David Nagel: Linux is the Future

if his wife uses a good camera like a canon with compact flash memory, then she will need a pda that accepts compact flash like a pocket pc.

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David

Sartre wrote:
Why would she need a PDA that accepts bulky CompactFlash?
All she would need to do, as most people who do digital
photography will, is download the images to a PC and then
save to a convenient SD card that's more convenient to carry
around.

What a strange and time consuming workaround.

Gruß
Uwe

Hey, I was shocked -- shocked, I say! -- when I saw that latest round of Black Ugly hp PPCs in a store and saw that in front-to-back thickness they match that new "skinless" Zire -- and yet they manage to have TWO slots instead of p1's stingy and idiotic one. (Wasn't the point of using SD to save space? WHAT saved space?!)

CF is not the only storage media in the universe, so saying someone uses a PDA to show their images does not assume a single format.

Why would she need a PDA that accepts bulky CompactFlash?

A few reasons: Least expensive and highest capacity media. Available (i.e. non-vaporware) expansion cards. Excellent data throughput. Compatible with the format used by the best digital cameras.

It's odd to hear this story about Nagel's wife. I thought he was gay.





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Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

However, if you have SD cards to use, you can get adaptors that will let an SD card be used in a CF card slot, hence, you CAN use an SD card with a Digital Rebel.

Since PalmSource doesn't sell the hardware, I'm glad his wife bought on... otherwise, she would have had to steal it ;-)

That was supposed to be more or less the plan: Cobalt for handhelds and high-end smartphones, and Garnet for more basic smartphones. Then they decided no, Cobalt is for ALL smartphones, it's the smartphone OS. No, wait, forget Cobalt, we want to run Linux. Yeah, that's it.

It's no wonder that confidence in PalmSource is low, particularly amongst licensees. Between their pinballesqe future plans, their weasling around the hard questions--notice that Nagel didn't even come close to answering the question about whether Linux would squeeze out Cobalt?--and the general lack of inititive, they look like they don't know what they're doing or what they want to do. They need to get on the ball now, produce a single new OS that has support for things like WiFi, video hardware, etc., then convince PalmOne to produce some actual compelling hardware. It's the only way to reclaim the inititive, mind-share, and image that they've lost.

>Cobalt for handhelds and high-end smartphones, and Garnet for more basic smartphones. Then they decided no, Cobalt is for ALL smartphones, it's the smartphone OS. No, wait, forget Cobalt, we want to run Linux.

That's the best explanation of Nagel's convoluted strategy that I've ever heard.

The spin-off (beheading??) of P1 & PalmSource was the single worst thing to ever happen to the platform, Yankowski aside.

P1 was never a strong hardware company and now they have weak hardware further handicapped by patched-up OS 5 revisions and buggy filesystems etc. The Palm OS platform never enjoyed a strong licensee aside from Sony and now that they are gone, PalmSource has nothing to lean on.

I think that only saving grace would be for some white knight to swoop in and pick up the pieces of both companies in one fell swoop OR for P1 to repurchase PalmSource and bring them back into the fold--but only after paring the PDA & Treo lineup to a few strong models.

The "split" made good economic sense at the time and made Palm a quick buck. Who cares about long term results if you're operating under a fatally flawed business model?

If the sham split is dissolved, I know of a few Palm execs that will deserve to be sent to jail along with Martha Stewart...

To expect decent hardware from pa1mOne (or any remaining licencee) is unrealistic. Palm has NO tradition of supplying advanced hardware. That was up to the likes of HandEra, Sony, Tapwave, Garmin, Handspring, AlphaSmart and Samsung. And now who's left?

HandEra. Dead. Killed by Palm's greed.

Sony. Retreated to Japan. Battered by Sony's desire to consolidate product lines.

Tapwave. Almost dead. Brutalized by poor retail presence, questionable business model and inadequate software support. About to be killed by Sony's PSP. Tapwave: your 15 minutes of (non)fame is up. Please exit stage left along the HandEra Pathway.

Garmin. Turncoat. Switching to PPC. Smart.

AlphaSmart. Near dead. Savaged by shaky business model.

Samsung. Bored. Ignored by carriers and not serious about PalmOS commitment.

Handspring. Dead. Born again in the Holy Palm Spirit, then Dead Again due to stagnant development of Treo 600.

PalmSource could have been a valuable asset had management not made so many mistakes. BUt now it's spinning out of control. PalmLinux, PalmOS 6/Cobalt, PalmOS 5/Garnet, China MobileSoft PhoneOS, Bob... Bless their hearts!

pa1mOne is a guppy hardware seller swimming in the PalmOS fish tank, floating in a sea of sharks. Expose themselves to REAL competition and they'll be devoured within a year. Go ahead, Palm: dump PalmOS and see what happens. Dumba$$es.

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Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

No, the worst thing was PalmOS 5 and 6: it was an incredibly stupid move by Palm to try to develop their own OS for ARM rather than building on BSD and/or Linux from the start (or even a commercial kernel). PalmOS 5 based on Linux could have shipped sooner than it did, with the same degree of compatibility (since PalmOS 4 is already running emulated on top of PalmOS 5), and Palm could have spent the last several years doing what they do best: applications and libraries, rather than kernels.

Nonsense. PalmOS 5 was well-executed and did the job required of it. A clean-sheet rewrite at that time would have cost Palm too much time. PalmOS 6, on the other hand should have been planned as PalmLinux from the very beginning. The fact that PalmOS 5 has stayed so capable over the years is a testament to PalmSource.

If you think applications are one of the things that Palm "do best", you obviously are clueless. And PalmSource HAS been spending a lot of time looking at APIs etc over the past two years. Only problem is no one knows how portable the Cobalt frameworks will be to PalmLinux.

At least Cobalt will finally be seen on a real device in March. Yawn.

*************************************************************************************

Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

*************************************************************************************

******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

The kernel is the underlaying part of the OS that runs the low level I/O of the computer. From your answer, you are saying that the kernel is not really relevant. It may be to you, end user. in fact from that perspective the user won't see any difference between the original Cobalt and the Linux Cobalt (or whatever the name is). The kernel is very important for the hardware manifacturer: What's cool about the Linux kernel is that the supported drivers are there already, while basically no drivers are available for the BeOS based Cobalt. The drivers talk to the kernel. Also feature currently not implemented in cobalt and way needed and requested by the users (a filesystem to start...), are already there. So Cobalt may be the coolest thing, with the best multimedia features. But if the hardware support is poor you don't go anywhere.

I don't think it is clever to invest a huge amount of money in developing a microkernel that didn't last very long (to actually be scrapped for Linux). A smarter move would have been to design the first kernel on Linux, or FreeBSD for Cobalt. In other words do what Apple (succesfully) did for OSX. Now they are late a year, there isn't any Cobalt device out, and we will have to wait another year to see the linux version.

Now this doesn't sound very smart... although I must say: better later than never.

the kernal uses a secret recipe of 9 languages and debuggers, drenched in java, and outsourced atop a medley of solaris and aix.

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David

http://www.fda.gov/cvm/images/fda_vet_jan_feb_2002_pigs.gif

That's Nagel sucking out the very last drop of milk from the teat of Mother Palm.

Nagel, Mace, Hackbod, et al are all staring out the window right now.

Cane and Geeko: Please don't make fun of Mistress Hackborn and longtime Palm Rotation Engineer Michael Mace.

- hackbod is a wonderful person, a great programmer and a "femme fatale" to boot! It's not her fault that Cobalt suffered the same fate as BeOS - it's just a coincidence that she also worked at Be. Yes, those of us who know PalmOS suggested Palm go the PalmLinux route three years ago, but it's time you stopped crying over spilt goo. Buy a TH55 and another one as a backup if you can afford it. That's as good as it's gonna get, Cane

- Michael Mace has effectively been ousted from Palm. He hasn't served any real function there in a couple years, in case you didn't realize.

This would all be hilarious if the mutilation of the PalmOS platform wasn't so sad. At least a lot of Palm execs got rich before everything collapsed. And between the UX50 and the TH55, there should be enough of a supply of good PDAs for enthusiasts to use for years to come.

Now I know how Newton owners felt when crApple pulled the plug on that platform.





*************************************************************************************

Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.