I have an SJ-33, it's been great. It plays MP3 files off memory sticks, which appear as a hard drive under Linux when the transfer app is running. There's a great free Japanese dictionary app I found on Freshmeat, it even attempts to guess the kanji I'm writing and give the meaning. All the typical PIM apps do what they're supposed to, and kontact syncs fine with it. It comes with the full version of Bejeweled, and has great sound capabilities with most of the games I play on it.
Most likely the difference is in our useage patterns, although it may also be the version of PalmOS the device runs (4.1 in the case of the SJ-33.) I've never tried to do a find for example, since I tend to know where things are on the PDA. I also haven't run any emulators on the device. I use it as a PIM, Japanese dictionary, and occasionally a game device.
Look into the gtf command, it should already be installed. Basically, try something like this:
gtf 1152 864 75 -x
It outputs a modeline you can insert into your XF86Config/xorg.conf file in the "Monitor" section, since it uses VESA guidelines it might do the trick. Then again, it might not. It's worth a shot to avoid the annoyance anyway.
You have a point about Linux for typical PDA use. I've used Linux on PDAs in several incarnations but I'm still most productive with my PalmOS-based Sony Clie. It does everything I want, is easy to use and has been very stable. On the other hand, I think it's great that there is further development with Linux on mobile devices such as this.
Although most people may not know this, the port of Linux to the iPaq brought forth several nice embedded systems and even commercial products. Fluke for example created a Linux-based wireless network scanner using an iPaq. We use one at work, it's much lighter than a laptop and works with much less configuration. Odds are the device would have been slower to market and probably have had fewer features if the Linux port to iPaq handhelds had not existed.
This story may not be interesting for everyone here, but to state that a Linux port to the PDA is irrelevent would be short sighted at best. There are many possibilities for a device which can be hacked up and turned into new products, and that's what excites me to see stories like this.
I think the point where it really stops is when non-US corporations start putting US corporations of business using patents. It's probably closer than we think, most of what the average joe purchases these days at Wal-Mart is already made in China. A pity that the people responsible won't be the most highly affected.
A lot of people don't see India or China as competition due to the current state of their economies, but they're the two most populous nations on the planet. Their businesses are fully capable of purchasing patents, and they have a larger set of people from which this innovation can come. Imagine what Japan did to the US auto industry, but on a much larger scale.
Say what you will about how innovation has typically come from the US, but we're exporting our jobs to these places. We're bringing people in to the US with H1-B visas, training them in cutting edge technologies and sending them packing after a few years. Then, we're giving corporations the world over tools to legally prevent others from using any technology they've developed. This is surely a recipe for disaster.
Really? We see it quite often at work, but then a lot of complex documents with embedded objects are created and tend to stay around for years. Sometimes we'll find documents that actually crash newer versions of word when it's loaded, or send it into some sort of infinite loop that brings the system to a crawl. Sometimes it happens even with the same version. Bizarre behavior IMHO.
I'm slowly introducing people to OpenOffice in cases like these. It may take a while to supplant MS Office in our environment, but I think we'll be able to get rid of it in time.
Good points. The only thing I would add is the lack of dependency on a company/corporation that may go out of business. While it's nice to have the backing of a company in many instances, if they go away you may end up being screwed. I know a few Amigans who could vouch for this, and Apple was rather close to going away before Steve took over the company again.
That's not to say that OS X is a bad choice. Having been a Mac user in the past though, I know that it's not the right choice for me.
1) One can give it to their friends and not be violating a license. 2) There is a large application base, many of which will come with the typical OS install media including an Office suite. 3) Wal-Mart sells it for cheap (Hey, this is Joe Sixpack.) 4) Those viruses don't work anymore 5) You can run it without installing and fix Windows (e.g. Knoppix)
There are plenty of other reasons, but that should be sufficient for the moment.
About the music production software, have you tried Rosegarden? The interface is rather nice and it can record/playback from just about any MIDI device. The sheet music it generates may not be perfect yet, but it's not half bad.
I made the transition several years ago. I'll admit that it was a bit of a shock and comes with a learning curve, but I'm actually quite happy with the change. Linux is light years ahead of where OS 9 was at the time for my purposes, and OS X brings little to the table but a new interface.
Personally, I like knowing that Linux will be around in 10 years regardless of what else changes. I do still have my old powerbook 1400c, and the IIgs for that matter. I won't be buying another Apple though. They're a bit too capricious for me I suppose.
I wouldn't count on it. Although it's currently slow, PearPC has made running OS X possible on Intel hardware. Remove the need for CPU emulation, and you coud very easily see fast Macintosh emulation soon. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.
I beg to differ: they are indeed related. Intellectual property laws seek to allow a works' author(s) to prevent others from learning, creating or innovating in a similar manner. This is just as valid for children as anyone else. He's just contradicting himself.
That's fine, if a copy of their lawn lies physically on your premises you can drive over it all you want. Part of your lawn may well look just like theirs.
More to the point, noone's selling him a golden master. He has a downsampled copy, at best maybe a 20 bit (or so) resolution sample of the original audio on enhanced formats. On a regular CD it's 16 bit 44.1khz. Never mind the fact that the CD itself can and does lose data occasionally, and that can introduce artifacts into the sound. We'll not even get into what perceptual encoding methods used in most popular audio file formats do to the source.
With this already lower quality copy, there's no justified claim that they have a license. If that were the case, they could ask for the music in a different format if that's what they wanted. It would already have been licensed to them, wouldn't it? No, they have and own a copy (a poor one at that) of the music, and that's all.
FWIW, I don't think your comment was flamebait. Otherwise I wouldn't have responded. That being said...
Certainly copyrighted works should be protected, and there should be a punishment when said protection is breached. I simply think that 3 years is a steep first offense for anyone, and it does more to hurt us than it helps.
I don't believe copyright should exist as a mechanism to protect US corporations. It was initially created as a mechanism to protect creative works for a limited time, such that the works' creators can benefit and feel inclined to create further works. This is useful since it increases the size of the public domain, thus benefiting the country at large. Corporations enjoy the same protections since they are "paper persons" so to speak. However, the protection given to a corporation should not be greater than the protection any other copyright holder is granted.
What would correct this? That's a pretty difficult question, but decreasing the cost of said products would cause fewer people to want to obtain them in other ways. Additionally, the amount of anticipation they attempt to generate via advertising also encourages people to want to see/hear it as quickly as possible, which is somewhat self-defeating when you're trying to keep it out of people's hands.
I personally believe copyrights at their current length do more to hurt the people of the US than help, however that's a subject for another debate which I'll not get into at this point.
The problem here is that you're putting the good of the corporation over the good of the people. In the other case mentioned, money was stolen directly from state tax revenues (your money at work...) for the benefit of one person. The sentence was only one year. Claiming that a teenager sharing a copyrighted work prematurely is a greater injustice is simply irresponsible.
Is a fine in order for the file sharer? Sure. However, currently proposed fines are far removed from reality. What we're really seeing is the entertainment industry attempting to milk more dollars from an economy which isn't doing very well. Better yet, they're doing it through our elected officials. That sounds just as criminal to me.
A similar device was developed at NASA Ames. At least for a time part of its routines for getting around objects was written in perl, so I suppose Python wouldn't be out of the question.:)
Re:!Windows Emulator, Wine Is Not an Emulator.
on
Does Linux Have Game?
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· Score: 1
The first problem with your argument is that having a program loader does not make a software package an emulator. Linux for example has program loaders for a number of binary formats, including the COFF and ELF specifications. Wine adds the PE format used by Windows to the list of formats that Linux can load.
The second part of Wine, the ABI that services the API calls, is a reimplementation of the Win32 API specifications. Reimplementation is not emulation. Implementing parts of POSIX does not make Linux an emulator, nor does implementing OpenGL make Mesa an emulator.
The emulators for the hardware that you've listed are not emulating APIs, but rather the chips, busses and interfaces for which those APIs were compiled. That's an important distinction. The software is later run on the virtual machine, ideally in the same fashion as it was executed on the original hardware. Dumps of the ROMs are mapped and accessed, or executables are loaded from their initial media. Bytecode is interpreted, checked against what it's supposed to do and then handler functions are called with appropriately emulated timing such that the software executes as it should onl the original hardware. Hardware needs to be emulated. Software can always be reimplemented.
I could understand if you were arguing that e.g. the Java virtual machine was an emulator, but Wine clearly is not. There's no virtual machine. There's simply a reimplementation of the API.
There are plenty of Windows-only applications out there that do what you want. This is an effort to bring missing functionality to Linux. It's not about market share for Rosegarden per se, although the availability of a free MIDI environment under Linux is likely to bring more people to both Linux and Rosegarden. There are even bootable CDs that come with Rosegarden pre-installed. It's freely available, and you can have now if you're willing to exercise a few neurons.
Your argument is akin to complaining about Macintosh application developers. Sure, they might be able to reach a larger audience under Windows. That's just not what they're after.
It's not KDE which has a compatibility issue with the scanner, but rather SANE. It is true that there are some classes of hardware where it will be more difficult to obtain drivers under Linux and other Free operating systems. Manufacturers are not always cooperative, and they probably won't be until we give them a real impetus to open the specs.
The best thing we can do about it (aside from complaining) is to buy from manufacturers who release products which do work with Linux, particularly those who don't mind giving developers enough information to write a driver. Recommend these manufacturers when others ask. I have an Epson Perfection 1260 on my desk which works fine with SANE, it just took a moment to check which hardware was compatible with the software I wanted to use.
Possibly because the previous three choices you mentioned don't have quite the same meltdown scenario, and you don't have that little half life issue. Nuclear power is one solution, but it's not the only real solution.
From what I've seen in general, consoles tend to cost about the same amount and the games seem to cost a bit more in Japan. Japanese kids don't seem to be that much different when it comes to playing games either, if my nephews are any indication. The difference seems to be in how much return a gaming company expects out of a given market.
Japanese gaming companies seem to treat their home country as a sort of testing grounds for products before they get shipped off to other countries. Some of the games will obviously never make it over here. One example from a Japanese arcade which stuck out particularly to me: A dog-walking game consisting of a treadmill and a screen showing the dog running around in front of you. Quite humorous to watch someone play, and possibly interesting for those who don't have the space to keep a dog. Not likely to get much interest in the US though.
Re:Still can't see how Sun will survive
on
Sun-isms Debunked
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· Score: 1
What can't be done by a set of PCs running Linux can be done by a mainframe running Linux. In the end, the problem that Sun faces is that the world is developing Linux. There's something to be gained by doing everything in-house, but there's more to be gained in the long term through collaboration. SGI and IBM have figured this out. They're playing for the long term. In the OS world Linux is just getting its feet wet, and there's a lot to look forward to.
Slashdot Mirror
I have an SJ-33, it's been great. It plays MP3 files off memory sticks, which appear as a hard drive under Linux when the transfer app is running. There's a great free Japanese dictionary app I found on Freshmeat, it even attempts to guess the kanji I'm writing and give the meaning. All the typical PIM apps do what they're supposed to, and kontact syncs fine with it. It comes with the full version of Bejeweled, and has great sound capabilities with most of the games I play on it.
Most likely the difference is in our useage patterns, although it may also be the version of PalmOS the device runs (4.1 in the case of the SJ-33.) I've never tried to do a find for example, since I tend to know where things are on the PDA. I also haven't run any emulators on the device. I use it as a PIM, Japanese dictionary, and occasionally a game device.
Look into the gtf command, it should already be installed. Basically, try something like this:
gtf 1152 864 75 -x
It outputs a modeline you can insert into your XF86Config/xorg.conf file in the "Monitor" section, since it uses VESA guidelines it might do the trick. Then again, it might not. It's worth a shot to avoid the annoyance anyway.
You have a point about Linux for typical PDA use. I've used Linux on PDAs in several incarnations but I'm still most productive with my PalmOS-based Sony Clie. It does everything I want, is easy to use and has been very stable. On the other hand, I think it's great that there is further development with Linux on mobile devices such as this.
Although most people may not know this, the port of Linux to the iPaq brought forth several nice embedded systems and even commercial products. Fluke for example created a Linux-based wireless network scanner using an iPaq. We use one at work, it's much lighter than a laptop and works with much less configuration. Odds are the device would have been slower to market and probably have had fewer features if the Linux port to iPaq handhelds had not existed.
This story may not be interesting for everyone here, but to state that a Linux port to the PDA is irrelevent would be short sighted at best. There are many possibilities for a device which can be hacked up and turned into new products, and that's what excites me to see stories like this.
I think the point where it really stops is when non-US corporations start putting US corporations of business using patents. It's probably closer than we think, most of what the average joe purchases these days at Wal-Mart is already made in China. A pity that the people responsible won't be the most highly affected.
A lot of people don't see India or China as competition due to the current state of their economies, but they're the two most populous nations on the planet. Their businesses are fully capable of purchasing patents, and they have a larger set of people from which this innovation can come. Imagine what Japan did to the US auto industry, but on a much larger scale.
Say what you will about how innovation has typically come from the US, but we're exporting our jobs to these places. We're bringing people in to the US with H1-B visas, training them in cutting edge technologies and sending them packing after a few years. Then, we're giving corporations the world over tools to legally prevent others from using any technology they've developed. This is surely a recipe for disaster.
Really? We see it quite often at work, but then a lot of complex documents with embedded objects are created and tend to stay around for years. Sometimes we'll find documents that actually crash newer versions of word when it's loaded, or send it into some sort of infinite loop that brings the system to a crawl. Sometimes it happens even with the same version. Bizarre behavior IMHO.
I'm slowly introducing people to OpenOffice in cases like these. It may take a while to supplant MS Office in our environment, but I think we'll be able to get rid of it in time.
Good points. The only thing I would add is the lack of dependency on a company/corporation that may go out of business. While it's nice to have the backing of a company in many instances, if they go away you may end up being screwed. I know a few Amigans who could vouch for this, and Apple was rather close to going away before Steve took over the company again.
That's not to say that OS X is a bad choice. Having been a Mac user in the past though, I know that it's not the right choice for me.
BTW, nice name there.
1) One can give it to their friends and not be violating a license.
2) There is a large application base, many of which will come with the typical OS install media including an Office suite.
3) Wal-Mart sells it for cheap (Hey, this is Joe Sixpack.)
4) Those viruses don't work anymore
5) You can run it without installing and fix Windows (e.g. Knoppix)
There are plenty of other reasons, but that should be sufficient for the moment.
About the music production software, have you tried Rosegarden? The interface is rather nice and it can record/playback from just about any MIDI device. The sheet music it generates may not be perfect yet, but it's not half bad.
I made the transition several years ago. I'll admit that it was a bit of a shock and comes with a learning curve, but I'm actually quite happy with the change. Linux is light years ahead of where OS 9 was at the time for my purposes, and OS X brings little to the table but a new interface.
Personally, I like knowing that Linux will be around in 10 years regardless of what else changes. I do still have my old powerbook 1400c, and the IIgs for that matter. I won't be buying another Apple though. They're a bit too capricious for me I suppose.
I wouldn't count on it. Although it's currently slow, PearPC has made running OS X possible on Intel hardware. Remove the need for CPU emulation, and you coud very easily see fast Macintosh emulation soon. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.
Well then, it seems these two sections of Florida have more in common than one might like to admit.
There's Disney, too. Gotta love corporations that sue pre-schools.
I beg to differ: they are indeed related. Intellectual property laws seek to allow a works' author(s) to prevent others from learning, creating or innovating in a similar manner. This is just as valid for children as anyone else. He's just contradicting himself.
That's fine, if a copy of their lawn lies physically on your premises you can drive over it all you want. Part of your lawn may well look just like theirs.
More to the point, noone's selling him a golden master. He has a downsampled copy, at best maybe a 20 bit (or so) resolution sample of the original audio on enhanced formats. On a regular CD it's 16 bit 44.1khz. Never mind the fact that the CD itself can and does lose data occasionally, and that can introduce artifacts into the sound. We'll not even get into what perceptual encoding methods used in most popular audio file formats do to the source.
With this already lower quality copy, there's no justified claim that they have a license. If that were the case, they could ask for the music in a different format if that's what they wanted. It would already have been licensed to them, wouldn't it? No, they have and own a copy (a poor one at that) of the music, and that's all.
FWIW, I don't think your comment was flamebait. Otherwise I wouldn't have responded. That being said...
Certainly copyrighted works should be protected, and there should be a punishment when said protection is breached. I simply think that 3 years is a steep first offense for anyone, and it does more to hurt us than it helps.
I don't believe copyright should exist as a mechanism to protect US corporations. It was initially created as a mechanism to protect creative works for a limited time, such that the works' creators can benefit and feel inclined to create further works. This is useful since it increases the size of the public domain, thus benefiting the country at large. Corporations enjoy the same protections since they are "paper persons" so to speak. However, the protection given to a corporation should not be greater than the protection any other copyright holder is granted.
What would correct this? That's a pretty difficult question, but decreasing the cost of said products would cause fewer people to want to obtain them in other ways. Additionally, the amount of anticipation they attempt to generate via advertising also encourages people to want to see/hear it as quickly as possible, which is somewhat self-defeating when you're trying to keep it out of people's hands.
I personally believe copyrights at their current length do more to hurt the people of the US than help, however that's a subject for another debate which I'll not get into at this point.
The problem here is that you're putting the good of the corporation over the good of the people. In the other case mentioned, money was stolen directly from state tax revenues (your money at work...) for the benefit of one person. The sentence was only one year. Claiming that a teenager sharing a copyrighted work prematurely is a greater injustice is simply irresponsible.
Is a fine in order for the file sharer? Sure. However, currently proposed fines are far removed from reality. What we're really seeing is the entertainment industry attempting to milk more dollars from an economy which isn't doing very well. Better yet, they're doing it through our elected officials. That sounds just as criminal to me.
Actual off-topic post:
Funny, the name of the website in your signature matches a mnemonic used to remember the order of operations in algebra. Coincidence?
A similar device was developed at NASA Ames. At least for a time part of its routines for getting around objects was written in perl, so I suppose Python wouldn't be out of the question. :)
2 00 0/00images/snakebot/snakebot.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/
The first problem with your argument is that having a program loader does not make a software package an emulator. Linux for example has program loaders for a number of binary formats, including the COFF and ELF specifications. Wine adds the PE format used by Windows to the list of formats that Linux can load.
The second part of Wine, the ABI that services the API calls, is a reimplementation of the Win32 API specifications. Reimplementation is not emulation. Implementing parts of POSIX does not make Linux an emulator, nor does implementing OpenGL make Mesa an emulator.
The emulators for the hardware that you've listed are not emulating APIs, but rather the chips, busses and interfaces for which those APIs were compiled. That's an important distinction. The software is later run on the virtual machine, ideally in the same fashion as it was executed on the original hardware. Dumps of the ROMs are mapped and accessed, or executables are loaded from their initial media. Bytecode is interpreted, checked against what it's supposed to do and then handler functions are called with appropriately emulated timing such that the software executes as it should onl the original hardware. Hardware needs to be emulated. Software can always be reimplemented.
I could understand if you were arguing that e.g. the Java virtual machine was an emulator, but Wine clearly is not. There's no virtual machine. There's simply a reimplementation of the API.
There are plenty of Windows-only applications out there that do what you want. This is an effort to bring missing functionality to Linux. It's not about market share for Rosegarden per se, although the availability of a free MIDI environment under Linux is likely to bring more people to both Linux and Rosegarden. There are even bootable CDs that come with Rosegarden pre-installed. It's freely available, and you can have now if you're willing to exercise a few neurons.
Your argument is akin to complaining about Macintosh application developers. Sure, they might be able to reach a larger audience under Windows. That's just not what they're after.
It's not KDE which has a compatibility issue with the scanner, but rather SANE. It is true that there are some classes of hardware where it will be more difficult to obtain drivers under Linux and other Free operating systems. Manufacturers are not always cooperative, and they probably won't be until we give them a real impetus to open the specs.
The best thing we can do about it (aside from complaining) is to buy from manufacturers who release products which do work with Linux, particularly those who don't mind giving developers enough information to write a driver. Recommend these manufacturers when others ask. I have an Epson Perfection 1260 on my desk which works fine with SANE, it just took a moment to check which hardware was compatible with the software I wanted to use.
Possibly because the previous three choices you mentioned don't have quite the same meltdown scenario, and you don't have that little half life issue. Nuclear power is one solution, but it's not the only real solution.
From what I've seen in general, consoles tend to cost about the same amount and the games seem to cost a bit more in Japan. Japanese kids don't seem to be that much different when it comes to playing games either, if my nephews are any indication. The difference seems to be in how much return a gaming company expects out of a given market.
Japanese gaming companies seem to treat their home country as a sort of testing grounds for products before they get shipped off to other countries. Some of the games will obviously never make it over here. One example from a Japanese arcade which stuck out particularly to me: A dog-walking game consisting of a treadmill and a screen showing the dog running around in front of you. Quite humorous to watch someone play, and possibly interesting for those who don't have the space to keep a dog. Not likely to get much interest in the US though.
What can't be done by a set of PCs running Linux can be done by a mainframe running Linux. In the end, the problem that Sun faces is that the world is developing Linux. There's something to be gained by doing everything in-house, but there's more to be gained in the long term through collaboration. SGI and IBM have figured this out. They're playing for the long term. In the OS world Linux is just getting its feet wet, and there's a lot to look forward to.
No, no, no. This one!