What the iPod does is mirror the macintosh it's connected to. What that means is that if it's got the mp3s from one mac, they'll get overridden with the mp3s from the next mac you sync with.
However, if you use the iPod as a firewire disk, then you can copy files back & forth (including mp3s that you can play) with glee. They just wanted the RIAA off of their back, so now you have to (gasp) click and drag your files in order to copy them.. It's called "manually copying" the files...
The site got/.'d halfway through my page download! I got the answer for question #6 (which just referred to the previous one), and then an unanswered #7... just to tease me!
Actually, multiple external busses makes perfect sense. One for high speed mass transfer of data, and another for low latency low bandwidth data. Firewire mice make no sense, and neither do USB disk drives (when you actually care about performance...). Bus & protocol design requires tradeoffs - cost vs performance, latency vs bandwidth, etc.
Besides, how many busses does the PC have? Serial, PS/2, USB, Parallel, etc. Two ain't too bad:-)
Actually, one of the best features of SVG is that it's XML. You can generate some XML data from a database, transform it into SVG (possibly with also with a template) via XSLT, and then render it into a graphic file (like JPEG or PNG with Batik).
And support is pretty good -- XML libraries are bountiful, and reading/writing SVG won't be too painful (now knowing what to do with that data once you've read it is another story....).
But selling a device that can unlock any car is available on the web! www.lock-picks.com. Its usage in a theft is illegal, tis all. That's fine by me, but this is utterly ridiculous.
actually, sun sells 'information appliances'.. X terminals, for about $600 apiece. You can get them in bundles with a sun enterprise. This morning had a set of 25 terminals + a sun enterprise 250 for $25k.
The reason is maintanence. These machines don't require any software maintanence, because they don't have copies of any important software on them. All they've got is an X server, which doesn't change, and an OS, which doesn't change.
Applications are on a central server, with a SINGLE COPY, which is also easy to administer.
If you're having problems with bad hardware, then go ahead & buy out a large set of bottom-end dells for $600 a piece, just for the support if it makes you feel better. But then explain to your boss how you just spent $500 per unit for support for COMMODITY HARDWARE.
As for users, they have a job and it isn't to play around with their computers. The machine is a tool, and if it does what they need (word processing, spreadsheets, etc), then that's all there is to it. Besides, now you have centralized backups for all users. Imagine how much they'll appreciate that. AND it doesn't crash on them.
And on the ease of use side, how much user training does it take for the user to hit the 'k' button instead of the 'start' button? Hell one of the biggest criticisms of KDE is that it's too windows-like. Structure the menu any way you like (hell change the 'k' icon to say 'start' if you like -- open source lets you do that).
If it _REALLY_ bugs you to buy old hardware, then pick up some sun network computers. They're supported, easy to maintain (hardware wise), and have a really big name behind them. The machines will be so different that the users won't compare them to their PCs the same way.
I'm a big linux fan & all, but honestly, OS X's only drawback right now is speed, and that's getting fixed up in next month's release. Run all the X apps you want (thanks to the darwin ports collection!), and all the mac apps you want, side by side. I mean, assuming 10.1 does a decent job at speed (let's say easily usable but not 1:1 with LinuxPPC), what reasons would one have to stick with linuxppc? (not trolling, honestly curious).
Truth be known, Linus didn't name the OS after himself. His original idea (if I remember correctly), was HackNix (or some variant of this name). But, the FTP admin who put up his original source code put it into a directory called "Linux."
The I/O methods have to change. Input should be done with voice commmands, and output done via a retinal scanning display. I think that eventually, PDAs can be built into glasses & later on, contact lenses.
Oh, and eventually, I'd like a network connection that doesn't suck:-)
Develop commercial software and pay money for Kylix
Sounds much like how QT is licensed. A good idea in my book and a great way to give back to the open source community. It's a great win-win scenario: they get customers for their commercial software and now we have another way to make great open source software.
I'm sure somebody will complain that they require the GPL instead of a BSD or Apache style license, but since one may also purchase Kylix, I think developer that most needs are met.
And please, no trolling about "All software should be free and we should just pay for support." Like everything else in life, that works great for some things, but not everything. When rationality re-enters your perverse monochromatic view of the software business, gimme a call.
Some fair complaints there. Let me elaborate.
The CPU power in the newer Palms will probably (I don't have any good insider information) go towards tasks to make it a better organizer. For example, speech to text notetaking. I added Mp3 playing just because it works so well & people will like it. This is in contrast to WinCE's use of its power on a feeble attempt to replace a desktop computer.
This moves us onto the second question, which was about feature count. WinCE's trying to do much more than is appropriate for a handheld machine; things (like word processing) which are honestly better left to a desktop computer. The point I was making about "waaay too overpriced for too little functionality" was in comparison to the desktop machine that WinCE's apparently trying to overtake.
And finally, I have to quote this one directly:
Does Palm have any killer app Pocket PC doesn't have? If it does, why not just run the PalmOS emulator on a Pocket PC? I doubt there is any killer app that CE doesn't have though.
That's just it. The pocketPC is simply overpowered for what's needed from a handheld. Sure you could make a handheld computer that does everything a desktop does, but you'll pay for it in weight, size, battery life, cost, and complexity. The Palm handheld is simple. The core applications that it comes with it don't have complex user interfaces, don't require megabytes of ram (the original palm came with what, 128K?), and don't ask much of the user in order for them to find use for it. They can just pop in whatever phone numbers they want, maybe a name, whatever.
If you're looking for a cool new toy, go WinCE. If you're looking for a useful tool, go Palm. Feature count simply doesn't matter once the features you need are present.
Shouldn't be a problem. Palm has people on staff who continuously help out with the development of POSE; it's an extremely critical development tool for PalmOS.
Palm's biggest advantage has always been their mission plan: be a good handheld organizer. Note that I didn't say 'handheld computer.'
Palm's single greatest asset has been a _WELL_DEFINED_ _PLAN_ and a _TARGET_MARKET_. CE's target market is "Palm's customers," without a second thought about _WHO_ those people are: salespeople, businesspeople, etc... you know, the _ordinary_user_, who doesn't really care that much about running a full web browser in their pocket (hence the philosophical difference between full internet connectivity and web clipping:full unadulterated access at disgustingly low speeds versus an efficient access point for the data most often accessed)... Don't let me go off on how little foresight or design MS actually puts into their products...
I don't see Palm turning their products into the ubergeek-toys that the CE crowd has been putting out: tiny handheld computers that are simply painful to use because they try to replace desktop computers with shitty, overpriced, small screened, keyboardless versions. Palm aims for the general public with a tool that lets you store your data, recall it, and otherwise, just gets out of your damn way.
CE's just turning into another Apple Newton: a handheld computer that's waaay too overpriced for too little functionality; useful only to those.1% of the computer buying population that can't possibly sit down and use a desktop for the majority of their real work.
Palm's probably going to use the new CPU power for things like a prettier GUI, voice recognition, MP3 playing, and perhaps some multimedia. At the end of the day, just improving what it does now: assists you with your life's tasks, not taking them over like CE.
But, let me end my random tirade on WinCE versus PalmOS... I'm afraid that the percentage of people here on/. that seek an ubergeek-toy is disproportionately high.
The sad part is that back in the day, Linux wasn't mainstream enough to be cool; it was more of an OS perversion than an 31EE+Eism it is today. Sadly enough, we've hit mainstream and Linux still isn't very usable. Without either an intelligent, respectable user base nor a product that's blatantly better (for the desktop), there isn't much hope for us.
I'm afraid Linux is stuck in server space.
I'm mostly leaving Linux alone these days in favor of my mac running os x. I can have my unix & use it too.
What's your opinion of Adobe's actions against Sattler for KIllustrator?
One one hand, the name infringement is pretty obvious, and the legal costs are (sorta-kinda) understandable considering Adobe's financial problems. While on the other, going after open source programmers for legal fees for legal services used against them is rather harsh.
Slashdot Mirror
What the iPod does is mirror the macintosh it's connected to. What that means is that if it's got the mp3s from one mac, they'll get overridden with the mp3s from the next mac you sync with.
However, if you use the iPod as a firewire disk, then you can copy files back & forth (including mp3s that you can play) with glee. They just wanted the RIAA off of their back, so now you have to (gasp) click and drag your files in order to copy them.. It's called "manually copying" the files...
Well, that interfered with advertising revenue.
DAMN YOU SLASHDOT!!!!!
AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
Actually, multiple external busses makes perfect sense. One for high speed mass transfer of data, and another for low latency low bandwidth data. Firewire mice make no sense, and neither do USB disk drives (when you actually care about performance...). Bus & protocol design requires tradeoffs - cost vs performance, latency vs bandwidth, etc.
Besides, how many busses does the PC have? Serial, PS/2, USB, Parallel, etc. Two ain't too bad
And support is pretty good -- XML libraries are bountiful, and reading/writing SVG won't be too painful (now knowing what to do with that data once you've read it is another story....).
Pretty cool stuff in my opinion.
Nope, because you end up with code that looks like:
(normal asm code)
jmp 245
(line number info, symbolics, etc)
245: (normal asm code)
Which really thrashes the cache and disrupts the pipeline pretty harshly.
But selling a device that can unlock any car is available on the web! www.lock-picks.com. Its usage in a theft is illegal, tis all. That's fine by me, but this is utterly ridiculous.
Call it what it is, a NOT gate.
actually, sun sells 'information appliances' .. X terminals, for about $600 apiece. You can get them in bundles with a sun enterprise. This morning had a set of 25 terminals + a sun enterprise 250 for $25k.
actually, there's probably a good market for retro CDROM faceplates that look like that...
The reason is maintanence. These machines don't require any software maintanence, because they don't have copies of any important software on them. All they've got is an X server, which doesn't change, and an OS, which doesn't change.
Applications are on a central server, with a SINGLE COPY, which is also easy to administer.
If you're having problems with bad hardware, then go ahead & buy out a large set of bottom-end dells for $600 a piece, just for the support if it makes you feel better. But then explain to your boss how you just spent $500 per unit for support for COMMODITY HARDWARE.
As for users, they have a job and it isn't to play around with their computers. The machine is a tool, and if it does what they need (word processing, spreadsheets, etc), then that's all there is to it. Besides, now you have centralized backups for all users. Imagine how much they'll appreciate that. AND it doesn't crash on them.
And on the ease of use side, how much user training does it take for the user to hit the 'k' button instead of the 'start' button? Hell one of the biggest criticisms of KDE is that it's too windows-like. Structure the menu any way you like (hell change the 'k' icon to say 'start' if you like -- open source lets you do that).
If it _REALLY_ bugs you to buy old hardware, then pick up some sun network computers. They're supported, easy to maintain (hardware wise), and have a really big name behind them. The machines will be so different that the users won't compare them to their PCs the same way.
I'm a big linux fan & all, but honestly, OS X's only drawback right now is speed, and that's getting fixed up in next month's release. Run all the X apps you want (thanks to the darwin ports collection!), and all the mac apps you want, side by side. I mean, assuming 10.1 does a decent job at speed (let's say easily usable but not 1:1 with LinuxPPC), what reasons would one have to stick with linuxppc? (not trolling, honestly curious).
Truth be known, Linus didn't name the OS after himself. His original idea (if I remember correctly), was HackNix (or some variant of this name). But, the FTP admin who put up his original source code put it into a directory called "Linux."
Did anyone see the stock prices? Be's gone down 47% to .25! TWENTY FIVE CENTS A SHARE!! It takes effort to drop your stock price down that far.
So does this mean that we get SMP palms with little LED bargraphs on each side of the display for each CPU?
But, the mousewheel works fine on my mac. What are you talking about? Works fine in Q3A, actually.
Oh, and eventually, I'd like a network connection that doesn't suck :-)
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- Develop GPL'd software and pay nothing for Kylix
- Develop commercial software and pay money for Kylix
Sounds much like how QT is licensed. A good idea in my book and a great way to give back to the open source community. It's a great win-win scenario: they get customers for their commercial software and now we have another way to make great open source software.I'm sure somebody will complain that they require the GPL instead of a BSD or Apache style license, but since one may also purchase Kylix, I think developer that most needs are met.
And please, no trolling about "All software should be free and we should just pay for support." Like everything else in life, that works great for some things, but not everything. When rationality re-enters your perverse monochromatic view of the software business, gimme a call.
--
This moves us onto the second question, which was about feature count. WinCE's trying to do much more than is appropriate for a handheld machine; things (like word processing) which are honestly better left to a desktop computer. The point I was making about "waaay too overpriced for too little functionality" was in comparison to the desktop machine that WinCE's apparently trying to overtake.
And finally, I have to quote this one directly:
That's just it. The pocketPC is simply overpowered for what's needed from a handheld. Sure you could make a handheld computer that does everything a desktop does, but you'll pay for it in weight, size, battery life, cost, and complexity. The Palm handheld is simple. The core applications that it comes with it don't have complex user interfaces, don't require megabytes of ram (the original palm came with what, 128K?), and don't ask much of the user in order for them to find use for it. They can just pop in whatever phone numbers they want, maybe a name, whatever.If you're looking for a cool new toy, go WinCE. If you're looking for a useful tool, go Palm. Feature count simply doesn't matter once the features you need are present.
--
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Palm's single greatest asset has been a _WELL_DEFINED_ _PLAN_ and a _TARGET_MARKET_. CE's target market is "Palm's customers," without a second thought about _WHO_ those people are: salespeople, businesspeople, etc... you know, the _ordinary_user_, who doesn't really care that much about running a full web browser in their pocket (hence the philosophical difference between full internet connectivity and web clipping
I don't see Palm turning their products into the ubergeek-toys that the CE crowd has been putting out: tiny handheld computers that are simply painful to use because they try to replace desktop computers with shitty, overpriced, small screened, keyboardless versions. Palm aims for the general public with a tool that lets you store your data, recall it, and otherwise, just gets out of your damn way.
CE's just turning into another Apple Newton: a handheld computer that's waaay too overpriced for too little functionality; useful only to those
Palm's probably going to use the new CPU power for things like a prettier GUI, voice recognition, MP3 playing, and perhaps some multimedia. At the end of the day, just improving what it does now: assists you with your life's tasks, not taking them over like CE.
But, let me end my random tirade on WinCE versus PalmOS... I'm afraid that the percentage of people here on
--Lally Singh, Palm Software Developer.
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I'm afraid Linux is stuck in server space.
I'm mostly leaving Linux alone these days in favor of my mac running os x. I can have my unix & use it too.
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One one hand, the name infringement is pretty obvious, and the legal costs are (sorta-kinda) understandable considering Adobe's financial problems. While on the other, going after open source programmers for legal fees for legal services used against them is rather harsh.
What's your take on it?
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