While that was true for Palm OS 4.0 and earlier, as of version 5.0 Palm OS has been running its own kernel.
The real threading issue in 5.X and later has to do with the memory management and shared library design in 5.x. The memory management model does not support a large number of independent threads, and access to native ARM was not seen as a high priority / fraught with danger. Interference with the 68k emulation layer was a big concern. 68k code all runs in a single ARM thread and coordinating between this thread and the rest of the system gets a bit tricky at times, particularly as the 68k code thinks it's the only thing running on the machine.
6.X does provide a more robust and usable threading model so that's really the place to be looking for multi-threaded operations.
Keep in mind too, 5.0 was originally intended as a transitional OS between 4.0 and 6.0. The yardstick was that 5.0 should look and feel like 4.0 except that it was running on an ARM processor instead of a DragonBall.
Cheers, Bruce Thompson late of PalmSource Strategic Partner Engineering
I'm an ex-Newton employee who worked for three years in the DTS group. No, I'm not the one who coined "Dr. Llama" I just couldn't resist keeping the name alive one way or another.
In my opinion, the single biggest reason why Apple hasn't done anything significant in the handheld space is this: Steve doesn't get it.
Shortly after Newton was pulled back into Apple we had an All-Hands Meeting with Steve. During this meeting Steve was downright gushing in his praise of the eMate. He thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It would change the world.
Okay, I happen to think the eMate was a tremendous product as well, but what he failed to recognize was that handheld computing is much more compelling and also the degree that eMate was disliked within the Newton group.
It is a shame, but most of us within Newton, Inc. just didn't get the eMate either. There was a lot of resistance to the product (it's not a handheld damnit!), but the fact is that we would have sold a ton of them in the education market giving us the flexibility to really pursue the handheld space and maybe give Palm a run for its money.
Oh well. Unless someone has been able to really get into Steve's face and essentially beat it over his head that handheld computing is also "insanely great" he's just not going to get it. Steve is nothing if not stubborn.
I'm in South San Francisco. We had a nice smooth roller here. It built and faded very smoothly and had a nice rolling motion. Got the fish tank sloshing a bit.
We had one a couple of years ago that was a single hard jerk. The epicenter was up around Napa. What I really remember about that one is that I heard it coming a second or so before it hit. Ain't nature a marvelous thing?
I am on Sprint Broadband and use VPN daily. Sprint does forbid the use of PPTP (i.e. MS's broken form of VPN) explicitly. The reason is that the PPTP protocol does nasty things to their bandwidth sharing mechanisms. IPSec is just fine with them.
By the same token they officially disallow servers, etc. etc., but as long as your traffic levels do not negatively impact others on your repeater then they are happy to look the other way.
It was in "A Stranger In A Strange Land" where he described the waterbed. I highly recommend the unabridged version which RAH's wife released following his death.
The description in the book was sufficient to be used as prior art to deny a patent application years later.
I live in the Silicon Valley area. This has been in the news for the last couple of days, going from a "Stage 1 Power Emergency" to a "Stage 2".
An interesting side note is that the California Public Utilities Commision is investigating why approx. 25 percent of the power generation capacity in California is off-line. There is speculation that Pacific Gas and Electric is attempting to justify their request for a significant rate increase on the basis that power capacity in the state is inadequate and they need to increase rates to afford buying power on the wholesale market.
At the same time though there is significant Not-In-My-Backyard going on. A proposal to build a new plant just south of San Jose has been bogged down and may not get off the ground.
When will everyone figure out that in order to keep having affordable power new generation facilities need to be built?
James P. Hogan wrote an essay a few years ago called "Know Nukes" where he discusses why well-built nuclear generation is not only more efficient but in fact far safer than building any other form of generator. I just hope we figure it out before we discover that we can't maintain the current status quo. Of course whether the US nuclear power industry can build a "safe, well-built" generation plant is a whole 'nother question. (CANDU! CANDU!)
FYI: For the record, I'm not affiliated in any way shape or form with anyone in the power generation business.
I went to University at the University of Calgary and worked for a time at ACTC, both names familiar to Multicians. Multics was in many ways decades before its time. Even though you had to program in PL/1, the sheer elegance of the system was a wonder to behold.
Hopefully the legacy found in Unix and to a larger degree in Domain/OS (anyone else remember Apollo?) will live on.
Fine, then go ahead and do that. The standards _do_ exist and _are_ becoming widely supported.
First off there is the concept of a MIME encoded attachment containing the meeting information. Every email client I'm aware of supports MIME encodings. Second there is vCalendar which is a standard for ASCII encoding of appointment information. The funny part is that the standard was defined by (or possibly for) the Internet Mail Consortium of which Microsoft is a member!
So here's yet again an example of Microsoft joining a standards body then refusing to adopt/comply with the standards espoused by that body! And people actually wonder why Microsoft is despised so?
There is no impediment to designing, building and selling a turntable right now. Whether they are currently available to the general public is entirely beside the point (and indeed, there are still turntables being produced for the audiophile market). The DMCA specifically DOES criminalize designing, building and selling a DVD player that can play CSS encrypted DVDs.
Without realizing it you've just made the entire point! That's why this case is so important! Because the MPAA through the DMCA seeks to criminalize this very thing!
Slashdot Mirror
While that was true for Palm OS 4.0 and earlier, as of version 5.0 Palm OS has been running its own kernel.
The real threading issue in 5.X and later has to do with the memory management and shared library design in 5.x. The memory management model does not support a large number of independent threads, and access to native ARM was not seen as a high priority / fraught with danger. Interference with the 68k emulation layer was a big concern. 68k code all runs in a single ARM thread and coordinating between this thread and the rest of the system gets a bit tricky at times, particularly as the 68k code thinks it's the only thing running on the machine.
6.X does provide a more robust and usable threading model so that's really the place to be looking for multi-threaded operations.
Keep in mind too, 5.0 was originally intended as a transitional OS between 4.0 and 6.0. The yardstick was that 5.0 should look and feel like 4.0 except that it was running on an ARM processor instead of a DragonBall.
Cheers,
Bruce Thompson
late of PalmSource Strategic Partner Engineering
Um, that's just it, they did.
And lost.
There can be no appeal from an USSC ruling.
Ok, this one I'll reply to...
I'm an ex-Newton employee who worked for three years in the DTS group. No, I'm not the one who coined "Dr. Llama" I just couldn't resist keeping the name alive one way or another.
In my opinion, the single biggest reason why Apple hasn't done anything significant in the handheld space is this: Steve doesn't get it.
Shortly after Newton was pulled back into Apple we had an All-Hands Meeting with Steve. During this meeting Steve was downright gushing in his praise of the eMate. He thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It would change the world.
Okay, I happen to think the eMate was a tremendous product as well, but what he failed to recognize was that handheld computing is much more compelling and also the degree that eMate was disliked within the Newton group.
It is a shame, but most of us within Newton, Inc. just didn't get the eMate either. There was a lot of resistance to the product (it's not a handheld damnit!), but the fact is that we would have sold a ton of them in the education market giving us the flexibility to really pursue the handheld space and maybe give Palm a run for its money.
Oh well. Unless someone has been able to really get into Steve's face and essentially beat it over his head that handheld computing is also "insanely great" he's just not going to get it. Steve is nothing if not stubborn.
I'm in South San Francisco. We had a nice smooth roller here. It built and faded very smoothly and had a nice rolling motion. Got the fish tank sloshing a bit.
We had one a couple of years ago that was a single hard jerk. The epicenter was up around Napa. What I really remember about that one is that I heard it coming a second or so before it hit. Ain't nature a marvelous thing?
This is worth emphasizing!
I am on Sprint Broadband and use VPN daily. Sprint does forbid the use of PPTP (i.e. MS's broken form of VPN) explicitly. The reason is that the PPTP protocol does nasty things to their bandwidth sharing mechanisms. IPSec is just fine with them.
By the same token they officially disallow servers, etc. etc., but as long as your traffic levels do not negatively impact others on your repeater then they are happy to look the other way.
--
.sig pending
It was in "A Stranger In A Strange Land" where he described the waterbed. I highly recommend the unabridged version which RAH's wife released following his death.
The description in the book was sufficient to be used as prior art to deny a patent application years later.
The problem is that these same "Christians" object to the Narnia tales for exactly the same reasoning!
Truly ironic since the whole series is essentially an allegory for the Bible...
Gawd, I meant "Turing Award" of course...
This of course was the topic of Dennis Ritchie's Turning Award lecture a number of years ago.....
An interesting side note is that the California Public Utilities Commision is investigating why approx. 25 percent of the power generation capacity in California is off-line. There is speculation that Pacific Gas and Electric is attempting to justify their request for a significant rate increase on the basis that power capacity in the state is inadequate and they need to increase rates to afford buying power on the wholesale market.
At the same time though there is significant Not-In-My-Backyard going on. A proposal to build a new plant just south of San Jose has been bogged down and may not get off the ground.
When will everyone figure out that in order to keep having affordable power new generation facilities need to be built?
James P. Hogan wrote an essay a few years ago called "Know Nukes" where he discusses why well-built nuclear generation is not only more efficient but in fact far safer than building any other form of generator. I just hope we figure it out before we discover that we can't maintain the current status quo. Of course whether the US nuclear power industry can build a "safe, well-built" generation plant is a whole 'nother question. (CANDU! CANDU!)
FYI: For the record, I'm not affiliated in any way shape or form with anyone in the power generation business.
Hopefully the legacy found in Unix and to a larger degree in Domain/OS (anyone else remember Apollo?) will live on.
Fine, then go ahead and do that. The standards _do_ exist and _are_ becoming widely supported.
First off there is the concept of a MIME encoded attachment containing the meeting information. Every email client I'm aware of supports MIME encodings. Second there is vCalendar which is a standard for ASCII encoding of appointment information. The funny part is that the standard was defined by (or possibly for) the Internet Mail Consortium of which Microsoft is a member!
So here's yet again an example of Microsoft joining a standards body then refusing to adopt/comply with the standards espoused by that body! And people actually wonder why Microsoft is despised so?
We haven't heard any claims yet that there are patent issues with the software, only the hardware indicates a patent may be pending.
To my mind then the only possible patent issue would surround creating copies of the hardware, not the software!
Cheers
Without realizing it you've just made the entire point! That's why this case is so important! Because the MPAA through the DMCA seeks to criminalize this very thing!