Kalin Harvey writes: A while ago I posted an announcement on Slashdot asking for feedback to take to Netpliance regarding the i-opener and their relationship with the hacker community. Since then I have met with Netpliance and basically concluded that a lot of the dialogue we were having about the company was missing the mark. Netpliance is a different company than many of us thought and basically don't have the ability to sell vast quantities of i-openers to the hacker community; their whole focus is the service, on many devices, not just the i-opener hardware. However, they also are big fans of open standards, and would love help to contribute to an open development model and see the embedded linux appliance market grow. They are also already making commitments to working with the open source community. You can read my full account on linuxpower.org

m.o asks "I am going to buy a laptop soon, and I was wondering if I could find something that would also work as a home theater, i.e. I could connect it to the TV and play DVDs and also connect it to several speakers (say, four speakers and a subwoofer) for the sound. Are there laptops like that? What is the minimum/recommended configuration for such a thing?" Hmmm....interesting idea. Gives me a reason to go out and snag another laptop! *grin!*

evilviper pointed us to a new hack on LinuxHacker. Last time it was the i-opener, but this time its the WebSurfer. It's 50 bucks and can be had at CompUSA. They show it booting Linux among other things. Has a wireless keyboard, a real (non win) modem, and a Cyrix CPU. Looks perfect for voiding warranties.

twdorris asks: "With all the talk about embedded Linux and with all the focus from typical Linux "guys" on hardcore hardware, I find myself a bit surprised by what appears to be a lack of support for EPROM burners under Linux. I have a Pocket Programmer make by Intronics that I use to burn performance mods to my car with. It's about as simple a task as there could be. I just need to burn 27c512's (a very common, simple EPROM). Yet I was not able to find any way to do this natively under Linux. Instead, I was forced to use DOS for this task (until I recently wrote a program to do it under Linux). Using DOS/Windows for things like paying bills is one thing...that's a typical "user" application that I don't mind relegating to a "user" OS. However, burning EPROMs is something that sure seems more appropriate to be doing under Linux. Anybody got any pointers to an EPROM burner and/or software that will work under Linux for this very much hardware related task?" That's a good question. I wonder if twdorris would mind sharing the code -he- used to burn EPROMS with Linux.

fizbin asks: "Every mouse I've ever had a chance to use for a long enough period of time (from cheap 5-dollar two-button specials to brand-name Logitech three-button things to those Sun optical ones that need the special metal mousepad) has developed the same problem: the first button (and I guess others as well, but I notice this on the first button) begins to slowly stop working. It lets up even if I keep my finger down. This makes it a royal pita to drag anything from one place to another (since what you're dragging gets "dropped" when the first button lets up), and makes using certain menus (such as the ctrl-button menus on xterms) almost impossible (since I can never keep the button held down long enough to drag down to the item I want). Is this expected behavior, and should I simply plan on replacing my mouse every six months? What about common computers (in labs, etc.) -- should they budget for replacement mice on a regular schedule? Is there some brand of mouse that avoids this problem?"

daninja asks: "Yet another laptop with classified information seems to be missing. It looks to me like there must be a good sized market for highly secure laptops with a built in Lojack tracking device (or simply a laptop with an integral handcuff, kind of like that briefcase full o' blues secured to the wrist of Elwood Blues). Such a device (the Lojack version, not the handcuff one) could be designed so that the tracking transmitter couldn't be separated or disabled without rendering the disk unreadable (by a small explosive charge, mildly corrosive gas, or whatever). It seems so obvious, why isn't there such a product? (Hey, maybe I could patent this idea!)"

Don Faulkner asks: "One of the features of USB that people are really excited about is the 'multi-headed support.' In other words, I should be able to connect several sets of [monitor, keyboard, mouse (and other stuff like joystick, printer, etc.)] to one computer, maybe distribute these throughout my house, and move seamlessly from one to the next. What if we turn this around? What if I wanted to control several computers in a rack, all from one location? This is done today with KVM (Keybard/Video/Mouse) switches, some of which are very sophisticated. Could USB do the same thing? Most computers have two USB ports, so you could theoretically daisy-chain the computers together, but this would be bad for reliability (take down one computer, and everything past it on the chain disappears). So, we would probably want to use a hub, and attach the head to that. Has anyone tried this? Anyone seen it done?" Here's an interesting sidenote: the USB 2.0 specs were just released. You might check out what they have to say about KVM switches.

big_hairy_mama asks: "I'm the author of MP3VoiceControl, a software package based on IBM's ViaVoice. As it was designed as an interface-free car stereo (in addition to being used at home) and allows you to search for and play all your MP3's completely without the use of a keyboard or monitor, I am seriously considering starting a small business to build and sell voice controlled MP3 player units. My project is called called EmVAX, short for MP3 Voice Activated Car Stereo. This is similar in concept to EMPEG's units, except a lot cooler, and I am confident that I can produce my box at about 1/3 of the $1500 price tag of EMPEG's similar unit. My question is, how much of a market is there for this type of item? How much would you be willing to pay for 140 hours of continuous playback with an easy-to-use voice-activated and voice-searchable system? Is the impress-your-friends factor enough of a selling point so that people will shell out $600 bucks for my unit?" Very cool. I'd love to have one of these, but at $600US a pop, I think I'd have to see one in action, first.

hubie asks: "We all know that Linux runs well on older hardware, and with the rate hardware becomes outdated there must be a lot of it out there. However I have a hard time finding older hardware to fill out an old 486 or Pentium system. I find local computer shops are very hit-and-miss in terms of what they have, and contrary to what some people suggest in articles, businesses in my area are not just putting these older systems out on the curb for junk. Are there any good on-line sources for new or used hardware people are happy with? Where are all those 500MB or 1.2GB drives or ISA cards of yesteryear?" (Read on...)

yamgirl asks: "I've been reading up on RAID strategies for protecting against hard disk failure, particularly those RAID levels that involve recording parity on one disk to duplicate data on multiple other drives, and I've been thinking that this would also be wonderfully useful in making backups to CDROM, or even floppies. Many's the time when I've had a bagful of floppies with me, trying to install something, and found that one floppy out of the batch had crapped out, rendering the rest useless until I went home and got a new copy. If I could make a RAID-style parity disk whenever I needed to make multiple-volume disk sets, I'd only have to carry around three extra disks (one blank to write a new copy on to in case of emergency, and one disk to keep the recovery software on - but the latter two I'd just need one each of for any number of separate sets of parity disks and multi-volume sets of media.) as very effective insurance against crappy disks. Much cheaper in time and effort and disks than making entire extra copies of multi-volume sets, or for that matter of needing to go off site to track down a new copy. ANYHOW, my question is, has anyone ever seen or written any software to do this, to generate parity disks and to recover lost data with them? (And is it free? =)"

mikefoley wrote to us with some interesting news from the PalmPilot folks regarding chips. They'll be moving to Arm/SA as the title indicates, but the story also contains some cool information about their wireless plans. Looks like I'm going to need a new Palm soon.

snack writes "FINALLY! ATI has released info on their new graphics chip, built to take on both the 3dfx and nVIDIA. Reading through the press release it says that it has Windows, Linux and Mac suport. There are no benchmarks yet on the Web site, but reading through the tech specs it seems that this chip will blow everything else away. It also says that over the summer, this will implement the MAXX technology. Two of these chips working in parallel... Oh, my God!"

ruiner writes: "This post at EE Times discusses that it now appears that silicon dioxide can be used as an insulator down to a process of .07 micron for processors. This will buy processor manufacturers a few more years to develop solutions for smaller processes. "

psychosis asks: "At a recent computer show, I came across an interesting bare bones system. It measures only 10.7" x 11.6" x 3.2", and includes a CD-ROM (or DVD), floppy, 2xUSB, lpt, RCA and S-video outputs, sound card, modem, and 10/100 NIC. It just needs a PPGA Celeron 300-500 CUP, RAM, and HDD. All this for about $160 as listed on pricewatch.com. A review of the (admittedly cheesy) customer comments on the first site show that someone claims to be running Linux on it. Someone else mentions the tasty idea of a car-based DVD/MP3/GPS implementation. A good friend of mine brought up a cheap clustering solution. Does anyone have any credible (i.e. not directly from a dealer!) experience with this hardware? What kernel modules do the integrated components use? If this particular one doesn't fare well with the penguin, are there similar ones that do?" And if it doesn't run Linux, how about FreeBSD or Be? I mean, if these things aren't pure crap, these would make a great small computer for the home.

Digital Cameras are becoming the rage these days. It seems that now people are opting for the ease of the CCD and the COMPACTflash card over the trusty 35mm film camera, and why not? Gone are the days of paying to have your film developed at the nearby PhotoHourMart. With a digital camera, a laptop, and a decent printer, you are your own photographer, photolab and even publisher. So what digital camera does the Slashdot Readership recommend? Which one offers the best bang for the buck or has the best features? I'd be interested in hearing your opinions.

Anonymous Coward writes: "Well, I thought I was pretty cool with my BP6 with dual 366s overclocked to 550 ... I just stumbled across what looks like a mini dual-slot 370 mobo. Up to 1GB RAM, flat-panel support, solid-state disk support. What *would* you use this for, a dual Celeron laptop!? I wonder if anyone makes a complete computer based on this board? Who are they selling this to?"

GrouchoMarx writes: "I was lucky enough to be at Comdex in Chicago the day Microsoft released the new PocketPC, aka WinCE 3.0. I spent about an hour playing with the new HP Jornada and Casio Cassiopeia. It's an improvement, but not a Palm killer by any means . " Good review if you're into small machines.

DeepDarkSky writes "Microsoft unveiled the Pocket PC today. Products being available by its partners include: HP Jornada, Compaq iPaq H3600, Casio Cassiopeia E-105 and Symbol PPT 2700. Microsoft's touting it as being better than Palm. Here's a list of features, significant among them: Microsoft Reader (for reading e-books), Windows Media Player (for playing music), Pocket Streets (a map program), Pocket Internet Explorer, and "Pocket" versions of office productivity tools like Outlook, Word, and Excel. " Check out the preview on C|Net as well.

retep writes: "32BitsOnline has a interesting article about how the new memory standard RAMBUS may go bust. Essentially a bunch of missteps with Intel's Camino chipset, high costs, the rise in popularity of alternative CPU's such as the Athlon and a lack of performance may prove its undoing. I remember a story in Wired just a year or two ago praising RAMBUS for its innovative tactics; look what's happened now."

leperjuice asks: "I've been looking at options for Network Attached Storage for my home network. I can't run a single machine as a file server, and a NAS box sounds like an ideal solution. The problem is that the products are targeted at the business market, and the only item that comes close to a SOHO level is Quantum's Snap Server and those are still somewhat pricy and non-upgradeable (you can't buy a new drive and slap it in). Are there network attached SCSI/IDE enclosures, for example? Or am I stuck with having to transform a crappy box into a server? "