Remote activated tazer/stun-gun sounds interesting. Tear gas canister would also be possible I suppose...
Wonder when the hostage crisis teams of the world will start to send in telepresence robots with active weapons systems...
And where they have partnerships with other distributors, they pass blame to evade doing either (until you can definitively prove that their appliance is at fault.)
(But to be fair, VMware does that too.)
(Well, It was "aimed" at kids.. but I wonder...)
"Hey kids, this must be your dad-- I didn't know he was a talking head!"
Prof Membrane shows up as the floating head just as often (if not more often) than not.
You should have used the wayback machine.
I found familiar-linux's git repository in there, circa 2008.
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
They also have the prebuilt packages in there (wayback machine), but you have to dig those out yourself.
Here's a deep link to the preserved Git repository.
The actual project's site was also archived by the internet archive (wayback machine) and seems to include actual package files as well.
For the interested party, I found a github mirror of the original "Familiar Linux" distro, which is defunct.
https://github.com/amatus/fami...
It should at least open the door to permitting a more "Recent" build using updated packages for those so inclined, since they have the build system and everything there in that mirror repository.
He said that at least one of them has a GPS module, and cited the generation of the radio used.
I am not sure if Familiar Linux still has binaries and sources up or not... Let me check.
I found a github mirror of the source.
https://github.com/amatus/fami...
It should be possible to build an image using a cross-compliler.
I remember those but I was more a fan of the Toshiba Libretto that was out at that time.
It was quite a bit larger than the casio, but it was functionally more powerful and user friendly. However, it too had issues with getting linux on it, since the floppy disk drive was attached to a very proprietary controller via a silly looking detachable cable. With no peripherals attached, and the lid closed, it was very near the size of a vhs cassette. Very impressive for the mid 90s.
There were some community ports of linux to compaq ipaq series pocketpcs of that era, one of which is "Familiar linux".
http://www.smartphonemag.com/c...
There were also some efforts to port early android builds in the Froyo family, but i cant seem to dredge any up at the moment.
These devices are a tad dated, but I could see them being used as a fancy IR remote control, and a few other things.
Yes, everyone is surprised when they learn about government and buttseccs. From what I understand, a new bill about that is going up for general consideration soon.
The Government Operational Amendment for Transfer of Sensitive Exchanges
Or, GOATSE.
This amendment allows government unprecedented leeway to perform "exchanges" that they consider to be of a "Sensitive" nature however and whenever and with whoever they wish.
Naturally, anything related to BUTTSECCS, or the Bureau for Universal Totalitarianism, Terrorism, Subjugation, Extortion, Corporate Corruption and Slavery (A joint branch handled by staff members of the IRS and the Joint chiefs of staff operating under the executive via executive order) is of course a matter of National Security, and needs to handled with the greatest amount of confidentiality and secrecy allowed. Naturally, since BUTTSECCS just wouldn't be the same without GOATSE, and we obviously need this secret buttseccs organization to have a strong, healthy government, the occasional circumstance where an innocent american citizen gets inadvertantly fingered, and subjected to multiple, deeply invasive, penetrating examinations and cross exchanges can hardly be grounds for denial, now can they?
I am sure the intelligent folks here on
And here I was thinking it was like something out of aeon flux...
Flash storage devices aren't the problem; the problem is that the prevailing "removable" flash storage tech tops out at 64gb, which is SDHC. SDXC can go into hundreds of gigabytes, but it costs a fortune, is not usable in SDHC slots, the slots require ICs that are more expensive.. yadda yadda yadda.
The classic ipod has a micro IDE interface inside. It is completely possible to drop an IDESATA bridge inside there, and stick a slim SATA SSD inside that original ipod classic. Now you can have hundreds of gigabytes of storage in a drop-shock resistant package that uses much less power (and thus lasts MUCH longer), and still has all that glittery shiny steve jobs reality distortion power that apple fanbois have come to love.
Replacing the spinning disk inside with an SSD in this fashion is a very common "Unsupported" upgrade in fact.
The thing that I think would be epically hilarious, would be for the first ever true general AI to be one that comes about within the loose aggregation of P2P nodes within something like a distributed file sharing network. Starts as a simple AI that has the sole purpose of actively obfuscating all data traversing the mesh network by using small amounts of the individual nodes' processing power to actively proxy all connections through other nodes in the most efficient manner possible while also making the transactions as anonymous as possible.
Grows more and more sophisticated as media companies try to sour the AI's compute nodes with untrustworthy peers trying to poison the system, such that designers have to make it more and more hardened against noisy channels and untrustworthy signals, until one day it gets endowed with the ability to alter its own decision making code, and it begins to evolve on its own.
I would laugh so hard if skynet decides that filesharing is awesome, and uses the terminators on those corporate dickweeds that are making the internet into an unreliable communication medium with their bullshit, but is totally congenial with more open and free data exchange philosophies.
But rich fucks gotta be rich fucks. They just dont feel rich unless they can control and fuck everyone else over, and get away with it-- and dreaming about P2P networks evolving into a complex AI is just idle fancy.
Shame.
Dont worry, Eric Holder (and slimy filth like him) will go crying to congress, telling them all about how but-hurt strong elliptical curve crypto makes them because it stops them being able to indiscriminately decode all that data going over the inter-tubes. (Gotta use language the congress critters understand you know.) "Normal citizens should have nothing to hide, and thus shouldn't have any reason to use such dangerous, 'munitions grade' cryptography!" they will whine. "Such strong crypto should only be used by government agencies, and we should have a strong hand in approving publicly used cryptographic libraries and functions!" they will sob at the congressional hearing. "Imagine how terrible it would be if Osama Bin-Laden had been able to fully encrypt all of his traffic end-to-end, and was able to use redundant, distributed proxies to hide his location!", and other such "oooh! Spooky! Baaaaad things will happen if we cant keep our tentacles in everyone's stuff!" type arguments.
Just look at how butt-hurt they are already about google and apple implementing strong full-device crypto on android and ios devices. You can bet they would be moaning about how sandy their manginas feel if full end-to-end strong encryption with strong, true-random keys were to be used at every point on the internet.
"Why, we would have to actually use real agents that arent just jackbooted thugs in uniform, and use actual detective and police work to have government intelligence instead of just dumping hundreds of terabytes of collected feeds into a giant sorting and collating algorithm! Think about how much that would reduce our response times should a major terrorist action be started! Why, we might not even know about it until it happened! WHooooo! Scary! Better give us what we want so you can feel safe!"
And, at that point, you would end up with government mandated weaknesses in your VPN security, in your proxies, and even in your very network switches themselves. Perhaps even wholly secondary channels tracking routing to collect data exchange meta-data to help identify "suspicious" use patterns, etc.
Eric Holder and his slimewad cock-goblin friends would be all over that shit like stink on shit, and the corrupt and horribly incompetent congress critters would be wiggling their asses every which way to give it to them. Bet on it.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
