>Anyway I don't see why being able to run Linux on a PDA will create a huge overwhelming amount of 'cool' software
If Palm could get the wealth of freeware and shareware it did, despite its proprietary nature and lack of programming solutions (PocketC? Yuck!) then just think what a Linux PDA could get. Most importantly, a Linux PDA will have the support of the Open Source community. It'll automatically have behind it half of the freeware programmers on the internet. It can't fail to beat out the competition in 3rd party development.
How Linux could fail to dominate as a handheld platform would be beyond me. WinCE is buggy, requires ridiculous overhead and tries too hard to be Win9x (as if that's anything to aspire to) and Palm...well...PalmOS, though it has fabulous third party support, is living in the 80s, as far as technology goes. The Palm Colour does nothing to improve functionality and the Palm as a wireless platform is being murdered by the Blackberry which beats Palm at its own "convenience" and "simplicity" game.
Third party programmers showed their stuff on the proprietary, restrictive Palm platform, just watch what they'll do under handheld Linux.
One question, however, is whether the all-important corporate market will buy into a Linux handheld device, or be scared away by its open-endedness.
I was going to respond to this article, but the Subversive-Activities-Detector-Device implanted in my neck went off when I tried to write the words "corporate accountability".
The really scary thing about this case has nothing to do with any conceivable illegality to these patent claims. What really worries me is that they have an absolutely legitimate claim, if what they say is true. I think we all agree that we need patent laws of some sort. If RAMBUS implemented these technologies first, they're rightfully theirs.
The fact that these technologies could give them the patent to SDRAM isn't, in and of itself, at least relatively, worrisome. I think the idea that Microsoft owns the rights to Winblows has far more wide-ranging effects and is far more troubling than the possibility of a company owning rights to SDRAM.
If you think that IT patents are crazy, look at some of the non-IT patents that have had half the world paying royalties, over the years. For years anyone using plexiglass (thousands of engineers and architects around the world) had to pay the fellow who patented it. The paper clip was patented in 1899. Everyone knows the telephone was patented. Motorola patented the cell phone, for that matter. If the idea of SDRAM's rights being owned is scary, it's because we should be scared of the idea of patenting, itself, not because of any misuse of patent law by RAMBUS.
Trademark Infringement: Just do it.
Valentines Day gift? Are you suggesting that love for another human being could ever equal the sort of profound, moving grandeur that the love for one's favourite open-source project provokes? That one's emotional connection with a person of like mind could compare to one's VPN connection with a box of like build?
Only Linux truly loves you. Human beings just can't grep all the processes you're going through.
In other anti-liberal alarmist news:
Ban streets! They're used, every day, by child pornographers to seek out underage prostitutes. Even now, as I write this, at least two child prostitutes are being abused via the medium of the public roadway, where they sell their service. Since the new "road" technology was introduced, a couple millennia ago, pedophelia has boomed, adopting the (not particularly informational) "superhighway" as its home. Unless we eliminate all roadways and sidewalks, there'll be no way to stop pedophiles from seeking out new victims. Advocation of free, anonymous access to roads is advocation of pedophelia, itself. Road and Sidewalk licenses will make America a happier, safer society. When the police take your mugshot, finger prints and name every time you walk outside your house, you'll know that your safe from the scourge of pedophelia, that public walkways so readily propagate.
Such a scheme seems to be completely implausible for a number of good reasons:
1) It assumes that ISPs are going to jump on the bandwagon, which they most certainly will not. Being the only ISP in town which doesn't allow customers to download MP3s would be a losing position, indeed. Most ISPs would certainly not be in favour of banning downloads of copyrighted media, especially given that Napster and its kin are the major selling point for many of the high-speed services out there. ISPs market on the basis of such services, they're not going to want to ban them.
2) It also assumes that you can censor given specific "illegal sites". Decentralised networking, anyone? There's no way to censor Gnutella, and the like, regardless, as their isn't a central server to ban.
3) Even were illegal goods to be acquired from specific "sites" with single, fixed IPs, I think the DeCSS fiasco has taught us that, no matter how hard corporations and government work to shoot down sites, there'll be 10 mirrors popping up to replace them within hours.
And, to conclude, on the topic of wacky German Internet censorship:
We won the wars! Let's just make a little addendum to the treaty of Versailles that says we own the Internet and call it a day.
Using P2P network data for advertising is one thing ("I see you have our music. Our new CD is available at..."), but the same technique could very well be used by labels to distribute threats to those possessing their music ("I see you have our music. Get rid of it or we'll sue").
Every time I use Napster from now on I'll live in fear of receiving a message from Dr. Dre, informing me that "he still got love for the streets, but if the streets should fail to cease and decist, forthwith, from trading his intellectual property over Internet file-sharing media, he will be forced to pursue legal action in persuance of reparations, personal ownership of said intellectual property, notwithstanding."
A high speed wireless connection could revolutionise the way we (watch pron) work. To be able to take (Debbie Does Dallas) productivity software and run (warez) corporate databases wherever you can bring an antenna is a service we all need, and we need it now.
So nice to be reminded that his royal highness, Linus, selected his subjects, the Queen and her family, to use his OS. It's good to know that someone of such great stature as Linus was gracious enough to let his lesser rival, the Queen use his system. Maybe he'll knight her, one day.
"That's where I've gone beyond the old form of command lines, and adopted the idea that issuing commands via a few alphabetic keystrokes is one of the best ways of operating a computer."
Then what's wrong with the command line in the first place? It isn't pretty enough? Or could he mean he wants an interface with configurable hotkeys? A programmable keyboard that can launch applications? That'd be a brilliant idea if every keyboard maker out there and dozens of independent programmers hadn't come up with it years ago. Raskin doesn't seem to have anything to offer beyond what's currently provided by command prompts, programmable keyboards and existing freeware hotkey configuration programs.
Screwballicus
How to break up with a geek:
"You just can't grep all the processes that I'm threading right now. It's not you, it's client-side. Goodbye."
Norwich Union:
"We're sorry, sir, but we have to reject you from our insurance plan. Our genetic tests have demonstrated that you possess the following genetic tendencies:
- 99% likelyhood of sitting around all day posting on slashdot, getting RSI, while drinking coffee under the misconception that "caffeine" is a principle food group, thus, getting osteoporosis, demonstrable at an accuracy of nine times out of ten.
- 98% likelyhood of then staying up all NIGHT as well, reading what other people have posted, nine times out of ten.
- 76% likelyhood of drinking self to death in a flury of sobs upon one's Asheron's Call 39th level Bladesmaster getting stuck in the Direlands, and losing his Peerless Atlan sword."
Slashdot Mirror
If Palm could get the wealth of freeware and shareware it did, despite its proprietary nature and lack of programming solutions (PocketC? Yuck!) then just think what a Linux PDA could get. Most importantly, a Linux PDA will have the support of the Open Source community. It'll automatically have behind it half of the freeware programmers on the internet. It can't fail to beat out the competition in 3rd party development.
Third party programmers showed their stuff on the proprietary, restrictive Palm platform, just watch what they'll do under handheld Linux.
One question, however, is whether the all-important corporate market will buy into a Linux handheld device, or be scared away by its open-endedness.
I was going to respond to this article, but the Subversive-Activities-Detector-Device implanted in my neck went off when I tried to write the words "corporate accountability".
The fact that these technologies could give them the patent to SDRAM isn't, in and of itself, at least relatively, worrisome. I think the idea that Microsoft owns the rights to Winblows has far more wide-ranging effects and is far more troubling than the possibility of a company owning rights to SDRAM.
If you think that IT patents are crazy, look at some of the non-IT patents that have had half the world paying royalties, over the years. For years anyone using plexiglass (thousands of engineers and architects around the world) had to pay the fellow who patented it. The paper clip was patented in 1899. Everyone knows the telephone was patented. Motorola patented the cell phone, for that matter. If the idea of SDRAM's rights being owned is scary, it's because we should be scared of the idea of patenting, itself, not because of any misuse of patent law by RAMBUS. Trademark Infringement: Just do it.
Only Linux truly loves you. Human beings just can't grep all the processes you're going through.
In other anti-liberal alarmist news: Ban streets! They're used, every day, by child pornographers to seek out underage prostitutes. Even now, as I write this, at least two child prostitutes are being abused via the medium of the public roadway, where they sell their service. Since the new "road" technology was introduced, a couple millennia ago, pedophelia has boomed, adopting the (not particularly informational) "superhighway" as its home. Unless we eliminate all roadways and sidewalks, there'll be no way to stop pedophiles from seeking out new victims. Advocation of free, anonymous access to roads is advocation of pedophelia, itself. Road and Sidewalk licenses will make America a happier, safer society. When the police take your mugshot, finger prints and name every time you walk outside your house, you'll know that your safe from the scourge of pedophelia, that public walkways so readily propagate.
1) It assumes that ISPs are going to jump on the bandwagon, which they most certainly will not. Being the only ISP in town which doesn't allow customers to download MP3s would be a losing position, indeed. Most ISPs would certainly not be in favour of banning downloads of copyrighted media, especially given that Napster and its kin are the major selling point for many of the high-speed services out there. ISPs market on the basis of such services, they're not going to want to ban them.
2) It also assumes that you can censor given specific "illegal sites". Decentralised networking, anyone? There's no way to censor Gnutella, and the like, regardless, as their isn't a central server to ban.
3) Even were illegal goods to be acquired from specific "sites" with single, fixed IPs, I think the DeCSS fiasco has taught us that, no matter how hard corporations and government work to shoot down sites, there'll be 10 mirrors popping up to replace them within hours. And, to conclude, on the topic of wacky German Internet censorship: We won the wars! Let's just make a little addendum to the treaty of Versailles that says we own the Internet and call it a day.
Every time I use Napster from now on I'll live in fear of receiving a message from Dr. Dre, informing me that "he still got love for the streets, but if the streets should fail to cease and decist, forthwith, from trading his intellectual property over Internet file-sharing media, he will be forced to pursue legal action in persuance of reparations, personal ownership of said intellectual property, notwithstanding."
A high speed wireless connection could revolutionise the way we (watch pron) work. To be able to take (Debbie Does Dallas) productivity software and run (warez) corporate databases wherever you can bring an antenna is a service we all need, and we need it now.
So nice to be reminded that his royal highness, Linus, selected his subjects, the Queen and her family, to use his OS. It's good to know that someone of such great stature as Linus was gracious enough to let his lesser rival, the Queen use his system. Maybe he'll knight her, one day.
My favourite:
<BEER>happiness</BEER>
"That's where I've gone beyond the old form of command lines, and adopted the idea that issuing commands via a few alphabetic keystrokes is one of the best ways of operating a computer."
Then what's wrong with the command line in the first place? It isn't pretty enough? Or could he mean he wants an interface with configurable hotkeys? A programmable keyboard that can launch applications? That'd be a brilliant idea if every keyboard maker out there and dozens of independent programmers hadn't come up with it years ago. Raskin doesn't seem to have anything to offer beyond what's currently provided by command prompts, programmable keyboards and existing freeware hotkey configuration programs.
Screwballicus
How to break up with a geek: "You just can't grep all the processes that I'm threading right now. It's not you, it's client-side. Goodbye."
Norwich Union: "We're sorry, sir, but we have to reject you from our insurance plan. Our genetic tests have demonstrated that you possess the following genetic tendencies: - 99% likelyhood of sitting around all day posting on slashdot, getting RSI, while drinking coffee under the misconception that "caffeine" is a principle food group, thus, getting osteoporosis, demonstrable at an accuracy of nine times out of ten. - 98% likelyhood of then staying up all NIGHT as well, reading what other people have posted, nine times out of ten. - 76% likelyhood of drinking self to death in a flury of sobs upon one's Asheron's Call 39th level Bladesmaster getting stuck in the Direlands, and losing his Peerless Atlan sword."