What is Digg?105 Comments
- Roger, on 10/11/2007, -3/+45Who the hell is reading replies?
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -5/+34what would be considered a "cheesy joke"?
- selrahc, on 10/11/2007, -3/+22So some cheddar and some provolone walk into a bar...
- underdog5004, on 10/11/2007, -18/+34I may be dense, but what is the point? It's like plugging in a USB wireless dongle into your wireless router.
Can anyone tell me why I'm wrong? - Jo9100, on 10/11/2007, -2/+17"can you install mozarella?"
hilarity DOES NOT ensue - MasterThief117, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15cheesy jokes?
what do you call cheese that's not yours?
nacho cheese. - starfisch, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14is it cheesy to laugh at the word "dongle"?
- drgruney, on 10/11/2007, -0/+13Hardware firewall.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+14Right after they make the mac shuffle
- stalefries, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12Fixed:
"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" - Kr4t05, on 10/11/2007, -3/+14The obligatory comment: Imagine a cluster of about 700 of these things.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+15That reminds me...When is apple dropping the Mac Nano?
- rdmillar, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11er... me
- b3mus3d, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8It's like some sort of comment treasure hunt. See if you can find the good ones.
- coredump0x01, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7They plug into the SSH port.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8What did the USB key say to Linux?.... Get in my Belly!
- Xavier1012, on 10/11/2007, -5/+11I'm gonna mod it with dual 8800GTX's--quad-sli baby!
*cheesy joke! - drgruney, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Lots of computers don't have displays. It's not the only form of output. Besides if it has VLC you can run a desktop remotely on it.
- Ai3d, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Am I the only one who didn't understand anything on that page but dugg it anyway?
- doctapeppa, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5ummm. This is not simply a USB key. It's a computer! The current "distro's on a stick" require a computer to run. Did you read the article?
- db113456, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Also think of instant file server, using nfs, samba, ftp ... Or a mini web server, just plug and go.
It is interesting, in a way, making very small computers is a way to achieving very large clusters ... - modelcadet, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5and me...
- ryannerd, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7This is not the Linux USB key you are looking for. Move along.
- Dankoozy, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7better than picotux. again could use this as a home server/automation server of some sort. remote data collection
- rdoger6424, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4so you're saying that "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" is actually relevant?
- jlauten, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Ditto. Look at Gumstix.
As to why small computers? You stick them on small things! Embedded computing. We're thinking of getting one to handle some of the processing on our Roomba robots which will one day rule the world. You could build lots of small form factor hardware with it. Hook it up to LCD screens. Heck, what do you think is inside your PDA?
Some example projects are Robotic fish (http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~jliua/videogal.htm), a rollable display computer (http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/archive/2005/050902-rolldisp.html), a swarm-based network (http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/staff/owen/research.htm), and a host of other personal projects (http://docwiki.gumstix.org/Customer_projects).
Gumstix is pretty neat. You can buy different types of motherboards (or whole 'waysmall' computers) and link in boards with various options: bluetooth, wifi, gps, robotics controllers, etc. - CubiX, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3These aren't as small, but still awesome. Designed for integrated systems. Run linux with JRE
http://www.gumstix.com/ - alexcutbill, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I think you mean VNC. VLC is a video player.
- eggo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I'm not sure if this thing can act as a usb host, rather than only as a client; but I'm picturing two usb wifi adapters and this thing stuck to a magnet as a wifi repeater "throwie". Though I'm sure this little gadget is on the expensive side, judging from "Pricing was not disclosed."
- Reno582, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5That'll be a pretty good firewall
- cl0n3x, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Nope.
- CompIsMyRx, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3You can only have 127 max, because you can only daisy-chan USB to 127 devices.
- Fordi, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3There's lots of potential uses for a computer in a USB stick - in fact, all USB sticks already have a near-computer built in (USB microcontroller).
Depending on what speed they can get such a thing up to, a USB-based computer could be used for robotics research (program the computer via USB and it controls the robot's logic), inline DSP (feed it an MP3 and it spits out karaoke backing, for example), build it as part of a camera and have a multitouch sensitive controller built into its LCD screen, and you could have a mini-photoshop that you can use to correct pictures before even getting the pics out of your camera.
That JTAG port looks mighty useful; 50 pinouts, if they can be individually controlled, is enough to run a LOT of stuff (consider that it's an ARM; that means that it's pretty likely that the 50 pinouts map to 48 parallel bits running at bus speed (190MHz on this little guy), ground and power. That's a lot of extraaneous bandwidth to play with. You could drive a display (VGA or TV), take a CCD input, do DCT compression/decompression at reasonable speeds, run an emulator, read a controller, control servos, read a Flash card, simulate an IDE controller, etc. The possibilities are only limited by imagination and technology.
I can't wait for the first handheld SNES emulator (190MHz is fast enough for this) based on this. - rdoger6424, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4aww, no more threads D:
- tnoy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Imagine a cluster of these plugged into a cluster.
- hadak, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3finally. a decent use for this thing. (usb powered computer? plug a computer into a computer? ehh? now a firewall...that makes sense. as does perhaps a mail/web server. i'm starting to see the uses...
- drgruney, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I like the thought of running one of these with a usb wifi adapter and powered by usb. Too bad the ethernet port doesn't support POE
For an AP that is. - moixa, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Ok, my 127 node cluster is on its way.
- cyberoidx, on 10/11/2007, -9/+11So a computer that has USB for a port? I thought i needed some kinda SCREEN to use IT!
Never mind. Move on. - inactive, on 02/25/2009, -0/+2I, for one, can't wait to connect this to my psp or ps3 to extend the devices' capabitlities manifold, given that both ps3 and psp support Linux 100 percent
- Sagags, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3omg spam overload!!!
- stahlratte, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Have we not read the article!?
- JerMe, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Embedded systems is a huge market. The article references GPS systems, point-of-sale terminals, Ethernet-based IP cameras, and bar code readers as examples.
- archimerged, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2A smart USB key can present many slave devices at once. This key, plugged into a USB port on the host, can appear to be a keyboard, mouse, CDROM, disk, network adapter, and one would expect, any other thing it wants to be, all at once. As a CDROM, it can supply autorun software to the host. As a network adapter (once the host loads drivers for it and enables it), it can use IP to connect to network ports on the host, or provide network services (such as a web server) to the host. It can also provide stealth remote control by presenting keyboard, mouse, and display USB slave devices, with no special software other than the USB drivers running in the host (if you plug a network cable into the back end of the USB key), or requiring special software but not requiring a separate network cable. The special software comes off the CDROM slave provided by the USB key.
- sstidman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I think the point is that you could use this device to collect information in an intelligent way, then connect it to a PC to download that information. They example they give in the article is a GPS application.processor. So imagine a USB GPS unit hooked into one of the two USB host ports collecting data as you drive around, storing that on the 256 MBytes of onboard flash RAM. When your done driving around, disconnect it from your truck, hook it up to your PC and download the data. Since it has two USB host ports, you could be collecting GPS data through one of the ports and some other data gathering device hooked into the other.
- TexanPsycho, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Or we could just have a cluster of normal computers that's probably cheaper and better?
- OrangeTide, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2The BlackDog was a Linux box that you could plug into USB. it was designed for security use. You could authenticate to the box with a password or a fingerprint (built-in fingerprint scanner). and it was upgradable with an MMC/SD socket. But it did not have ethernet. Mostly it was just a platform for running "secure" applications. When you plugged it into a Windows box it would autorun an X server and pop up with whatever apps you configured it to load. When you unplugged the device would shutdown using a short term battery internally to make certain you didn't lose your data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackDog
I liked mine, but the product was a failure. (it was targeted to the corporate security industry, but nobody could really come up with the important apps to run on it). I found it useful for security work on contract jobs while I'm at a full-time employer, they can't easily get into the device and figure out that I was moonlighting. (I had a C compiler installed on mine to do my contract work) - jamdogg, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Who's reading the replies to the the replies to replies? (how deep does this rabbit hole go?)
- Desimat0r, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Through USB? Enjoy your latency.
- byte, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I think that they were talking about the manufacturers description of the processors used in the system
-- /usr/bin/byte -
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