Other posters have shown how this idea has problems, but I have a slightly different suggestion that has most of the same advantages as BitTorrent and would be more appropriate for typical web content.
Basically, set up the browsers to share the cached data.
A typical transaction life cycle would be to send an HTTP request to a server, but instead of getting back the actual document content, your browser gets back a short list of the last n clients to ask for the document. Your browser then requests the documents from the most recent client to get the file and that client returns the file if it is still in the cache. If it's not in the cache, or the client is no longer connected, then the browser moves on to the next client in the list. If none of them have the document, then the browser will go back to the server and request the document providing a list of clients that no longer have the content available so the server can keep it's list up-to-date. To prevent any tampering, the content documents would be signed by the original host and the client would have to request the public key directly from the original host. Any time a document is updated, the server will have to provide the actual document to the next few requesting clients and rebuild it's list of clients from scratch.
This would really reduce the load on servers by using sharing in a way that is similar to BitTorrent, but would be much more appropriate for the small file sizes that are typical of web documents and be able to work in a public way that doesn't require proxy caches.
Darn, I was just about to believe my eyes when I saw the video (sorry Real Video), which featured a lighter being held to a petrie dish of the feul. Other reading suggests that this stuff, while not entirely benign, is much safer than gasoline. It's a good thing the parent warns of the, otherwise, unapparent dangers;)
A Creative Commons license would probably be more appropriate for a T.V. show, even if the show is mostly about GPL.
Don't forget to install your mozcc extension in your Mozilla based browser so you can determine the creative commons license status of the web page that the T.V. show is on;)
Folks, ZOË has been doing a fantastic job of email archiving and searching for some time now. Check it out... it's open source and totally cross platform and will happily co-exist with whatever email client you are already using.
It's such a great system, that it's not uncommon to see comments on the mailing list from users who keep 10's of thousands of emails in ZOË without any problems. I, personally, have email going back to 1995 in ZOË and have back burner plans to copy my old Tapcis emails from the 80's to ZOË.
This is a great idea for the rich nations of the world, but the real trouble spots, typically, don't have such affluence.
The idea I've been pondering for a while is something that is cheap and easily distributable so that people in the places where bad stuff happens can put them in their windows and make the results available to journalists when something goes down. These could be distributed for free by NGO's, like freedom organizations, so that most trouble spots would be blanketed.
The hardware I have in mind is something really cheap, rugged and self-contined, with a walkman form factor and, perhaps, endless loop DAT tape storage and a solar power source. Journalists could knock on doors the day after an event (or dig through the rubble) and copy these tapes for later perusal. The data would ideally be encrypted, to help with authenticity and make it difficult to view in the field. Some cheap equipment actually does see outside of human visible range, so these might actually be useful at night time too. This sort of form factor might make the devices cheap enough to make it practical to distribute them to thousands of homes in each world trouble spot.
I suspect that even though people in trouble areas might be suspicious of these things, that most of them would realized the advantages of having them and be willing to participate. Since the devices are automatic and easy to hide, the danger to the operator is minimal. Also, the collection process makes them pretty much useless for military use, so there's no real danger of "bad guys" collecting the tapes for use against "good guys". The only real practical use would be reporting of abuses or setting the story straight. Regardless of which side you're on, having more info is generally a better thing for the innocent victims of any conflict.
Imagine what things might be like if there was one of these in every tenth house in Baghdad or the West Bank...
If it already runs under Linux, it might not be too hard for them to port it to a Zaurus. However, with Sharp's limited distribution in the US and Europe, I doubt they'd even try. It's too bad because I be the same app could run without recompiling on OpenZaurus or even an iPAQ running Familiar.
Just looking at the contents on Suprnova makes me immediately think that this stuff has got to be pirated. The other torrent link in the article also looks suspicious too. Do either of these torrents include Creative Commons licenses? I doubt it.
I'd love to download these torrents to see the show, but I'm not sure I should, though saying so on slashdot makes me wonder if I should post as AC.
Is slashdot, as opposed to individual posters on slashdot, actually linking to clearly pirated content? Could this be a legal problem for OSTG?
torrentocracy has political content that is set up to work with MythTV and a corresponding Blog so you can point their custom BitTorrent client at the RSS feed and automatically have your MythTV box download the content as it becomes available and view when you get around to it. This is really a great example of the RSS & BT Together idea that was discussed here on slashdot a while back. Until I saw Torrentocracy, I really didn't "get it", but now I do. This kind of thing could really change the way we get our newertainment.
It's interesting to note that patents apply to all sorts of unlikely things like software and business processes, but not to legal strategies, practices or processes. It seems as if the lawyers realized how badly that would muck them up and haven't applied the patent pricipals to their own field. I guess that there's lots of money to be made from messing up everyone else's business, but not their own.
It would be very bizarre to hear an objection to a legal argument because someone else owned the right to make arguments of they style that the motion used. Perhaps only Johny Cochraine could "play the race card" or something like that. Every other law firm might have to pay him a royalty to use the argument.
If someone could come up with a clear demonstration showing that software patents are as sensible as legal strategy patents, then I'll bet that the supreme court would overturn the current incarnation of the patent laws in a heart beat.
That's how the (software) patent game works. It's virtually impossible to avoid violating patents due to the very nature of software. When challenged, the big guns go through their patent portfolio and can usually find something that the challenger violates in some way. Then, a cross licensing agreement is hammered out. Thus, the big fish are protected, but any small fry can't compete.
So, yes, everyone is guilty, but the IBM's of this world can weather the war just fine, while everyone else gets wiped out. In fact, the war is already in full swing and has simply become part of doing business.
The notes section of ESR'sMagic Cauldron has a wonderful comment that suggests that since programmers and support staff appear on the books as a liability, expanding by hiring more staff is a net loss. However, the aquisition of another software company, which is primarily valuable because it is a bunch of other programmers and support staff, is seen as an investment on the books.
It all seems so bizarre that the factory model treats software as if it has some sale value, when it's really the service provided by the programmers and support staff that has real value. In this topsy turvy way of looking at things the accounting systems artificially encourage mergers rather than increasing staff because the former appears as growth, while the latter appears to be a loss.
All of this is why we end up with huge companies that produce mostly shelfware with a point upgrade cycle that is not backwards compatible so that customers are forced to keep sending in money or be abandonned. An honest service model would be much better for everybody.
I didn't do this one... it happened to a colleauge, who actually managed to hang onto his job despite what he did.
Will pulling cable through the cieling of a computer room (you know the type with the magnetic locks, halon gas fire suppression system, massive airconditioning and racks of equipment with blinking lights), my colleauge found that the place where the cables entered the room up was next to a row of equipment that ended right where he wanted to pull the cables back out... so, he walked across the top of the machines to get to the other side rather than climb down the ladder and move it to the other side. What he didn't know was that five of the washing machine sized boxes in the middle of the row were hard drives (the old removable platter kind). The sysop came running into the room to se why all five hard drives had crashed only to see the technician walking back across to his ladder.
All five drives had multiple head crashes causing physical loss of data and dammage to the media. I don't know if the heads were damaged or not.
Strangely enough, later that summer, in the same room, I was pulling some cable under the floor and we were very concerned that some of the fire sensors were dangerously close to where the cable was going. The cable got stuck, so I pulled a little harder, it gave way and the fire alarm went off! I was terrified and was out of there so fast that we beat most of the office staff to the mustering area.
It just turned out to be a co-incidence. A different fire alarm had been set off by a careless welder in a nearby hallway and it wasn't my fault at all. The fact that the halon system didn't trigger might have been a hint, but we were out of there so fast we wouldn't have known if it did.
Heat sensors in the floor always seemed like a strange idea, but I guess with all those wires running under there it makes sense... and there were smoke detectors on the ceiling too.
Back in the day I was making a "luggable" and used one of those old hospital tv monitors as the display. However, the connector on the back was some kludged together jackobson connector that included both the antenna AND the power. I guessed wrong and the power supply was a motorcycle battery (I did say luggable) so the result was this little 10 inch high mushroom cloud escaping out of the top of the box.
In retrospect I'm surprised it was able to keep its form and not be disrupted by the vents in the metal case, though it did dissapate before it got to the ceiling.
Since I figured it was toast and I had the wrong two connectors, I didn't think there was any harm in trying the other two. This was rewarded with the appearance of a second mushroom cloud! It turned out that the first pair was + and antenna ground and the second pair was - and antenna.
After all of this, I found a small choke whose guts were spilled out of the now split housing. I pushed them back inside and they made good enough contact that the monitor worked as well as it ever did, which wasn't that great.
Two decades later, when I smoked a real monitor by setting the XF86Config file incorrectly the result was not nearly as dramatic and was much smellier. These days, you have to work pretty hard to do that, though I'm sure some of you are up to the task;)
Surely his is the perfect place for JINI technology to really shine.
All you need is a bluetooth or WiFi enabled Java/JINI phone/pda or some such gadget. As you walk into the room, your device gets updated with the appropriate GUI control software for all of your entertainment boxes and you just select the ones you want to use and interact with them via the user interface provided via JINI.
No more searching for the correct controller. The too many buttons syndrome could also be overcome because these apps will be able to use rich client interfaces to simplify the huge number of options and even provide help documentation!
The same guy who gave us the bear proof suit has also created some goop he calls Fire Paste. Perhaps this stuff would be able to do an even better job.
Wish there was a cheaper version -- Meccano?
on
Mechanical Computing
·
· Score: 1
The Curta is definitely a very cool gadget, but since they're collector's items, the prices can be outrageously high.
Although the VCALC Curta Page mentions that most of the old Curta technicians who worked on the devices have made replicas at some point or other, nobody seems to be doing it today.
With the huge interest in them (since the Scientific American article), and the high prices, I'm very surprised that nobody's making low cost replicas. I'm sure lots of geeks who are more enamoured with the technology than the history would love to have a knock-off and the patents have probably long since expired.
They are missing SnipSnap, an fantastically easy to install java GPLd blog/wiki server. Try it out at snipsnap.org.
While you're plugging Java based blogging software, don't forget the Roller Weblogger, which runs JRoller and, since the article includes blosxom, people should also be aware of blojsom, which is a Java based clone of blosxom. Naturally, there are others out there too.
P.S. Since the original post didn't provide a direct link, here's one for the home page of SnipSnap.
If you have a computer and a voice/fax modem and voicemail/fax software, it's easy enough to make your own telezapper. You can even do it with an regular answering machine, though you might find it difficult to make a high enough quality recording for it to work correctly. In both cases, you just pre-pend your answering message with the appropriate SIT tones and a few seconds of silence.
I was going to rant on about how much better Zoe is, but the review really makes it sound like the Google folks have gotten a few things right. Zoe may have to change it's byline of "Googling your email".
Nonetheless, I'd really like to suggest that folks who like GMail give Zoe a try and if you don't think Zoe is feature complete, then help out... it's an open source Java program, so you have the control and it's cross platform.
One caveat is that Zoe is a mail archiver, not a client, so it's best used in conjunction with a desktop client for reading and composing messages. It's not quite in the same niche as GMail, but it's actually more flexible because you get the choice of how to use it and it still stores messages so you don't have to mess with mail folders and you will be able to find any message from any browser.
I'm not saying that the handwriting recognition doesn't work. What I'm saying is that the recognition isn't practical for serious data input.
For example, with the Apple Newton MP-2100, I was able to sit through a two hour, non-technical lecture and write down virtually every word the speaker said, just like I could on a piece of paper. I haven't seen any modern PDA that can even come close to doing that. Some of the newer WinCE^H^H^H^H^HPocketPC devices do have some fairly good free-form recognition, but it's a far cry from what the Newton could do and doesn't have the accompanying gesture support that made on-the-fly corrections viable. Those devices would have trouble keeping up with even a G.W. Bush speech for five minutes.
Since a PDA can go pretty much anywhere the user can, it's an ideal data input device for shop floor, warehouse, medical and other users who can't find a terminal or big keyboard device difficult. Consider a Doctor who needs to write down free-form patient input as the patient describes it. Thumb typing isn't going to do it. Most of them use paper and have someone transcirbe it. For those sorts of applications, the industry has gone for limited input devices that have specific forms and menu pickers, which really limits the range of input that the user can enter.
A well designed pen interface has the potential to be more productive than a keyboard for things like writing long text documents. Unfortunately, the technology was killed as an infant.
Drops Insignia Jeode Java VM in favor of IBM J9 VM
on
Zaurus SL-6000 Review
·
· Score: 3, Informative
One place that you can see the IBM influence is that the SL-6000 dropped the Insignia Jeode Java Virtual Machine that was used in the 5000 series and used the IBM J9 VM.
Unfortunately, both are J2MEPersonal Profile VM's, so most java programs have to be ported to work on them. It's too bad that SUN laid down the law and told SavaJe and others that handheld devices are only allowed to run J2ME and not J2SE, even if SavaJe did manage to port it and make it work. So, no applets in your web browser:(
Another Java issue is that you can't simply tap on a jar file and expect it to run. Instead, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to create a special installation package just for the Zaurus. This makes it difficult to use PersonalJava applications that were designed to work on any platform without doing some re-packaging. Although I understand the impetus to use the linux-ish packaging system they use for linux based applictions, it's disappointing that they didn't use something like JNLP for PersonalJava applications.
Slashdot Mirror
Other posters have shown how this idea has problems, but I have a slightly different suggestion that has most of the same advantages as BitTorrent and would be more appropriate for typical web content.
Basically, set up the browsers to share the cached data.
A typical transaction life cycle would be to send an HTTP request to a server, but instead of getting back the actual document content, your browser gets back a short list of the last n clients to ask for the document. Your browser then requests the documents from the most recent client to get the file and that client returns the file if it is still in the cache. If it's not in the cache, or the client is no longer connected, then the browser moves on to the next client in the list. If none of them have the document, then the browser will go back to the server and request the document providing a list of clients that no longer have the content available so the server can keep it's list up-to-date. To prevent any tampering, the content documents would be signed by the original host and the client would have to request the public key directly from the original host. Any time a document is updated, the server will have to provide the actual document to the next few requesting clients and rebuild it's list of clients from scratch.
This would really reduce the load on servers by using sharing in a way that is similar to BitTorrent, but would be much more appropriate for the small file sizes that are typical of web documents and be able to work in a public way that doesn't require proxy caches.
Darn, I was just about to believe my eyes when I saw the video (sorry Real Video), which featured a lighter being held to a petrie dish of the feul. Other reading suggests that this stuff, while not entirely benign, is much safer than gasoline. It's a good thing the parent warns of the, otherwise, unapparent dangers ;)
A Creative Commons license would probably be more appropriate for a T.V. show, even if the show is mostly about GPL.
;)
Don't forget to install your mozcc extension in your Mozilla based browser so you can determine the creative commons license status of the web page that the T.V. show is on
Folks, ZOË has been doing a fantastic job of email archiving and searching for some time now. Check it out... it's open source and totally cross platform and will happily co-exist with whatever email client you are already using.
It's such a great system, that it's not uncommon to see comments on the mailing list from users who keep 10's of thousands of emails in ZOË without any problems. I, personally, have email going back to 1995 in ZOË and have back burner plans to copy my old Tapcis emails from the 80's to ZOË.
This is a great idea for the rich nations of the world, but the real trouble spots, typically, don't have such affluence.
The idea I've been pondering for a while is something that is cheap and easily distributable so that people in the places where bad stuff happens can put them in their windows and make the results available to journalists when something goes down. These could be distributed for free by NGO's, like freedom organizations, so that most trouble spots would be blanketed.
The hardware I have in mind is something really cheap, rugged and self-contined, with a walkman form factor and, perhaps, endless loop DAT tape storage and a solar power source. Journalists could knock on doors the day after an event (or dig through the rubble) and copy these tapes for later perusal. The data would ideally be encrypted, to help with authenticity and make it difficult to view in the field. Some cheap equipment actually does see outside of human visible range, so these might actually be useful at night time too. This sort of form factor might make the devices cheap enough to make it practical to distribute them to thousands of homes in each world trouble spot.
I suspect that even though people in trouble areas might be suspicious of these things, that most of them would realized the advantages of having them and be willing to participate. Since the devices are automatic and easy to hide, the danger to the operator is minimal. Also, the collection process makes them pretty much useless for military use, so there's no real danger of "bad guys" collecting the tapes for use against "good guys". The only real practical use would be reporting of abuses or setting the story straight. Regardless of which side you're on, having more info is generally a better thing for the innocent victims of any conflict.
Imagine what things might be like if there was one of these in every tenth house in Baghdad or the West Bank...
If it already runs under Linux, it might not be too hard for them to port it to a Zaurus. However, with Sharp's limited distribution in the US and Europe, I doubt they'd even try. It's too bad because I be the same app could run without recompiling on OpenZaurus or even an iPAQ running Familiar.
Of course, this isn't the only handheld option. The TomTom folks also have PDA editions for more popular devices.
The theory and economics of open sourcing hardware drivers is really well covered by Eric S. Raymond in his now famous book the Cathedral and the Bazaar. In particular, The Magic Cauldron section deals with the theory and economics of exactly this sort of thing and follows up with an afterword that explains Why Closing a Driver Loses Its Vendor Money.
Just looking at the contents on Suprnova makes me immediately think that this stuff has got to be pirated. The other torrent link in the article also looks suspicious too. Do either of these torrents include Creative Commons licenses? I doubt it.
I'd love to download these torrents to see the show, but I'm not sure I should, though saying so on slashdot makes me wonder if I should post as AC.
Is slashdot, as opposed to individual posters on slashdot, actually linking to clearly pirated content? Could this be a legal problem for OSTG?
torrentocracy has political content that is set up to work with MythTV and a corresponding Blog so you can point their custom BitTorrent client at the RSS feed and automatically have your MythTV box download the content as it becomes available and view when you get around to it. This is really a great example of the RSS & BT Together idea that was discussed here on slashdot a while back. Until I saw Torrentocracy, I really didn't "get it", but now I do. This kind of thing could really change the way we get our newertainment.
RHZ radio is already up and running and streaming content on the internet so that remote stations can rebroadcast it. Very cool stuff!
It's interesting to note that patents apply to all sorts of unlikely things like software and business processes, but not to legal strategies, practices or processes. It seems as if the lawyers realized how badly that would muck them up and haven't applied the patent pricipals to their own field. I guess that there's lots of money to be made from messing up everyone else's business, but not their own.
It would be very bizarre to hear an objection to a legal argument because someone else owned the right to make arguments of they style that the motion used. Perhaps only Johny Cochraine could "play the race card" or something like that. Every other law firm might have to pay him a royalty to use the argument.
If someone could come up with a clear demonstration showing that software patents are as sensible as legal strategy patents, then I'll bet that the supreme court would overturn the current incarnation of the patent laws in a heart beat.
That's how the (software) patent game works. It's virtually impossible to avoid violating patents due to the very nature of software. When challenged, the big guns go through their patent portfolio and can usually find something that the challenger violates in some way. Then, a cross licensing agreement is hammered out. Thus, the big fish are protected, but any small fry can't compete.
So, yes, everyone is guilty, but the IBM's of this world can weather the war just fine, while everyone else gets wiped out. In fact, the war is already in full swing and has simply become part of doing business.
I think RMS covers this in his speech The dangers of software patents.
The notes section of ESR's Magic Cauldron has a wonderful comment that suggests that since programmers and support staff appear on the books as a liability, expanding by hiring more staff is a net loss. However, the aquisition of another software company, which is primarily valuable because it is a bunch of other programmers and support staff, is seen as an investment on the books.
It all seems so bizarre that the factory model treats software as if it has some sale value, when it's really the service provided by the programmers and support staff that has real value. In this topsy turvy way of looking at things the accounting systems artificially encourage mergers rather than increasing staff because the former appears as growth, while the latter appears to be a loss.
All of this is why we end up with huge companies that produce mostly shelfware with a point upgrade cycle that is not backwards compatible so that customers are forced to keep sending in money or be abandonned. An honest service model would be much better for everybody.
I didn't do this one... it happened to a colleauge, who actually managed to hang onto his job despite what he did.
Will pulling cable through the cieling of a computer room (you know the type with the magnetic locks, halon gas fire suppression system, massive airconditioning and racks of equipment with blinking lights), my colleauge found that the place where the cables entered the room up was next to a row of equipment that ended right where he wanted to pull the cables back out... so, he walked across the top of the machines to get to the other side rather than climb down the ladder and move it to the other side. What he didn't know was that five of the washing machine sized boxes in the middle of the row were hard drives (the old removable platter kind). The sysop came running into the room to se why all five hard drives had crashed only to see the technician walking back across to his ladder.
All five drives had multiple head crashes causing physical loss of data and dammage to the media. I don't know if the heads were damaged or not.
Strangely enough, later that summer, in the same room, I was pulling some cable under the floor and we were very concerned that some of the fire sensors were dangerously close to where the cable was going. The cable got stuck, so I pulled a little harder, it gave way and the fire alarm went off! I was terrified and was out of there so fast that we beat most of the office staff to the mustering area.
It just turned out to be a co-incidence. A different fire alarm had been set off by a careless welder in a nearby hallway and it wasn't my fault at all. The fact that the halon system didn't trigger might have been a hint, but we were out of there so fast we wouldn't have known if it did.
Heat sensors in the floor always seemed like a strange idea, but I guess with all those wires running under there it makes sense... and there were smoke detectors on the ceiling too.
Back in the day I was making a "luggable" and used one of those old hospital tv monitors as the display. However, the connector on the back was some kludged together jackobson connector that included both the antenna AND the power. I guessed wrong and the power supply was a motorcycle battery (I did say luggable) so the result was this little 10 inch high mushroom cloud escaping out of the top of the box.
;)
In retrospect I'm surprised it was able to keep its form and not be disrupted by the vents in the metal case, though it did dissapate before it got to the ceiling.
Since I figured it was toast and I had the wrong two connectors, I didn't think there was any harm in trying the other two. This was rewarded with the appearance of a second mushroom cloud! It turned out that the first pair was + and antenna ground and the second pair was - and antenna.
After all of this, I found a small choke whose guts were spilled out of the now split housing. I pushed them back inside and they made good enough contact that the monitor worked as well as it ever did, which wasn't that great.
Two decades later, when I smoked a real monitor by setting the XF86Config file incorrectly the result was not nearly as dramatic and was much smellier. These days, you have to work pretty hard to do that, though I'm sure some of you are up to the task
Surely his is the perfect place for JINI technology to really shine.
All you need is a bluetooth or WiFi enabled Java/JINI phone/pda or some such gadget. As you walk into the room, your device gets updated with the appropriate GUI control software for all of your entertainment boxes and you just select the ones you want to use and interact with them via the user interface provided via JINI.
No more searching for the correct controller. The too many buttons syndrome could also be overcome because these apps will be able to use rich client interfaces to simplify the huge number of options and even provide help documentation!
I doubt it'll happen any time soon though.
The same guy who gave us the bear proof suit has also created some goop he calls Fire Paste. Perhaps this stuff would be able to do an even better job.
The Curta is definitely a very cool gadget, but since they're collector's items, the prices can be outrageously high.
Although the VCALC Curta Page mentions that most of the old Curta technicians who worked on the devices have made replicas at some point or other, nobody seems to be doing it today.
With the huge interest in them (since the Scientific American article), and the high prices, I'm very surprised that nobody's making low cost replicas. I'm sure lots of geeks who are more enamoured with the technology than the history would love to have a knock-off and the patents have probably long since expired.
This seems like a pattern for Mr. Gosling. He seems to like re-inventing the wheel.
Isn't that what the "free" version of Google's Blogger does already?
While you're plugging Java based blogging software, don't forget the Roller Weblogger, which runs JRoller and, since the article includes blosxom, people should also be aware of blojsom, which is a Java based clone of blosxom. Naturally, there are others out there too.
P.S. Since the original post didn't provide a direct link, here's one for the home page of SnipSnap.
If you have a computer and a voice/fax modem and voicemail/fax software, it's easy enough to make your own telezapper. You can even do it with an regular answering machine, though you might find it difficult to make a high enough quality recording for it to work correctly. In both cases, you just pre-pend your answering message with the appropriate SIT tones and a few seconds of silence.
JunkBUSTERS has a good web page on dealing with junk faxes. They also have lots of good, practical advice on lots of other related communications abuses. This is a site that is well worth checking out.
I was going to rant on about how much better Zoe is, but the review really makes it sound like the Google folks have gotten a few things right. Zoe may have to change it's byline of "Googling your email".
Nonetheless, I'd really like to suggest that folks who like GMail give Zoe a try and if you don't think Zoe is feature complete, then help out... it's an open source Java program, so you have the control and it's cross platform.
One caveat is that Zoe is a mail archiver, not a client, so it's best used in conjunction with a desktop client for reading and composing messages. It's not quite in the same niche as GMail, but it's actually more flexible because you get the choice of how to use it and it still stores messages so you don't have to mess with mail folders and you will be able to find any message from any browser.
I'm not saying that the handwriting recognition doesn't work. What I'm saying is that the recognition isn't practical for serious data input.
For example, with the Apple Newton MP-2100, I was able to sit through a two hour, non-technical lecture and write down virtually every word the speaker said, just like I could on a piece of paper. I haven't seen any modern PDA that can even come close to doing that. Some of the newer WinCE^H^H^H^H^HPocketPC devices do have some fairly good free-form recognition, but it's a far cry from what the Newton could do and doesn't have the accompanying gesture support that made on-the-fly corrections viable. Those devices would have trouble keeping up with even a G.W. Bush speech for five minutes.
Since a PDA can go pretty much anywhere the user can, it's an ideal data input device for shop floor, warehouse, medical and other users who can't find a terminal or big keyboard device difficult. Consider a Doctor who needs to write down free-form patient input as the patient describes it. Thumb typing isn't going to do it. Most of them use paper and have someone transcirbe it. For those sorts of applications, the industry has gone for limited input devices that have specific forms and menu pickers, which really limits the range of input that the user can enter.
A well designed pen interface has the potential to be more productive than a keyboard for things like writing long text documents. Unfortunately, the technology was killed as an infant.
One place that you can see the IBM influence is that the SL-6000 dropped the Insignia Jeode Java Virtual Machine that was used in the 5000 series and used the IBM J9 VM.
:(
Unfortunately, both are J2ME Personal Profile VM's, so most java programs have to be ported to work on them. It's too bad that SUN laid down the law and told SavaJe and others that handheld devices are only allowed to run J2ME and not J2SE, even if SavaJe did manage to port it and make it work. So, no applets in your web browser
Another Java issue is that you can't simply tap on a jar file and expect it to run. Instead, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to create a special installation package just for the Zaurus. This makes it difficult to use PersonalJava applications that were designed to work on any platform without doing some re-packaging. Although I understand the impetus to use the linux-ish packaging system they use for linux based applictions, it's disappointing that they didn't use something like JNLP for PersonalJava applications.