How can there be no mention yet of monowall? Its an excellent tool for simple reliable firewalling. We're running it off an old P2 class machine. The system software is on CD with our config file on a floppy. Its been completely reliable for going on a year and even this old machine happily keeps our T1 maxed out without blinking an eye. We actually replaced a failing WatchGuard box ($$) with monowall, increasing the feature set at near zero cost. The actaul hardware is a retired desktop (free) and we just added 3 PCI NICs (~$20 each). Eventually, we'll probably buy a rackmount system built for monowall, but even that only runs $500-$800.
Get a treo. It has a thumb keyboard and several ssh clients. Add in PDANet and its a wireless modem with a USB connection to your laptop. Its available on both CDMA/EVDO and GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks. The price varies wildly from ~$600 for an unlocked GSM model down to $99 for an Earthlink branded one (probably with some strings attached).
This would be a great gizmo to sit in the kitchen for checking stuff on the web far away from the office and the real computers.
But does it do multi-user? I'd really like a web tablet that did basic email and web with multiple accounts via some kind of fast user switching interface. Oh well, this probably isn't it.
Connecting a desktop computer to a TV is the realm of linux weenies who argue about gold-tipped cables. Real People, the kind that buy macs because they 'just work', don't want to use a keyboard anywhere close to the TV! This device needs to be a dedicated box that does one thing and does it well. It bridges the gap between media center in the living room and media depot on your mac. A resonably equipped mac mini (airport, memory, applecare) is about $700 or $800. This device needs to be $200 and brain dead easy to use. (That means it'll be brain dead easy to use, but cost $400.)
The fact the iTMS is suddenly selling music videos is clearly not ground breaking. It is, at most, a curiousity. Some folks will download some videos simple to see how it works. (I probably will.) For Apple, however, its a public beta of their video distribution channels. Its important that they test out their distribution chain end to end. This is a lot easier with 3 minute music videos rather than all 12 hours of LOTR. The iPod isn't going away any time soon, but clearly in several years, the cell will absorb these functionalities. (Cell phone outfits are already planning (announced?) cell phones with hard drives.)
What's more likely is a home entertainment device, probably tagged with the iPod moniker -- iPod TV if you will. Imagine a small (probably white) box that you sit next to your TV. Plug in a couple cables and {poof!} you can see all the media on your mac. It'll probably have ethernet as well as Airport Extreme. It'll be zero-conf and automagically find your mac via Bonjour/Rendzvous/whatever. A lot of this functionality is available on your TiVo today, at least music and photos. iPod TV will likely provide similiar functionality plus video. On the mac side, iTunes will expand to encompass video as well, managing video playlists and libraries, all exported to the iPodTV. iTMS being able to deliver video content over the internet is the last piece to this puzzle. Jobs has got to annouce something at WWDC.
Oh, and BTW, bluetooth on the iPod is stupid for syncing. There's just not enough bandwidth. Airport and Bonjour could do the job though. That's not entirely crazy.
Tiger finally provides 64-bit apps, right? Not quite. In their 64-bit apps overview document, Apple slips in the bad news. Neither the Carbon or Cocoa APIs are 64-bit, so no graphics apps can be 64-bit. Their solution is to create a 64-bit command line app and wrapper it with a 32-bit frontend, communicating through pipes, shared memory, etc.
While that's all well and good and the Unix Way, its disappointing that graphical apps should be hamstrung in such a way. If you need big memory access and OpenGL, you've got quite a few hoops to jump through. As a linux weenie who made the switch, I'm saddened by crumbs we keep getting as Apple strings us along towards 64-bit land. Linux has been 64-bit for a very long time now and even Microsoft's 64-bit XP is fully 64-bit including graphics.
At least my G5 is still the 'world's fastest personal computer'.
BellSouth (in NC, at least) offeres a DSL Lite connection for $25. You get the always-on, but lowere speeds. Sounds like just what the poster is looking for.
Surely if we've got it here in Dixie, ya'll should have it elsewhere too. It even includes 20 hours of dialup service.
I've got a Trager Cross Country bag (which came from eBags). Its a three-way -- carry handle, shoulder strap, and disappearing backpack straps. Its slides easily over a rolly-bag handle -- good for schlepping through airports. There's room on the inside for a laptop of good size and a notebook or two as week as a pretty spacious outside pocket for all your cables/chargers/other gear.
I've had mine a long time (>3 years) and use it every day. Its great. Nothing's broken, torn, or ripped. Its outlasted 3 laptops and show's no real signs on wear. They have a bigger one and a smaller one now too.
I've had a lot of success using Knoppix and dd. Knoppix is a full linux distro on a CD.
I image a lot of identical laptops. With Knoppix, I can pop in a boot CD along with a pcmcia firewire card attached to a big external drive. Everything (even sound!) is detected on boot up and I can mount the external drive and dd an image to or from. I can write a 20 gig image to the laptop in just over 12 minutes. Going the other way takes a bit longer... haven't figured that one out.
I was using ghost, but its a royal pain. Limited support for external devices (no pcmcia support). Network backups involve making DOS/Windows for Workgroup (!) boot disks. Ick all around. Knoppix works much better. Network interfaces are also detected and configured via dhcp, so I could do net backups as well.
Blantant Plug -- Got a CAVE -- Use Ensight!
on
What is a CAVE Good For?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
My company, CEI, Inc., makes a product called EnSight that's used in CAVE environments. EnSight is a general purpose scientific visualization tool used in a broad variety of fields. Take a look at the pretty pictures on our website. Fields include astrophysics, professional motorsports, crash test simulations, industrial production simulation, biomedical, aerospace vehicle design, etc. Really high end visualization happens in a CAVE environment with 3-D goggles and head tracking equipment. This lets you move around through your simulation, look at things from different perspectives and even look from inside out. Most of these things are driven by big SGI boxes, but clustered (read linux) solutions are becoming more viable.
EnSight -- See what you're missing! (Please mod accordingly for cheese content.)
If you look at the mail in form, there's fine print at the bottom. The 'Trade In, Trade Up' deal where you mail in your Premiere CD for a free Final Cut Express disk does not mention Academic versions at all -- just the Premiere LE.
Only the 'Your Checks in the Mail' offer mentions Academic software. Sounds like you can't buy FC Pro Academic ($500) and get the $500 rebate. But it seems that you can trade your Academic Premeire disk for FC Express for free!
It seems to me that one of the bigger draws of 64-bit computing is the ability to address much more memory than a 32-bit processor can. Why would Apple put a 64-bit chip in a laptop when even the highest end laptops have a 2 gig physical limit? Even that requires 1 GB laptop sized dimms which are rare and cost many $$$. So, is the 64-bit laptop thing crazy or is Apple going to magically chock it full of memory?
I'm a twenty-something computer geek (okay, late twenties). Back in my day, in the seventh grade, I typed up a report on my cherry new Amiga 500. My teacher reluctantly informed me that typing wasn't part of the cirriculum and I'd have to write future reports out by hand in cursive.
15 years later, the shoes on the other foot. I only write in block letters when I'm forced to write at all. Cursive is strictly for my illegible signature, closer to signet stamp than english text. And my middle school teacher is blind as a bat from reading children's scribbling.
All the previous iPod updates have come through Software Update. I'm guessing it won't appear for a couple hours/days, like most every other update. They appear on the website for the die-hards and trickle into Software Update for the rest of the world too busy to check the iPod homepage everyday.
Microsoft Office file formats are the lynchpin to their dominance of the computer software world. Because everyone has Office, no one can switch since the defacto exchange format is MS Office docs. Small companies/organizations can effect wholesale change to some degree but still have difficulty trying to interact with other businesses. Non-techs don't understand why you can't read their Word doc b/c what else could you be using? This causes pain for anybody who tries to switch and the quickest relief of pain is to fork out a few hundred smackers for a copy of Office.
Microsoft also enforces its planned obsolesence in the same way. Since new machines only come with the new version of Office, any existing organization is eventually infected with the 'upgraded' versions (complete with their 'smart' features that are either annoying or useless to 99% of the consumer base). Once these documents begin to float around and not open quite right in old versions of Office, everyone needs to upgrade. Otherwise, countless billable hours will be lost to futzing with file formats. $400 for an Office license quickly pays for itself when you're billed out at $50-$100 per hour. Its not the most desireable path, but for a struggling business, its the quickest pain relief available.
File formats also further entrence the Windows operating system. Clearly, linux and unix are out with no native MS Office suite. While I admire the open source projects and their ability to continually reverse engineer the moving target of MS file formats, it is impossible to keep up and they can never provide 100% compatibility which is imperative for a working daily interaction with MS Office users. Even on the Mac with Office X (touted by MS ads for its full compatibility), there are roadblocks to easy transion. My wife uses Office at work because she has to interact with others who do. She recently tried to move to Mac but couldn't because her files weren't quite right. The symbols didn't translate correctly, which might not bother business folk, but as a scientist, it meant that all her technical papers would require endless fixing just to do a little work at hoem. So she's back to a Microsoft Windows box. How fortunate for Redmond that the software they supplied wasn't capable enough for her to make the 'switch'.
All of this hinges on the ability of Office to maintain a closed file format. It keeps users trapped in Office due to compatibility with their coworkers and colleagues. It forces users to upgrade their perfectly good software and shell out more $$$ to MS just because someone else in the office has a new machine. It locks users into the blessed Windows OS again solely for the sake of compatibility and ease of document exchange. MS will never agree to a default open file format for its applications as it would break their stranglehold on both office productivity software and operating systems, the only two profitable portions of their business. Even the new XML formats that promise self describing data storage will only pay lip service to the critics as they wrap up their proprietary binary formats in easy to read, text tags.
With my parents cleaning out their garage, I was recently reunited with my Atari 2600. Adventure was absolutely one of my favorites, so I popped the cartridge in and started running through the game. My wife was quite disturbed that I dashed right through the all the mazes. I know I haven't touched the thing in at least 10 years, but the game map is burned into my head forever. I'm sure I could have done something better with those brain cells, but I'm glad I didn't. Anybody else got video-game-map-burn-in? I'm pretty sure the original Legend of Zelda (for NES) is permanently imprinted too.
Take a tennis ball and a basketball. Bounce each separately in front of the kids. The place the tennis ball on top of the basketball and drop both. If you do it right, so the two are in contact when the basketball hits the floor, it will definitely shock them. The basketball will hardly bounce as its kinetic energy is transfered to the tennis ball. The tennis ball will shoot up into the air as if fired from a cannon! Be sure to have lots of head room for this one.
I'm looking for a bluetooth enabler for my existing peripherals. I've got an existing USB/ps2 keyboard and trackball. They're not super expensive, but $100 or more. More importantly, I like my trackball and logictech no longer makes the same form factor. Does there (or will there) exist an adapter that would allow me to bluetooth enable these? I'm looking for a magic box that I plug these into via USB (or ps2 for that matter) and the magic box then connects to a laptop (or whatever) wirelessly via bluetooth. I know this sounds silly when I could just plug in the USB cable, but I'd like to have a 'wireless dock' to these peripherals.
Bandwidth shouldn't be a problem, since its just a keyboard and mouse. I expect to see bluetooth versions in the market in the next year (or five). It seems like this is a feasible thing to build, but it might be prohibitively exspensive. Other applications might include adapting keyboards and mice for handhelds that don't have USB controllers but are bluetooh enabled.
The Cartoon Guide to Physics (Gonick and Huffman) and The New Way Things Work (Macaulay, Ardley) are both excellent books for a low-level introduction to physics. Both books present physics in an accurate, yet simplified way suitable for anyone past the 7th grade.
Slashdot Mirror
How can there be no mention yet of monowall? Its an excellent tool for simple reliable firewalling. We're running it off an old P2 class machine. The system software is on CD with our config file on a floppy. Its been completely reliable for going on a year and even this old machine happily keeps our T1 maxed out without blinking an eye. We actually replaced a failing WatchGuard box ($$) with monowall, increasing the feature set at near zero cost. The actaul hardware is a retired desktop (free) and we just added 3 PCI NICs (~$20 each). Eventually, we'll probably buy a rackmount system built for monowall, but even that only runs $500-$800.
Get a treo. It has a thumb keyboard and several ssh clients. Add in PDANet and its a wireless modem with a USB connection to your laptop. Its available on both CDMA/EVDO and GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks. The price varies wildly from ~$600 for an unlocked GSM model down to $99 for an Earthlink branded one (probably with some strings attached).
This would be a great gizmo to sit in the kitchen for checking stuff on the web far away from the office and the real computers.
But does it do multi-user? I'd really like a web tablet that did basic email and web with multiple accounts via some kind of fast user switching interface. Oh well, this probably isn't it.
No! No! No!
Connecting a desktop computer to a TV is the realm of linux weenies who argue about gold-tipped cables. Real People, the kind that buy macs because they 'just work', don't want to use a keyboard anywhere close to the TV! This device needs to be a dedicated box that does one thing and does it well. It bridges the gap between media center in the living room and media depot on your mac. A resonably equipped mac mini (airport, memory, applecare) is about $700 or $800. This device needs to be $200 and brain dead easy to use. (That means it'll be brain dead easy to use, but cost $400.)
The fact the iTMS is suddenly selling music videos is clearly not ground breaking. It is, at most, a curiousity. Some folks will download some videos simple to see how it works. (I probably will.) For Apple, however, its a public beta of their video distribution channels. Its important that they test out their distribution chain end to end. This is a lot easier with 3 minute music videos rather than all 12 hours of LOTR. The iPod isn't going away any time soon, but clearly in several years, the cell will absorb these functionalities. (Cell phone outfits are already planning (announced?) cell phones with hard drives.)
What's more likely is a home entertainment device, probably tagged with the iPod moniker -- iPod TV if you will. Imagine a small (probably white) box that you sit next to your TV. Plug in a couple cables and {poof!} you can see all the media on your mac. It'll probably have ethernet as well as Airport Extreme. It'll be zero-conf and automagically find your mac via Bonjour/Rendzvous/whatever. A lot of this functionality is available on your TiVo today, at least music and photos. iPod TV will likely provide similiar functionality plus video. On the mac side, iTunes will expand to encompass video as well, managing video playlists and libraries, all exported to the iPodTV. iTMS being able to deliver video content over the internet is the last piece to this puzzle. Jobs has got to annouce something at WWDC.
Oh, and BTW, bluetooth on the iPod is stupid for syncing. There's just not enough bandwidth. Airport and Bonjour could do the job though. That's not entirely crazy.
Tiger finally provides 64-bit apps, right? Not quite. In their 64-bit apps overview document, Apple slips in the bad news. Neither the Carbon or Cocoa APIs are 64-bit, so no graphics apps can be 64-bit. Their solution is to create a 64-bit command line app and wrapper it with a 32-bit frontend, communicating through pipes, shared memory, etc.
While that's all well and good and the Unix Way, its disappointing that graphical apps should be hamstrung in such a way. If you need big memory access and OpenGL, you've got quite a few hoops to jump through. As a linux weenie who made the switch, I'm saddened by crumbs we keep getting as Apple strings us along towards 64-bit land. Linux has been 64-bit for a very long time now and even Microsoft's 64-bit XP is fully 64-bit including graphics.
At least my G5 is still the 'world's fastest personal computer'.
BellSouth (in NC, at least) offeres a DSL Lite connection for $25. You get the always-on, but lowere speeds. Sounds like just what the poster is looking for.
Surely if we've got it here in Dixie, ya'll should have it elsewhere too. It even includes 20 hours of dialup service.
I've got a Trager Cross Country bag (which came from eBags). Its a three-way -- carry handle, shoulder strap, and disappearing backpack straps. Its slides easily over a rolly-bag handle -- good for schlepping through airports. There's room on the inside for a laptop of good size and a notebook or two as week as a pretty spacious outside pocket for all your cables/chargers/other gear.
I've had mine a long time (>3 years) and use it every day. Its great. Nothing's broken, torn, or ripped. Its outlasted 3 laptops and show's no real signs on wear. They have a bigger one and a smaller one now too.
Pi.
The worst part was at the end, when only the guy in the movie got to drill a whole in his head. I was jealous.
If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it.
For those keeping score at home, you can buy generac at home depot.
I've had a lot of success using Knoppix and dd. Knoppix is a full linux distro on a CD.
I image a lot of identical laptops. With Knoppix, I can pop in a boot CD along with a pcmcia firewire card attached to a big external drive. Everything (even sound!) is detected on boot up and I can mount the external drive and dd an image to or from. I can write a 20 gig image to the laptop in just over 12 minutes. Going the other way takes a bit longer... haven't figured that one out.
I was using ghost, but its a royal pain. Limited support for external devices (no pcmcia support). Network backups involve making DOS/Windows for Workgroup (!) boot disks. Ick all around. Knoppix works much better. Network interfaces are also detected and configured via dhcp, so I could do net backups as well.
My company, CEI, Inc., makes a product called EnSight that's used in CAVE environments. EnSight is a general purpose scientific visualization tool used in a broad variety of fields. Take a look at the pretty pictures on our website. Fields include astrophysics, professional motorsports, crash test simulations, industrial production simulation, biomedical, aerospace vehicle design, etc. Really high end visualization happens in a CAVE environment with 3-D goggles and head tracking equipment. This lets you move around through your simulation, look at things from different perspectives and even look from inside out. Most of these things are driven by big SGI boxes, but clustered (read linux) solutions are becoming more viable.
EnSight -- See what you're missing! (Please mod accordingly for cheese content.)
Don't forget about Second Breakfast!
If you look at the mail in form, there's fine print at the bottom. The 'Trade In, Trade Up' deal where you mail in your Premiere CD for a free Final Cut Express disk does not mention Academic versions at all -- just the Premiere LE.
Only the 'Your Checks in the Mail' offer mentions Academic software. Sounds like you can't buy FC Pro Academic ($500) and get the $500 rebate. But it seems that you can trade your Academic Premeire disk for FC Express for free!
I'm licking my stamps now!
It seems to me that one of the bigger draws of 64-bit computing is the ability to address much more memory than a 32-bit processor can. Why would Apple put a 64-bit chip in a laptop when even the highest end laptops have a 2 gig physical limit? Even that requires 1 GB laptop sized dimms which are rare and cost many $$$. So, is the 64-bit laptop thing crazy or is Apple going to magically chock it full of memory?
15 years later, the shoes on the other foot. I only write in block letters when I'm forced to write at all. Cursive is strictly for my illegible signature, closer to signet stamp than english text. And my middle school teacher is blind as a bat from reading children's scribbling.
OSX has finally come along to replace the Amiga.
No mo' Neo.
All the previous iPod updates have come through Software Update. I'm guessing it won't appear for a couple hours/days, like most every other update. They appear on the website for the die-hards and trickle into Software Update for the rest of the world too busy to check the iPod homepage everyday.
Microsoft Office file formats are the lynchpin to their dominance of the computer software world. Because everyone has Office, no one can switch since the defacto exchange format is MS Office docs. Small companies/organizations can effect wholesale change to some degree but still have difficulty trying to interact with other businesses. Non-techs don't understand why you can't read their Word doc b/c what else could you be using? This causes pain for anybody who tries to switch and the quickest relief of pain is to fork out a few hundred smackers for a copy of Office.
Microsoft also enforces its planned obsolesence in the same way. Since new machines only come with the new version of Office, any existing organization is eventually infected with the 'upgraded' versions (complete with their 'smart' features that are either annoying or useless to 99% of the consumer base). Once these documents begin to float around and not open quite right in old versions of Office, everyone needs to upgrade. Otherwise, countless billable hours will be lost to futzing with file formats. $400 for an Office license quickly pays for itself when you're billed out at $50-$100 per hour. Its not the most desireable path, but for a struggling business, its the quickest pain relief available.
File formats also further entrence the Windows operating system. Clearly, linux and unix are out with no native MS Office suite. While I admire the open source projects and their ability to continually reverse engineer the moving target of MS file formats, it is impossible to keep up and they can never provide 100% compatibility which is imperative for a working daily interaction with MS Office users. Even on the Mac with Office X (touted by MS ads for its full compatibility), there are roadblocks to easy transion. My wife uses Office at work because she has to interact with others who do. She recently tried to move to Mac but couldn't because her files weren't quite right. The symbols didn't translate correctly, which might not bother business folk, but as a scientist, it meant that all her technical papers would require endless fixing just to do a little work at hoem. So she's back to a Microsoft Windows box. How fortunate for Redmond that the software they supplied wasn't capable enough for her to make the 'switch'.
All of this hinges on the ability of Office to maintain a closed file format. It keeps users trapped in Office due to compatibility with their coworkers and colleagues. It forces users to upgrade their perfectly good software and shell out more $$$ to MS just because someone else in the office has a new machine. It locks users into the blessed Windows OS again solely for the sake of compatibility and ease of document exchange. MS will never agree to a default open file format for its applications as it would break their stranglehold on both office productivity software and operating systems, the only two profitable portions of their business. Even the new XML formats that promise self describing data storage will only pay lip service to the critics as they wrap up their proprietary binary formats in easy to read, text tags.
So Pudge, where's the /. channel already?
With my parents cleaning out their garage, I was recently reunited with my Atari 2600. Adventure was absolutely one of my favorites, so I popped the cartridge in and started running through the game. My wife was quite disturbed that I dashed right through the all the mazes. I know I haven't touched the thing in at least 10 years, but the game map is burned into my head forever. I'm sure I could have done something better with those brain cells, but I'm glad I didn't. Anybody else got video-game-map-burn-in? I'm pretty sure the original Legend of Zelda (for NES) is permanently imprinted too.
Take a tennis ball and a basketball. Bounce each separately in front of the kids. The place the tennis ball on top of the basketball and drop both. If you do it right, so the two are in contact when the basketball hits the floor, it will definitely shock them. The basketball will hardly bounce as its kinetic energy is transfered to the tennis ball. The tennis ball will shoot up into the air as if fired from a cannon! Be sure to have lots of head room for this one.
I'm looking for a bluetooth enabler for my existing peripherals. I've got an existing USB/ps2 keyboard and trackball. They're not super expensive, but $100 or more. More importantly, I like my trackball and logictech no longer makes the same form factor. Does there (or will there) exist an adapter that would allow me to bluetooth enable these? I'm looking for a magic box that I plug these into via USB (or ps2 for that matter) and the magic box then connects to a laptop (or whatever) wirelessly via bluetooth. I know this sounds silly when I could just plug in the USB cable, but I'd like to have a 'wireless dock' to these peripherals.
Bandwidth shouldn't be a problem, since its just a keyboard and mouse. I expect to see bluetooth versions in the market in the next year (or five). It seems like this is a feasible thing to build, but it might be prohibitively exspensive. Other applications might include adapting keyboards and mice for handhelds that don't have USB controllers but are bluetooh enabled.
The Cartoon Guide to Physics (Gonick and Huffman) and The New Way Things Work (Macaulay, Ardley) are both excellent books for a low-level introduction to physics. Both books present physics in an accurate, yet simplified way suitable for anyone past the 7th grade.