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Why yes, I do.

(OK, now that I've established my credentials... :-P )

You folks should react to new products differently. New Linux products are an opportunity, not a threat.

Let's do iPaq vs Zaurus first.

The Zaurus hardware architecture is substantially similar to the iPaq. Even if the kernel sources are maintained separately, you should be able to run the same distributions on the the Sharp as on the Compaq (once we do any needed X server changes). So if you're really dedicated to the handhelds.org community, this gives you the opportunity to choose between two hardware vendors and devices to run Familiar on. Competition is good, right?

Now, what about handhelds.org/familiar vs Zaurus Linux? Well, there's still a lot of lingering questions about the efficacy of the X11 architecture for handhelds. Sharp's commitment to QTE means they've spent a lot of resources on building a nice environment on top of it. So for you, the opportunity is to let Sharp spend a lot of money finding out how well the QTE architecture really works. And if they're right, because this is Open Source you have the opportunity to take the basis of their code and use it yourself. No risk.

What about the Java angle? Jeode isn't Open Source. But PocketLinux is. (And appears to have some very active development lately.) If Jeode is doing some things right, PocketLinux gets to pick up the best of their ideas for free. The opportunity is to explore the viability of Java and alternatives for Java application architectures for handhelds, and again, at no cost to you.

Stop thinking of yourself as a member of the handhelds.org community, or the PocketLinux community, or the Agenda VR3 community.

Start thinking of yourself as a member of the Open Source community---with particular interests: handhelds, information management tools, multimedia, task mobility....

We don't know what the right answers are to all of the hard questions that face us; we don't even know all the questions. But we can share our results, change direction, and work on parts of the problems as we ourselves see fit. When companies produce Linux products, they're another research staff and contributor to this, not a dictator. That's the value proposition of Open Source in emerging technologies.

It says on the Sharp developer news page that it uses PersonalJava version 1.2 and from that spec you can see that:

• PJAE 1.2 uses JDK 1.1.8 as its base.
• PJAE 1.2 adds security as specified in Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v 1.2.2 (referred to as "JDKTM 1.2.2" in this specification). Therefore, this specification contains some APIs based on JDK 1.2.2 APIs. These are identified in the appropriate sections.

I found this stuff while trying to figure out if you were right:

• Sun J2ME FAQ
• The Personal Java FAQ from Sun.
• The Sun/Sharp press release about the product and
• Insignia.

Even still, it uses Java 1.18 for most of it's functionality, but this isn't totally useless! I was doing some decent development a few years ago using that spec...

-Russ

OK, that is the situation now. But have you noticed the number of 'web appliances', games consoles and other non-PC type browsing platforms springing up? These buggers have all kinds of processors, all kinds of OS and all kinds of browsers on 'em.

Now, it is true that maybe this whole market segment will flop mightily. But if these consumer devices catch on - and you want to bet that Joe 'flashing 12:00' Punter will prefer to buy and configure Windows? - then we may have seen the high water mark of Windows.

As it happens, I work for Insignia porting our JVM to these boxes. Maybe someone is doing the same for Flash. How many plugins do you think the manufacturers are going to deem it necessary to support before launching?

So, with a bit of luck, web site designers will be dragged back to the open standards. Cross your fingers...

I have an old used Mac IIci, which came with some old version of this SoftPC on it. I just booted it up, and the "About SoftPC" from the "Apple Menu", says "Version 1.4: (EGA/AT) © 1986-1990 Insignia Solutions" I'm not sure if they really sold a product before 1988, but anyone who's going to try and claim a patent on the invention of a virtual machine is going to have a lot of prior art to deal with.

Of course, there are a number of well written, and well moderated (up) posts suggesting that their patents might not be as broad as Rod hinted, and maybe the whole thing is a hoax.... but if anyone's looking for some prior art, I've got an ancient mac that's in danger of being completely replaced with ARDI's Mac Emulator, also some nice Prior Art, perhaps even as old as Insignia's SoftPC, but was only released commercially a couple years ago.

hm...
at my work (CWI) we used to use (and still have) NTrigue from Insignia.
We use it to have people on SGI's and SUN's log in to our NTrigue server, where they are able to run NT 3.5 apps...
MicroSoft stopped the development by Insignia, so unfortunately there is no NT4 version :(

When you run NTtrigue you get your own dedicated NT display, unlike VNC...

--
Dutch Linux Users Group

(Near the bottom)

eswan@lips.net A mozilla ate my cookie.

On a typical work day, I'll have 3 operating systems booted simultaneously on my Mac G3: The MacOS, SoftWindows95, and MachTen (BSD 4.4).

This seems to be an example of someone else trying to catch up to the same idea.