A new job for the little Asus

I think I've finally found the perfect job for the little Asus EEE, since it's just too weak to show good video. It has the following tasks:

• Linux machine I can ssh to
• Spam Sorter and mail filter
• Tor Exit Relay
• CIFS fileserver for my CD collection

Using this as the "Linux machine I can ssh to" means I'm not running a 4 core Mac Pro keeping all those disks spinning all the time anymore. This works out great, and the Pro can hibernate 95% of the time now, which should do good things for the electric bill.

I'm doing the laziest mail filtering ever. I'm running X11VNC with a Thunderbird instance doing spam filtering on my IMAP account. I don't care how lame, that was just easiest, and it works.

I decided a few weeks ago at the start of the Egyptian uprising that the good that can be done by providing a Tor exit relay is worth the risk of people using it for bad things, and the risk of a knock on my own door for activity originating from my IP. Now that feeling is stronger since people in more and more countries are standing up and trying to topple dictators, and are getting slaughtered in the streets for it. These governments might permit access to Twitter and FB and Google, but believe they're only doing so so they can track activity and target individual Twitter users. If you're in danger from your government, and more importantly, if your government is in danger from you, always use Tor.

So there it is, it took six months to find a niche for this machine, but once found, it's filling the niche perfectly.

I have a bunch of Amex gift cards which amount to about 2/3 the price of a Mac Mini. I'm on the fence about whether a Mini, even at 2/3 off, is worth it. My T60 solution seems to be running great for the time being.