Re: N800 etc.

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:53:34AM +0200, Syren Baran wrote:
> There are a lot of good application fields for Java, but they tend to be
> more server-centric. Amusingly enough a lot of the modern phones dont
> support Java, e.g. iPhone, Android based phones, Pre. 

Android only exports a Java runtime environment for its applications.
It uses a non-stanard Java platform (Google decided not to use
JavaME), but all Android applications are most run using a Java
bytecode engine.

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Diablo's Modest/Email

[Theodore Tso]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 09:54:14AM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:
> 
> With commercial software the "I'm paying money for this software"
> argument carries some (but not much, in my experience) weight with the
> maintainers, which it obviously doesn't with Free Software. 

At least in theory, this can work with Free Software as well; there
are various "bounty systems" that are around, which allow some number
of people to get together and offer money to someone who will add some
particular desired feature.  In the case where N==1, it's the way most
classical music was written (i.e., a patron sponsoring a composer's
work), but the advantage of the Internet is that it is possible to
more easily aggregate a large number of people getting together over
the internet to pay for a particular feature, which is then available
for everyone to use given that it is Open Source.

This has been used to pay for an author to write a book that two
publishers considered not economically viable (The Big Meow, at
http://www.the-big-meow.com).  As another example, Codeweavers
(www.codeweavers.com) have a bounty system allow users of make
CrossOver office, their commercially supported version of WINE, an
open source program which allows people to run Windows executables on
Linux, support various proprietary programs which aren't supported on
Crossover Office and/or WINE.  Programs that have enough bounty money
pledged get worked on first, and the improvements show up first in
Crossover Office, and eventually make their way back to the open
source version of WINE.

Attempts to try to do this on a more general scale have failed
(www.openculture.org is gone, www.bountysource.com has a website which
is still up, but the folks running it are planning to shut it down due
to lack of time on their part), but I suspect that if someone were to
set it some kind of aggregation/escrow service as a non-profit
organization, there's no reason why it couldn't work; the hard part is
getting enough the patrons and the programmers and/or artists to
embrace it so it can achieve critical mass.

This is getting a bit far afield from the original thread, or this
mailing list for that matter, though...

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Diablo's Modest/Email

[Theodore Tso]

On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 03:58:26PM -0600, Mark wrote:
> This sounds like going to a whole lot of work to do something that
> I've been doing for years with POP3 without any additional server or
> software...

It's actually very hard to do this robustly using POP3 because you
don't have stable identifiers for e-mail addresses.  Qualcomm dealt
with this problem by adding a unique ID into the mail headers (thus
modifying the message), but (a) not all POP servers do this, and (b)
it means you're modifying the mail message, which is aesthetically
unclean.

The problem with not having a unique message identifier is that if
some other application deletes a message, it's very easy to confuse a
mail synchronization program.  So such schemes tend not to be very
robust.

Still, if something worked for you, great!

> In other words, f*** off! This is exactly the attitude that will
> always keep open source from gaining significant market share. Only
> the projects that actually listen to such concerns ever make any real
> impact (Mozilla, anyone?).

Mozilla gets millions of dollars from Google every year; it's nice
when you can have that support.  Otherwise, you can always get
together with other folks to sponsor someone to write a feature, or
you can implement the feature yourself.  Open source is not about free
features that people can get just by whining about them.  It's about
having the freedom to change it --- either by yourself, or by paying
someone to do it for you.  It means you're not beholden to a single
source supplier to make those changes.  

As Bob Young once said, proprietary software is like buying a car with
the hood welded shut, so only the dealer can work on it.  Open source
allows you or someone you pay, like a neighborhood mechanic, to work
on the car, not just the dealer.  But that doesn't mean you get your
car fixed for free!  And as much as you threaten a car manufacturer
that you won't buy a car unless they provide free car customization
services, just try it and see how far you get.  

Similar, with open source, by itself it does not mean the software is
better, just that over time it is likely to get better as more people
work on it, not just the company who owns the software.  So yes, Open
Source is not a magic bullet.  But I'd much rather have an open
platform than a closed one.

> Bull hockey! The Nokia tablets are sold as consumer devices, but are
> severely lacking in software functionality. I didn't lay out several
> hundred in cash just so I can carry yet another device around. The
> whole point was to replace several devices with one. This amounts to
> false advertising, and ensures that the the tablets will never take
> off or make any real impact with consumers, especially since Nokia has
> been rumbling for some time about orphaning the devices completely and
> leaving them to their fate with the community. In other words,
> resigning them to a fate of never being anything more than developers'
> playthings.

Actually, Nokia has been very clear that the only thing the N800 was
ever meant to be was an Internet Tablet.  So web browsing really was
its primary goal.  Communication progams were always secondary, and
PIM functionality, not at all.  They've always been very clear about
that, and you can see it in how much they bothered to spend in
development dollars improving the mail application or the instant
messaging application.  The advantage with Open Source is that it
allows the N800 to be expanded beyond what Nokia was willing to invest
development dollars to improve.  So there is at least a *chance* that
the PIM functionality will one day get better than what the Palm Pilot
offers, as opposed to "not at all" which would appear to be the case
with (a) any Symbian based cell phone, or (b) any other closed-source
platform.

If you're not happy with that set of priorities, then maybe you
shouldn't have purchased an N800 in the first place.  I'm sorry you
feel that open source developers or Nokia somehow owe you to implement
whatever functionality you happen to want, but unfortunately, it
doesn't work that way.  I have may pet favorite enhancements that I
wish Apple would implement for the ipod, or Canon in their digital
SLR's.  But having proprietary software doesn't mean I get my favorite
features, even if large web sites like Luminous Landscape has been
whining about certain features (like an easy way to implement mirror
lockup using a single button push, instead of several button pushes to
navigate through multiple levels of menus) for years.

> If you want anyone to use your software and are using them for alpha
> and beta testers, then you *have* to expect some feedback. If you
> don't want feedback, don't distribute your software. It's that simple!

It's not the feedback, it's the attitude.  With that kind of attitude,
you'll probably be generally very unhappy in life, regardless of
whether you use open source or proprietary software.  Sometimes asking
nicely will get you m

Re: Diablo's Modest/Email

[Theodore Tso]

On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 01:53:40PM -0600, Mark wrote:
> 
> Anyway, I didn't say that IMAP was a "resource hog" in the grand
> scheme of computing, only in comparison with POP3.
> 

It really depends on how the IMAP/POP3 server was implemented.  Some
POP3 servers are implemented optimizing for the case where all of the
mail messages are downloaded, and then deleted; so if you download all
of the messages, but only delete a few, it could be quite expensive if
the POP3 server stores the mailbox as a single file, and deletes
require copying all of the messages which are _not_ deleted.

In contrast, if your IMAP server is implemented to use some kind of
back-end database, or a Maildir directory, a particular implementation
of IMAP could be more performance than a particular implementation of
POP3 protocol.

It's also true that IMAP has some extra operations that allow for
partial download of just the header information, for example.  If a
POP3 client implements this by downloading *all* of the mail messages
each time you connect, without caching the downloaded mail messages
due to local space reasons, in theory POP3 could be less efficient and
end up impacting the server more.

On the other hand, IMAP has some optional SEARCH capabilities which
could impact the server; but the server doesn't have to implement said
search extensions.

So it's a lot more complicated than saying categorically that IMAP
always uses more server resources than POP3, or vice versa.  A lot
depends on how the client was implemented, how the server was
implemented, and what sort of user functionality is desired.

Regards,

- Ted

P.S.  Something I very much like is a program called "mbsync",
available at http://isync.sourceforge.net.  This will use IMAP4
download a local copy of all of your mail message to a local laptop or
tablet, in a Maildir directory on local disk (or flash storage).  This
allows you to read your e-mail messages while disconnected, without
needing access to the network.  After you mark messages as deleted,
the next time you synchronize your local Maildir store with your IMAP4
mailbox, it will delete any messages marked as deleted, and then
download any new messages.  Since the messages aren't deleted on the
IMAP server, if your tablet gets lost or destroyed, the messages
aren't lost, since there is a copy safely on the IMAP server.

Yes, you can in theory do this using POP, but this particular
implementation only does it for IMAP.  It's open source --- people who
want to implement this for POP are free to do so.  In general, I find
the attitude of the original requester who seemed to expect that other
people implement software for his own convenience to be a little
annoying.  If there's something you want that isn't yet implemented in
open source, either implement it yourself, or gently request that
someone who can implement do so --- or perhaps you can hire them or
otherwise give them some kind of incentive to implement the feature
for you.  Open source developers do *not* owe anything to their user
base; they implement feature requests out of the goodness of their
hearts, or because they need the feature as well.

Or, of course, you can use another solution.  I still carry around a
Palm Pilot because none of the opensource PIM applications are good
enough yet.  And I use a Blackberry because its e-mail solution is
still far superior to what is available on the Palm or N800 platform.
But you don't see me whining about how people *must* make improvements
to the N800's mail client.  I hope it will happen, but unfortunately I
don't have time to help improve the N800 mail client.  I did however,
help improve the isync project until it was good enough to meet my
needs.  That's the way open source works...  you scratch your own
itch.

___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 09:45:27PM +0200, Luca Olivetti wrote:
> > but most people like their cell phones light and
> > thin, and for 99.99% of the population out there, this plus "must be
> > low cost" tends to trump considerations such as open drivers.
> 
> 90% of the population is using windows, and ten years ago it was 
> probably 100%, thank God neither Linus nor RMS cared about those numbers 
> (and neither did you).

15 years ago I was giving presentations promoting Linux using
Microsoft Powerpoint, because the Linux presentation tools were cr*p.
And while I chose to use Linux, and accepted various sacrifices to so
I could have a working system (including, by the way, using binary
drivers), I wasn't throwing rotten tomatoes and screaming at laptop
vendors who chose to use closed hardware which didn't support Linux.
I chose to avoid buying Sony laptops, since they were the worst in
terms of proprietary hardware with Windows-only drivers, but I
accepted why they made the business decisions that they did.

Look, engineering is the art of the possible, and this includes
understanding the business constraints.  There are things we can do to
help make life easier for companies that choose to be FOSS friendly,
including patronizing companies that are doing what they can.  That
means understanding what the best that they can do might be at a
particular point in time.  

Back in 1993, not only was I completely supportive of people who used
Powerpoint as a presentation tool, I did it myself.  In 2008, I try to
gently convert people to use Open Office, even if they choose to use a
Windows or MacOS X desktop.

Just three years ago, I used used binary video drivers from ATI as the
only way I could get the needed functionality for my laptop.  Now, I
used and recommend to others using the laptops that contain Intel
video chipsets, because of Intel's release of open source, high
quality video drivers.

So things are moving in the right direction, but in some areas change
may come quicker than others.  The trick is to helpfully engage with
vendors and help them work with their suppliers --- and not just throw
rocks.  The former is usually for more productive than the latter.
You catch very few flies with vinegar

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 01:31:51AM +0200, Luca Olivetti wrote:
> In the case of the wifi chip you could buy it from atheros or ralink 
> (and I'm sure there are other), that at least have open drivers, and 
> don't base their business model on linux without giving anything back 
> like broadcom.

As I mentioned earlier, the real challenge in the mobile space is
getting chipsets which combine multiple functions (cell phone
services, GPS, wifi, 3G, etc.) into a single chipset, using very low
power consumption so devices can be both (a) lightweight, and (b) have
a decent battery lifespan.

It's not that hard to make something that is the size and weight of an
OpenMoko device, but most people like their cell phones light and
thin, and for 99.99% of the population out there, this plus "must be
low cost" tends to trump considerations such as open drivers.  If
you'd like to try to convince the general population that they should
ditch their Blackberries and RZOR's for Open Moko's, please don't let
me stop you

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 03:54:40PM -0600, Mark wrote:
> 
> Because it *is* obvious. The fundamental assumption is that the given
> company has the size and resources to manufacture chips. Give that
> capability, yes, it is *always* cheaper for them to manufacture their
> own.

Your naiveté is touching.  You have no idea how expensive it is to
design modern, highly complex chips, do you?  The manufacturing costs
are only one part of it.  If you ignore the R&D costs, then sure, once
the chip is designed, making your own is cheaper but the startup costs
of doing your own design, even if you are going to amortize it over a
very large number of device, will generally push the per-unit cost of
a custom chip to becoming FAR more expensive than simply buying a CPU
from Intel or AMD --- or a wifi chip from Broadcom or a Video chipset
from Nvidia.

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 05:44:57PM -0400, Steve Brown wrote:
> Business reality? *looks over at OpenMoko* Although it isn't mine to worry
> about, some companies (smaller ones than nokia, even) seem to be doing fine
> in this business reality. What's better, OpenMoko seem to be delivering open
> handhelds and not excuses (or semi-open handhelds). I'm not going to draw
> out a roadmap of what Nokia should do to conquer the open source handheld
> market, because frankly, there is a lot that we aren't told about Nokia's
> business (and I love how some people on here are pretending that they have
> all of these details about it). But, on one side I have Nokia saying it is
> almost impossible, and then OpenMoko simply DOING it. So, the real business
> reality is that it IS possible, and Nokia isn't doing it for other reasons.
> All of which is totally fine, I'll go for the open one, not the closed one
> that says "well, atleast we tried".

OpenMoko is not a business, it's a non-profit research organization.
The new phone, when it finally will cost $400 for a tri-band GSM
phone, bluetooth, and GPS.  It will have no EDGE support; no 3G
support.  Basic PDA functionality will be included out of the box, but
not much else.

Compared to what you can get, even ignoring the carrier subsidies,
that's a pretty anemic feature set.  Sure, open source developers will
buy the phone, but do you really think OpenMoko will be a commercial
success given its price and feature set?

Obviously, commercial success is not the point of the OpenMoko
project.  But to attack Nokia because they aren't following in
OpenMoko's footsteps is also missing the point.

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 02:44:01PM -0600, Mark wrote:
> 
> What you're talking about is "outsourcing", which contrary to popular
> misconception is NOT cheaper than doing things in-house. EVER. What
> outsourcing allows unethical management to do is to hide some of the
> costs elsewhere, and have fewer employees to answer to.

No, it's not the same as "outsourcing".  I'm talking about the
physical components such as the chips that provide the Wifi, GSM/3G
functionality, etc.  Companies make "buy" vs "build" decisions all the
time.  It is very often NOT cheaper to make your own chips; why do you
think a laptop manufacturer buys video chips from Intel, Nvidia, ATI,
etc., and Wifi chips from Broadcom and Atheros, and so on?

And while you can choose to build a laptop with devices that all have
open source drivers thanks to company like Intel (although you may
sacrifice some 3-D graphics performance as a result), life is not so
simple in the mobile space, where cell radios are a bit more
specialized, and where low power requirements are far more stringent.  

> Again with the myth that it's cheaper to buy somebody else's product
> than to manufacture your own. How can you possibly believe that it's
> possible for one company to manufacture a given product for less, when
> they all have the same resources at their disposal? How gullible can
> you be?

Because they have expertise you don't?  Because they manufacture their
chipset and sell to multiple customers, so they can amortize their
costs across a much larger volume of unit sales?  Because they may
have access to certaint patents you don't have?  There are many good
reasons; the best counter example is that all PC manufacturers find it
cheaper to buy their CPU chips from Intel and AMD instead of making
their own from scratch.  Do you really think it is OBVIOUS that it is
always cheaper to make your own and never to buy from another
company's product?  Why is it that Dell doesnt make their own CPU
chips, then?

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 08:24:05PM +0200, Aniello Del Sorbo wrote:
> Ari reply:
> 
> 

Here's my contribution to this discussion:

   http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/06/13/learning-how-to-communicate/

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 01:01:51PM -0600, Mark wrote:
> Nokia has the resources to develop its own chips, which it could
> easily keep open. That would solve the problems for everybody (meaning
> consumers, developers and Nokia).

Many companies can *afford* to build and design new chips from
scratch, yes --- but unfortunately companies are not charities.  The
question is can you create a credible business plan where a single
company (and I don't care whether it is Nokia, Lenovoa, Dell, or
anyone else) or maybe a consortium of companies, produces a new
multi-function wireless chip that does 3G, Wifi, and everything else,
and at the very least breaks even compared with the cost of buying
that same component from Broadcom, or whatever supplier they might
happen to have.

Remember, the mobile business is a highly competitive one, and if it
costs an extra $20 per handset, that company will be hugely
disadvantaged when they try to get carriers to pick up their phones
(at least in the US market, where 99% of cell phones are sold through
carriers).   

And if you think someone is going to put down a huge capital
investment just to create an open chipset for the relatively small
internet tablet market, and do it in a way that won't lose vast
amounts of money, you're *really* smoking something pretty good.

> But they're not doing it out of fear
> of backlash from the closed community. Heaven help the company that
> sticks its neck out and breaks the industry wide open for *real*
> innovation...

I don't think it has anything to do with that at all.  It's about a
creating valid business plan where it at least breaks even, especially
since the number of people that would actually pay extra for open
device drivers is very small.  I happen to be one of them, but I
*know* that I am in the minority.

It's just like in the airline business, where people will kvetch about
comfort, and lack of hot food in economy class, but where time and
time again, it has been proven that when it comes down to deciding
whether to fly with airline X or airline Y, the vast majority of
customers overwhelmingly go with whatever is cheapest.

If you think you're so smart, and can figure a way to make money while
"breaking the industry wide open", I can certainly introduce you to a
few VC's (and VC's are really good at shredding six business plans
before breakfast --- well, at least during multiple breakfast meetings.  :-)

   - Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Nokia: Linux Needs to Learn Business

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 12:47:25PM -0500, mathew wrote:
> Aniello Del Sorbo wrote:
> > I think that what Ari wanted too say is that Nokia and the industry in
> > general is not YET ready to work the way the open source community
> > wants them to.
> >   
> Well, goodbye then Nokia. We'll all switch to OpenMoko or Android.
> 

I'm not speaking for Nokia, but I've talked to a number of folks from
Nokia, and the problem is that their suppliers are not willing to
release specifications under any kinda of NDA that would allow them,
or someone else, to release open source device drivers.  If they did
this, they would either be late to market by 6-12 months, which is an
eternity, or they would not be able to use the latest hardware which
has a combination of the latest functionality (i.e., 3G support, GPS,
WIFI, etc. all on one chipset) that competitors such as Apple and
iPhone might use.

I very much doubt that Android or other Linux mobile solutions will be
much different.  Android in particular tries to make it such that
application vendors don't even know that they are running on a Linux
OS; what they see is a restricted Java environment.

If people are willing to use Open Moko, despite its relative
disadvantage in terms of battery lifetime, and bleeding edge features
--- that's a tradeoff that Linux geeks can make, if they want.  I
suspect though that for commercial success, it will be hard for Open
Moko to complete in the general population who will always find cool
features like GPS, 3G, Wifi and UMA support, etc. very attractive.

Regards,

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: N810 European Power Adapter

[Theodore Tso]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 12:13:46PM +, Matt Emson wrote:
> UK (and Irish) plugs are completely different. They are far, far safer 
> in practice. Each plug has a rated fuse (3, 5 and 13 amps are common in 
> various devices.) Our plugs are designed to fail at the plug before 
> damaging the appliance. We also have an earth pin on all plugs (though 
> some devices don't use it.) This means that we don't have the "my outlet 
> has no earth pin" issue that people some times hack around in the US/Europe.

This is all true, but those plugs take up a huge amount of space in
laptop bags...  and the number of times that I've had my equipment
blow up due to grounding problems or power surges is nil.  And a fuse
doesn't protect against voltage spikes.

> > ...and the UK too, if you activate the interlock on the (missing) earth 
> > leg with a toothpick (240vAC scares me) when you plug it in.
>
> So, what you are advocating is electrocuting yourself if the earth is 
> "live" and bypassing the fuse so that you can blow up your device in 
> case of a power surge? :-P (yes, I know.. the UK charger has no user  
> accessible fuse)

What I recommend to fellow road warriors, is if you ever go to Japan,
get one of these:

http://www.warrior.co.jp/go-con.htm

(Scroll to the bottom of the page to see pictures of how it can be
configured.)

It takes up a very tiny amount of space in your laptop bag, and it has
a nice safe plastic ground-defeat for the UK plugs which is much safer
than using a toothpick or a screwdriver.  Not available for sale in
the US or EU, probably because the safety bureaucrats would have
apoplectic seizures over the thing, but I've never had a problem using
it in over ten years.

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: SanDisk microSD 8 GB SDHC class 4

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 12:16:12PM +, Neil MacLeod wrote:
> 
> IMHO, microSD is more versatile than miniSD as microSD cards can be
> converted to miniSD and full-SD for use in other devices. Although
> you can convert miniSD to full SD, you obviously can't use miniSD in
> a microSD device in the future so you could be stuck with memory
> cards you can't use once you move on from your N810 (what's the
> betting the "N900" comes with microSD and not miniSD?!)

I'm a bit nervouse about using those adapters, especially where there
are multiple adapters involved (i.e., a microSD card in a miniSD
adapter in a full SD adapter in a CF adapter).  I'll use them when I
need to pull data from my laptop, but personally, it's not like these
cards are that expensive, so my personal preference is to get the
size for the primary system where the card is intended.

  - Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: my two big fustrations with the N800 - please help me find aworkaround!

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 04:03:33PM +0100, Andrew Flegg wrote:
> The community *has* tried to do calendar and contacts applications;
> off the top of my head:
> 
>  * GPE Suite's (calendar, contacts, todo)
>  * Opened Hand's Dates and Contacts
>  * Winzig
>  * DejaPim
> 
> ...and probably a few others. But decent PIM applications (see Palm OS
> or EPOC) are fairly involved, and these disparate efforts have had no
> consolidated resource and leadership. Currently, with the Maemo
> community so disparate, Nokia is best placed to provide that
> leadership.

And in fact, the problem is that one of them haven't gone ahead of the
others. If one of them were easy to extend, was 90% of the way there,
and had an open contribution model, it would probably rapidly
accelerate ahead of the others.  But it's hard to *make* that happen.
Open source communty is an organic process; it takes time for it to
develop; but once it does, the rate of change can take off very, very,
rapidly.

> As you say, it's a fantastic piece of hardware (video bandwidth
> notwithstanding), but it's only marketing which makes it an "Internet
> Tablet" rather than "high-end PDA" or "palmtop computer" (if I were in
> an uncharitable mood, I'd point out that it's not the RSS reader or
> email client which makes it an Internet Tablet ;-)).

I've always suspected that the "Internet Tablet" moniker was just an
excuse for the fact that Nokia didn't have the budget to implement a
decent set of PDA apps or a decent off-line RSS reader which could
suck down entire web pages when you're off line, and then allow you to
read them when you're on an airplane, ala my Advogato reader on my
Palm.  (Again, why is it that I am choosing to take my 12-year old
technology gadget instead of my N800 all the time?  Maybe because it
got a lot of things Just Right?  And for people who point out that
Advogato is a commercial application, I would pay $40/year for a
decent RSS feed reader, as I do with Advogato to get the advanced
service, and I would pay $40 for a decent calendar program, as I would
with Datebk3/4/5, and I would pay $40 for a decent addressbook
application that was feature-compatible with the Palm.  Unfortunately
the ISV community for the N800 hasn't happened yet like it has for the
Palm.)

> My phone doesn't advertise itself as a PDA, but it has a calendar, a
> countdown timer and decent contacts management. Various people working
> at Nokia have expressed the opinion its PIM functions should be
> adequate for my needs. It's not: the screen is too small and the data
> entry is crap.

The way my cell phone displays contact information is also crap, and
it doesn't have good searching capabilities.  In addition, the
calendar program doesn't display multiple overlapping entries well,
nor does it support repeating entries.  Again, Nokia needs to look at
what Datebk3, or even the original Datebook application from Palm had
12 years ago, before they try to claim that what they have is
"adequate".  It's not even close.  But that's not the N800 team's
fault.

> The pragmatic point has also been made: *every* review of the 770/N800
> has mentioned the lack of PDA-like functionality (whatever that is
> taken to mean), if that results in a slightly more negative review, it
> *will* cost additional sales. Presumably, at the moment Nokia
> Marketing have decided that the cost of development is greater than
> the cost of the lost sales.

Yep.  The reviews also generally refer to it as a "toy", because as
*just* as a web tablet, it's not compelling enough for someone to
spend $399.  Techheads buy it because of the possibilities, but to be
honest there hasn't been enough useful apps for me to pack it most of
the time when I go out.  I bring just my phone and my PDA, and that's
it.  Or if I'm going to bring more, I'll probably bring my X41 laptop,
suspended so I have the same kind of "instant on" that the N800 has,
with a 12" display and much faster ability to execute javascript for
those Web 2.0 sites.

> Ted's made the consumer point: it's one of practicality, if I need an
> MP3 player, PDA, phone and Internet Tablet; there will be times where
> one or more has to stay behind. If I can manage one day without my
> N800, why not two, four, a week, a month? Once it falls into disuse,
> the community dies.

The other problem is that even when I bring it along with me, and
people see it and ask me about the N800, I have to grimace and say,
"it's a neat toy, but"  Because in all honesty, it's hard for me
to plug something when it's missing what I consider to be basic
functionality.  If an Internet Tablet doesn't replace my PDA, but is
defined as something that is *missing* a decent calendar, and
*missing* a decent contact database, it's not very useful.  (And memo
to the Nokia marketing department: my honest assessment, which
includes the hopes that someday it will get the killer apps that it
needs, has probably cost them at least a half-dozen sales so far.  And
if there are

Re: my two big fustrations with the N800 - please help me find aworkaround!

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 03:12:47PM +0300, Tomas Junnonen wrote:
> Defaults matter. By enabling extras through an install file on garage
> you're limiting yourself to the hardcore crowd who knows to visit garage
> in the first place.

True, but we don't need to wait until the next OS/Firmware refresh to
change the default.  It would be a good thing to do, but that's
probably at least 2-3 months away, no?  (And I
expect/hope/fear/anticipate eagerly that there will only be 2-3
releases before some new hardware refresh moving us from the 770 to
the N800 to maybe the N850, right?  :-)

What about highlighting some really cool community package that would
be of use to the general user population, not just the power users[1],
and putting it in extras, and then plugging it on the Tableteer web
site?  Then when people install it, they wlil get the extra repository
automatically added to sources list.

And in general, the goal really should be to encourage community
members to make their packages polished enough so they *are* worthy to
be published and plugged on Tableteer.  After all, in the open source
community that kind of publicity and reputation capital of getting
plugged on an "official" site is a really big motivator.  So if there
were standards published about what it would take to do that, I think
it would make a huge difference in terms of that "carrot".  And that
was Nokia's original dream of the Internet Tablet anyway, right --- to
build a platform and to get the community to help make it much more
useful?  (At least, that's what I remember from chatting with the
Nokia folks at that really nice shindig in Tremezzo, Italy.  :-)

- Ted

[1] Although given the lack of a decent Calendar/PDA application and
better cellphone integration of the Contacts application, I suspect a
large number of the regular users of the N800 *are* power users; right
now I have to carry around my Cell phone, my palm pilot, *and* my
N-800, and when I can't carry around so many toys, guess which one
gets left at home?  Hint: it's not the cell phone.  And until Nokia
figures out how to implement decent PDA functionality, I'm still going
to be carrying my Palm pilot around.  I paid $$$ for the E70 and was
*very* disappointed in the quality of the PDA applications; why is it
that 12-year-old Palm technology still better than anything Nokia can
put out over a decade later?  I've occasionally considered ditching
the E70 and replacing it with a Treo, just to cut down on the number
of units I have to carry around.  If I could get a Treo (or something
with Palm Pilot level of functionality) in a E70 form-factor, I'd be
ditching the E70 so fast it would make your head spin.

And if the Palm Foleo has better PDA applications, it might seriouslly
threaten the N800; after all, it has built-in keyboard and is only
$100 more
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: question on booting from mmc

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 04:17:50PM -0700, James Sparenberg wrote:
> > jffs runs directly on raw NAND flash so it must do such things. SD cards
> > however are normal block devices and my understanding is that they do
> > same or similar wear levelling when writing blocks. 

More to the point, SD cards don't give you access raw NAND flash so
you couldn't even use jffs2; it's not technically possible.  (Go ahead
and try!  :-)

> Real question I can see at this point is which FS has the smallest
> journal and the fastest response on solid state media.  BTW the #1
> reason I've lost data on ext3 systems was due to automagic fsck.
> Admittedly those systems were primarily Fedora Core2 or RHEL3.  Ext3
> may have improved since them but I'm still shy.

 That hasn't been my experience, nor of most people I've talked
to.  Note that if you are losing data due to the automagic fsck,
that's just probably when you are discovering it, not when the damage
actually happened.  My guess is that you are running your ext3 systems
on flaky hardware, but that's just a guess.

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: question on booting from mmc

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 09:14:09AM +0200, Frantisek Dufka wrote:
> Theodore Tso wrote:
> 
> >Yeah, but the ext3 journal wears out the flash card much more quickly.
> 
> Since you know better than anyone how ext3 works can you quantify what 
> means 'much more quickly' with default date=ordered mode? 2x 10x 100x ?

It depends on how much metadata updates you do --- I would definitely
recommend using the noatime mount option, but probably somewhere
between 1.2x and 2x.  Basically, each time you update some part of the
metadata, it will result in the block being written to the journal,
before it is ultimately written to the primary location on disk.  So
the number of writes will go up by 2x for metadata blocks.  So the big
question is the ratio between metadata updates and data block updates.   

> This is slightly problematic. There is no fsck in initfs partition and 
> space is really tight there. Also we have no keyboard so realistically 
> -y is the only option which may sometimes do something wrong. From the 
> manpage: ...  Sometimes an  expert  may  be  able to do better driving 
> the fsck manually. ... AUTHOR Theodore Tso

Well, the initfs partition could mount the original jffs2 partition
and grab the fsck from there.  Or you could do what Linux systems did
before initfs, which is to mount the root partition read-only, and
then run e2fsck, and if the root filesystem was changed, force a
reboot; else remount the root partition read/write.

As far as e2fsck -y, 99% of the time if the machine just shutsdown
uncleanly, the e2fsck -p (preen mode) will do the job just fine.  If
we do need to run e2fsck interactively, yeah, the only way to do that
would be to boot back to the jffs root image, bring up an xterm, and
then run it interactively from there.  But that hopefully should be a
relatively rare case.

I'm assuming here that most of the time those people who are using the
ext2/3 filesystem on an MMC is keeping a viable boot image in the
original jffs2 device, so that can be used as the way to run e2fsck if
necessary --- and as the source for the e2fsck binary from the initrd
environment, if necessary.

Regards,

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: question on booting from mmc

[Theodore Tso]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 09:41:04PM +0200, Frantisek Dufka wrote:
> Also as mentioned in that thread (and in README and bootmenu 
> configuration examples inside initfs flasher), it may be better to use 
> ext3 not ext2 system as ext3 has similar journaling nature like jffs2 so 
> you don't need to run fsck when your system does not shutdown properly.

Yeah, but the ext3 journal wears out the flash card much more quickly.
Given how cheap 2GB cards are, maybe we don't care, but given how
quick e2fsck is on a 2GB flash disk, another approach would be modify
the boot script so that it detects if the root filesystem is ext2, and
if it is unclean, force an fsck automatically.

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: OpenSSH on OS 2006 repository problem?

[Theodore Tso]

On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 12:10:33PM -0400, dasDasein wrote:
> When I click the installer for OpenSSH from Maemo download site, it fails to
> add repository and install.  I manually entered the repository, and try to
> install openssh-installer I get ... "Unable to download. Package not found."

I ran into one problem because I had the following in my application
catalog

Catalog name:   Maemo
Web address:http://repository.maemo.org
Distribution:   bora
Components: free non-free extras
  ^^

The problem was that extras is a non-existent component in
repository.maemo.org.  Previous versions of the firmware would just
ignore the non-existent component.

The latest version seems to abort the "apt-get update" process and
leave you with the old package information --- for all catalogs, not
just the one with the bogus extra component.

I figured this out by eliminating all non-essential categories until
the package information was getting properly updated, and then I was
able to figure out that the problem was the extra, non-existent
component.  Once I eliminated that, I was able to install skype,
openssh, etc. 

Don't know if this is the problem you ran into, but maybe it will help
some others

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: N800: Notes from the Field - A Successful Radio Workaround

[Theodore Tso]

On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 11:39:48AM +0200, Wahlau - wrote:
> 
> I've got my n800 last week and i have the same feeling too - the soft case
> is more like eye candy than something i can rely on. I even found out if i
> look the screen and slide the device in the case, if the screen is tapped it
> will still brighten up as if it is ready to be used, although i have
> manually locked the screen.
> 
> kind of funny i must say, perhaps i am just a newbie :)

That problem is fixed with the new firmware update... IMHO, worth it
for that reason alone.  :-)

- Ted

___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Reading the manual (was RE: Instant on Loading)

[Theodore Tso]

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 02:51:41PM -0400, Jonathan Greene wrote:
> I found the manual in my own exploration of the device and was
> surprised it was not more actively promoted anywhere since the box
> only included a quickstart guide and no printed material of detail.  I
> missed it was there when I had the 770...

Yup, my n800 didn't come with a printed manual either, and I found the
.PDF manual to be horribly optimized for screen reading.  The fonts
are too small such that you can't really read it until you blow it up,
and then you have to cosntantly panning the viewer around to read the
entire screen.  

It would have been really nice if the manual came in HTML format, so
that the browser could rejustify the text based on the zoom level.
Basically, I found the .PDF to be pretty much unusable unless I copied
it over to my laptop and read it on a 1600x1200 display, or if printed
it out and then read it in dead-tree format.

- Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users

Re: Accuracy of the power meter?

[Theodore Tso]

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 01:39:35PM +0200, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
> Lucky you. When I'm connected to my AP at home (The white fonera AP),
> I'll get 1.5 days max, even if I don't use the device and just omweather
> does periodic updates.

Omeweather turned out to be it, it looks like.  I need to do some more
tests to conclusively prove it, but it looks like I had set omweather
(version 0.17.2) to "never" update, and my guess that set the interval
time to 0, and that seems to have triggered some continue loop.
Setting the interval time to 4 hours seems to have extended my battery
life.

 - Ted
___
maemo-users mailing list
maemo-users@maemo.org
https://maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users