This is really just the first step towards an iNewton.. It's already got some Ram, a CPU, all the storage you could want..
NOW, make the screen a bit bigger and touch-sensitive, add either PalmOS or a new NewtonOS, and you've got one heck of a PDA... Slightly bigger than than the slimmest, but it seems to still be a good size, and access to 5GB (or more) of storage..
The author states that he tried 6.5*100 (650Mhz CPU 100 Mhz bus), but it was unstable.
I would therefore venture to assume that 7.5*100 wouldn't work either.
Of course, that was his CPU. Someone else posted that 600/100 didn't work for them, someone else might find that perhaps 7.5*10 does work for them, but that is somewhat of a stretch. Of course, the guy who didn't get 6.5*10 working could have had problems elsewhere with the system bus @100MHz
I don't think that would be feasable with the current product. There are lots of things that rely on the scriptable nature of the UI. Even if it were possible, there are thousands of more important things to be working on as opposed to something so completely destabilizing, and totally unnecessry.
If someone really wanted to make an Aqua UI for mozilla that Apple couldn't complain about, they might be able to make a skin which dynamically (perhaps at startup, or something) generated the Aqua UI element images, made them into bitmaps, and used those for the skin.
That way, there would be no copyright violation, as the copyrighted Aqua UI elements would never be copied.
Wouldn't improve the experience any, but it would make such a thing possible.
Someone could also make a browser which embedded gecko, with an Aqua UI, (like galeon, etc), which might actually be a good idea for a lightweight browser.
That's all it is. Microsoft has simply repurposed their time-tested strategy for making competitive technologies "go away".
In this case, they are purposely making this farcical attempt to join the open-source comminity, when their only intent is to confuse the masses who are first starting to learn what open-source is all about.
The masses will be coerced into thinking that Microsoft _is_ open source after all, and then wonder what all the hoopla is about.
The darwin streaming server is a free, open source, standards compliant RTP/RTSP server. You can use it with the QuickTime players (free as in beer, but not as in speech), or any other RTP/RTSP clients. The pieces necessary to make free RTP and RTSP clients are all there, we just need to put them together to make a useful free player.
The pieces would be a usable RTP stack (see vic/vat, rat, or other h.323 programs), which include useful codecs, and then some RTSP and GUI glue to put them together.
Put something like that together, use it with the Darwin Streaming Server, and you end up with a first-class streaming media solution which is free (as in speech and beer) from end-to-end.
It's also possible to put together a player with the JMF classes in Java. Then, it becomes accessable to any java-enabled browser, with no plugins or software downloads.
The highest quality codecs are still a difficult issue, but usable unencumbered codecs are out there, and if the community puts this kind of infrastructure together, the codecs will come (either from, eg. the Ogg Vorbis group, or even commercial entities wanting to get their technology into this). I wouldn't be surprised if IBM had something like this up their sleeve they might be willing to donate to such a cause.
As a small contributor and regular user of the gimp-print printer drivers, I have to say you _can_ get excellent photo quality output out of commodity inkjets from Linux.
gimp-print integrates not only with The Gimp, but also with ghostscript and CUPS, so you can use it for everyday printing.
It has support for Epson, HP, Lexmark, Canon and other printers.
I have an Epson Stylus Photo 870, and it works great with this reasonably priced model.
There have been several posts about HorizonLive so far in this thread, and I'd just like to say a few things about Distance Learning and HorizonLive.
First of all, the subject of one of these posts, "distance learning is hard", is a good start for a discussion. There are so many different ways to accomplish "distance learning", and these all vary in difficulty.
There are several ways that people look at this topic in a narrow way. Some people expect to replace all other means of learning with internet-based distance learning. That's just unreasonable. For certain applications, I don't think there's any combination of technology that's going to be able to compete with a good old fashioned classroom. For others, there are easier ways to distribute knowledge, like books or other asynchronous means of communication.
That said, when you decide that what you want to do is enable people in diverse locations to be able to share a live, interactive learning experience, you have a lot of compromises to make. Most of these comprimises rest upon the requirements you put on the class participants. If you require them all to have un-firewalled internet access, at very high speeds, with only a particular type of computing platform and peripherals, you can build a nice, gee-whiz learning environment. However, the barrier for students to use the software will be very high, and that limits the utility of the software.
I think that HorizonLive has made choices which a lot of slashdotters will find they may have made themselves. Here's why:
We're people like you: We advocate open-source software, and open systems. While the HorizonLive product itself is not (currently) open source, we use open-source software to build and run it, and we try to contribute back to the community.
We try to support as many platforms as possible. I think that everyone here who develops web applications (or even web sites) knows how hard it is to deal with all the different (buggy) browsers out there, we do our best to work with any browser that supports Java and Javascript (i.e. either 3.0+ browser -- and we're working out the kinks with Mozilla also).
We made the decision early on to use Real for our media delivery, because they were the best compromise possible. If you look at a previous article from a few days ago, you'll see the situation hasn't gotten much better recently. However, we have alternative media plans coming soon.
In short, we try to make a compelling learning environment accessable to as many people as possible, with the lease amout of fuss possible. The goals are somewhat contradictory, and elusive, but we get closer all the time.
We certainly are not the right solution for everything. Any package that tried to be that would certainly be doomed to failure. However, I think we are a great choice for many applications.
If you're looking for a distance learning solution, I'd say that you ought to take a few minutes and check out our website, where you can find additional information about us. You can even participate in a live demo session, or view archives of actual HorizonLive classes.
To be honest, I have just one big problem with Apple's Open-source policy... They have this quicktime standard, which is being embraced by everyone, but I think it would explode within the Linux and Free software community if they would release source to a quicktime client.
Even if they would release a couple of unix QT clients, it would really make my day.
If they have it running under MacOSX, std MacOS, and windows, I would imagine it wouldn't be too terribly hard to make other unix ports.
As far as open-sourcing the whole thing -- there may be code in there (i.e. the particular codecs) that they can't open up due to copyrights, and/or perhaps couldn't truly be free because of patents, but if they at least gave us the unencumbered parts, perhaps arrangements could be made, a-la xanim, to incorporate binary "plugins" for the encumbered parts.
> 1. Is InterBase 5.6 the last version that InterBase will support with there > techincal support group or will you be putting out "Certified builds" of > the future open source version and supporting thoose as well? --I > understand that the support cost must cover the enginners instead of sales.
I doubt that the "certified builds" thing will happen. 5.6 will most likely continue to be sold and supported as a certified Interbase version but I don't think anything past 5.6 will.
> 2. What type of licencing will be used for the source?
Don't know that yet.
> 3. Is the product being Open Source... Where the source is sold with the > product or > is the source going to be publically available?
I would guess that the software would be publicly available. I think they will work out the details of this open sourcing while we wait for 6.0 to be finished.
> 4. Besides support will there be any work on the InterBase front in the > future. And if so what should we expect.
Doubtful that any work will happen (beyond support of 5.6) after 6.0 is released.
-- Kind Regards,
Steve Peters Inprise/Borland Developer Support =========== bobitt =============
I think that lots of people are really jumping to conclusions here. First of all, unless anyone here has seen the code, or has an informed understanding of it, I think that they shouldn't be commenting on it's supposed quality.
Secondly, I think the K&R bit is flamebait. What's wrong with K&R C? Really, the differences between K&R and ansi are not very important. It was not too long ago that most open-source programs were _all_ written with K&R C for portability. By the time I was involved, it was mostly because SunOS came with a K&R C compiler. Looking at gcc, I still see that it contains lots of K&R code.
What would be much better is a MD-MP3 player. Sony's MD format is much more convienient for a portable player, and it's capacity get close to that of CD.
What this basically would be is the same as the current crop of MD players, except trashing the proprietary encoding algorithm and formats for MP3. They could be built to the same size, which is pretty small, and have the convenience of MP3 formats (i.e. save/format/etc from your computer).
Doing the same thing with CD or CD-R would be OK, but they are 3x the size. A MD-MP3 player would be something you keep in your pocket.
I have to agree with Kim (I think that's Kim who wrote this).
I've done the same thing, and I have to say it is a sweet system. I dunno if I'd use $2300 of my own cash for it (my company paid for it), but I was looking for something simple to do some work on the road, and I just know It would be useless to do anything without a keyboard (no Palms), and I barfed at the thought of the WinCE machines, and the Psions looked like a poorly supported environment.
So, I caught one of these things at the local CompUSA, and said Wow. Went home to look at the specs more carefully, then went back to pick it up.
The machine itself is gorgeous, and linux runs very well on it (why not? 266MMX, 64MB/4.3GB, great display, etc). And the ergonomics are a fair comprimise considering it's size.
Now, just gotta figure out how to get that camera up under linux:)
Slashdot Mirror
This is really just the first step towards an iNewton.. It's already got some Ram, a CPU, all the storage you could want..
NOW, make the screen a bit bigger and touch-sensitive, add either PalmOS or a new NewtonOS, and you've got one heck of a PDA... Slightly bigger than than the slimmest, but it seems to still be a good size, and access to 5GB (or more) of storage..
This is a QuickTime AUDIO file. There is no Sorenson audio codec, therefore it's not likely to be encoded with Sorenson.
Again, read the article.
The author states that he tried 6.5*100 (650Mhz CPU 100 Mhz bus), but it was unstable.
I would therefore venture to assume that 7.5*100 wouldn't work either.
Of course, that was his CPU. Someone else posted that 600/100 didn't work for them, someone else might find that perhaps 7.5*10 does work for them, but that is somewhat of a stretch. Of course, the guy who didn't get 6.5*10 working could have had problems elsewhere with the system bus @100MHz
I don't think that would be feasable with the current product. There are lots of things that rely on the scriptable nature of the UI. Even if it were possible, there are thousands of more important things to be working on as opposed to something so completely destabilizing, and totally unnecessry.
If someone really wanted to make an Aqua UI for mozilla that Apple couldn't complain about, they might be able to make a skin which dynamically (perhaps at startup, or something) generated the Aqua UI element images, made them into bitmaps, and used those for the skin.
That way, there would be no copyright violation, as the copyrighted Aqua UI elements would never be copied.
Wouldn't improve the experience any, but it would make such a thing possible.
Someone could also make a browser which embedded gecko, with an Aqua UI, (like galeon, etc), which might actually be a good idea for a lightweight browser.
That's all it is. Microsoft has simply repurposed their time-tested strategy for making competitive technologies "go away".
In this case, they are purposely making this farcical attempt to join the open-source comminity, when their only intent is to confuse the masses who are first starting to learn what open-source is all about.
The masses will be coerced into thinking that Microsoft _is_ open source after all, and then wonder what all the hoopla is about.
Click here for NextStep version 4.. there's many browsers available.
The darwin streaming server is a free, open source, standards compliant RTP/RTSP server. You can use it with the QuickTime players (free as in beer, but not as in speech), or any other RTP/RTSP clients. The pieces necessary to make free RTP and RTSP clients are all there, we just need to put them together to make a useful free player.
The pieces would be a usable RTP stack (see vic/vat, rat, or other h.323 programs), which include useful codecs, and then some RTSP and GUI glue to put them together.
Put something like that together, use it with the Darwin Streaming Server, and you end up with a first-class streaming media solution which is free (as in speech and beer) from end-to-end.
It's also possible to put together a player with the JMF classes in Java. Then, it becomes accessable to any java-enabled browser, with no plugins or software downloads.
The highest quality codecs are still a difficult issue, but usable unencumbered codecs are out there, and if the community puts this kind of infrastructure together, the codecs will come (either from, eg. the Ogg Vorbis group, or even commercial entities wanting to get their technology into this). I wouldn't be surprised if IBM had something like this up their sleeve they might be willing to donate to such a cause.
As a small contributor and regular user of the gimp-print printer drivers, I have to say you _can_ get excellent photo quality output out of commodity inkjets from Linux.
gimp-print integrates not only with The Gimp, but also with ghostscript and CUPS, so you can use it for everyday printing.
It has support for Epson, HP, Lexmark, Canon and other printers.
I have an Epson Stylus Photo 870, and it works great with this reasonably priced model.
See our website for more info.
There have been several posts about HorizonLive so far in this thread, and I'd just like to say a few things about Distance Learning and HorizonLive.
First of all, the subject of one of these posts, "distance learning is hard", is a good start for a discussion. There are so many different ways to accomplish "distance learning", and these all vary in difficulty.
There are several ways that people look at this topic in a narrow way. Some people expect to replace all other means of learning with internet-based distance learning. That's just unreasonable. For certain applications, I don't think there's any combination of technology that's going to be able to compete with a good old fashioned classroom. For others, there are easier ways to distribute knowledge, like books or other asynchronous means of communication.
That said, when you decide that what you want to do is enable people in diverse locations to be able to share a live, interactive learning experience, you have a lot of compromises to make. Most of these comprimises rest upon the requirements you put on the class participants. If you require them all to have un-firewalled internet access, at very high speeds, with only a particular type of computing platform and peripherals, you can build a nice, gee-whiz learning environment. However, the barrier for students to use the software will be very high, and that limits the utility of the software.
I think that HorizonLive has made choices which a lot of slashdotters will find they may have made themselves. Here's why:
In short, we try to make a compelling learning environment accessable to as many people as possible, with the lease amout of fuss possible. The goals are somewhat contradictory, and elusive, but we get closer all the time.
We certainly are not the right solution for everything. Any package that tried to be that would certainly be doomed to failure. However, I think we are a great choice for many applications.
If you're looking for a distance learning solution, I'd say that you ought to take a few minutes and check out our website, where you can find additional information about us. You can even participate in a live demo session, or view archives of actual HorizonLive classes.
-SteveK
(linux user since 0.99.12k).
To be honest, I have just one big problem with Apple's Open-source policy... They have this quicktime standard, which is being embraced by everyone, but I think it would explode within the Linux and Free software community if they would release source to a quicktime client.
Even if they would release a couple of unix QT clients, it would really make my day.
If they have it running under MacOSX, std MacOS, and windows, I would imagine it wouldn't be too terribly hard to make other unix ports.
As far as open-sourcing the whole thing -- there may be code in there (i.e. the particular codecs) that they can't open up due to copyrights, and/or perhaps couldn't truly be free because of patents, but if they at least gave us the unencumbered parts, perhaps arrangements could be made, a-la xanim, to incorporate binary "plugins" for the encumbered parts.
This is what I've just seen posted to the interbase.public.non-technical newsgroup at nnrp:forums.inprise.com:
======== bobitt ===========
Subject: Re: Interbase Opensource Details?
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2000 09:13:47 -0800
From: "Steve Peters (Inprise/Borland)"
Organization: Borland
Newsgroups: interbase.public.non-technical
References: 1
Hi Robert,
My responses are below...
Robert Love wrote:
> 1. Is InterBase 5.6 the last version that InterBase will support with there
> techincal support group or will you be putting out "Certified builds" of
> the future open source version and supporting thoose as well? --I
> understand that the support cost must cover the enginners instead of sales.
I doubt that the "certified builds" thing will happen. 5.6 will most
likely continue to be sold and supported as a certified Interbase
version but I don't think anything past 5.6 will.
> 2. What type of licencing will be used for the source?
Don't know that yet.
> 3. Is the product being Open Source... Where the source is sold with the
> product or
> is the source going to be publically available?
I would guess that the software would be publicly available. I think
they will work out the details of this open sourcing while we wait for
6.0 to be finished.
> 4. Besides support will there be any work on the InterBase front in the
> future. And if so what should we expect.
Doubtful that any work will happen (beyond support of 5.6) after
6.0 is released.
--
Kind Regards,
Steve Peters
Inprise/Borland Developer Support
=========== bobitt =============
I think that lots of people are really jumping to conclusions here. First of all, unless anyone here has seen the code, or has an informed understanding of it, I think that they shouldn't be commenting on it's supposed quality.
Secondly, I think the K&R bit is flamebait. What's wrong with K&R C? Really, the differences between K&R and ansi are not very important. It was not too long ago that most open-source programs were _all_ written with K&R C for portability. By the time I was involved, it was mostly because SunOS came with a K&R C compiler. Looking at gcc, I still see that it contains lots of K&R code.
What would be much better is a MD-MP3 player. Sony's MD format is much more convienient for a portable player, and it's capacity get close to that of CD.
What this basically would be is the same as the current crop of MD players, except trashing the proprietary encoding algorithm and formats for MP3. They could be built to the same size, which is pretty small, and have the convenience of MP3 formats (i.e. save/format/etc from your computer).
Doing the same thing with CD or CD-R would be OK, but they are 3x the size. A MD-MP3 player would be something you keep in your pocket.
I have to agree with Kim (I think that's Kim who wrote this).
:)
I've done the same thing, and I have to say it is a sweet system. I dunno if I'd use $2300 of my own cash for it (my company paid for it), but I was looking for something simple to do some work on the road, and I just know It would be useless to do anything without a keyboard (no Palms), and I barfed at the thought of the WinCE machines, and the Psions looked like a poorly supported environment.
So, I caught one of these things at the local CompUSA, and said Wow. Went home to look at the specs more carefully, then went back to pick it up.
The machine itself is gorgeous, and linux runs very well on it (why not? 266MMX, 64MB/4.3GB, great display, etc). And the ergonomics are a fair comprimise considering it's size.
Now, just gotta figure out how to get that camera up under linux
-SteveK