detritus asks: "I own a few acres of woods and am wondering if there is some sort of camera that can be networked via ethernet instead of the standard video connectors? Preferably, a telnet interface and the ability to control and transmit live feeds/snapshots to a remote server on a LAN/WAN would be awesome. I am looking to mount them in specific areas on my property and running 10Base2 (BNC), repeaters and power to each camera, and then be able to remotely manage the cameras from the comfort of my computer. It evidently would have to be weatherproof. Any ideas on where one could find something like this?" For anyone looking for something like this, you might want to check out Axis.Com. Is there anyone out there who can comment on the performance of such devices?

jedi_jeffrey writes: "Check out the Sony 1.3 Gig High Density CD/CDRW -- They say it can't be copied :-)" Higher-capacity CDs might be nice, but many comments in the attached Talkback forum (like this one) gripe with reason about incompatibility, particularly given Sony's track record with closed-standard storage devices, and the much larger capacity of DVD.

Scott Hutton asks: "I'm shopping around for door access systems (e.g., CardKey) that can be managed from a Unix system, and preferably uses RF-based keys (rather than mag stripes). Obviously, something that is managed from a serial port is fine. What are folks using out there that doesn't require maintenance from a Windows System?"

byronne asks: "There is a completely uncharted virus distribution exploit available on Palm platforms that I've been wondering about for several months, namely, 'beaming.' By default, a Palm device's beam receive via infrared is set to on, or always ready to receive. If one were to write a piece of replicating code that ran in the OS as a hack, constantly 'beaming' copies of itself out the infrared port, you might have a significant problem at hand, especially if that code were malicious. Has anyone heard or read about this possibility?" It's possible, but the code needs to be executed. I'm not quite familiar enough with the Palm to know if this is possible once it's been "beamed."

mister nate writes: "Last night on PBS's Nightly Business Report (6/22), I saw the stock quotes and noticed a blurb about International Rectifier (IRF). According to the transcript, '...the company unveiled a new generation of computer chips which use only about half of the electricity required by current chips in appliances.' Not having heard anything about this previously, I went to IRF's Web site. I saw a lot info about power supplies and converters, but not anything that was a 'new generation computer chip'. Does anyone know what this is?"

parker9 asks: "I do a lot of numerical computations- typical runs take one or two days (occasionally a week) on dual alpha processors. These boxes (either running Tru64 or Linux) are pretty stripped down- just dual processors, 2Gb ram and tiny hard drives. All the results are dumped to a simple PC running Linux via NFS. We're talking GBs of data in 24 hours. Works fine, since backups are a snap. The problem, however, is that this user disk has been hosed three times since November. Not sure what's going on, since the latest combination of hardware looked pretty good (SCSI Seagate HDs). So, please advise me on what hardware to put together for a stable (24/7) NFS server: motherboard, processor, scsi card, network card, power supply and HD. Is there a flavor of Linux which would be optimal for this type of application?"

electricmonk writes: "Tom's Hardware has just posted their review of the Cyrix III. They benchmarked it against the older Cyrix designs, and a Celeron, and the Celeron beat the crap out of all of them. They aren't meant for desktops, however, so it really isn't a valid comparison. But it is very overclockable, and runs so cool that it can work without a fan. Quake III on an Internet appliance, anyone?"

wilderf writes: "Check out this site. A group of crazy overclockers decided to fully submerge a motherboard in a liquid nitrogen cooled fluorinert? bath (Fluorinert? is an electronic testing fluid manufactured by 3M? -- $500/gallon), to see how much they could overclock the CPU. Crazy." The site is pretty impressive too, if you're the sort of sadist who loves torturing hardware.

Stonent writes: "Palm computing has just announced that a number of 8MB units produced between October 1999 and May 2000 may have some faulty memory. They are currently working on a patch for the IIIXe and have one for the Vx and IIIC. You can read about it on the Palm Computing site. I'm just wondering why they are supplying a software patch for a hardware issue. Intel tried this with the FDIV bug and look where it got them."

LinuxWolf asks: "This ad on PDABuzz is for an Oregon Scientific OSPro (2MB). The device has 2MB of memory, a screen size slightly larger than the Palm, little bit more software than the Palm, IrDA capability, and (allegedly, according to advertisements) "Compatible with PalmPilot". The regular price is $279, but the ad site has it listed for $79. This is really cool, but then I ask, "can it run PalmOS software?" The OS in use is a proprietary one, but I cannot find any additional information on this thing. Oregon Scientific does not seem to have a FAQ or sales e-mail, either. Anybody know more?"

mirko writes: "Chalice Technologies has released an ARM-based ATX motherboard : the CATS. The CATS supports SDRAM, USB and PCI among other features, which makes it easy for anybody to assemble a reliable computer with low-cost equipment. Regarding their price along with their ability to run both ARMLinux or NetBSD, these boards are an interesting alternative to set up a cheap but powerful server."

giminy writes: "These boards from TotalImpact look pretty nifty. Each one can take 4 g3's or 4 g4's and go in a regular PCI slot -- and get this, they can run in Intel machines. They work by having a program dumped to them like a second computer. Still kinda pricey for the cards, but you can put as many of these cards in your server as you want for something super-scalable. Linux support is there, and datasheets are available." We mentioned these back in '98 but a lot has changed since then. I'm sure there are clever uses for a couple of spare CPUs in a box ;)

john asks: "I'm in a position where I may be "blessed" with the task of creating several hundred, even thousand, standard 1.44mb 3.5" floppy disks from a set of images. I'm curious if there exists a sort of "high speed" floppy drive available that would significantly speed up the time this process takes. Thanks!" Ouch! What about floppy copiers that are designed to copy floppies at high speed without the need for a computer?

kyllikki writes "Oh no no another one? Yes but this time the idea is that its simple enough for those with just a small amount of electronics experience to actualy build it! Everything you need except the physical components and a PIC programmer (theres a link to a 11 component one) is on the website. There is source code , binary hex file (for those to lazy to assemble their own) , hardware design and layout even a parts list and costings... Go have a look and build your own!" No pretty pictures, but a lucid explanation of how you can (cheaply) build a tiny spitter-up-of-html, driven by their GPL'd software.

yankeehack writes: "Oh Joy! The Standard published this article which explains predicted shortages of critical memory and LCD components (resulting in-of course-higher prices and delayed product launches). Component makers including Intel, Hyundai, NEC and Sharp Electronics are among those quoted for the article. Those afflicted by the shortage include Nintendo's Game Boy Advanced handheld console (Does anybody *still* use those?) which will be released 6 months late and mobile phone manufacturers, who are having trouble getting the hardware for all those nifty features they advertise."

Pru asks: "What is the best way to clean out those old computers systems now caked with dust? The Slashdot community would probably be a great one to ask.. How should I clean out that old computer system? With dust caked on it and marks and scuffs all over the case; I would like to take a couple of the old systems I have around and put them back to work. But I would like to clean them up some first. My question is: How important is it to keep it free of dust? heat considerations, damaging the parts with cleaning and so on.. Maybe some of the veteran /.'ers that know some great advice and tips and tricks on this can help out the fairly new users here."

K2 dug up a page where people are discussing hacking the Tivo (note to outsiders: Hacking is a good thing!) Essentially, they figured out how to mount the boot partition, and get a shell running off the serial port. It's a long page, and it doesn't start getting really interesting until you're a third of the way into it, but it opens up the door for fun ways of voiding your warranty like adding bigger hard drives... of course my dream is a way to suck MP3s over and use a few gigs of Tivo as a stereo component, but that'd take some doing.

core10k asks: "I have a question concerning quick loading operating systems. I have a laptop that I use which I'd *like* to have running in the 10 seconds or so it takes for the BIOS to heat up, but then I have to wait for Windows 98 to load. And I know that Linux is even slower loading up. So I was wondering, does anyone know of a fast-loading operating system that has a half-decent (not necessarily great) C/C++ and GUI toolkit?"

shpoffo writes "In relation to the recent /. article i thought i'd give people a heads-up on some more console info. For those of you with the time, interest and know-how there are a few really good resources around for reverse engineering most of the major video game consoles such as Jeff Frohwein's site for the Gameboy. There's others for the N64 here and here, Dreamcast, Playstation, TurboGraphix, Genesis, and the Nintendo."

windex asks: "I've been looking recently for information on writing a OS (OS == kernel) from scratch, mainly as a personal science project. I've been looking for information on how to do this, however the only real information I've found is on developer.intel.com and its mostly in Intel-ese, not English. Does anyone know of a good place to start getting the basics of the x86 architecture?" There are probably plenty of x86 ASM books out there that can serve as a good reference for this project, but what about references that discuss writing the portions of the basic OS (memory management in particular)? If you find this question interesting, you might want to check out a previous topic we've done on multiplatform device drivers.