who ever was so delusional as to not think themselves to be pirates? I've got ROMs, including some for games I don't own. I know I'm a pirate.
Perhaps some people use the euphamism "abandonware," but the legality is no different and the crime is the same. But show me one person for whom legality defines all morality. What kind of person would download illegal ROMs and then wrestle with themselves over the moral implications? Either download them, or avoid- I doubt many people rationalize and hallucinate what they're doing is legal. It may not be wrong (by my moral standards), but what makes you a "pirate" is the legal definition.
(Most) People only use IE because they are scared to install some software (I don't want to break my computer!) or they don't know there are options (What are you using - why do I get all these pop-ups?)
Having done actual helpdesk/tech support work for a number of years, I feel somewhat qualified to say something here.
The above is true, but very far from being the whole story. A lot of users use IE for a much better reason than just ignorance: because the web pages they view look right in IE. I've known plenty of folks who didn't want to use Netscape 4.8 (at least when that was an option), Netscape 6/7, other Mozilla derivatives like Firebird- not because of a lack of knowledge, but because those browsers did not handle the pages they viewed very well.
IMHO, things are a lot better in this regard today, although there are still some of these issues.
Standards? Users don't give a flying flip about standards. They just want the page to work as expected, as they used to. I personally am not aware of big chunks of implementation that IE supports that Mozilla does not. Hell, I don't know any pages that don't work fine in Mozilla (but do in IE) at all- but I do know that I still hear these complaints, even though none of the pages I browse have any issues. But then again, I can do the vaaaaast majority of my browsing using links in graphical mode.
Use MS tactics! Force a new browser on them!
In the Mac world, there is Safari. I'd guess that around 60% of Mac users now use Safari, instead of IE or Moz, a higher percentage when looking at Mac enthusiasts. Apple is in the position to ship Safari with new machines, or with the OS. These users may have used IE in the past, but when they try Safari, they find they like it and that it supports the pages they need to use. No wonder they keep on with it.
A couple months ago, I found out about the joy of eMusic from some post here. So, I did the trial, and that went well. I wanted to sign up for 3 months @ 14.95/mo, but didn't have the money at the time. And still wanted to do it, but still didn't have the money... UNTIL NOW. Literally. Today I got an email from my college letting me know that my school loan surplus is being direct deposited into my account. So today (or tommorow) I was going to sign back up for eMusic, and start the leech-fest.
Crap. Can I still do this- if only until November? I want unlimited downloads. Crap.
what a coincidence- "We're sorry but our messageboards are temporarily unavailable. Stay tuned, the messageboards will available again soon." Pfft.
He sings Nintendo's praises, but doesn't actually own a GameCube himself. Yeah, that's true heart-felt devotion.
Who said anything about devotion? Nintendo was a part of youth, not religion. Jeeze.
The third person with whom my gf and I share this apartment has a GCN. And the roomate we had before him had one as well. Why the hell should we buy one? So we can please idiots like yourself? Or just so we can give money to Nintendo, because we love them? C'mon, yeah right.
He says he's 'early-mid-20s' (what is that exactly?) but the whole post is just dripping with immature fan-boyism.
Other folks seem to understand- what is so hard about it? Why whine about someone's mod point? Tried to describe, evidentally terms and format used still a tough for lower end of Bell curve- my apologies.
Man, just when the gf and I finished getting all the games in this collection- she just bought Majora's Mask, and I bought her Ocarina of Time for her birthday in April. Great games, OoT is probably the best- game- ever- at least as far as both of us are concerned. It'd be great to have all of them in one place, though.
And a friend of ours is going to buy a GCN this week- but probably too early to get in on this deal. Heh- we convinced him to get a GCN. Why do humans do that? It's not like it'll benefit us, and hell- we don't even have one ourselves. (roomate does, and so did former roomate) But, it's like Mac vs PC. Except in this case, the "Mac" is cheaper than the "PC" analog. We believe in the supremacy of the platform, we believe in Nintendo. Nintendo has soul, spirit, personality- MS is "M$" and Sony is Sony, just big companies who see something profitable in gaming.
Yes, we're early-mid-20s. Raised on the NES, jealous of friends whose parents got them an SNES. Bought an original GameBoy [1] with hard earned kid-money. Can you blame us for loving Nintendo, having given us so much electronic joy in our youths? What did MS give me- at that age, they gave me DOS. And that's about all I've recieved from them. And Sony? Sure, younger brother got a PSX for Xmas in 1996 or so, but it wasn't a member of the family in the way an NES is.
6 or 8 months ago, I bought a Dreamcast. It was a steal at a piddly $40 on half.com. It was a lot cheaper than getting another NES along with the games I still didn't have, were broken, or couldn't find anymore in storage over at grandma's house. So now, on one CD (with only a couple dozen MBs taken up) I have a good 400 NES games, ones I'll never play and ones I'll play over and over.
[1] And still have it- the GB itself and ~10 games for $20 to first person who emails me - revaaron {AT} hot_mail DOT com. Eh, fix that to get the email addy. Ok, maybe that's too much- make an offer. If it comes down to it, I'm willing to let it fo for free plus shipping, as long as the recipient plans on actually using it.:)
Indeed. If/when a responsible IRC network like Freenode goes away, I imagine it will be because of better means of communication or a lack of interest. When you run your IRC server in a way that people can exploit it for their evil doings (ok, over simplification!) it's no surprise people will avoid it.
Are these new solar cells less toxic? Existing top-o-the-line (before this, at least) solar cells only achieve around 30% efficiency and create a *lot* of nasty waste products in their prduction. The less efficient ones (10-15%) produce a lot less of these toxic wastes, but meh, 10% light conversion is piddly.
Sometimes, it seems hard to justify solar's use when the panels are just so damned toxic. I really hope that these are a lot better in that regard.
As a side note, my birthday is tommorow. M girlfriend, who always gives her presents to me a couple days early, has given me a badass solar charger for my Zaurus C760. Hell. yeah. Only way if it could be better is if I had one made out of these new fangled solar panels...
You thought *we* were technologically advanced? Ha! We have computers, big deal. But in so many other ways, we're still pretty un-advanced, or at least, it has always seemed that way to me.
The PocketPC is no more a pocket computer than the Palm.
Well, it depends on how you define "pocket computer" I suppose. Yes, the Palm is a computer- the Palm Pro is as powerful as the first PCs, when were considered "real computers" in their day. But before Palm OS 6, the Palm really wasn't much of a semi-general purpose "pocket computer," not in the way that a PocketPC or Zaurus or Newton is. Things like multitasking, chunks of memory more than 32K (or 64K, as was achieved in POS5)- generally innards that vaguely resemble the design of "real OSes." (highly subjective, though)
For a lot of people, that means a platform that can accept a port without writing a new layer that implements all of the OS-like functionality that the OS itself doesn't. On PocketPC or WinCE, Unix apps can be ported without that much work, whereas on PalmOS the work required in porting may surpass rewriting the app from scratch.
The Newton didn't have an OS that resembled the desing of WinNT/Linux/Unix or any other "regular" OS, but it did have multitasking, which I suppose is a big part of it. The apps followed accordingly, and it could be used as a "real computer" in similar ways the PocketPC or Zaurus can- even a TeX interpreter.:)
But you can't boot off of any other source if the BIOS is locked with a password, and you can't go into change it which device from which to boot because the BIOS is locked. It has nothing to do with what OS you boot- if the BIOS will not allow you to boot off of anything other than IDE00, you won't be booting off of a floppy any time soon.
The parent mentioned not being able to open the device up because, on most PC mobos, there is a trick or a jumper that resets the BIOS, including password.
PPC means both PowerPC and PocketPC. I was a Mac user before PocketPC existed (not that is any achievement, isn't meant as a claim on one), and I too had to get used to that. "PPC" in the PocketPC/WindowsCE community is a pretty common abbreviation.:)
It's about time woke up and smelled the price points, man.
For a while, you've been able to pick up a very good PocketPC device for around $200- currently the Dell Axim X5 Basic, and before that the iPAQ 3100 series (all the usual 3600 specs, but with a B&W screen, 16 MB of RAM instead of 32). Both of those PPC devices are very capable little PDAs that can just about do it all.
Palm, on the other hand, has only tossed us some pretty crappy bones for a cheaper Palm device. Yeah, you could get a Palm m130 for $200 (now $180), or the low-end Zire for $100. However, both of these models are pretty limited. The m130 has an old, slow processor (although, it still displays PDFs faster than my 400 MHz Zaurus C760, or a 206 MHz/400 MHz WinCE device), little RAM, and a small, non-reflective screen. The m130 has a limited SD slot and the Palm serial connection. For the same price, you could get a PocketPC device with 3x the screen real-estate, 4x the RAM, 5-10x the processor speed and 3 expansion options (SD, CF, serial), usable for various networking options and memory upgrades.
However, it seems Palm is finally putting out something
In a way, this model has the potential to be the company's iMac analogue. When you think of it, the PocketPC vs Palm race parallels the Microsoft vs Apple one. I'll put the MS vs Apple in parens:
1. Palm (Apple) comes out with a superior product at first: the first Palm PDA (the original Mac 128K). 2. Microsoft comes out with an inferior product as a reaction to #1: WinCE 1.0 devices (MS Windows 1.0). 3. Palm (Apple) keeps on moving forward, doing incremental updates, eventually arriving at the Palm III (Mac OS 6). 4. MS finally gets a larger chunk of its act together, gets a better hardware platform, puts out PocketPC. (Win 95) 5. MS and PocketPC starts to claim territory that was once very clearly PalmOS-land. 6. Does a CPU and general archetecture upgrade, moving from dead-end m68k CPUs to ARM-based chips. (Apple goes from m68k to PowerPC.) 7. Palm sticks to a friendly to use, but somewhat ugly to code for and quite primitive internally OS, while Microsoft has had something resembling a "real" OS for a while. (Apple sticks to its primitive-cored Mac OS 9, MS has NT, 2k, 9x [although they suck just as much ass as OS 9, even though they look better on paper].) 8. Palm comes out with the Tungsten E, which provides almost all of the features of a more expensive PDA for a lot less. (Apple comes out with the iMac, pretty much all the features you need, but for cheaper.)...9. What's next? Here's to hoping the story continues on this line- I'd use a Palm device if PalmOS wasn't so primitive. I want/need a pocket computer, not an expensive organizer, and before the PalmOS can fill that need, it will need to be able to do a couple those little features we take for granted in a real OS, like multitasking.:) Will PalmOS 6 be the analogue to Apple's OS X?
Of course, this is totally ignoring the Newton, which is where Palm did well to steal a lot of ideas for PalmOS, although ignoring a handful of very important architectural elements. I also ignore all name changes, referring to USR, Palm, PalmOne, etc just as "Palm."
Re:What a sad, brutal story!
on
How Were You Fired?
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· Score: 2, Informative
No, the story isn't true. Follow the link to his homepage- HE USES PERL NOT PHP!
The evidence is there for leet haxorz like myself willing to follow the "Trail of Tears." ARE YOU ONE OF US?
Why should they toss out Solaris on their Sun hardware when they've already spent a helluva lot of money on that system? Why not work with what they have?
This has come up a million time I imagine. The vast majority of companies will not ditch a huge hardware, software and training investment on a system like Solaris so that they can have the feel-good-vibe of knowing that they are using an open source platform. They couldn't give a rat's ass if Linux is open source or not. Sure, they could install Linux on their Sun hardware- but why? It's just a wild guess, but I bet Solaris runs a helluva lot better on the hardware they already own than Linux does, at least while Sun still supports it.
Nothing wrong in expanding with Linux on Intel hardware though. A hundred cheap intel boxes, one big Sun machine- why not?
That is the worst attempt at my-favorite-language-cheerleading I've ever seen. Ok, it's not, but it's still pretty bad.
1. Writing C for web apps is not a solution. The wrapping tools for Python aren't impossible to use, but they can't perform miracles. Yes, it is very easy to use an external C function for performing some repetitive math function, an FFT or something- but in a data-intensive web app, it really makes no sense. In the case of the poster's problem, he and his team would end up re-writing half of the framework their using in C, giving it Python interfaces. If they were having problem with just Java's raw execution speed, they could just as easily use Java's JNI to interface with C libraries.
2. No matter good it looks on paper, going from a big system written in Java for one particular framework to a system written half in Python and half in Java doesn't make all that much sense. They'll be dealing with the same bottlenecks, the same bloat- it's all running on the JVM. If anything else, they'd increase the footprint and slow the app down, as they're adding on yet another layer of complexity.
Yes, I am fully aware that Jython outputs Java bytecode itself, but Sun's Java compiler does a lot better generating efficient Java bytecode out of Java than Jython does. Nothing inherent to Python or Jython, but when you've got a multi-billion dollar project like Java, when you consider what Sun puts into it- then compare that to the miniscule (by comparison) project that is Jython, it'd be absurd to expect the same results.
I know it's easy to get a little jumpy when the dude mentions PHP and your favorite language is Python, or hell, anything that isn't PHP. You want to come in any say "hey, use my favorite language!" Believe me, I'm wanting to do the same thing, and I could substitute the word "Smalltalk" for "Python" throughout your post, and it'd be just as true; unfortunately, so would my points against it.
Python and Jython certainly have their places, no doubt. Depending on a couple factors, I may use Python to write my system intiailly, but simply having a language that spit out Java bytecode doesn't mean you have some non-trivial, seamless transition between two system.
This is exactly the same way I feel. For me, it was once about getting the information for free, but after actually being very close to paper-free (sans text books and the occasional prof who won't let me submit something electronically) for a few years, the convenience and advantages go much further.
I've been taking all of my notes on a PDA of one kind or another for four years. This is a ton more useful and convenient than paper notes. Like an electronic text book, you can search your notes, which is awesome for studying. Considering that only the nuttiest study-freak would keep any sort of usable index for their notes, I have a huge advantage here. And since I've always taken my notes using word-based handwriting recognition, I get all of the supposed memory-based benefits of actually putting my pen to paper, which typing notes apparently wouldn't generate. (Although, I can't say how true those classic learning theory statements are though.)
In some of my classes, we don't have text books per se, relying instead on primary literature. Journal articles and the like are a lot easier to get in an electronic form, it's a lot more common. I've yet to find a single text book I need for a class in any electronic format, but never print off those journal articles I need for class, even for discussions.
Give me a PDF, HTML+Images, anything. While I think it would make sense for the ebook version of a textbook to be cheaper than the paper version, I'd probably be willing to pay full price. After all, I'm already wasting all of that damned money, and I'd much rather have it electronically.
As a friend once said: "Because you can't grep a dead tree."
You can use more than one toolkit on just about any platform- including Mac OS Classic/X, Windows, and others. Unless a platform is very poorly designed (which has happened at some point), implementing another toolkit should be possibile and just about as economical as using the built-in toolkit.
X is a big mess of toolkits. There is definately a measure of "toolkit darwinism" going on, but not enough. Not enough to make working and living X a consistent experience. We haven't seen one really good toolkit come to dominance in the world of X, instead we've had a procession of groups of dominant toolkits.
Yeah, yeah consistency may be not be on the top of your list if you're some leet Linux haxor, but for the majority of users, including most of the new wave of Linux users, consistency is important.
Yes, it would suck if Motif is all we had. But APIs have evolved, improved, and outright changed on platforms that have a "sanctioned" toolkit, while retaining the all-important consistency.
But then again, in the world of open source, I think that a multi-toolkit approach is the best idea. After all, in the FSF/OS/Linux world, people usually aren't willing to do all the not-so-fun work- they want to write that new toolkit, create a new API based around some new "innovation" they thought up, but they don't like to work on the really important work of evolving, adapting or maturing the existing toolkit beyond simply adding new features.
Working on writing compatibility layers, rewriting chunks of the library isn't as glamorous. Apple and Microsoft can pay someone to do this work, glamor or not- but often times in the OSS/FSF community, people can simply drop the project and start something new, avoiding doing that kind of work. I see it as an overall flaw in the community, although sometimes it does bear good fruit.
I think a couple other folks have mentioned it, but I would look into a PDA. A lot of them have SD slots.
Palm A PalmOS PDA would probably be the best option from a number of standpoints (e.g., it just works usually), but I don't know how hard it would be to find an app that would record to a format you could get at easily from your desktop. I know that a Palm device will leave an SD card in the usual FAT-based format that you buy them in, which would be readable by Linux. However, even if you tell the app to record to the SD card (rather than internal memory), I imagine it'll be in a Palm database rather than a flat mp3 or ogg file.
Zaurus I'm sure a couple folks are plugging the Zaurus, because it runs Linux. All of the Linux Zaurus models do have a SD card slot, but only one of them- the SL-5600- has a built-in mic, which is pretty crappy. The SL-5600 is pretty expensive, going for $450-500 depending on where you get it. Quite a bit more than a PDA with similar hardware and capabilities should cost. The Linux Tax, I guess. If you're willing to have a potentially fragile microphone hanging out of the dual mic/headphone jack, you could always use a hack. That way, you could get one of the cheaper SL-5500 models- up to $300 cheaper than the SL-5600 for a machine that is about as good. E.g., the CPU in the 5600 is 400 MHz, but only a very, very wee bit faster (if at all) than the 206 MHz CPU in the 5500. (think of a 100 MHz 486 vs 100 MHz Pentium) The built-in software records as WAV files, but since it runs Linux, I'm sure you could port an mp3 recorder if you're willing to invest the time in writing code for a Qtopia GUI, or some other kind of interface that doesn't require you to type something to record a note.
WinCE/PocketPC The third real option is a PocketPC device. A lot of Linux weenies are too bigoted to consider it, but if you're just looking for a solution to your problem you shouldn't overlook it.
One I'd reccomend is the Dell Axim X5 Basic, which can be had for around $200. Specs like you'd expect- 300 MHz CPU, 32 MB RAM (being increased in a new model, not sure if its out yet), and dual SD and CF slots. Since it writes to the regular FAT filesystem that comes on SD and CF cards, it's just as easily read on your Linux box. There are a couple software options for recording mp3s, and a million for recording WAV files.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose that would depend on application. There was a story on Slashdot-today- about this.
who ever was so delusional as to not think themselves to be pirates? I've got ROMs, including some for games I don't own. I know I'm a pirate.
Perhaps some people use the euphamism "abandonware," but the legality is no different and the crime is the same. But show me one person for whom legality defines all morality. What kind of person would download illegal ROMs and then wrestle with themselves over the moral implications? Either download them, or avoid- I doubt many people rationalize and hallucinate what they're doing is legal. It may not be wrong (by my moral standards), but what makes you a "pirate" is the legal definition.
(Most) People only use IE because they are scared to install some software (I don't want to break my computer!) or they don't know there are options (What are you using - why do I get all these pop-ups?)
Having done actual helpdesk/tech support work for a number of years, I feel somewhat qualified to say something here.
The above is true, but very far from being the whole story. A lot of users use IE for a much better reason than just ignorance: because the web pages they view look right in IE. I've known plenty of folks who didn't want to use Netscape 4.8 (at least when that was an option), Netscape 6/7, other Mozilla derivatives like Firebird- not because of a lack of knowledge, but because those browsers did not handle the pages they viewed very well.
IMHO, things are a lot better in this regard today, although there are still some of these issues.
Standards? Users don't give a flying flip about standards. They just want the page to work as expected, as they used to. I personally am not aware of big chunks of implementation that IE supports that Mozilla does not. Hell, I don't know any pages that don't work fine in Mozilla (but do in IE) at all- but I do know that I still hear these complaints, even though none of the pages I browse have any issues. But then again, I can do the vaaaaast majority of my browsing using links in graphical mode.
Use MS tactics! Force a new browser on them!
In the Mac world, there is Safari. I'd guess that around 60% of Mac users now use Safari, instead of IE or Moz, a higher percentage when looking at Mac enthusiasts. Apple is in the position to ship Safari with new machines, or with the OS. These users may have used IE in the past, but when they try Safari, they find they like it and that it supports the pages they need to use. No wonder they keep on with it.
Damnit!
A couple months ago, I found out about the joy of eMusic from some post here. So, I did the trial, and that went well. I wanted to sign up for 3 months @ 14.95/mo, but didn't have the money at the time. And still wanted to do it, but still didn't have the money... UNTIL NOW. Literally. Today I got an email from my college letting me know that my school loan surplus is being direct deposited into my account. So today (or tommorow) I was going to sign back up for eMusic, and start the leech-fest.
Crap. Can I still do this- if only until November? I want unlimited downloads. Crap.
what a coincidence- "We're sorry but our messageboards are temporarily unavailable. Stay tuned, the messageboards will available again soon." Pfft.
He sings Nintendo's praises, but doesn't actually own a GameCube himself. Yeah, that's true heart-felt devotion.
Who said anything about devotion? Nintendo was a part of youth, not religion. Jeeze.
The third person with whom my gf and I share this apartment has a GCN. And the roomate we had before him had one as well. Why the hell should we buy one? So we can please idiots like yourself? Or just so we can give money to Nintendo, because we love them? C'mon, yeah right.
He says he's 'early-mid-20s' (what is that exactly?) but the whole post is just dripping with immature fan-boyism.
Other folks seem to understand- what is so hard about it? Why whine about someone's mod point? Tried to describe, evidentally terms and format used still a tough for lower end of Bell curve- my apologies.
Man, just when the gf and I finished getting all the games in this collection- she just bought Majora's Mask, and I bought her Ocarina of Time for her birthday in April. Great games, OoT is probably the best- game- ever- at least as far as both of us are concerned. It'd be great to have all of them in one place, though.
:)
And a friend of ours is going to buy a GCN this week- but probably too early to get in on this deal. Heh- we convinced him to get a GCN. Why do humans do that? It's not like it'll benefit us, and hell- we don't even have one ourselves. (roomate does, and so did former roomate) But, it's like Mac vs PC. Except in this case, the "Mac" is cheaper than the "PC" analog. We believe in the supremacy of the platform, we believe in Nintendo. Nintendo has soul, spirit, personality- MS is "M$" and Sony is Sony, just big companies who see something profitable in gaming.
Yes, we're early-mid-20s. Raised on the NES, jealous of friends whose parents got them an SNES. Bought an original GameBoy [1] with hard earned kid-money. Can you blame us for loving Nintendo, having given us so much electronic joy in our youths? What did MS give me- at that age, they gave me DOS. And that's about all I've recieved from them. And Sony? Sure, younger brother got a PSX for Xmas in 1996 or so, but it wasn't a member of the family in the way an NES is.
6 or 8 months ago, I bought a Dreamcast. It was a steal at a piddly $40 on half.com. It was a lot cheaper than getting another NES along with the games I still didn't have, were broken, or couldn't find anymore in storage over at grandma's house. So now, on one CD (with only a couple dozen MBs taken up) I have a good 400 NES games, ones I'll never play and ones I'll play over and over.
[1] And still have it- the GB itself and ~10 games for $20 to first person who emails me - revaaron {AT} hot_mail DOT com. Eh, fix that to get the email addy. Ok, maybe that's too much- make an offer. If it comes down to it, I'm willing to let it fo for free plus shipping, as long as the recipient plans on actually using it.
Indeed. If/when a responsible IRC network like Freenode goes away, I imagine it will be because of better means of communication or a lack of interest. When you run your IRC server in a way that people can exploit it for their evil doings (ok, over simplification!) it's no surprise people will avoid it.
When a word processor is out of the picture, I use a document processor, like LaTeX. It's on my PDA, so I'm never without. :)
Heh, totally.
.... lame? Or is it just me?
Is it just me, or has ThinkGeek always struck anyone else as extremely
Are these new solar cells less toxic? Existing top-o-the-line (before this, at least) solar cells only achieve around 30% efficiency and create a *lot* of nasty waste products in their prduction. The less efficient ones (10-15%) produce a lot less of these toxic wastes, but meh, 10% light conversion is piddly.
Sometimes, it seems hard to justify solar's use when the panels are just so damned toxic. I really hope that these are a lot better in that regard.
As a side note, my birthday is tommorow. M girlfriend, who always gives her presents to me a couple days early, has given me a badass solar charger for my Zaurus C760. Hell. yeah. Only way if it could be better is if I had one made out of these new fangled solar panels...
You thought *we* were technologically advanced? Ha! We have computers, big deal. But in so many other ways, we're still pretty un-advanced, or at least, it has always seemed that way to me.
Ok, don't mean to be a grump, but:
Music isn't "all about simplicity," any more than sex, life, or all art should be all about simplicity. Music is different things to different people.
The PocketPC is no more a pocket computer than the Palm.
:)
Well, it depends on how you define "pocket computer" I suppose. Yes, the Palm is a computer- the Palm Pro is as powerful as the first PCs, when were considered "real computers" in their day. But before Palm OS 6, the Palm really wasn't much of a semi-general purpose "pocket computer," not in the way that a PocketPC or Zaurus or Newton is. Things like multitasking, chunks of memory more than 32K (or 64K, as was achieved in POS5)- generally innards that vaguely resemble the design of "real OSes." (highly subjective, though)
For a lot of people, that means a platform that can accept a port without writing a new layer that implements all of the OS-like functionality that the OS itself doesn't. On PocketPC or WinCE, Unix apps can be ported without that much work, whereas on PalmOS the work required in porting may surpass rewriting the app from scratch.
The Newton didn't have an OS that resembled the desing of WinNT/Linux/Unix or any other "regular" OS, but it did have multitasking, which I suppose is a big part of it. The apps followed accordingly, and it could be used as a "real computer" in similar ways the PocketPC or Zaurus can- even a TeX interpreter.
But you can't boot off of any other source if the BIOS is locked with a password, and you can't go into change it which device from which to boot because the BIOS is locked. It has nothing to do with what OS you boot- if the BIOS will not allow you to boot off of anything other than IDE00, you won't be booting off of a floppy any time soon.
The parent mentioned not being able to open the device up because, on most PC mobos, there is a trick or a jumper that resets the BIOS, including password.
PPC means both PowerPC and PocketPC. I was a Mac user before PocketPC existed (not that is any achievement, isn't meant as a claim on one), and I too had to get used to that. "PPC" in the PocketPC/WindowsCE community is a pretty common abbreviation. :)
My mention had nothing to do with how successful the Newton was- I simply mentioned it so no one would see my over simplification as ignorance.
It's about time woke up and smelled the price points, man.
...9. What's next? Here's to hoping the story continues on this line- I'd use a Palm device if PalmOS wasn't so primitive. I want/need a pocket computer, not an expensive organizer, and before the PalmOS can fill that need, it will need to be able to do a couple those little features we take for granted in a real OS, like multitasking. :) Will PalmOS 6 be the analogue to Apple's OS X?
For a while, you've been able to pick up a very good PocketPC device for around $200- currently the Dell Axim X5 Basic, and before that the iPAQ 3100 series (all the usual 3600 specs, but with a B&W screen, 16 MB of RAM instead of 32). Both of those PPC devices are very capable little PDAs that can just about do it all.
Palm, on the other hand, has only tossed us some pretty crappy bones for a cheaper Palm device. Yeah, you could get a Palm m130 for $200 (now $180), or the low-end Zire for $100. However, both of these models are pretty limited. The m130 has an old, slow processor (although, it still displays PDFs faster than my 400 MHz Zaurus C760, or a 206 MHz/400 MHz WinCE device), little RAM, and a small, non-reflective screen. The m130 has a limited SD slot and the Palm serial connection. For the same price, you could get a PocketPC device with 3x the screen real-estate, 4x the RAM, 5-10x the processor speed and 3 expansion options (SD, CF, serial), usable for various networking options and memory upgrades.
However, it seems Palm is finally putting out something
In a way, this model has the potential to be the company's iMac analogue. When you think of it, the PocketPC vs Palm race parallels the Microsoft vs Apple one. I'll put the MS vs Apple in parens:
1. Palm (Apple) comes out with a superior product at first: the first Palm PDA (the original Mac 128K).
2. Microsoft comes out with an inferior product as a reaction to #1: WinCE 1.0 devices (MS Windows 1.0).
3. Palm (Apple) keeps on moving forward, doing incremental updates, eventually arriving at the Palm III (Mac OS 6).
4. MS finally gets a larger chunk of its act together, gets a better hardware platform, puts out PocketPC. (Win 95)
5. MS and PocketPC starts to claim territory that was once very clearly PalmOS-land.
6. Does a CPU and general archetecture upgrade, moving from dead-end m68k CPUs to ARM-based chips. (Apple goes from m68k to PowerPC.)
7. Palm sticks to a friendly to use, but somewhat ugly to code for and quite primitive internally OS, while Microsoft has had something resembling a "real" OS for a while. (Apple sticks to its primitive-cored Mac OS 9, MS has NT, 2k, 9x [although they suck just as much ass as OS 9, even though they look better on paper].)
8. Palm comes out with the Tungsten E, which provides almost all of the features of a more expensive PDA for a lot less. (Apple comes out with the iMac, pretty much all the features you need, but for cheaper.)
Of course, this is totally ignoring the Newton, which is where Palm did well to steal a lot of ideas for PalmOS, although ignoring a handful of very important architectural elements. I also ignore all name changes, referring to USR, Palm, PalmOne, etc just as "Palm."
No, the story isn't true. Follow the link to his homepage- HE USES PERL NOT PHP!
The evidence is there for leet haxorz like myself willing to follow the "Trail of Tears." ARE YOU ONE OF US?
Have you been fired *that* many times?
Why should they toss out Solaris on their Sun hardware when they've already spent a helluva lot of money on that system? Why not work with what they have?
This has come up a million time I imagine. The vast majority of companies will not ditch a huge hardware, software and training investment on a system like Solaris so that they can have the feel-good-vibe of knowing that they are using an open source platform. They couldn't give a rat's ass if Linux is open source or not. Sure, they could install Linux on their Sun hardware- but why? It's just a wild guess, but I bet Solaris runs a helluva lot better on the hardware they already own than Linux does, at least while Sun still supports it.
Nothing wrong in expanding with Linux on Intel hardware though. A hundred cheap intel boxes, one big Sun machine- why not?
That is the worst attempt at my-favorite-language-cheerleading I've ever seen. Ok, it's not, but it's still pretty bad.
1. Writing C for web apps is not a solution. The wrapping tools for Python aren't impossible to use, but they can't perform miracles. Yes, it is very easy to use an external C function for performing some repetitive math function, an FFT or something- but in a data-intensive web app, it really makes no sense. In the case of the poster's problem, he and his team would end up re-writing half of the framework their using in C, giving it Python interfaces. If they were having problem with just Java's raw execution speed, they could just as easily use Java's JNI to interface with C libraries.
2. No matter good it looks on paper, going from a big system written in Java for one particular framework to a system written half in Python and half in Java doesn't make all that much sense. They'll be dealing with the same bottlenecks, the same bloat- it's all running on the JVM. If anything else, they'd increase the footprint and slow the app down, as they're adding on yet another layer of complexity.
Yes, I am fully aware that Jython outputs Java bytecode itself, but Sun's Java compiler does a lot better generating efficient Java bytecode out of Java than Jython does. Nothing inherent to Python or Jython, but when you've got a multi-billion dollar project like Java, when you consider what Sun puts into it- then compare that to the miniscule (by comparison) project that is Jython, it'd be absurd to expect the same results.
I know it's easy to get a little jumpy when the dude mentions PHP and your favorite language is Python, or hell, anything that isn't PHP. You want to come in any say "hey, use my favorite language!" Believe me, I'm wanting to do the same thing, and I could substitute the word "Smalltalk" for "Python" throughout your post, and it'd be just as true; unfortunately, so would my points against it.
Python and Jython certainly have their places, no doubt. Depending on a couple factors, I may use Python to write my system intiailly, but simply having a language that spit out Java bytecode doesn't mean you have some non-trivial, seamless transition between two system.
This is exactly the same way I feel. For me, it was once about getting the information for free, but after actually being very close to paper-free (sans text books and the occasional prof who won't let me submit something electronically) for a few years, the convenience and advantages go much further.
I've been taking all of my notes on a PDA of one kind or another for four years. This is a ton more useful and convenient than paper notes. Like an electronic text book, you can search your notes, which is awesome for studying. Considering that only the nuttiest study-freak would keep any sort of usable index for their notes, I have a huge advantage here. And since I've always taken my notes using word-based handwriting recognition, I get all of the supposed memory-based benefits of actually putting my pen to paper, which typing notes apparently wouldn't generate. (Although, I can't say how true those classic learning theory statements are though.)
In some of my classes, we don't have text books per se, relying instead on primary literature. Journal articles and the like are a lot easier to get in an electronic form, it's a lot more common. I've yet to find a single text book I need for a class in any electronic format, but never print off those journal articles I need for class, even for discussions.
Give me a PDF, HTML+Images, anything. While I think it would make sense for the ebook version of a textbook to be cheaper than the paper version, I'd probably be willing to pay full price. After all, I'm already wasting all of that damned money, and I'd much rather have it electronically.
As a friend once said: "Because you can't grep a dead tree."
You can use more than one toolkit on just about any platform- including Mac OS Classic/X, Windows, and others. Unless a platform is very poorly designed (which has happened at some point), implementing another toolkit should be possibile and just about as economical as using the built-in toolkit.
X is a big mess of toolkits. There is definately a measure of "toolkit darwinism" going on, but not enough. Not enough to make working and living X a consistent experience. We haven't seen one really good toolkit come to dominance in the world of X, instead we've had a procession of groups of dominant toolkits.
Yeah, yeah consistency may be not be on the top of your list if you're some leet Linux haxor, but for the majority of users, including most of the new wave of Linux users, consistency is important.
Yes, it would suck if Motif is all we had. But APIs have evolved, improved, and outright changed on platforms that have a "sanctioned" toolkit, while retaining the all-important consistency.
But then again, in the world of open source, I think that a multi-toolkit approach is the best idea. After all, in the FSF/OS/Linux world, people usually aren't willing to do all the not-so-fun work- they want to write that new toolkit, create a new API based around some new "innovation" they thought up, but they don't like to work on the really important work of evolving, adapting or maturing the existing toolkit beyond simply adding new features.
Working on writing compatibility layers, rewriting chunks of the library isn't as glamorous. Apple and Microsoft can pay someone to do this work, glamor or not- but often times in the OSS/FSF community, people can simply drop the project and start something new, avoiding doing that kind of work. I see it as an overall flaw in the community, although sometimes it does bear good fruit.
I think a couple other folks have mentioned it, but I would look into a PDA. A lot of them have SD slots.
Palm
A PalmOS PDA would probably be the best option from a number of standpoints (e.g., it just works usually), but I don't know how hard it would be to find an app that would record to a format you could get at easily from your desktop. I know that a Palm device will leave an SD card in the usual FAT-based format that you buy them in, which would be readable by Linux. However, even if you tell the app to record to the SD card (rather than internal memory), I imagine it'll be in a Palm database rather than a flat mp3 or ogg file.
Zaurus
I'm sure a couple folks are plugging the Zaurus, because it runs Linux. All of the Linux Zaurus models do have a SD card slot, but only one of them- the SL-5600- has a built-in mic, which is pretty crappy. The SL-5600 is pretty expensive, going for $450-500 depending on where you get it. Quite a bit more than a PDA with similar hardware and capabilities should cost. The Linux Tax, I guess. If you're willing to have a potentially fragile microphone hanging out of the dual mic/headphone jack, you could always use a hack. That way, you could get one of the cheaper SL-5500 models- up to $300 cheaper than the SL-5600 for a machine that is about as good. E.g., the CPU in the 5600 is 400 MHz, but only a very, very wee bit faster (if at all) than the 206 MHz CPU in the 5500. (think of a 100 MHz 486 vs 100 MHz Pentium)
The built-in software records as WAV files, but since it runs Linux, I'm sure you could port an mp3 recorder if you're willing to invest the time in writing code for a Qtopia GUI, or some other kind of interface that doesn't require you to type something to record a note.
WinCE/PocketPC
The third real option is a PocketPC device. A lot of Linux weenies are too bigoted to consider it, but if you're just looking for a solution to your problem you shouldn't overlook it.
One I'd reccomend is the Dell Axim X5 Basic, which can be had for around $200. Specs like you'd expect- 300 MHz CPU, 32 MB RAM (being increased in a new model, not sure if its out yet), and dual SD and CF slots. Since it writes to the regular FAT filesystem that comes on SD and CF cards, it's just as easily read on your Linux box. There are a couple software options for recording mp3s, and a million for recording WAV files.
The Zaurus records to .wav.