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Something I've wondered about, as a non-lawyer, is how exactly the obviousness test works. Some solutions are obvious once you formulate the problem with sufficient specificity. Here the problem is something like: "How to make dynamic annotations by multiple authors, with different preferences about the distribution range for their annotations, usefully available to the user of an electronic work?" Given this formulation of the problem, the solution in this patent is pretty obvious.

But the problem itself isn't obvious. And there is an art to formulating a problem in such a way as makes a solution obvious. One could, after all, formulate the problem in a way that doesn't make this solution obvious: "How to do something really useful with an electronic work?" or even more specifically: "How to make an annotation system more sophisticated?"

And I know that when I implemented initial annotation support in the Plucker e-text reader for PalmOS in March, 2004, nothing as sophisticated as this patent occurred to me.

So, is the obviousness test a test of the obviousness of a solution or of the problem or both?

Good riddance. I switched from AvantGo years ago to Plucker on the Palm, fed by Sunrise XP. The combination is a bit harder to set up initially but you're no longer limited to the feeds that AvantGo offers.

For snarfing web pages and similar for reading offline on a palm(also supported on other handheld OSes), Plucker is worth a look. Longer term, this conceptual area is basically being taken over by RSS.

From what specifics I could find on it, they are planning on supporting Flash 7.0 and I think this means one could play swfs on it (of which I know several addictive games online).

As for other support, I'm kind of disappointed that they went far enough to support Lyrics (Lyc) files but they only support TXT for their E-Books. I would be nice to see Plucker supported by default so that all the Project Gutenberg books would be readily accessible in something better than just plain text. But, I suppose that's just a matter of recompiling for the targeted architecture. I wonder if proprietary e-Book formats will ever be supported on devices like this? That's probably just wishful thinking--why would Amazon divert sales of the Kindle to something like this?

In most if not all cases, you will find applications that are as good as if not better than the PalmOS version.

Ah, but can I get the source? It's not essential, but it's a definite important feature for me.

TomTom - Exists for PalmOS and WM. In my opinion the WM version seems to work MUCH better and is far easier to set up.

I haven't tried this, but I was not aware that the GPS was usable by apps on Treo 650.

TCPMP media player - Exists for both platforms, has somewhat extended codec support compared to PalmOS on a Windows Mobile device

Yeah, I prefer TCPMP over RealPlayer, as TCPMP will play OGGs (which is what I rip to by default).

Web browser - The PalmOS web browser Just Plain Sucks in every way possible. Even Pocket IE is better and it isn't that hot (there are other options for WM)

Yes, which is why I've switched to Opera. I'm not happy that I can't get source to Opera, but I can't get source to any of the others and Opera seems to work better.

Java - The Java environment for PalmOS is utter and total crap and when I tried it on my Treo 650 not a single app I tried would work.

I managed to get ahold of the IMB java kit for PalmOS so I could run Opera. Seems to work pretty well, but then I don't use it for anything besides Opera; I'm not a big fan of Java myself.

GMail's Java app works great on my Tilt.

I run my own mail/web server, which seems to work fine with Opera and the mail client that comes with PalmOS. My only gripe there is that the PalmOS mail client doesn't support aliases.

Google Maps - Don't think there's a PalmOS client that can come anywhere close to Google's Windows Mobile native app

Don't know; haven't use the windows mobile version, but the PalmOS version of Google Maps seems to work fine for me.

Instant Messaging - Half of the PalmOS IM app vendors seem to have gone out of business or stopped supporting the app. I've found FAR more choices for WM.

IM isn't a priority for me (I hardly use it). I'm pretty sure there are open source IM clients for PalmOS however.

You don't exactly provide details of what apps you're using.

Here's a list:

• Little John - Console emulator for playing classic games.
• pFuel - Keeps track of gas mileage.
• FreeCoins - Accounting software.
• Keyring - Keeps track of passwords.
• pssh - SSH client.
• Plucker - EBook reader.
• LispMe - Scheme interpreter.
• Eat Watch - Weight tracking.

The thing is, PalmOS works very well for me, and is entirely compatible with Linux (or any other platform I choose to move to). If I were going to move to a new mobile platform, the last place I would look is to Microsoft (or Apple for that matter). Not only would I need to have the apps I use above (which I have source to, so I could port given a decent development environment that runs on my desktop of choice), but I would prefer to move to something more open, not less. Something more hackable, not something that gets in my way when I try to do something the big corps don't like.

Funny to read this today, after I spent a couple of hours yesterday searching Google for something that doesn't exist -- a Plucker type app for the iPod Classic. What struck me was just how badly Google performed. Any search containing the word "iPod" seems to return pages upon pages of blog entries about the (long since released) iPhone. What one tends to find with a Google search are a lot of loud, content-light blog entries, popping with ads, with short dashed-off articles broken across several pages. "Relevance" in Google seems to have the most to do with activity -- posts per day per site, repeated introductory blurbs on every page, modestly-trafficed forums devoid of meaningful discussion. Google does a pretty decent job with common searches, reasonably well with obscure searches, but very badly with the rest -- the middle of the long tail.

Google rose to prominence by being the best of a pretty weak set of players. It's still only the least bad solution, and there are a lot of things it does poorly. In classic AltaVista, you could type a few words of a song in quotes and find the title and lyrics. Type a long quoted string into Google, and you're likely to come up with nothing.

If Wikia manages to best Google in any type of search I'll applaud it. Search choices beyond Google and Trying to Be Google would be most welcome.

you find a lot of free pdfs on the net, and the one hand usage with the wheel for paging is ideal. in plucker you can add one click lookup of words for translation and if you add this font you have the right balance between strong readability and narrow width - I read hundreds of books this way.. PAT

you find a lot of free pdfs on the net, and the one hand usage with the wheel for paging is ideal. in plucker you can add one click lookup of words for translation and if you add this font you have the right balance between strong readability and narrow width - I read hundreds of books this way.. PAT

However, as an entire movement, they've managed to convince me that it isn't primarily greed that's motivating them, rather the genuine ideological conviction that culture and information should be accessible and free to anyone who seeks it out.

You might be interested in this site, Project Gutenberg, or perhaps for helping out the cause, it's companion site, Distributed Proofreaders.

Short background: Project Gutenberg is a "digital printing press" for all works that have fallen into the public domain. (They will "soon" run out of material to digitize, since nothing has hit the public domain since 1923. "Soon" could be decades, but Eldred didn't win in the Supreme Court, so expect more copyright extensions...)

I've read Einstein, Mark Twain, Leonardo DaVinci, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and many others without risking violating copyright while reading on my Palm. Highly recommend them! I now understand the two Theories of Relativity, which is no small feat. :) I recommend Plucker as the reader, it's also open source (GPL).

I was about to say that it takes even more space on Plucker,but then I realized that we were talking about different things.

I get Plucker to spider the most recent 30 articles (all the direct links from http://slashdot.org/search.pl? ). Without graphics, the first-order spidering, when harvested and compressed, becomes a 1MB file for my Palm Treo.

But you're talking about just the front page of Slashdot. Looks like that CSS is pretty hefty. If you happen to want to compress it, looks like Plucker might be an option.

Why not just block everyone EXCEPT Firefox users?

What about everyone using IceWeasel on Debian? Is he blocking them too?

What about those using Mozilla, or Epiphany (both using the same XUL and underlying Gecko HTML engine)?

How is he blocking them? By UserAgent? That's assinine, because you can just change it, and be done with it (or remove it altogether).

Why not block MSIE also? Their HTTP request objects are malformed, and they do not follow the specifications. Not to mention, they don't properly support standards, CSS, or HTML properly.

Blocking browsers is futile, and all we ended up doing by posting this to Slashdot, was bring attention to his ad-ridden blog, generating him a ton of cash, negating the whole point in the first place.

Sigh, kids. What they should do, is learn proper SEO, and how to write and market a website properly, to generate actual revenue from people who WANT to click on the ads you present to them. Plenty of my pages are precisely that.

Why not just block everyone EXCEPT Firefox users?

What about everyone using IceWeasel on Debian? Is he blocking them too?

What about those using Mozilla, or Epiphany (both using the same XUL and underlying Gecko HTML engine)?

How is he blocking them? By UserAgent? That's assinine, because you can just change it, and be done with it (or remove it altogether).

Why not block MSIE also? Their HTTP request objects are malformed, and they do not follow the specifications. Not to mention, they don't properly support standards, CSS, or HTML properly.

Blocking browsers is futile, and all we ended up doing by posting this to Slashdot, was bring attention to his ad-ridden blog, generating him a ton of cash, negating the whole point in the first place.

Sigh, kids. What they should do, is learn proper SEO, and how to write and market a website properly, to generate actual revenue from people who WANT to click on the ads you present to them. Plenty of my pages are precisely that.

Your Treo does wifi

There is wifi available for it

and has a touch screen?

Are you being obtuse? Palms have had a touch screen since they came out over ten years ago.

And how much does the "sold separately" expansion card for the MP3 player hold?

I don't know what you are talking about, but TCPMP seems to play my OGGs just fine from any of my SD cards, which I've been using since I had a Palm m500. It's also handy to take the SD card from my digital camera and upload the pictures to my webserver via my Treo.

Does it also run OS X?

No; that's one of the reasons I like it :)

That screen sure is big.

Yeah, it's about 75% the size of the iPhone's screen. Not too shabby, especially considering that it came out on the market years ago.

Watch movies on it do you?

I do, with the aforementioned TCPMP, which I have source to. "HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is my current favorite. I also play NES and GameBoy games, keep track of my car's mileage, keep track of my finances, keep track of my passwords, administer my servers remotely, read books, get directions, browse the web, etc, etc. Hell, I can even write and run software, right on my Treo! I haven't been paying attention, is Apple allowing people to even *load* third party software on the iPhone yet? How about that battery, can you swap it out with a spare like I can on any of my Palm devices and cell phones? Can you expand the memory? $600 is a lot, but I can buy a Treo 650 and 15 1GB SD cards for that much money. Plus I wouldn't be locked into a single provider. Or I could even wait three months and get a fully open-sourced phone with even more features, and port all the software that I use to it.

You're "does it run OSX" bit gives you away: you're an Apple fanboy, and the only reason you replied was because you didn't have points to mod me down. Face it, the only thing new that the iPhone brings to the cell phone world is Apple's marketing power.

There's one piece of this fraud that isn't being talked about, but it is where the REAL crime is happening.

We have been accepting donations for several years now using PayPal, and very recently, we've seen this happening with donations being given to our project.

Example: We receive a $5.00 donation from someone through PayPal. Roughly two weeks later, after we've withdrawn the funds to our bank account, the original donator disputes the "charge we made" to their credit card (we make no such charges, and the person who donated the $5.00 had to type that amount into the PayPal form, it's not an automated process).

PayPal investigates the dispute, refunds the $5.00 to the credit card holder, and charges US the extra $10.00 chargeback fee for the reversal. If our bank balance for donations is $0.00, that just cost us $10.00 out of our own pockets. 100 of those in a month, and we're out $1,000, out of our own salaries.

I've disputed this practice with PayPal many times, including logs of the hits, dates, times, bank transaction history, etc. and they just don't seem to care.

Accepting donations to OSS projects has become very risky, because of this exact practice. CCV would eliminate it, but PayPal and similar outfits do not require it.

I've owned a Treo 300, 600 and 700. I've read PDF's on all of them.

HOWEVER: It is not easy. The best is the 700. The high-res screen (320x320) makes a big difference. But even then, you're talking about using a device that has a screen that's 2 inches x 2 inches to try to read a document formatted for 8.5 x 11. The whole idea of a PDF is to preserve precise paper-based formatting. Working with that on a handheld is awkward at best.

Your best option is to convert the PDF to text and read the text on the PDF, using some sort of eReader (Plucker or ,A HREF="http://www.isilo.com/">iSilo come to mind). I read lots of PG material that way, as well as IBM Redbooks that I've converted to text.

Of course, I have had the MySQL Manuals in "pocket" (Palm, mobile) format for quite some time... you can get them over here in Plucker format.

I also have the PostgreSQL documentation in Plucker format as well.

(Don't forget to check the rest of my mobile work if you're interested in some of the other custom conversions I've done: FreeBSD docs, PHP docs, Cygwin/CygwinX FAQ, and dozens of others).

Of course, I have had the MySQL Manuals in "pocket" (Palm, mobile) format for quite some time... you can get them over here in Plucker format.

I also have the PostgreSQL documentation in Plucker format as well.

(Don't forget to check the rest of my mobile work if you're interested in some of the other custom conversions I've done: FreeBSD docs, PHP docs, Cygwin/CygwinX FAQ, and dozens of others).

Of course, I have had the MySQL Manuals in "pocket" (Palm, mobile) format for quite some time... you can get them over here in Plucker format.

I also have the PostgreSQL documentation in Plucker format as well.

(Don't forget to check the rest of my mobile work if you're interested in some of the other custom conversions I've done: FreeBSD docs, PHP docs, Cygwin/CygwinX FAQ, and dozens of others).

Of course, I have had the MySQL Manuals in "pocket" (Palm, mobile) format for quite some time... you can get them over here in Plucker format.

I also have the PostgreSQL documentation in Plucker format as well.

(Don't forget to check the rest of my mobile work if you're interested in some of the other custom conversions I've done: FreeBSD docs, PHP docs, Cygwin/CygwinX FAQ, and dozens of others).

Of course, I have had the MySQL Manuals in "pocket" (Palm, mobile) format for quite some time... you can get them over here in Plucker format.

I also have the PostgreSQL documentation in Plucker format as well.

(Don't forget to check the rest of my mobile work if you're interested in some of the other custom conversions I've done: FreeBSD docs, PHP docs, Cygwin/CygwinX FAQ, and dozens of others).

Of course, I have had the MySQL Manuals in "pocket" (Palm, mobile) format for quite some time... you can get them over here in Plucker format.

I also have the PostgreSQL documentation in Plucker format as well.

(Don't forget to check the rest of my mobile work if you're interested in some of the other custom conversions I've done: FreeBSD docs, PHP docs, Cygwin/CygwinX FAQ, and dozens of others).

Of course, I have had the MySQL Manuals in "pocket" (Palm, mobile) format for quite some time... you can get them over here in Plucker format.

I also have the PostgreSQL documentation in Plucker format as well.

(Don't forget to check the rest of my mobile work if you're interested in some of the other custom conversions I've done: FreeBSD docs, PHP docs, Cygwin/CygwinX FAQ, and dozens of others).

Plucker and adobe reader. If I could take the floorplan of my house in acrobat format, carry it in to the local hardware store, and zoom in to get the measurements of various areas, good enough for me.

Wendy Seltzer was our pro-bono, FSF-appointed attorney for a few years when we were investigating a commercial company (not intentionally linked here, they don't deserve the hits) for using our GPL code without complying with the license.

All we wanted, was for them to bring themselves into compliance... and they insisted that they were, and we were wrong, and that the GPL was "...subject to interpretation". So we contacted the FSF and they gave us Wendy. It's been a few years now, and we never really got final closure on the situation, so I'm not sure where it stands at this point. (past copyright infringement does not just vanish if you stop violating it in the present, however).

I have collaborated with Wendy over numerous dozens of emails and personally met her to sit down with the CEO of aforementioned alleged-infringing company in New York, and I can say that she really knows her field. I'm happy that she's doing good things for the EFF, they need someone of her skillset on-staff.

I have nothing but praise for her abilities and her skills. She was a brick wall between our project and the commercial company who tried to threaten us many times with their millions of dollars of investor money to try to silence us.

If Wendy is on your side, it's a good thing. It's where she shines the best.

Enjoy, and let me know if there's anything else we can do.

(don't forget to check out the other things we've created for you over here)

Enjoy, and let me know if there's anything else we can do.

(don't forget to check out the other things we've created for you over here)

I don't know if you'd prefer it, but I found a solution for this, and for another problem - storage in a small space. I've got a Palm Tungsten E, which has 32 MB of memory built-in. I've had as many as 20 books on it at once - some of which were over half a meg compressed - and never been able to break the 2MB barrier in terms of book size. Before I used compressed ones, this was a bit of a problem.

The answer is that you can convert from all of those formats to HTML. In fact, HTML can look like any of those. So what you really want is something that can display HTML in from a perspective of an e-book reader. Just convert to HTML and tell your e-book reader what the root file of your book is (or do like I do and make a nice presentation front page from which you can select whichever book you want).

I use plucker for my actual reader, and convert most every format using Open Office. Open Office can read RTF, DOC, HTML (if you get very nonstandard HTML from somewhere, as is usually the case) and convert them into compliant HTML. The one exception to this is PDF.

Since PDF is an exact layout format, it's very difficult to remove text from it programmatically. You can do it with ghostscript, but it doesn't look good. I mostly use Acroread for palm for those - which still doesn't look very good.

Lit files actually involve an unpacking step which unfortunately breaks DRM. Your other alternative is to pay for a crappy e-book reader, though. Lit files are actually compressed, encrypted collections of HTML files, so you generally lose almost nothing in the conversion in terms of display.

It's great for you that you like your Clie, but I don't own one and am not about to run out and spend, what, over $200, or heck, even $100 to be able to purchase a book.

I've had a Palm of one flavor or another for years now. One of my favorite programs for the Palm OS is Plucker at http://www.plkr.org/. Here's a bit from their web site:

With Plucker installed on your Palm, you can read any Internet web pages, ebooks, text-files, or other documents you want at any time, simply by converting it with Plucker's desktop tools, and sending it to your Palm for reading on your Palm handheld.

Obviously it's not a real-time browser, but offline only. But not one of my favorite web sites has to restructure their sites for just a handful of users.

It handles images, links, RSS, RDF, text files, HTML PDF, and many other file formats, etc, etc. And it's GNU.

I recommend your client give Plucker a shot. Can't hurt anything, the software has been stable for ages.

I'm suspicious that some of the people here are just worried that they won't be able to pirate commercial ebooks.

That actually wasn't what I was thinking. Right now, I use Plucker to translate and read HTML documents on my (admittedly past its prime) Palm Vx. I can take larger webpages, such as HOWTOs, online manuals, and any other text-focused web content, and read them semi-conveniently on my old portable. I'm hoping this device will extend this kind of functionality, so maybe I can keep larger pages (doesn't take long to fill that 8MB on the Palm Vx).

Plucker has been growing on me and seen increased use as of late. Its very versatile, and the format is open so I shouldn't get stuck with more eBooks having only semi-obsolete (or missing) readers on my palmtop of choice.

Television can't do news properly and Radio is only useful for transmitting headlines and local news. If I want good coverage of international news, then I get an online newspaper and stuff it into Plucker and read it at my leasure.

-AD

There's also some details on finding your cache with your Palm + Plucker over here as well.

I may cook up a little mod_perl app that allows people to upload their .gpx file to convert to Plucker format at some point in the future if there is enough demand for it.

Any requests for something like that?

There's also some details on finding your cache with your Palm + Plucker over here as well.

I may cook up a little mod_perl app that allows people to upload their .gpx file to convert to Plucker format at some point in the future if there is enough demand for it.

Any requests for something like that?

I'm happy with AvantGo; it may not be perfect for content creators (since they have to pay for a channel), but as a user I get quite a nice bunch of information. Replaces a daily newspaper.

AvantGo has LONG been surpassed by better, smaller, faster, more-capable, feature-rich, free tools.

Take a look at Plucker for the current leader in this space. Runs on everything (Windows, Linux, OSX) and on PalmOS, PocketPC, Linux PDAs. Has Python, perl, Java, C++ distillers, dozens more options than AvantGo, lots of third-party support and add-ons, and is significanly more visually appealing than the bloated, wasted space of AvantGo.

Feel free to read the (slightly old) comparison of AvantGo, Plucker and iSilo over here for more details.

Lots of screenshots of Plucker examples over here and Google's new RSS feeds in Plucker over here.

I'm happy with AvantGo; it may not be perfect for content creators (since they have to pay for a channel), but as a user I get quite a nice bunch of information. Replaces a daily newspaper.

AvantGo has LONG been surpassed by better, smaller, faster, more-capable, feature-rich, free tools.

Take a look at Plucker for the current leader in this space. Runs on everything (Windows, Linux, OSX) and on PalmOS, PocketPC, Linux PDAs. Has Python, perl, Java, C++ distillers, dozens more options than AvantGo, lots of third-party support and add-ons, and is significanly more visually appealing than the bloated, wasted space of AvantGo.

Feel free to read the (slightly old) comparison of AvantGo, Plucker and iSilo over here for more details.

Lots of screenshots of Plucker examples over here and Google's new RSS feeds in Plucker over here.

I'm happy with AvantGo; it may not be perfect for content creators (since they have to pay for a channel), but as a user I get quite a nice bunch of information. Replaces a daily newspaper.

AvantGo has LONG been surpassed by better, smaller, faster, more-capable, feature-rich, free tools.

Take a look at Plucker for the current leader in this space. Runs on everything (Windows, Linux, OSX) and on PalmOS, PocketPC, Linux PDAs. Has Python, perl, Java, C++ distillers, dozens more options than AvantGo, lots of third-party support and add-ons, and is significanly more visually appealing than the bloated, wasted space of AvantGo.

Feel free to read the (slightly old) comparison of AvantGo, Plucker and iSilo over here for more details.

Lots of screenshots of Plucker examples over here and Google's new RSS feeds in Plucker over here.

I'm happy with AvantGo; it may not be perfect for content creators (since they have to pay for a channel), but as a user I get quite a nice bunch of information. Replaces a daily newspaper.

AvantGo has LONG been surpassed by better, smaller, faster, more-capable, feature-rich, free tools.

Take a look at Plucker for the current leader in this space. Runs on everything (Windows, Linux, OSX) and on PalmOS, PocketPC, Linux PDAs. Has Python, perl, Java, C++ distillers, dozens more options than AvantGo, lots of third-party support and add-ons, and is significanly more visually appealing than the bloated, wasted space of AvantGo.

Feel free to read the (slightly old) comparison of AvantGo, Plucker and iSilo over here for more details.

Lots of screenshots of Plucker examples over here and Google's new RSS feeds in Plucker over here.

The new feeds look GREAT in Plucker on my PDA. I wrote a little web-based tool that takes any rss/rdf/atom/opml/nntp resource and converts it to validated HTML, which I can then directly manipulate (and in my case, turn into Plucker format).

You can see some screenshots of what it looks like on my Palm.

The new feeds look GREAT in Plucker on my PDA. I wrote a little web-based tool that takes any rss/rdf/atom/opml/nntp resource and converts it to validated HTML, which I can then directly manipulate (and in my case, turn into Plucker format).

You can see some screenshots of what it looks like on my Palm.

If you need any advice on book reading software, or software to help convert ebooks to other formats or anything else lemme know.

Here's a good ebook reader that can do txt and html:
http://www.plkr.org/

I also grabbed a 64 meg SD card from officemax on sale for $10 after rebate. So if you see a good sale on something similar might want to grab one.

I use a simpler one that only does txt but I always have to convert first then.

I dont mind helping a fellow palm ebook reader out just give a yell if you want more info.

We're not having any trouble serving lots of torrent files from the same instance of the server. To the tune of over 109GiB of Plucker torrent downloads this year.

That doesn't count the downloads over http, rsync, and through our mirrors. Probably another 200GiB there, rough estimate.

I use bttrack and point it to the torrent directory (locked with --allowed_dir of course), and it works great.

I run a separate server on a separate port for various projects, to separate the torrents per-project. No issues at all.

We're not having any trouble serving lots of torrent files from the same instance of the server. To the tune of over 109GiB of Plucker torrent downloads this year.

That doesn't count the downloads over http, rsync, and through our mirrors. Probably another 200GiB there, rough estimate.

I use bttrack and point it to the torrent directory (locked with --allowed_dir of course), and it works great.

I run a separate server on a separate port for various projects, to separate the torrents per-project. No issues at all.

After reading your post and staring blankly at the screen for a few moments in disbelief, I can only come to the conclusion that:

A) You're a troll
B) You're drunk
or
C) You work with a bunch of saboteurs that intentionally crash their Treos to get paid downtime.

I've had my Treo 600 for about 2 years, now, and have experienced none of the problems you've described. The GP's description of no more than 1 crash per month is very accurate. Anytime it has crashed, it quickly boots right back up. I've never had to send it in to be serviced.

For those that think that a Palm is just an "organizer" and a PokcetPC is a "pocket computer", don't buy into stereotypes. I use my Treo as a computer. I have an ssh client installed that I use frequently to work on some servers I admin for. The thing came with a capable web browser, but I have many options to install something else, if I want. I also have a Samba client that works great, an FTP client, a VNC Client, and an Instant Messenger. Somebody already mentioned the superb movie player TCPMP, but that's not all, I also have a Video recorder that makes use of the Treo's built-in digital camera. I use a perl script I found to convert the video to mpeg1. I use a Photoshop-like image editor that has support for complex things like layers and blending modes. My Treo is also my mp3/ogg player and I use it to listen to podcasts in the car. I read ebooks and even /. using Plucker. I take audio notes using SoundRec. I even have a Python interpreter, and can code native apps in C right on my Palm. I won't even bother to mention all the games that are available. You can google for them yourself. I've seen apps out there for viewing/editing Word Docs and Excel files, but having never had a need for that, haven't installed them.

This is why "ignoring font size" (whatever that means),

New to the internet are you? Internet Explorer has, in it Internet Options/Acessibility :

"Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages"

And it does - except when people use stylesheets to specify an absolute size - perhaps the programmers thought that they webmonsters knew what they were doing. Sorry, ment to write webmasters.

Ah, baseless accusations without any research, I should have recognized this troll at the first post.

You come across as some unthinking person who only cares about some lofty design goals and care little about anything else - that you add "troll" here just shows that as well. Anybody dare not agree with you, must be a troll!

And how the fuck could I "research" a random stranger - and more to the point why should i waste time on that - will it improve the multitude of sites out there? No it won't. Better try and forget it (until I'm reminded of it again)

Our sites go through a QA test of ...

Yeah yeah, bla bla - everybody are saints - show me your site and I'll tell you if you are the exception (and if your only site is http://code.plkr.org/ then yes, that is readable - but 15 tests for that?)

Why do you think I used em in my font declaration, and not px or pt ?

Because you like being in the minority? I'd bet 99% of sites don't.

We care more about poorly-sighted individuals and those without sight altogether, as well as the colorblind... than almost everyone else we've been compared to.


Good for you (and us), but almost nobody does in any form (not just web - how many games allow you do increase font size on the interface?).

I had one of those for a couple years before I upgraded to an M500. The M500 is similar, but has an SD slot, and slightly better scroll buttons that actually make it a lot easier to use for reading books. I use Plucker to read books, and Convert LITto convert those pesky Microsoft LIT files to HTML.

GPL violations are a lot more common than most people think.

Just because it doesn't hit the mainstream media doesn't mean that thousands (yes, thousands of OSS projects out there are being actively violated by commercial enterprises). A few years ago I caught Sony doing this and reported about it (picked up by Slashdot here based on my account).

But that was relatively small potatoes to another GPL violation we've had to deal with. The CEO of a mobile company (who shall remain nameless, thousands know who he is) took our code, stripped our names and attribution out, removed the COPYING file (our copy of the GPL license), put his name all over it, and claimed he wrote it. He also waffled and lied over the years about which parts of our project he was and was not using. His stories changed back and forth (and I have all of the emails confirming these wishy-washy statements).

When we started seeing companies giving away binary versions of an application that looked suspisciously like ours (and I mean pixel-for-pixel identical) without any source, attribution or links back to the GPL, we started calling those companies and requesting the source for compliance. Since these companies had no idea who we were, they referred us back to the company they bought it from.. the original one who took our code from us outside of compliance with the GPL.

Then the threats started coming in... from the CEO of the company that originally took our source. My favorite quote from him:

"...if we end up in court, I'll bankrupt these guys..."

We were appointed an amazing attorney by the FSF, and she represented us well. I even went to NYC to meet with this CEO with Wendy to discuss how they could bring themselves into compliance. The CEO insisted that "..the GPL is not a license, its subject to interpretation... it was never reviewed by real attorneys or tested in court", and then proceeded to tell me to fire my attorney, right in front of her, because he said she wasn't giving me correct information about the law. Yeah ok, except she TEACHES law, and this CEO does what again? Oh yeah, steals other people's products for his own profitous gain.

He continued to threaten us for contacting his "partners" (who were also not transferred the GPL when he sold them "his" product [using our code]). Of course his threats fell on deaf ears, since it is our duty to require compliance with our code no matter who uses it.

The case goes on now, 4+ years later, but some interesting facts have come to light and we may have some official corporate backing from someone he believes is a partner of his... this is FAR from over, and he has absolutely no idea what mountain of legal stress is heading his way.

Wendy has moved on to the EFF now, and we have some new legal contacts at the FSF to try persue this further, but they're busy with lots of other cases.

If anyone is interested in hearing more details, feel free to contact me. If you want to support our case against companies like this, please visit our donation page and contribute to help us fund more legal support (or just because your appreciate our work: Don't forget to check out our Plucker eye-candy page).

GPL violations are a lot more common than most people think.

Just because it doesn't hit the mainstream media doesn't mean that thousands (yes, thousands of OSS projects out there are being actively violated by commercial enterprises). A few years ago I caught Sony doing this and reported about it (picked up by Slashdot here based on my account).

But that was relatively small potatoes to another GPL violation we've had to deal with. The CEO of a mobile company (who shall remain nameless, thousands know who he is) took our code, stripped our names and attribution out, removed the COPYING file (our copy of the GPL license), put his name all over it, and claimed he wrote it. He also waffled and lied over the years about which parts of our project he was and was not using. His stories changed back and forth (and I have all of the emails confirming these wishy-washy statements).

When we started seeing companies giving away binary versions of an application that looked suspisciously like ours (and I mean pixel-for-pixel identical) without any source, attribution or links back to the GPL, we started calling those companies and requesting the source for compliance. Since these companies had no idea who we were, they referred us back to the company they bought it from.. the original one who took our code from us outside of compliance with the GPL.

Then the threats started coming in... from the CEO of the company that originally took our source. My favorite quote from him:

"...if we end up in court, I'll bankrupt these guys..."

We were appointed an amazing attorney by the FSF, and she represented us well. I even went to NYC to meet with this CEO with Wendy to discuss how they could bring themselves into compliance. The CEO insisted that "..the GPL is not a license, its subject to interpretation... it was never reviewed by real attorneys or tested in court", and then proceeded to tell me to fire my attorney, right in front of her, because he said she wasn't giving me correct information about the law. Yeah ok, except she TEACHES law, and this CEO does what again? Oh yeah, steals other people's products for his own profitous gain.

He continued to threaten us for contacting his "partners" (who were also not transferred the GPL when he sold them "his" product [using our code]). Of course his threats fell on deaf ears, since it is our duty to require compliance with our code no matter who uses it.

The case goes on now, 4+ years later, but some interesting facts have come to light and we may have some official corporate backing from someone he believes is a partner of his... this is FAR from over, and he has absolutely no idea what mountain of legal stress is heading his way.

Wendy has moved on to the EFF now, and we have some new legal contacts at the FSF to try persue this further, but they're busy with lots of other cases.

If anyone is interested in hearing more details, feel free to contact me. If you want to support our case against companies like this, please visit our donation page and contribute to help us fund more legal support (or just because your appreciate our work: Don't forget to check out our Plucker eye-candy page).

GPL violations are a lot more common than most people think.

Just because it doesn't hit the mainstream media doesn't mean that thousands (yes, thousands of OSS projects out there are being actively violated by commercial enterprises). A few years ago I caught Sony doing this and reported about it (picked up by Slashdot here based on my account).

But that was relatively small potatoes to another GPL violation we've had to deal with. The CEO of a mobile company (who shall remain nameless, thousands know who he is) took our code, stripped our names and attribution out, removed the COPYING file (our copy of the GPL license), put his name all over it, and claimed he wrote it. He also waffled and lied over the years about which parts of our project he was and was not using. His stories changed back and forth (and I have all of the emails confirming these wishy-washy statements).

When we started seeing companies giving away binary versions of an application that looked suspisciously like ours (and I mean pixel-for-pixel identical) without any source, attribution or links back to the GPL, we started calling those companies and requesting the source for compliance. Since these companies had no idea who we were, they referred us back to the company they bought it from.. the original one who took our code from us outside of compliance with the GPL.

Then the threats started coming in... from the CEO of the company that originally took our source. My favorite quote from him:

"...if we end up in court, I'll bankrupt these guys..."

We were appointed an amazing attorney by the FSF, and she represented us well. I even went to NYC to meet with this CEO with Wendy to discuss how they could bring themselves into compliance. The CEO insisted that "..the GPL is not a license, its subject to interpretation... it was never reviewed by real attorneys or tested in court", and then proceeded to tell me to fire my attorney, right in front of her, because he said she wasn't giving me correct information about the law. Yeah ok, except she TEACHES law, and this CEO does what again? Oh yeah, steals other people's products for his own profitous gain.

He continued to threaten us for contacting his "partners" (who were also not transferred the GPL when he sold them "his" product [using our code]). Of course his threats fell on deaf ears, since it is our duty to require compliance with our code no matter who uses it.

The case goes on now, 4+ years later, but some interesting facts have come to light and we may have some official corporate backing from someone he believes is a partner of his... this is FAR from over, and he has absolutely no idea what mountain of legal stress is heading his way.

Wendy has moved on to the EFF now, and we have some new legal contacts at the FSF to try persue this further, but they're busy with lots of other cases.

If anyone is interested in hearing more details, feel free to contact me. If you want to support our case against companies like this, please visit our donation page and contribute to help us fund more legal support (or just because your appreciate our work: Don't forget to check out our Plucker eye-candy page).

You can see my work so far at the following links:

Wikipedia in Plucker format
Wikiquote in Plucker format
Wikitionary in Plucker format

..and of course, my beautiful anti-alias fonts for Plucker, made with PalmFontConv by Alexander Pruss.

I've also converted the Creating XPCOM Components book by Doug Turner and Ian Oeschger to Plucker format as well as the FreeBSD Handbook.

I have literally hundreds of similar-quality works I'll be releasing over the next few months to the community on an ongoing basis.

If there's something you'd like to see, just let me know