An an slightly different node, I found this link a while ago that discusses, in great depth, Sinclair Clones from teh late 1970's to the early 1990's.
Another thing I remember reading a long while ago was an article in "A+/Incider" magazine (and Apple II magazine) where the cover story was the giant headline "Red Apples"; in it they talked about a close of the Apple IIe that looked like a negative of the Apple IIe we know (black case, white keys), but otherwise was more or less the same -- compatible logic, just made somewhere else. I may even throw that coppy in my flatbed if there is enoguh interest.
If I had to guess, all but either very high-end or very early machine will be of the same designs as western counterparts, probably for engineering reasons because an engineer doesn't want to reinvent the wheel (or bitwise logic in this case) just to make machine to do word processing.
ISP: $15
DSL Line: $30 (Qwest DSL Deluxe)
-----
Total: $45 montly (not including telephone line itself)
256 kbsp down guaranteed (burstable to 640), 256 kbps up (not guaranteed)
To be fair, my ISP charge should be $20 a month but I'm on a very ancient pricing structure and because I'm a long-time customer they have never raised my price.
By a striking coicidence, I've actually been working on something similar, albeit not for a desktop machine, but for my car computer.
I don't have pictures or anything up because it's only half finished, but the basic are simple enough to understand. I bought some scrap parts from a fighter jet (at a place that buys military scrap), and among them was the small overhead toggle panel from some sort of aircraft, probably a transport jet, though most of the labels are worn off so I can't really read the markings on it. I've been trying to wire up the toggle and guard switches and use them to, at least partly, control the computer and other things in the car.
Another reason, besides all those already metnioned are that fiber is still kinda expensive (couple of quid per foot), and Gigabit over Cat-5 is a hack -- it has to use all 4 strands and send a parallel signal. And Cat-7... costlier then fiber.
Another reason is that Gigabit doesn't support QoS out of the box; you need a router type device to do that -- Firewire has that built into the protocol to make sure that your CD-R drive doesn't get an under-run even though you're editing video.
Still one more reason is comaring the cost of Firewire hubs versus Gigabit hubs. A 4+1 IEEE 1394 hub will run you about $45 USD, while a 5+1 Gigabit ethernet port (over cat-5) will run well over $100 (according the minimal research I've done).
That actually/does/ have a name, too. Generally speaking, "uncompressed", Phillips-standard CD Audio is usually know as PCM, or "Pulse Coded Modulation".
With all the hub-ub that has been made about electronic security on the Olymipic network and how paranoid they are, it's a shame that the site itself looks so rank because what is the point of a site staying up if no-one wants to look at it?
I think they will.. but I think that because I'm wireless app developer myself.
One of the most intreguing things about games on WML is that it forces creativity over flashyness, in the same vein that Zork relied on content rather then FMV. It's a chance to really use skill that isn't used much in todays world of huge pipes and fast CPUs.
Most people think the issue here is screen size, but I disagree -- I still think the primary issuse is speed and overhead. Zork would be playable on a handset if it didn't take 30 seconds to move from place to place as it does on some Mobile providers networks (Qwest being the worst offender here).
Okay, here is where I gloat about scooping everyone. When the iPod was first announced, I did my homework and figured it the hard drive used was the Toshiba MK5002MAL, and it turned out to be the HDD1242 which are, in fact, the same drive.
Here is where I get to gloat about being ahead of the curve for once! Yippie!
I know you probably realize that SCSI does/can do this. But I also know that you're probably using IDE because SCSI drives of comparable size will be like twice the cost.
But, you might look into a hybrid solution by using SCSI-to-IDE converters. I'm not sure if the 'delay spinup' feature is dependent on the drive itself or just the SCSI Host Card, but if it's the SCSI card that does delayed spinup, you might be able to do this.
Something like this is what I'm thinking about. Of course, they charge $70 each adapter (which means per drive, too) -- though you may be able to get a better deal somewhere else.
Also, depending on OS, have you looked into a firewire solution? THey don't delay spinup, but you can use external power with them (via the drive or the hub/repeater).
I think you're underestimating both the minimal pressure required to break an LCD panel and the sheer paper-thin-ness of the plastic involved.:) Really, on the 73xx line, the plastic on the top has way more give than I like, and there is enough screen torsion to annoy me.
Hard dives, especially while not running/parked, are mightly resiliant (something like 500g non-op shock withstanding or such for the Travelstar).. and as for the the other stuff, well it soldered in, my boy!
If I drop the machine while it's running, I've probably got problems bigger than can be fixed with casemodding.
Okay, okay, and the metal looks cool. Metal laptops look cool. We can't all afford a Powerbook G4!
I have a laptop, and I'm paranoid about it (even though it be cheap), so my case mod was designed for safety.
It's a Compaq Armada 7380, and the back of the screen assembly (the _top_ when the screen is closed) seemed pretty thin and weak and I felt that if anything hit the top with any speed the LCD would buckle.
To counteract that I found a piece of aluminium plate and had it cut to the size of the top of the laptop with the edges beveled, fasteners holes added and a cutout for the name/model display square. It attaches with 8 very short/small bolts with washers to the the top so if anything is dropped in the closed laptop, or if the laptop is dropped upside down on something, the screen won't be pushed in from the back and shatter. It also adds some much needed rigidity to the screen as a whole.
Cornerstone?
on
Samba Turns 10
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"...becoming a cornerstone of the Linux community."
This counts as sort of amusing as Samba was originally written for Trigells' DEC system, and I doubt he even expected to ever get off his DEC, let along be ported to a dozen other systems and become one of the highest profile Free Software projects in use.
No, I love the Everything Engine, and I'm even a code contributor.. but if you're seriously thinking about doing this with Everything, make sure you allocate a lot of time to it's configuration.
The initial instal is cake, but getting pages, templates, themes and whatnot together does take a lot of time. Of course, the effect is nothing short of amazing when it's finished.
You first need to ask yourself what sort of a community you're trying to create; news logs like kuro5hin and slashdot have very differnt community dynamic from places like PerlMonks or E2 and you should probably choose based on that.
And, of course you don't want to drop the possibility of completely rolling your own engine. If you have a grasp of a web-suitable language like Python, Perl or PHP or the like, you could actually hack a small scale content presentation system together in about the time it would take to assemble and Everything based site. If you're into DIY.
...you have at once argued that people should not expect free software to be of the same quality as commercial software...
Really? I'd be tickled pink if you would show me where I said that.
In fact, what I said is that people sould expect free software to be on the same level as non-free. I also said that it woudld get there but there is a chance it would get there at a much slower pace due to the fact that there is very little in the way of a paid development model and thus cannot throw the manpower that companies who require product prepayment can.
If people didn't expect quality, no one would ever attempt to deliver it.
When developers can work on something as their "day job", the software gets progressed quicker, it't that simple -- because then people can give themselves over to developement as a job instead of a hobby.
"Free" software means many things to many people. To me it means you should pay for software out of a measure of it's usefulness to you (and, of course, your ability to pay).
I can't say I got that from the letter, but it is nice to see developers standing up from themselves. Especially in this day of "Free Software can compete with Pay software" it's great seeing someone telling it like it is. My favourite sentement:
Microsoft... can spend a fortune on getting good documentation written, new features, debugging, installation process made smooth and generally polish the thing till it shines. In comparison, AbiWord development is driven solely by a small group's volunteer effort. We work on AbiWord after work and in the weekends when "life" doesn't demand our attention elsewhere. We do it for fun. (emphesis mine)
The problem here is expecting too much all the time. Many of the more visible free software projects have made huge leaps in the past, and to many users that then makes them expect that sort of delivery to be the norm. If you deliver the best most of the time, it's expected all of the time. And as a developer, I'm flattered that users belive in a product and like it so much that the want to be able use it better. But as much as we love code, we also love just relaxing after work sometimes. The Abiword dev's want the software to get as good as it can be, but they also need to have time to work at their day jobs, cut the grass and walk the dog.
Perhaps in the future people will start paying for "free" software. That day, my friends, will be a glorious day.
a friend of mine and I did this a while ago kinda, but not nearly as cool as you're saying (we weren't moving, etc).
We took two Acer Warplink cards and hacked together a basic client-server system (one of us was set as the service, one client, but if we had continued work on it there would probably have been some kind of election process, etc). When I went over to his place I'd leave my laptop based MP3 player running (as did he) and our music would synchronize between each other, not too hard.
The problems in extenting the capabilities are great, though. One, if you want to use wireless like this, you either need to use something like TCP/IP and be on the same subnet, use netbeui and deal with "chatter" or write some new protocol. DHCP is a distinct possibility, though the clients would probably have to tell their rigs to refresh addresses explicitly.
The cards we used were slow... sloowww.... like 100-125 kbps if we were lucky and they didn't suffer distances over 300 feet and didn't seem to deal with Doppler shifts very well.. but then again, these cards are shite and can be had on ebay for 40 bucks (I DO NOT recommend them). 802.11b/a are probably better.
Due to the limited range of ye olde average wavelan card, I'd say transfering music while driving isn't a possibility for a few more years unless you were willing to maintain a static speed while transfers were taking place. If 802.11 in cars becomes more prevalent you could institute a routed/ping-pong system, but that would max out the effective bandwidth pretty fast. But it would be damn cool to transfer files over a relay-p2p highway network.
It could work with a request/response system (human-wise, I;m talking) where the cars co-pilot would send a message to a vehicle near them asking for them to stay stationary relative to them while they traded songs, but I'm not sure people are that social.
For now the best way would be to have servers set up near places like parking lots, etc, where people can stay still for long periods of time.
(if you wanna see my car as it is now (sans wireless networking), go here.
... and what is more spectacular than the Olympics?
The Utah-based company where my day-job is has had a hand in the ticket sales side of the Winter Olies and I've noticed that whenever something this big comes around, people come out of the woodwork to make it go wrong or atleast cause general mayhem.
A lot of people don't like the olympics, and a lot downright hate it to the point where they'll do anything they can to sabatage it including -- you guessed it -- hitting my company so that tickets cannot be sold online for the events.
Now that they're imminently upon us things have calmed down a bit, but a while ago not a day would go by that we didn't get DOS'ed, Skript Kiddie'd and even had a near hit/miss with a domain hijacking, and a lot of the action carried nice little messages saying things like "death to those who promote globalization" and soforth. I can feel for Matt in this, especially since in a little over 2 months it's going to be his systems on centre stage along with the atheletes. The Olympics are too high-profile of a target for anyone lacking in self-esteem to pass up becuase it'll so "so 31337" to say "I changed the name of a frech competitor to 'Le Shithead' on the statz page! W00h00!"
Maybe in 2004 Firewall configuration should be made an Olympic sport?
According to the Cygwin web site, Cygwin is "a UNIX environment for Windows...a UNIX emulation layer".
So I must raise a question of symantics: Is this technically "porting" or mearly something akin to "cross-compiling"? After all, it's not compiling under Windows but a Unix facade over top of Windows?
I had the chance to use the other US 3G provider, VoiceStream, a few weeks ago for a few days. While the connection was a decent speed (fluctuated from 3kBps up to ~12), what killed my hope for it was the latency. Doing anything directly interactive, namely telnet/rlogin/ssh, was highly painful. I can't in good concience solely blame 3G because voicesteams' equipment could just be shite, but I don't think it would be bad enough to give me ~2 second latencies.
Another server that is used in the Java arena is the Orion Server. It's very nice and I enjoy working with it on a daily basis, but it's not Open Source which a lot of people consider to be a downside. It's free for development platform and non-profits, but for production it's $1500 USD per host. Cheaper than BEA, but But a lot more expensive than Jboss or TomCat (the Apache JAS).
Of eXP and slot machines and free money.
on
Windows XP Embedded
·
· Score: 2
Okay, I can fully see why they're doing this: Slot machines are getting more and more advanced these days to bring in more consumers who aren't traditionally attracted to the "one armed bandit". So they make them more advanced with sound, video and everything else you can name. This is fine with me since I don't gamble.
But, to be fair, the Windows product line has been rightly derided for it's stability (though, IMO, Xfree is even less stable:) ) and there is the problem. Most multi-media slaot machines run on proven embedded OS's (especially QNX) and a pretty much bullet-proof becuase they are so single-focused.
I'm not sure of the size of Embedded XP, but I have feeling it will be like embedded NT and have loads of cruft that you'll never need in an embedded system -- and that just gives more stuff to go wrong.
An issue arises: GO to Las Vegas and look at the legal notices posted around, usually around the change cage -- one of them will be a big sign saying something like "in the case of mechanical or elelctronic failure or error, all payouts are declared void and all wagers are considered forfeit." What this is saying is that if your eXP multimedia slot machine BSODs and spits out 50k dollars at you, you don't get to keep it -- what's more is that any money you put into the machine as a bet is lost.
Although I'm still a fan of the T900 and have been for some time, I've had reliability problems. I purchased mine from Metrocall, and while the service was great, I went through 3 replacements before I just gave up on it. They always broke the same way - one day they ust stopped powering up when I flipped open the screen. And I treated these things gingerly too! If you choose it, I hope you'll have better luck than I.
The RIM Blackberry is another popular option in the pager department.
The option I'm with now is Wireless internet from At&t -- for 15/mo on top of any plan you have unlimited WAP, etc, and the R289LX Phone has an optional clip-on keyboard too (though I chose the T250 myself)
Another cheaper cell-phone option is Voicestream who offers 5mb of WAP data across any of their iStream Phones for $5/month.
And Depending on range, you could even go with some wireless toy like the Cybiko, too.
I think a lot of the extreme people are much too extreme, like Richard Stallman; He's a very extreme person, and while I admire a lot of his ideals, I don't admire him because he is so extreme that he can't relate to other people; and that's a limitation.
Casio also has the EG-800 running Windows CE (A ruggedized version of the e-1xx), though they're only splashproof and not waterproof (for that you may want the Psion Freezer).
Another option if the OS realy isnt an issue is to get an old tablet PC from Dauphin off eBay. Most of them are waterproof but they're also only low-end 386's with mono displays.
Slashdot Mirror
An an slightly different node, I found this link a while ago that discusses, in great depth, Sinclair Clones from teh late 1970's to the early 1990's.
Another thing I remember reading a long while ago was an article in "A+/Incider" magazine (and Apple II magazine) where the cover story was the giant headline "Red Apples"; in it they talked about a close of the Apple IIe that looked like a negative of the Apple IIe we know (black case, white keys), but otherwise was more or less the same -- compatible logic, just made somewhere else. I may even throw that coppy in my flatbed if there is enoguh interest.
If I had to guess, all but either very high-end or very early machine will be of the same designs as western counterparts, probably for engineering reasons because an engineer doesn't want to reinvent the wheel (or bitwise logic in this case) just to make machine to do word processing.
ISP: $15
DSL Line: $30 (Qwest DSL Deluxe)
-----
Total: $45 montly (not including telephone line itself)
256 kbsp down guaranteed (burstable to 640), 256 kbps up (not guaranteed)
To be fair, my ISP charge should be $20 a month but I'm on a very ancient pricing structure and because I'm a long-time customer they have never raised my price.
By a striking coicidence, I've actually been working on something similar, albeit not for a desktop machine, but for my car computer.
I don't have pictures or anything up because it's only half finished, but the basic are simple enough to understand. I bought some scrap parts from a fighter jet (at a place that buys military scrap), and among them was the small overhead toggle panel from some sort of aircraft, probably a transport jet, though most of the labels are worn off so I can't really read the markings on it. I've been trying to wire up the toggle and guard switches and use them to, at least partly, control the computer and other things in the car.
*click* Power On
*click* headlights
*click-click* defroster on 'high'
Another reason, besides all those already metnioned are that fiber is still kinda expensive (couple of quid per foot), and Gigabit over Cat-5 is a hack -- it has to use all 4 strands and send a parallel signal. And Cat-7... costlier then fiber.
Another reason is that Gigabit doesn't support QoS out of the box; you need a router type device to do that -- Firewire has that built into the protocol to make sure that your CD-R drive doesn't get an under-run even though you're editing video.
Still one more reason is comaring the cost of Firewire hubs versus Gigabit hubs. A 4+1 IEEE 1394 hub will run you about $45 USD, while a 5+1 Gigabit ethernet port (over cat-5) will run well over $100 (according the minimal research I've done).
That actually /does/ have a name, too. Generally speaking, "uncompressed", Phillips-standard CD Audio is usually know as PCM, or "Pulse Coded Modulation".
With all the hub-ub that has been made about electronic security on the Olymipic network and how paranoid they are, it's a shame that the site itself looks so rank because what is the point of a site staying up if no-one wants to look at it?
I think they will.. but I think that because I'm wireless app developer myself.
One of the most intreguing things about games on WML is that it forces creativity over flashyness, in the same vein that Zork relied on content rather then FMV. It's a chance to really use skill that isn't used much in todays world of huge pipes and fast CPUs.
Most people think the issue here is screen size, but I disagree -- I still think the primary issuse is speed and overhead. Zork would be playable on a handset if it didn't take 30 seconds to move from place to place as it does on some Mobile providers networks (Qwest being the worst offender here).
Okay, here is where I gloat about scooping everyone. When the iPod was first announced, I did my homework and figured it the hard drive used was the Toshiba MK5002MAL, and it turned out to be the HDD1242 which are, in fact, the same drive.
Here is where I get to gloat about being ahead of the curve for once! Yippie!
I know you probably realize that SCSI does/can do this. But I also know that you're probably using IDE because SCSI drives of comparable size will be like twice the cost.
But, you might look into a hybrid solution by using SCSI-to-IDE converters. I'm not sure if the 'delay spinup' feature is dependent on the drive itself or just the SCSI Host Card, but if it's the SCSI card that does delayed spinup, you might be able to do this.
Something like this is what I'm thinking about. Of course, they charge $70 each adapter (which means per drive, too) -- though you may be able to get a better deal somewhere else.
Also, depending on OS, have you looked into a firewire solution? THey don't delay spinup, but you can use external power with them (via the drive or the hub/repeater).
I think you're underestimating both the minimal pressure required to break an LCD panel and the sheer paper-thin-ness of the plastic involved. :) Really, on the 73xx line, the plastic on the top has way more give than I like, and there is enough screen torsion to annoy me.
Hard dives, especially while not running/parked, are mightly resiliant (something like 500g non-op shock withstanding or such for the Travelstar).. and as for the the other stuff, well it soldered in, my boy!
If I drop the machine while it's running, I've probably got problems bigger than can be fixed with casemodding.
Okay, okay, and the metal looks cool. Metal laptops look cool. We can't all afford a Powerbook G4!
I have a laptop, and I'm paranoid about it (even though it be cheap), so my case mod was designed for safety.
It's a Compaq Armada 7380, and the back of the screen assembly (the _top_ when the screen is closed) seemed pretty thin and weak and I felt that if anything hit the top with any speed the LCD would buckle.
To counteract that I found a piece of aluminium plate and had it cut to the size of the top of the laptop with the edges beveled, fasteners holes added and a cutout for the name/model display square. It attaches with 8 very short/small bolts with washers to the the top so if anything is dropped in the closed laptop, or if the laptop is dropped upside down on something, the screen won't be pushed in from the back and shatter. It also adds some much needed rigidity to the screen as a whole.
This counts as sort of amusing as Samba was originally written for Trigells' DEC system, and I doubt he even expected to ever get off his DEC, let along be ported to a dozen other systems and become one of the highest profile Free Software projects in use.
No, I love the Everything Engine, and I'm even a code contributor.. but if you're seriously thinking about doing this with Everything, make sure you allocate a lot of time to it's configuration.
The initial instal is cake, but getting pages, templates, themes and whatnot together does take a lot of time. Of course, the effect is nothing short of amazing when it's finished.
You first need to ask yourself what sort of a community you're trying to create; news logs like kuro5hin and slashdot have very differnt community dynamic from places like PerlMonks or E2 and you should probably choose based on that.
And, of course you don't want to drop the possibility of completely rolling your own engine. If you have a grasp of a web-suitable language like Python, Perl or PHP or the like, you could actually hack a small scale content presentation system together in about the time it would take to assemble and Everything based site. If you're into DIY.
Really? I'd be tickled pink if you would show me where I said that.
In fact, what I said is that people sould expect free software to be on the same level as non-free. I also said that it woudld get there but there is a chance it would get there at a much slower pace due to the fact that there is very little in the way of a paid development model and thus cannot throw the manpower that companies who require product prepayment can.
If people didn't expect quality, no one would ever attempt to deliver it.
When developers can work on something as their "day job", the software gets progressed quicker, it't that simple -- because then people can give themselves over to developement as a job instead of a hobby.
"Free" software means many things to many people. To me it means you should pay for software out of a measure of it's usefulness to you (and, of course, your ability to pay).
I can't say I got that from the letter, but it is nice to see developers standing up from themselves. Especially in this day of "Free Software can compete with Pay software" it's great seeing someone telling it like it is. My favourite sentement:
The problem here is expecting too much all the time. Many of the more visible free software projects have made huge leaps in the past, and to many users that then makes them expect that sort of delivery to be the norm. If you deliver the best most of the time, it's expected all of the time. And as a developer, I'm flattered that users belive in a product and like it so much that the want to be able use it better. But as much as we love code, we also love just relaxing after work sometimes. The Abiword dev's want the software to get as good as it can be, but they also need to have time to work at their day jobs, cut the grass and walk the dog.
Perhaps in the future people will start paying for "free" software. That day, my friends, will be a glorious day.
a friend of mine and I did this a while ago kinda, but not nearly as cool as you're saying (we weren't moving, etc).
We took two Acer Warplink cards and hacked together a basic client-server system (one of us was set as the service, one client, but if we had continued work on it there would probably have been some kind of election process, etc). When I went over to his place I'd leave my laptop based MP3 player running (as did he) and our music would synchronize between each other, not too hard.
The problems in extenting the capabilities are great, though. One, if you want to use wireless like this, you either need to use something like TCP/IP and be on the same subnet, use netbeui and deal with "chatter" or write some new protocol. DHCP is a distinct possibility, though the clients would probably have to tell their rigs to refresh addresses explicitly.
The cards we used were slow... sloowww.... like 100-125 kbps if we were lucky and they didn't suffer distances over 300 feet and didn't seem to deal with Doppler shifts very well.. but then again, these cards are shite and can be had on ebay for 40 bucks (I DO NOT recommend them). 802.11b/a are probably better.
Due to the limited range of ye olde average wavelan card, I'd say transfering music while driving isn't a possibility for a few more years unless you were willing to maintain a static speed while transfers were taking place. If 802.11 in cars becomes more prevalent you could institute a routed/ping-pong system, but that would max out the effective bandwidth pretty fast. But it would be damn cool to transfer files over a relay-p2p highway network.
It could work with a request/response system (human-wise, I;m talking) where the cars co-pilot would send a message to a vehicle near them asking for them to stay stationary relative to them while they traded songs, but I'm not sure people are that social.
For now the best way would be to have servers set up near places like parking lots, etc, where people can stay still for long periods of time.
(if you wanna see my car as it is now (sans wireless networking), go here.
... and what is more spectacular than the Olympics?
The Utah-based company where my day-job is has had a hand in the ticket sales side of the Winter Olies and I've noticed that whenever something this big comes around, people come out of the woodwork to make it go wrong or atleast cause general mayhem.
A lot of people don't like the olympics, and a lot downright hate it to the point where they'll do anything they can to sabatage it including -- you guessed it -- hitting my company so that tickets cannot be sold online for the events.
Now that they're imminently upon us things have calmed down a bit, but a while ago not a day would go by that we didn't get DOS'ed, Skript Kiddie'd and even had a near hit/miss with a domain hijacking, and a lot of the action carried nice little messages saying things like "death to those who promote globalization" and soforth. I can feel for Matt in this, especially since in a little over 2 months it's going to be his systems on centre stage along with the atheletes. The Olympics are too high-profile of a target for anyone lacking in self-esteem to pass up becuase it'll so "so 31337" to say "I changed the name of a frech competitor to 'Le Shithead' on the statz page! W00h00!"
Maybe in 2004 Firewall configuration should be made an Olympic sport?
Makes sense you looke at it that way. So, technically it's porting Debian to Cygwin -- but since Cygwin only runs under Windows anyway..
Sir, I am now enlightened.
Imagine, actually having an intelligent reply on Slashdot. Who'd a' thunk it? :)
According to the Cygwin web site, Cygwin is "a UNIX environment for Windows...a UNIX emulation layer".
So I must raise a question of symantics: Is this technically "porting" or mearly something akin to "cross-compiling"? After all, it's not compiling under Windows but a Unix facade over top of Windows?
I had the chance to use the other US 3G provider, VoiceStream, a few weeks ago for a few days. While the connection was a decent speed (fluctuated from 3kBps up to ~12), what killed my hope for it was the latency. Doing anything directly interactive, namely telnet/rlogin/ssh, was highly painful. I can't in good concience solely blame 3G because voicesteams' equipment could just be shite, but I don't think it would be bad enough to give me ~2 second latencies.
Another server that is used in the Java arena is the Orion Server. It's very nice and I enjoy working with it on a daily basis, but it's not Open Source which a lot of people consider to be a downside. It's free for development platform and non-profits, but for production it's $1500 USD per host. Cheaper than BEA, but But a lot more expensive than Jboss or TomCat (the Apache JAS).
Okay, I can fully see why they're doing this: Slot machines are getting more and more advanced these days to bring in more consumers who aren't traditionally attracted to the "one armed bandit". So they make them more advanced with sound, video and everything else you can name. This is fine with me since I don't gamble.
But, to be fair, the Windows product line has been rightly derided for it's stability (though, IMO, Xfree is even less stable :) ) and there is the problem. Most multi-media slaot machines run on proven embedded OS's (especially QNX) and a pretty much bullet-proof becuase they are so single-focused.
I'm not sure of the size of Embedded XP, but I have feeling it will be like embedded NT and have loads of cruft that you'll never need in an embedded system -- and that just gives more stuff to go wrong.
An issue arises: GO to Las Vegas and look at the legal notices posted around, usually around the change cage -- one of them will be a big sign saying something like "in the case of mechanical or elelctronic failure or error, all payouts are declared void and all wagers are considered forfeit." What this is saying is that if your eXP multimedia slot machine BSODs and spits out 50k dollars at you, you don't get to keep it -- what's more is that any money you put into the machine as a bet is lost.
Casino aren't in this business to loose money.
Although I'm still a fan of the T900 and have been for some time, I've had reliability problems. I purchased mine from Metrocall, and while the service was great, I went through 3 replacements before I just gave up on it. They always broke the same way - one day they ust stopped powering up when I flipped open the screen. And I treated these things gingerly too! If you choose it, I hope you'll have better luck than I.
The RIM Blackberry is another popular option in the pager department.
The option I'm with now is Wireless internet from At&t -- for 15/mo on top of any plan you have unlimited WAP, etc, and the R289LX Phone has an optional clip-on keyboard too (though I chose the T250 myself)
Another cheaper cell-phone option is Voicestream who offers 5mb of WAP data across any of their iStream Phones for $5/month.
And Depending on range, you could even go with some wireless toy like the Cybiko, too.
I think a lot of the extreme people are much too extreme, like Richard Stallman; He's a very extreme person, and while I admire a lot of his ideals, I don't admire him because he is so extreme that he can't relate to other people; and that's a limitation.
Casio also has the EG-800 running Windows CE (A ruggedized version of the e-1xx), though they're only splashproof and not waterproof (for that you may want the Psion Freezer).
Another option if the OS realy isnt an issue is to get an old tablet PC from Dauphin off eBay. Most of them are waterproof but they're also only low-end 386's with mono displays.