it had 32K of memory, 10 of which had to be used by the screen (when you were in 4 colour, 160x256 screen mode)... I read an interview with the guy who did the port (He was porting from the ST version) - he said that the array in the ST version that held which buildings were connected to electricity took 32K up by itself...
I recently installed Caldera 2.3, and I found the installation was very smooth apart from a nasty little bug that breaks the installation process if you press 'help' when the tetris game comes up when you're waiting for the install to finish.
Apart from that small problem, the installation process was much smoother than most windows installs I've done, and I liked the way it only had to reboot once rather than the three times.
One thing I would say is that they probably need to put a little more thought into some of the things that they've got in their program startup menus, and how they're presented. I happened to know that I would have to run kppp to dialup with my modem, but a new user wouldn't have the slightest idea.
'period' in Britain means a space of time or menstruation.
On a similar note, Patrick Moore (Famous and Venerable Astronomer, at least here in the UK - also does a good line in appearing as the 'GamesMaster' and Xylophone music) recently read out a URL on his programme, 'The Sky at Night' - along the lines of www STOP blah STOP com...
I think you've hit the nail on the head - you can't carry a Newton in your back or shirt pocket. Sure, the PalmOS devices are less feature-complete, but they are cheaper and a lot more portable. I'm not sure what the battery life on the Newton was like, but it probably wasn't as good as the Palm's. I've had my palm for nearly 18 months , and I'm only on my fourth or fifth set of AAA's...
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds as if you're saying that the only reason that they've licensed the PalmOS is that they're afraid that Palm will sue them if they do their own.
I don't think that's the case. They've gone for PalmOS because there's already a large amount of software out there for it and it's the most widely-used palm-sized platform operating system out there.
As for Palm, sure - the Visor is going to compete with their products, but I think they've expected this for a while as they've been licensing their operating system for some time. They need there to be competition in the PalmOS market to ensure that they can keep abreast of the WinCE devices.
I suspect one of the main reasons that they've not got Linux support is that they've probably licensed large amounts of the PC/Mac-side PalmOS-related software from Palm as well as just the basic operating system. They could probably get away with just rewriting the actual communication sections, so as to get it to work over USB.
It would be nice to see whether it is possible to recharge it's batteries from the docking cradle - it's one of the things that I miss from my PalmIII.
Also, the GPS module sounds *very* interesting. It'd be great if it could integrate with some of the 'alarm' functionality in the calendar application, as I tend to find that I want to be reminded to do things when I'm in certain places, rather than at specific times - i.e. to be able to specify rules like:
o Remind me to pay my phone bill 10 minutes after I get home. o Remind me to buy some weedkiller next time I'm the the town centre. o If I'm still at work at 7:30pm on Tuesday, remind me that the first episode of 'Futurama' is being shown on Sky1 at 8:00...
The playstation was never known for it's reliability - many of the CD units broke down quite quickly. Having a new unit prolongs the life of your playstation games considerably.
Also, having the new console able to play the old games means that people can try and sell their old console (probably with a couple of the game they're not so fond of) You can bet that a lot of people will figure the price they'd get from selling their console against buying a new one. Of course, with the huge amount of secondhand PSX units that will suddenly flood the market, I don't suppose they'd get much for them...
Another point is that if you have to keep your old console around, that's abother set of power plugs, video cables etc that clutters up your living room floor...
Are the USB, firewire and PCMCIA slots - add a USB keyboard and mouse, a firewire harddrive, and you've effectively got something with the power and capability of a PC. Then you just need to see if it will be possible to run a different operating system on it;)
It seems to me that a self-rating system is a very good idea, and that these proposals probably don't go far enough. Now, before you explode, let me explain.
The system that is being proposed seems to be a way for people to rate their sites, so as to describe their content, but only in terms of subjects that people might find offensive.
This doesn't go far enough - a *really* useful system would have a standard set of classifications for a *vast range* of subjects. - it'd make web searching so much easier - a bit like Yahoo! but with a much larger search space, as it'd be robot-generated. Those who would wish to filter content could do so by cutting off various branches of the content description tree. Searching for things could also become a lot easier - with a standard description system you wouldn't get the vast number of incorrect matches due to homonyms.
The problem with this is deciding how to structure the content description tree - there's a lot of decisions to be made which might not go down well with some people.
"Companies that want to make games and don't want to pony up $$$ for an officially blessed console development system can still develop games for the PC. Of course, they then have the headache that their hardware platform is not standardized, but that's life."
Or of course they could develop for the Mac - it's fairly standardized...
Wow. Never thought I'd find myself advocating a Mac! (Checks forehead for a fever...)
The cheaper, cradleless version is probably for those without computers, or for corporate customers who hand out the devices for their employees use in the field.
Being USB, I can imagine that the hotsync process is a lot quicker than it was with serial ports, so I can imagine the situation where an employee just pops it in a cradle near the door for a couple of seconds when going in and out of the building.
I had the title as "Insert Colossus/Eniac flame war here" except contained within greater than and less than symbols... evidently the whole thing was removed as a html tag... oops!
I was under the impression that Colossus had now been given the crown of 'First computer' but always with these things it seems to revolve around definitions:
'First stored-program computer' 'First digital computer' 'First digital computer with a stored program' 'First computer with a turbo button' 'First computer youcould play Space War on'
Some of the new Pentium III instructions can be used to preload the cache with sections of memory. However, I don't remember offhand whether they were 'commands' or a 'hints'...
Now, what I'd like to see is someone running an operating system *entirely* out of cache. 8Mb should easily be enough to run a cut-down Linux, and definitely enough for the earlier MS operating systems...
Question is, is it possible? I suppose if you're never getting any cache misses then it won't have to access any external memory, but I'd imagine that there's a whole load of problems to do with memory mapped I/O and booting...
anybody with a little more technical knowledge care to comment?
$200 is still way outside the budget of the vast proportion of the world's population, many of whom don't even have a telephone yet.
Katz is right that it is important to lessen the gap between rich & poor, however, it won't happen with computers. It'll happen largely by those in rich countries making the brave decision to sacrifice some of their standard of living by doing things like:
Cancelling third world debt Insisting on ethical manufacturing processes - e.g ensuring that 'Made in Taiwan' Reeboks have been produced by a factory that treats and pays it's workers fairly.
I find it difficult to believe that GT would just go straight out there and steal a game they knew not to be theirs.
I find it more likely that they entered negotiations with StarPlay to distribute the title in parts of Europe, and there was some form of glitch in their communications. Perhaps it had looked like the deal was about to be sealed, so the German GT office started manufacturing the game. The contract negotiations then fail, and the German office is either not informed or the message is misunderstood or lost somewhere along the line.
I'm quite sure that the above scenario is quite possible. My own experience, publishers often get many details wrong, and the appropriate information never gets to the proper person. This gets even worse when a language barrierr is involved.
Another possibility is that the contract went most of the way through, they started production, and at the last minute StarPlay backed out. GT decided that since they had already invested considerable resources into running the product, that they would try and force StarPlay's hand by going ahead with the rollout anyway. They probably figured that StarPlay would then relent and accept the contract.
Which isn't going to be much help if I'm running Windows, BeOS, MacOS etc...
As the OS that gets the most driver support at the moment is Win9x, it's important for any cross-platform driver system to work on it, as that (in most cases) will be the OS that drivers are written for first. If vendors can write drivers for it that also work on other OSes, then as long as it doesn't cost them much, they'll just take that route. They are much less likely to write drivers for a slightly portable system *as well* as doing a Windows driver.
Also, surely an XFree86 4.0 isn't going to help you much when you're writing a driver for a scanner?
a) Although the development environment uses UNIX, the PSX libraries themselves are not at all UNIX.
b) WinCE is only used for some software (the internet access stuff I think & Sega rally II) as it's 3D performance is much worse than the Sega libraries, so I don't think you have to worry about putting bills into Bill's pocket.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is =NOT= the be-all and end-all. That's as blinkard as arguing that Windows 2000 is usable.
Even it that was meant to be a joke, I think it undermines your credibility in the 'Practice what you Preach' department...
They even did a version for the BBC Micro -
it had 32K of memory, 10 of which had to be used by the screen (when you were in 4 colour, 160x256 screen mode)... I read an interview with the guy who did the port (He was porting from the ST version) - he said that the array in the ST version that held which buildings were connected to electricity took 32K up by itself...
I'm not kidding. Check out the angel smoking the biggest spliff you've ever seen.
I recently installed Caldera 2.3, and I found the installation was very smooth apart from a nasty little bug that breaks the installation process if you press 'help' when the tetris game comes up when you're waiting for the install to finish.
Apart from that small problem, the installation process was much smoother than most windows installs I've done, and I liked the way it only had to reboot once rather than the three times.
One thing I would say is that they probably need to put a little more thought into some of the things that they've got in their program startup menus, and how they're presented. I happened to know that I would have to run kppp to dialup with my modem, but a new user wouldn't have the slightest idea.
The British Equivalent might be
Slashfullstop or Slashstop
'period' in Britain means a space of time or menstruation.
On a similar note, Patrick Moore (Famous and Venerable Astronomer, at least here in the UK - also does a good line in appearing as the 'GamesMaster' and Xylophone music) recently read out a URL on his programme, 'The Sky at Night' - along the lines of www STOP blah STOP com...
It's funny you should mention that - I was thinking the very same thing myself...
;)
Tim
I think you've hit the nail on the head - you can't carry a Newton in your back or shirt pocket. Sure, the PalmOS devices are less feature-complete, but they are cheaper and a lot more portable. I'm not sure what the battery life on the Newton was like, but it probably wasn't as good as the Palm's. I've had my palm for nearly 18 months , and I'm only on my fourth or fifth set of AAA's...
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds as if you're saying that the only reason that they've licensed the PalmOS is that they're afraid that Palm will sue them if they do their own.
I don't think that's the case. They've gone for PalmOS because there's already a large amount of software out there for it and it's the most widely-used palm-sized platform operating system out there.
As for Palm, sure - the Visor is going to compete with their products, but I think they've expected this for a while as they've been licensing their operating system for some time. They need there to be competition in the PalmOS market to ensure that they can keep abreast of the WinCE devices.
I suspect one of the main reasons that they've not got Linux support is that they've probably licensed large amounts of the PC/Mac-side PalmOS-related software from Palm as well as just the basic operating system. They could probably get away with just rewriting the actual communication sections, so as to get it to work over USB.
Linux would require substantially more work.
It would be nice to see whether it is possible to recharge it's batteries from the docking cradle - it's one of the things that I miss from my PalmIII.
Also, the GPS module sounds *very* interesting. It'd be great if it could integrate with some of the 'alarm' functionality in the calendar application, as I tend to find that I want to be reminded to do things when I'm in certain places, rather than at specific times - i.e. to be able to specify rules like:
o Remind me to pay my phone bill 10 minutes after I get home.
o Remind me to buy some weedkiller next time I'm the the town centre.
o If I'm still at work at 7:30pm on Tuesday, remind me that the first episode of 'Futurama' is being shown on Sky1 at 8:00...
Tim
The playstation was never known for it's reliability - many of the CD units broke down quite quickly. Having a new unit prolongs the life of your playstation games considerably.
Also, having the new console able to play the old games means that people can try and sell their old console (probably with a couple of the game they're not so fond of) You can bet that a lot of people will figure the price they'd get from selling their console against buying a new one. Of course, with the huge amount of secondhand PSX units that will suddenly flood the market, I don't suppose they'd get much for them...
Another point is that if you have to keep your old console around, that's abother set of power plugs, video cables etc that clutters up your living room floor...
cheers,
Tim
Are the USB, firewire and PCMCIA slots - add a USB keyboard and mouse, a firewire harddrive, and you've effectively got something with the power and capability of a PC. Then you just need to see if it will be possible to run a different operating system on it ;)
It seems to me that a self-rating system is a very good idea, and that these proposals probably don't go far enough. Now, before you explode, let me explain.
The system that is being proposed seems to be a way for people to rate their sites, so as to describe their content, but only in terms of subjects that people might find offensive.
This doesn't go far enough - a *really* useful system would have a standard set of classifications for a *vast range* of subjects. - it'd make web searching so much easier - a bit like Yahoo! but with a much larger search space, as it'd be robot-generated. Those who would wish to filter content could do so by cutting off various branches of the content description tree. Searching for things could also become a lot easier - with a standard description system you wouldn't get the vast number of incorrect matches due to homonyms.
The problem with this is deciding how to structure the content description tree - there's a lot of decisions to be made which might not go down well with some people.
thoughts?
Tim
"Companies that want to make games and don't want to pony up $$$ for an officially blessed console development system can still develop games for the PC. Of course, they then have the headache that their hardware platform is not standardized, but that's life."
Or of course they could develop for the Mac - it's fairly standardized...
Wow. Never thought I'd find myself advocating a Mac! (Checks forehead for a fever...)
The cheaper, cradleless version is probably for those without computers, or for corporate customers who hand out the devices for their employees use in the field.
Being USB, I can imagine that the hotsync process is a lot quicker than it was with serial ports, so I can imagine the situation where an employee just pops it in a cradle near the door for a couple of seconds when going in and out of the building.
I had the title as "Insert Colossus/Eniac flame war here" except contained within greater than and less than symbols... evidently the whole thing was removed as a html tag... oops!
I was under the impression that Colossus had now been given the crown of 'First computer' but always with these things it seems to revolve around definitions:
'First stored-program computer'
'First digital computer'
'First digital computer with a stored program'
'First computer with a turbo button'
'First computer youcould play Space War on'
etc...
Some of the new Pentium III instructions can be used to preload the cache with sections of memory. However, I don't remember offhand whether they were 'commands' or a 'hints'...
Now, what I'd like to see is someone running an operating system *entirely* out of cache. 8Mb should easily be enough to run a cut-down Linux, and definitely enough for the earlier MS operating systems...
Question is, is it possible? I suppose if you're never getting any cache misses then it won't have to access any external memory, but I'd imagine that there's a whole load of problems to do with memory mapped I/O and booting...
anybody with a little more technical knowledge care to comment?
Re: $200 computers...
$200 is still way outside the budget of the vast proportion of the world's population, many of whom don't even have a telephone yet.
Katz is right that it is important to lessen the gap between rich & poor, however, it won't happen with computers. It'll happen largely by those in rich countries making the brave decision to sacrifice some of their standard of living by doing things like:
Cancelling third world debt
Insisting on ethical manufacturing processes - e.g ensuring that 'Made in Taiwan' Reeboks have been produced by a factory that treats and pays it's workers fairly.
etc.
I find it difficult to believe that GT would just go straight out there and steal a game they knew not to be theirs.
I find it more likely that they entered negotiations with StarPlay to distribute the title in parts of Europe, and there was some form of glitch in their communications. Perhaps it had looked like the deal was about to be sealed, so the German GT office started manufacturing the game. The contract negotiations then fail, and the German office is either not informed or the message is misunderstood or lost somewhere along the line.
I'm quite sure that the above scenario is quite possible. My own experience, publishers often get many details wrong, and the appropriate information never gets to the proper person. This gets even worse when a language barrierr is involved.
Another possibility is that the contract went most of the way through, they started production, and at the last minute StarPlay backed out. GT decided that since they had already invested considerable resources into running the product, that they would try and force StarPlay's hand by going ahead with the rollout anyway. They probably figured that StarPlay would then relent and accept the contract.
Which isn't going to be much help if I'm running Windows, BeOS, MacOS etc...
As the OS that gets the most driver support at the moment is Win9x, it's important for any cross-platform driver system to work on it, as that (in most cases) will be the OS that drivers are written for first. If vendors can write drivers for it that also work on other OSes, then as long as it doesn't cost them much, they'll just take that route. They are much less likely to write drivers for a slightly portable system *as well* as doing a Windows driver.
Also, surely an XFree86 4.0 isn't going to help you much when you're writing a driver for a scanner?
Here's a link to the Sun Community Source License, in case (like me) you're not sure of exactly what that means...
cheers,
Tim
a) Although the development environment uses UNIX, the PSX libraries themselves are not at all UNIX.
b) WinCE is only used for some software (the internet access stuff I think & Sega rally II) as it's 3D performance is much worse than the Sega libraries, so I don't think you have to worry about putting bills into Bill's pocket.
A lot of people have gotten the wrong idea about WinCE & DC.