Very Computer

Hi all,

I spotted this on Freshmeat today (Remember Freshmeat, it's the site that
Flatfish claimed contained "useless snippets of incomplete code").

CueCat Driver 0.8.0

About: The :Cue:Cat is a little barcode reader that RadioShack distributes for
free with their new barcoded product catalog. It connects on a PS/2 keyboard,
mouse, or USB port (directly for USB CueCats, or through a CueCat USB adapter
with regular PS/2 CueCats), and sends codes when it scans a barcode
successfully. This driver watches scancodes on any of these ports, and decodes
the ones coming from the :Cue:Cat. When it decodes a barcode successfully, it
sends it in human-readable form on /dev/scanners/cuecat.

http://freshmeat.net/redir/cuecat/1602/url_homepage/

Here is something I havent seen before :-

0.8.0:  Keith Owens and Alan Cox introduced the "tainted" mechanism in the
kernel and in the modutils to determine if one or more kernel modules
that are not GPL have been insmoded, or if they have been insmoded by
force. The kernel now provides the /proc/sys/kernel/tainted file, which
is really only a placeholder to store an integer, and insmod/modprobe
use it to store 1 if a module was not GPL (or at least if didn't declare
itself as being GPL, which is rather different), 2 if a module was
insmoded by force, and 3 if a non-GPL module was insmoded by force.
The CueCat driver is GPL, so we should tell insmod. This mechanism
only work with the latest modutils (v2.4.10 and above).

--
Kind Regards from Terry
My Desktop is powered by GNU/Linux.  
Free Micro Burner http://w3w.arafuraconnect.com.au/~tp/burn.html          
** Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

--
It is financially more expensive to go to prison than to attend Harvard.

You really get into making things work, I've noticed
that over the years, and my news archive has many of your posts.

--
Kind Regards from Terry
My Desktop is powered by GNU/Linux.  
Free Micro Burner http://w3w.arafuraconnect.com.au/~tp/burn.html          
** Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

  o require a user name (account)
  o require a password
  o require a barcode that is valid today

Then, you could change the accepted barcodes every day and distribute
a valid one for each user.  You could, also, tie an account and
password to a single bar code, paste it on your eyelid and you would
be correct.

--
It is financially more expensive to go to prison than to attend Harvard.

To be sure, I could see this method being modified for, say,
retinal recognition, or, more likely * recogition;
the last time I had my retina photographed (for health reasons)
it left a nice big purple spot in my vision as the cones
recovered from the photonic onslaught :-).

Or perhaps a fingerprint scanner would make sense here.

Neat possibilities.

[.sigsnip]

--

EAC code #191       97d:03h:14m actually running Linux.
                    I'm here, you're there, and that's pretty much it.

Quote:> To be sure, I could see this method being modified for, say,
> retinal recognition, or, more likely * recogition;
> the last time I had my retina photographed (for health reasons)
> it left a nice big purple spot in my vision as the cones
> recovered from the photonic onslaught :-).

> Or perhaps a fingerprint scanner would make sense here.

> Neat possibilities.

--
It is financially more expensive to go to prison than to attend Harvard.