I can't tell if this comment is in benign ignorance, or a joke...
The most recent and most capable model, the one which is largely being talked about is the MP2x00 series. It has 162 MHz StrongARM processor, 5 or 8 MB of RAM and a luxurious 480x320 screen (compared to the piddly 320x240 res of so-called modern PDAs). However, the MP120 and MP130 running Newton OS 2.0, with their 20-25 MHz ARM and 2-4 MB of RAM are also still incredibly useful, although not as powerful.
The MP2100 model is still impressive, not only in it's day, but today as well.:)
Cannabis sp. is a plant. It contains cannaboids. People imbibe it to get high. However, it's not physically addictive in the way that nicotine is. But because it produces pleasure, it can be psychologically addictive.
Double-clicking WSH scripts doesn't compare to this. Sash is an entire environment for developing applications, not just a means to double-click a script. You can do that with any decent file manager under X.
It's a shame WSH doesn't provide the application scriptability that AppleScript does, it's a pain to automate apps on Windows in comparison. Like WSH, you can have language plug-ins for the AppleScript system, scripting any AS-aware app in whatever the language has a plug-in, perl or JavaScript, for example.
Sash is pretty old news... Saw it either here or on fm.net a year ago. However, a similar technology, XWT was released more recently, and may appeal to a similar crowd.
No incentive to play? The brains own chemicals, including a beautiful array of endorphins (home-grown morphine) and adrenaline, are a much stronger incentive and return than nicotine or virtual money.
Many non-chemical things can be addictive. EQ is one of them. It gave this kid pleasures he couldn't get elsewhere, that he knew of at least. If not, why would he play it? Why would anyone?
People are addicted to EQ. And TV. And food. And sex. And cannabis. The mechanism is pretty much the same, you don't need a chemical that is physically addictive like nicotine to have a psychological addiction to it. With physically addictive substances like nicotine, there is more interplay between the psychological and physical components, but it's very easy to become psychologically addicted to something that produces pleasure. Have a look at some B.F. Skinner papers, or talk to someone who actually studies science- any sane person could tell you that being addicted to a game is very possible, and this kid probably was addicted to it.
However, unless Sony did something to trick him into playing it for that initial month (which I find almost impossible), they're not to blame. He is. It's his body, his mind, his life, and if he choose to try to live in the EQ world, that's his own deal. Wasn't harming anyone. If anything, the psychiatrist and mother would be partially to blame, for recognizing that this kid had a problem with the game, and many other psychological problems, and should've intervened. But it's too late for that.
Sony isn't to blame, but cigarette companies aren't to blame when kids on their own decide to start smoking, provided a kid would do that in an environment without all the cig adverts. They'd still do it, some of them. And they'd still die of lung cancer. And they'd still uphold the American Way (tm) and try to blame someone else for their problems.
This mother's action to sue Sony isn't about retribution, or even money so much. It's about her shifting the blame from herself to Sony. Internally, she knows she is partially to blame for her son's suicide. She doesn't admit it to others, but she feels it. She feels that if she "prove" that Sony is really to blame, that those feelings will stop plaguing her, and the blame will rest on Sony's shoulders, not her own.
There's a huge functional difference between writing an entire word and writing a character. You've obviously never actually used a real HWR recognition scheme. If you had a PDA capable of using one, I'd recomend one. Perhaps you have a friend with some surplus PocketPC toy, or a Newton to spare for a few weeks? The difference in writing speed between writing it down, char by char, rather than word by word is quite signifigant. The human brain can be trained to break words down into characters, but it's still a lot more natural and fluid to write words.
I've tried many means of getting information into a computer using a pen: on screen keyboards, in Qwerty and Fital; Graffiti; Jot; various programmable single- or multiple-stroke means (no, it's nothing new) using various X11 programs, CharRecog, and Genie before I ever had the pleasure of using real *handwriting* recognition, on the Newton and CalliGrapher.
I'm not trying to make you feel like you wasted your money on your Zaurus. You like it, that's great. It's just a shame that you're being held back by a lack of a better means for using the device, and that the device itself isn't being used to it's full potential.
Heh, bzzzt! Sorry! You're talking about character recognition, not handwriting recognition. It doesn't matter if it's Graffiti, Jot, something programmable, it's still just character recognition, not real *handwriting* recognition.
They didn't save the company by killing it. It appears that Steve simply had some grudges, and generally thought it was worthless. Newton was spun off as a seperate company (Newton, Inc) and the MP2100 was finally turning a profit. Apple bought it back, and killed it. Hardly to save the company.:(
I've been using an iPAQ 3150 to replace my Newton. Having CalliGrapher helps some, but the size of the screen, and general lack of consistency in PocketPC (man, I can't understand how people used WinCE 2!) really detracts from the experience.
The keyboard is just something to make up for the flaw of not having real HWR. I used to use a Newton 2100u for everything. I had a keyboard, but almost never used it. Why? A smallish keyboard (the Newton's was a lot bigger, and more useful than the Zaurus' kb) is a helluva lot slower than using real HWR like on the Newton, or CalliGrapher on a WinCE device. No, real HWR isn't character recognition like Graffiti or on the Zaurus.
...Or you could buy an iPAQ 3150... 206 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 320@240 B&W scren and a CF sleeve including a 128 MB card for $200. Perfect for someone who doesn't want to waste a $500+ on a Zaurus or a higher-end iPAQ.
And you can still install Linux, and run OpenZaurus on it, if you want to settle for a substandard Linux distro on a PDA.
Z = Trainable handwriting recognition (Use Palm gestures if you want) iPAQ = Not trainable
Not quite. The Zaurus has trainable HWR, yes. But the iPAQ has many recognizers available, some trainable. Including Transcriber and CalliGrapher, which are real handwriting recognition, not just the crappy *character* recognition that comes with the Zaurus. Until Palm OS or Linux/PDA gets real HWR like the Newton, or CalliGrapher, there's no way I could rationalize spending $500 on what amounts to be just a toy.
My biggest gripe about the hardware is the stylus is too small. I'm using an iPaq stylus with it which is a lot better.
Hold up here. The Zaurus has a *smaller* stylus than the iPAQs? Man! The iPAQ's stylus is too small, for me. Then again, I prefer a stylus that is the size of a real pen, not a toothpick. Like on the Newton. But I don't want to carry an extra stylus in my pocket, too high of a risk tha I'd loose it. Perhaps I use a PDA differently than most people, and that's why I prefer a real stylus... I actually take notes and write on a PDA, program, use it like a computer, not a hideiously overpriced organizer. To each her own!:)
I don't need color or to be able to play MP3s. It's a PDA, not a laptop.
Heh. The reason I don't bother with Palm OS devices is that I want more than an electornic organizer and toy. To each her own, I suppose.:) (Color is an annoying waste of battery, though. )
Parrot is cool, but it's still not usable for anything real. That is, I can't pick it up and start subclassing perl classes from ruby today, whereas I could with.NET, except I've no machines capable running Windoze.:P
I've no political interest.NET. I'm just a pragmatist. With GNU Mono as a Free option to satisfy these ends, I'm interested in it. If parrot pans out, fine- but I'm not going to sit around on my hands, neglecting cool technology just because.
Seems like an awful lot of work for such a tiny amount of amusement. In general, a lot of Mac users and some Mac developers seem to think that Cocoa is better, just because. It would be a lot more worth while to create an IDE that used perl+CB as it's programming engine, and added the niceities of RB, but leaving the GUI design to IB. Now, there are a lot of people who don't use or much like perl (including me, but I'm trying to like it, desperately) and would want another language. While BASIC blows, if you're writing bindings, why not write them for some Free BASIC interpreter, and make a free RB, that was very well at dealing with and working with Cocoa? I think that'd get them back in a much more fatal way, if that's the point.
One question for you... are you the Apple engineer that was working on this for the OS X build system, or is this a completely independent project?
Hmm... another person who doesn't seem to know what.NET really is..NET isn't some attempt at creating a new Java.
Even if it does live up to the hype, I fail to see why any Mac developer, and especially Apple
itself, would have even the slightest interest in bringing it to Mac OS X.
Not everyone is fooled by Sun's hype. I'm not interested in using Java, it sucks. Not everyone feels that way, and that's what there are still Java programmers. I shouldn't have to put up with Java just because you like it. At least, with.NET if I don't want to use the language you're using, I don't. I can use a different language targeted for.NET and get the same result. Java's VM isn't nearly as language-neutral as the toy implementations of non-Java languages for the JVM.
However,.NET provides more than just a shitty language.
Cocoa isn't language neutral in the way.NET is. In.NET, I can program in Smalltalk. And in this Smalltalk app, I could use libraries written in Python, perl, C++, Java, C# and Haskell, transparently. I could subclass a C# class. You can't do that with Cocoa. If I wrote an app using this cool new CamelBones perl-ObjC bridge, I could go into Objective-C and create an subclass of a perl class in Objective-C.
I doubt that a lot of the Mac community will embrace Mono or.NET (if there's an official MS version of it for OS X). There's too much ignorance and distrust. Too many people that think you're selling out if you use MS software on a Mac..NET/Mono stands to provide a lot for a developer, and because of upped productivity, better and more available apps for users.
Frankly, besides the few perl IDEs that cost money, there doesn't seem to be any decent IDEs for perl on Linux or Win32, let alone OS X. I found an IDE for Win32 called "Open Perl IDE" that is OK, but it's only for Windoze. Most perl coders seem to think that having an IDE is wussy, but then again, using a more straight forward language is wussy too, so perhaps there's a connection.:P With this new bridge, I may give a whack at trying to make a little perl IDE. I'm talking about a "real" IDE, something Smalltalk-like, not some cheap hack. mmm, NSBrowser.:)
A lot of people seem to love BBEdit. Not sure why, that feature list you cite isn't really outstanding for an IDE. Not everyone likes a real IDE, I understand that. PB isn't much of a "real" IDE compared to a Smalltalk system though, either.
But keep your eyes out. With this badass new CamelBones stuffs, I'm going to try and developer a Smalltalk-like IDE for perl. mmmm, NSBrowser.:)
One of the issues that hasn't really been solved on most platforms is the want to have a double-clickable app written in one of these high-level languages. In the case of RubyCocoa and CamelBridge, that problem is solved, thanks to OS X's awesome bundling system.
Take ShuX, the POD viewer for OS X mentioned above, for example. It's written in perl, and aside the perl system that comes with OS X, all it requires is the CamelBridge.framework. When the user decompresses the ShuX tarball, they're presented with a.app- a double-clickable, first-class Mac OS X application. To the user, it appears native in every way. They could easily copy it to other drives and folders with no problems.
They could stuff-it up and send it to a friend- and provided they that had the CamelBridge framework, the recipient could run the app with no fuss. No screwing around with extra dependencies, installing libs, making sure the.pl file is associated with the interpreter. If there are additional libraries that app requires, but aren't generally applicable, they can just be thrown in the Resources subfolder, along with the main.pl script. This isn't quite as big of a deal in perl, because of CPAN, but it could be a huge boon for those using other scripting languages.
AFAIK, this problem hasn't been solved anywhere near this elegantly on other platforms. Keep the user experience very consistent and pleasing, but gives the developer all the option she wants!:)
Why would you have to have Apple "let" you use PB to write perl? Have a look a CamelBridge, the very project that this post is about, look at the Doc section of the website. You can write the perl scripts in PB, even use IB to create the GUI. The ShuX POD browser is a native, double-clickable GUI app for OS X that's written in perl.
See my post. Use Google. There are frameworks for other languages (including Python), but there could always stand to be more. Why create Cocoa bindings for REALbasic? What would that accomplish?
This isn't the first XXXObjective-C bridge to come out for OS X. There's RubyCocoa, which works pretty well. Squeak has an (more generalized) Objective-C bridge. Lua has one. I believe the PyObjC bridge has released code as well, and works under OS X, although that project seems to be a lot more quiet than the others.
Good to see this. I emailed the author about it coming out, and had a bad feeling it would never get released. (why? dunno, just a feeling):)
Slashdot Mirror
I can't tell if this comment is in benign ignorance, or a joke...
:)
The most recent and most capable model, the one which is largely being talked about is the MP2x00 series. It has 162 MHz StrongARM processor, 5 or 8 MB of RAM and a luxurious 480x320 screen (compared to the piddly 320x240 res of so-called modern PDAs). However, the MP120 and MP130 running Newton OS 2.0, with their 20-25 MHz ARM and 2-4 MB of RAM are also still incredibly useful, although not as powerful.
The MP2100 model is still impressive, not only in it's day, but today as well.
What are you confused about?
Cannabis sp. is a plant. It contains cannaboids. People imbibe it to get high. However, it's not physically addictive in the way that nicotine is. But because it produces pleasure, it can be psychologically addictive.
Double-clicking WSH scripts doesn't compare to this. Sash is an entire environment for developing applications, not just a means to double-click a script. You can do that with any decent file manager under X.
It's a shame WSH doesn't provide the application scriptability that AppleScript does, it's a pain to automate apps on Windows in comparison. Like WSH, you can have language plug-ins for the AppleScript system, scripting any AS-aware app in whatever the language has a plug-in, perl or JavaScript, for example.
Sash is pretty old news... Saw it either here or on fm.net a year ago. However, a similar technology, XWT was released more recently, and may appeal to a similar crowd.
No incentive to play? The brains own chemicals, including a beautiful array of endorphins (home-grown morphine) and adrenaline, are a much stronger incentive and return than nicotine or virtual money.
Many non-chemical things can be addictive. EQ is one of them. It gave this kid pleasures he couldn't get elsewhere, that he knew of at least. If not, why would he play it? Why would anyone?
People are addicted to EQ. And TV. And food. And sex. And cannabis. The mechanism is pretty much the same, you don't need a chemical that is physically addictive like nicotine to have a psychological addiction to it. With physically addictive substances like nicotine, there is more interplay between the psychological and physical components, but it's very easy to become psychologically addicted to something that produces pleasure. Have a look at some B.F. Skinner papers, or talk to someone who actually studies science- any sane person could tell you that being addicted to a game is very possible, and this kid probably was addicted to it.
However, unless Sony did something to trick him into playing it for that initial month (which I find almost impossible), they're not to blame. He is. It's his body, his mind, his life, and if he choose to try to live in the EQ world, that's his own deal. Wasn't harming anyone. If anything, the psychiatrist and mother would be partially to blame, for recognizing that this kid had a problem with the game, and many other psychological problems, and should've intervened. But it's too late for that.
Sony isn't to blame, but cigarette companies aren't to blame when kids on their own decide to start smoking, provided a kid would do that in an environment without all the cig adverts. They'd still do it, some of them. And they'd still die of lung cancer. And they'd still uphold the American Way (tm) and try to blame someone else for their problems.
This mother's action to sue Sony isn't about retribution, or even money so much. It's about her shifting the blame from herself to Sony. Internally, she knows she is partially to blame for her son's suicide. She doesn't admit it to others, but she feels it. She feels that if she "prove" that Sony is really to blame, that those feelings will stop plaguing her, and the blame will rest on Sony's shoulders, not her own.
There's a huge functional difference between writing an entire word and writing a character. You've obviously never actually used a real HWR recognition scheme. If you had a PDA capable of using one, I'd recomend one. Perhaps you have a friend with some surplus PocketPC toy, or a Newton to spare for a few weeks? The difference in writing speed between writing it down, char by char, rather than word by word is quite signifigant. The human brain can be trained to break words down into characters, but it's still a lot more natural and fluid to write words.
I've tried many means of getting information into a computer using a pen: on screen keyboards, in Qwerty and Fital; Graffiti; Jot; various programmable single- or multiple-stroke means (no, it's nothing new) using various X11 programs, CharRecog, and Genie before I ever had the pleasure of using real *handwriting* recognition, on the Newton and CalliGrapher.
I'm not trying to make you feel like you wasted your money on your Zaurus. You like it, that's great. It's just a shame that you're being held back by a lack of a better means for using the device, and that the device itself isn't being used to it's full potential.
Heh, bzzzt! Sorry! You're talking about character recognition, not handwriting recognition. It doesn't matter if it's Graffiti, Jot, something programmable, it's still just character recognition, not real *handwriting* recognition.
See this.
If you want to get rid of that 3150 for cheap, shoot me an email... I could always use a backup for developing my own WinCE/Linux replacement.
They didn't save the company by killing it. It appears that Steve simply had some grudges, and generally thought it was worthless. Newton was spun off as a seperate company (Newton, Inc) and the MP2100 was finally turning a profit. Apple bought it back, and killed it. Hardly to save the company. :(
I've been using an iPAQ 3150 to replace my Newton. Having CalliGrapher helps some, but the size of the screen, and general lack of consistency in PocketPC (man, I can't understand how people used WinCE 2!) really detracts from the experience.
That's all fine and dandy, but until Parrot is actually useful, Mono is looking pretty nice.
The keyboard is just something to make up for the flaw of not having real HWR. I used to use a Newton 2100u for everything. I had a keyboard, but almost never used it. Why? A smallish keyboard (the Newton's was a lot bigger, and more useful than the Zaurus' kb) is a helluva lot slower than using real HWR like on the Newton, or CalliGrapher on a WinCE device. No, real HWR isn't character recognition like Graffiti or on the Zaurus.
...Or you could buy an iPAQ 3150... 206 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 320@240 B&W scren and a CF sleeve including a 128 MB card for $200. Perfect for someone who doesn't want to waste a $500+ on a Zaurus or a higher-end iPAQ.
And you can still install Linux, and run OpenZaurus on it, if you want to settle for a substandard Linux distro on a PDA.
Z = Trainable handwriting recognition (Use Palm gestures if you want)
iPAQ = Not trainable
Not quite. The Zaurus has trainable HWR, yes. But the iPAQ has many recognizers available, some trainable. Including Transcriber and CalliGrapher, which are real handwriting recognition, not just the crappy *character* recognition that comes with the Zaurus. Until Palm OS or Linux/PDA gets real HWR like the Newton, or CalliGrapher, there's no way I could rationalize spending $500 on what amounts to be just a toy.
My biggest gripe about the hardware is the stylus is too small. I'm using an iPaq stylus with it which is a lot better.
:)
Hold up here. The Zaurus has a *smaller* stylus than the iPAQs? Man! The iPAQ's stylus is too small, for me. Then again, I prefer a stylus that is the size of a real pen, not a toothpick. Like on the Newton. But I don't want to carry an extra stylus in my pocket, too high of a risk tha I'd loose it. Perhaps I use a PDA differently than most people, and that's why I prefer a real stylus... I actually take notes and write on a PDA, program, use it like a computer, not a hideiously overpriced organizer. To each her own!
I don't need color or to be able to play MP3s. It's a PDA, not a laptop.
:) (Color is an annoying waste of battery, though. )
Heh. The reason I don't bother with Palm OS devices is that I want more than an electornic organizer and toy. To each her own, I suppose.
Parrot is cool, but it's still not usable for anything real. That is, I can't pick it up and start subclassing perl classes from ruby today, whereas I could with .NET, except I've no machines capable running Windoze. :P
.NET. I'm just a pragmatist. With GNU Mono as a Free option to satisfy these ends, I'm interested in it. If parrot pans out, fine- but I'm not going to sit around on my hands, neglecting cool technology just because.
I've no political interest
A-ha! Hi! Well, thanks for the effort- it could just get me to use perl some even. :)
I apologize for for not being fun, but ...
Seems like an awful lot of work for such a tiny amount of amusement. In general, a lot of Mac users and some Mac developers seem to think that Cocoa is better, just because. It would be a lot more worth while to create an IDE that used perl+CB as it's programming engine, and added the niceities of RB, but leaving the GUI design to IB. Now, there are a lot of people who don't use or much like perl (including me, but I'm trying to like it, desperately) and would want another language. While BASIC blows, if you're writing bindings, why not write them for some Free BASIC interpreter, and make a free RB, that was very well at dealing with and working with Cocoa? I think that'd get them back in a much more fatal way, if that's the point.
One question for you... are you the Apple engineer that was working on this for the OS X build system, or is this a completely independent project?
Ah, I see what you mean. Well, all the same- OS X still presents a great solution to that problem. :)
Hmm... another person who doesn't seem to know what .NET really is. .NET isn't some attempt at creating a new Java.
.NET if I don't want to use the language you're using, I don't. I can use a different language targeted for .NET and get the same result. Java's VM isn't nearly as language-neutral as the toy implementations of non-Java languages for the JVM.
.NET provides more than just a shitty language.
.NET is. In .NET, I can program in Smalltalk. And in this Smalltalk app, I could use libraries written in Python, perl, C++, Java, C# and Haskell, transparently. I could subclass a C# class. You can't do that with Cocoa. If I wrote an app using this cool new CamelBones perl-ObjC bridge, I could go into Objective-C and create an subclass of a perl class in Objective-C.
.NET (if there's an official MS version of it for OS X). There's too much ignorance and distrust. Too many people that think you're selling out if you use MS software on a Mac. .NET/Mono stands to provide a lot for a developer, and because of upped productivity, better and more available apps for users.
Even if it does live up to the hype, I fail to see why any Mac developer, and especially Apple
itself, would have even the slightest interest in bringing it to Mac OS X.
Not everyone is fooled by Sun's hype. I'm not interested in using Java, it sucks. Not everyone feels that way, and that's what there are still Java programmers. I shouldn't have to put up with Java just because you like it. At least, with
However,
Cocoa isn't language neutral in the way
I doubt that a lot of the Mac community will embrace Mono or
Frankly, besides the few perl IDEs that cost money, there doesn't seem to be any decent IDEs for perl on Linux or Win32, let alone OS X. I found an IDE for Win32 called "Open Perl IDE" that is OK, but it's only for Windoze. Most perl coders seem to think that having an IDE is wussy, but then again, using a more straight forward language is wussy too, so perhaps there's a connection. :P With this new bridge, I may give a whack at trying to make a little perl IDE. I'm talking about a "real" IDE, something Smalltalk-like, not some cheap hack. mmm, NSBrowser. :)
A lot of people seem to love BBEdit. Not sure why, that feature list you cite isn't really outstanding for an IDE. Not everyone likes a real IDE, I understand that. PB isn't much of a "real" IDE compared to a Smalltalk system though, either.
:)
But keep your eyes out. With this badass new CamelBones stuffs, I'm going to try and developer a Smalltalk-like IDE for perl. mmmm, NSBrowser.
One of the issues that hasn't really been solved on most platforms is the want to have a double-clickable app written in one of these high-level languages. In the case of RubyCocoa and CamelBridge, that problem is solved, thanks to OS X's awesome bundling system.
.app- a double-clickable, first-class Mac OS X application. To the user, it appears native in every way. They could easily copy it to other drives and folders with no problems.
.pl file is associated with the interpreter. If there are additional libraries that app requires, but aren't generally applicable, they can just be thrown in the Resources subfolder, along with the main.pl script. This isn't quite as big of a deal in perl, because of CPAN, but it could be a huge boon for those using other scripting languages.
:)
Take ShuX, the POD viewer for OS X mentioned above, for example. It's written in perl, and aside the perl system that comes with OS X, all it requires is the CamelBridge.framework. When the user decompresses the ShuX tarball, they're presented with a
They could stuff-it up and send it to a friend- and provided they that had the CamelBridge framework, the recipient could run the app with no fuss. No screwing around with extra dependencies, installing libs, making sure the
AFAIK, this problem hasn't been solved anywhere near this elegantly on other platforms. Keep the user experience very consistent and pleasing, but gives the developer all the option she wants!
Why would you have to have Apple "let" you use PB to write perl? Have a look a CamelBridge, the very project that this post is about, look at the Doc section of the website. You can write the perl scripts in PB, even use IB to create the GUI. The ShuX POD browser is a native, double-clickable GUI app for OS X that's written in perl.
See my post. Use Google. There are frameworks for other languages (including Python), but there could always stand to be more. Why create Cocoa bindings for REALbasic? What would that accomplish?
This isn't the first XXXObjective-C bridge to come out for OS X. There's RubyCocoa, which works pretty well. Squeak has an (more generalized) Objective-C bridge. Lua has one. I believe the PyObjC bridge has released code as well, and works under OS X, although that project seems to be a lot more quiet than the others.
:)
Good to see this. I emailed the author about it coming out, and had a bad feeling it would never get released. (why? dunno, just a feeling)