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Linux to Power Most Motorola Phones
raffe writes "Motorola will begin selling its first cell phone based on Linux this year and says most future models will follow suit, a major sign of the growing popularity of operating system outside its stronghold on high-end computers."
Hmmm! will the source code be posted for it?
But symian os is already OSS and probably better for mobile phones (since Nokia spearheaded the modular phone movement).
Now a Linux development kit for symian would be nice though.
It seems as Windows and Linux will meet at yet another frontier. Desktop-wise Windows is holding strong and no break-through seems to be near. Server wise, I'd say that Windows is loosing, but only slowly and more work will be needed. In the portable area, both Linux and Windows are relatively new players, but Linux is better suited. Hopefully this will mean that more developers start using (and liking) Linux, and thus help Linux in other areas.
As for the phones; Can I make a call from bash?
I suppose it'll give a whole new meaning if the phone says "Time for a fsck"
Linux and Java archenemy, Microsoft, said Motorola's move doesn't change things much--it's just a new variation on the fight to lure programmers to Microsoft software rather than Java.
Nice to see MS still have their heads in the sand, lets just hope Sendo survive and win their lawsuit.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Well, perhaps this will be an improvement :-)
why I need any OS on my lower-end phone. I just want to make some calls!
I'm all for Linux but I'd have to say this is just a marketing strategy. Motorola is desperate.
I'd be interested in what kind of hardware they are using. I built a Linux-based cell phone a while back (uses VoIP w/ WiFi) and the best hardware I could find was still somewhat clunky (PDA sized) and cost about $400. I'm looking into rebuilding the software into tablet and wearable form factors but I'd sure love to find a cellphone sized device that ran Linux that I could hack on.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Do they mean like servers, or what? I run coyote off a floppy on a like 20MHz 286.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
What are they running now? I mean, they've already got J2ME and all this other stuff... why switch? What's the footprint of Linux stripped down for a cell? Will we have to wait 2 gens to actually see it?
Personally, the first phone that offers a SSH client will be the one I buy.
HELLO?! WHAT?! No, I'm on Linux! LINUX! No it's rubbish! Yeah, I have to worry about dependencies and all that bollocks! Ciao!
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
Whoop-tee-fucking doo.
It's a phone. As long as it lets me place calls, who cares what OS it runs on?
Come one, it's got linux in the title, does that make it news?
You bet it is. One of the big three mobile phone manufacturers has said it's not going to be following the rest of the herd with Symbian but is going with an alternative. That in itself is huge news - the mobile phone market is gigantic - almost certainly the single most important embedded software market - and Symbian was expected to walk it, and win over every major manufacturer. Instead, as we see, it's not. Even without looking at it from a Linux perspective, it's a big thing.
At the same time, from a Linux perspective, it's even bigger. It's an enormous win, it'll keep MontaVista and their partners afloat for years. It's also a huge boost to Linux's status in the embedded world - a manufacturer as large as Motorola doesn't choose an OS for their phones lightly. This is a market Microsoft has been spending hand over fist to get into, and failing apart from with a few niche players (one of whom, Sendo, very publicly dumped Microsoft for Symbian)... and yet Linux waltzes in with no budget behind it and captures a Big Three manufacturer without even trying, and in the face of competition from Symbian who have a very very sharp phone OS of their own.
So yes it's news.
Cool... my phone has locked up a few times... maybe this'll fix that.
-Derick
Now what am I gonna do when I go buying my next mobile? As a Finn I should of course buy a Nokia, since doing that won't send all my money abroad. But in the other hand I want to have Linux in my phone. Buying it would of course send my money even out from the EU, which is a bad thing. And knowing the current political situation with NATO, Germany and all I'd rather not buy anything from USA.. But even though Nokias Series 60 -plaform is /somewhat/ open, I'd like the idea of truly free OS in my phone very much. And if I could get a console on that motorola.. *drool*
Now what am I going to do?
Where have your banknotes been?!
Lose != win
Loose != tight
Is it too much to ask to see someone get it right for a change?
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
How wrong you are,
My local computer shop sells all new PC's with OpenOffice no M$ office in site.
this company ships most PC's with Lindows installed.
etc....
2.5 is soooo smooth on the desktop compaired to 2.4, but doesn't have supermount grrr.....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
...the butt awful interface on every motorola I've ever used.
Actually seriously, all motorlas I've use right up till the v66 are appaulingly horrible to do anything with. Before I would actually buy one they really need to sort this out. Reading a text message was an exercise in hell ffs.
Its worth noting that Yamaha (the music gear maker, not the motorcycle maker) announced recently that they would be using an embedded version of linux for most of their keyboards in the near future.
This is very good news! All it takes is a couple large companies like this to adopt Linux (e.g. for embedded systems, perfect use for Linux).
Everyone on slashdot loves desktop PCs and laptops, but the vast majority of computing power in the world exists in embedded systems like in your car, home appliances, portable gadgets, etc. These little systems really run the world.
So when embedded systems engineers get hooked on Linux, believe me, that's huge.
...if you recompile your phone's kernal.
;)
:p
Every time you add a new number.
still, I can start sending my business card as an rpm
I hope Motorola will include Xkillbill on their phones!!
a major sign of the growing popularity of operating system outside its stronghold on high-end computers
This seems like good news. However, is this really Linux as we know it? Probably not. I assume (hope) that this will be some kind of stripped down Linux kernel, which is small and efficient and stable enough to reliably power a mobile device. People tend to forget that most of the ability to scale Linux up to mainframes etc or down to mobile devices and wristwatches is undertaken by corporates who intend to profit from doing so. (IBM, Motorola etc)
Outsiders agree. "The story here isn't really Linux on cell phones. It's Java running on Linux," Jackson said. "It's more about it being a bigger part of Motorola's Java strategy than it is about the efficacy or viability of Linux."
:-/
That's just wrong. The story is about selling more phones. How to do that. Easy: Put (java)games, (java)PIM applications, (java)Chat, (java)anything on the phone. A second bonus is ofcourse that linux runs on top of the PPC arch that motorola develops. It's also worth noting that now that Apple is flirting with IBM motorola needs customers for it's PPC line. It all makes sense: Let one division of motorola use the chips that the other division produces.
I'm only worried about what all this does for battery lifetime of my phone
Thomas S. Iversen
The new, Linux-powered, easy-to-use SmartPhone! To make a call, just enter the IP address of each router!
is here. I can't find a picture of the device anywhere. Does anyone know whether it will run QTopia? If so, the QTopia platform (already adopted by Sharp and IBM) will be getting some useful momentum.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I say this as someone who was actually contracting for Motorola, when a rant came down from management demanding that everyone use Motorola phones. I wonder if anyone was actually brave enough to actually tell him why none of the workforce were using their phones...
Anyway, I hope the situation has changed and management has gotten a clue. No one will eat a cake that looks like a giant dog turd even if it is made of delicious marzipan. The same goes for running Linux in a phone.
I'm sorry, but that is blatently false.
Everyplace I've seen/worked at/heard about uses the following:
Real Unix for the high-end stuff
Windows for the middle tier stuff
Linux (if at all) for the low tier, security type stuff (possibly filesharing but mostly firewalling)
Remember, your water cooled athlon does not equal a high-end computer!
If you're a Swedish speaking Finn (like Linus), buy a Motorola. Otherwise go with Nokia.
And when speaking about Java applets running on phones. That has been done by both Ericsson and Nokia for a while now
And, in Japan, on Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba, Dentsu, and others' phones.
Nokia is just buying its technology from Sanyo and passing it off as its own in Europe and North America, as is Ericsson with Sony's technology.
You just can't see it.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Nowadays more and more companies sell various soluions based on Linux. Many of there include modifications to the kernel. Where's the source?
As far as I understand, they are required to provide the source to their customers, and they're can not prohibit by any means redistribution of the source by the customers.
But I have yet to see a website download section with source. What's happening? Do all those companies act as if the code was in public domain , or BSD-type licensed? What the hell??
The only thing MontaVista's site offers for download is some preview kit. It is an ISO image (uncompressed!!), "encrypted" by some stupid password which gets mailed once you fill out a ridiculously long form on their website and requires Flash 5 to run.
I'm downloading it right now, but I'm more than sure there ain't a trace of source to linux source there.
Have anybody got any GPL-d source from them? What holds you from putting it up on the web?
Come on, this shit shouldn't have begun to happen in the first place.
./lxnt
Even though this is a simple question. and probably the most obvious one of all. I still havent been able to find much answers.
How, given the nature of the copyleft that the GPL enforces, can a company keep they're code closed.
Unless motorola doesnt even care about it source? im sure that its figured out the answer to my question above.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Ok , perhaps I'm being slightly sarcastic but IF they decide to make the phone into a handheld computer too then the opportunites to hack it could be quite large especially if it runs TCP/IP over the phone network. Ok , this can happen already with handheld computers but people who use them tend to be a bit more tech savvy and almost expect something nasty to happen. Joe and Flo Sixpack however won't have a clue and won't understand what it means to have their phone "owned" or "rooted". Imagine a virus running on the cellphone system.... nasty...
This certainly seems interesting, having also political consequences discussed above, but my understanding is that only a single process will execute on these mobile phones: the Java(tm) interpreter.
Rationale: Licencing Symbian or Windows (whatizzit? Mobile Edition?) for a mobile phone may shorten the development cycle, but a) it costs real money (with per-unit charges) and b) you give up control of your platform. With all solutions you will need to code support for your extra gadgets (e.g. the camera, keypad circuitry, LCD screen, battery status, and let's not forget the basics: GSM chipsets). Since the phone will use Java, it will need to support the MIDP, therefore the interpreter will need to have access to these features anyway. So, why code your OS (as in, what the user will see on the display) in native code when you can use Java?
I'm currently planning to buy an Ericsson T800 when they'll be available where I live (Greece); I'd buy a Motorola phone if I could get my hands on all the source and java classfiles (the decompiler is your fried, together with the global search-and-replace - think unobfuscation). However, I don't expect I'll get the source for the more nifty features of the phones....
(Posting this using a laptop to an Ericsson T39 to the 4.0-second-round-trip-time GPRS network.)
The article talks about MontaVista, but they just purchased Lineo's Embeddix assets.
Kind of weird
When do i get to recompile the kernel in my truck?
SimonTek
All that said, Nokias have cool games, so many accessories and addons it's almost hard to fathom. BUT, they get VERY poor reception across the board. My Mitsubishi phone had great reception, great battery life, took standard home accessories, and was easy to navigate; but was basic and sorta heavy, not clunky like the "sattelite phone sized original analog Motos" but still clunky.
The point is, every phone has it's problems. My current is a Sony Ericcson t68i, I like it more than any phone I have ever had. I just feel like I'm going to break it. Accessories are few and far between, and the neat features need refinement.
As for Moto embedding Linux, this will only be of use if they can get full functionality of a small PC by using the PowerPC, iPod like size (with hard drive of iPod too), color screen, great battery life. Then, maybe if it can run some of the Mac emulators out there under it's Linux, like the Sharp Zaurus can, then that would be beyond useful, if not revelutionary.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I think what Motorola is doing is smart - like the article said, by using Linux/Java they're controlling their own destiny a bit more. The part that I don't understand is that Motorola is part owner of Symbian. It seems to me that they would want to promote that platform instead of going off in a different direction entirely.
But if you just ignore that for a sec, I think choosing Linux is the right thing to do from a power/scalability perspective. Symbian, for example, was designed from the ground up to run on mobile devices. But since these devices are now becoming more and more powerful (like a circa 1995 laptop) you're going to need an OS that can take advantage of that power in an open way and I'll vote Linux any day (like all the rest of you, I'm sure).
Think about this: Motorola (and Nokia) are both going to sell around 400 million smart phones in 2003. Even if a very small percentage of these phones initially use Linux, it will still mean millions of Linux "installs". Motorola could soon be the #1 Linux computing platform.
If you check out Motorola's home page, you'll also see that they've launched a reference platform for OEMs called i.Smart to base their mobile phones on also. According to this article on InfoSync.no, this will allow OEMs to create smart phones in as little as 90 days with support for Symbian, eLinux, Windows CE or PalmOS. This is pretty cool, but what is disappointing is the complete lack of WCDMA/CDMA2000 (i.e. 3G) support in either the A760 or the i.Smart reference design. They need to just pay Qualcomm some ransom money and get on board the CDMA train, IMHO.
I've got lots more thoughts about this. From what I've seen so far, I can't tell if Motorola is going to follow Sharp's example and make the Java Apps peers with the native apps using Personal Java, or whether they'll restrict the functionality and use J2ME, which keeps Java apps in a tightly controlled sandbox. That could really make a difference in the number of apps available and usability also.
Anyways, cool news to see.
-Russ
Me
Keep in mind that nothing is ever that simple. Both Nokia and Motorola may and DO have foreign investors. So no matter what you do at some point your money is goign to circle the globe.
Lets keep politics out of our technology purchasing decisions.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
So what you are saying is that we need a Moore's law for batteries, eh? Sounds good -- it means that in 10 or 15 years, I'll have a nice, portable power plant for that phaser I'm working on
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Just be happy someone is using your beloved arcane OS to begin with.
You do bring up a good point though. I imagine that in the future a LOT of companies will be using Linux in their products. This will create two different factions.
1. Companies who publicly declare Linux is in their product and provide the source immediately (or sometimes after some prodding from the hairy bastard RMS)
2. Companies who covertly use Linux in their products without telling a soul. The only way we the public will discover this is due to the occasional goof or screwup that exposes the code for all to see. But that will be a rare occourance. These "parasite" companies will continue to feed off of the free development of Linux for as long as they can without contributing anything back to the project.
Personally I don't have a problem with group #2. I mean what can you honestly expect when you give away something for free? You think a silly license is going to stop anyone from using it inappropriately? Do proprietary EULA's stop software pirates? No they don't. So what power over the truly unscrupulous do you think the GPL will have?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
He describes how Einstein and other scientists spent a great deal of time looking outwards, at the largest things - the far reaches of space. Now we have returned to look at the smallest things, quantum physics.
Linux is working to get into the high end computing as well as the smallest parts. We have a unified Linux kernel!
I'm getting tired of stories like this and "Home Depot to use Linux in cash registers." First, we're just talking about the Linux kernel and some device drivers. We're not talking about X11, bash, a window manager, KDE, Mesa, or anything like that. Just a kernel and some device drivers.
This has nothing to do with the general "popularity" of Linux. Test time: Name any of the 10+ other operating systems used in embedded devices? Can't name them? Exactly.
There's getting to be a more than a little annoying "Linux is the only operating system and should be used in everything from PCs to microwaves" rally. Doesn't that sound a whole lot like what Microsoft has been saying since the mid 1990s?
I've following the OS debate for smartphones for a couple years now, because I am from Europe an seemingly everyone wants a cellphone and smartphone technology eventually trickles down to normal phones as well.
This means that the number of phones (and therefore of OSs on them) will soon surpass or is already bigger than the number of PCs. Any OS that will dominate that market will have the biggest installer base of all OSs in the world and will sell more licences than MS.
The most interesting event was when Psion gave up its control of their embedded OS called Epox and now shares control with Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. The new name is Symbian.
Motorola is the only one that for some reason still can't make up its mind how to power their smartphones and has been trying j2me for a while now. Siemens and Samsung got on the Symbian train last year.
The problem with Symbian is that it is still very unstable on some phones which is the reason why they don't give out kits for the P800. Many apps seem to stall the system.
Imagine writing a killer app for an OS that dominates the mobile market. Symbian is pretty new and still doesn't have many of the most basic app written for it. Any future Bill Gates readings this?
Good Luck! If Symbian will ever turn out to dominate. And the chances are still pretty high.
Our concern is about making the best experience for developers. We feel it's going to be the developer experience that drives these devices, not the operating system itself," Kaim said.
Uh, so let me get this straight.
What he really said was "Even though Microsoft is aware our software products may be bloated and massive memory hogs, the fact that developers have a really neat toy to utilize these systems is what will make our device the leading one."
I get that right?
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
The one-two punch of "free" and "open source" translate into benefits for just about anyone. But most importantly the embedded market doesn't require 3rd party developers, nor does it require large installed user base. Those two issues are irrelevant for that market, thus some of the traditional Linux drawbacks are moot for them. This makes Linux a very logical choice.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Read my lips richards! Mexi MOFO! Mexi MOFO! do a google searts of a MEXIMOFO!
Technically, this should be a no-brainer. PalmOS is effectively a 16bit platform dedicated to organizer functions, with other uses as an afterthought; and Palm is currently in transition between PalmOS4 and PalmOS6 anyway, two very different architectures. Microsoft's phone platform is the usual bloated, buggy, messy stuff we have come to expect from them. Only Symbian is pretty decent, but it is proprietary. The Linux APIs (i.e., UNIX/POSIX) have a three decade history. They are mature and scalable to small devices, and Linux itself is as well. And huge numbers of programmers know the Linux APIs.
By 2006, IDC believes Symbian will have increased its market share in powerful phones to 53 percent from its current 46 percent. Microsoft will have about 27 percent of the market, with Palm at 10 percent. IDC predicts that Linux could take as much as 4.2 percent.
I see: the reason why Linux will have a hard time is because we say so.
"It's more efficient to work with (Linux) because there are more modules we won't have to develop ourselves." [...] "By using Linux instead of Symbian or Windows, they are in control of their own upgrade cycle,"
Seems like Motorola really has their act together. Good to see. If they deliver on their promises, my next phone is likely going to be from Motorola.
its pissingtime!
No, it's not pissingtime. It's kissingtime!
on 286?.. I doubt.. it's more likely to be a high end 386DX.
If you want to see how the 'Linux at the core' of a consumer product VS the GPL's source code release policy, then look to the past - The Virgin WebPlayer.
.... want to take on Virgin's legal team?
A VERY restrictive EULA shipped with the WebPlayer, no sourcecode shipped, and the people who hold the various copyrights on the Linux Kernel didn't take the effort to sue.
Why should Linus (Who works for a company that makes a chip/released an Linux fork targeted at the embedded market) or Alan (who works for a company that sells consulting services to companies who want to embedded source) or
No one took action. None of the copyright holders had a backbone.
And it is underdtandable, because at the end of the day the question asked is "What are the damages?" and the answer is 'the source code costs $0.00', therefore the damages are $0.00.
The OS itself and its subsystems (GSM/GPRS, IR/BT, camera, voice recognition, etc) aren't written in Java; they're written in very tight, small, fast code, usually C or C++ with bits of assembler. But the phone supports a Java engine so it can run Java apps, which makes it easy for 3rd party developers to target the phone. Like Microsoft did with Windows in the 90's: encourage the developer community, and your product gains mindshare.
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
at least its not bang paths, what?
A year ago, I was working on Motorola's primary phones. In fact, I worked on the v60, v120, and a couple others.
There is no way in hell I think that Motorola will use Linux on most phones....maybe the high-powered ones. I won't name any specifics out of fear of breaking confidentiality, however their current phones operate a real-time OS on a microprocessor that is roughly fast as a 80386. Flash ROM storage was less than 16mb, and RAM was less than a megabyte. Real-time tasks had to respond to an interrupt in less than a microsecond for certain things.
Sure, they can build a phone that runs Linux. However not without fuel-cell technology to power them. Linux will have to run as a separate task in a real-time kernel. And to do so will require a more powerful processor which of course requires more either a much-larger lithium ion battery, or something revolutionary like fuel cells.
Once again another Java win too.
It may be Linux based, but it can run Java apps along with the rest of the phone world.
It is a fine testament to how advanced Linux has become since its beginings in Finland so long ago.
Who would have thunk it! Kudos to Linus, Motorola, and the whole Linux family.
"does this use of Linux in Motorola phones make it less likely that it will be used widely as a desktop? I think Linux is rapidly becoming viewed as an appliance engine."
In breaking news today, IBM, HP, and Sun Microsystems have officially dropped their plans for Linux becuase, quote, "Linux is just an appliance engine."
Meanwhile, sales of desktop Windows have crashed as the public has come to terms with "Windows only being a game console OS."
I guess I would tell the parent to "lighten up" if he was not already modded "Insightful."
Before you mod me down, please realize that I could have been a coward and used my mod points to mod the parent down, instead of posting a reply.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
(I haven't read through the replies) So, Linux now powers mobile phones. I wonder how the Energizer Bunny likes the Penguin taking over marketing shares.
And Motorola has had Java support for a long time, too.
However... it'd be fun to hack around on an old Linux phone.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
First of all I'm just happy to see this.
:)
I'm impressed with the idea of running the phone software in JVM because this can nicely seporates
OSS Vs Propritory software
I think this'll help them. Just as well because getting the OSS and Propritory boundary unclear is bad for PR. I for one get pissed if source code is withheld.
To use linux as a selling point, giving all the OpenSouce asssociations to help sell the product, only then to withhold code is A ONE-WAY deal.
I suggest we continue to buy to buy these linux product as long as they continue to return developments to Linux+OpenSource.
I shout hurray when we get the code
A blog I run for the wealth
...That its still not exactly unified. Most (all?) of the Linux ports (ie. everything non-x86 where x is greater than 3) are not in a very compileable condition on Linus's branch. Not that this is a bad thing. But you definitely couldn't take your stock 2.4.20 source and compile it, and have it run correctly on say a Sharp Zaurus without adding a stupendous amount of ARM patches.
-AC
Linux is GPL so any kernel modifications must be posted.
The GPL is so poorly written as to be nigh unto unintelligible, but nearabouts as I can tell, it concerns the distribution of SOFTWARE that exists independently of hardware [MSFT CD-ROMs, RHAT CD-ROMs, NOVL CD-ROMs, ORCL CD-ROMs]. The firmware that lives in a cellphone is nothing but electrical representations of 0's and 1's; it's not at all clear to me that the GPL covers electricity.
Remember that Motorola owns Metrowerks. Metrowerks just recently bought Embedix, the company that formerly was Lineo. That means Motorola now controls a major chunk of embedded Linux intellectual property. Yes, lots of it is GPL, but Lineo also developed a lot of their own IP around the Linux platform that Motorola can now leverage.
It takes ELKS to run on a 286.
Or Minix.
20 MHz is also very high speed for a 286. There were a few at 20 MHz, but most 286 were around 8-16 MHz.
Actually, the statements
Loose != Win
Lose != Tight
are also true. I think what you meant to say:
!Lose = Win
!Loose= Tight
You are correct. I would imagine the best business tactics to be such where you do not finance your competitors, but apparently the companies you mentioned do not see the situation as such. Time will tell whether they will ever find a clue.
The source changes they make do not need to be posted. They only need to be available and they can charge you for that availability.
Linux will have to run as a separate task in a real-time kernel. And to do so will require a more powerful processor which of course requires more either a much-larger lithium ion battery, or something revolutionary like fuel cells.
Or a more efficient but faster processor. You've heard of Moore's Law right? Use a smaller feature size, maximum clock speed goes up, power consumption goes down. These phones are going to have to be more powerful anyway, they're going to be expected to drive colour displays that can play video and run Java games at decent speeds. If you've got a processor that can do that then the extra overhead of RTLinux or RTAI or LXRT to give you sub-microsecond interrupt response is pretty minimal.
Note that Symbian is only available on high-end phones right now too, but it's expected to trickle down to the lower-end once the processors, memory and screens that can handle its requirements become cheaper. Symbian isn't really any lighter than a properly-stripped Linux anyway, it needs at least 8MB RAM to be properly usable and prefers a lot more.
I bought the new motorolla flip phone T720 and the damn thing kept locking up on me everyday. It stunk. I never did like motorollas becouse the interface stinks and to lock the keypad you have to use both hands.
I alwayed loved Nokia. I traded my motorola and bought the 6590 and love it. It was $100 cheaper and crashed on me a few times. but never during a call!
I want to hear about you phone crashes experiances. Do I just have bad luck, or it just normal to reboot once a day?
Also I'll comment on the motorolla T720, the cool java games that come with it are DEMOs!!! You have to pay for the ful version!
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Apparently this phone is so clever that if your wife calls when you're with your mistress, the phone will kernel panic.
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Am I the only person who doesn't see this is as good idea. I have a Sharp Zaurus. I love it, it's a complete geeks toy but it's not really stable. Ocasionally it hangs and needs rebooting. The software is about 95% there and lacks the finish to make it truely professional.
My phone, which runs Symbian 6, just works. It's intuitive, easy to use, with lots of features. It's never crashed and it's quick to boot. I'm sorry, I love linux but much of the software is badly written, it's never been designed and it's not good enough for the consumer yet.
I'd like to take a moment away from the "popularity contest" arguement and talk about how this could possibly change the way we use this particular product. If all phones run compatible software, the world will be a better place. It may make it easier to do filesharing, for example, if you decide to send your freind an app over the line, (if they are installable) you can ask yourself, "is it a Motorola?" If so, chances are, it's compatible.
Now ask youself, what other advantages have you encountered being compatible?
By switching to an established OS, like Linux or MS's new phone OS, they can by-pass the problem of writing a new OS, maintaining it, testing it, etc.
I would say the switch to Linux is more a financial one, as Motorola hasnt been on the money-making end of things for quite a while (RISC processors losing out to Intel, Apple probably going over to Intel, losing the cell phone wars to Nokia, etc). Since there is about zero cost using Linux as their base platform, they can bypass the royalty fees to MS, and increase their profit per phone. Or they could just charge less per phone, but I would imagine they are more interesting in profit per phone than volume sales.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Lawrence Livermore's new Linux-based cluter is currently the fifth most powerful supercomputer in the world. I can't speak to your experiences, but 11.2 Teraflops, 4.6 TB of memory and 138.2 TB of storage sounds pretty "super" to me. There are many more lesser Linux-based high-end computers as well. Google should give you a nice list.
Trouble is, you haven't seen/worked/heard about everything, so blanket statements like yours are typically what turns out to be blatantly false. Get some facts, and try to stay away from sweeping judgements.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I say all you Grammar nazis need to get a life. Really most people write these comments in the little text box without any spell checker. Second most people write these comments in a short time to get their point across. I have no Idea why your stuff is modded up. If I had moderation right right now Ill Offtopic you because it is completly off topic, Wasting space and not accomplishing anything. OPPS SOMEONE MADE A TYPO! Oh someone mispelled a word or used bad grammar! They must be bad because of that. If this type of stuff really bothers you you should get off slashdot and continue you life as a book editor and make sure that every day you make sure your underware is ironed. Because you guys sound like you are comply compulive perfectionist who need everything perfect. To bad it is not a perfect world. Oh buy the way I was the one who moved that piece of paper on you 2 weeks ago.
Just because something runs Linux doesn't mean it will be cheaper!
...of course, none of us really expect the slashdot "editors" to understand the corporate way.
BAD MYTH!!
like any electronic; R&D, testing, plus marketing costs and all the other Corporate Buzzwords affect cost.
DON'T ASSUME IT WILL BE CHEAPER. (say this 3 times and commit to memory)
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
We all know that technical merit is the sole deciding factor of sucess in the market, right?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Symbian is not supposed to be competing with the phone companies it's working with them.
Hence why there are two user-interface platforms competing on Symbian, Symbian's UIQ, and Nokia's Series 60, which very much are competing with each other.
Symbian is a strange company. Partly it's an independent software developer like any other, partly it's a collaboration group between the big phone manufacturers, and all the manufacturers have their own vision of the future. When one manufacturer disagrees with the majority view, well that manufacturer goes off and does their own thing, while Symbian implements the wishes of the majority. Which is why you get the situation where Symbian competes with a company that partly owns it. It's very much at the mercy of the corporate egos that own it, and consequently is riddled with inter-owner politics.
Nokia and particularly Ericsson have always been very keen on the idea of Symbian. If you'll excuse the wild conspiracy theory... I think they see it as an opportunity to control the other manufacturers so that none of them can ever threaten their leading position. They were the first phone manufacturers to get on board, they were the first manufacturers with Symbian phones, and between them they own over half of Symbian. I think their plan is to make it a standard, then ratchet up the pricing and direct development in a way that suits them - by which time it'd be difficult to put together a competitive platform without huge resources. A classic Microsoft-ish lock-in strategy. Motorola decided to hedge their bets and play along, but it looks like they don't want to play that game any more - they have a smaller stake in Symbian as they got in later and they don't have the same fairly cordial relations that Nokia and Ericsson have with each other. Can we start calling them the Nordic Mafia yet?
I think Motorola will hold onto its stake in Symbian though even though they now appear not to be using the software, both to keep a controlling hand in it and to piss Nokia and Ericsson off.
Long Term Goals:
1)Prevent any practical use of PowerPC architechture
2)Add enough features to Cell Phones so that nobody can use them to make a call.
3)???
4)Profit
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Oh, no! I wish they would have picked a more stable more robust operating system like BSD instead.
...hey i wonder if when this thing comes out i can hack it and put windows xp on it (ducks)
I thought I was the only one to catch that.
It seems to me that Cell Phone makers are continuously spinning in circles, like a spaztic dog chasing it's tail, to put out the products they think are best products for consumers.
Digital Camera Phones, walkie-talkies, pda's, text messaging, are other attempts to capitalize on what Cell Companies think the public needs. They haven't a clue. The answer is so simple. The thing is that cell companies will never figure out what the answer is. (Which brings us back to the dog chasing it's tail example.)
The following quotes are from one of the many links in the above article:
"The user interface in MIDP 2.0 gives application developers more control over the look and feel of their applications," Lorain said.
It (Java/MIDP 2.0) mandates a standard method for downloading programs over cell phone networks. That's likely to be a boon to software and wireless companies that want to make money selling cell phone programs.
Sun is Suing MS for what reason?
"Mmmmmm Monopoly" - H. Simpson
...and...
The extra 100K of required memory may also make it impossible to upgrade some Java-enabled handsets already on the market, Yach said. These phones simply don't have enough room and, unlike with personal computers, most cell phones can't be upgraded with more memory.
(Must Be said like Captain Kirk) Damnit Scotty, Make that OS Fit! I don't care about performance!!!
Bill Nguyen, founder of wireless messaging company Seven, says that MIDP 2.0 will be used predominantly for "heavy" business applications, so his company will work on applications along those lines. Seven's wireless messaging is offered by Sprint PCS, Cingular Wireless and U.K-based Mmo2.
Hmmm. So the Advancements to Solitare will be what?
Cell companies don't have a clue on how to make or predict good product.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
But it must be good for the "Linux world" to get the name heard more and more often, must it not? The more people hear and learn about it, the less alienated they become.
That's my 20 öre...
First, we're just talking about the Linux kernel and some device drivers.
:)
And that's what Linux is. A kernel. This might be one of the rare cases where everyone agrees we can leave off the "GNU/" at the beginning, so just hush up!
This has nothing to do with the general "popularity" of Linux.
It has everything to do with the general popularity of Linux. Name five other kernels that scale from cell-phones to super-clusters.
"Linux is the only operating system and should be used in everything from PCs to microwaves" rally. Doesn't that sound a whole lot like what Microsoft has been saying since the mid 1990s?
The big difference is that Linus isn't trying to leverage his desktop monopoly into control of cell-phones and super-clusters. He's just offering his software up to the world, and letting the world make its own choices. Moreover, Linus isn't saying, "here's my system, you should use it everywhere," he's saying, "here's my system, if you like, you can adapt it to fit your needs," and people are responding, "oh cool, look, I can adapt it to fit here...and here...and here...."
But the biggest difference is that Linus isn't saying "use my software to run your cell-phone and super-cluster, or I'll do everything in my power to lock your system out of talking to my desktop."
...because this idiot got into an argument with me over MS' products at the small level. I asked why anyone would pay for CE when there are so many more proven alternatives at that level, and some of them are free?
.NET to be used in our projects, even though we had written tons of code in Java!!! He's still running the same company into the ground, and I found out later he ran four other startups into the ground before coming to this particular company. If I didn't need the money so much, and I had any other prospects, I would have quit a few days after he started, since he made it so clear he wanted to broom out the old blood (read: those who knew what they were doing, and might question his "decisions") anyway.
He actually thought that MS had the only solution for this sort of stuff....what a flaming ass. I was almost relieved when he conspired to fire me (he was still only a "consultant CTO" in the weeks prior to firing myself and another guy). He was always prosyletizing crappy MS products for EVERYTHING. Originally, we were slated to move to UNIX for our servers, but genius boy came along, and started to change all that. He was trying to even get
Anyway, I wish I still worked there, just so I could ask him what he thought about "useless" open source since companies like Motorola obviously chose it. Not to mention just about every other company that matters, including Microsoft.
This genius actually called Apache "amateurish" and referred to Java as "dead". Sometimes I hate this industry - when folks like this can be placed in positions of power and hailed as "rainmakers" even when they so obviously aren't, it's a really bad reflection of things as a whole.
I hope when he's done running this particular company in the ground that he never works anywhere again. I have been telling everyone I know in Denver about him to try to insure that he does not. It's a small community out here, and reputations like his tend to precede them...
Hey retard go to your hillbillie friends and discuss it with them.!
Iraq != nazis
War in Iraq is not about your freaking terrorists, if US hadn't fucked every thing up in the firstplace there wouldn't be any problems. The real reason why Bush is so trigger happy is war => production => jobs => _votes_. He has to pay up those companies who got him elected.
The only threat Iraq is to anyone is any contry that resides within 150 km or so from their border (the range afaik on their Al-whatthefuckwasthatnameagain?) - the vx carrying rockets.
Now what really should be a concern to US if were talking threat is the North Korea - They actually got ICBM's and are about to fit them up with nukes. Thats fucking scary.
Speaking of defending the world - Finnish stood ground against russia longer than anyone else afaik in WWII when you compare forces, looking from DK they happen to be the buffer if the red army ever get hold of some rust remover.
Ohh maybe you should look up history some time, US didn't exactly go into WWII to "defend freedom" they wen't into the war because they got their ass' kicked at pearl harbor.
The only real threat in the world to day is that the average person controlling nukes has an IQ of less than 70 and a trigger happy factor of 100.
This is just the type of news that I've been waiting for. Mobile phones have evolved past the stage where they are simply used for making a voice call. With more phones supporting new tech like MMS ,EMS, GPRS and HSCSD we need to change the practical uses of phones as well.The phone companies have been trying to get a standard for years now. Symbian seems the best solution so far, with talks of a stripped-down version of Java and even CE on phones. But this is really a cool idea from Motorola and I would buy one for a couple of reasons. One being that I could really play with my phone and throw away my PDA and leave my laptop at the office. You know how great it is to log into your office linux box with your Nokia 9210 over ssh? This could give motorola a coolness factor beyond their expectations. Oh yeah, and the phone looks damn cool as well.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Einstein-
I was calling the pussy-ass Germans Nazis, not the Iraqis. Doesn't matter what you think, America is dealing with the world's problems one at a time. N. Korea will be dealt with in time.
The threat with North Korea is indeed real, but gauging the threat of North Korea vs Iraq is difficult without stacks of intelligence advisors. IMHO, North Korea is trying to pick a fight while Iraq is trying to cover up what it's got. (And yes, it's got banned weapons; read UN reports from the past 12 years. You don't just lose tonnes and tonnes of VX, one of the most toxic nerve gasses out there, or destroy it without anyone knowing about it.) This does not imply that North Korea has more weapons of mass destruction than Iraq, or that it will pose more of a threat in the near future.
Notwithstanding the above, removing Saddam or Kim Jong Il would probably be a great favour to the citizens of their respective countries in the long term, and the world in general. Both have appaling records of torture, run dictatorships that have less freedom than jails in other countries, and elect to suffer crippling economic sanctions rather than behave in the way that the rest of the world expects of them.
And let's not get into the subject of what you think Bush's IQ is. Even if he has a low IQ (high IQ!=eloquent speaker), he still has teams of advisors with access to far more information than anyone else on the planet. It would take a very stupid and amoral president (no, Bush doesn't fit this description, much as I'm sure you'd like to paint that picture) to nuke a country with no advice to do so. It's likely that Bush is playing a far more elaborate game than either North Korea or Iraq, and with the amount of advice he receives, his words should not be taken lightly.
The only point which is debatable in the Iraq issue is this: was this Iraq's last chance, or do they deserve another? Why or why not?
Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property
of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane
complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to
obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is
available to anyone.
-- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid"
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