I came pretty close to buying F1, but never did. It looks nice, but doesn't have all of the features that Maxima or Octave have, both or one of which you can get easily and free for Windows CE/PocketPC or Zaurus handhelds. It sure as hell is far away from being Mathematica...
I've been pretty happy with Maxima on Windows CE. In my case, I'm using it on WinCE.NET 4.1 on a device with a real touch-typeable keyboard, which is a dream- but it'd work just as well on a PocketPC. Alongside Maxima, I've got GNUplot working well too. I'm trying to get Xmaxima working, the integrated Maxima environment, but I've run into a couple snags and haven't had the time to look at it. There is an older version of Maple for WinCE, but I've not found any place to grab a copy. There are some other apps, but I try to stick to the free stuff on WinCE when I can. (and that is almost always!)
On the Zaurus I usually use GNU Octave, a Matlab clone. It is a lot crappier to use than Maxima is on my WinCE-based Sigmarion III. You are given a straight up command line, you don't even get readline.:P It'd be nice if someone made a front end app, it would increase the usability of this thing a ton.
In the end, I usually end up using Maxima on the WinCE box. I've more experience with Matlab/Octave than I do with Maxima, but I'm learning, and it's paying off.
Other options include Formulae 1, a simpler Java math app for WinCE or the Zaurus. There are a couple other Java math apps, but nothing near as good as Maxima or Octave.
It wasn't first to market. There were several devices like it on the market before. The fact that it made it in the market where others failed is a combination of excellent marketing, fortuitous timing, and, mostly, dumb luck.
Indeed- Newton, the Amstrad PDA thing, a couple based on GEOS...
It would have been even cheaper to develop the system if they had reused existing APIs or bought a better third party kernel.
More importantly, it'd be 10x cheaper for PalmSource, licencees and all of the PalmOS developers out there now if Palm had some this back in 96...
As operating systems go, WindowsCE and PalmOS have no advantages over Linux/X11 in terms of resource usage or performance.
That's bunk, man.
The key to WinCE or PalmOS is that it leaves out the stuff you may not need, but allowing you to add it on later if you need it. I can always install X11 on WinCE if I want (though, not on PalmOS IIRC), but I can't just the functionality that X11 provides which I just don't need on my PDA. Certainly, there are times where having remote display is useful on my PDA, but the majority of the time I don't need it, so why should it waste resources that would be better used for functionality that I actually want?
I can run X11 on WinCE by installing XFreeCE and get that functionality, and I wouldn't be surprised if the total memory used with CE, XFree, and a couple small apps does end up being smaller than the same set under Linux/X11.
No, I think you're missing an important point here. Those "Bad OS's" generally have to run on weaker hardware. Linux can't run on hardware as weak as the Palm's, and can barely run on Windows CE grade handhelds (I've tried it, it's painful).
Linux *can* and does run on some PalmOS hardware. ucLinux ran on some old PalmOS units, 16 MHz DragonBalls. But, it wasn't "real" Linux. A lot of the modern PalmOS units have the same hardware as any Linux or WinCE PDA: 200-400 MHz ARM CPU, 30-200 MHz bus, 16-128 MB RAM, lots of potential storage space, networking options up the wazoo, etc. I don't know about you, but I ran Linux on machines far less powerful than these, all the way down to a 25 MHz 386 with only a fraction of the power and RAM of these modern PalmOS, WinCE and Linux PDAs.
That said, I don't think Linux has much of a place on handhelds, at least not until the software gets better. Linux runs fine, but it is the software available for Linux which really makes it shit poor for PDAs. That said, a memory footprint is important- on boot, my WinCE machine takes up 3-4 MB of RAM; my Linux/Qtopia-based Zaurus C760 is using 18 MB of RAM on boot. No wonder it comes with 128 MB of dedicated RAM. A bit obese.
What is a "Windows CE grade handheld?" In your opinion, are the existing Linux PDAs, specifically the Zaurus, a bad platform for Linux?
I imagine they're using A and B... I think the drug alphabet goes backwards. After all, folks have been using H, M, and O for far longer than E. We've had H for the last hundred and some years, M for even longer, and O has been a part of human evolution since time immemorial...
I've not problem with using Visual Boy Advance or Boycott Advance on Mac OS X on a lowly 500 MHz G3 iBook. It runs full speed, and has no problem speeding up to something quite a bit faster.
The Zaurus does have some problems getting emulators to work well, but there are other reasons for that than raw performance. I've no problems with emulating some systems on a WinCE unit with the same CPU speed that are painful on the Zaurus.
I'd put Linux/QPE and WinCE in the same category, modest. There are libraries for WinCE that make it a lot easier, SDL and some partial POSIX compat libraries that make apps a ton easier to port. Even without this, porting isn't all that bad, depending on what the original depended on. Naturally, if it is heavy into OpenGL or DirectX it'll be more work- but then again, if you had an OpenGL-based emulator [1] for Linux, it'd be a lot more than "trivial" work to port it to a Linux PDA, whether it targets Qtopia or X11.
A big consideration in porting certain types of apps to Linux or WinCE PDAs is the lack of an FPU, which very often pushes the app out of trivial into moderate, even if you're using X11 or SDL on the PDA. There are always the cheerleaders who like to praise the Zaurus unduly, magnifying the disapointment in the platform that much more.
To an extent, I agree with your assessment about bad platform and PR; if your platform sucks, every "feature," whether it's an actual feature or a fix, seems like a leap for mankind. But, in this case, I really rather doubt it is the case- more likely someone submitted the story, and timothy being relatively ignorant of what PDAs can do these days, thought it was cool and newsworthy. It is certainly cool, but emulation isn't new on PalmOS- at the very least, there are GB, NES, C64, Apple2, and perhaps some others.
I dunno, it's Slashdot, and this kind of thing should be expected. But then again, it is also expected that some schmuck like me will whine about it, share the truth and their worthless opinion with everyone else...:D
[1] Sounds silly for a 2D emulator to use OpenGL, but it's sometimes an easy way to blit yer bits...
There are also more for WinCE- I gave up on trying to have pissing contests with Zaurus cheerleaders a while back. Though not that you are trying to do that neccesarily (after all, I did say "On WinCE (PocketPCs) and Linux PDAs, there are a ton of good emulators"), but someone may try it...
I wish there was a decent GBA emulator for any PDA platform- it is hardly worth listing it for the Zaurus, as it sucks. The day I can get a good one for my WinCE machine or Zaurus is the day I give some cousin of mine my GBA...:)
Palm OS, Pocket PC, Smartphone and Symbian Series 60 - using our SHARK development kit. gone are the days of dealing with a single operating system.
Same for me, though I am taking a different approach, using Squeak Smalltalk, which is a bytecode-compiled + virtual machine language which runs on just about any platform, desktop and PDA, with one huge exception- PalmOS. But I am working to remedy that, now that here are some tricks around PalmOS's limitation...
Not only do I remember Liberty, but I still use it, although on a VTech Helio and not on a Palm.:P It is one of a handful of apps that still makes my funky old Helio useful...
Yes, like I said myself, any new PalmOS emulator is a little bit more notable than one for WinCE or Linux PDAs, where porting or writing an emulator is a lot easier, on account of Linux and WinCE being "real OSes."
It's not quite the same reasoning. By your interpretation of what I said, it would be appropriate and expected for Slashdot to post for every new software package released for a PDA...
Notes about new releases for Linux or Apache are expected due to the nature of this community. I personally am not terribly interested and ignore them, but considering the bias and focus of this community, is an obvious choice for a story post.
What is the big deal about this? It is somewhat of note on PalmOS, where creating emulators is a lot harder than on WinCE or Linux, because of POS's architecture.
On WinCE (PocketPCs) and Linux PDAs, there are a ton of good emulators, and for a number of systems, more than one. Off the top of my head, i know I've used on WinCE: GameBoy, SNES, NES, MAME, C64, and NeoGeo.
While there aren't as many, there certainly are a handful of emulators for PalmOS, although I have only used the good Liberty GB emu.
So why post this? Should we start posting when any PalmOS package is released, like it is some big event? It may be of interest if it were the first emulator for PalmOS, or the fist C64 emulator for a PDA- but it isn't. And it certainly is not anything exceptional or of note, although my kudos goes to the developer, it is good to see people pushing the limits of PalmOS 5 and under.
I am a very literate computer user, but that has nothing to do with whether I will use Linux or not. My problem is how closed most OSes are, including Linux and Windows. I do not mean closed in the sense of OSS/FSF but in the way apps, systems, and the user interacts with eachother. OS X is better in this respect, but it doesn't take it to the level I expect. Future Windows may improve, depending on how.NET is woven into the mesh.
For me, an OS should have the seamless interop, and I the user and developer, should have the ability to change anything and everything with the way my OS works, grab data structures from within other apps, etc etc without having to waste a lot of time and energy conforming to a very remote and ugly API.
Oh bother... I am not explaining this well at all. But tis my dream. Kind of like Emacs, but not just an overgrown editor.
Well, I certainly didn't mean to sound like a dick, but yeah. I bet it would've been funny if someone said to me outloud, especially if it were the middle of a late night nerding session and I was kind of drunk or just sleep deprived.:)
less funny to you? I hope I didn't wreck it for you...:/
I personally have no problems with drivers, but I am a pretty vanilla guy from that standpoint. I can't say I like Linux much more than BSD, but I only use Linux on my file server because it happens to suck the least out of the options- but it still sucks.:)
My main OS is Squeak Smalltalk on a base of WinCE. Which has me marked as insane I'm sure.
I shouldn't have to run a firewall just to make my computer secure.
If you have various servers or services running, a firewall makes sense. If you want the services off, no- but you must not have read my post or the parent if you jumped to that conclusion.
The reason for running a firewall is not so you can turn off services- but to prevent outsiders from using the services you want or need.
The parent to my post mentioned needing RPC, that turning off RPC broke something in the apps he ran. The solution certainly isn't stop using all sorts of RPC simply because of a worm; rather, the firewall should block those RPC requests unless they're local, which would allow this user's app to keep working fine.
I have FTP, XML-RPC and some other services enabled within my firewall. Both have potential exploits, whether they are run on Linux, Windows, WinCE or Mac OS X. So, what do I do? Just turn them off, taking away the functionality I want or need? No, that would be retarded. The solution is to not allow the outside to make requests on those services.
There is no reason MS could give you a checkbox that allowed RPC requests to be made within the machine itself, but not accepting them from the outside world. Hell, it may be possible already- and easy enough to enable- with some Windows firewalls.
Can't always blame MS- blocking external RPC calls is something that can and should be done in a firewall. Granted, MS should ship a firewall with their OSes that does it...
These boxes need to communicate over the network. While I do not work for Diebold or any other ATM provider, there is a chance they are using RPC (or MS's implementation of an RPC system, DCOM) for doing requests. After all, with XML-RPC and SOAP, there has been a lot of interest in RPC systems again, calling methods on remote objects, etc etc. Oftentimes, SSL'd XML-RPC is the quickest and easiest way to get a mostly secure message across the network. Why invent new protocols when you could just access data as if it were run on the same machine?
I implemented an Expose wannabe in Squeak. Quite easy considering the way Squeak's GUI tk - Morphic- works. Very little code, yet slick. Should've taken a screenshot in anticipation...
What about support for coding on the unit itself? For me, my WinCE.NET 4.1 Sigmarion III is my main computer. Beats my Zaurus C760 for that any day of the week. I've no interest in buying a Windows PC to run VS.NET, so I sure hope a language or two (preferably a Smalltalk or Lisp-like language, perhaps something perl or pythonish) pops up where I can do the development for.NET CF on the WinCE device itself.
Ahoy- Anyone used the.NET CF on WinCE.NET 4.1? I have a device (Sigmarion III, 800x480 5" screen and a real keybard- mm mm good) which runs it. According to what I can find at msdn.microsoft.com
How much of the regular.NET framework translates to the Compact Framework? I think.NET is way cool, but if one was just restricted to VB.NET/CF and C#/CF I don't think I'd be interested. For me, it really is about the many-language inter-op. I would love to have some interpretable language- Smalltalk, Lisp, Perl, Ruby or even Python that had a.NET CF version with which I could play with making CE apps with the.NET API.
I already have a number of languages on the Zaurus C760 and Sigmarion III. The Zaurus isn't as good as CE as far as having a lot of options for developing "real" apps on the device itself. I could probably compile GNU Mono for the Z pretty easily, but without the ability to create "native" apps for Qtopia, it's no fun.:)
I already do a lot of coding on WinCE (and Linux PDAs) in various languages, but using.NET would be even cooler... I bet portability to the desktop version would be pretty good too. I don't even have a Windows machine to doing the development, I do it all on the PDA or on my Linux file server. But then again, I'm an anamoly; the Sigmarion III is pretty much my primary computer.
Reminds me of when Falwell sent me a check...
on
FSF Wants Your Vouchers
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· Score: 3, Funny
People mention poetic justice...
When I was a frosh in the forms, my friends and I thirsted for mail. So we sent away for various free stuff- info from weird religions, product samples, software trials, etc etc.
While I never requested any information from Jerry Falwell Ministries I somehow ended up on their mailing list. At some point during the school year, I got a letter from them asking for donations- as well as a $1 check.
The letter purported that they had an anonymous shadow donor who was willing to match all donations. So if I cashed the $1 check they sent me and sent them that same $1 back, they would end up with $1 total profit, coming from the anonymous donor.
Probably a common scam- a lot of the folks they'd target would feel guilty about cashing the $1 and keeping it. And they'd figure, why not send them back their $1? But then they'd have the checkbook open, made out for everything but the amount. Then they think- why not make it $5? Or $10? Not that much money, but whatever they send in will be doubled by the donor lurking in the shadows, so why not?
That is what they were betting on with this donation drive. Except that they picked the wrong guy with me.
I went ahead and cashed the check. Before doing so, I made a photocopy of the check and letter. Then I wrote a new check, just like my pal Jerry said to do. After that I send a letter, a $1 check, and the photocopies of what Jerr sent me to a gay and lesbian rights group.
I can't remember the group though. I was a bit bummed that I never got a reply expressing the humor- or the extreme grattitude for donating a whole dollar!
Not sure to what your reply is, but the parent of your post wasn't saying that Windows is smaller or anything. It was saying that Windows is often used in these cases because it's quick, oftentimes pretty cheap, and sometimes dirty.
Why the hell would I want to "write my own gfx routines" and use something low level like Linux and svgalib? That is definately not quick, cheap and dirty. No, you wouldn't have to pay for the OS, but writing all of your own gfx routines would cost the difference in a Windows OS. I would go for a WinCE.NET license myself- over 9x/ME or NT/2k/XP- for a number of reasons. Best of both worlds in a lot of ways- it's pretty stable (a lot more than 9x/ME); definately quick and dirty, w/ VB, MFC or other very well integrated scripting languages; cheaper than 2k or XP, and a very small footprint. You don't get stuck with a piece of shit like 9x running your kiosk (or whatever), yet you don't have to invest many man-hours in coding your own GUI system just so you can use Linux.
And you could fit that on a floppy, but why would you want to? Running your embeded system, locked away in some cabinet somewhere- a floppy would be the worst thing ever. A hard drive or if you don't mind spending the cash, a flash card and a IDE->CF/PCMCIA adapter.
Which isn't to say I don't love Windows- I've not had Windows on a desktop and I've run Linux or some Unix since 1994. Although, I have a soft spot for WinCE that I admit to. That said, most everything has a purpose- and using a tiny Linux install with your own home-brewed GUI/gfx system on top of svgalib is not a good solution for quick, dirty, and cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
pffft, lame.
I came pretty close to buying F1, but never did. It looks nice, but doesn't have all of the features that Maxima or Octave have, both or one of which you can get easily and free for Windows CE/PocketPC or Zaurus handhelds. It sure as hell is far away from being Mathematica...
I've been pretty happy with Maxima on Windows CE. In my case, I'm using it on WinCE.NET 4.1 on a device with a real touch-typeable keyboard, which is a dream- but it'd work just as well on a PocketPC. Alongside Maxima, I've got GNUplot working well too. I'm trying to get Xmaxima working, the integrated Maxima environment, but I've run into a couple snags and haven't had the time to look at it. There is an older version of Maple for WinCE, but I've not found any place to grab a copy. There are some other apps, but I try to stick to the free stuff on WinCE when I can. (and that is almost always!)
:P It'd be nice if someone made a front end app, it would increase the usability of this thing a ton.
On the Zaurus I usually use GNU Octave, a Matlab clone. It is a lot crappier to use than Maxima is on my WinCE-based Sigmarion III. You are given a straight up command line, you don't even get readline.
In the end, I usually end up using Maxima on the WinCE box. I've more experience with Matlab/Octave than I do with Maxima, but I'm learning, and it's paying off.
Other options include Formulae 1, a simpler Java math app for WinCE or the Zaurus. There are a couple other Java math apps, but nothing near as good as Maxima or Octave.
It wasn't first to market. There were several devices like it on the market before. The fact that it made it in the market where others failed is a combination of excellent marketing, fortuitous timing, and, mostly, dumb luck.
Indeed- Newton, the Amstrad PDA thing, a couple based on GEOS...
It would have been even cheaper to develop the system if they had reused existing APIs or bought a better third party kernel.
More importantly, it'd be 10x cheaper for PalmSource, licencees and all of the PalmOS developers out there now if Palm had some this back in 96...
As operating systems go, WindowsCE and PalmOS have no advantages over Linux/X11 in terms of resource usage or performance.
That's bunk, man.
The key to WinCE or PalmOS is that it leaves out the stuff you may not need, but allowing you to add it on later if you need it. I can always install X11 on WinCE if I want (though, not on PalmOS IIRC), but I can't just the functionality that X11 provides which I just don't need on my PDA. Certainly, there are times where having remote display is useful on my PDA, but the majority of the time I don't need it, so why should it waste resources that would be better used for functionality that I actually want?
I can run X11 on WinCE by installing XFreeCE and get that functionality, and I wouldn't be surprised if the total memory used with CE, XFree, and a couple small apps does end up being smaller than the same set under Linux/X11.
No, I think you're missing an important point here. Those "Bad OS's" generally have to run on weaker hardware. Linux can't run on hardware as weak as the Palm's, and can barely run on Windows CE grade handhelds (I've tried it, it's painful).
Linux *can* and does run on some PalmOS hardware. ucLinux ran on some old PalmOS units, 16 MHz DragonBalls. But, it wasn't "real" Linux. A lot of the modern PalmOS units have the same hardware as any Linux or WinCE PDA: 200-400 MHz ARM CPU, 30-200 MHz bus, 16-128 MB RAM, lots of potential storage space, networking options up the wazoo, etc. I don't know about you, but I ran Linux on machines far less powerful than these, all the way down to a 25 MHz 386 with only a fraction of the power and RAM of these modern PalmOS, WinCE and Linux PDAs.
That said, I don't think Linux has much of a place on handhelds, at least not until the software gets better. Linux runs fine, but it is the software available for Linux which really makes it shit poor for PDAs. That said, a memory footprint is important- on boot, my WinCE machine takes up 3-4 MB of RAM; my Linux/Qtopia-based Zaurus C760 is using 18 MB of RAM on boot. No wonder it comes with 128 MB of dedicated RAM. A bit obese.
What is a "Windows CE grade handheld?" In your opinion, are the existing Linux PDAs, specifically the Zaurus, a bad platform for Linux?
Aaron
I imagine they're using A and B... I think the drug alphabet goes backwards. After all, folks have been using H, M, and O for far longer than E. We've had H for the last hundred and some years, M for even longer, and O has been a part of human evolution since time immemorial...
I've not problem with using Visual Boy Advance or Boycott Advance on Mac OS X on a lowly 500 MHz G3 iBook. It runs full speed, and has no problem speeding up to something quite a bit faster.
The Zaurus does have some problems getting emulators to work well, but there are other reasons for that than raw performance. I've no problems with emulating some systems on a WinCE unit with the same CPU speed that are painful on the Zaurus.
Way too slow. The emulation seemed fine for the most part, that is, it worked. Only ran at a couple FPS.
I'd put Linux/QPE and WinCE in the same category, modest. There are libraries for WinCE that make it a lot easier, SDL and some partial POSIX compat libraries that make apps a ton easier to port. Even without this, porting isn't all that bad, depending on what the original depended on. Naturally, if it is heavy into OpenGL or DirectX it'll be more work- but then again, if you had an OpenGL-based emulator [1] for Linux, it'd be a lot more than "trivial" work to port it to a Linux PDA, whether it targets Qtopia or X11.
:D
A big consideration in porting certain types of apps to Linux or WinCE PDAs is the lack of an FPU, which very often pushes the app out of trivial into moderate, even if you're using X11 or SDL on the PDA. There are always the cheerleaders who like to praise the Zaurus unduly, magnifying the disapointment in the platform that much more.
To an extent, I agree with your assessment about bad platform and PR; if your platform sucks, every "feature," whether it's an actual feature or a fix, seems like a leap for mankind. But, in this case, I really rather doubt it is the case- more likely someone submitted the story, and timothy being relatively ignorant of what PDAs can do these days, thought it was cool and newsworthy. It is certainly cool, but emulation isn't new on PalmOS- at the very least, there are GB, NES, C64, Apple2, and perhaps some others.
I dunno, it's Slashdot, and this kind of thing should be expected. But then again, it is also expected that some schmuck like me will whine about it, share the truth and their worthless opinion with everyone else...
[1] Sounds silly for a 2D emulator to use OpenGL, but it's sometimes an easy way to blit yer bits...
There are also more for WinCE- I gave up on trying to have pissing contests with Zaurus cheerleaders a while back. Though not that you are trying to do that neccesarily (after all, I did say "On WinCE (PocketPCs) and Linux PDAs, there are a ton of good emulators"), but someone may try it...
:)
I wish there was a decent GBA emulator for any PDA platform- it is hardly worth listing it for the Zaurus, as it sucks. The day I can get a good one for my WinCE machine or Zaurus is the day I give some cousin of mine my GBA...
Palm OS, Pocket PC, Smartphone and Symbian Series 60 - using our SHARK development kit. gone are the days of dealing with a single operating system.
:P It is one of a handful of apps that still makes my funky old Helio useful...
Same for me, though I am taking a different approach, using Squeak Smalltalk, which is a bytecode-compiled + virtual machine language which runs on just about any platform, desktop and PDA, with one huge exception- PalmOS. But I am working to remedy that, now that here are some tricks around PalmOS's limitation...
Not only do I remember Liberty, but I still use it, although on a VTech Helio and not on a Palm.
Yes, like I said myself, any new PalmOS emulator is a little bit more notable than one for WinCE or Linux PDAs, where porting or writing an emulator is a lot easier, on account of Linux and WinCE being "real OSes."
It's not quite the same reasoning. By your interpretation of what I said, it would be appropriate and expected for Slashdot to post for every new software package released for a PDA...
Notes about new releases for Linux or Apache are expected due to the nature of this community. I personally am not terribly interested and ignore them, but considering the bias and focus of this community, is an obvious choice for a story post.
What is the big deal about this? It is somewhat of note on PalmOS, where creating emulators is a lot harder than on WinCE or Linux, because of POS's architecture.
On WinCE (PocketPCs) and Linux PDAs, there are a ton of good emulators, and for a number of systems, more than one. Off the top of my head, i know I've used on WinCE: GameBoy, SNES, NES, MAME, C64, and NeoGeo.
While there aren't as many, there certainly are a handful of emulators for PalmOS, although I have only used the good Liberty GB emu.
So why post this? Should we start posting when any PalmOS package is released, like it is some big event? It may be of interest if it were the first emulator for PalmOS, or the fist C64 emulator for a PDA- but it isn't. And it certainly is not anything exceptional or of note, although my kudos goes to the developer, it is good to see people pushing the limits of PalmOS 5 and under.
I am a very literate computer user, but that has nothing to do with whether I will use Linux or not. My problem is how closed most OSes are, including Linux and Windows. I do not mean closed in the sense of OSS/FSF but in the way apps, systems, and the user interacts with eachother. OS X is better in this respect, but it doesn't take it to the level I expect. Future Windows may improve, depending on how .NET is woven into the mesh.
For me, an OS should have the seamless interop, and I the user and developer, should have the ability to change anything and everything with the way my OS works, grab data structures from within other apps, etc etc without having to waste a lot of time and energy conforming to a very remote and ugly API.
Oh bother... I am not explaining this well at all. But tis my dream. Kind of like Emacs, but not just an overgrown editor.
Well, I certainly didn't mean to sound like a dick, but yeah. I bet it would've been funny if someone said to me outloud, especially if it were the middle of a late night nerding session and I was kind of drunk or just sleep deprived. :)
:/
:)
less funny to you? I hope I didn't wreck it for you...
I personally have no problems with drivers, but I am a pretty vanilla guy from that standpoint. I can't say I like Linux much more than BSD, but I only use Linux on my file server because it happens to suck the least out of the options- but it still sucks.
My main OS is Squeak Smalltalk on a base of WinCE. Which has me marked as insane I'm sure.
Good christ man, that was horrible. I don't mean like "lame, but admittedly funny as hell," but I really mean, "wow, that was retarded."
What kind of sound does death make? Even more abstract and non-extant, what is the sound of one OS dying?
"Linux? Is that pronounced Lee's nux? You know, like the sound of Lee's nuts banging together?"
I shouldn't have to run a firewall just to make my computer secure.
If you have various servers or services running, a firewall makes sense. If you want the services off, no- but you must not have read my post or the parent if you jumped to that conclusion.
The reason for running a firewall is not so you can turn off services- but to prevent outsiders from using the services you want or need.
The parent to my post mentioned needing RPC, that turning off RPC broke something in the apps he ran. The solution certainly isn't stop using all sorts of RPC simply because of a worm; rather, the firewall should block those RPC requests unless they're local, which would allow this user's app to keep working fine.
I have FTP, XML-RPC and some other services enabled within my firewall. Both have potential exploits, whether they are run on Linux, Windows, WinCE or Mac OS X. So, what do I do? Just turn them off, taking away the functionality I want or need? No, that would be retarded. The solution is to not allow the outside to make requests on those services.
There is no reason MS could give you a checkbox that allowed RPC requests to be made within the machine itself, but not accepting them from the outside world. Hell, it may be possible already- and easy enough to enable- with some Windows firewalls.
Can't always blame MS- blocking external RPC calls is something that can and should be done in a firewall. Granted, MS should ship a firewall with their OSes that does it...
These boxes need to communicate over the network. While I do not work for Diebold or any other ATM provider, there is a chance they are using RPC (or MS's implementation of an RPC system, DCOM) for doing requests. After all, with XML-RPC and SOAP, there has been a lot of interest in RPC systems again, calling methods on remote objects, etc etc. Oftentimes, SSL'd XML-RPC is the quickest and easiest way to get a mostly secure message across the network. Why invent new protocols when you could just access data as if it were run on the same machine?
ATMs run bloated operating systems for the same reasons that certain web browsers can read email. Because it's possible. ;)
XP Embedded is not WinXP Pro/Home. Microsoft should've named XP/E something else, just so that all the slashkiddies wouldn't get confused.
But yeah, ATMs and gas stations with LCDs playing commercials annoy the hell out of me.
And touchscreens blow for an ATM. What about blind people? Maybe it'll be excusable in the future, with tactile feedback and better touchscreens- fun.
I implemented an Expose wannabe in Squeak. Quite easy considering the way Squeak's GUI tk - Morphic- works. Very little code, yet slick. Should've taken a screenshot in anticipation...
Aaron
What about support for coding on the unit itself? For me, my WinCE.NET 4.1 Sigmarion III is my main computer. Beats my Zaurus C760 for that any day of the week. I've no interest in buying a Windows PC to run VS.NET, so I sure hope a language or two (preferably a Smalltalk or Lisp-like language, perhaps something perl or pythonish) pops up where I can do the development for .NET CF on the WinCE device itself.
Ahoy- Anyone used the .NET CF on WinCE.NET 4.1? I have a device (Sigmarion III, 800x480 5" screen and a real keybard- mm mm good) which runs it. According to what I can find at msdn.microsoft.com
.NET framework translates to the Compact Framework? I think .NET is way cool, but if one was just restricted to VB.NET/CF and C#/CF I don't think I'd be interested. For me, it really is about the many-language inter-op. I would love to have some interpretable language- Smalltalk, Lisp, Perl, Ruby or even Python that had a .NET CF version with which I could play with making CE apps with the .NET API.
:)
.NET would be even cooler... I bet portability to the desktop version would be pretty good too. I don't even have a Windows machine to doing the development, I do it all on the PDA or on my Linux file server. But then again, I'm an anamoly; the Sigmarion III is pretty much my primary computer.
How much of the regular
I already have a number of languages on the Zaurus C760 and Sigmarion III. The Zaurus isn't as good as CE as far as having a lot of options for developing "real" apps on the device itself. I could probably compile GNU Mono for the Z pretty easily, but without the ability to create "native" apps for Qtopia, it's no fun.
I already do a lot of coding on WinCE (and Linux PDAs) in various languages, but using
People mention poetic justice...
When I was a frosh in the forms, my friends and I thirsted for mail. So we sent away for various free stuff- info from weird religions, product samples, software trials, etc etc.
While I never requested any information from Jerry Falwell Ministries I somehow ended up on their mailing list. At some point during the school year, I got a letter from them asking for donations- as well as a $1 check.
The letter purported that they had an anonymous shadow donor who was willing to match all donations. So if I cashed the $1 check they sent me and sent them that same $1 back, they would end up with $1 total profit, coming from the anonymous donor.
Probably a common scam- a lot of the folks they'd target would feel guilty about cashing the $1 and keeping it. And they'd figure, why not send them back their $1? But then they'd have the checkbook open, made out for everything but the amount. Then they think- why not make it $5? Or $10? Not that much money, but whatever they send in will be doubled by the donor lurking in the shadows, so why not?
That is what they were betting on with this donation drive. Except that they picked the wrong guy with me.
I went ahead and cashed the check. Before doing so, I made a photocopy of the check and letter. Then I wrote a new check, just like my pal Jerry said to do. After that I send a letter, a $1 check, and the photocopies of what Jerr sent me to a gay and lesbian rights group.
I can't remember the group though. I was a bit bummed that I never got a reply expressing the humor- or the extreme grattitude for donating a whole dollar!
Not sure to what your reply is, but the parent of your post wasn't saying that Windows is smaller or anything. It was saying that Windows is often used in these cases because it's quick, oftentimes pretty cheap, and sometimes dirty.
Why the hell would I want to "write my own gfx routines" and use something low level like Linux and svgalib? That is definately not quick, cheap and dirty. No, you wouldn't have to pay for the OS, but writing all of your own gfx routines would cost the difference in a Windows OS. I would go for a WinCE.NET license myself- over 9x/ME or NT/2k/XP- for a number of reasons. Best of both worlds in a lot of ways- it's pretty stable (a lot more than 9x/ME); definately quick and dirty, w/ VB, MFC or other very well integrated scripting languages; cheaper than 2k or XP, and a very small footprint. You don't get stuck with a piece of shit like 9x running your kiosk (or whatever), yet you don't have to invest many man-hours in coding your own GUI system just so you can use Linux.
And you could fit that on a floppy, but why would you want to? Running your embeded system, locked away in some cabinet somewhere- a floppy would be the worst thing ever. A hard drive or if you don't mind spending the cash, a flash card and a IDE->CF/PCMCIA adapter.
Which isn't to say I don't love Windows- I've not had Windows on a desktop and I've run Linux or some Unix since 1994. Although, I have a soft spot for WinCE that I admit to. That said, most everything has a purpose- and using a tiny Linux install with your own home-brewed GUI/gfx system on top of svgalib is not a good solution for quick, dirty, and cheap.