Indeed, this is perhaps a better Holy Grail than everything in one box; ubiquitous networking in the home.
If all your devices can talk to each other and you have standards in place, presto.
Your Tivo talks to your CD/MP3 device talks to your BeIA fridge talks to your IPaq etc. and they all talk to your NAT router and hence to everyone else's kit.
Some of this is behind the ideas of Bluetooth, but of course for media you need something faster.
You can see from this why IP v 6 is gonna be needed when every hose needs a class C!!
Just re-built my thinkpad - so I put Mandrake 8.0 on it. What else is DSL for if not linuxisos.org?;-)
After 2 days of grief with no mouse support working (you do not want to run their graphical installer without a mouse)... I talked the thinkpad into enabling the serial port so I can at least use a serial mouse. Doubtless I'll get the trackpoint on the go with a little work.
I must say I'm impressed with it. It looks good, and it auto-detected my PCMCIA network card that is very new and so not supposed to work under anything Microsoft didn't write (DFE-680TXD; it's using a tulip chipset if you're interested)
Mind you, it's I guess a case that each new major revison of a distro has all the latest toys and that's a big part of the "wow" factor.
Friend of mine was once formatting a floppy (under Win 9x) when someone distracted him and he formatted C: instead.... hit the Y without even thinking..... nasty!
Surprisingly Windozes didn't fall over straight away but kind of staggered about a bit first, it was interesting from a distance;-)
Put in as much cable as you'll ever need, then double it. Sooner or later.
One thing on the fibre debate; some people are saying "fibre is cheap to put in" and others "yeah, but the interfaces are expensive"; a third option for real future-proofing it to run dark cable; i.e. while you're putting your CAT5 in put some un-used fibre next to it; then you can gradually migrate as time goes on.
Well, hang on, if he is asking for an Ethernet intercom, so why are you going on about a CAT5 intercom? In fact, he seems to be after a solution using 802.11.
The concensus seems to be that there is needless complexity in what he asks.
Essentially, one normally runs data over IP over ethernet over CAT5 and that is the normal scenario.
Occasionally for some reason (usually trying to save money by using excess capacity on your WAN) you want to run voice over IP over ethernet over CAT5 ; and occassionally (because you want mobile computers or have trouble running cables) you want to run data over IP over 802.11 over radio waves. You could combine the two and do (deep breath) voice over IP over 802.11 over radio waves.
However, if all you want is a wireless intercom, then there are products designed to run navive voice over radio; and these will be cheaper and simpler hand have bigger feature sets.
What does the SLA with them say? If the service keeps failing, not thru your fault, sounds like you have a good case that they are breaching the contract, and you can walk away.
Mind you, I am not a lawyer, although I play one on Televison.
It is not to try and run things while waiting for the power to come back. You'll go thru a lot of expensive batteries that way!
It is to allow you to perform a safe shutdown on your devices.
A TV does not need a safe shutdown. Just kill the power.
I don't know about the Tivo; it may be designed to safely deal with power cuts, since after all it is a consumer device.
I can't see any difficulty with connecting UPSes to a Linux box; liable to be a lot easier than an NT box, since it should be simple to write some code that checks for a signal on the serial port and issues a shutdown -h now when it sees it.
Re:Slightly more expensive than a Lego Mindstorms
on
Agenda VR3 Review
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· Score: 2
Ah, but hardly anyone's gonna buy one of those, are they?
What you want really is to take a commercially viable PDA like the iPaq and find a way to subvert the consumer orientated OS in favour of something open you can hack about etc.
Re:Going to wait for a post-release review
on
Agenda VR3 Review
·
· Score: 2
As the reviewer point out though, the company only said it was pre-release after he complained it was crap, and also he got it after the official release date.
...I was going to install BeOS on my new machine, but if I can have zOs... I mean, that must be 25 versions later, right? Same as my Windows 2000 was 1902 versions better than Windows 98.
I must say, that when I had a Palm, it was the other way around for me; on the rare (and they are rare!) occasions when I had to write with a pen, I had to consciously struggle not to use the Palm's alphabet.
How portable has it go to be? I suspect you want a laptop because you'll only have one machine and it's got to be portable as you need it to move around with you.
Reason is I'm wondering if a "luggable" is an option. Presumably you can get those with absurd power levels in them...hell, checkmout what the overclocking freaks do in making PC cases with handles for gamers...
Or, how about some kind of thinner client? Can you use some kind of cheapo laptop with an editor for the portable part of it, and remote control a proper machine when you need to do some heavy processing?
In essence, you will take a hideous speed hit in moving to a laptop, so if you can think of a way out of it....
Well, this is the old argument that Microsoft's hold on the market is kinda good because it helps comodditize (sp?) it; PCs are cheap because they are all similar, and they're all similar because if you make 'em too dissimilar they don't run windoze and people don't buy them. This in turn means you can buy a cheap PC, throw the OEM license for ME in the trash, and install Linux.
Ditto with the tablet PC. Since it is essentially a PC, it'll be running Linux about a day after Alan Cox gets hold of one;-)
What's the point in having 10MBps to your ISP from home? The inhibitor is surely going to be what the ISP has to the internet.
Example: One of my ISP's is UUNET.
Across the Atlantic they have 5 x OC3c lines and 2 x OC48c lines which comes to... about 5.7 Gb/s
Where it might help I suppose issituations like you have now with cable companies, when you are accessing sites in the same ISP; or for sites that have been cached at the ISP level.
This is one reason why broadband companies are so keen on stuff like "watch movies from our media servers" because that's not choking their upstream feed.
They have removed key features; like Windows ME, XP-Personal cannot participate in a Microsoft NEtworking Domain. I ain't gonna install XP-PE for the same reason I won't let my users have ME on their machines.
Actually they have two "client" XP's; XP Pro is for business and XP Personal for home. You wouldn't want to use Personal in a business as it can't particip[ate fully in MS networking etc.
Hey, isn't everything in Linux user-configurable? You've got the source!
Don't forget the work at Bletchley Park in WW2, building the first digital computer...it's easy to because for so many years it was secret.
One approach that interests me in the history of computing is the cumulaive nature of applications.
What makes a computer different from other inventions is the fact tha tpeople keep thinking of major new applications for them. You could take an applicationa t a time and show how that idea started and how it developed. That way your work isn't strictly chronological, but goes back and forward. Example applications:
Originally, Computers were built to do hard sums - babbage's machines were designed to do statistical analysis in the search for ways to cheat at gambling! And that function continues today with the supercomputers predicting the weather.
data processing from the early business computers to the modern storecard systems that track every time I buy dogfood.
Personal productivity devices - the initial visicalc through to Office XP (Bleaarggh!) or PDA's
Communications devices - POS terminals, cash machines, the net, e-mail
Games machines - pong to Quake
Control devices - Apollo program
Fun toys for geeks - some Linux history in there - but also things like the altair and the Sinclairs
Hardware support/detection is another. And that one improves over time, moreso as the user base increases in size.
It's always interesting to me how divided the community is on this matter... I understand the purists would prefer effort to be done on making Linux specific apps; but on the other hand I know I don't run Linux on my machines purely because I have win32 apps that I must run, and if the price of that is running Win2K then so be it.
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Indeed, this is perhaps a better Holy Grail than everything in one box; ubiquitous networking in the home.
If all your devices can talk to each other and you have standards in place, presto.
Your Tivo talks to your CD/MP3 device talks to your BeIA fridge talks to your IPaq etc. and they all talk to your NAT router and hence to everyone else's kit.
Some of this is behind the ideas of Bluetooth, but of course for media you need something faster.
You can see from this why IP v 6 is gonna be needed when every hose needs a class C!!
Just re-built my thinkpad - so I put Mandrake 8.0 on it. What else is DSL for if not linuxisos.org? ;-)
After 2 days of grief with no mouse support working (you do not want to run their graphical installer without a mouse)... I talked the thinkpad into enabling the serial port so I can at least use a serial mouse. Doubtless I'll get the trackpoint on the go with a little work.
I must say I'm impressed with it. It looks good, and it auto-detected my PCMCIA network card that is very new and so not supposed to work under anything Microsoft didn't write (DFE-680TXD; it's using a tulip chipset if you're interested)
Mind you, it's I guess a case that each new major revison of a distro has all the latest toys and that's a big part of the "wow" factor.
Friend of mine was once formatting a floppy (under Win 9x) when someone distracted him and he formatted C: instead.... hit the Y without even thinking..... nasty!
;-)
Surprisingly Windozes didn't fall over straight away but kind of staggered about a bit first, it was interesting from a distance
All together now: "wouldn't happen under Linux!"
Now that's a mission statement - "We want our product to kick total butt"!
Put in as much cable as you'll ever need, then double it. Sooner or later.
One thing on the fibre debate; some people are saying "fibre is cheap to put in" and others "yeah, but the interfaces are expensive"; a third option for real future-proofing it to run dark cable; i.e. while you're putting your CAT5 in put some un-used fibre next to it; then you can gradually migrate as time goes on.
Er... the point is not that your computer is hacked, but that it has been physically stolen?
You can't count time spent securing a box as damage - it was insecure before the cracker arrived.
...there aren't that many devices around shaped like a manta ray!
Well, hang on, if he is asking for an Ethernet intercom, so why are you going on about a CAT5 intercom? In fact, he seems to be after a solution using 802.11.
The concensus seems to be that there is needless complexity in what he asks.
Essentially, one normally runs data over IP over ethernet over CAT5 and that is the normal scenario.
Occasionally for some reason (usually trying to save money by using excess capacity on your WAN) you want to run voice over IP over ethernet over CAT5 ; and occassionally (because you want mobile computers or have trouble running cables) you want to run data over IP over 802.11 over radio waves. You could combine the two and do (deep breath) voice over IP over 802.11 over radio waves.
However, if all you want is a wireless intercom, then there are products designed to run navive voice over radio; and these will be cheaper and simpler hand have bigger feature sets.
But they're not very geeky.
What does the SLA with them say? If the service keeps failing, not thru your fault, sounds like you have a good case that they are breaching the contract, and you can walk away.
Mind you, I am not a lawyer, although I play one on Televison.
It is not to try and run things while waiting for the power to come back. You'll go thru a lot of expensive batteries that way!
It is to allow you to perform a safe shutdown on your devices.
A TV does not need a safe shutdown. Just kill the power.
I don't know about the Tivo; it may be designed to safely deal with power cuts, since after all it is a consumer device.
I can't see any difficulty with connecting UPSes to a Linux box; liable to be a lot easier than an NT box, since it should be simple to write some code that checks for a signal on the serial port and issues a shutdown -h now when it sees it.
Ah, but hardly anyone's gonna buy one of those, are they?
What you want really is to take a commercially viable PDA like the iPaq and find a way to subvert the consumer orientated OS in favour of something open you can hack about etc.
As the reviewer point out though, the company only said it was pre-release after he complained it was crap, and also he got it after the official release date.
But they were all disapointed when it didn't eject? (If they were disappointed that they couldn't downlaod kungfu with it, then they may need help)
I'm convinced that the Matrix is why Nokia put a sprung cover onto the 7110....
True, but many routing protocols don't accept cassless subnets, such as (as I dimly recall) OPSF and RIP.
Box firewalls tend to be in those small boxes because people want to rack mount them etc.
But if you're going to build your own won't it be a lot easier to stick with standard PC hardware?
That way your time concentrates on the Firewall stuff, not struggling with unusal/slightly supported hardware.
...I was going to install BeOS on my new machine, but if I can have zOs... I mean, that must be 25 versions later, right? Same as my Windows 2000 was 1902 versions better than Windows 98.
I must say, that when I had a Palm, it was the other way around for me; on the rare (and they are rare!) occasions when I had to write with a pen, I had to consciously struggle not to use the Palm's alphabet.
How portable has it go to be? I suspect you want a laptop because you'll only have one machine and it's got to be portable as you need it to move around with you.
Reason is I'm wondering if a "luggable" is an option. Presumably you can get those with absurd power levels in them...hell, checkmout what the overclocking freaks do in making PC cases with handles for gamers...
Or, how about some kind of thinner client? Can you use some kind of cheapo laptop with an editor for the portable part of it, and remote control a proper machine when you need to do some heavy processing?
In essence, you will take a hideous speed hit in moving to a laptop, so if you can think of a way out of it....
Well, this is the old argument that Microsoft's hold on the market is kinda good because it helps comodditize (sp?) it; PCs are cheap because they are all similar, and they're all similar because if you make 'em too dissimilar they don't run windoze and people don't buy them. This in turn means you can buy a cheap PC, throw the OEM license for ME in the trash, and install Linux.
;-)
Ditto with the tablet PC. Since it is essentially a PC, it'll be running Linux about a day after Alan Cox gets hold of one
What's the point in having 10MBps to your ISP from home? The inhibitor is surely going to be what the ISP has to the internet.
Example: One of my ISP's is UUNET.
Across the Atlantic they have 5 x OC3c lines and 2 x OC48c lines which comes to... about 5.7 Gb/s
Where it might help I suppose issituations like you have now with cable companies, when you are accessing sites in the same ISP; or for sites that have been cached at the ISP level.
This is one reason why broadband companies are so keen on stuff like "watch movies from our media servers" because that's not choking their upstream feed.
They have removed key features; like Windows ME, XP-Personal cannot participate in a Microsoft NEtworking Domain. I ain't gonna install XP-PE for the same reason I won't let my users have ME on their machines.
Actually they have two "client" XP's; XP Pro is for business and XP Personal for home. You wouldn't want to use Personal in a business as it can't particip[ate fully in MS networking etc.
Hey, isn't everything in Linux user-configurable? You've got the source!
Don't forget the work at Bletchley Park in WW2, building the first digital computer...it's easy to because for so many years it was secret.
One approach that interests me in the history of computing is the cumulaive nature of applications.
What makes a computer different from other inventions is the fact tha tpeople keep thinking of major new applications for them. You could take an applicationa t a time and show how that idea started and how it developed. That way your work isn't strictly chronological, but goes back and forward. Example applications:
Originally, Computers were built to do hard sums - babbage's machines were designed to do statistical analysis in the search for ways to cheat at gambling! And that function continues today with the supercomputers predicting the weather.
data processing from the early business computers to the modern storecard systems that track every time I buy dogfood.
Personal productivity devices - the initial visicalc through to Office XP (Bleaarggh!) or PDA's
Communications devices - POS terminals, cash machines, the net, e-mail
Games machines - pong to Quake
Control devices - Apollo program
Fun toys for geeks - some Linux history in there - but also things like the altair and the Sinclairs
etc.etc.
Hardware support/detection is another. And that one improves over time, moreso as the user base increases in size.
It's always interesting to me how divided the community is on this matter... I understand the purists would prefer effort to be done on making Linux specific apps; but on the other hand I know I don't run Linux on my machines purely because I have win32 apps that I must run, and if the price of that is running Win2K then so be it.
Remember that OS's are not important. Apps are.