[H-GEN] Call for suggestions

[Christopher Biggs]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]

Jason Henry Parker <jasonp at uq.net.au> moved upon the face of the 'Net and spake thusly:

> I've got a small 486 I've managed to successfully boot with dhcp and
> tftp, mounting a root filesystem over NFS.

Been there, did that.  Works surprisingly well, doesn't it.

There used to be a kernel patch which allowed you to have "context
dependent files", where you actually NFS mount the REAL root
of the server, but some files are per-machine.

Basically whenever the kernel does open('foo') it looks for
foo#machine=fred# or foo#type=client# or something, if 
none are found, it opens foo, otherwise it opens the 
appropriate foo#blah# variant.   It fudges directory
listings to show the appropriate variant as 'foo' also.  Way cool.

> 
> The question now is finding something to *do* with it; do any
> humbuggers have any suggestions for hack-worthy things for this box to
> do?  

Intelligent telephone book?   

BTW, I'm writing this from a WYSE 50 terminal plugged direct to a
modem.  The terminal sits on a small (30cm) table in the living room,
and allows me to read email without going troglodite mode in the spare
room.  The missus has a laptop, but it cooks yer legs after a while.

Um, fridge contents monitor?  Toilet terminal?   CD player?   Radio
telescope controller?   Weather station (add one of those jaycar PIC
microcontroller projects with humidty and temperature sensors)?
Robotic doorbell?   Automatic watering system?   Home voice mail?

LAVA LAMP!

Nine out of ten beings possessed with at least a rudimentary notochord
testify that a lava lamp is more interesting than Channel
7. (seriously, I did the experiment).

cjb
-- 
It's boring being a program when your only job is inserting a random .sig.
Muggins thinks I've put his .sig here, won't he be surprised...

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