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Someone provides an interesting insight. I'd say PDAs are were some of it's at.

Well, part of that is because of my selective quoting (the entire soliloquy is a bit more balanced, since it is set in a specific time and place) but yes, Moglen takes the extreme view.

I am far more in agreement with that viewpoint than the one that says GUIs are "intuitive".

The best thing about modern GUIs is that they virtualize displays, which has nothing to do with mice and very little to do with graphics (software carousel did it with no graphics at all).

Those NEXTs you mention were very innovative machines. I liked them, although I was a VMS jockey at the time so I was basically comparing them to DECwindows (a bloatfest that reminds me of XNU).

"Mr. Wallace [the NTP lawyer] maintained that Mr. Goodfellow was retained because he had been mentioned in news articles from the early 1990's "regarding a product called RadioMail" -- his effort to commercialize the wireless e-mail idea -- but that Mr. Goodfellow "could not locate any documentation beyond these articles regarding the product.""

Wow, it's a good thing google wasn't around at the time to help.

Sheesh, I knew that RIM was getting some of their own medicine, so I was only partially sympathetic (both companies deserve a good legal slapping for pursuing such ridiculously obvious patents), but I had no idea NTP was THAT scummy. They knew about prior art. They hired the guy that was practically the embodiment of that prior art -- a guy that didn't merely have something on paper, but actually once ran a business on the principles NTP claimed to be a novel invention at the time of its patents. And they paid him to sign a contract to shut up.

Can this Mr. Wallace be disbarred for such unethical behaviour?

Nevermind that HP did this in 1993

The Omnibook 300 also had built-in ROM to hold the operating system and so forth. It was a damn fine computer for its time. Hell, I still use one on occasion...it's lighter and more usable than most modern superthins. The 386 processor is kind of showing its age, though...

On the other hand recall the 1993 omnibook 300 (http://www.palmtoppaper.com/ptphtml/9/ptp90024.ht m; http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum /personalsystems/0037/) which, if I recall correctly, came with either a hard drive or flash for mass storage, and windows, word, excel, etc on a rom pc card.

Amen, brother!

I'm still using mine; if you don't want yours, drop me a line! :)

I still love having the FULL version of Lotus 123 on there, easily beats little toy versions of Excel.

And the improvements that they have made (double speed - more RAM, etc) are very nice. Someday I'll have to get an upgraded one.

Palmtops forever!

Pocket portage computing has been usable since the release of the HP 95/100/200LX beginning in 1991.

See here and the Palmtop Paper.

These little clamshell devices are the size of a check book but about an inch thick, and are little 1MB 186 DOS machines, and the 200 LX can run any software designed for DOS 5.0 and CGA graphics. They're quite useful, and I still use mine over higher powered "Palm" devices. The entire though small keyboard is usable for notetaking, and the standard PCMCIA card allows for much expandability.

The current Palm-brain washed crowd seem to forget we had powerful PDA devices 10 years ago as well. In fact I bought an Intel 80186 based HP 100 LX palmtop 10 years ago that had all the power of an IBM PC + a bunch of very good PIM applications. Also don't forget the Psion devices that were very popular back then.

Palmtop history

I now own a Sony Clie TG50 but I must say its PIM features are still not quite as good as that old HP (BTW: I still have it and it *still* works for about two weeks on a pair of AA batteries).

Of course doing e-mail and browsing with it was a real pain but I remember plugging it in in a Tokyo phonebooth to mail home with Compuserve.

I got a 10MB PCMCIA flashcard (not compact!) for it that cost me $500.

Also I remember beta-testing a hotsync type of application for a company called Palm software. I've always wondered if they took that hotsync technology and went on to make the Palm devices...

Regards,
Xenna

Enjoy.

Actually, Americans didn't buy them because they were too big and cost too much. Remember that in the beginning of Windows CE, all of the units were keyboard-based and there were many of them from a variety of manufacturers: HP, Compaq, Sharp, Casio... However, these 1.0 units were a complete joke as they had pathetic battery life and the most useless operating system to ever be released to the mainstream market. They were also overpriced but were pretty small like the Philips Velo which actually became somewhat popular.

But CE 2.0 came and then everyone decided to follow the lead of HP and make these ridiculously large units which couldn't even honestly be called palmtops. The prices were raised even further.

CE 2.1 came and was actually fairly useable except for the fact that you couldn't store any of your PIM databases on a flash card (a cause of much frustration on my part). By this time, however, most of the manufacturers had pulled out of the market leaving only NEC and HP. The units were a bit smaller but still were too big and the cost was as much as a much more useful laptop.

The other problem was bad marketing. Microsoft knew the early CE devices were crap and so it didn't promote them very much.

The handheld PC, IMHO, is the perfect platform for Linux since the units cost a lot to manufacture. However, with a free OS and apps, units like these could be made for about USD 500. They'd have to be about as big as an HP 200LX which is about 6 inches wide by 4 inches and weighs about 12 ounces.

--Antiphon

Outrageous demonstrations of technology should take a back seat to well integrated personal information management software. That is the case, anyway, if you want to make a functional handheld that appeals to people who have to manage contacts, generate ideas, and coordinate schedules (isn't that everyone, though?).

Unfortunately, most of these gadgets are just overpriced candy for geeks and executives. I still use a HP 200lx (80186 CPU, 2MB RAM, and kickass PIM software designed by Lotus, inc). The technology is ten years old, but was (and is) favored by doctors, lawyers, and anyone who had a serious need to manage their personal information.

What would I like to see in a dream handheld? I would like whoever owns the copyright on the 200lx PIM software (Lotus/IBM?) to release it as open source or integrate it into a next generation handheld. Yes, I am aware that The Palmtop Paper sells upgraded 200lx's. I would like to see basically a 200lx with Bluetooth, USB, backlighting, a touchscreen...

... no dependency on a stylus, though. A stylus is a clumsy solution compared with the efficiency of thumb-typing.

The same applies to programming languages. For many programming tasks, the imperative model will serve you well, but there are times -- especially when repetitive, recursive or just plain mathematically complex tasks are involved -- that a good functional language is exactly what you need.

P.S. While probably not the best way to compare languages, you might want to check out this web page that compares how you'd get verious programming languages to output the complete lyrics to the "99 bottles of beer" song. (At last, an almost on-topic posting about beer!)

All this and it fits in the pocket!!

Try out the double-speed 96mb versions!!

• http://www.hplx.net/
• http://www.palmtoppaper.com/

Good Sites!!