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Birth of the Pilot PDA

Sabah Arif writes "Braeburn has published an in depth history of how Palm Computing transformed itself from a software company that published software for the Zoomer and Newton, into a hardware company with the wildly successful Pilot in 1996."

5 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. How to tell if you are a linux fanatic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    AKA a nazi fanatic loser.

    1. You rejuvenate and dance when you hear a windows flaw exposed, but you conveniently ignore the thousands of security flaws exposed in linux.

    2. You yell loudly TROLL! at any person's post or at any person you see posting facts that you do not want to hear about your oh so cool linux.

    3. You know it's a classic case of penis envy, you don't have all the support, software and hardware available for linux and you have to let that anger out somewhere, but you don't have the brains to admit it.

    4. You hate windows, hate Microsoft, but race to emulate windows, have programs to run office from within linux, and spend a $300 on a Windows emulator, only Windows fools.

    5. You cannot admit that you don't have professional usage of Linux outside server markets.

    6. You cannot admit that most of the joe user out there when told that there is linux will respond, what is that?

    7. You cannot admit that there is no professional printing capabilities in linux.

    8. You cannot admit that you are a masochist (otherwise why would someone spend hours playing with scripts,
    and recompiling programs that are available for Windows?)

    9. You cannot admit that there is no professional desktop publishing done on Linux.

    10. You cannot admit that no one in their right mind would do professional video editing in Linux.

    11. You cannot admit that linux sucks when it comes for gaming/home entertainment or education.

    12. You have problems in understanding Windows, and you will blame your own incompetence on Microsoft.

    13. You have problems in pointing a clicking, but have no problems in wading through cryptic scripts written by lunatics.

    14. Nothing will get past that shit that fills your head, you will not admit to any facts.

    15. You can't admit that naming of linux components, packages, and others are weird and fits profiles of troubled teenagers. gentoo, lgx, rpm ....

    16. You feel angered because you were left out by microsoft's Media technologies, they support Mac, Sun sparc, but not linux.

    17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.

    18. You cannot tell that not a single office package outside Microsoft's is worth looking at or bothering with.

    19. You don't know that your CD recorder software sucks.

    20. You don't have DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW support in your pathetic OS.

    21. While the rest of the world moves on, you're stuck in a stone age technology that needs third party software to boot into GUI.

    22. You act out of prejudice, you kill file domains and users of specific news readers while you ignore the bullshit that your fellow linux losers post.

    23. You don't know commercial support in Linux is almost non existent.

    24. You miss the fact that companies are leaving linux because of the chaos, and the cheap linux losers who are unwilling to pay and support hard work, Corel, gaming companies,...etc.

    25. You are unaware that linux has no terminal services (there is a lame one that no one uses), and commercial support for it is not happening.

    26. You are unaware that setting up servers on Windows takes couple of minutes while on linux, good luck playing with configuration scripts.

    27. You cannot admit that support for USB on linux is laughable at best.

    28. You think that Linux is better because slashdot told you so.

    29. You spend countless hours flaming people because they post their opinions about your oh so cool linux and your attitude, instead of researching things for yourself and understanding fact in order not to look this stupid.

    30. You think that anyone who uses linux has a clue.

    31. You think that linux cannot crash.

    32. You think that everyone is interested in your conspiracy theories about Microsoft (or should i say M$ in order for you, teenagers to understand?), and how they destroyed linux, ...etc.

    33. You keep ignoring the fact that thousands of linux servers get hacked every year, but it takes one Windows server hacked to get you and your fellow linux idiots to dance and celebrate.

  2. Microsoft fucking suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Byte me linux fags, I am a VMS holdout.

  3. I thought Linus was supposed to be free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I'm a small business woman and in order to control costs, I have looked
    at open source software as an alternative to MS. As a non-technical
    person, it has been a very frustrating journey.

    First of all, the term "free" seems misleading. It seems that you can
    aquire a "starter" version of a Linus distro that is not production
    ready for free. But if you want want that is tested and stable, one
    needs to purchase an expensive yearly maitenance fee for each computer
    it is installed on. My understanding is that one can aquire something
    called "source" to the expensive linux distro version, but that the
    source doesn't actually run the computer.

    When researching, I read about "Redhat Linux" (sic ?). It seems that
    they allowed one to download the complete "working" version for a while
    but then they did a switchero and hid the working version download and
    made it available to paying customers only. To pacify the rest, they
    gave a "starter" ("Fredora" (sic?)) version to them. It seems they cut
    off affordable support to those with the working version and replaced
    it with something more expensive than MS.

    My IT consultant put FireFox on my computer and it looks like another
    switchero is in the works. With the members founding a corporation, it
    looks like they will start charging for the good version and leave the
    a "starter" version for the non-paying customers.

    So is the business model of open-source to bait people with free
    software when their software isn't as good as the commercial offerings,
    and when it does become good or they get enough people on board, do
    they just jack up the prices as much as possible? Seems to me this is
    a poor business model, and I can't understand why a saleman recommended
    it to me as a way to keep costs down. I would rather go with a vendor
    where I can expect things to stay the same and a vendor that has a
    clear business plan. That way they won't just change the rules halfway
    like open source seems to.

    Maybe it is a wrong impression, but that is what a good business woman
    like myself sees.

  4. The Linux FAQ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll



    Here's a list of some frequently asked and answered question here
    and elsewhere that you may find useful in your quest to try linux.
    Read these carefully before you decide to invest time in Linux, you
    may find that you have better things you can do instead.


    SECTION ONE - INSTALLATION
    --

    1.1 Q: I heard linux was easy to install, is it?
    A: That depends on what distro you try. Most of them will have
    trouble detecting all your hardware. Most new hardware devices
    are not supported. If your lucky you might be able to find
    something that someone threw together on the net. But that's
    after spending a couple hours searching and probably won't take
    advantage of your hardware to it's fullest capability.

    1.2 Q: Once I get it installed, then what?
    A: Then you get the joy of making sure everything is configured
    right. Plan on a minimum of two hours per device to get it to
    work. That's if the device is even supported.

    1.3 Q: What happens if I'm in the middle of an install and the
    installation freezes or just stops?
    A: You get to reboot and start all over again. :) This happens
    every so often with Linux. It seems like it's buggy install
    routines or something. Ain't Linux grand? :)

    1.4 Q: What's the deal?! I installed Linux and it took up almost 2GB
    hard drive space!
    A: The Linux distros usually install a LOT of never-used programs
    on the default install. You can pick and choose what you want,
    but good luck figuring out what programs are needed and what is
    useless, obscure tools. Linux usually installs stuff like 10
    different editors, 12 different mail clients, and so on.

    (more to come...)

    SECTION TWO - CONFIGURATION
    --

    2.1 Q: What's with all these cryptic files?
    A: All of Linux is configured with cryptic text files. Some of
    the more user-friendly distros have configuration utilities
    that claim to do it for you, but success with these works
    sometimes and other times don't, so sometimes you have to
    edit them by hand. With Linux's spotty reliability in UI
    programming, you might as well get used to it.

    2.2 Q: What is killall, HUP, ls, cat, rm, which, etc and why are
    these programs telling me to do them? Arggg!!
    A: These are command line programs that do things within the
    system. It's what makes Linux a powerful OS for those that
    are experienced with it. But it's also what makes it a pain
    in the arse to use and inefficient as a desktop system. Who
    wants to type all the time when th

  5. I fucking hate linux zealots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    OS X is closed source. This means that it is the work of the devil - its purpose is to make the end users eat babies.

    Linux is the only free OS. Yes the BSD lincenses may appear more free, but as they have no restrictions, they are actually less free than the GPL. You see, restricting the end user more actually makes them more free than not putting restrictions on them. You must be a dumb luser for not understanding this.

    And you obviously dont have a real job. A real job involves being a student or professional academic. You see, academics are the ones who know all about productivity - if you work for a commercial organisation you obviously do not know anything about computers. Usability is stupid. Whats wrong with the command line? If you cant use the command line then you shouldnt be using a computer. vi should be the standard word processor - you are such a luser if you want to use Word. Installing software should have to involve recompiling the kernel of the OS. If you dont know how to do this, you are a stupid luser who should RTFM. Or go to a Linux irc channel or newsgroup. After all, they are soooo friendly. If you dont know how the latest 2.6 kernel scheduling algorithm works then they will tell you to stop wasting their time, but they really are quite supportive.

    Oh, and M$ is just as evil as Apple. Take LookOUT for instance. You could just as easily use Eudora. Who needs groupware anyway, a simple email client should be all we use (thats all we use as academics, why cant businesses be any different).

    And trend setters - Linux is the trend setter. It may appear KDE is a ripoff from XP, but thats because M$ stole the KDE code. We all know they have GPL'ed code hidden in there somewhere (but not the things that dont work, only the things that work could possibly have GPL'ed code in it).

    And Apple is the suxor because they charge people for their product. We all know that its a much better business model to give all your products away for free. If you charge for anything, then you are allied with M$ and will burn in hell.