It's not really possible. In court, a patent that is approved by the PTO is assumed to be valid and to have passed all of these tests. So about the only thing that's effective in court is provable prior art.
You always could just download all of the PRC tools (gcc, gdb, pilrc, etc) and do debugging from the device without having to join. You basically just need to join if you want the roms (for POSE), the simulator (PalmOS 5), or to join their newsgroups. Joining is free, so it's not really that big of deal. (That's unless you work for a company, then you probably have to go through the lawyers for the license agreement part.) It's been so long since I've needed to get anything from there, that I can't even remember my login and password anymore.
The fact that this post got +5 Informative goes to show that the moderators really are on crack, and that many/.ers really don't know much about PalmOS development, but like to spout off their incorrect ideas anyway.
GCC, GDB, and Pilrc (resource compiler) have been availible for a long time. POSE (Palm OS Emulator) is also completely open source and maintained by PalmSource. Right there is a complete open source dev environment.
OS documentation is pretty complete, up to and including info on many of the internal data structures. There's also several easy to access newsgroups, faqs, books, etc, with tons of info for doing practically anything you could imagine.
Really, after doing some side programming on the Palm for 3+ years, I've never seen anyone who's had as much trouble as this guy's said he had. Heck, I've got a better dev enviroment, docs, etc, for Palm, than the solaris & linux systems that I use at my full time job.
PS, PalmSource is now working on a fully integrated & free Eclipse dev environment...
All the first run T3's were affected by a bug with the sound interrupts. It was sending huge number of them, bogging down the device, and sometimes making it crash. There is an update to fix this.
The square screen Palms will be the rough part. I haven't yet figured out the best way to display the tactical combat on them (PPC & 320x480 Palms will be in landscape mode). (Keep in mind that MoM was in 320x200 8-bit color.) As for the size of things, Warfare Incorporated (a RTS game) has smaller units than this will and still looks and plays well. Mice can do more than a stylus, but tap & hold, flicking (tap, hold, move to the side, and release), and on screen navigational aids can do the job well enough.
PalmOS 5 devices have enough horsepower to handle it. The original MoM ran on 25Mhz computers w/2M ram and 40M HD space. With smaller screens, faster processors, and flash cards, it will work. The PPC version will run on a Axim 5, because that's what I have:-).
When transitioning from 68K to ARM, Palm made a 2 stage process. PalmOS 5 is the first stage, making the ARM devices backwardly compatible with 68K devices. This is done by an "open box" emulator called PACE. Basically the OS is running seperately from PACE, and any program running in PACE will have all of it's OS called translated into ARM PalmOS calls. It's sort of like a WinNT running a Win3.1 program (or a PPC Mac running a 68K Mac program), but without as many protections.
As part of the first stage, programmers can write "armlets" that are custom ARM code that can be accessed by the 68K program running in PACE. So if you want to make an ARM program, you can just do it, and use a 68K stub to start it.
Stage 2 is PalmOS 6. PalmOS 6 fills out the real OS (the PACE emulator won't be changed) to add all of the other goodies. PalmOS 6 programs won't be runnable on older devices since they'll be full ARM programs. This is the part that the BeOS guys have been working on, and I have high hopes for it considering how good BeOS was.
I'm working on an updated version of MoM. It's different, but will be very familiar to MoM players. Multiple races, 2 planes (surface and underworld), 200+ spells + spell research, a HoMM type tactical combat w/ 15+ units, heroes + magic item creation, etc. Hopefully done by XMAS. Here's the kicker: it will only be for Palm (OS 5+) and PPC.
Don't view this as a game machine. View it as a high-end Palm that also is the best for playing games.
In that view, $399 for a hi-res+ screen and 128M is pretty cheap. I know of several people interested in buying it, and they have no interest at all in playing games on it.
You actually patent an implementation of an idea, plus as many variants as you can think of. Of course, with the way the PTO office is going, I'm not sure if they even remember that anymore.
Dell and HP are basically selling just a little over cost. Basically they're losing money on each one sold, but they make great throwins to help get big server purchases, so it evens out.
Palm, et al, actually need to make a nice profit off of each one sold...
Palm Zire 71 is going for about $275 right now. The Tungsten E will be out soon for $200. (It's roughly comparable to an ipaq 19xx.)
I've been to 4 colleges, seen another half dozen, and taught CS classes for a year as a full instructor.
Here's what I've learned: 50% of what you'll get out of college is based on how hard you work. The other 50% is based on what kind of instructors you get.
Except for a few exceptions (Ivy league schools and the contacts you get), that's it. The school's ranking, reputation, administration, resources, research, etc., mean absolutely nothing for a BS degree.
The fact is, if you know a nearby community college that has very good instructors (they're out there), then it can be better to go to the CC for 2 years (and save a bunch of $$$), and then go to the 4-year school for your BS. I did this, and my UIUC BS/EE degree looks the same as everyone who spent 4 years there.
The most important thing that you can do is actually research the department, and the instructors. (Do the instructors teach most of the classes, or TAs? What do their office hours look like? Do they even care about teaching?) Go to the school and check it out.
Side note: You also need to view college with a cost/benefit ratio, like a business investment.
If I walk into a bookstore, and then walk out with a load of books without paying for them that's theft. That will get me what? A felony conviction and likely about a month of jail time (if not straight to parole).
If I go onto kazaa and download that same bunch of books, then that's copyright infringment. That will get me what? A felony conviction for 5 years and $250K fine per offense.
I think that the anti-copyright zeolots should start insisting that it's theft because the penalties are a lot less...
VHDL & verilog both have serious concurrency problems. As an engineer you have to either A) design a system without any potential fundamental concurrency problems, or B) write your design without these problems from your knowledge of how both the simulator and sythesis tool will handle that section of code.
The problem is that synthesis of these languages has different assumptions than the simulation. This is like having a version of C++ that runs differently in the debugger than it does compilied (and sometimes that even happens...).
This thing is actually cheap! How can I say that when a GBA is only $70? Compare it to all the other Palm PDAs with a 320x480 screen. It's the cheapest one with PalmOS5 and ARM based.
Since this can also be used for everything else a Palm is used for, I've heard many people say that they'd get it for PIM/productivity stuff, and screw the games.
A lot of these are availible for less than $100. The original Zire only has 2M, but it's now less than $80 most places. M100/105/125 and the visors are all less than $100.
The midrange handheld...
TT, TT2, Zire 71, several sonys. This also is pretty well covered already.
Finally, at the high end...
Don't look for PPC or Palm here if you want those kind of features. Linux is also out. Look for the tablet version of WinXP. Several companies are working on these right now. (Several were suppose to have already shipped...) I think that most of these will go to companies that will promptly dump all their PPC PDAs. (Why run a substitute WinOS, when you can run the real thing?)
Palm Zire 71, around $275 with MP3, SD, color, etc. Even a camera.
I've got a Dell X5, a Treo 90, and a Sony 615. The treo is used for work, the other 2 are just toys. They are just too big, too heavy, and don't have nearly enough battery life.
What really puts them into a spot is their investors. They still think that MS is a growth stock. If they cut prices to compete with linux, they have a bunch of really pissed off investors, because their revenue won't be increasing as expected. If they raise prices to increase revenue to please the investors, then linux wins in the long run.
Thinking PalmOS vs PPC is outright ignoring market effects.
PalmOS owns the PIM market, by far the biggest reason that PDAs are purchased. 28M+ Palms sold by now, and 100M+ smartphones sold by now (many running Symbian). Doing the math shows that Palm is going to have a rough time in the future and will have to open up new markets.
The biggest danger PPC devices have is Microsoft itself. In 2 years you'll see tablet PCs the same size as PPCs, and only $100 more. Which would you rather have? MS makes about $15 for PPC OS and Pocket Office. They make about $300 for XP and Office. It seems pretty obvious that MS won't want PPC to be competitive to XP, and will likely slowly kill it.
These things and tablet PCs are going to kill PPC.
Most people (like you) who get a PPC really are wanting a tiny full powered PC.
What are the differences between a PPC and a small tablet PC? Processor type, amount of memory, and the HD. With the new tiny and cheap HD coming out, it's only a matter of time before a tablet PC comes out the same size as the PPCs, and costing only $100-$200 more.
Palm can't kill PPC, but MS will. MS gets something like $15 for both WinCE for PPC and Pocket Office. MS gets something like $65 for each XP license, and another $200+ for Office. The more successful that PPC is, the more money it will cost MS.
The latest version of PalmOS5 now has support for the 320x240 screens on PPC hardware and some other stuff. A couple of the asian licensees wanted to produce one box that could handle both PalmOS and PPC.
So in theory, you could see an offical PalmSource version of this in the US at some time.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really possible. In court, a patent that is approved by the PTO is assumed to be valid and to have passed all of these tests. So about the only thing that's effective in court is provable prior art.
You always could just download all of the PRC tools (gcc, gdb, pilrc, etc) and do debugging from the device without having to join. You basically just need to join if you want the roms (for POSE), the simulator (PalmOS 5), or to join their newsgroups. Joining is free, so it's not really that big of deal. (That's unless you work for a company, then you probably have to go through the lawyers for the license agreement part.) It's been so long since I've needed to get anything from there, that I can't even remember my login and password anymore.
The fact that this post got +5 Informative goes to show that the moderators really are on crack, and that many /.ers really don't know much about PalmOS development, but like to spout off their incorrect ideas anyway.
GCC, GDB, and Pilrc (resource compiler) have been availible for a long time. POSE (Palm OS Emulator) is also completely open source and maintained by PalmSource. Right there is a complete open source dev environment.
OS documentation is pretty complete, up to and including info on many of the internal data structures. There's also several easy to access newsgroups, faqs, books, etc, with tons of info for doing practically anything you could imagine.
Really, after doing some side programming on the Palm for 3+ years, I've never seen anyone who's had as much trouble as this guy's said he had. Heck, I've got a better dev enviroment, docs, etc, for Palm, than the solaris & linux systems that I use at my full time job.
PS, PalmSource is now working on a fully integrated & free Eclipse dev environment...
All the first run T3's were affected by a bug with the sound interrupts. It was sending huge number of them, bogging down the device, and sometimes making it crash. There is an update to fix this.
The square screen Palms will be the rough part. I haven't yet figured out the best way to display the tactical combat on them (PPC & 320x480 Palms will be in landscape mode). (Keep in mind that MoM was in 320x200 8-bit color.) As for the size of things, Warfare Incorporated (a RTS game) has smaller units than this will and still looks and plays well. Mice can do more than a stylus, but tap & hold, flicking (tap, hold, move to the side, and release), and on screen navigational aids can do the job well enough.
PalmOS 5 devices have enough horsepower to handle it. The original MoM ran on 25Mhz computers w/2M ram and 40M HD space. With smaller screens, faster processors, and flash cards, it will work. The PPC version will run on a Axim 5, because that's what I have :-).
When transitioning from 68K to ARM, Palm made a 2 stage process. PalmOS 5 is the first stage, making the ARM devices backwardly compatible with 68K devices. This is done by an "open box" emulator called PACE. Basically the OS is running seperately from PACE, and any program running in PACE will have all of it's OS called translated into ARM PalmOS calls. It's sort of like a WinNT running a Win3.1 program (or a PPC Mac running a 68K Mac program), but without as many protections.
As part of the first stage, programmers can write "armlets" that are custom ARM code that can be accessed by the 68K program running in PACE. So if you want to make an ARM program, you can just do it, and use a 68K stub to start it.
Stage 2 is PalmOS 6. PalmOS 6 fills out the real OS (the PACE emulator won't be changed) to add all of the other goodies. PalmOS 6 programs won't be runnable on older devices since they'll be full ARM programs. This is the part that the BeOS guys have been working on, and I have high hopes for it considering how good BeOS was.
I'm working on an updated version of MoM. It's different, but will be very familiar to MoM players. Multiple races, 2 planes (surface and underworld), 200+ spells + spell research, a HoMM type tactical combat w/ 15+ units, heroes + magic item creation, etc. Hopefully done by XMAS. Here's the kicker: it will only be for Palm (OS 5+) and PPC.
Todd.
GoTactics
Laser Squad Nemesis
Don't view this as a game machine. View it as a high-end Palm that also is the best for playing games.
In that view, $399 for a hi-res+ screen and 128M is pretty cheap. I know of several people interested in buying it, and they have no interest at all in playing games on it.
You actually patent an implementation of an idea, plus as many variants as you can think of. Of course, with the way the PTO office is going, I'm not sure if they even remember that anymore.
Distributing tons of batteries in areas with poor infastructure is problematic at best. (Not to mention expensive.)
Dell and HP are basically selling just a little over cost. Basically they're losing money on each one sold, but they make great throwins to help get big server purchases, so it evens out.
Palm, et al, actually need to make a nice profit off of each one sold...
Palm Zire 71 is going for about $275 right now.
The Tungsten E will be out soon for $200. (It's roughly comparable to an ipaq 19xx.)
I've been to 4 colleges, seen another half dozen, and taught CS classes for a year as a full instructor.
Here's what I've learned: 50% of what you'll get out of college is based on how hard you work. The other 50% is based on what kind of instructors you get.
Except for a few exceptions (Ivy league schools and the contacts you get), that's it. The school's ranking, reputation, administration, resources, research, etc., mean absolutely nothing for a BS degree.
The fact is, if you know a nearby community college that has very good instructors (they're out there), then it can be better to go to the CC for 2 years (and save a bunch of $$$), and then go to the 4-year school for your BS. I did this, and my UIUC BS/EE degree looks the same as everyone who spent 4 years there.
The most important thing that you can do is actually research the department, and the instructors. (Do the instructors teach most of the classes, or TAs? What do their office hours look like? Do they even care about teaching?) Go to the school and check it out.
Side note: You also need to view college with a cost/benefit ratio, like a business investment.
Ok, let me get this straight.
If I walk into a bookstore, and then walk out with a load of books without paying for them that's theft. That will get me what? A felony conviction and likely about a month of jail time (if not straight to parole).
If I go onto kazaa and download that same bunch of books, then that's copyright infringment. That will get me what? A felony conviction for 5 years and $250K fine per offense.
I think that the anti-copyright zeolots should start insisting that it's theft because the penalties are a lot less...
VHDL & verilog both have serious concurrency problems. As an engineer you have to either A) design a system without any potential fundamental concurrency problems, or B) write your design without these problems from your knowledge of how both the simulator and sythesis tool will handle that section of code.
The problem is that synthesis of these languages has different assumptions than the simulation. This is like having a version of C++ that runs differently in the debugger than it does compilied (and sometimes that even happens...).
Take a look at Handel-C.
This thing is actually cheap! How can I say that when a GBA is only $70? Compare it to all the other Palm PDAs with a 320x480 screen. It's the cheapest one with PalmOS5 and ARM based.
Since this can also be used for everything else a Palm is used for, I've heard many people say that they'd get it for PIM/productivity stuff, and screw the games.
Basic/Economy - ...
...
...
A lot of these are availible for less than $100. The original Zire only has 2M, but it's now less than $80 most places. M100/105/125 and the visors are all less than $100.
The midrange handheld
TT, TT2, Zire 71, several sonys. This also is pretty well covered already.
Finally, at the high end
Don't look for PPC or Palm here if you want those kind of features. Linux is also out. Look for the tablet version of WinXP. Several companies are working on these right now. (Several were suppose to have already shipped...) I think that most of these will go to companies that will promptly dump all their PPC PDAs. (Why run a substitute WinOS, when you can run the real thing?)
Palm Zire 71, around $275 with MP3, SD, color, etc. Even a camera.
I've got a Dell X5, a Treo 90, and a Sony 615. The treo is used for work, the other 2 are just toys. They are just too big, too heavy, and don't have nearly enough battery life.
Unfortunately, the color screens are $50-$100 alone...
Hopefully the new screen technology coming out, added to component consolidation, will allow $100 full-featured PDAs in a few years.
What really puts them into a spot is their investors. They still think that MS is a growth stock. If they cut prices to compete with linux, they have a bunch of really pissed off investors, because their revenue won't be increasing as expected. If they raise prices to increase revenue to please the investors, then linux wins in the long run.
Thinking PalmOS vs PPC is outright ignoring market effects.
PalmOS owns the PIM market, by far the biggest reason that PDAs are purchased. 28M+ Palms sold by now, and 100M+ smartphones sold by now (many running Symbian). Doing the math shows that Palm is going to have a rough time in the future and will have to open up new markets.
The biggest danger PPC devices have is Microsoft itself. In 2 years you'll see tablet PCs the same size as PPCs, and only $100 more. Which would you rather have? MS makes about $15 for PPC OS and Pocket Office. They make about $300 for XP and Office. It seems pretty obvious that MS won't want PPC to be competitive to XP, and will likely slowly kill it.
These things and tablet PCs are going to kill PPC.
Most people (like you) who get a PPC really are wanting a tiny full powered PC.
What are the differences between a PPC and a small tablet PC? Processor type, amount of memory, and the HD. With the new tiny and cheap HD coming out, it's only a matter of time before a tablet PC comes out the same size as the PPCs, and costing only $100-$200 more.
Palm can't kill PPC, but MS will. MS gets something like $15 for both WinCE for PPC and Pocket Office. MS gets something like $65 for each XP license, and another $200+ for Office. The more successful that PPC is, the more money it will cost MS.
I wouldn't pay $500 for a PDA either, but...
Dell Axim: $350 for 400Mhz, 64M, physically larger screen, 2 slots.
T|C: $500 for 400Mhz, 64M, higher resolution screen, wifi, KB, smaller and lighter.
Add a wifi card (~$100), and a memory card (~$25, to make up for PPC's more wasteful memory usage), and they aren't far off in price.
Seems to be pretty price/performance competitive to me.
The latest version of PalmOS5 now has support for the 320x240 screens on PPC hardware and some other stuff. A couple of the asian licensees wanted to produce one box that could handle both PalmOS and PPC.
So in theory, you could see an offical PalmSource version of this in the US at some time.