And a 25% smaller screen? That's just not going to be very useful to people.
It's for kids.
The current 73 dpi display was designed for 40 year old aging eyeballs. The youth market will have no problems with a smaller 90+ dpi display as long as the contrast is reasonable.
For some kids, a display too small for their parents to easily read over their shoulder could even be a selling point.
>Yeah, the demise of Hypercard has been a real low point in the history of Macintosh.
Its one of the few occasions where I've seen Steve really fail to "get it".
The demise of Hypercard was correctly ordained. Although Hypercard was one of the heroic precursors to whole idea of graphical browsers, Apple did not have the right networked vision at the time,and so Hypercard was totally displaced in the grand scheme of things by HTML/Mosaic and follow-ons (and at a time when Next did have a networked vision...)
Also, if they lose the case based on the GPL, could the FSF not sue again over copyright infringment.
If the distribution license is held invalid, wouldn't the FSF then have to sue EVERY distributor of GPL'd software to be non-discriminatory?
And then if the FSF wins the copyright suit, the damage award would be millions of copies times zero dollars in lost profits (since copy #1 was given away). Hmmm, doesn't seem to be that bad for the copyright violator. Maybe the FSF should only sell GPL'd software for several millon dollars a copy so that they'd have some damages worth suing over...
Ian-K writes: And if it makes any difference to you, keep in mind that Basic was designed by Bill Gates himself (not that it matters to me, but I thought you should know if you already don't)
Absolutely false. Learn some history of computing. The BASIC programming language was designed by two Dartmouth College professors, Kemeny and Kurtz, in 1964. Gates and Allen (allegedly) just rewrote an existing DEC BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8080 about a dozen years after the BASIC language was designed.
BASIC was designed to give non-science students a simple introduction to programming on time-shared computers. By any historic metric, Kemeny and Kurtz's design was an amazing success. Before the web, probably more non-science|ee|cs students learned to use Basic than all other programming languages put together.
By contrast, the relative percentage of scheme|eiffel|prolog|smalltalk programmers is, to a first approximation, zero. Nice elegant languages, perhaps to be studied like brontosaurs and Esperanto.
One common thread here is that many programmers first learned to code in Basic. This may simply say that most of the contributors to this thread learned to program more than 5 years ago. The majority of all computers sold from 1978 to 1995 or so came with a BASIC intepreter included free. Thus zillions of kids could learn to program by just tinkering around in BASIC, and without the need to digest some semi-religious tome on {structure|types|lists|objects|etc.}. Even though the {Logo|Pascal} school claims that this was bad way to start, the ratio of good to bad coders seems about the same, whatever the first language, IMHO. Good coders seem to (mosty) outgrow their childish ways; plus those old rapid prototyping skills come in handy when there's the need to evolve software at "internet speed".
Anyway, one can still start out playing with the classic BASIC language on a linux boxen:
which both have both linux and windows ports. Chipmunk Basic also has a MacOS port which includes sprite graphics. Books on programming in the classic BASIC can easily be found in any public library that hasn't had a huge acquisition budget over the past few years.
Given that nearly every computer sold these days comes with a html and javascript interpreter, and that one can write some simple, instant feedback code with these languages, I expect javascript to be next popular beginning language. All that's missing is a few books with titles like "101 games in jscript"(tm), etc. Who's up?
While the name Amiga does happen to match up with the Spanish term meaning roughly "female friend". The original marketing brochures that pitched the Amiga claimed that the name came from the combining of Alpha and Omega.
Pure Spin. One of the founders thought the word might have some possible racist connotations; so marketing made up another reason for the name.
> If the GPL falls in court, it will be the end of free software.
There is lots of free software not covered by the GPL (e.g. public domain, Berkeley, Mozilla, etc.). There is even the question of whether software covered by the GPL is actually "free" under many definitions of that term.
> IPOs are typically used to obtain working capital for business development. > But the Palm series is already popular and profitable. > Does this sound screwy to anyone besides me?
The small reason: IPOs are called "liquidity events' by venture capitilists.
The big reason: Chambers (Cisco CEO) was a keynote speaker at the Palm developers conference. He hinted that there are big deals that would NOT happen if Palm had remained strictly a 3Com captive division.
I'm not sure whether Dave Morse or Jay Miner was employee #1 of HiToro (later Amiga, Inc.). Jay Miner, Joe Decuir and Ron Nicholson were the technical founders and ASIC architects; Luck, Mical and Needle came later, after Glen Keller, Dave Dean and Bob Pariseau joined the engineering team. Decuir is now at Microsoft. Nicholson is currently writing PalmPilot software.
Re:Any HTTP server that might run?
on
Linux on Palm
·
· Score: 1
There's already an HTTP server that runs on any stock PalmPilot with a TCP/IP/PPP stack (PalmOS 2.0 and above). Serve's MemoPad pages I think...
These are screen shots of a new Mac hosted version of the Palm OS Emulator running an early developmental version of PalmOS 3.5. They were shown in a public demonstration by a Palm employee on Tuesday at the PalmSource developers convention. The presenter suggested that some licensee may come out with a unit that uses this OS possibly in the first half of 2000.
>Do they? IMO PalmOS is far too underpowered. Use EPOC for a while, and you'll see just how much is missing.
So underpowered that shirt pocket size units have excellent battery life. If you want something with a lot more power and features, and even less battery life, try linux on a sub 3 lb. laptop.
A 66 MHz PowerPC could emulate a 7.5 MHz 68000, and run Mac Plus apps about an order of magnitute faster, even under emulation. Given that a Palm is 16.5 MHz; it's possible for a decent 16-36 MHz RISC processor (ARM7) to emulate it and have around the same performance level. The problem is that most high performance emulators require a lot of fast cache accesses. Thus cache size and memory system power consumption might be the bigger hurdle in a handheld system than CPU clock rate.
>Yes but do we need these things to be publicly funded? Often highly inefficient IMVAO >Let's cut off their (gov'ts) air supply (taxes).
It's not a matter if we need these things, or a matter of whether or not they're supplied inefficiently (they are). It's a matter that the law says we gotta pay taxes for these things. These laws are enacted by politicians. These politicians are put in office by the few people who show up to vote. And voters consist of a lot of people who are "hooked" on the transportation system and other such "public" benefits, or are employed by the government or other contracters carrying out these projects. The funds will come from somewhere; the question is what is the most fair (and politically acceptable) source.
> Open Source means I can see and modify the > source code. That's it.
That makes sense to me. "Open" alone means that one can see the source, even if the software is restricted in use.
> Free software - to me - means that it abides by > the GPL (or LGPL I think). This means that > anything under the BSD or Artistic or the > Netscape liceneces is Open Source, yet not > Free Software.
Interesting. To me free means free from cost or other restrictions on use. In this respect public domain software is the most free, followed by BSD and maybe Mozilla. GPL'd stuff seems less free due to its restrictions on use in combination with software under other licenses (in order to force as much code as possible to be Open.)
Optimal, of course, is software that is both Open and Free of both cost and restrictions.
And Open and Free still doesn't prevent a developer from being flamed by some user or other developer. e.g. Free -> free speech also.
> Open Source means I can see and modify the > source code. That's it.
That makes sense to me. "Open" alone means that one can see the source, even if the software is restricted in use.
> Free software - to me - means that it abides by > the GPL (or LGPL I think). This means that > anything under the BSD or Artistic or the > Netscape liceneces is Open Source, yet not > Free Software.
Interesting. To me free means free from cost or other restrictions on use. In this respect public domain software is the most free, followed by BSD and maybe Mozilla. GPL'd stuff seems less free due to its restrictions on use in combination with software under other licenses (in order to force as much code as possible to be Open.)
Optimal, of course, is software that is both Open and Free of both cost and restrictions.
This still isn't enough for secure email to be ubiquitously usable. What do you if your recipient receives email on a PalmPilot, WinCE handheld or WebTV? How 'bout if you're accessing your email on a web browser based account (maybe on a vacation without your laptop) and someone sends you pgp'd email?
Re:RMS Never tried to run a company
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
> There are people out there who claim that if you allow anyone to > redistribute the programs you sell for a lower price, then you will > always only sell one copy. Someone will buy a copy and then everyone > will buy from him because he's selling it 10% cheaper than you are.
> That has proved itself to be a faulty conclusion because the FSF keeps > selling copy after copy after copy of manuals and CD-ROMs, even if we > try to be the highest price distributor of everything we sell because > we're doing this to raise money to develop free software.
Innumeracy. Sure there are a few people who will buy from the high priced shops (even after Walmart moves into town). Maybe it's closer, or they like the shopclerk. But it's not about there existing a few people who don't price shop; it's about whether there is a sufficient number of customers to support your business over your competitors. Think about all the local shops that are now empty storefronts. Now think about all the people who price shop on the web.
Re:What a tangled web we weave...
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
>1. It's the best way of preventing work which they give for free >(gratis, nothing) to the community from being 'borrowed' wholesale or >in part for someone else's profit.
My understanding is that the GPL allows anyone who agrees to republish the source to 'borrow' all GPL software for profit. (Redhat, etc.)
>2. They see their 'payment' for their free (open) software as being the >fact that everyone who modifies it must share their changes freely (in >an open manner).
The FSF demands much more than this. I can appreciate that if I find bugs in GNU ReadPotato, then it would be most equitable for me to share my bugfixes and improvements with the codebase maintainer (in return for her sharing the code with me in the first place) and with all other users of ReadPotato; and that the community at large would benefit from this mutual sharing.
But the FSF also prohibits me from using and publishing GNU ReadPotato, *unmodified* and without any bugfixes or improvements, in combination with code that is covered under almost any other license terms, thus *reducing* my freedom to create applications (even other Open Source applications!) that might benefit potential users of the combination. Combining GPL and non-GPL code in this manner would remove no capability from the code maintainer of ReadPotato or the rest of the greater ReadPotato user community. This aspect of the GPL (or GPV) thus removes freedom from me and removes benefits from the users of potential combined software, while adding almost NOTHING to the GNU community at large.
For comparison with other licenses: If ReadPotato were public domain or under a Berkeley style license, one would not be able to 'steal' code that the ReadPotato authors had written (unless you had write access to all their disks and backups!) or to prohibit users from the continued use of ReadPotato. But one would be able to keep bug fixes secret; thus leaving many users with buggy software or developers wasting time reinventing the fix. If ReadPotato was under the MPL, then software distributors using ReadPotato would be legally required to send out bug fixes and improvements to ReadPotato. But one would not be restricted from using ReadPotato subroutines with code that is under other license terms, thus potentially benefiting the user community, but making it difficult for the programming community to fix bugs in the combined software.
Stallman's mistake was too assume that the GPL would infect a large portion of all newly written software. What he failed to realize is that because of it obvious virulence, corporate legal departments would 'innoculate' a great many potential application areas from being touched by GPL'd software, thus causing a Cambrian explosion in 'OSS' license mutants. Now the GPL is just one of many.
> My users at work double click files they are sent. > If they don't open right up, the email is deleted and forgotten.
Deleting email that's from your not-too-computer-literate but beloved (or rich) aunt, your boss's boss, or a (potential) big customer may not always be in your best interest.
(I sometimes get mail from friends and family in MS.doc format, but usually "od -c" gives me the important content...)
Woz's original disk controller used only 5 off-the-shelf TTL chips and 1 ROM, no custom circuits. The IWM chip came several years later.
Somewhere I have a copy of the original spec of the Mac and Apple IIe IWM disk controller chip. "IWM" stands for "Integrated Woz Machine". Two vendors developed prototypes of the chip from that specification, Synertek and AMI. The IWM spec was derived from a TTL prototype breadboard designed by Wendall Sander in early 1982.
> Encourage your state to pass consumer protection laws that say that any company that > uses shrinkwrap agreements to license software have: > Companies must at least refund all money spent, at any time during the life of the > license, if the product fails to work as described in any documentation from the > company.
Does any significant major OSS/GPL/commercial application completely comply with all its documentation 100%?
If not, this is a refund-at-will proposal (e.g. buy RedHat 7.x; wait until 10.x comes out; say that some lunix utility in 7.x doesn't fully act as it says on the man page or README; get a full refund, RedHat goes bankrupt...)
Slashdot Mirror
And a 25% smaller screen? That's just not going to be very useful to people.
It's for kids.
The current 73 dpi display was designed for 40 year old aging eyeballs. The youth market will have no problems with a smaller 90+ dpi display as long as the contrast is reasonable.
For some kids, a display too small for their parents to easily read over their shoulder could even be a selling point.
>Yeah, the demise of Hypercard has been a real low point in the history of Macintosh.
Its one of the few occasions where I've seen Steve really fail to "get it".
The demise of Hypercard was correctly ordained. Although Hypercard was one of the heroic precursors to whole idea of graphical browsers, Apple did not have the right networked vision at the time,and so Hypercard was totally displaced in the grand scheme of things by HTML/Mosaic and follow-ons (and at a time when Next did have a networked vision...)
Also, if they lose the case based on the GPL, could the FSF not sue again over copyright infringment.
If the distribution license is held invalid, wouldn't the FSF then have to sue EVERY distributor of GPL'd software to be non-discriminatory?
And then if the FSF wins the copyright suit, the damage award would be millions of copies times zero dollars in lost profits (since copy #1 was given away). Hmmm, doesn't seem to be that bad for the copyright violator. Maybe the FSF should only sell GPL'd software for several millon dollars a copy so that they'd have some damages worth suing over...
IANAL, etc.
I think the only sensible route for a small third-party developer is to develop for an operating system which is GPL'ed.
Are you claiming there is greater revenue or profits for small developers in the linux market than is in the Wintel, MacOS or PalmOS markets?
Ian-K writes:
And if it makes any difference to you, keep in mind that Basic was designed by Bill Gates himself (not that it matters to me, but I thought you should know if you already don't)
Absolutely false. Learn some history of computing. The BASIC programming language was designed by two Dartmouth College professors, Kemeny and Kurtz, in 1964. Gates and Allen (allegedly) just rewrote an existing DEC BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8080 about a dozen years after the BASIC language was designed.
BASIC was designed to give non-science students a simple introduction to programming on time-shared computers. By any historic metric, Kemeny and Kurtz's design was an amazing success. Before the web, probably more non-science|ee|cs students learned to use Basic than all other programming languages put together.
By contrast, the relative percentage of scheme|eiffel|prolog|smalltalk programmers is, to a first approximation, zero. Nice elegant languages, perhaps to be studied like brontosaurs and Esperanto.
One common thread here is that many programmers first learned to code in Basic. This may simply say that most of the contributors to this thread learned to program more than 5 years ago. The majority of all computers sold from 1978 to 1995 or so came with a BASIC intepreter included free. Thus zillions of kids could learn to program by just tinkering around in BASIC, and without the need to digest some semi-religious tome on {structure|types|lists|objects|etc.}. Even though the {Logo|Pascal} school claims that this was bad way to start, the ratio of good to bad coders seems about the same, whatever the first language, IMHO. Good coders seem to (mosty) outgrow their childish ways; plus those old rapid prototyping skills come in handy when there's the need to evolve software at "internet speed".
Anyway, one can still start out playing with the classic BASIC language on a linux boxen:
There's Yabasic http://www.yabasic.de/ (GPL'd)
and Chipmunk Basic http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/ (that's mine)
which both have both linux and windows ports. Chipmunk Basic also has a MacOS port which includes sprite graphics. Books on programming in the classic BASIC can easily be found in any public library that hasn't had a huge acquisition budget over the past few years.
Given that nearly every computer sold these days comes with a html and javascript interpreter, and that one can write some simple, instant feedback code with these languages, I expect javascript to be next popular beginning language. All that's missing is a few books with titles like "101 games in jscript"(tm), etc. Who's up?
IMHO. YMMV.
... and small enough and at an affordable enough cost that the company could actually make a profit selling the things.
While the name Amiga does happen to match up with the Spanish term meaning roughly "female friend". The original marketing brochures that pitched the Amiga claimed that the name came from the combining of Alpha and Omega.
Pure Spin. One of the founders thought the word might have some possible racist connotations; so marketing made up another reason for the name.
> If the GPL falls in court, it will be the end of free software.
There is lots of free software not covered by the GPL (e.g. public domain, Berkeley, Mozilla, etc.). There is even the question of whether software covered by the GPL is actually "free"
under many definitions of that term.
> But the Palm series is already popular and profitable.
> Does this sound screwy to anyone besides me?
The small reason: IPOs are called "liquidity events' by venture capitilists.
The big reason: Chambers (Cisco CEO) was a keynote speaker at the Palm developers conference. He hinted that there are big deals that would NOT happen if Palm had remained strictly a 3Com captive division.
I'm not sure whether Dave Morse or Jay Miner was employee #1 of HiToro (later Amiga, Inc.). Jay Miner, Joe Decuir and Ron Nicholson were the technical founders and ASIC architects; Luck, Mical and Needle came later, after Glen Keller, Dave Dean and Bob Pariseau joined the engineering team. Decuir is now at Microsoft. Nicholson is currently writing PalmPilot software.
There's already an HTTP server that runs on any stock PalmPilot with a TCP/IP/PPP stack (PalmOS 2.0 and above). Serve's MemoPad pages I think...
These are screen shots of a new Mac hosted version of the Palm OS Emulator running an early developmental version of PalmOS 3.5. They were shown in a public demonstration by a Palm employee on Tuesday at the PalmSource developers convention. The presenter suggested that some licensee may come out with a unit that uses this OS possibly in the first half of 2000.
>>Everyone likes the PalmOS
>Do they? IMO PalmOS is far too underpowered. Use EPOC for a while, and you'll see just how much is missing.
So underpowered that shirt pocket size units have excellent battery life. If you want something with a lot more power and features, and even less battery life, try linux on a sub 3 lb. laptop.
A 66 MHz PowerPC could emulate a 7.5 MHz 68000, and run Mac Plus apps about an order of magnitute faster, even under emulation. Given that a Palm is 16.5 MHz; it's possible for a decent 16-36 MHz RISC processor (ARM7) to emulate it and have around the same performance level. The problem is that most high performance emulators require a lot of fast cache accesses. Thus cache size and memory system power consumption might be the bigger hurdle in a handheld system than CPU clock rate.
>Yes but do we need these things to be publicly funded? Often highly inefficient IMVAO
>Let's cut off their (gov'ts) air supply (taxes).
It's not a matter if we need these things, or a matter of whether or not they're supplied inefficiently (they are). It's a matter that the law says we gotta pay taxes for these things. These laws are enacted by politicians. These politicians are put in office by the few people who show up to vote. And voters consist of a lot of people who are "hooked" on the transportation system and other such "public" benefits, or are employed by the government or other contracters carrying out these projects. The funds will come from somewhere; the question is what is the most fair (and politically acceptable) source.
Less wait states to memory.
> Open Source means I can see and modify the
> source code. That's it.
That makes sense to me. "Open" alone means that one can see the source, even if the software is restricted in use.
> Free software - to me - means that it abides by
> the GPL (or LGPL I think). This means that
> anything under the BSD or Artistic or the
> Netscape liceneces is Open Source, yet not
> Free Software.
Interesting. To me free means free from cost or other restrictions on use. In this respect public domain software is the most free, followed by BSD and maybe Mozilla. GPL'd stuff seems less free due to its restrictions on use in combination with software under other licenses (in order to force as much code as possible to be Open.)
Optimal, of course, is software that is both Open and Free of both cost and restrictions.
And Open and Free still doesn't prevent a developer from being flamed by some user or other developer. e.g. Free -> free speech also.
IMHO, of course.
> Open Source means I can see and modify the
> source code. That's it.
That makes sense to me. "Open" alone means that one can see the source, even if the software is restricted in use.
> Free software - to me - means that it abides by
> the GPL (or LGPL I think). This means that
> anything under the BSD or Artistic or the
> Netscape liceneces is Open Source, yet not
> Free Software.
Interesting. To me free means free from cost or
other restrictions on use. In this respect public domain software is the most free, followed by BSD and maybe Mozilla. GPL'd stuff seems less free due to its restrictions on use in combination with software under other licenses (in order to force as much code as possible to be Open.)
Optimal, of course, is software that is both Open and Free of both cost and restrictions.
IMHO, of course.
This still isn't enough for secure email to be ubiquitously usable. What do you if your recipient receives email on a PalmPilot, WinCE handheld or WebTV? How 'bout if you're accessing your email on a web browser based account (maybe on a vacation without your laptop) and someone sends you pgp'd email?
> There are people out there who claim that if you allow anyone to
> redistribute the programs you sell for a lower price, then you will
> always only sell one copy. Someone will buy a copy and then everyone
> will buy from him because he's selling it 10% cheaper than you are.
> That has proved itself to be a faulty conclusion because the FSF keeps
> selling copy after copy after copy of manuals and CD-ROMs, even if we
> try to be the highest price distributor of everything we sell because
> we're doing this to raise money to develop free software.
Innumeracy. Sure there are a few people who will buy from the high
priced shops (even after Walmart moves into town). Maybe it's closer,
or they like the shopclerk. But it's not about there existing a few
people who don't price shop; it's about whether there is a sufficient
number of customers to support your business over your competitors.
Think about all the local shops that are now empty storefronts. Now
think about all the people who price shop on the web.
>1. It's the best way of preventing work which they give for free
>(gratis, nothing) to the community from being 'borrowed' wholesale or
>in part for someone else's profit.
My understanding is that the GPL allows anyone who agrees to republish
the source to 'borrow' all GPL software for profit. (Redhat, etc.)
>2. They see their 'payment' for their free (open) software as being the
>fact that everyone who modifies it must share their changes freely (in
>an open manner).
The FSF demands much more than this. I can appreciate that if I find
bugs in GNU ReadPotato, then it would be most equitable for me to share
my bugfixes and improvements with the codebase maintainer (in return
for her sharing the code with me in the first place) and with all other
users of ReadPotato; and that the community at large would benefit from
this mutual sharing.
But the FSF also prohibits me from using and publishing GNU ReadPotato,
*unmodified* and without any bugfixes or improvements, in combination
with code that is covered under almost any other license terms, thus
*reducing* my freedom to create applications (even other Open Source
applications!) that might benefit potential users of the combination.
Combining GPL and non-GPL code in this manner would remove no
capability from the code maintainer of ReadPotato or the rest of the
greater ReadPotato user community. This aspect of the GPL (or GPV)
thus removes freedom from me and removes benefits from the users of
potential combined software, while adding almost NOTHING to the GNU
community at large.
For comparison with other licenses: If ReadPotato were public domain
or under a Berkeley style license, one would not be able to 'steal'
code that the ReadPotato authors had written (unless you had write
access to all their disks and backups!) or to prohibit users from the
continued use of ReadPotato. But one would be able to keep bug fixes
secret; thus leaving many users with buggy software or developers
wasting time reinventing the fix. If ReadPotato was under the MPL,
then software distributors using ReadPotato would be legally required
to send out bug fixes and improvements to ReadPotato. But one would
not be restricted from using ReadPotato subroutines with code that is
under other license terms, thus potentially benefiting the user
community, but making it difficult for the programming community
to fix bugs in the combined software.
Stallman's mistake was too assume that the GPL would infect a large
portion of all newly written software. What he failed to realize is
that because of it obvious virulence, corporate legal departments would
'innoculate' a great many potential application areas from being
touched by GPL'd software, thus causing a Cambrian explosion in 'OSS'
license mutants. Now the GPL is just one of many.
IMHO.
> My users at work double click files they are sent.
.doc format, but usually "od -c" gives me the important content...)
> If they don't open right up, the email is deleted and forgotten.
Deleting email that's from your not-too-computer-literate but beloved (or rich) aunt, your boss's boss, or a (potential) big customer may not always be in your best interest.
(I sometimes get mail from friends and family in MS
Woz's original disk controller used only 5 off-the-shelf TTL chips and 1 ROM, no custom circuits. The IWM chip came several years later.
Somewhere I have a copy of the original spec of the Mac and Apple IIe IWM disk controller chip. "IWM" stands for "Integrated Woz Machine". Two vendors developed prototypes of the chip from that specification, Synertek and AMI. The IWM spec was derived from a TTL prototype breadboard designed by Wendall Sander in early 1982.
> Encourage your state to pass consumer protection laws that say that any company that
> uses shrinkwrap agreements to license software have:
> Companies must at least refund all money spent, at any time during the life of the
> license, if the product fails to work as described in any documentation from the
> company.
Does any significant major OSS/GPL/commercial application completely comply with all its documentation 100%?
If not, this is a refund-at-will proposal (e.g. buy RedHat 7.x; wait until 10.x comes out; say that some lunix utility in 7.x doesn't fully act as it says on the man page or README; get a full refund, RedHat goes bankrupt...)