1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote 2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, 3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour 4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth 6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne, 9: And smale foweles maken melodye, 10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye 11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages); 12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
While it is true that language evolves, such turns-of-phrase as "intensive purposes", "could of", or "begs the question" are the linguistic equivalent of congenital birth-defects.
And yet people make that defense all the time, eh? "It's common usage now, therefore it's correct." Blah...
UN is a joke. It has no power and so nobody cares about its commissions.
They may be a joke, but you won't be laughing when they get their hands on alien technology and start thrashing non-compliant governments with hordes of variable fighters...
There's lots of things that a properly implemented world government could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet.
There are a lot of things that Santa Claus could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet too...
I know. Don't get me started on that fat fucker...
I mean, he can do a complete tour of the globe in less than 48 hours, visiting hundreds of millions of homes along the way to leave toys for all the little children whose families celebrate Christmas (except the really poor ones, I mean) - I mean, what else could he do with that kind of power? A real kick-ass search and rescue service, I bet, or distributing food to those in need - hell, even if he just readjusted his Christmas program a bit - giving more to the poor and less to the comfortably wealthy - that would be worth a lot in my book.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
That's nice. But what about non-intensive purposes?
DO NOT QUESTION the almighty misquoted idiom!
If The Average Idiot has decided that it is "for all intensive purposes" from now on, then THAT'S WHAT IT IS, because language evolves to fit the speaker! Those of us who do not accept this change are simply living in the past! Thus, there is no such thing as "correct" speech or writing!
I spent my teen and pre-teen years building electronics from freely-available plans. But we never called it "open source" back then, so why start now?
Um, because we have a good general purpose term for it now that wasn't in use when you were a pre-teen?/K
Because it explicitly conveys the notion that in addition to having open access to this (copyrighted) circuit design information, you also have a degree of freedom in how you may use it?
Ha! good luck adding a radio receiver to a clock with both a multiplexed display and 32khz boost converter. WWVB receivers wont work within 10 feet of this clock. (yes, we've tried it)
Interesting.
How about GPS? Is it likewise afflicted with interference?
That is one bad-ass looking display. I didn't even know these existed... and I can see now that I would want to use them over normal LCD or LEDs, when given the space and power to use them. That looks fantastic!
Stick a color filter over it for even more badassery!
The 7-segment ones strike me as rather boring - though admittedly I haven't seen 7-segment fluorescent in person before...
Nixie tubes or (for more general applications) dot-matrix VFDs seem more appealing to me...
Gee I don't have a digital clock in my house yet...
The digital clocks in my house aren't vacuum-fluorescent displays.
Now, you may be saying, "so who cares about VFDs?" - and from a functional standpoint this is a perfectly valid argument. There's nothing a VFD can do, in terms of practical, display-related functionality, that an LED display cannot do cheaper today. And, in fact, VFDs of any kind have various practical disadvantages - risk of breakage, cathode poisoning, etc.
What VFDs do offer is a rather unique aesthetic - the quantity and quality of the light, the "glow" of the display. The segments work similarly to neon signs - inert gases charged with electricity until they give off light. It's art, basically. One might want a VFD-based clock for similar reasons why one might want a grandfather clock instead of a cheap wall clock from Staples. Probably the cheap clock is actually going to be better at telling time - but it's not just about telling time. It's about using this "job opening" around your house - the need for a timepiece - as an excuse to put something really cool on display.
Now, to me personally, using 7-segment displays is simply a waste of time. It's not interesting. If I were to build a VFD clock of some kind I'd want Nixie tubes, which contain electrical contacts inside the tube in the shape of the different numbers. That, to me, would be a much more interesting and worthwhile display piece.
Libertarianism: rich wolves and poor sheep deciding what to have for dinner.
I'd make it even better, though:
Libertarianism: rich wolves and poor sheep advocating complete freedom of dinner choice
I don't know, seems like the whole message would be better encapsulated as a political cartoon. Just imagine, fat wolves in waistcoats, wearing top hats and monocles, sheep wearing tattered rags, both labeled clearly ("the rich", "the poor") just in case some people didn't understand - the wolves holding up forks and knives and staring at the sheep, a caption at the top reading "LIBERTARIANISM" and another at the bottom with the line about freedom of choice...
Pretty soon, Apple is going to run out of cats to name their OS X versions after. How many are left? When are they going to stoop to calling a new version "Housecat"?
I think they've got plenty of good cat names left still in reserve. For instance:
Mac OS X 10.10: "Selena Kyle" Mac OS X 10.11: "Cheetara" Mac OS X 10.12: "Nuku Nuku" Mac OS X 10.13: "Bubastis" Mac OS X 10.14: "Ravage" Mac OS X 10.15: "Sammy Davis Jr."
See, I changed one letter, an 'n', for another, an 'l', as a way of making fun of the new release of Mac OS... I don't have any real reason for thinking it's slow, and it's not like I really have anything against Snow Leopard (apart from the fact that I, myself, am not interested in running Mac OS X any more) - it's just fun to make fun of it.
I thought it was the story of a man who uploaded an image to Photobucket, and inlined that image everywhere he went as a kind of personal mark? Then in act two his bandwidth allocation on Photobucket runs out, and so in act three he seeks out a better hosting option...
It sounds like you had a similar experience as I had with OS X/Aqua. I bought a Powerbook because it was unix...but they changed things in annoying ways and the UI didn't work quite right with others. Changing back to Linux made me feel free again.
It was kind of a surprising progression for me. I mean, I've been using Linux exclusively on my home desktop since 1997 or so (and, prior to that, dual-booting since 1995) - I went with Mac for my first laptop because I wanted to avoid configuration hassles and have some measure of commercial software support for it. I think the first time I started to realize it wasn't such a great fit was when I was using the laptop for slide presentations - first using Open Office (and having to deal with Mac's X server issues with the clipboard, dual-monitor support, and full screen mode) and then Keynote... But I was creating this content on the desktop, using GIMP and KPresenter and so on (having discovered that I actually really don't like OpenOffice very much) - so I had to go through an annoying series of transitions to get from KPresenter to Keynote. Even GIMP wasn't terribly at home on the Mac at that time, since there was no native GTK port at that point (once a native port did materialize, I had to upgrade the OS to use it)...
It's kind of surreal to think of it in these terms, but I switched away from Mac to Linux (for my laptop, anyway) because it's better at running the software I want to run.
Also when I got my EEE I also tried Gnome for the first time. (I've mostly been a KDE user) That's been a great experience - just as it "feels right" for me, personally, to have a desktop running on an X server, running a bunch of GNU software, GNOME also somehow just "felt right" when I first used it. It hasn't been a perfect experience (for instance it has an annoying habit of dimming the screen while I'm doing things - and if an application is using sound and the machine suspends, the application's sound won't work when the machine wakes again...) but I've enjoyed it quite a lot.
Even as old as it is I think my Powerbook is still a great piece of hardware... More compact than most laptops but much more luxuriously spacious than my EEE... If I could run Linux on it well, I would. (The main things there are wi-fi and graphics support - I think the state of those isn't so good on PPC Linux.) I haven't really put in the time to determine whether I could bend Mac OS into an environment in which I could feel at home... I think if I weren't using my EEE so much I might use the Powerbook a lot more.:)
Given that this is Palm we're talking about I'm not convinced that their runtime engine is terribly well optimized for time or space...
Do some research before spreading FUD. Palm WebOS uses V8, the same Javascript engine that Chrome uses. It compiles to machine code.
Sorry, don't really know where to get this kind of information about WebOS. But, you know, Palm really hasn't inspired a lot of confidence in me over the last five years. That's not FUD, that's fact. But I also accept as fact that their new platform may have its act together a little better than I thought. It's just very counter-intuitive, you know? I'm used to Palm being the sad old shadow of their former glory.:)
Storage space on these devices is an issue as well, however. It seems rather silly to store source code on your device in addition to a native binary.
You're not storing the source and the binary: you're storing the source and generating the binary at runtime.
You either store two copies of the program all the time, or re-interpret it each time you run... Or something in between (caching strategy) - either way, storing textual program code on the device is very wasteful.
And [managed] code [is a panacea]?
The set of vulnerabilities in managed code is a subset of the set of vulnerabilities in native code, barring bugs in the runtime environment. Of course managed code isn't invulnerable, but many common attacks against native code simply don't apply.
Still not convinced that's worth a big chunk of runtime performance, storage, and severe restriction in the choice of development languages - but that's just me.:)
If, as in your example, the code is written for some obscure, dead environment, then you're going to have to port the code anyway regardless of what Palm offers
Palm users aren't supposed to talk about PalmOS as an obscure dead platform... XD
In the case of HanDBase they already ported the app to WinCE and other platforms, including the desktop version of Windows, basically rewriting the whole database interface to work with flat PDB files... It's still pretty natural to expect they'd have to rewrite the GUI for a new platform, but they've got a bunch of code which, one would hope, would simply be reusable on a new platform. Work that's already done which shouldn't have to be redone, or retested. This is somewhat complicated on platforms where apps are expected to be fully managed and language choice is limited.
Anyway - as I said you've made very good points... I'd like to look at the platform from a somewhat different angle. Ignoring the whole managed code/Javascript issue, which is also a matter of taste from my perspective- What's so great about WebOS? All I really know about it is what's on Wikipedia, combined with the fact that a lot of people seem to think it's really quite fantastic, for reasons I can't quite pin down.
And in the case of WebOS it's not even a bytecode VM (or is it?) - it's interpreting textual program code...
You clearly have no idea how modern Javascript runtime systems work. They're compiled to bytecode for ages, and modern Javascript engines compile down to machine code. Like I said, modern Javascript is fast as hell.
You've made some good points, for sure.
Storage space on these devices is an issue as well, however. It seems rather silly to store source code on your device in addition to a native binary. Given that this is Palm we're talking about I'm not convinced that their runtime engine is terribly well optimized for time or space... That's sort of a separate issue, of course, more specific to the Pre itself. But ever since PACE failed to go away I haven't trusted Palm with any serious technical decisions.:)
One issue that makes a huge difference here is whether WebOS programs are stored as Javascript source or as byte-compiled code. If it's the former then that is simply cracked - blatant waste of limited resources. If it's the latter, that's more reasonable. I still don't think it's too bright to run interpreted code on an embedded device, but at least if the "interpreted code" is an intermediate, compact byte code that's a bit better.
stuff like non-executable memory pages - that would provide a lot of the same protection as interpreted code
blah blah blah blah Non-executable pages provide some protection against some attacks, but they're not a panacea.
And interpreted code is?
I mean, look at the overall situation: really, there's very little a process can do on an OS unless the OS kernel allows it. Network communication, I/O, CPU utilization, thread or process creation, memory utilization, whatever - it all goes through system calls, and the OS kernel is at liberty to deny any request that it chooses to. The only thing an interpreted environment offers beyond this in the way of safeguards is protection from hardware vulnerabilities - flaws in the CPU's implementation of access control that could result in privilege escalation issues.
At least it seems this time they are going to follow through with some good native code options...
They are already there if you really need them. You can write a browser plugin (using NSAPI, the API that's been stable for 15 years) or you can write a normal, boring Linux process in whatever language you want, and have your Javascript front-end communicate with it over dbus. (That's how WebOS reuses libpurple, the same library that Pidgin uses.) But chances are, you don't need to write native code.
The hell I don't.
First off, maybe I've got some hefty established code base I want to port over, rather than re-write in a new language. (The HanDBase people are apparently facing this issue - their app was written for PalmOS in C. To move it over to the Pre - natively, I mean - requires either porting that C code or rewriting the damn thing...)
Or maybe I just have some code that I need to run fast. Games are one of the most common scenarios. (Palm, I've heard, are already addressing that...)
This is cool, really cool. A full Linux machine in your pocket. Wow.
Though I do wonder how useful it will actually be. Can Linux bypass the desktop and go straight to the next big thing? User interface and good design are important on such small devices (and frankly, most phones fail more or less), and they're not exactly traditional strongholds of the Linux crowd.
Personally, those issues don't matter to me. That is, at a basic level I don't care about whether this device succeeds (beyond my own self-serving interest, the desire to buy future versions, perhaps) - I don't care whether it's the "next big thing" that everyone will like - what matters is that it's a device I would like.
My personal reason for wanting a phone running straight Linux is pretty simple: it's what I enjoy. I ran a Powerbook for several years because I thought the combination of a commercially-backed OS and a Unix core would satisfy me - but I've actually been much happier since switching to an EEE running Linux. It just feels right. X apps aren't treated as "foreign", I can install the latest VNC or Firefox or whatever without buying an OS upgrade, etc. I think I would enjoy a Linux phone for similar reasons. I have a Treo now, running a decrepit (and crash-prone now, thanks to PalmOS features like PACE and NVFS) old copy of LispMe... that's great, but what if I want to tinker with Python or Haskell or C or whatever? That's the great thing about phones running Linux - you can just install and run that stuff. In PalmOS it would be a significant effort to port it. There's still a fair bit of work if you want to port something to a phone and have it look nice (having a GUI well-fitted to the device in question is very important!) - but a lot of the time if I can just get a thing working I'm OK with some rough edges.
Some people want a phone that they can watch movies on, or tilt left and right to make the car steer. That's great stuff, I am super happy that they can get that. I'm after something a little different. I thought Android might be the way to go, now I'm thinking this might be what I need.
You can't just hack together your own code, plug it into the GSM network and expect the FCC to just smile and look the other way.
You can if all GSM/UMTS-related code runs on a dedicated core that communicates with the main core (which runs the apps) through a well-defined interface. The Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi, although not phones, follow the same general scheme: one core to handle audio, Wi-Fi, and power management, and one core to handle everything else.
You know, I skimmed over this post until I saw "Nintendo DS" and then I was like, "Hey, is that tepples?" XD
The Pre runs a practically normal Linux distribution. Granted, all the applications are written in Javascript and not some compiled language using C, but I look at that as a good thing.
How the hell is that a good thing?
I mean, OK, I'm asking in kind of an inflammatory way there, but I am serious. To me, running interpreted code on an embedded device seems like the most retarded idea possible. How is it even close to a good idea, when running on a device with relatively slow CPU and limited battery power, to not optimize the code for runtime efficiency before you put it on the device?
Pretty much the only things a VM buys you are architecture independence and a certain measure of protection against exploits. Neither one, IMO, ranks above battery lifetime or runtime performance. (I don't know if ARM supports stuff like non-executable memory pages - that would provide a lot of the same protection as interpreted code...) And in the case of WebOS it's not even a bytecode VM (or is it?) - it's interpreting textual program code...
I've used PalmOS 5 for roughly the last six years. It seems like they've been stacking bad decisions (i.e. PACE) with more bad decisions (i.e. NVFS) - and now with WebOS they've made a clean start with some even worse decisions. It's mind-boggling, truly. At least it seems this time they are going to follow through with some good native code options...
I'm waiting for the SunnyD commercial "Aw, dude, grape stuff? Epic fail !!!"
I can see it now...
Kid 1: "Aw, dude, grape stuff? Epic fail!" Kid 3: "Noooooooo!" Kid 2: "Do not want!" Kid 3: "El oh el oh el!" Mom: "Who wants some Sunny D?" Kid 2: "Sunny D greater-than grape stuff!" Announcer: "New Sunny D is made of win, with vitamins and minerals that are teh roxx-zero-ars!" Kid 1: "Sunny D p'owns!" Kid 3: "Are oh tee eff el oh el!"
Slashdot Mirror
Huh. Is there a point here?
While it is true that language evolves, such turns-of-phrase as "intensive purposes", "could of", or "begs the question" are the linguistic equivalent of congenital birth-defects.
And yet people make that defense all the time, eh? "It's common usage now, therefore it's correct." Blah...
UN is a joke. It has no power and so nobody cares about its commissions.
They may be a joke, but you won't be laughing when they get their hands on alien technology and start thrashing non-compliant governments with hordes of variable fighters...
There's lots of things that a properly implemented world government could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet.
There are a lot of things that Santa Claus could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet too...
I know. Don't get me started on that fat fucker...
I mean, he can do a complete tour of the globe in less than 48 hours, visiting hundreds of millions of homes along the way to leave toys for all the little children whose families celebrate Christmas (except the really poor ones, I mean) - I mean, what else could he do with that kind of power? A real kick-ass search and rescue service, I bet, or distributing food to those in need - hell, even if he just readjusted his Christmas program a bit - giving more to the poor and less to the comfortably wealthy - that would be worth a lot in my book.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
That's nice. But what about non-intensive purposes?
DO NOT QUESTION the almighty misquoted idiom!
If The Average Idiot has decided that it is "for all intensive purposes" from now on, then THAT'S WHAT IT IS, because language evolves to fit the speaker! Those of us who do not accept this change are simply living in the past! Thus, there is no such thing as "correct" speech or writing!
I think you're taking it a bit too literally.
Analogies tend to break down when... they are no longer
taken as analogies!
Well, really, the break-down of an analogy is a lot like the break-down of a car...
I spent my teen and pre-teen years building electronics from freely-available plans. But we never called it "open source" back then, so why start now?
Um, because we have a good general purpose term for it now that wasn't in use when you were a pre-teen? /K
Because it explicitly conveys the notion that in addition to having open access to this (copyrighted) circuit design information, you also have a degree of freedom in how you may use it?
Ha! good luck adding a radio receiver to a clock with both a multiplexed display and 32khz boost converter. WWVB receivers wont work within 10 feet of this clock. (yes, we've tried it)
Interesting.
How about GPS? Is it likewise afflicted with interference?
That is one bad-ass looking display. I didn't even know these existed... and I can see now that I would want to use them over normal LCD or LEDs, when given the space and power to use them. That looks fantastic!
Stick a color filter over it for even more badassery!
The 7-segment ones strike me as rather boring - though admittedly I haven't seen 7-segment fluorescent in person before...
Nixie tubes or (for more general applications) dot-matrix VFDs seem more appealing to me...
Gee I don't have a digital clock in my house yet ...
The digital clocks in my house aren't vacuum-fluorescent displays.
Now, you may be saying, "so who cares about VFDs?" - and from a functional standpoint this is a perfectly valid argument. There's nothing a VFD can do, in terms of practical, display-related functionality, that an LED display cannot do cheaper today. And, in fact, VFDs of any kind have various practical disadvantages - risk of breakage, cathode poisoning, etc.
What VFDs do offer is a rather unique aesthetic - the quantity and quality of the light, the "glow" of the display. The segments work similarly to neon signs - inert gases charged with electricity until they give off light. It's art, basically. One might want a VFD-based clock for similar reasons why one might want a grandfather clock instead of a cheap wall clock from Staples. Probably the cheap clock is actually going to be better at telling time - but it's not just about telling time. It's about using this "job opening" around your house - the need for a timepiece - as an excuse to put something really cool on display.
Now, to me personally, using 7-segment displays is simply a waste of time. It's not interesting. If I were to build a VFD clock of some kind I'd want Nixie tubes, which contain electrical contacts inside the tube in the shape of the different numbers. That, to me, would be a much more interesting and worthwhile display piece.
I like your sig.
I'd make it even better, though:
Libertarianism: rich wolves and poor sheep advocating complete freedom of dinner choice
I don't know, seems like the whole message would be better encapsulated as a political cartoon. Just imagine, fat wolves in waistcoats, wearing top hats and monocles, sheep wearing tattered rags, both labeled clearly ("the rich", "the poor") just in case some people didn't understand - the wolves holding up forks and knives and staring at the sheep, a caption at the top reading "LIBERTARIANISM" and another at the bottom with the line about freedom of choice...
Pretty soon, Apple is going to run out of cats to name their OS X versions after. How many are left? When are they going to stoop to calling a new version "Housecat"?
I think they've got plenty of good cat names left still in reserve. For instance:
Mac OS X 10.10: "Selena Kyle"
Mac OS X 10.11: "Cheetara"
Mac OS X 10.12: "Nuku Nuku"
Mac OS X 10.13: "Bubastis"
Mac OS X 10.14: "Ravage"
Mac OS X 10.15: "Sammy Davis Jr."
See, I changed one letter, an 'n', for another, an 'l', as a way of making fun of the new release of Mac OS... I don't have any real reason for thinking it's slow, and it's not like I really have anything against Snow Leopard (apart from the fact that I, myself, am not interested in running Mac OS X any more) - it's just fun to make fun of it.
Avatar: FernGully with Mechs.
I thought it was the story of a man who uploaded an image to Photobucket, and inlined that image everywhere he went as a kind of personal mark? Then in act two his bandwidth allocation on Photobucket runs out, and so in act three he seeks out a better hosting option...
It sounds like you had a similar experience as I had with OS X/Aqua. I bought a Powerbook because it was unix...but they changed things in annoying ways and the UI didn't work quite right with others. Changing back to Linux made me feel free again.
It was kind of a surprising progression for me. I mean, I've been using Linux exclusively on my home desktop since 1997 or so (and, prior to that, dual-booting since 1995) - I went with Mac for my first laptop because I wanted to avoid configuration hassles and have some measure of commercial software support for it. I think the first time I started to realize it wasn't such a great fit was when I was using the laptop for slide presentations - first using Open Office (and having to deal with Mac's X server issues with the clipboard, dual-monitor support, and full screen mode) and then Keynote... But I was creating this content on the desktop, using GIMP and KPresenter and so on (having discovered that I actually really don't like OpenOffice very much) - so I had to go through an annoying series of transitions to get from KPresenter to Keynote. Even GIMP wasn't terribly at home on the Mac at that time, since there was no native GTK port at that point (once a native port did materialize, I had to upgrade the OS to use it)...
It's kind of surreal to think of it in these terms, but I switched away from Mac to Linux (for my laptop, anyway) because it's better at running the software I want to run.
Also when I got my EEE I also tried Gnome for the first time. (I've mostly been a KDE user) That's been a great experience - just as it "feels right" for me, personally, to have a desktop running on an X server, running a bunch of GNU software, GNOME also somehow just "felt right" when I first used it. It hasn't been a perfect experience (for instance it has an annoying habit of dimming the screen while I'm doing things - and if an application is using sound and the machine suspends, the application's sound won't work when the machine wakes again...) but I've enjoyed it quite a lot.
Even as old as it is I think my Powerbook is still a great piece of hardware... More compact than most laptops but much more luxuriously spacious than my EEE... If I could run Linux on it well, I would. (The main things there are wi-fi and graphics support - I think the state of those isn't so good on PPC Linux.) I haven't really put in the time to determine whether I could bend Mac OS into an environment in which I could feel at home... I think if I weren't using my EEE so much I might use the Powerbook a lot more. :)
Do some research before spreading FUD. Palm WebOS uses V8, the same Javascript engine that Chrome uses. It compiles to machine code.
Sorry, don't really know where to get this kind of information about WebOS. But, you know, Palm really hasn't inspired a lot of confidence in me over the last five years. That's not FUD, that's fact. But I also accept as fact that their new platform may have its act together a little better than I thought. It's just very counter-intuitive, you know? I'm used to Palm being the sad old shadow of their former glory. :)
You're not storing the source and the binary: you're storing the source and generating the binary at runtime.
You either store two copies of the program all the time, or re-interpret it each time you run... Or something in between (caching strategy) - either way, storing textual program code on the device is very wasteful.
The set of vulnerabilities in managed code is a subset of the set of vulnerabilities in native code, barring bugs in the runtime environment. Of course managed code isn't invulnerable, but many common attacks against native code simply don't apply.
Still not convinced that's worth a big chunk of runtime performance, storage, and severe restriction in the choice of development languages - but that's just me. :)
If, as in your example, the code is written for some obscure, dead environment, then you're going to have to port the code anyway regardless of what Palm offers
Palm users aren't supposed to talk about PalmOS as an obscure dead platform... XD
In the case of HanDBase they already ported the app to WinCE and other platforms, including the desktop version of Windows, basically rewriting the whole database interface to work with flat PDB files... It's still pretty natural to expect they'd have to rewrite the GUI for a new platform, but they've got a bunch of code which, one would hope, would simply be reusable on a new platform. Work that's already done which shouldn't have to be redone, or retested. This is somewhat complicated on platforms where apps are expected to be fully managed and language choice is limited.
Anyway - as I said you've made very good points... I'd like to look at the platform from a somewhat different angle. Ignoring the whole managed code/Javascript issue, which is also a matter of taste from my perspective- What's so great about WebOS? All I really know about it is what's on Wikipedia, combined with the fact that a lot of people seem to think it's really quite fantastic, for reasons I can't quite pin down.
You clearly have no idea how modern Javascript runtime systems work. They're compiled to bytecode for ages, and modern Javascript engines compile down to machine code. Like I said, modern Javascript is fast as hell.
You've made some good points, for sure.
Storage space on these devices is an issue as well, however. It seems rather silly to store source code on your device in addition to a native binary. Given that this is Palm we're talking about I'm not convinced that their runtime engine is terribly well optimized for time or space... That's sort of a separate issue, of course, more specific to the Pre itself. But ever since PACE failed to go away I haven't trusted Palm with any serious technical decisions. :)
One issue that makes a huge difference here is whether WebOS programs are stored as Javascript source or as byte-compiled code. If it's the former then that is simply cracked - blatant waste of limited resources. If it's the latter, that's more reasonable. I still don't think it's too bright to run interpreted code on an embedded device, but at least if the "interpreted code" is an intermediate, compact byte code that's a bit better.
blah blah blah blah Non-executable pages provide some protection against some attacks, but they're not a panacea.
And interpreted code is?
I mean, look at the overall situation: really, there's very little a process can do on an OS unless the OS kernel allows it. Network communication, I/O, CPU utilization, thread or process creation, memory utilization, whatever - it all goes through system calls, and the OS kernel is at liberty to deny any request that it chooses to. The only thing an interpreted environment offers beyond this in the way of safeguards is protection from hardware vulnerabilities - flaws in the CPU's implementation of access control that could result in privilege escalation issues.
They are already there if you really need them. You can write a browser plugin (using NSAPI, the API that's been stable for 15 years) or you can write a normal, boring Linux process in whatever language you want, and have your Javascript front-end communicate with it over dbus. (That's how WebOS reuses libpurple, the same library that Pidgin uses.) But chances are, you don't need to write native code.
The hell I don't.
First off, maybe I've got some hefty established code base I want to port over, rather than re-write in a new language. (The HanDBase people are apparently facing this issue - their app was written for PalmOS in C. To move it over to the Pre - natively, I mean - requires either porting that C code or rewriting the damn thing...)
Or maybe I just have some code that I need to run fast. Games are one of the most common scenarios. (Palm, I've heard, are already addressing that...)
so what's the point?
I don't want an iPhone. Nothing wrong with it, just the iPhone ain't for me. I guess that's the point.
This is cool, really cool. A full Linux machine in your pocket. Wow.
Though I do wonder how useful it will actually be. Can Linux bypass the desktop and go straight to the next big thing? User interface and good design are important on such small devices (and frankly, most phones fail more or less), and they're not exactly traditional strongholds of the Linux crowd.
Personally, those issues don't matter to me. That is, at a basic level I don't care about whether this device succeeds (beyond my own self-serving interest, the desire to buy future versions, perhaps) - I don't care whether it's the "next big thing" that everyone will like - what matters is that it's a device I would like.
My personal reason for wanting a phone running straight Linux is pretty simple: it's what I enjoy. I ran a Powerbook for several years because I thought the combination of a commercially-backed OS and a Unix core would satisfy me - but I've actually been much happier since switching to an EEE running Linux. It just feels right. X apps aren't treated as "foreign", I can install the latest VNC or Firefox or whatever without buying an OS upgrade, etc. I think I would enjoy a Linux phone for similar reasons. I have a Treo now, running a decrepit (and crash-prone now, thanks to PalmOS features like PACE and NVFS) old copy of LispMe... that's great, but what if I want to tinker with Python or Haskell or C or whatever? That's the great thing about phones running Linux - you can just install and run that stuff. In PalmOS it would be a significant effort to port it. There's still a fair bit of work if you want to port something to a phone and have it look nice (having a GUI well-fitted to the device in question is very important!) - but a lot of the time if I can just get a thing working I'm OK with some rough edges.
Some people want a phone that they can watch movies on, or tilt left and right to make the car steer. That's great stuff, I am super happy that they can get that. I'm after something a little different. I thought Android might be the way to go, now I'm thinking this might be what I need.
You can't just hack together your own code, plug it into the GSM network and expect the FCC to just smile and look the other way.
You can if all GSM/UMTS-related code runs on a dedicated core that communicates with the main core (which runs the apps) through a well-defined interface. The Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi, although not phones, follow the same general scheme: one core to handle audio, Wi-Fi, and power management, and one core to handle everything else.
You know, I skimmed over this post until I saw "Nintendo DS" and then I was like, "Hey, is that tepples?" XD
How can you justify that cost? For $800, you could buy a netbook, a basic smart phone, plus hookers and blow.
Hm, really? Your mom must have lowered her rates...
The Pre runs a practically normal Linux distribution. Granted, all the applications are written in Javascript and not some compiled language using C, but I look at that as a good thing.
How the hell is that a good thing?
I mean, OK, I'm asking in kind of an inflammatory way there, but I am serious. To me, running interpreted code on an embedded device seems like the most retarded idea possible. How is it even close to a good idea, when running on a device with relatively slow CPU and limited battery power, to not optimize the code for runtime efficiency before you put it on the device?
Pretty much the only things a VM buys you are architecture independence and a certain measure of protection against exploits. Neither one, IMO, ranks above battery lifetime or runtime performance. (I don't know if ARM supports stuff like non-executable memory pages - that would provide a lot of the same protection as interpreted code...) And in the case of WebOS it's not even a bytecode VM (or is it?) - it's interpreting textual program code...
I've used PalmOS 5 for roughly the last six years. It seems like they've been stacking bad decisions (i.e. PACE) with more bad decisions (i.e. NVFS) - and now with WebOS they've made a clean start with some even worse decisions. It's mind-boggling, truly. At least it seems this time they are going to follow through with some good native code options...
I'm waiting for the SunnyD commercial "Aw, dude, grape stuff? Epic fail !!!"
I can see it now...
Kid 1: "Aw, dude, grape stuff? Epic fail!"
Kid 3: "Noooooooo!"
Kid 2: "Do not want!"
Kid 3: "El oh el oh el!"
Mom: "Who wants some Sunny D?"
Kid 2: "Sunny D greater-than grape stuff!"
Announcer: "New Sunny D is made of win, with vitamins and minerals that are teh roxx-zero-ars!"
Kid 1: "Sunny D p'owns!"
Kid 3: "Are oh tee eff el oh el!"
What do you get when you arm a child?
a machine gunning BRAT!
Oompa loompa ...
True, perhaps - but you can't fight the seether.
Can't they just use cats with cameras strapped to their heads?
Yes! Extremely well-trained, obedient cats who will bravely follow instructions to the letter even in the harshest, most dangerous environments...
I like this idea. I am confident that no flaws will be found in it.