Another chip family? No, unless you think Intel XScale and TI OMAP are in different chip families. The ColdFire chips are just another example of the m68k family, like the DragonBall chips are.
Reminds me of the nanotech in David Brin's "Earth". It exists, but the energy costs are so extreme that the only things it's used for are materials that simply cannot be built any other way. I seem to remember them using them to build some extremely large crystals that were part of a planetary-scale gravity detector or something.
If you could have an app that looked and acted exactly the same on all desktop machines, and appropriately differently on palmtop devices (but the same across all such devices), would that be enough to make you want to avoid duplicating all those presentation layers?
Actually, no. That's exactly what I do not want. I want an app that conforms to each platform's UI guidelines. The UI guidelines of the different platforms are incompatible with each other, though. An app that behaved exactly the same on each desktop platform would be able to conform with guidelines on one platform, but then it would be jarring for folks who don't use that platform.
But back to the rest of what you were writing...
There are a number of JVMs available for Pocket PC devices, either as MIDP, J2ME Personal Profile, or its predecessor Personal Java, the latter two being Java 1.1.8 compatible and capable of running applets. The exact versions available depend on the underlying processor, but Creme, Jeode and IBM's J9 are ones I've encountered.
Could you post a more specific pointer to IBM's J9 one? That's what I'm running on my Tungsten T3 already, and if I could run that on my iPaq h4350 (ARM-based PocketPC 2003), I can do a real comparison and see if it's suitable for our applications.
First of all, I don't know of a way to run Java applets or midlets on PocketPC devices. If you know of a way, let me know. Also, I don't know of a way to run them on PowerPC or ARM or Alpha Linux boxes, which is a concern for me, at least.
Also, native apps often look and behave better than Java apps. I use MacOS X and PalmOS 5. Do I use Java apps? Yes. Do I use any MIDlets? Yes. Given the choice between a Java app and a Cocoa app, which will I use? The Cocoa app. Given a choice between a MIDlet and a native Palm app, which will I use? The native Palm app.
If the application logic can be put somewhere that a dozen presentation layers can get to it, and it's very cheap to write presentation layers, then there's less reason not to make a dozen versions of the presentation layer. Hackers can churn them out, they can be made skinnable, et cetera.
Uhh, Mozilla/XUL runs on Linux, Windows and MacOS X. Why would you develop three different times when you could do it once?
Some people might do so because they prefer native apps to cross-platform apps (for example, under MacOS X it's easier to make the behavior of Services consistent that way -- as things stand, I don't run Mozilla on MacOS X because it's not as well-integrated with the OS as Safari is).
But the point I was really trying to make is that by using web services, you could enable that strategy, with not too much effort required for all the user interfaces. Nothing would require you to do that, but writing apps that consume web services is really very easy with.Net and AppleScript -- it'd be an afternoon's job for many apps, once the web service providing the application logic was written.
Personally I'd like to see the application logic live in web services (as in WSDL/SOAP), with WS-Security support for authentication.
Then the presentation layer could be done in something like Mozilla/XUL on Linux,.Net Windows Forms apps on Windows and Pocket PC, J2ME on PalmOS and java phone devices, AppleScript Studio on MacOS X, and all sorts of other things (eg. our portal has a RAD framework for portlets, and it can slurp up web services with no trouble, and I'm sure there must be at least one BREW dev environment with support for them).
What, can people not say balls now? If not, could someone please say why?
Of course you can't! You can't mention anything covered by a swim-suit. That'd be like, like, admitting genitals exist! It's only a short step from that to admitting that sex occurs! We can't have that in our media.
Okay, so, some book stores keep PDFs of their books around and run off paperback copies at the time they're ordered, rather than keeping a big inventory around. Right?
So, imagine a machine that printed a real, decent copy of a manual, printed a box with art, burned a CD-R of your software, and assembled the whole shebang at the time you ordered it.
Wouldn't that be great? Distribution and warehousing costs would plummet, even if it was only ever used behind the counter. The lowering of those costs means more of the software that today is only available as shareware might become available off-the-shelf at CompUSA.
(Then we need the same thing for DVDs, so you can reasonably get more independent films. And of course for audio CDs, so you can cheaply get a real CD with album art from a small independent label at your local record store.)
Sure, there's a few Windows apps that I can't live without, including such abominations as MS Project, but I'm willing to bet that either Virtual PC on a Mac will let me run those apps or I'll find suitable replacements. In any case, the inconvenience will be more than covered by not having to run Windows.
The solution we use at my office is: we've got a powerful desktop Windows machine on a good network running Windows Terminal Server. Then we run the Remote Desktop Client that Microsoft released for MacOS to connect to it. This is much, much, much faster than trying to get the same work done under emulation. The only real downsides are that you have to have a machine for this and it's only of use while you're connected to the network (no running MS project from 30,000 feet).
This is completely serious. I've seen it all over the place. If an executive is quoted as saying something, all you can usually infer from it is that the text was run by that executive and permission was given to publish. You absolutely cannot ever asusme they actually originated the text. It continually surprises me that people are surprised by this. I thought everyone took this for granted these days.
That's why I've attached a keyboard and mouse to my PlayStation 2. I prefer to play on a console because the hardware does not change, so costs are kept low and you're guaranteed that all the games for the platform will play on your machine. I can hook up a keyboard, mouse, gun, wheel, dance pad, whatever -- the argument that PCs have better control is null, because the controls for a PC can be attached to a console.
I've already purchased two albums from them, pict.soul and Error. What's interesting is that both are available from the iTunes Music Store as well as from Audio Lunchbox, at exactly the same price (here and here). I buy plenty of music from the iTunes Music Store, but I am willing to go a little bit out of my way to avoid the DRM if I can get the same price without it.
They take PayPal too, so I didn't have to enter credit card info into... anything at all.
If the PS3 will play PS2 and PS1 games, then when (not if, but when) I buy it I will get rid of my PS2, just like I got rid of my original PlayStation when I got my PS2. I don't want a zillion consoles. If I'm going to hook up multiple consoles, they'll be from different manufacturers.
Hey, you're trying to rant about "The Standards", but you only managed to rant about de-facto standards. If you want to rant about all standards, including de-jure standards, throw in some comments on the OSI networking stack and how succesful everyone who used it was.
Yes, it's nice while it's in your hand, but mine spends a lot more time on a table than in my hand. And this device sucks when it's on a table. It's got these two little flat bits on the bottom near the two ends, but other than those, it's all curved. You've got to get those two contact points onto the same flat surface for the remote to be stable. If you don't, the thing falls over constantly. So, whenever I want to start watching my TiVo, because of their remote design, the first step is a hunt for the remote. None of my other remotes have this problem.
Of course some say print is dead. But if print is dead then so too is the novel. No one wants to read 300 plus pages on a screen. And more importantly, no one wants to re-read a novel on screen. Very little interaction with the object there. No sense of "consumption."
I can only say that I hope you're right as far as most of the population is concerned, because I know you're wrong as far as I'm concerned. I've gotten to the point where I actually prefer to read novels on my handheld. A recent novel I bought came with a CD-ROM containing the same novel in electronic form. I loaded it on to my palm and then proceeded to totally ignore the actual book.
I've read several full-length novels this way now, and speaking only for myself, I absolutely prefer it, by a fairly wide margin. I have an entire library in my pocket all the time, the book mark never falls out, and I can read in the dark. Hurah for the Baen free library!
Apple's iTunes and iPod provide synergy with each other but iTunes limits itself to only those with iPods (or effectively does, since converting from AAC to MP3 to use with other players is a pain). Nice for them in the niche market, but a limiter in the absolute sense.
You're forgetting the single largest segment of the music market -- those with no portable MP3 players at all. Some of the other services are certainly targeting that market. Apple's iTMS works perfectly fine for people who listen via iTunes and burn ordinary audio CDs and don't listen any other way.
The largest segment has no portable players at all. The second largest segment uses the single most popular portable player, which is the iPod. I don't think Apple has too much to worry about in terms of limiting their market, at least yet.
Now, if the vendors can't break even, why doesn't a record company (or, say, the RIAA itself) buy an 'unprofitable' online vendor and continue merrily selling songs?
As long as one big online music vendor remains successful, they don't really have a reason to. They're getting their cut, without the (significant) added costs of running a service themselves. It's not like it would be in their interests to foster competition -- competition would drive down prices, and thereby their cut. No, it's in RIAA's interest for there to be exactly one such service, at as high a price point as people will tolerate. If Apple's iTMS isn't going away because Apple makes money on iPods, well, that means to me that there won't be a reason for RIAA to jump in on their own. It seems to me that from RIAA's point of view, iTMS totally dominating the market and driving out all competition would be pretty much ideal.
Before someone counters by saying they could keep a higher percentage of the revenue if they ran it themselves, remember that they'd also have to take on a higher percentage of the costs (which are currently at 0% for them, recall) as well. Apple is already doing the big bandwidth business thing, for their trailer site and software update infrastructure and such. RIAA is most decidedly not.
You'll note that I was very careful to say "by my standards at least". By my standards, it very much is stealing. You are taking something that you are not entitled to. By my standards, that is the only thing required to make an act "stealing". It fits, here.
If you're that cheap, buy an XBox 1 when the Xbox 2 comes out. It will be a lot cheaper than a brand new XBox 2.
It's a thought, but then I'd be locking myself out of the newest games. I got a PS2 because it would play PS1 games, but once I had it I also bought PS2 games.
I want the best of both worlds. Sony has been giving it to me. Nintendo has too, with handhelds. If Microsoft wants my business, they will too. If not, I can live without an XBox.
That's true. You can also use them to play imports, and to write your own code to run on a console. That second point is very interesting to me.
It will allow you to try games before you buy.
However, if what you mean by this is that you play an illegally-produced copy before deciding whether to buy your own copy then, by my standards at least, you are in fact stealing. Even if the vendor ends up with more of your money than they would if you weren't doing this. It's something I won't even entertain the possibility of tolerating.
And how much money will Microsoft be making when you purchase that metric buttload of used Xbox games?
More than you might think. With the PS1, compatibility drives up the resale value of games, which makes people more willing to buy them to begin with, which drives up the price of the games for first-time buyers. Market forces work.
Also, I won't buy the XBox 2 unless I can buy a metric buttload of cheap used games, but that doesn't mean that's all I'll buy. If they want me to buy any new XBox 2 games, they have to build in compatibility with XBox 1.
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I might be able to handle the "less is more" philosophy, as long as in the end all the old functionality is available.
But where's the composer? The WYSIWYG HTML editor that's a part of Mozilla? It's really not bad. I'd hate for it to disappear.
Another chip family? No, unless you think Intel XScale and TI OMAP are in different chip families. The ColdFire chips are just another example of the m68k family, like the DragonBall chips are.
Reminds me of the nanotech in David Brin's "Earth". It exists, but the energy costs are so extreme that the only things it's used for are materials that simply cannot be built any other way. I seem to remember them using them to build some extremely large crystals that were part of a planetary-scale gravity detector or something.
But back to the rest of what you were writing...Could you post a more specific pointer to IBM's J9 one? That's what I'm running on my Tungsten T3 already, and if I could run that on my iPaq h4350 (ARM-based PocketPC 2003), I can do a real comparison and see if it's suitable for our applications.
First of all, I don't know of a way to run Java applets or midlets on PocketPC devices. If you know of a way, let me know. Also, I don't know of a way to run them on PowerPC or ARM or Alpha Linux boxes, which is a concern for me, at least.
Also, native apps often look and behave better than Java apps. I use MacOS X and PalmOS 5. Do I use Java apps? Yes. Do I use any MIDlets? Yes. Given the choice between a Java app and a Cocoa app, which will I use? The Cocoa app. Given a choice between a MIDlet and a native Palm app, which will I use? The native Palm app.
If the application logic can be put somewhere that a dozen presentation layers can get to it, and it's very cheap to write presentation layers, then there's less reason not to make a dozen versions of the presentation layer. Hackers can churn them out, they can be made skinnable, et cetera.
But the point I was really trying to make is that by using web services, you could enable that strategy, with not too much effort required for all the user interfaces. Nothing would require you to do that, but writing apps that consume web services is really very easy with
Personally I'd like to see the application logic live in web services (as in WSDL/SOAP), with WS-Security support for authentication.
.Net Windows Forms apps on Windows and Pocket PC, J2ME on PalmOS and java phone devices, AppleScript Studio on MacOS X, and all sorts of other things (eg. our portal has a RAD framework for portlets, and it can slurp up web services with no trouble, and I'm sure there must be at least one BREW dev environment with support for them).
Then the presentation layer could be done in something like Mozilla/XUL on Linux,
Okay, so, some book stores keep PDFs of their books around and run off paperback copies at the time they're ordered, rather than keeping a big inventory around. Right?
So, imagine a machine that printed a real, decent copy of a manual, printed a box with art, burned a CD-R of your software, and assembled the whole shebang at the time you ordered it.
Wouldn't that be great? Distribution and warehousing costs would plummet, even if it was only ever used behind the counter. The lowering of those costs means more of the software that today is only available as shareware might become available off-the-shelf at CompUSA.
(Then we need the same thing for DVDs, so you can reasonably get more independent films. And of course for audio CDs, so you can cheaply get a real CD with album art from a small independent label at your local record store.)
This is completely serious. I've seen it all over the place. If an executive is quoted as saying something, all you can usually infer from it is that the text was run by that executive and permission was given to publish. You absolutely cannot ever asusme they actually originated the text. It continually surprises me that people are surprised by this. I thought everyone took this for granted these days.
That's why I've attached a keyboard and mouse to my PlayStation 2. I prefer to play on a console because the hardware does not change, so costs are kept low and you're guaranteed that all the games for the platform will play on your machine. I can hook up a keyboard, mouse, gun, wheel, dance pad, whatever -- the argument that PCs have better control is null, because the controls for a PC can be attached to a console.
I've already purchased two albums from them, pict.soul and Error. What's interesting is that both are available from the iTunes Music Store as well as from Audio Lunchbox, at exactly the same price (here and here). I buy plenty of music from the iTunes Music Store, but I am willing to go a little bit out of my way to avoid the DRM if I can get the same price without it.
They take PayPal too, so I didn't have to enter credit card info into... anything at all.
If the PS3 will play PS2 and PS1 games, then when (not if, but when) I buy it I will get rid of my PS2, just like I got rid of my original PlayStation when I got my PS2. I don't want a zillion consoles. If I'm going to hook up multiple consoles, they'll be from different manufacturers.
...that I never, ever buy their beer. Bletch. It's darks and stouts for me, none of this "making love in a canoe" crap.
Hey, you're trying to rant about "The Standards", but you only managed to rant about de-facto standards. If you want to rant about all standards, including de-jure standards, throw in some comments on the OSI networking stack and how succesful everyone who used it was.
Yes, it's nice while it's in your hand, but mine spends a lot more time on a table than in my hand. And this device sucks when it's on a table. It's got these two little flat bits on the bottom near the two ends, but other than those, it's all curved. You've got to get those two contact points onto the same flat surface for the remote to be stable. If you don't, the thing falls over constantly. So, whenever I want to start watching my TiVo, because of their remote design, the first step is a hunt for the remote. None of my other remotes have this problem.
I've read several full-length novels this way now, and speaking only for myself, I absolutely prefer it, by a fairly wide margin. I have an entire library in my pocket all the time, the book mark never falls out, and I can read in the dark. Hurah for the Baen free library!
The largest segment has no portable players at all. The second largest segment uses the single most popular portable player, which is the iPod. I don't think Apple has too much to worry about in terms of limiting their market, at least yet.
Before someone counters by saying they could keep a higher percentage of the revenue if they ran it themselves, remember that they'd also have to take on a higher percentage of the costs (which are currently at 0% for them, recall) as well. Apple is already doing the big bandwidth business thing, for their trailer site and software update infrastructure and such. RIAA is most decidedly not.
I want the best of both worlds. Sony has been giving it to me. Nintendo has too, with handhelds. If Microsoft wants my business, they will too. If not, I can live without an XBox.
Also, I won't buy the XBox 2 unless I can buy a metric buttload of cheap used games, but that doesn't mean that's all I'll buy. If they want me to buy any new XBox 2 games, they have to build in compatibility with XBox 1.