Considering that Doom ran on fast 386's as well in a sort of playable state, I don't think that the GBA is going to be having any problems with the game.
I don't know how the (16MHz?) ARM processor in the GBA compares against a 33MHz 486 which could play Doom well, but that 486 would not have had built-in 3Dish hardware, sprite scaling capabilities, etc, so it is coming out about equal in the end I reckon. GBA cartridges can hold 256Mbits of data (32MB), possibly even more, and it is possible that they can use data compression like the N64 (anyone know?). Should be enough space for a full version of Doom.
I have never bought anything (or visited the site of) any company that has sent a spam email to me. Mainly because the language is appalling, littered with $ signs (and I live in the UK - yep, sound very targetted to me), and I know that the product will NOT change my life forever, or give me a 13" wanger and 15 girls a week, or show me the most beautiful girls without clothes in the world.
I (and most other slightly clueful internet users) view any spam email as suspicious and dodgy (like a pyramid scheme, etc). Your company might sell the most marvellous products, but all that effort will go to waste if you use spam. I recall a company called "Domains for Christmas" that used spam email to get customers - the resulting backlash all but shut the company down before it had started, and I haven't heard of it since.
Talk to your boss about opt-in mailing lists and online targetted advertising, such as the excellent Google system. Newsletters and the like every month or so are fine, and they will go to the customers most likely to buy stuff (otherwise why would they have signed up?). Newsletters every week are annoying, and every fortnight is dodgy as well. On the opt-in form, put an option for "Plain Text Mails Only" please...
Your boss sounds just like a clueless bosses off of BOFH 2 (on The Register).
It just can't compete with the existing Palm software library - thousands of applications to do practically anything you want.
Shame really - this looks like a reasonable machine. The processor is a little weak (66MHz MIPs is marginally better than a 33MHz Dragonball), the screen is 160x240, when 240x320 would be better, and the interface is clunky to say the least.
I hope it doesn't use some cut down version of X for its display either. That would blow seriously. A native display would be fine though.
Anyway, the current Palms are the last of the (very) old generation. The new generation (ARM CPU, etc) will be coming out next year. These will most likely have better screens in a format that users have demanded - probably 240x240, 240x320, 320x320 or 320x480 even. It will still be the old greyscale and colour screens though. From the low end m120 and m125, the m320 and m325,the m520 and m525, the m720 and m725 etc, will be the ARM based PalmOS 5 devices. These wil not cost more than the current Palms, due to cost reductions in having the new hardware instead of the legacy hardware. The top models will be able to emulate Dragonball Palms in near real time.
m110, m115, m510, m515 etc will be speed bumps and OS upgrades for the existing Palm line in around 6 months time, when Motorola get a faster Dragonball out (40MHz and 50MHz versions). These will sport 160x160 screens, or 320x320 doubled screens like the Sony Clie.
ALl the above is a pile of bollocks from the depths of my mind, but hey, it can't be that far wrong... Palm only uses a 160x160 screen now because that was practically the best you could have in 1995 when the first Palm devices came out.
All of the Palm devices are way overpriced for their hardware - however software is the key, and is what differentiates the Palm from the WinCEs and others.
However, new hardware from other companies is appearing. The Franklin eBookman looks pretty good for a PDA sizes device, and there is a larger device called the myebook.
eBookman: 240x200 16-greyscale screen, PDA functionality, eBook functionality, 32-bit, custom OS, free development kit runs under Linux, USB connector to PC, MMC slot, slim, etc etc.
myebook: 480x400 16-greyscale screen, PDA functionality, eBook functionality, etc.
All that is required is for a critical movement to get behind one of these devices, which both make the Palm look stupid. The eBookman looks like a sure fire hit. Twice as much screen estate as the Palm, about the same size, slim, good feature set, and DAMN CHEAP. Yes, $129 to $229.
They just don't have the same following as the Palm, however it is new, and things will change for the better. With 8 or 16MB of RAM, lots of flash for the OS, an OS with real OS features (separate 1GB address spaces for apps, etc), this should appeal to the geek in every one of you.
1) Smartmedia cards are _slow_, and 3x as big as the SD-Card in the new Palm, although a little thinner. It is coming to the end of its lifespan now. Also only usable as a memory expansion.
2) CompactFlash cards are faster than Smartmedia, but the same size, and a lot fatter. That would affect the Palm m50x a lot, as these are meant to be slim devices.
3) You might as well use the same media between all of your devices, and use one that is well supported and that most users will buy anyway.
4) MemoryStick is a Sony proprietary technology. SD isn't.
5) There is no comparable libre technology, at least none that don't have some disadvantage or another.
6) Logical Conclusion: SD
SD provides a flexible expansion option. It isn't just storage, it can do digital cameras, modems, fingerprint scanners, games on ROM, wireless, etc. Pretty much like memorystick.
I cannot see the worth of an IBM microdrive in a Palm - no Palm generates the amount of data that would require one of these, to be honest. Store 1billion appointments. Great. In a Psion or a WinCE device, yes - but these are more like mini-laptops that PDAs.
Well for a standard well supported small form factor expansion system, it is a lot better than MemoryStick.
Face it, new forms of media that do not have the ability to protect content are not going to ever get popular these days. The capabilities of SD/MMC are vast, and if you don't want to use it, then don't use it! The format will succeed anyway, with or without your support. And the cards look cute.
2. USB connectivity is proprietary
Palm deserve a slap for that one. It will get reverse engineered at some point I am sure - why don't they just release the information to get greater support for the device?
So how do you feel about the new Clie and the new m500 and m505?
The new Palms have a 'standard' SD/MMC slot for which a tonne of devices will be made by a multitude of companies.
The Palm m50X has an improved calendar, and includes software to let you work on Excel worksheets, an image viewer and more security features. They also have a proper USB cradle at last.
Does anyone know the horsepower of the new Palms? Why can't Motorola just go and make a 66MHz DragonBall at 0.25u or something? That would make the Palm range even better.
As the linked website says - "Palm OS 4.0 is backwards compatible. Most of your applications will work as always. ".
Read links before blurting all over Slashdot:-)
And for the guy with the Palm turning on problem in his pocket (ooh er missus!) the new Palm has mroe security features that might help this. Slightly.
I think that PalmOS 4 uses more than 2 MB of flash memory on the device, so the device has to include over 2MB of flash - say 4 MB, in order to use POS4. As all previous Palms only had 2MB flash for the OS, they are unable to take advantage of Palm OS4. I am sure that Palm will release a Palm OS 3.6 with necessary upgrades however.
Also, the Palm is not a computer. It is a PDA. If I bought a filofax(tm), then why would I expect to get extra filofax(tm) components for free? You pay for them. You bought a Palm that did X, you didn't buy a Palm that you thought might do Y in the future - that is a stupid policy!
1) DivX is 640x480 resolution or higher. Of course they aren't talking about that type of compression. They probably are talking 2.5 hours 10fps at 160x120, or 1 hour 10fps at 320x240, or 10 minutes 30fps 320x240. Still great for some purposes I am sure.
1.5) AVI is compressed at roughly 15MB/minute for 320x240 video and audio. Not great, but still....
2) The device doesn't support MP3. It supports ATRAC, the minidisk system. There are many people who would say that ATRAC is audibly superior to MP3, especially the latest ATRAC codec. It also compresses a lot more than MP3 for good quality audio.
Yup, sounds about right to me here as well. Except you try to post your comment and get logged out, and then your comment doesn't get posted, so you have to start again, or go to another site.
Face it people, holographic storage for the masses as 5 years off, 10 years for reasonable acceptance. Sure, a few devices might dribble out over the next couple of years. The best hope appears to be the FMD disc/card devices which might appear as early as next year.
Now what is 55,000 Yen in decent currencies? Is it around $500? This board also has two Intel network chips, which would cost about $200 for a dual network PCI card. Also has 64MB of memory installed. One PCI slot and one micro-PCI. Two parallel, 2 USB, 2 IDE, 1 floppy and audio. No graphics, you will have to use a PCI card, like a Voodoo5500, if you want graphics.
Go with the Revo. Kicks Palm up the butt in general, very good quality, nice screen even at 480x160 in 16 greys.
The Palm has a better interface for PIM work, but not for programming!
Future support may be a problem - Palm will be around in a few years time to be sure, but Psion are having difficulties.
But MAME and SimCity make up for that. And you can do real work in it, like word processing, programming, etc. Even has its own COM like system for embedding spreadsheets etc into other apps.
The Revo has a 36MHz ARM processor, the Palm has a 33MHz Dragonball. The ARM is arguably better, and if you want to do programming, ARM assembly is fun and nice, and has a future.
One2One is 30p a minute for data calls - well it was when I last looked. Yeah, right, like I want to pay 30p/m for a 9.6kb connection.
And then you read about the Palm m500 and m505 and it just makes you think that Visor is really gettings its butt kicked.
The Palm m500 will cost the same as the Visor Edge. It has an expansion port for SD-card devices (a standard if ever there is one for small form factor expansion slots), and it has Palm OS 4.
If you want colour, pay $50 more and get the m505 with a superior sidelit screen.
Gawd, Palm seem to be creeping up on Handspring. The m100 is clearly better than the old Visor. Maybe Handspring should update their low-end market? How about a 4MB device with the latest OS for $150?
The Visor Deluxe needs a $50 rebate to look like it competes with the IIIxe. Sure, the Handspring devices use USB, not serial, which is nice, and include microphones, nice for quick voice memos I am sure, but in the end it just doesn't look comptetitive enough. You can't update the OS without installing a springbrick module, etc.
The Clie looks more enticing than the Platinum, even though it costs $50 more. It is smaller, has some interesting looking apps, and also has its own proprietary memorystick expansion.
The Prism looks like it would compete with the Palm IIIc, but then you compare the prices - USB and a few more colours for an extra $120? Yeah, right.
Now the only thing that you don't get the details for is the speed of the processor. Handspring say that they use the latest PalmOS processor technology (you what?) and that everybody else doesn't - but the IIIc uses the 33MHz Dragonball just like the Prism, etc. Palms are flash upgradable as well.
Someone care to ease my mind about Palm actually being better value than Handspring?
No, I don't think you are missing anything at all.
It is a Palm Vx, with a USB connector instead of a serial connector, a slightly faster processor,
slightly enhanced apps (enhanced calculator woo!, and enhanced calendar). The Vx is smaller. The price is the same.
So you basically pay for faster syncs and miniSpringboard. Until miniSpringboard devices appear there isn't much point of that unless you want to add a brick to your Visor.
The stylus looks nice though.
I will still get a GBA though, wait for a GBA keyboard, and some PIM software for it. Mostly game playing, with some PIM (todo, calendar, birthdays, notes) functions is all I need. COsts a lot less. Bigger screen. Colour. So what if the games are on cartridges, and the PIM stuff would be as well. About the same speed as well!
Graham
They've got a 256K connection, how saturated would it be?
No, each server gets a 256K connection. Sealand has multiple links to Amsterdam and England, I don't know their total bandwidth but it is probably well over 10MBps. It would be possible to also buy more than 256K I am sure.
I am more in favour of the communitity Napster style services that someone mentioned earlier.
If they were under the size of a bucket, then you could say bye bye to your PC power supply and use water to power your PC (300W), Monitor (100W), and various expansion devices.
Of course, this ain't much use if a small reactor is bigger than a house.
Oh, and in traditional sarcastic Slashdot fashion, I'll believe it when I see it!:-)
Stupid angled bracket... Lets repeat that messed up paragraph...
The graphics are awesome for a portable device that uses under 0.6W of power, with a 16-20MHz 32-bit CPU. The CPU is much more powerful than the Palms dragonball. You can see the Japanese TV ads online for the GBA, and the graphics are also dead smooth, with parallax scrolling etc in the Mario 2 style game, and the mode 7 style graphics look smoother than the original - still twice the CPU power and 2/3rds the screen area should be helping here.
I know it isn't going to be the ultimate in hardware gaming platforms ever, but with the great graphics, 240x160 16-bit screen, etc, this is going to make a lot of people happy.
The 15 hour battery life means it won't be another GameGear or Lynx, where the only way to play it was plugged into the wall. Yeah, very portable. Also making the device backwards compatible with the old gamboy series is a master move, as it means that your investment in portable games will not be wasted ("Take two handhelds into the train?" aka shampoo ads).
God, I am rambling. Nintendo have always said that they will only release better machines when the market is ready for it, and it can be delivered cheaply. Under $100 is cheap. Look at the cost of a colour Palm IIIc - this has more buttons, 1.5x the screen area, and an expansion port. This has multimedia capabilities (such as MPEG video decoding, great audio, etc). If it had a touchscreen and more RAM it would be the PDA that everyone would want:-).
The graphics are awesome for a portable device that uses
This device will not be playing Quake anytime soon, but Doom is a possibility - albeit with some caveats I am sure. The cartridges can hold either 256Mbits or 512Mbits (32MB or 64MB), which is enough for a portable Doom with all of the WAD files and the like, reduced textures, simplified maps, etc. And with 4 player deathmatch!
What I want to see is Bomberman - that game was great. ALso that Japanese RPG (SunThingy) looks absolutely awesome, what with those thatched rooves and the like. I don't sound like a 23 year old at the moment do I? I really want to program this device - the VGBA is onlny at version 0.2 though, the dev kits are expensive etc. ARM assembly is the computer equivalent of a long drawn out orgasm, whereas x86 is like a quick wank into a manky tissue and then you get stuff all over the carpet and duvet and stuff.
I would also like to see a lot of the Amiga classics ported. Alien Breed for one, maybe even Alien Breed 3D - that could run on a bog standard A1200, albeit like Quake III on a S3Virge. This handheld has much more CPU power than the original A1200, nevermind the A500. Other games include New Zealand Story, Addams Family, Sim City, Lionheart, Speedball 2... the list goes on and on.
I think I have talked myself into getting one when they are released over here in dark and distant England. Mario Kart Advance looks like a sure fire buy from here.
Anyone know where you can find some detailed hardware information about the GBA - not the high level stuff that is on every website, but things like graphics modes, CPU speed, audio functionality, etc?
On a decent system with a faster IDE controller (not the 16MBps system your mate is using) then I am sure that the IDE flash ROM transfer rate would be even faster, maybe even 100MBps. That would be great for the tasks that only need that. I could fit a minimal FreeBSD + exim configuration on one of those for a mailserver that would boot up in seconds rather that minutes. Sure, the logs and data for the system would be on a hard drive still, but anyway.
How much do these IDE solid state disks cost anyway (the small ones, not the fast ones). Imagine fitting a kernal, sshd, bash and a fully configured apache on one for instant web server availability. I know that the win2k microsoft.com website runs of large solid state disks for near instant reboots.
I agree wholeheartedly, and I would put you up to +5 if I could.
If anyone out there who has any say in next generation BIOSes that are not intended to boot windows or other OSs that requires primary and extended partitions, then please implement this.
I would a system with unlimited partitions, no legacy hard drive rubbish etc. Instead of mounting / on sd1s3a1 etc, why not mount / on "root", mount/var on "var", mount/usr on "usr" etc, just like the Amiga ("Work", "Workbench", "System 3.0" etc. The same goes for removable media - the Amiga has "CD0", "Zip0", "DF0", "DF1", etc for various types of removable media. Instead of mounting a floppy as/mnt/floppy from/dev/fda or whatever, mount a floppy as/mnt/floppy from "fd0" or "floppy", or "zip" or "playdisk" or "dvd" or whatever.
Add naming to disks themselves. Then when you do cd/mnt/backup, the system will ask you to insert the disk named "backup", which could be in any drive. The OS would autoload the disk when inserted, see that the disks name was "backup", and everything would continue fine.
Computers have gone a long way backwards since the elegant solutions that existed and died in the past with the likes of the Amiga, etc. This can mostly be blamed directly on Microsoft and Unix systems where usability was put last on the list of priorities. Now it is important, there are a whole load of nasty hacks to get around the crufty old PC system that just doesn't work nicely. The sooner it dies, the better.
Amazing... Some people don't read the stories or the other posts. THE PROTOCOL IS CALLED SECSH. NOT SHH.
Okay? Got it? SSH is an implementation of SecSH. OpenSSH is an implementation of SecSH. Clearly, OpenSSH is leaching off the brand and name that SSH has developed. Renaming it, as they are doing to OpenSecSH, solves all these problems, and the guy is happy with that.
Crikes, why should SSH Communications have to spend time and money dealing with support for OpenSSH just because the person is confused?
Imagine that the first car was a Ford Explorer. Along comes Toyota and calls their car Toyota Explorer. This is clearly not right. This is exactly the same.
The guy has been in contact with them before to try and get them to change the name. He has not got sufficiently annoyed so as to post it on a public developers list as they will not change the name. Next step will be a lawyer, and this would not do the open source cause any good at all. He is being reasonable, think about the people who are not being reasonable?!
I know the difference between ssh and openssh, so do you. But IT consultant X running 'ssh' on a Unix box doesn't know (or care) whether it is SSH or OpenSSH - but if something is funny, or goes wrong, the first port of call is SSH, not OpenSSH.
So, the steps to be taken:
Rename ssh in the/etc/services file to secsh - this applies to all operating systems
Rename OpenSSH to OpenSecSH. Already done, look at http://www.opensecsh.org/
Change references to ssh on all websites to secsh. Only mention ssh as an instance of the secsh protocol.
Etc....
Sorry if this is a little terse, and I doubt it will do my karma any good, but this is how I see the problem, and how I see the solution.
Hmmm, we have FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, etc. Maybe OpenSSH should be named "Secure Tunnelling Protocol" or STP for short. Then in Mozilla, typing in STP://remote.host.com/ would bring up an integrated SSH program...:-)
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Considering that Doom ran on fast 386's as well in a sort of playable state, I don't think that the GBA is going to be having any problems with the game.
I don't know how the (16MHz?) ARM processor in the GBA compares against a 33MHz 486 which could play Doom well, but that 486 would not have had built-in 3Dish hardware, sprite scaling capabilities, etc, so it is coming out about equal in the end I reckon. GBA cartridges can hold 256Mbits of data (32MB), possibly even more, and it is possible that they can use data compression like the N64 (anyone know?). Should be enough space for a full version of Doom.
I have never bought anything (or visited the site of) any company that has sent a spam email to me. Mainly because the language is appalling, littered with $ signs (and I live in the UK - yep, sound very targetted to me), and I know that the product will NOT change my life forever, or give me a 13" wanger and 15 girls a week, or show me the most beautiful girls without clothes in the world.
I (and most other slightly clueful internet users) view any spam email as suspicious and dodgy (like a pyramid scheme, etc). Your company might sell the most marvellous products, but all that effort will go to waste if you use spam. I recall a company called "Domains for Christmas" that used spam email to get customers - the resulting backlash all but shut the company down before it had started, and I haven't heard of it since.
Talk to your boss about opt-in mailing lists and online targetted advertising, such as the excellent Google system. Newsletters and the like every month or so are fine, and they will go to the customers most likely to buy stuff (otherwise why would they have signed up?). Newsletters every week are annoying, and every fortnight is dodgy as well. On the opt-in form, put an option for "Plain Text Mails Only" please...
Your boss sounds just like a clueless bosses off of BOFH 2 (on The Register).
It just can't compete with the existing Palm software library - thousands of applications to do practically anything you want.
Shame really - this looks like a reasonable machine. The processor is a little weak (66MHz MIPs is marginally better than a 33MHz Dragonball), the screen is 160x240, when 240x320 would be better, and the interface is clunky to say the least.
I hope it doesn't use some cut down version of X for its display either. That would blow seriously. A native display would be fine though.
Anyway, the current Palms are the last of the (very) old generation. The new generation (ARM CPU, etc) will be coming out next year. These will most likely have better screens in a format that users have demanded - probably 240x240, 240x320, 320x320 or 320x480 even. It will still be the old greyscale and colour screens though. From the low end m120 and m125, the m320 and m325,the m520 and m525, the m720 and m725 etc, will be the ARM based PalmOS 5 devices. These wil not cost more than the current Palms, due to cost reductions in having the new hardware instead of the legacy hardware. The top models will be able to emulate Dragonball Palms in near real time.
m110, m115, m510, m515 etc will be speed bumps and OS upgrades for the existing Palm line in around 6 months time, when Motorola get a faster Dragonball out (40MHz and 50MHz versions). These will sport 160x160 screens, or 320x320 doubled screens like the Sony Clie.
ALl the above is a pile of bollocks from the depths of my mind, but hey, it can't be that far wrong... Palm only uses a 160x160 screen now because that was practically the best you could have in 1995 when the first Palm devices came out.
All of the Palm devices are way overpriced for their hardware - however software is the key, and is what differentiates the Palm from the WinCEs and others.
However, new hardware from other companies is appearing. The Franklin eBookman looks pretty good for a PDA sizes device, and there is a larger device called the myebook.
eBookman: 240x200 16-greyscale screen, PDA functionality, eBook functionality, 32-bit, custom OS, free development kit runs under Linux, USB connector to PC, MMC slot, slim, etc etc.
myebook: 480x400 16-greyscale screen, PDA functionality, eBook functionality, etc.
All that is required is for a critical movement to get behind one of these devices, which both make the Palm look stupid. The eBookman looks like a sure fire hit. Twice as much screen estate as the Palm, about the same size, slim, good feature set, and DAMN CHEAP. Yes, $129 to $229.
They just don't have the same following as the Palm, however it is new, and things will change for the better. With 8 or 16MB of RAM, lots of flash for the OS, an OS with real OS features (separate 1GB address spaces for apps, etc), this should appeal to the geek in every one of you.
1) Smartmedia cards are _slow_, and 3x as big as the SD-Card in the new Palm, although a little thinner. It is coming to the end of its lifespan now. Also only usable as a memory expansion.
2) CompactFlash cards are faster than Smartmedia, but the same size, and a lot fatter. That would affect the Palm m50x a lot, as these are meant to be slim devices.
3) You might as well use the same media between all of your devices, and use one that is well supported and that most users will buy anyway.
4) MemoryStick is a Sony proprietary technology. SD isn't.
5) There is no comparable libre technology, at least none that don't have some disadvantage or another.
6) Logical Conclusion: SD
SD provides a flexible expansion option. It isn't just storage, it can do digital cameras, modems, fingerprint scanners, games on ROM, wireless, etc. Pretty much like memorystick.
I cannot see the worth of an IBM microdrive in a Palm - no Palm generates the amount of data that would require one of these, to be honest. Store 1billion appointments. Great. In a Psion or a WinCE device, yes - but these are more like mini-laptops that PDAs.
Well for a standard well supported small form factor expansion system, it is a lot better than MemoryStick.
Face it, new forms of media that do not have the ability to protect content are not going to ever get popular these days. The capabilities of SD/MMC are vast, and if you don't want to use it, then don't use it! The format will succeed anyway, with or without your support. And the cards look cute.
2. USB connectivity is proprietary
Palm deserve a slap for that one. It will get reverse engineered at some point I am sure - why don't they just release the information to get greater support for the device?
So how do you feel about the new Clie and the new m500 and m505?
The new Palms have a 'standard' SD/MMC slot for which a tonne of devices will be made by a multitude of companies.
The Palm m50X has an improved calendar, and includes software to let you work on Excel worksheets, an image viewer and more security features. They also have a proper USB cradle at last.
Does anyone know the horsepower of the new Palms? Why can't Motorola just go and make a 66MHz DragonBall at 0.25u or something? That would make the Palm range even better.
As the linked website says - "Palm OS 4.0 is backwards compatible. Most of your applications will work as always. ".
:-)
Read links before blurting all over Slashdot
And for the guy with the Palm turning on problem in his pocket (ooh er missus!) the new Palm has mroe security features that might help this. Slightly.
I think that PalmOS 4 uses more than 2 MB of flash memory on the device, so the device has to include over 2MB of flash - say 4 MB, in order to use POS4. As all previous Palms only had 2MB flash for the OS, they are unable to take advantage of Palm OS4. I am sure that Palm will release a Palm OS 3.6 with necessary upgrades however.
Also, the Palm is not a computer. It is a PDA. If I bought a filofax(tm), then why would I expect to get extra filofax(tm) components for free? You pay for them. You bought a Palm that did X, you didn't buy a Palm that you thought might do Y in the future - that is a stupid policy!
1) DivX is 640x480 resolution or higher. Of course they aren't talking about that type of compression. They probably are talking 2.5 hours 10fps at 160x120, or 1 hour 10fps at 320x240, or 10 minutes 30fps 320x240. Still great for some purposes I am sure.
1.5) AVI is compressed at roughly 15MB/minute for 320x240 video and audio. Not great, but still....
2) The device doesn't support MP3. It supports ATRAC, the minidisk system. There are many people who would say that ATRAC is audibly superior to MP3, especially the latest ATRAC codec. It also compresses a lot more than MP3 for good quality audio.
3) Price is slated to be $420
Other than that, everything you said is correct.
Face it people, holographic storage for the masses as 5 years off, 10 years for reasonable acceptance. Sure, a few devices might dribble out over the next couple of years. The best hope appears to be the FMD disc/card devices which might appear as early as next year.
In Japanese, but has pictures
Manufacturers page, with english specs
Now what is 55,000 Yen in decent currencies? Is it around $500? This board also has two Intel network chips, which would cost about $200 for a dual network PCI card. Also has 64MB of memory installed. One PCI slot and one micro-PCI. Two parallel, 2 USB, 2 IDE, 1 floppy and audio. No graphics, you will have to use a PCI card, like a Voodoo5500, if you want graphics.
Go with the Revo. Kicks Palm up the butt in general, very good quality, nice screen even at 480x160 in 16 greys.
The Palm has a better interface for PIM work, but not for programming!
Future support may be a problem - Palm will be around in a few years time to be sure, but Psion are having difficulties.
But MAME and SimCity make up for that. And you can do real work in it, like word processing, programming, etc. Even has its own COM like system for embedding spreadsheets etc into other apps.
The Revo has a 36MHz ARM processor, the Palm has a 33MHz Dragonball. The ARM is arguably better, and if you want to do programming, ARM assembly is fun and nice, and has a future.
One2One is 30p a minute for data calls - well it was when I last looked. Yeah, right, like I want to pay 30p/m for a 9.6kb connection.
And then you read about the Palm m500 and m505 and it just makes you think that Visor is really gettings its butt kicked.
The Palm m500 will cost the same as the Visor Edge. It has an expansion port for SD-card devices (a standard if ever there is one for small form factor expansion slots), and it has Palm OS 4.
If you want colour, pay $50 more and get the m505 with a superior sidelit screen.
So why buy the edge when you can buy the m500?
Gawd, Palm seem to be creeping up on Handspring. The m100 is clearly better than the old Visor. Maybe Handspring should update their low-end market? How about a 4MB device with the latest OS for $150?
The Visor Deluxe needs a $50 rebate to look like it competes with the IIIxe. Sure, the Handspring devices use USB, not serial, which is nice, and include microphones, nice for quick voice memos I am sure, but in the end it just doesn't look comptetitive enough. You can't update the OS without installing a springbrick module, etc.
The Clie looks more enticing than the Platinum, even though it costs $50 more. It is smaller, has some interesting looking apps, and also has its own proprietary memorystick expansion.
The Prism looks like it would compete with the Palm IIIc, but then you compare the prices - USB and a few more colours for an extra $120? Yeah, right.
Now the only thing that you don't get the details for is the speed of the processor. Handspring say that they use the latest PalmOS processor technology (you what?) and that everybody else doesn't - but the IIIc uses the 33MHz Dragonball just like the Prism, etc. Palms are flash upgradable as well.
Someone care to ease my mind about Palm actually being better value than Handspring?
No, I don't think you are missing anything at all. It is a Palm Vx, with a USB connector instead of a serial connector, a slightly faster processor, slightly enhanced apps (enhanced calculator woo!, and enhanced calendar). The Vx is smaller. The price is the same. So you basically pay for faster syncs and miniSpringboard. Until miniSpringboard devices appear there isn't much point of that unless you want to add a brick to your Visor. The stylus looks nice though. I will still get a GBA though, wait for a GBA keyboard, and some PIM software for it. Mostly game playing, with some PIM (todo, calendar, birthdays, notes) functions is all I need. COsts a lot less. Bigger screen. Colour. So what if the games are on cartridges, and the PIM stuff would be as well. About the same speed as well! Graham
If they were under the size of a bucket, then you could say bye bye to your PC power supply and use water to power your PC (300W), Monitor (100W), and various expansion devices.
Of course, this ain't much use if a small reactor is bigger than a house.
Oh, and in traditional sarcastic Slashdot fashion, I'll believe it when I see it! :-)
The graphics are awesome for a portable device that uses under 0.6W of power, with a 16-20MHz 32-bit CPU. The CPU is much more powerful than the Palms dragonball. You can see the Japanese TV ads online for the GBA, and the graphics are also dead smooth, with parallax scrolling etc in the Mario 2 style game, and the mode 7 style graphics look smoother than the original - still twice the CPU power and 2/3rds the screen area should be helping here.
The 15 hour battery life means it won't be another GameGear or Lynx, where the only way to play it was plugged into the wall. Yeah, very portable. Also making the device backwards compatible with the old gamboy series is a master move, as it means that your investment in portable games will not be wasted ("Take two handhelds into the train?" aka shampoo ads).
God, I am rambling. Nintendo have always said that they will only release better machines when the market is ready for it, and it can be delivered cheaply. Under $100 is cheap. Look at the cost of a colour Palm IIIc - this has more buttons, 1.5x the screen area, and an expansion port. This has multimedia capabilities (such as MPEG video decoding, great audio, etc). If it had a touchscreen and more RAM it would be the PDA that everyone would want :-).
The graphics are awesome for a portable device that uses This device will not be playing Quake anytime soon, but Doom is a possibility - albeit with some caveats I am sure. The cartridges can hold either 256Mbits or 512Mbits (32MB or 64MB), which is enough for a portable Doom with all of the WAD files and the like, reduced textures, simplified maps, etc. And with 4 player deathmatch!
What I want to see is Bomberman - that game was great. ALso that Japanese RPG (SunThingy) looks absolutely awesome, what with those thatched rooves and the like. I don't sound like a 23 year old at the moment do I? I really want to program this device - the VGBA is onlny at version 0.2 though, the dev kits are expensive etc. ARM assembly is the computer equivalent of a long drawn out orgasm, whereas x86 is like a quick wank into a manky tissue and then you get stuff all over the carpet and duvet and stuff.
I would also like to see a lot of the Amiga classics ported. Alien Breed for one, maybe even Alien Breed 3D - that could run on a bog standard A1200, albeit like Quake III on a S3Virge. This handheld has much more CPU power than the original A1200, nevermind the A500. Other games include New Zealand Story, Addams Family, Sim City, Lionheart, Speedball 2 ... the list goes on and on.
I think I have talked myself into getting one when they are released over here in dark and distant England. Mario Kart Advance looks like a sure fire buy from here.
Anyone know where you can find some detailed hardware information about the GBA - not the high level stuff that is on every website, but things like graphics modes, CPU speed, audio functionality, etc?
How much do these IDE solid state disks cost anyway (the small ones, not the fast ones). Imagine fitting a kernal, sshd, bash and a fully configured apache on one for instant web server availability. I know that the win2k microsoft.com website runs of large solid state disks for near instant reboots.
If anyone out there who has any say in next generation BIOSes that are not intended to boot windows or other OSs that requires primary and extended partitions, then please implement this.
I would a system with unlimited partitions, no legacy hard drive rubbish etc. Instead of mounting / on sd1s3a1 etc, why not mount / on "root", mount /var on "var", mount /usr on "usr" etc, just like the Amiga ("Work", "Workbench", "System 3.0" etc. The same goes for removable media - the Amiga has "CD0", "Zip0", "DF0", "DF1", etc for various types of removable media. Instead of mounting a floppy as /mnt/floppy from /dev/fda or whatever, mount a floppy as /mnt/floppy from "fd0" or "floppy", or "zip" or "playdisk" or "dvd" or whatever.
Add naming to disks themselves. Then when you do cd /mnt/backup, the system will ask you to insert the disk named "backup", which could be in any drive. The OS would autoload the disk when inserted, see that the disks name was "backup", and everything would continue fine.
Computers have gone a long way backwards since the elegant solutions that existed and died in the past with the likes of the Amiga, etc. This can mostly be blamed directly on Microsoft and Unix systems where usability was put last on the list of priorities. Now it is important, there are a whole load of nasty hacks to get around the crufty old PC system that just doesn't work nicely. The sooner it dies, the better.
Amazing... Some people don't read the stories or the other posts. THE PROTOCOL IS CALLED SECSH. NOT SHH.
Okay? Got it? SSH is an implementation of SecSH. OpenSSH is an implementation of SecSH. Clearly, OpenSSH is leaching off the brand and name that SSH has developed. Renaming it, as they are doing to OpenSecSH, solves all these problems, and the guy is happy with that.
Crikes, why should SSH Communications have to spend time and money dealing with support for OpenSSH just because the person is confused?
Imagine that the first car was a Ford Explorer. Along comes Toyota and calls their car Toyota Explorer. This is clearly not right. This is exactly the same.
The guy has been in contact with them before to try and get them to change the name. He has not got sufficiently annoyed so as to post it on a public developers list as they will not change the name. Next step will be a lawyer, and this would not do the open source cause any good at all. He is being reasonable, think about the people who are not being reasonable?!
I know the difference between ssh and openssh, so do you. But IT consultant X running 'ssh' on a Unix box doesn't know (or care) whether it is SSH or OpenSSH - but if something is funny, or goes wrong, the first port of call is SSH, not OpenSSH.
So, the steps to be taken:
- Rename ssh in the
/etc/services file to secsh - this applies to all operating systems
- Rename OpenSSH to OpenSecSH. Already done, look at http://www.opensecsh.org/
- Change references to ssh on all websites to secsh. Only mention ssh as an instance of the secsh protocol.
- Etc....
Sorry if this is a little terse, and I doubt it will do my karma any good, but this is how I see the problem, and how I see the solution.I think that using the name in an arcane place like that file is not going to count against him.
And do you really know that he never contacted the unix vendors?
Hmmm, we have FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, etc. Maybe OpenSSH should be named "Secure Tunnelling Protocol" or STP for short. Then in Mozilla, typing in STP://remote.host.com/ would bring up an integrated SSH program... :-)