We can only hope that they wont fork Qtopia like Sharp did and upgrade as TrollTech releases new versions. Because of Sharp's fork, the Zaurus users never got the bug fixes from TrollTech and Sharp never gave back their fixes leaded to a very rapid End Of Life for the Zaurus. Ever wonder why Sharp's Qtopia sucked so much? It was a fork of 1.4beta. 1.5 was TrollTech's first stable release and that is debatable as to being stable. 1.7 is much better.
Now for the big question... Will it be compiled with gcc 2.x or gcc 3? If they use 2 they get binary compatibility. If they use 3 they get a much needed speedup, but only have source compatibility. Sharp choose the worse of the two. They broke binary compatibility and kept gcc 2. What stupidity!
Bad Apples and how commercial companies should utilize Open Source with in-house development.
Open Source software is for most a new and unknown idea whose time has finally come. Many managers who have never even heard of Linux are finding themselves attempting to integrate it into their in-house development. They hear all of the wonderful benefits of utilizing Open Source software and want to be part of that. Unfortunately too often the projects fail for what seems unknown reasons. The majority of the time the problem stems from the false idea that Free Software means no cost across the board. Projects are done on a shoestring budget and the idea of interacting with the community is forgotten. The community is a large asset at the companies disposal that should not be ignored. A successful Open Source project within a company must incorporate developers within the community into the project.
John Macintosh owned an apple tree farm. The vast majority of his apples were shipped out by the ton to a company that made apple cider. After seeing a local farm open its fields to those who wanted to hand pick their own apples with fantastic success he decided to do it also. The margin for selling hand picked apples is much better then selling apples by the ton so why not give it a shot he thought. Come the next spring he put out a sign by the road stating that anyone could hand pick apples. As the summer wore on he found a few customers stopping by, but due to the infrequency he mostly found them to be an annoyance and considered stopping the program all together. Near the end of the August he had a friend over whom also ran an apple farm. The topic turned to John's field and the his lack of customers. His friend quickly pointed out a number of problems that John had overlooked:
Customers were given little help when picking the apples. Basics such as ladders, apple grabbers, and bags or crates were not provided.
There was no one officially hired at the farm to deal with customers. John who was often busy with other things made the customers feel as though they were not his top priority (it doesn't matter if they really were or not).
Getting customers to know about his farm was nothing more then a sign down near his driveway. Because of the success of other farms he incorrectly assumed that this is all he would have to do.
Each one of these were a problem that in the end hurt John's apple farm.
Of course John Macintosh and his farm doesn't exist, but if you replace him with a manager and apples with Open Source you suddenly have an interesting situation. Most all business managers when presented with the apple story know the list of problems even before it was listed, but when talking about Open Source they go tripping all over themselves asking why didn't it work? The problem is mostly a lack of knowledge about how Open Source works. They hear about Open Source and Free Software and think that is exactly what it is, something that they can take for free and with very minimal effort get Open Source developers to help. Half of the reason for using Open Source software is to utilize the community, letting them help in improving and developing the software. Managers hear about the army of programmer just working away on code in their free time. They then incorrectly assume that this army of free programmers are just waiting for them to start their project. Managers often times think that very little to no effort will be needed to utilize the community.
Customers were given little help when picking the apples. Basics such as ladders, apple grabbers, and bags or crates were not provided.
Developers want to work on Open Source software, your Open Source software! There is no ex
One of Linux's biggest strenghts is its networking and ability to many, many different things. Unfortunettly every distrobution has choosen a different way to configure their networking. From Wifi, ppp, basic static/hdcp, vpn, profiles, etc. It is all different! This makes it very difficult for end users and anoying for those who want to write frontend to configure the networking (and even if they do write one it is only used by a small set of users and doesn't get the full use/review that a normal app that runs on most distros would). On top of that every distro maker out there puts out an almost ok (but different look, feel, and feature set) network configuration application. This is without a doubt something that should get into the Linux Standard Base and was surprised to find that it was not.
I quickly found that if I couldn't condence it down into a bullet points the odds of me doing on the fly reviews were little to non. Other then before the tests, honestly how often do students review their notes? With the data on my palm wherever I was, I was continusly reviewing before and after class (and while waiting in line for dinner...). When it came time to do a comprehensive review (for a test for example) then I would pull out the book and review everything (or just look up stuff from the study sheet that was given out...) but those quick reviews all the time, any time really pays off. When it is on my notbook that I really only carry in my backpack I hardly ever reviewed my notes.
I got a Palm PDA the week before I went to collage because I wanted the todo and contact list, but I found that I took notes on it quite a bit. I had it with me everywhere I went and when ever I was walking around campus I could whip it out and review a class or two. Can't exactly do that with a laptop I found that taking notes for a lot of classes (not math...) could easily be done on my palm. I saw many other kids lug around their laptops and take notes on them. The whole lugging around part of all of the accessories looked like a major pain! I never really saw the advantage of it other then maybe getting a five minute head start on writing an essay for english class. For those that connected to the net and surfed during class I never once saw a valid reason why they needed to be on right then and the laptop with everything extra it had only distracted them in time period where paying attention to the teacher is important. The majority of classes you read the stuff out of the book and otherwise you have a little list of keys things to memorize. The pda fit that perfectly for me as I unexpecdly found as I was able to constently review those lists (like when walking to that class I should have reviewed for...) For actually writing/coding etc the desktop does its job. Course I found that if I was in the labs I was 50% more likly to actully finish the project right there then in the dorm (but that is another topic).
right specs:
64 flash (that is rw via jff2)
32 RAM
The SL-5600, which is powered by a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor, features a reflective QVGA (240 x 320 pixel) color LCD screen and a unique integrated QWERTY keyboard with sliding cover. It also includes a rechargeable (and replaceable) 1700 mAh battery, 64MB of protected Flash memory, 32MB of SD-RAM, dual expansion via CompactFlash and SecureDigital/MMC card slots, and an integrated speaker and microphone. The software stack is based on Linux along with the Qtopia GUI environment and PIM suite, Opera embedded browser, and the Geode Java virtual machine.
With this price there is something that I have wanted to do with the Zaurus for a really long time. Turn it into a media player. For $600 or some insane price you can get one of those media players with the 2 line text lcd. Pick up one of these connect it to the network, power, and receiver. Then write a little app to play audio files over the network onto your stereo. You get a COLOR 320x240 lcd TOUCH screen. I don't think that there is any media center that has that for this cheap. With the touch screen there is all sorts of extra goodies that you could put on it to make managing the music easier. Heck you could just run apache on it and browse to it from any computer and all it would do is display the current song and cool swirly plugins. Put some cool visual plugins on it, duck tape it to your stereo rack (or make a nice case, whatever suits you) and enjoy.
I too was called about computer questions. I remember one time I got called by this girl I knew back in high school. I hadn't talked to her in maybe 4 years. After 45 minutes she plugs in the computer question. It was then I knew. My parents, freinds, co workers etc. But Linux once again saved the day. Sense 97 I have been using Linux on my desktop. So my windows computer has the most up to date "Windows 98". I have only used XP once (on someone elses machine) and was finally forced to try 2K at work when I open word docs. But this caused a very nice occurance. When someone inquires to me about a technical question and they tell me they use anything post 1998 I really don't know anything about there problem and tell them flat out. Once they relized that I can't help them (even though I know tons about computers) the amount of tech support calls I have recieved has dropped through the floor. Of course when my mom calls me and tells me the email doesn't work (linux 386 mail server is down) that is a different call...:-D
-Benjamin Meyer
The 24" Widescreen is a dream monitor. I bought it two years ago and have never regreted it. Look for rebranded SGI versions that are the exact same, but are a heck of a lot cheaper. I saw them on ebay for ~700 a few weeks ago.
Benjamin Meyer
P.S. You have never lived until you have 3 of them side by side forming 1 large monitor bigger then your perifial vision can see at once.... and then play unreal.
I do not think that you can ever help your hands by doing just one thing. A few weeks ago I sat down and wrote out a number of actions that all in conjunction create an enviorment that is much better for your wrist I believe. Check it out here and let me know what you think.
14MB of Photos:
http://www.zauruszone.com/files/sl5600pics.zip
Pretty much:
Linux 2.4.18
64MB of Flash
32 RAM
1700 Battery
Speaker and Mic added
Will be out around end of december and early January
Probaly we have the same price as the 5500 when it came out (~$500)
The mini laptop that came out that everyone saw also was anounced today, but that is for Sharp Japan.
Can someone with more knowledge give me some more info on the differences between DietLibC and uclibc? As in how much I save in binary size for both of them. Problems (something like it wont support translations is a big thing) such as feature Y wont work. Can I compile Gnome or KDE with them? I read the FAQ and both seem wonderfull and I really don't see why someone _wouldn't_ want to use them. So why wouldn't I want to use them?
When the cable guys came to my house they were brought to our 2nd room which has two computers. The first one being my high end one with a Sony 24" widescreeen and Kinesis keyboard. The other one being a Pentium 100 with a 15" monitor. Guess which one they had to install the cable modem too and which one they were not allowed to touch.
Well from the article it looks like they are trying to target those who are not trying to hurt there wrist, but in the add itself they say it responds to movment of the wrist, arm or Anything! Other then the arm and wrist what is there? I will move my body just to move the cursor? This is pure bull, you will move your wrist. Now, what hurts the wrist? Why moving it! What makes them think that holding this will help in anyway? The sad thing is that they are going to sucker in some people who are trying to help their hands. As much as it stinks trackballs are just about the only mouse that I (and many of my friends) have found to work for hurt wrists because they don't move the wrist, but only the thumb.
Hmmmm.... I can name a number of features that I have added to my application that have been copied by their windows counterpart.
Heck I even made an application (coughsondracough) for Linux that was so inovative and ahead of anything out there that several big ass companies such as BOSS and Clear Channel wanted it.
It generally isn't in the big areas where you see it, but in the little is what I am saying.
Well as a KDE developer and as someone with the last name of Meyer I frequently get e-mail in German even though I do not speak it. Because of this I wrote a plugin for Kinkatta that allows me to talk to other people in different languages. I write in english, It translates it to german and send the message. A message comes in and it is translated from german to english and passed in. Although bablefish doesn't do that great for large articles snort sentences back and forth work fine. Many people I know in turn have then used Kinkatta for the same purpose and I myself have fixed several language errors.
Slashdot Mirror
Now for the big question... Will it be compiled with gcc 2.x or gcc 3? If they use 2 they get binary compatibility. If they use 3 they get a much needed speedup, but only have source compatibility. Sharp choose the worse of the two. They broke binary compatibility and kept gcc 2. What stupidity!
-Benjamin Meyer
-Benjamin meyer
Bad Apples and how commercial companies should utilize Open Source with in-house development.
Open Source software is for most a new and unknown idea whose time has finally come. Many managers who have never even heard of Linux are finding themselves attempting to integrate it into their in-house development. They hear all of the wonderful benefits of utilizing Open Source software and want to be part of that. Unfortunately too often the projects fail for what seems unknown reasons. The majority of the time the problem stems from the false idea that Free Software means no cost across the board. Projects are done on a shoestring budget and the idea of interacting with the community is forgotten. The community is a large asset at the companies disposal that should not be ignored. A successful Open Source project within a company must incorporate developers within the community into the project.
John Macintosh owned an apple tree farm. The vast majority of his apples were shipped out by the ton to a company that made apple cider. After seeing a local farm open its fields to those who wanted to hand pick their own apples with fantastic success he decided to do it also. The margin for selling hand picked apples is much better then selling apples by the ton so why not give it a shot he thought. Come the next spring he put out a sign by the road stating that anyone could hand pick apples. As the summer wore on he found a few customers stopping by, but due to the infrequency he mostly found them to be an annoyance and considered stopping the program all together. Near the end of the August he had a friend over whom also ran an apple farm. The topic turned to John's field and the his lack of customers. His friend quickly pointed out a number of problems that John had overlooked:
Each one of these were a problem that in the end hurt John's apple farm.
Of course John Macintosh and his farm doesn't exist, but if you replace him with a manager and apples with Open Source you suddenly have an interesting situation. Most all business managers when presented with the apple story know the list of problems even before it was listed, but when talking about Open Source they go tripping all over themselves asking why didn't it work? The problem is mostly a lack of knowledge about how Open Source works. They hear about Open Source and Free Software and think that is exactly what it is, something that they can take for free and with very minimal effort get Open Source developers to help. Half of the reason for using Open Source software is to utilize the community, letting them help in improving and developing the software. Managers hear about the army of programmer just working away on code in their free time. They then incorrectly assume that this army of free programmers are just waiting for them to start their project. Managers often times think that very little to no effort will be needed to utilize the community.
Customers were given little help when picking the apples. Basics such as ladders, apple grabbers, and bags or crates were not provided.
Developers want to work on Open Source software, your Open Source software! There is no ex
One of Linux's biggest strenghts is its networking and ability to many, many different things. Unfortunettly every distrobution has choosen a different way to configure their networking. From Wifi, ppp, basic static/hdcp, vpn, profiles, etc. It is all different! This makes it very difficult for end users and anoying for those who want to write frontend to configure the networking (and even if they do write one it is only used by a small set of users and doesn't get the full use/review that a normal app that runs on most distros would). On top of that every distro maker out there puts out an almost ok (but different look, feel, and feature set) network configuration application. This is without a doubt something that should get into the Linux Standard Base and was surprised to find that it was not.
-Benjamin Meyer
Kinkatta has had on the fly translations sense it put it in back in I think August 2001. -Benjamin Meyer
I quickly found that if I couldn't condence it down into a bullet points the odds of me doing on the fly reviews were little to non. Other then before the tests, honestly how often do students review their notes? With the data on my palm wherever I was, I was continusly reviewing before and after class (and while waiting in line for dinner...). When it came time to do a comprehensive review (for a test for example) then I would pull out the book and review everything (or just look up stuff from the study sheet that was given out...) but those quick reviews all the time, any time really pays off. When it is on my notbook that I really only carry in my backpack I hardly ever reviewed my notes.
I got a Palm PDA the week before I went to collage because I wanted the todo and contact list, but I found that I took notes on it quite a bit. I had it with me everywhere I went and when ever I was walking around campus I could whip it out and review a class or two. Can't exactly do that with a laptop I found that taking notes for a lot of classes (not math...) could easily be done on my palm. I saw many other kids lug around their laptops and take notes on them. The whole lugging around part of all of the accessories looked like a major pain! I never really saw the advantage of it other then maybe getting a five minute head start on writing an essay for english class. For those that connected to the net and surfed during class I never once saw a valid reason why they needed to be on right then and the laptop with everything extra it had only distracted them in time period where paying attention to the teacher is important. The majority of classes you read the stuff out of the book and otherwise you have a little list of keys things to memorize. The pda fit that perfectly for me as I unexpecdly found as I was able to constently review those lists (like when walking to that class I should have reviewed for...) For actually writing/coding etc the desktop does its job. Course I found that if I was in the labs I was 50% more likly to actully finish the project right there then in the dorm (but that is another topic).
-Benjamin Meyer
Actually I myself have been meaning to set it up for myself...
-Benjamin Meyer
Hmm I work for Sharp so I would know better then most.... FYI though the C700 is a Sharp Japan line product. Same with the B5 and A3.
64 flash (that is rw via jff2)
32 RAM
The SL-5600, which is powered by a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor, features a reflective QVGA (240 x 320 pixel) color LCD screen and a unique integrated QWERTY keyboard with sliding cover. It also includes a rechargeable (and replaceable) 1700 mAh battery, 64MB of protected Flash memory, 32MB of SD-RAM, dual expansion via CompactFlash and SecureDigital/MMC card slots, and an integrated speaker and microphone. The software stack is based on Linux along with the Qtopia GUI environment and PIM suite, Opera embedded browser, and the Geode Java virtual machine.
Don't forget the Howtos at docs.zaurus.com. I try to get as much up there documentation wise to help everyone.
With this price there is something that I have wanted to do with the Zaurus for a really long time. Turn it into a media player. For $600 or some insane price you can get one of those media players with the 2 line text lcd. Pick up one of these connect it to the network, power, and receiver. Then write a little app to play audio files over the network onto your stereo. You get a COLOR 320x240 lcd TOUCH screen. I don't think that there is any media center that has that for this cheap. With the touch screen there is all sorts of extra goodies that you could put on it to make managing the music easier. Heck you could just run apache on it and browse to it from any computer and all it would do is display the current song and cool swirly plugins. Put some cool visual plugins on it, duck tape it to your stereo rack (or make a nice case, whatever suits you) and enjoy.
I too was called about computer questions. I remember one time I got called by this girl I knew back in high school. I hadn't talked to her in maybe 4 years. After 45 minutes she plugs in the computer question. It was then I knew. My parents, freinds, co workers etc. But Linux once again saved the day. Sense 97 I have been using Linux on my desktop. So my windows computer has the most up to date "Windows 98". I have only used XP once (on someone elses machine) and was finally forced to try 2K at work when I open word docs. But this caused a very nice occurance. When someone inquires to me about a technical question and they tell me they use anything post 1998 I really don't know anything about there problem and tell them flat out. Once they relized that I can't help them (even though I know tons about computers) the amount of tech support calls I have recieved has dropped through the floor. Of course when my mom calls me and tells me the email doesn't work (linux 386 mail server is down) that is a different call... :-D
-Benjamin Meyer
The 24" Widescreen is a dream monitor. I bought it two years ago and have never regreted it. Look for rebranded SGI versions that are the exact same, but are a heck of a lot cheaper. I saw them on ebay for ~700 a few weeks ago.
Benjamin Meyer
P.S. You have never lived until you have 3 of them side by side forming 1 large monitor bigger then your perifial vision can see at once.... and then play unreal.
Photos here!
Hmmm, the url didn't come out.... http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/articles/wrists.p hp
-Benjamin Meyer
http://www.sharpusa.com/products/ModelLanding/0,1
http://www.sharpusa.com/products/FunctionPressRel
14MB of Photos: http://www.zauruszone.com/files/sl5600pics.zip
Pretty much:
Linux 2.4.18
64MB of Flash
32 RAM
1700 Battery
Speaker and Mic added
Will be out around end of december and early January
Probaly we have the same price as the 5500 when it came out (~$500)
The mini laptop that came out that everyone saw also was anounced today, but that is for Sharp Japan.
Benjamin Meyer
Can someone with more knowledge give me some more info on the differences between DietLibC and uclibc? As in how much I save in binary size for both of them. Problems (something like it wont support translations is a big thing) such as feature Y wont work. Can I compile Gnome or KDE with them? I read the FAQ and both seem wonderfull and I really don't see why someone _wouldn't_ want to use them. So why wouldn't I want to use them?
-Benjamin Meyer
I myself simply use the web itself to profide that. Browse to www.mail2web.com and off you go. No account required.
-Benjamin Meyer
Because Sharp only gave out the kernel source and nothing else.
When the cable guys came to my house they were brought to our 2nd room which has two computers. The first one being my high end one with a Sony 24" widescreeen and Kinesis keyboard. The other one being a Pentium 100 with a 15" monitor. Guess which one they had to install the cable modem too and which one they were not allowed to touch.
Well from the article it looks like they are trying to target those who are not trying to hurt there wrist, but in the add itself they say it responds to movment of the wrist, arm or Anything! Other then the arm and wrist what is there? I will move my body just to move the cursor? This is pure bull, you will move your wrist. Now, what hurts the wrist? Why moving it! What makes them think that holding this will help in anyway? The sad thing is that they are going to sucker in some people who are trying to help their hands. As much as it stinks trackballs are just about the only mouse that I (and many of my friends) have found to work for hurt wrists because they don't move the wrist, but only the thumb.
Hmmmm.... I can name a number of features that I have added to my application that have been copied by their windows counterpart.
Heck I even made an application (coughsondracough) for Linux that was so inovative and ahead of anything out there that several big ass companies such as BOSS and Clear Channel wanted it.
It generally isn't in the big areas where you see it, but in the little is what I am saying.
Well as a KDE developer and as someone with the last name of Meyer I frequently get e-mail in German even though I do not speak it. Because of this I wrote a plugin for Kinkatta that allows me to talk to other people in different languages. I write in english, It translates it to german and send the message. A message comes in and it is translated from german to english and passed in. Although bablefish doesn't do that great for large articles snort sentences back and forth work fine. Many people I know in turn have then used Kinkatta for the same purpose and I myself have fixed several language errors.