I owned an HPC Pro. The problem was not that they offered too little. The problem was that they offered too much. It's all about the operating system.
The entire point of a PDA or an ultraportable is instant-on, rapid data access and entry. My Palm IIIe used to do that, but I wanted a bigger display, so I got a Vadem Clio. What a dog! Windows CE HPC Pro 2.0 was just a Windows 95 clone, complete with Start menu, Word, Excel, etc.
Who wants to use a PDA or an instant-on device where your information is stored in databases and files that have to be copied around with Windows exporer? Where you have to treat your CompactFlash card as a hard drive, double-tapping on my computer, then double-tapping on the drive icon to see the files there? Not to mention that Windows CE could reliably be expected to crash once a day.
Someone would want to give me a bit of contact information. "Wait!" I'd say, and I'd hit the power switch, then tap Start -> Programs -> Pocket Outlook -> Contacts, then I'd wait for the little spinning hourglass while the Pocket Outlook contacts manager started... Then I'd finally be writing the information in, and suddenly I'd say "oops, hold on" and I'd have to turn the machine over, stick the stylus into the reset hole because the thing had crashed... then it was time to wait for a reboot... This is not what a PDA or ultraportable laptop is supposed to be like!
I imagine a Palm-based unit with a full-size keyboard will do quite well. I used to own a TRS-80 Model 100 and, as another poster has already pointed out, it was quite a nice machine for writing, reporting, etc. on the go.
As for me, I am now using dead technology -- a Newton 2100 -- whose operating system is so far ahead of Palm and PocketPC that it makes your heart sink to realize how long it will take other platforms to catch up -- and whose carry-along keyboard is actually quite small and quite nice. I only hope that my Newton (and its two spares) last long enough to see the day when a true successor emerges.
Just sold a TRS-80 Color Computer III with 512k, 20MB bootable hard drive, RS-232 port and 720k floppy on eBay with OS-9 pre-installed and a pile of software.
It's been sitting in my garage since the early '90s, when I switched first to a Sun 3/80 and then to Linux on a 386DX/25.
I've also got a TRS-80 Model I system with monitor, expansion unit and floppy drive sitting in the garage, but I don't think I'll part with that one yet...
Ooooh, you evil anti-patriot, you, how dare you disagree with military spending and nuclear proliferation! You must be a terrorist! Or a feminist! Or a devil worshipper...;)
NO keyboard Natural handwriting recognition LARGE, half-VGA (320x480) color display Overall size similar to a paperback book, maybe slightly taller DECENT PDA operating system (NOT PocketPC or Palm) PCMCIA slots! Reasonably fast CPU, expandable memory
I do not care about: voice recognition, smaller and smaller sizes (if it's small enough to fit in a pocket, it's not big enough to read a book on, browse the Web on, do serious handwriting on, etc.), keyboards (if I want a keyboard I will get a laptop), graffiti (SLOOOOOOOOW), pocket Word/Excel (if I want office I will get a laptop), digital camera add-ons, etc... None of these things are worth anything to me.
Basically, my ideal PDA is the Newton 2100 but with a nicer color display and maybe a little bit thinner.
Why did I say "and you will hate it"? Because basically people get furious when I describe my perfect PDA, as if by making my ideal PDA, the market will necessarily make unavailable theirs (which is usually something the size of a credit card with a built-in keyboard with keys the size of sand grains that can run a Web server and Adobe Photoshop while using a digital camera attachment).
Apex, the company famous for making the DVD player with the "region selection menu", also has taken care of this with the "PBC" (playback control) button.
The magical PBC button bypasses the menu, the introductory crap, and RCE as well, and just gives you the film, period.
No gamer in their right mind would choose a laptop over a desktop for normal use. To do so would be stupid. You're right, a monitor is much better.
The point is that some people can't use a desktop. Look at me, I'm often on a plane, on the road, here and there... I sling a laptop in my backpack... and sometimes I want entertainment! I can't possibly bring a desktop or a monitor with me.
So there IS some reason to playing fast-moving games on an LCD and I'm glad machines capable of doing so exist.
You miss the point. It is not all about superstition, it is all about nice living spaces. If you visit a room "before" and then again "after" you will often find that there is a huge difference in simple livability.
Interior designers and architects do largely the same thing, but often to more western tastes. Their terms are artistic, rather than spiritual, but the effect is the same. Any deliberately designed space, done by someone who makes a living designing spaces, will be much more liveable and workable than a space haphazardly thrown together in the course of use.
Hello, do you have a job? If your entire company uses Software X and your boss is giving you assignments using Software X and you say "geez, I will only use open-source Software Y and it isn't compatible with your Software X" -- you'll be out the door.
I was in the car with a friend of mine one day when I noticed a post-it note on her notebook with words written on it in a list: "mom, god, love, peace, dad..." and I asked her about it and whether it was a list of values or goals or something... and of course it turned out to be her password list at work -- each time they forced her to change her password, she wrote the new one at the bottom of the list, which was then sitting on a post-it note on her notebook, which routinely sat on her desk.
I tried to explain about the importance of selecting good passwords... and she agreed.
Several weeks later, she called me to ask for my help -- she needed to know how to "bypass" the password and get to her files. When I asked why, she said she'd taken my advice and selected a more difficult password this time around, and hadn't written it down on a post-it note. Instead, she'd saved it in a file so that she could always print it out when she needed it, but of course now she'd forgotten it because it wasn't something she'd normally remember, and without it, she couldn't get to her file...
The truth is that passwords are never going to work for most people. People only have the mental capital and patience to remember things that are important to them. But once you know someone, you know what is important to them, and pretty quickly you know their potential passwords. And of course, many humans find that the same things are important to them... so passwords as a group from anyone but computer professionals tend to be easy to guess.
Just bring out the fingerprint scans or retina scans, etc. and be done with it.
But you miss my point. The article did not say that Linux is a bad risk for 777 flaps when compared against the advantages it brings. That would have been helpful, and if presented along with case study information, would have been a nice risk assessment. Rather, the article just said that Linux is built by 2nd year biology students in their spare time and represents less than a zillion monkeys with 'C' compilers could create.
My point therefore is not that Linux is great for 777 flaps, but that to simply write an article whose point is 'Linux is a risk [presumably in every situation?], don't use it' and then to call the Linux developers -- especially the talented 'core team' -- a lot of 2nd year biology students... and then to provide no case study information, no specific problems other than an inability to compile source code on Solaris... is not helpful in the least, and tells me nothing about (for example) how Linux might actually behave with 777 flaps, even on an anecdotal level. Is not what I'd call specific and informative material for any professional publication I care to read... Unless you are asserting that the artice's vague implication is in fact correct -- that Linux should probably not be used under any circumstances, whether for 777 flaps or as a mail server or as an instructional tool, because of some vague yet omnipresent level of monkey/biology risk involved in all of these cases and indeed therefore in the general case.
So -- given that this article is such utter nonsense -- and that they were still willing to publish it, I don't know how inclined I'd be to read any other articles in the list without several shakers of salt at my side.
Hmm, I just read the most recent article at your RISKS link in which Linux developers are said to be lesser than "a zillion monkies with C compilers" who can't come up with a Hello, world program and who practice "flag-waving" instead of "sound software engineering".
The article also equates using linux with stepping to an aeroplane "designed by, say, 2nd year biology student as a night-time hobby" and slams GNU for "pretty much ignoring the need for competence and expertise on the part of software developers".
Considering the fact that companies full of software developers like, say, oh, IBM, are shipping Linux right now, and considering the fact that a sizable percentage of computer science departments now use Linux for official coursework, and considering the fact that Linux Torvalds is, in fact, a professional software developer...
I'd say that I won't risk any more of my time reading RISKS.
Numerous pages that load correctly and look the same in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Konqueror were simply botched by Opera 5. Have they fixed it yet? Opera may be great, but I have no interest in missing information or not being able to use a needed Web site just to support this particular organization.
If Konqueror can get it right and Konqueror is free and well integrated with my Linux system, Opera had better do it much better -- at least as long as they want me to leave open source and to pay for it either with my money or with my "eyeballs".
It seems to me that all we'll ever be able to run on Wine is old Windows applications. Any cutting edge applications will not run unless the said app. maintains strict adherence to a old proprietary standard. This means that Wine will always be one step back.
And don't forget that so far, we can't even run old Windows applications using Wine. We're how many years on and I still can't run MS Office 95 or 97 with the latest Wine release, much less Internet Explorer or Photoshop. The recent popularity of the "screw native Linux software, all we need is Wine" mentality is very troubling.
Incedently VMWare and Bochs are not new concepts. SCO have had something called Merge [caldera.com] for ages, which has allowed people to run Windows on Openserver for years now and more recently allowed Unixware users to do the same.
By the way, you can also get Merge for Linux. It's used as the guts of the very popular (and cheaper and faster than VMWare) Win4Lin.
I don't look at ads anywhere -- on television, at the cinema, on shopping center walls... And yet I continue to keep my eyes open and see everything else!
I am stealing all of society! I will crush the world economy! It is my evil masterplan!
Bwahahaha! Ha-ha!
Re:No support for pre-DRM media formats.
on
Reason Magazine on DRM
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It's worse than than just losing your home videos... Imagine having to throw out all 300 of your CDs, all 100 of your DVDs, all 100 of your VHS tapes, your current PDA and your current operating system+PC because 1) your CDs aren't "secure" compatible, 2) your DVDs aren't "secure" compatible, 3) your VHS tapes aren't "secure" comaptible, 4) your PDA isn't "secure" compatible and 4) your favorite PC operating system, doesn't implement the proprietary "secure" system (which costs bundles to license) while your existing PC communications and storage hardware won't work with the new "Safe and Secure Signal[TM]" Internet and data streams.
SO, you spend all of the endless amounts of cash necessary to replace this entire pile of equipment and media, and then you spend it again and again every month, because now you don't own any of it in the free and clear, but you "license" it instead and must keep paying into the central license database in order to have access to any of it -- if you don't pay, you will suddenly find yourself "securely" cut off from what was, once upon a time, media and equipment you had already paid for in the free and clear.
And meanwhile, the few fat, rich men at the top get richer, watching their personal wealth go from $10bn to $30bn to $60bn to $120bn to $240bn as the "emerging markets" around the world happily donate their (very limited) cash to the same licensing system in order to participate in western pop culture on the one hand and get what was once a free flow of news and information on the other.
Hey, man, it's mostly Americans who repeatedly call Linux "anti-American" so don't blame anyone but yourself.
With regard to colonialism: the US is the largest practitioner of colonialism in history; the breath of its economic conquests stretching across the face of the earth. What do you think all the protests are about? That Wal-Mart's prices aren't low enough? Why do you think the Islamists are so upset? Do you really buy Bush's "they hate democracy" propaganda?
The only reason withdrawal of American carriers would lead to instability is because of the power vacuum their departure would leave -- a power vacuum which could then (and should have always been) filled by countries who actually have a direct, regional interest in those waters.
I used a Voodoo3 3000 for several years under Linux with a middling K6 CPU and did not experience any slowdown -- opaque window moves were rapid and there were no slowness artifacts like window trails or visible redraws -- it was every bit as fast as Windows. I played 3D accelerated games (Myth II, Quake II) with no problems -- again, every bit as fast as the Windows versions.
What distribution are you using? And are you sure it hasn't configured your card using the VESA framebuffer mode, instead of the tdfx driver module, which is what it should be using?
Re:X kicks ass, XFree86 doubly so.
on
XFree86 10 Years Old
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The trails you see have very little to do with your CPU and everything to do with your graphics accelerator. If you're seeing artifacts or slowness on a 266MHz (or even 66MHz) machine, your accelerator chip is either lacking proper accelerated drivers or is misconfigured.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of, when is someone going to start making machines that look as good as those old Thinking Machines CM installations?
God those were sexy. I'd take one to bed with me now.
I owned an HPC Pro. The problem was not that they offered too little. The problem was that they offered too much. It's all about the operating system.
The entire point of a PDA or an ultraportable is instant-on, rapid data access and entry. My Palm IIIe used to do that, but I wanted a bigger display, so I got a Vadem Clio. What a dog! Windows CE HPC Pro 2.0 was just a Windows 95 clone, complete with Start menu, Word, Excel, etc.
Who wants to use a PDA or an instant-on device where your information is stored in databases and files that have to be copied around with Windows exporer? Where you have to treat your CompactFlash card as a hard drive, double-tapping on my computer, then double-tapping on the drive icon to see the files there? Not to mention that Windows CE could reliably be expected to crash once a day.
Someone would want to give me a bit of contact information. "Wait!" I'd say, and I'd hit the power switch, then tap Start -> Programs -> Pocket Outlook -> Contacts, then I'd wait for the little spinning hourglass while the Pocket Outlook contacts manager started... Then I'd finally be writing the information in, and suddenly I'd say "oops, hold on" and I'd have to turn the machine over, stick the stylus into the reset hole because the thing had crashed... then it was time to wait for a reboot... This is not what a PDA or ultraportable laptop is supposed to be like!
I imagine a Palm-based unit with a full-size keyboard will do quite well. I used to own a TRS-80 Model 100 and, as another poster has already pointed out, it was quite a nice machine for writing, reporting, etc. on the go.
As for me, I am now using dead technology -- a Newton 2100 -- whose operating system is so far ahead of Palm and PocketPC that it makes your heart sink to realize how long it will take other platforms to catch up -- and whose carry-along keyboard is actually quite small and quite nice. I only hope that my Newton (and its two spares) last long enough to see the day when a true successor emerges.
Microware OS-9 (later to be replaced by OS-9000, if I remember right, and then 'David'?) not Apple Mac OS 9.
And of course Slackware remains the ultimate...
Just sold a TRS-80 Color Computer III with 512k, 20MB bootable hard drive, RS-232 port and 720k floppy on eBay with OS-9 pre-installed and a pile of software.
It's been sitting in my garage since the early '90s, when I switched first to a Sun 3/80 and then to Linux on a 386DX/25.
I've also got a TRS-80 Model I system with monitor, expansion unit and floppy drive sitting in the garage, but I don't think I'll part with that one yet...
Here's what I did a few months ago:
PowerMac 7300: $155 used at local university surplus sale.
17" PC Monitor, $25.00.
PC Monitor adapter for macs: $10.00.
OS X from eBay, $80.00.
Couple of hacks off the net to get OS X to install on some PowerMac machines: free.
OS X machine total cost: $270.
It can be done. Be creative.
I had a Kodak disc camera, it took SHIT pictures.
Ooooh, you evil anti-patriot, you, how dare you disagree with military spending and nuclear proliferation! You must be a terrorist! Or a feminist! Or a devil worshipper... ;)
My ideal PDA:
NO keyboard
Natural handwriting recognition
LARGE, half-VGA (320x480) color display
Overall size similar to a paperback book, maybe slightly taller
DECENT PDA operating system (NOT PocketPC or Palm)
PCMCIA slots!
Reasonably fast CPU, expandable memory
I do not care about: voice recognition, smaller and smaller sizes (if it's small enough to fit in a pocket, it's not big enough to read a book on, browse the Web on, do serious handwriting on, etc.), keyboards (if I want a keyboard I will get a laptop), graffiti (SLOOOOOOOOW), pocket Word/Excel (if I want office I will get a laptop), digital camera add-ons, etc... None of these things are worth anything to me.
Basically, my ideal PDA is the Newton 2100 but with a nicer color display and maybe a little bit thinner.
Why did I say "and you will hate it"? Because basically people get furious when I describe my perfect PDA, as if by making my ideal PDA, the market will necessarily make unavailable theirs (which is usually something the size of a credit card with a built-in keyboard with keys the size of sand grains that can run a Web server and Adobe Photoshop while using a digital camera attachment).
Apex, the company famous for making the DVD player with the "region selection menu", also has taken care of this with the "PBC" (playback control) button.
The magical PBC button bypasses the menu, the introductory crap, and RCE as well, and just gives you the film, period.
I love my Apex DVD player!
No gamer in their right mind would choose a laptop over a desktop for normal use. To do so would be stupid. You're right, a monitor is much better.
The point is that some people can't use a desktop. Look at me, I'm often on a plane, on the road, here and there... I sling a laptop in my backpack... and sometimes I want entertainment! I can't possibly bring a desktop or a monitor with me.
So there IS some reason to playing fast-moving games on an LCD and I'm glad machines capable of doing so exist.
You miss the point. It is not all about superstition, it is all about nice living spaces. If you visit a room "before" and then again "after" you will often find that there is a huge difference in simple livability.
Interior designers and architects do largely the same thing, but often to more western tastes. Their terms are artistic, rather than spiritual, but the effect is the same. Any deliberately designed space, done by someone who makes a living designing spaces, will be much more liveable and workable than a space haphazardly thrown together in the course of use.
Hello, do you have a job? If your entire company uses Software X and your boss is giving you assignments using Software X and you say "geez, I will only use open-source Software Y and it isn't compatible with your Software X" -- you'll be out the door.
I was in the car with a friend of mine one day when I noticed a post-it note on her notebook with words written on it in a list: "mom, god, love, peace, dad..." and I asked her about it and whether it was a list of values or goals or something... and of course it turned out to be her password list at work -- each time they forced her to change her password, she wrote the new one at the bottom of the list, which was then sitting on a post-it note on her notebook, which routinely sat on her desk.
I tried to explain about the importance of selecting good passwords... and she agreed.
Several weeks later, she called me to ask for my help -- she needed to know how to "bypass" the password and get to her files. When I asked why, she said she'd taken my advice and selected a more difficult password this time around, and hadn't written it down on a post-it note. Instead, she'd saved it in a file so that she could always print it out when she needed it, but of course now she'd forgotten it because it wasn't something she'd normally remember, and without it, she couldn't get to her file...
The truth is that passwords are never going to work for most people. People only have the mental capital and patience to remember things that are important to them. But once you know someone, you know what is important to them, and pretty quickly you know their potential passwords. And of course, many humans find that the same things are important to them... so passwords as a group from anyone but computer professionals tend to be easy to guess.
Just bring out the fingerprint scans or retina scans, etc. and be done with it.
But you miss my point. The article did not say that Linux is a bad risk for 777 flaps when compared against the advantages it brings. That would have been helpful, and if presented along with case study information, would have been a nice risk assessment. Rather, the article just said that Linux is built by 2nd year biology students in their spare time and represents less than a zillion monkeys with 'C' compilers could create.
My point therefore is not that Linux is great for 777 flaps, but that to simply write an article whose point is 'Linux is a risk [presumably in every situation?], don't use it' and then to call the Linux developers -- especially the talented 'core team' -- a lot of 2nd year biology students... and then to provide no case study information, no specific problems other than an inability to compile source code on Solaris... is not helpful in the least, and tells me nothing about (for example) how Linux might actually behave with 777 flaps, even on an anecdotal level. Is not what I'd call specific and informative material for any professional publication I care to read... Unless you are asserting that the artice's vague implication is in fact correct -- that Linux should probably not be used under any circumstances, whether for 777 flaps or as a mail server or as an instructional tool, because of some vague yet omnipresent level of monkey/biology risk involved in all of these cases and indeed therefore in the general case.
So -- given that this article is such utter nonsense -- and that they were still willing to publish it, I don't know how inclined I'd be to read any other articles in the list without several shakers of salt at my side.
Hmm, I just read the most recent article at your RISKS link in which Linux developers are said to be lesser than "a zillion monkies with C compilers" who can't come up with a Hello, world program and who practice "flag-waving" instead of "sound software engineering".
The article also equates using linux with stepping to an aeroplane "designed by, say,
2nd year biology student as a night-time hobby" and slams GNU for "pretty much ignoring the
need for competence and expertise on the part of software developers".
Considering the fact that companies full of software developers like, say, oh, IBM, are shipping Linux right now, and considering the fact that a sizable percentage of computer science departments now use Linux for official coursework, and considering the fact that Linux Torvalds is, in fact, a professional software developer...
I'd say that I won't risk any more of my time reading RISKS.
Numerous pages that load correctly and look the same in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Konqueror were simply botched by Opera 5. Have they fixed it yet? Opera may be great, but I have no interest in missing information or not being able to use a needed Web site just to support this particular organization.
If Konqueror can get it right and Konqueror is free and well integrated with my Linux system, Opera had better do it much better -- at least as long as they want me to leave open source and to pay for it either with my money or with my "eyeballs".
It seems to me that all we'll ever be able to run on Wine is old Windows applications. Any cutting edge applications will not run unless the said app. maintains strict adherence to a old proprietary standard. This means that Wine will always be one step back.
And don't forget that so far, we can't even run old Windows applications using Wine. We're how many years on and I still can't run MS Office 95 or 97 with the latest Wine release, much less Internet Explorer or Photoshop. The recent popularity of the "screw native Linux software, all we need is Wine" mentality is very troubling.
Incedently VMWare and Bochs are not new concepts. SCO have had something called Merge [caldera.com] for ages, which has allowed people to run Windows on Openserver for years now and more recently allowed Unixware users to do the same.
By the way, you can also get Merge for Linux. It's used as the guts of the very popular (and cheaper and faster than VMWare) Win4Lin.
If you are relying on the Word grammar checker for correctness, you're in trouble... it is easily confused and often wrong.
Perhaps you should learn your grammar before going to university?
I don't look at ads anywhere -- on television, at the cinema, on shopping center walls... And yet I continue to keep my eyes open and see everything else!
I am stealing all of society! I will crush the world economy! It is my evil masterplan!
Bwahahaha! Ha-ha!
It's worse than than just losing your home videos... Imagine having to throw out all 300 of your CDs, all 100 of your DVDs, all 100 of your VHS tapes, your current PDA and your current operating system+PC because 1) your CDs aren't "secure" compatible, 2) your DVDs aren't "secure" compatible, 3) your VHS tapes aren't "secure" comaptible, 4) your PDA isn't "secure" compatible and 4) your favorite PC operating system, doesn't implement the proprietary "secure" system (which costs bundles to license) while your existing PC communications and storage hardware won't work with the new "Safe and Secure Signal[TM]" Internet and data streams.
SO, you spend all of the endless amounts of cash necessary to replace this entire pile of equipment and media, and then you spend it again and again every month, because now you don't own any of it in the free and clear, but you "license" it instead and must keep paying into the central license database in order to have access to any of it -- if you don't pay, you will suddenly find yourself "securely" cut off from what was, once upon a time, media and equipment you had already paid for in the free and clear.
And meanwhile, the few fat, rich men at the top get richer, watching their personal wealth go from $10bn to $30bn to $60bn to $120bn to $240bn as the "emerging markets" around the world happily donate their (very limited) cash to the same licensing system in order to participate in western pop culture on the one hand and get what was once a free flow of news and information on the other.
Hey, man, it's mostly Americans who repeatedly call Linux "anti-American" so don't blame anyone but yourself.
With regard to colonialism: the US is the largest practitioner of colonialism in history; the breath of its economic conquests stretching across the face of the earth. What do you think all the protests are about? That Wal-Mart's prices aren't low enough? Why do you think the Islamists are so upset? Do you really buy Bush's "they hate democracy" propaganda?
The only reason withdrawal of American carriers would lead to instability is because of the power vacuum their departure would leave -- a power vacuum which could then (and should have always been) filled by countries who actually have a direct, regional interest in those waters.
But Opteron? Reminds me of Optimus Prime from Transformers.
I think Megatron would have been a cooler name.
I used a Voodoo3 3000 for several years under Linux with a middling K6 CPU and did not experience any slowdown -- opaque window moves were rapid and there were no slowness artifacts like window trails or visible redraws -- it was every bit as fast as Windows. I played 3D accelerated games (Myth II, Quake II) with no problems -- again, every bit as fast as the Windows versions.
What distribution are you using? And are you sure it hasn't configured your card using the VESA framebuffer mode, instead of the tdfx driver module, which is what it should be using?
The trails you see have very little to do with your CPU and everything to do with your graphics accelerator. If you're seeing artifacts or slowness on a 266MHz (or even 66MHz) machine, your accelerator chip is either lacking proper accelerated drivers or is misconfigured.