All of your critical scepticism is worthless and useless and doesn't actually result in any kind of philosophic intellectual stimulation, nor is it frankly valid. Your statement is, in effect "This is Wrong", when you don't even have a clue what might be right.
I've been playing with the neo1973 for a couple months now and I must say its a wonderful environment. This week I got it set up with bluetooth keyboard support, so now I can code 'on-the-go'.. having onboard python is exceptionally cool for a phone, and its really just a 'normal' linux system for me now, with the advantage that it has a big fat connection to the phone network for connectivity...
The OpenMoko development scene has its pros and cons, but for the most part its a very active community and has a lot going for it right now.
Plus, the neo1973 itself is a cool bit of kit. You can dual-boot either QTopia or OpenMoko environments, depending your preferred style, and there is even a NetBSD port on its way for the phone. So there is a lot of activity, but it may be that this is just not being promoted widely enough by the core developers right now, because there are other things to do - like release GTA02 (version2 of the neo phone) in December, and such things.
For now, the neo1973 is a very useful hacker toy.. but by January/February, I would say that it'll have a few nice applications onboard that attract consumers. I for one am working on a suite of music applications for it - sequencer, sampler-playback (soundboard-like toys for phone calls) and a mini-synth.. my interests as a developer/musician mean this little machine can give me a really unique instrument for performance. Perhaps you have similar ideas: the point is, its wide open. Get one and get on with it.
I also have a neo1973, and am thoroughly enjoying the geek factor - just this week I got it an Apple wireless keyboard for it, set up and running, and I have to tell you all that there is nothing quite so fun as sitting somewhere, hacking code on my phone, using the phone itself. Python+neo1973+apple bt keyboard == the coolest godamn bit of hardware in the room, and I've got tons of stuff in here.. from BeBox to SGI to Access Music to.. well, lots of stuff.
And yes, there is hardware in front of me that had a *lot* of potential. The BeBox, for example. The BeBox and the NEO1973 have a fairly decent set of common traits; both started out as exciting hardware platforms from excited engineers who "thought of all the potential, but never implemented any of it"..
The difference with the neo1973 and openmoko in general is that the BeBox lesson has been learned, and learned well.. OpenMoko will move onto whatever hardware it can support, and it will move rapidly. Its already being planned for a number of other devices in the near future - not just phones, but such things as synthesizers, musical gear, etc. In that capacity, it looks to fair pretty well.. all the tools are there in the base OS to give developers a real boot in the ass and make something nice for their end user.
But the thing to keep in mind in all of this is: the *hardware* *has* *to* *be* *there* *first*. OpenMoko is just a software platform. If it gains traction, watch as numerous other hardware vendors come along, take the risks, and reap all the rewards of not having to bootstrap a software environment for their users from scratch..
Its true! I remember also being amused about CnD's enlightenment hits at altavitsa.. I also remember it being a pretty active pro-Java site in the beginning too, and for me it was a good place to come to find interesting Java 1.0-related stories.. my how things have changed (I don't do Java any more..)
.. I yearn for the days when I would get a personal message from Cmrd. Taco and the gang, just for posting something smart to their new website.
Ah, those were the days. Before 'blogs' (what a horrid term), before 'wiki' (oh even worse...), before the push and the pull and the stagnation. Before hot grits. When you could check the site every *two days* or so, and not necessarily miss a story.
Oh, slashdot, you are a tempestuous mistress, but how we love you well..
I've got the GTA01 release, and its rockin'.. definitely the most open and easily approachable platforms for mobile development, even if its not really established market-wise quite yet.. time will tell when the GTA02 release (December) is done and we start seeing OpenMoko-based phones on the market.. in the meantime its sure nice to be hacking apps up for it in advance .
Look at it this way. You're buying one for your kid. And also for some strangers kid. Its a selfless act.
IMO, Americans could do with far more such selflessness these days.
What would be really great in my opinion is if the two laptops were somehow registered such that the kids can get to know each other.. this would be an astoundingly peaceful action. What modern child wouldn't want to communicate with another kid around the world using their new laptops?
Yes that is the phone I want to get. But because I can't try it in the shop I have a question which you may be able to answer: can you carry the OpenMoko around in your pocket, or is it a belt pouch phone? I have seen the dimensions on the web site but it is not the same as holding one in your hand.
Admittedly it is a bit bulky and quite a bit like a large bar of oversized soap.. with not so much to endear you to the plastic form, to be honest, until you turn it on and start using it - the most immediate design appeal comes from the high resolution screen, which is a lot denser and brighter than you might imagine from the screenshots.
I carry it around in its pouch (provided) with a lanyard attached through the loop on the case.. so its not really so much 'pocketable' as it is luggable. Its akin to having a serious bit of industrial-strength equipment with you, though, keep in mind it has a lot of onboard peripherals inside the somewhat bloated case..
I look forward to future refined iterations of the case design, though. Definitely a fairly bloaty bit of kit. Reminds me a lot of an American car, in some ways.. and I'm really not so big a fan of the 'bar of soap' mentality of industrial design that seems to be standard with such kit. Would be very nice if it had a more of a harder edge to it, but I suppose after a while you get used to it.
It sure is fun to be using autotools to hack code that can run both on my Linux machine and my cell phone, I gotta say! Long live Linux portability and the suite of tools it provides!
.. and its a really, really great device even though the developer version is missing a few things (accelerometers, WLAN).. there is really nothing quite so fun as being able to write software for your own cell phone, and do things that just wouldn't be possible elsewhere.
I'm looking forward, for example, to having my own answering service onboard with a user-selectable set of recordings to playback (IVR-style application), and some music-making apps are on the horizon as well..
Lovely bit of gear; I will definitely upgrade to GTA02 when its available, too.
There are two things that I would do for Linux right now:
1. Focus the distributions on hardware packaging. Yes, not just Ubuntu laptops, or RedHat servers, but embedded systems (such as OpenMoko effort) with complete, full, 100% included Linux on board. You buy a system, it has Linux onboard and ready to go. This is already happening everywhere, but I would push it further and further into other realms of hardware. Until recently, for example, I worked for a major synthesizer manufacturer (musical instruments) with the purpose of putting Linux into digital musical instruments - I would continue this effort, for more and more hardware, and I would put Linux in the box from the start - not as an afterthought or a bring-up/port, but as part of the effort to get the hardware out there.
2. Full Source distributions. This means, a fully populated/usr/src tree with *everything* needed to maintain updates for each individual package - *without* the use of package management. I know this would seem by some to be a step backwards, but what I would do if I had the time would be to develop a completely Source-on-board distribution that has everything a person needs already unpacked and ready to go in order to be able to make local source changes to their system, as well as contribute to each and every dir in the/usr/src tree - using whatever source management systems are the native for each package. So if dhcpd has a subversion server,/usr/src/dhcpd would be fully set up to be able to pull from that tree, using the tools of the primary programmers for dhcpd, instead of replacing them with Yet Another Package Management Nightmare. Too many distro's are not distro's, but in fact are source-code management projects - this needs to be brought much closer to the Linux core filesystem, in my opinion. Its just far too difficult to find the source for a package, unpack it, patch it, etc. - all of this should just be onboard from the get-go.
Perhaps not revolutionary idea's, but as a Linux user since the day of the minix-list post, I feel that there is too much focus on distributions-as-a-fix-for-people-unable-to-grok-s ource-management and not enough focus on having it all onboard in the first place, from first boot onwards..
Open Source is an adequate response to the Cloner problem. If we can all make it, because its designed to be make-able by all in the first place, then there is no worries with the economy issue.
At this point, the question becomes: how fast can we all shift to an open/cloner form of economy, with local resources and local markets being properly managed in competition with the way they manage things in China? Answer that one, or at least have some sort of scope for the horizon, and maybe things will just get better and better for those of us who want nice, fast, cheap, easily reproducible hardware, for interesting uses..
Digital Audio Workstations make it too easy for people to polish crap music. So many musicians put a lot of effort into their DAW setup and learning all the 'professional' tool that they forget that making music is a highly emotional experience.
Ever watched someone use Pro Tools? Its the most boring, utterly ludicrous activity around the process of music-making that you can ever witness. DAW's in general have removed all the need for performance and practice from the modern music-making process; leaving boring, musically un-interesting results to be polished and primped and cut and pasted into place..
If you're a modern musician, my advice (been writing or 20 years) is to get rid of the DAW as the main focus in your environment, and do something truly unique in this day and age: Learn to Play Your Instrument Well, first and foremost..
A good show is always going to be more interesting than a polished recording. Get the live thing nailed first, and then focus on all the DAW technology; you might be surprised, after you've learned to play well, just how little you really need to invest in the technology side in order to sound good and attract a sufficient following to demonstrate that your music is of interest. Most pro's really don't need Pro Tools.
This is a big surprise, why? Because geeks and nerds don't realize that establishing historical bias is what lawyers do for a living. There is no question that the *AA's lawyers have researched case law all the way back to the beginning of recorded and duplicated media. There is very little shock or surprise that these century-old assets, long since passed down through generations of corporate accounting to the modern era, have been a model for decades and now generations of lawyers.
Unless, of course, you are ignorant of the fact that lawyers pass this historical legacy down through the ages in the arena of the courts. Modern strategies and tactics are derived from a historical corporate perspective spanning centuries. Where us individual nerds may have too much stigma occluding our view of the scene to contemplate this reality, corporations have their archives, their teams working on the historical precedence, and long-term awareness of markets.
Life as it was, as it is, and as it shall be, outside the realm of a single life-time, is de jour for certain factions in society. Outside the realm of video games and computer code, people do actually focus on such depths. Geeks and nerds attempting to make political reality would do well to make themselves much more aware of this level of responsibility, in my opinion..
I have a great setup with Ardor running on my laptop, using a Presonus Firepod (10x10) multi-channel interface. Smooth as silk, and at least as productive as the same interface running with Sonar under windows on the same machine, or with DP/Logic/Cubase on my Powerbook..
Honestly, Ardor really rocks! Get any of the Bridgeco-based Firewire I/O's and off you go..
I already ported MidiShare to the GP2X.. but your library looks good.. its an unfortunate fact that very few people know about MidiShare, but its one of the nicest MIDI API's out there..
I feel inclined to port Pro MIDI Player to this platform I'm currently hacking around on.. in an effort to completely dissuade any of my normally-interesting-musically friends from ever getting up on stage with a laptop and faking a 'performance' ever again..;)
Meanwhile, people like you just keep driving and driving, taking airplanes and using plastics, and all the while acting like it's someone else's fault. Well, guess what? The problem is *consumption*.
right. and the whole point is that patents are being used to force people - nay, lock them into - cycles of consumption, whereas what the world wants is easier, smaller, cheaper, lighter, less restrictive, less controlled and easier to maintain production.
show me how to violate Big Oils patents in my backyard lab and grow a garden/solar array that will provide my family with enough energy to suit their needs, for free (or whatever it costs for us to personally harvest it), and I'll step off the Big Oil treadmill *today*.. but the fact is, all this investment and all this development is only being done by the people in these companies in order to prevent people from ever having to give up their consumption addiction and stop sending $$ in directions that Big Oil benefit from..
i'm sure the technology exists to maintain a family household using available materials and harvest the free energy that pervades our universe. i'm sure i could look at the patent database and find hints about that technology. and i'm sure there are police states poised to prevent me from doing it in my local backyard...
Slashdot Mirror
You, sir, are the reason why science sucks. Hard.
All of your critical scepticism is worthless and useless and doesn't actually result in any kind of philosophic intellectual stimulation, nor is it frankly valid. Your statement is, in effect "This is Wrong", when you don't even have a clue what might be right.
Yeah, likewise. And if the new printer isn't smaller and faster and cheaper and lighter than the first one, I'll want my moneyback. Ad infinitum.
Not porn, exactly, but definitely: sex. Porn is just a socialized form of the substance that drives all human civilization forward.
Lets see the Linux world sort that can of worms out. (Hint: its completely proprietary..)
I've been playing with the neo1973 for a couple months now and I must say its a wonderful environment. This week I got it set up with bluetooth keyboard support, so now I can code 'on-the-go' .. having onboard python is exceptionally cool for a phone, and its really just a 'normal' linux system for me now, with the advantage that it has a big fat connection to the phone network for connectivity ...
.. but by January/February, I would say that it'll have a few nice applications onboard that attract consumers. I for one am working on a suite of music applications for it - sequencer, sampler-playback (soundboard-like toys for phone calls) and a mini-synth .. my interests as a developer/musician mean this little machine can give me a really unique instrument for performance. Perhaps you have similar ideas: the point is, its wide open. Get one and get on with it.
The OpenMoko development scene has its pros and cons, but for the most part its a very active community and has a lot going for it right now.
Plus, the neo1973 itself is a cool bit of kit. You can dual-boot either QTopia or OpenMoko environments, depending your preferred style, and there is even a NetBSD port on its way for the phone. So there is a lot of activity, but it may be that this is just not being promoted widely enough by the core developers right now, because there are other things to do - like release GTA02 (version2 of the neo phone) in December, and such things.
For now, the neo1973 is a very useful hacker toy
I also have a neo1973, and am thoroughly enjoying the geek factor - just this week I got it an Apple wireless keyboard for it, set up and running, and I have to tell you all that there is nothing quite so fun as sitting somewhere, hacking code on my phone, using the phone itself. Python+neo1973+apple bt keyboard == the coolest godamn bit of hardware in the room, and I've got tons of stuff in here .. from BeBox to SGI to Access Music to .. well, lots of stuff.
..
.. OpenMoko will move onto whatever hardware it can support, and it will move rapidly. Its already being planned for a number of other devices in the near future - not just phones, but such things as synthesizers, musical gear, etc. In that capacity, it looks to fair pretty well .. all the tools are there in the base OS to give developers a real boot in the ass and make something nice for their end user.
..
And yes, there is hardware in front of me that had a *lot* of potential. The BeBox, for example. The BeBox and the NEO1973 have a fairly decent set of common traits; both started out as exciting hardware platforms from excited engineers who "thought of all the potential, but never implemented any of it"
The difference with the neo1973 and openmoko in general is that the BeBox lesson has been learned, and learned well
But the thing to keep in mind in all of this is: the *hardware* *has* *to* *be* *there* *first*. OpenMoko is just a software platform. If it gains traction, watch as numerous other hardware vendors come along, take the risks, and reap all the rewards of not having to bootstrap a software environment for their users from scratch
Anyone got any screenshots? :)
/raises hand. Been a long, stormy journey.
..
I often wonder myself, what it would be like, to meet some of the earlier slashdot adopters in person
Its true! I remember also being amused about CnD's enlightenment hits at altavitsa .. I also remember it being a pretty active pro-Java site in the beginning too, and for me it was a good place to come to find interesting Java 1.0-related stories .. my how things have changed (I don't do Java any more..)
.. I yearn for the days when I would get a personal message from Cmrd. Taco and the gang, just for posting something smart to their new website.
..
Ah, those were the days. Before 'blogs' (what a horrid term), before 'wiki' (oh even worse...), before the push and the pull and the stagnation. Before hot grits. When you could check the site every *two days* or so, and not necessarily miss a story.
Oh, slashdot, you are a tempestuous mistress, but how we love you well
I've got the GTA01 release, and its rockin' .. definitely the most open and easily approachable platforms for mobile development, even if its not really established market-wise quite yet .. time will tell when the GTA02 release (December) is done and we start seeing OpenMoko-based phones on the market .. in the meantime its sure nice to be hacking apps up for it in advance .
Look at it this way. You're buying one for your kid. And also for some strangers kid. Its a selfless act.
.. this would be an astoundingly peaceful action. What modern child wouldn't want to communicate with another kid around the world using their new laptops?
IMO, Americans could do with far more such selflessness these days.
What would be really great in my opinion is if the two laptops were somehow registered such that the kids can get to know each other
Yes that is the phone I want to get. But because I can't try it in the shop I have a question which you may be able to answer: can you carry the OpenMoko around in your pocket, or is it a belt pouch phone? I have seen the dimensions on the web site but it is not the same as holding one in your hand.
Admittedly it is a bit bulky and quite a bit like a large bar of oversized soapI carry it around in its pouch (provided) with a lanyard attached through the loop on the case
I look forward to future refined iterations of the case design, though. Definitely a fairly bloaty bit of kit. Reminds me a lot of an American car, in some ways
It sure is fun to be using autotools to hack code that can run both on my Linux machine and my cell phone, I gotta say! Long live Linux portability and the suite of tools it provides!
.. and its a really, really great device even though the developer version is missing a few things (accelerometers, WLAN) .. there is really nothing quite so fun as being able to write software for your own cell phone, and do things that just wouldn't be possible elsewhere.
..
I'm looking forward, for example, to having my own answering service onboard with a user-selectable set of recordings to playback (IVR-style application), and some music-making apps are on the horizon as well
Lovely bit of gear; I will definitely upgrade to GTA02 when its available, too.
There are two things that I would do for Linux right now:
/usr/src tree with *everything* needed to maintain updates for each individual package - *without* the use of package management. I know this would seem by some to be a step backwards, but what I would do if I had the time would be to develop a completely Source-on-board distribution that has everything a person needs already unpacked and ready to go in order to be able to make local source changes to their system, as well as contribute to each and every dir in the /usr/src tree - using whatever source management systems are the native for each package. So if dhcpd has a subversion server, /usr/src/dhcpd would be fully set up to be able to pull from that tree, using the tools of the primary programmers for dhcpd, instead of replacing them with Yet Another Package Management Nightmare. Too many distro's are not distro's, but in fact are source-code management projects - this needs to be brought much closer to the Linux core filesystem, in my opinion. Its just far too difficult to find the source for a package, unpack it, patch it, etc. - all of this should just be onboard from the get-go.
s ource-management and not enough focus on having it all onboard in the first place, from first boot onwards ..
1. Focus the distributions on hardware packaging. Yes, not just Ubuntu laptops, or RedHat servers, but embedded systems (such as OpenMoko effort) with complete, full, 100% included Linux on board. You buy a system, it has Linux onboard and ready to go. This is already happening everywhere, but I would push it further and further into other realms of hardware. Until recently, for example, I worked for a major synthesizer manufacturer (musical instruments) with the purpose of putting Linux into digital musical instruments - I would continue this effort, for more and more hardware, and I would put Linux in the box from the start - not as an afterthought or a bring-up/port, but as part of the effort to get the hardware out there.
2. Full Source distributions. This means, a fully populated
Perhaps not revolutionary idea's, but as a Linux user since the day of the minix-list post, I feel that there is too much focus on distributions-as-a-fix-for-people-unable-to-grok-
.. what .. instead of, say, HUGE Internet connectivity and copious quantities of time to waste wigging out on it?
Open Source is an adequate response to the Cloner problem. If we can all make it, because its designed to be make-able by all in the first place, then there is no worries with the economy issue.
At this point, the question becomes: how fast can we all shift to an open/cloner form of economy, with local resources and local markets being properly managed in competition with the way they manage things in China? Answer that one, or at least have some sort of scope for the horizon, and maybe things will just get better and better for those of us who want nice, fast, cheap, easily reproducible hardware, for interesting uses
Digital Audio Workstations make it too easy for people to polish crap music. So many musicians put a lot of effort into their DAW setup and learning all the 'professional' tool that they forget that making music is a highly emotional experience.
..
..
Ever watched someone use Pro Tools? Its the most boring, utterly ludicrous activity around the process of music-making that you can ever witness. DAW's in general have removed all the need for performance and practice from the modern music-making process; leaving boring, musically un-interesting results to be polished and primped and cut and pasted into place
If you're a modern musician, my advice (been writing or 20 years) is to get rid of the DAW as the main focus in your environment, and do something truly unique in this day and age: Learn to Play Your Instrument Well, first and foremost
A good show is always going to be more interesting than a polished recording. Get the live thing nailed first, and then focus on all the DAW technology; you might be surprised, after you've learned to play well, just how little you really need to invest in the technology side in order to sound good and attract a sufficient following to demonstrate that your music is of interest. Most pro's really don't need Pro Tools.
Apple *owns* x86 now.
This is a big surprise, why? Because geeks and nerds don't realize that establishing historical bias is what lawyers do for a living. There is no question that the *AA's lawyers have researched case law all the way back to the beginning of recorded and duplicated media. There is very little shock or surprise that these century-old assets, long since passed down through generations of corporate accounting to the modern era, have been a model for decades and now generations of lawyers.
..
Unless, of course, you are ignorant of the fact that lawyers pass this historical legacy down through the ages in the arena of the courts. Modern strategies and tactics are derived from a historical corporate perspective spanning centuries. Where us individual nerds may have too much stigma occluding our view of the scene to contemplate this reality, corporations have their archives, their teams working on the historical precedence, and long-term awareness of markets.
Life as it was, as it is, and as it shall be, outside the realm of a single life-time, is de jour for certain factions in society. Outside the realm of video games and computer code, people do actually focus on such depths. Geeks and nerds attempting to make political reality would do well to make themselves much more aware of this level of responsibility, in my opinion
I have a great setup with Ardor running on my laptop, using a Presonus Firepod (10x10) multi-channel interface. Smooth as silk, and at least as productive as the same interface running with Sonar under windows on the same machine, or with DP/Logic/Cubase on my Powerbook ..
..
Honestly, Ardor really rocks! Get any of the Bridgeco-based Firewire I/O's and off you go
I already ported MidiShare to the GP2X .. but your library looks good .. its an unfortunate fact that very few people know about MidiShare, but its one of the nicest MIDI API's out there ..
Nice.
.. in an effort to completely dissuade any of my normally-interesting-musically friends from ever getting up on stage with a laptop and faking a 'performance' ever again .. ;)
I feel inclined to port Pro MIDI Player to this platform I'm currently hacking around on
Meanwhile, people like you just keep driving and driving, taking airplanes and using plastics, and all the while acting like it's someone else's fault. Well, guess what? The problem is *consumption*.
.. but the fact is, all this investment and all this development is only being done by the people in these companies in order to prevent people from ever having to give up their consumption addiction and stop sending $$ in directions that Big Oil benefit from ..
...
right. and the whole point is that patents are being used to force people - nay, lock them into - cycles of consumption, whereas what the world wants is easier, smaller, cheaper, lighter, less restrictive, less controlled and easier to maintain production.
show me how to violate Big Oils patents in my backyard lab and grow a garden/solar array that will provide my family with enough energy to suit their needs, for free (or whatever it costs for us to personally harvest it), and I'll step off the Big Oil treadmill *today*
i'm sure the technology exists to maintain a family household using available materials and harvest the free energy that pervades our universe. i'm sure i could look at the patent database and find hints about that technology. and i'm sure there are police states poised to prevent me from doing it in my local backyard
I've still got my lovely BeBox happily purring away, but I would consider it definitely a viable member of the Flop list, alas ..