, HTTP, SMTP, IM conversations from prying work eyes. Unlike putty, saves passwords quickly and easily. Cygwin - worst. installer. ever. still, must-have linux/unix tools for windows Photoshop - I always end up needing it. WinKey - unfuck your Windows key Eudora - still my favorite email client.
and for Linux - postfix, squirrelmail, screen, apache, mysql, squid, php, courier-imap, rsync, cvs - in no particular order
I think you are doing the right thing. Who has time to dick around backing up to CDs, tapes, etc? To me, any backup solution that spans multiple tapes, etc is severely broken.
I have a big honkin hard drive 120gig with all my stuff at home. I have a 2nd big honkin 120gig that has USB2. I take the USB2 drive to work once a month and leave it there. Bingo--off-site backup solution. (Yes, encrypted file system so co-workers can't browse my comprehensive porn collection.)
The stuff that changes more often (like photos) that I couldn't really bear to lose I rsync to my linux box over the net.
Everything fails, redundancy is the way to go. And it has to be easy.
Right. I actually remembered this just after posting. It has been a long time since I dug through Ambient's excellent API docs on their website. I just knew the ever-vigilant/. crowd would catch my error:-)
> It doesn't add but a few bucks to the total cost.
For the hardware and a lifetime subscription to a pager network? I'd wager that is more than a few bucks. But I buy your "unique art" comment, Ambient is the only player in this game at the moment. They have obviously picked a pretty perfect price point that both nets them profits and gets them picked up by Brookstone.com.
Anyway, I'd wager that your cool orb is sitting in a room that is currently covered by wifi, right? Who needs the damn pager.
Someone will nail this with a product under $50 soon. I'll be first in line to buy. If I can get in front of you, that is.
Great point. By giving this thing a simple API you could transform it from a cheap parlor trick to a useful information device. Glowing red when your server gets slashdotted perhaps?
Along those lines, these guys make some great products but come on, a cellular modem embedded in every device? Why not lower the cost significantly and just have the damn thing plug into your computer. Sheesh.
It is going for $26 (free ship) at Buy.com at the moment: here
I'd report back here on how I like it in a few days, but I fear slashdot will have archived this story by then.
I'll post my experience here, if anyone is curious how it works out.
Now that all the hardware specialists are focused on an input related Ask Slashdot question, I'll pose my somewhat related question:-)
Is it possible to plug in a spare USB keyboard and reprogram ALL the keys to do custom things: launch programs, launch scripts, emulate menu selects for specific programs, etc. I have several spare keyboards lying around and would love to put them to use. (I'm envisioning some sort of multi-keyboard array mounted on various surfaces that make my home desk look like a cockpit.)
I've googled around in the past for fully programmable keyboards and found stuff like this. But it is expensive stuff, most over $100 if you have more than 20 programmable keys. (Although certainly there is value in having software to assign the functions and pre-made templates that remind you key #69 is the 'apply drop shadow in photoshop' button.)
Any ideas? Is this possible? Easy? Will it suck up so much time that I am better off biting the bullet and shelling out the dough for a shrink-wrapped solution to this problem?
>rather see NASA devote money to building new towers and new space crafts
Yes!
I grew up in FL, and went on a field trip to see a shuttle launch in the late '80s. It was the most powerful thing I have ever seen, both in physical and emotional terms. TV can't do justice to something that shakes the ground like that.
After the launch, we toured the Kennedy Space Ctr. and saw your typical museum fare--impressive but nothing compared to the launch we had just witnessed. One more tired old piece of scaffolding is not going to tip that scale in the slightest.
Honor the past by building on past accomplishments.
The answer to the prof's concer is RSS. You give back control of subscriptions 100% to the 30,000 subscribers and eliminate all that mailman/listserv/lyris/yahoogroups/topica nonsense.
If you've ever seen a post to a public list that reads "please take me off your list" you know how goofy subscription management via email can be. RSS is intuitive. Email listserv is not.
I'm not endorsing the email postage solution, but I'll take it if it helps the spam problem significantly. I can control my own mailing lists, Professor. Don't underestimate your users. If they want what you got, they will find a way to get it.
I'd love to have a bluetooth camera that was smart enough to
- periodically look for a trusted computer (but only when it has images on the camera)
- automatically move images across bluetooth to the computer and then delete from local flash memory
This way I could come home from work, never actually take my camera out of my briefcase, and have an automatic sync take place. (My palm pilot should do the same thing.)
All the curmudgeonly griping about bluetooth being too slow for this kind of application is pretty shortsighted. Faster is always better, but lets make better use of what's available today.
While we're at it, why not have my briefcase incorporate splashpower.com technology so everything in the bag charges up when I set the bag down on a special landing pad at home.
Fiction: Life of Pi by Yann Martel was without a doubt the best book I read this year.
Nonfiction: Confessions of a Tax Collector : One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the IRS by Richard Yancey. Okay, I'm cheating here because I think this won't be released until '04--but my friend snuck me a publisher's advance copy and it blew my doors off.
Nice howto. One thing you may want to consider adding is the option to use SSH w/o any encryption. I think you may have to recompile to get that support in the sshd.
I set up what you are talking about with cygwin's ssh connecting to a linux box at home, and the connection was slow to the point of being almost unusable. That SMB is one chatty protocol. I did not try the SSH w/o encryption thing though.
The company that AOL wants you to forget they own... Nullsoft releases cool software called Waste, AOL pulls plug almost instantly. Nullsoft releases cool software called AIMazing, AOL pulls plug almost instantly.
I still use WinAmp, but this company no longer whips the llama's ass.
you should check out quicktopic. It is a web-based app with email hooks. As you propose, you can tune in and out of a given thread whenever you want. Kick the tires. It is very cool.
This annoying little bitch of a company is only worth about 200 million dollars. Here is a suggested course of action:
1. IBM buys SCO outright 2. IBM dismantles SCO and makes ALL their source code free without restrictions of any kind 3. ??? 4. Linux world profits. MSFT suffers.
Perhaps this isn't the "right" thing to do because SCO's lawsuit appears to us to be frivolous. But do we really want to leave that in the hands of a court?
Slashdot Mirror
Since you mention the magic keyword "inexpensive" I'll mention that you should factor in the cost of running a PC 24/7. I've seen estimates that put this at around $5/mo for an average PC.
You keep that running for a year, and suddenly commercial solutions like the Snap Server start making a lot of sense. They draw much less power as they are designed from the ground up to be NAS devices. Rsync the snap every few minutes and you get redundancy to boot.
By the same reasoning, many home users who roll their own firewall/router solutions with old PCs running linux completely forget the power costs and don't realize that the little $50 linksys router would pay for itself in just a few months of electricity charges for the old PC.
I wish. Let me know if you find anything.
A few months back I searched hard for a little utility that would automatically lock my Windows PC when my bluetooth Tungsten went out of range, but had no luck after much googling. I was even willing to do some of my own coding/scripting if a program had the right hooks, but never found that program.
Macs seem to get a lot of this stuff done right.
Disclaimer: I've never tried this software as I don't have a mac.
What, you bought that shiny G4 and don't have $ left over for a BT phone/pda? Cry elsewhere you insensitive clod :-)
Thanks for the free exposure!
:-)
I know Slashdotters love pretty graphs, so check out:
http://www.dodgeit.com/techtv.png
This is what happened when The Screen Savers on now-defunct TechTV ran a tiny little segment on DodgeIt.com a few weeks back.
Here's to hoping a +5 comment from the parent gets me a proper Slashdotting
Bingo.
Textpad - the anti-IDE I always come back to
ActiveState Perl - essential.
Komodo - the Perl IDE I'm learning to love
Trillian - universal IM client with logging
SecureCRT - SSH with lots of tunnels to protect POP, HTTP, SMTP, IM conversations from prying work eyes. Unlike putty, saves passwords quickly and easily.
Cygwin - worst. installer. ever. still, must-have linux/unix tools for windows
Photoshop - I always end up needing it.
WinKey - unfuck your Windows key
Eudora - still my favorite email client.
and for Linux - postfix, squirrelmail, screen, apache, mysql, squid, php, courier-imap, rsync, cvs - in no particular order
posted this list at my blog too - First Ten Programs
you can use all the disposable addresses you want at dodgeit. Just fill in #3 for me if you get a chance :-)
1. create disposable email service
2. give it away for free
3. ???
4. profit!
I think you are doing the right thing. Who has time to dick around backing up to CDs, tapes, etc? To me, any backup solution that spans multiple tapes, etc is severely broken.
I have a big honkin hard drive 120gig with all my stuff at home. I have a 2nd big honkin 120gig that has USB2. I take the USB2 drive to work once a month and leave it there. Bingo--off-site backup solution. (Yes, encrypted file system so co-workers can't browse my comprehensive porn collection.)
The stuff that changes more often (like photos) that I couldn't really bear to lose I rsync to my linux box over the net.
Everything fails, redundancy is the way to go. And it has to be easy.
Right. I actually remembered this just after posting. It has been a long time since I dug through Ambient's excellent API docs on their website. I just knew the ever-vigilant /. crowd would catch my error :-)
> It doesn't add but a few bucks to the total cost.
For the hardware and a lifetime subscription to a pager network? I'd wager that is more than a few bucks. But I buy your "unique art" comment, Ambient is the only player in this game at the moment. They have obviously picked a pretty perfect price point that both nets them profits and gets them picked up by Brookstone.com.
Anyway, I'd wager that your cool orb is sitting in a room that is currently covered by wifi, right? Who needs the damn pager.
Someone will nail this with a product under $50 soon. I'll be first in line to buy. If I can get in front of you, that is.
Along those lines, these guys make some great products but come on, a cellular modem embedded in every device? Why not lower the cost significantly and just have the damn thing plug into your computer. Sheesh.
http://www.pricelessware.org/ - I'll 2nd this recommendation
http://www.tinyapps.org/ - I've had some good luck here too.
I bid on a couple at ebay, but they were going for over $30, which I think is a bit high for a used keyboard.
Today I read a review of the Belkin's Nostromo Game Controller n52. It looks to be programmable and can emulate over 100 keys
It is going for $26 (free ship) at Buy.com at the moment: here
I'd report back here on how I like it in a few days, but I fear slashdot will have archived this story by then. I'll post my experience here, if anyone is curious how it works out.
Is it possible to plug in a spare USB keyboard and reprogram ALL the keys to do custom things: launch programs, launch scripts, emulate menu selects for specific programs, etc. I have several spare keyboards lying around and would love to put them to use. (I'm envisioning some sort of multi-keyboard array mounted on various surfaces that make my home desk look like a cockpit.)
I've googled around in the past for fully programmable keyboards and found stuff like this. But it is expensive stuff, most over $100 if you have more than 20 programmable keys. (Although certainly there is value in having software to assign the functions and pre-made templates that remind you key #69 is the 'apply drop shadow in photoshop' button.)
Any ideas? Is this possible? Easy? Will it suck up so much time that I am better off biting the bullet and shelling out the dough for a shrink-wrapped solution to this problem?
I'm primarily on Win2K and WinXP for my desktops.
Where can you find auctions for this kind of stuff in the DC area? I need a new lcd monitor, an aeron, and a g4 :-)
>rather see NASA devote money to building new towers and new space crafts
Yes!
I grew up in FL, and went on a field trip to see a shuttle launch in the late '80s. It was the most powerful thing I have ever seen, both in physical and emotional terms. TV can't do justice to something that shakes the ground like that.
After the launch, we toured the Kennedy Space Ctr. and saw your typical museum fare--impressive but nothing compared to the launch we had just witnessed. One more tired old piece of scaffolding is not going to tip that scale in the slightest.
Honor the past by building on past accomplishments.
All it costs you is the hunk of old parts and probably $5/mo in extra electricity charges.
The linksys would pay for itself in less than a year.
This of course puts a $0 value on all the other stuff you get from ClarkConnect, but I'm not sure what else you are using.
I actually belong to an email list that gets sent to dodgeit, that I consume with an RSS reader that then sends me an email.
So I have:
list -> email -> rss -> email -> me
Why all the hoops? Control. I can end the subscription any time I want and never ever get spammed because I was once a member of the list.
The answer to the prof's concer is RSS. You give back control of subscriptions 100% to the 30,000 subscribers and eliminate all that mailman/listserv/lyris/yahoogroups/topica nonsense.
If you've ever seen a post to a public list that reads "please take me off your list" you know how goofy subscription management via email can be. RSS is intuitive. Email listserv is not.
I'm not endorsing the email postage solution, but I'll take it if it helps the spam problem significantly. I can control my own mailing lists, Professor. Don't underestimate your users. If they want what you got, they will find a way to get it.
I'd love to have a bluetooth camera that was smart enough to
- periodically look for a trusted computer (but only when it has images on the camera)
- automatically move images across bluetooth to the computer and then delete from local flash memory
This way I could come home from work, never actually take my camera out of my briefcase, and have an automatic sync take place. (My palm pilot should do the same thing.)
All the curmudgeonly griping about bluetooth being too slow for this kind of application is pretty shortsighted. Faster is always better, but lets make better use of what's available today.
While we're at it, why not have my briefcase incorporate splashpower.com technology so everything in the bag charges up when I set the bag down on a special landing pad at home.
Wires suck.
Fiction: Life of Pi by Yann Martel was without a doubt the best book I read this year.
Nonfiction: Confessions of a Tax Collector : One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the IRS
by Richard Yancey. Okay, I'm cheating here because I think this won't be released until '04--but my friend snuck me a publisher's advance copy and it blew my doors off.
Hey, is this available via Software Update as well? Sorry - couldn't resist pretending I didn't RTF'ing tiny article...
Nice howto. One thing you may want to consider adding is the option to use SSH w/o any encryption. I think you may have to recompile to get that support in the sshd.
I set up what you are talking about with cygwin's ssh connecting to a linux box at home, and the connection was slow to the point of being almost unusable. That SMB is one chatty protocol. I did not try the SSH w/o encryption thing though.
The company that AOL wants you to forget they own... Nullsoft releases cool software called Waste, AOL pulls plug almost instantly. Nullsoft releases cool software called AIMazing, AOL pulls plug almost instantly.
I still use WinAmp, but this company no longer whips the llama's ass.
you should check out quicktopic. It is a web-based app with email hooks. As you propose, you can tune in and out of a given thread whenever you want. Kick the tires. It is very cool.
This annoying little bitch of a company is only worth about 200 million dollars. Here is a suggested course of action:
1. IBM buys SCO outright
2. IBM dismantles SCO and makes ALL their source code free without restrictions of any kind
3. ???
4. Linux world profits. MSFT suffers.
Perhaps this isn't the "right" thing to do because SCO's lawsuit appears to us to be frivolous. But do we really want to leave that in the hands of a court?