Re: [tlug] Amazon Kindle

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > The Zaurus is still going strong, isn't it?  They seem to regularly
 > produce new models,

Not in a couple of years, and there was no interesting activity on the
Sharp site just before i was leaving Japan.  The best they could do at
that time was the model I already have (since almost 3 years ago).
Nor can you find them in a lot of stores, where they used to be
ubiquitous.

 > and, very much unlike Sony stuff, it runs a standard OS (Linux),

So does the Vaio. ;-)

 > uses standard memory cards, and so on.

Well, yes and no.  The downloads available from Sharp are mostly games
and small business apps (calendars, expense accounts, contact lists).
Downloads from third parties are much more comprehensive including all
the P-languages (including ones starting with "T"), but you have to
blow away the Sharp ROM ... including the te-gaki ninshiki.  That's a
non-starter.  No X programs work since the base GUI is a version of Qt
that runs directly on top of the graphical console.  (3rd-party ROMs
support X11 but we been there---you lose the exclusive Sharp
features.)  The IRDA never cooperated with my Linux boxes, there never
was a jpilot equivalent for syncing calendars etc that I know of over
USB, and the standard kernel only drives a couple of Wifi cards, none
of which worked very well with either my Corega or IBM access points.
As for Linux, I suppose they probably did comply with the GPL more or
less, but no easily found copy of the GPL was distributed with the
product, and I never did find source for their kernel although I
searched couple of their websites.

In other words, yes, you *could* eventually take advantage of your
free software rights, but they made it as painful as possible.  Dumb,
since the kind of software they were actually selling is not the kind
of software that FLOSS is good at producing in a reasonable amount of
time.

 > > And it's almost hysterical the way the Japanese denshiya are repeating
 > > the Betamax fiasco with Bloo-Ray.[1] Same time, same channel, same
 > > leading actors just about.
 > 
 > I'm not sure that this will be anywhere near the same kind of
 > fiasco.

Maybe not for SONY, but it will be a fiasco for somebody.  Blu-ray is
not enough better then HD-DVD to pay for the standards war; it would
be better to have gone with the inferior standard 3 years ago.

 > First, Blue-ray, as well as being technically better (which in some
 > respects--particularly playing time--Betamax was not),

Well, all I know is Wikipedia-level stuff, but my understanding is
that although Blu-ray has better physical specs per layer, HD-DVD can
pretty much match them with addition of a third layer.  More
important, HD-DVD players are quite a bit more advanced at this point,
and Blu-ray's early lead in the number of players could be reversed
within the year depending on shifting industrial alliances more than
anything else.  If it doesn't happen, though, Blu-ray will catch up on
the play specs, and that will quite likely be that.

Given that Microsoft's on the other side, I suppose I wouldn't mind
seeing SONY win this one ....