Slashdot is discussing an article in Time.com about the US government and what it calls “Open Source Intelligence.”

james writes: “I found this interesting piece on Alan Cox. He says scalability and ease-of-use are the big projects now. Also he’s big on 64-bit chips like Hammer 🙂 and disses the IETF bug-reporting rules.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “Wizards-of-Source.org is going another way to provide free e-mail services. Why do you need these funky webinterfaces or pop and smtp access? All a user needs is a pine-shell, the creators thought. For all people who want to try this free spamfiltering pine-shell service, visit www.wizards-of-source.org. You can also register for a free xbox-linux.org mailaddy, and blame our friends Microsoft”

From O’Reilly OnLamp: “Free as in Freedom traces Richard Stallman’s evolution from gifted, solitary child to teen outcast to revered and reviled crusader. As the leader of the free software movement, Stallman is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in hacker culture today. Through extensive interviews with Stallman, his family, and fellow hackers, author Sam Williams has created an intimate portrait of this freedom fighter.”

– By Jeff Field –

It was cold when I woke up Tuesday morning, but I had some work to get done. On any other Tuesday morning, I would have had to get out of bed to go to work, but that morning, I had Linux, a laptop, and a wireless LAN card.

As Robin Miller, our editor in chief, discussed last week, wireless networking provides for a whole new sort of freedom — porch, front yard, bathroom or bedroom, you can now be online anywhere without having to rewire your house. What Robin reviewed was a very interesting all-in-one solution for routing, printer sharing, and wireless networking. Many people already have routers and printer sharing setup, so what sort of solution is right for them?

Belkin, which makes just about every peripheral under the sun, has recently been active in the area of networking. Starting with network cards and moving up to switches and routers, the company has now released a line of wireless products. Among these products are a wireless access point and a PCMCIA Wireless NIC, both of which I am covering in this review.

In the box
Opening the box, I was surprised at how small the WAP was. This was great for me, because space on my desk is prime real estate, and I could easily sit it by the window, out of my way. Inside the box were the AC adapter, the WAP, the CD with the configuration software, and the manual.

Configuration of the WAP
Unfortunately, right off the bat there is a problem for Linux users and the model F5D6130 WAP: You need a Windows machine, so those in a pure Linux environment, or even a mixed Mac/Linux environment, are going to have trouble. I hope Belkin fixes this by releasing a Linux or Mac version of this software. Fortunately (in this case, anyway) I have access to a Windows machine, and was able to run the configuration software. The configuration software was easy to use. I set up the hub to use the MAC addresses of the wireless network cards I had, and connected it to my 10/100 switch. Everything seemed properly configured, so I went on to the next step.

The wireless card
Configuring a wireless network setup under Linux is something that, in my experience, can vary greatly in its difficulty. It is a subject that could be an entire article by itself — in fact, I plan to write one; here I will go into the specific detail of setting up a Prism2-based card like the Belkin F5D6020. I am now a Debian user, and while it is great for most things, it does not have the built-in hardware detection that Mandrake did. In order to install the network card, I had to download the linux-wlan source and compile it myself — something I am familiar with, but I had gotten used to not having to do it anymore.

I already had a 2.4.17 kernel configured with PCMCIA-CS 3.1.31, so the only task I had to do was configure the Linux-WLAN package to use these, and compile and install the specific driver for my card, in this case a Prism2-based PCMCIA card. The setup process is very straightforward, and assuming there are no complications, any user should be able to set it up if he adheres to the documentation. You run “make config,” answer a few questions, type “make all,” and then, as root, run “make install.” The documentation then goes into details about setting up your card, but for me, all that was necessary was to plug the card in, and DHCP did the rest.

Range, speed and interference
With only my laptop using the access point, my speeds did not decrease or increase noticeably from the 10-megabit wired network it was connected to previously. As for the range, I have not done any real measuring, but with the access point in my window I am free to move around my building, and go outside with it at least 100 feet from my window, which is as far as I need to go to sit outside on a nice day.

The only problem I have had with the signal is one that is easily solved, but was annoying at first because I did not pick up on it. I am the owner of a 2.4GHz cordless phone, and using the phone near my laptop caused the network to disconnect without me noticing. When I got off the phone it would reconnect, but I would notice errors. Once I realized what was happening, it was a simple matter of changing the channel on the phone, but interference from other devices is something you should definitely consider when setting up a wireless network.

Conclusions
While Belkin’s wireless access point was somewhat of a disappointment for requiring the use of a proprietary operating system to configure it (isn’t the whole point of wireless to gain some freedom?), once it was working it did not disappoint, nor did the Wireless NIC. I will be covering more wireless solutions in the future, and I hope they will be more Linux friendly.

For the Free Software purists, I cannot recommend the Belkin WAP because it requires the use of Windows. Otherwise, it did its job. For those people who cannot or will not use Windows, there are other solutions out there that will work better. The F5D6130 wireless access point is available for under $150 on Pricewatch, and the F5D6020 is available there for just under $90 shipped.

Anonymous Reader writes “ELJonline.com has published the online version of the March, 2002 edition of the Embedded Linux Journal. As usual, the new issue is filled with interesting and informative articles on embedded Linux technologies and projects, including . . .

• Embedded Real-Time Linux for Instrument Control and Data Logging
• RTLinux Application Development Tutorial
• Quest for PDA Utopia: Qtopia?
• Real-Time and Linux, Part 2: the Preemptible Kernel
• Selecting I/O Units
• User Mode Drivers
• Running Embedded Linux on SuperH
• Brian Writes about His BOEL (Brian’s Own Embedded Linux)
• Linux on the Air

It’s all online and ready for your reading pleasure, here.”

Techsol is proud to announce the availability of the first of many Medallion development kits. The Thin-Client Device Mini-Development Kit is targeted at developers of thin-client desktop devices and also wearable computing devices. It features a 60 MHz ARM-720T-based RISC computer with Techsol’s proprietary boot-loader/debugger in FLASH, Lineo?s Embedix Linux distribution pre-installed in the 32-mega-byte Disk-On-Chip module, and 32 mega-bytes of SDRAM for program execution. Additional software will include TrollTech’s QT-Embedded GUI plus their Qtopia palm-top OS. There will also be a choice of JAVA virtual machines available in the near future.

This development kit also features:

• SVGA video (via a standard 15-pin VGA connector)
• USB host ports x 2 (for KBD, mouse, or other peripherals)
• USB device port (for connection to a PC or Laptop) for hi-speed debugging
• 10BaseT Ethernet port (for connection to a server or broadband Internet)
• MultiMedia Card (MMC) for removable storage
• Stereo Audio Out for playing your favorite MP3s while you work
• Stereo Audio In for audio or data-logging applications
• Mono Headset Jack for VOIP development (perfect for call-centers)
• Power Jack that connects to the supplied 5-volt, 1amp AC adapter
• Serial Debug Port that connects via the supplied adapter cable to a PC serial port.
• A Rugged Aluminum Enclosure with clear labelling for all connectors.

In addition, there are connectors inside the case for:

• Another Serial Port with modem control line support (for dial-up connectivity)
• LCD Connectors x 2 for development of handheld products
• JTAG Connector for debugging via the On Chip Emulator features
• Boot Configuration Jumpers that allow the user to boot from an SRAM IC instead of FLASH (for low-level SOFTWARE development)
• Audio Configuration Jumpers to select between Line Out or Amplifier Out

There are also instructions for disassembling the kit, along with schematics to facilitate development of custom products based on Medallion CPU modules.

Techsol’s Medallion CPU modules are the embodiment of 15 years of embedded product development. By carefully integrating the best of open-source and off-the-shelf software with the latest in portable computing power, Techsol takes the technology used by the world?s largest high-volume manufacturers and makes it available to low- to mid-volume manufacturers. The tiny (4 sq.inch), low-power Medallion modules are pre-loaded with Linux, device-drivers, graphics and communications software. Plus, we support industry standards to simplify the connection of Medallion-based products to both enterprise systems and other portable devices. New modules based on ARM-7, ARM-9, Intel X-Scale, and PowerPC processors will appear monthly over the next year, ensuring that you always have access to the latest technology!

Techsol’s Medallion system is unique in the embedded computer world. Over time, the product line will encompass dozens of CPUs. However, the pin-out and form-factor will remain the same. There will always be a Medallion module that is almost perfect for your application. By designing with the Medallion system, you are effectively out-sourcing your CPU design and Linux porting with no up-front NRE fees! That lets your team concentrate on the hardware and software portions of your product that your customers see. The result is that you can create a higher-quality product in a fraction of the time (and cost) of designing everything from scratch! Plus, the interchangeable modules extend product life-cycle times.
Following our mission of delivering maximum value to our customers, this development kit is offered at only US$500.00 complete with a CD of free development tools. See the website for details www.techsol.ca or call 1 888 TECHSOL (888.832.4765 or 604.946.8324) for more details.

Techsol is a private company head-quartered in Delta, BC, where the Fraser River meets the Pacific Ocean.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

NewsFactor Network writes, “Microsoft would have us believe that its products are dominant because they are the best. The software giant suggests that such companies as Netscape were badly mismanaged, and that companies like Apple and Sun produce products that are inferior to Microsoft’s own. This attitude seems to indicate that Microsoft believes it is truly capable of doing anything that can be done on a computer. Everything, that is, except for shipping an operating system that comes without an integrated Web browser. Microsoft may say it is the zenith of the software industry, but the company also says it can’t find a way to ship Windows without IE.”

Eugenia writes, “Font Antialias first made its way to XFree through Qt/KDE only a year ago and GTK+/Gnome followed some time after. Even with the latest version of Freetype 2.08, which reportedly brings better quality, the result is still not up to par with the rendering quality found on some commercial OSes. David Chester has hacked through the Xft library and he achieved an incredibly good quality on antialias rendering under XFree86. With this ‘hack,’ at last, XFree can deliver similar aesthetic results with the MacOSX or Windows rendering engines. Check the two brand new screenshots ‘before’ and ‘after’ at his web page and notice the difference with your own eyes.”

Bryan Richard writes: Py, a technical journal for Python developers, announced today the list of articles for it’s first issue (01.01), due to be published April 2002.

Articles included in the first issue:

• Scientific Python: Introducing Numeric by Eric Jones
• Simple CGI Template Processing by Michael P. Soulier
• Extending Python with C – Part 1 by Alex Martelli
• Image Viewing with TKinter by Blake Garretson
• Threading and the Global Interpreter Lock by Aahz

Scientific Python: Introducing Numeric is the first installment in an ongoing column on leveraging Python for scientific computing Eric Jones was gracious enough to take under his wing. Part 2 of Alex Martelli’s (co-editor of the Python Cookbook from O’Reilly) Extending Python with C will appear in Issue 01.02.

Preorders for issue 01.01 are available through March 2002 via the web site www.pyzine.com (snail mail and PayPal accepted). Preorder price per issue is US$2.00 domestic (United States) and US$3.00 international.

Py is an independent print zine for Python developers.

PyZine (www.pyzine.com) is the online home of the print publication Py.

perm-link : http://www.pyzine.com/01.01/pr.03052002.phtml

Contact Information
Bryan Richard [cook@pyzine.com]

214 Main Street #208

El Segundo, CA 90245

vox: 310 322 6682