I seem to remember a case that went up to the Supreme Court from California during the 70's or 80's where a person refused to produce ID when asked by police while walking. His crime was WWBIRWN (Walking While Black In A Rich White Neighborhood). The pedestrian won.
As an engineer who has been on the inside of creating mass consumer electronics let me tell you the decision I made were very different from what you might expect. When you order anything in quantity one million everything is off the shelf. Or to put it another way the NRE (Non Recoverable Engineering) costs per unit for doing something from scratch is so little there is no reason not to do so. In fact, I've yet to see a major chip that was not worth doing a turn on to drop the unused parts and to reduce the cost (reduces area, reduced I/O pads, increased yield and reduced testing). If you talk to the project leads at the major chip houses they do not expect major electronic companies to use what's in their catalogs. They view those as resumes to show what they can do and why you should give them a call. Only under funded startups and niche plays use catalog products. The only reason to use off the shielf is time to market and in consumer electronics if it isn't as cheap as it can be its not ready for market.
Open up a TV or a VCR. do you see a standard bus in there. No! And why? Because everything in there is designed from scratch to play nice with each other. Standard products carry extra capabilities that a fixed large volume product does not need. You'll know that STBs and DVRs have hit the big time when you see a single board with custon chips, the code in ROM and no I/O besides required cable/AV in and AV out.
If it were me, I'd buy a small CPU like an ARM7 and do all my heavy lifting like transcoding in hardware.
Cobalt may be more accurate that you might think. The agenda for the Palm Dev Conf. in a few days lists the Cobalt name for OS 6. My guess is that this may be an internal code name as Palm One alrady has a Tungsten line and Palm Source would want to appear OEM neutral. But it may point to the fact that the spec for OS 6 was driven my Palm One.
An ugly solution is to find a VGA to NTSC box and then capture it from there in a video capture card. Backwards way to do it, but you might have the NTSC in card laying around.
The dirty lottle secret of ergonomics is that there is no "best" solution or you could use what everybody else uses. Our bodies are different and we need different solutions. Some of us need very different solutions. The "best" thing ergo designers can do is to make thngs as adjustable as they can. The solution to ergo problems is to keep trying until you find what works. That may be a laptop or it may be working standing up.
Consider the
Squeak environment. It's an open, highly-portable Smalltalk-80 implementation. It is really friendly place for kids to get started and smalltalk is a good language for kids to start with.
I've been working woth the Palm OS for several year and I very much enjoy working with it. Metrowerks has a professional quality C/C++ environment for it and Palm has released a free (as in beer )simulator that allows for source level debugging. There are several frameworks and other tools that make the Palm OS specific issues a snap. It really is a joy to work wehere thing just work - No driver issues, no incompatabilities, etc. Palm programming does require a very different mindset from the desktop. The Palm OS is very lean, but that is how it should be. Bloated palms are an ugly thing indeed.
Get real. Your m515m has a 68k CPU and Palm OS 6 requires an ARM CPU. There is just no way you are going to make OS6 work on a 68k. Nor would you. The ARM chip spends most of it's time emulating a 68k so that it can run old apps.
I've seen a number of clock radio alarms that have an AC outlet on the back. Nothing wakes me up like bright daylight. Depending on your schedule/environment leave your bed room curtins open and have daylight help you. Another goof-ball option for the smoke detector buzzer in the parent you could hook an alarm to start a toster set to "burnt" and have it set the smoke detector off.
What I expect to see more of is a net global reduction of IT jobs. Currently, every business seems to have a custom network configuration, a bunch of custom legacy application, etc. At some point somebody is going to start offering off the shelf solutions for most businesses. We really should not need network admins. It is a sign of immature technology. I'm sure that 75 years ago a large business needed an army of engineers to keep their phone and pneumatic tube systems working. These days offices are wired at move in by a contractor and given little thought afterwards. The standard "Office Suite" has matured to the point where the IT gives it little thought. Before VisiCalc/Lotus/Excel doing financial work required a bunch of work by programmers. Today every MBA is a spreadsheet jockey who has little use for a programmer to do his number crunching. The rest of the office computing environment needs to become that simple to use. The network should be a part time task of an administrative assistant, not a professional network administrator. Computer hardware should be the job of a supply room clerk ("Do you want your standard issue computer brick in grey or black?").
The next wave after offshore will be outsourcing all IT functions to outside vendors. After that comes COTS (Commercial Off The Self) solutions. COTS means the end of IT departments.
I'm sure that many will argue that their business "needs" custom inventory tracking software because their business " really" is different. How many MBAs do you see demanding custom spreadsheet programs? The truth of the matter is we should not need IT departments. We need programmers. Very very good professional programmers at that, but we don't need droolers writing VB front ends to badly written legacy Cobal inventory programs. Businesses need IT as bad as they need IT departments to go away.
A person's name is a bit more problematic. If you look at law firms they use the partner's name. There has to be many "Smith LLC," and the like. IIRC Hilton had some problems some years back with someone named Hilton opening their own hotel under their name.
Oddly enough I have an old Linux T-shirt that reads "In a world without Gates who needs Windows?" My company provides memberships to the same health club (ProSports Club) that Microsoft uses for their employees in Redmond. I do get some very *interesting* looks from people.
Since ATA-4, IIRC, there has been a password call to which drives will respond. The password locatoin is not accessable to the user, could be stored in FLASH on the HDD board or on the disc proper depending on the mfg. Most drivres give you x tries (apx 4???) and then lock-up forever. I'm sure that there is a back door, but don't expect to get it unless you live in San Jose and buy lots of pizza & bear for HDD firmware engineers. The one flaw in the system is that it is easy to sniff the ATA bus and read the password when it is written. I assume that this is the flaw for x-box.
LaserTech also sold NASA a few hand held rangefinding LIDAR units for docking with objects in orbit. They are simple time-of-flight low power pulse units much like the units they sell for surveying or traffic enforcement.
This is a lot more interesting than you might think. H (near) field communication is really unexplored in the commercial world. It is rather limited in range (meter or two) and for the most part it is rather ignored in EMC testing (Electro-Magnetic Compatability [read FCC testing]). If you want to see a cool example of H field interference dig up two 10 year old 20" monitors and put them side by side and watch the wicked interferance. Even if you wrap the monitors in a grounded wire mesh you will still see interferance because the problem is a magnetic H field not an E field (RF) signal. To kill the interferance you need to use a Mu Metal shield (or one heck of a lot of iron). Of course, one application's interferance is another signal. If you are really carefull about building your H field and not generate much E field it would be rather secure from evesdropping outside of 4 or 5 meters.
The stoy that I've hear is that the clear stations were assigned to "even" frequencies such as 1200 and local stations were assigned to "odd" frequencies, such as 1220.
IIRC, clear stations were given three letter IDs and the local stations were given 4 letter IDs. Don't know how KIRO & KMOX fit in with this.
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I seem to remember a case that went up to the Supreme Court from California during the 70's or 80's where a person refused to produce ID when asked by police while walking. His crime was WWBIRWN (Walking While Black In A Rich White Neighborhood). The pedestrian won.
Open up a TV or a VCR. do you see a standard bus in there. No! And why? Because everything in there is designed from scratch to play nice with each other. Standard products carry extra capabilities that a fixed large volume product does not need. You'll know that STBs and DVRs have hit the big time when you see a single board with custon chips, the code in ROM and no I/O besides required cable/AV in and AV out.
If it were me, I'd buy a small CPU like an ARM7 and do all my heavy lifting like transcoding in hardware.
Portland Pattern Repository.
Cobalt may be more accurate that you might think. The agenda for the Palm Dev Conf. in a few days lists the Cobalt name for OS 6. My guess is that this may be an internal code name as Palm One alrady has a Tungsten line and Palm Source would want to appear OEM neutral. But it may point to the fact that the spec for OS 6 was driven my Palm One.
An ugly solution is to find a VGA to NTSC box and then capture it from there in a video capture card. Backwards way to do it, but you might have the NTSC in card laying around.
Chack out what George W Bush is doing.
The dirty lottle secret of ergonomics is that there is no "best" solution or you could use what everybody else uses. Our bodies are different and we need different solutions. Some of us need very different solutions. The "best" thing ergo designers can do is to make thngs as adjustable as they can. The solution to ergo problems is to keep trying until you find what works. That may be a laptop or it may be working standing up.
Are you really making a living or is it just to get buy until you can find something better?
Consider the Squeak environment. It's an open, highly-portable Smalltalk-80 implementation. It is really friendly place for kids to get started and smalltalk is a good language for kids to start with.
IIRC, accourding to treaty, the country of origin has final responsiblity.
I've been working woth the Palm OS for several year and I very much enjoy working with it. Metrowerks has a professional quality C/C++ environment for it and Palm has released a free (as in beer )simulator that allows for source level debugging. There are several frameworks and other tools that make the Palm OS specific issues a snap. It really is a joy to work wehere thing just work - No driver issues, no incompatabilities, etc. Palm programming does require a very different mindset from the desktop. The Palm OS is very lean, but that is how it should be. Bloated palms are an ugly thing indeed.
How can you have a great OS without such a tool?
Get real. Your m515m has a 68k CPU and Palm OS 6 requires an ARM CPU. There is just no way you are going to make OS6 work on a 68k. Nor would you. The ARM chip spends most of it's time emulating a 68k so that it can run old apps.
I've seen a number of clock radio alarms that have an AC outlet on the back. Nothing wakes me up like bright daylight. Depending on your schedule/environment leave your bed room curtins open and have daylight help you. Another goof-ball option for the smoke detector buzzer in the parent you could hook an alarm to start a toster set to "burnt" and have it set the smoke detector off.
The next wave after offshore will be outsourcing all IT functions to outside vendors. After that comes COTS (Commercial Off The Self) solutions. COTS means the end of IT departments. I'm sure that many will argue that their business "needs" custom inventory tracking software because their business " really" is different. How many MBAs do you see demanding custom spreadsheet programs? The truth of the matter is we should not need IT departments. We need programmers. Very very good professional programmers at that, but we don't need droolers writing VB front ends to badly written legacy Cobal inventory programs. Businesses need IT as bad as they need IT departments to go away.
Oh, wait. Never mind.
A person's name is a bit more problematic. If you look at law firms they use the partner's name. There has to be many "Smith LLC," and the like. IIRC Hilton had some problems some years back with someone named Hilton opening their own hotel under their name.
Oddly enough I have an old Linux T-shirt that reads "In a world without Gates who needs Windows?" My company provides memberships to the same health club (ProSports Club) that Microsoft uses for their employees in Redmond. I do get some very *interesting* looks from people.
My friend Clif Cox did a networking project in Bhutan as a United Nations Volunteer (UNV). You might find his experances working in a lesser developed country of use in making your plans.
Since ATA-4, IIRC, there has been a password call to which drives will respond. The password locatoin is not accessable to the user, could be stored in FLASH on the HDD board or on the disc proper depending on the mfg. Most drivres give you x tries (apx 4???) and then lock-up forever. I'm sure that there is a back door, but don't expect to get it unless you live in San Jose and buy lots of pizza & bear for HDD firmware engineers. The one flaw in the system is that it is easy to sniff the ATA bus and read the password when it is written. I assume that this is the flaw for x-box.
LaserTech also sold NASA a few hand held rangefinding LIDAR units for docking with objects in orbit. They are simple time-of-flight low power pulse units much like the units they sell for surveying or traffic enforcement.
Aren't most English speaker from India?
This is a lot more interesting than you might think. H (near) field communication is really unexplored in the commercial world. It is rather limited in range (meter or two) and for the most part it is rather ignored in EMC testing (Electro-Magnetic Compatability [read FCC testing]). If you want to see a cool example of H field interference dig up two 10 year old 20" monitors and put them side by side and watch the wicked interferance. Even if you wrap the monitors in a grounded wire mesh you will still see interferance because the problem is a magnetic H field not an E field (RF) signal. To kill the interferance you need to use a Mu Metal shield (or one heck of a lot of iron). Of course, one application's interferance is another signal. If you are really carefull about building your H field and not generate much E field it would be rather secure from evesdropping outside of 4 or 5 meters.
The office of home land paranoia is really doing it's best toshut down this kind of hobby. See here for more details.
IIRC, clear stations were given three letter IDs and the local stations were given 4 letter IDs. Don't know how KIRO & KMOX fit in with this.