GNU+Linux on the mainstream?

Apple Mac OS was always clear and simple, take a look at any GNU+Linux distribution and you'll see any number of overcomplicated messages for basic functions such the laptop battery indicator. Is decimal place really needed? does know the .2 in 34.2% make much difference?

Time to pay for email?

Guardian has an interesting article The end of free email.

Like calling an organisation or person, I have to pay the cost of the
phone call! Likewise for sending them a letter (with the exception of
organisations offering FREEPOST addresses). Perhaps we should do the
same for email, 1p per email externally to start with?

"One of the best ways to deal with externalities is to create a market. This means we start respecting other people's inbox as their own property, and stop dumping into it without consideration. We create a system that forces people to bear more of the costs of their actions."

Interesting to consider the options to try cut back on both unnecessary email and spam email. Having authenticated SMTP servers on a white list would make it much eaier to see who was actually emailing too.

Missing weight in laptop adverts

I'm amazed retailers get away with this, they advertise laptops in magaines and newspapers, even gadget specialist mags like T3 and Stuff.. and they miss out the weight! Vital info when considering a laptop etc

New puppy video

Testing if this will work.. using the "video" tag in HTML5.

Alternatively, download the video directly: kaiya_garden.ogv. Oddly it only works if I name .ogg, the .ogv version does not work in video tag!

Brown the Incapable

Been thinking how Gordon Brown will be known after his time in office? The King of England from 978 was Æthelred the Unready, that's was quite a good nickname. Actually a pun on the his name Æthelred, meaning "noble counsel", they changed to "unræd", meaning "bad counsel".

How about calling Gordon: "Brown the Incapable"? He's not exactly successful!

Nintendo Apple merge?

Both Nintendo and Apple are niche innovators. My feeling is it could be a great US-Japan enterprise, bringing Nintendo design ideas to mobile computing and the web :)

Rip of UK

Dell Zino HD, $249 in USA,
AMD Athlon 2650e (512K L2, 1.6GHz)

In EU we get slower CPU, AMD X2 3250E 1.5GHz 512k
and costs £329.. bargain!

Considering the exchange rate, should cost around the same price as Acer Revo 3600, £160

Political revival of Cornish

Nationalist politicians in Cornwall are at it again.. like Scottish SNP. As a dead language, Cornish was revived to its current level of 3,500, started by Henry Jenner back in 1903

The Independent writes about the current state. Over 50 primary schools have been forced to become the politician buttress, and devote hours per week to teaching Cornish to pupils, what a waste of education time which could have been spent much better.

Comoditised mobile free software

We've recently reached the point where free software such as GNU+Linux is finally making it's mark in the mobile handset space.

There is a trend, new technology niches need investment and so start off as binary only. When there is increased competition either an open source option will take hold (Apache) or one of the big players will open their source (Netscape, Sun OpenOffice, Trolltech Qt etc) to gain an advantage over their competitors. Also they gain the wisdom of all contributors they gain.

Now we're seeing this in the mobile space, the likes of OpenMoko and more successful Android. Palm also have their webOS distro. They all share a Linux kernel and are built with standard GCC tools.

Symbian is a special case, like Netscape, Sun and Troll they have now also opened up their source code. They've only done this because they are loosing market share like Netscape was. In effect this was something which landed in our lap! I think Symbian could stop the drift of its smartphone marketshare now, but they do need t move away from their own flavours of C++ and cleanup stack, and support a new standard API while deprecating old ones. Like Nokia's newly acquired Qt.. hopefully ;)

Web unified HOME folder and email

Back in 2005 I had a great idea, only found time this evening to write about it due to the snow in UK :)

Essentially we have two folder hierarchies, HOME folder, and email Inbox etc when we only need one!

So currently I have in my HOME folder I have:
Documents
Music
Videos
Photos
Public
Deleted
Tosort

In my Email I have:
Inbox
Drafts
Sent
Deleted
Documents


Take the example of me quoting for some work. On a spreadsheet I calculate my costs, my fees and I email my total quote to client as my tender. Now in a conventional system I could not store that spreadsheet with the email. I need to keep two different directory structures.

So I'd like my email client to operate on the HOME folder, I even have "Tosort" which is basically an "Inbox" and of cause Deleted.

So this means we have:
Inbox
Drafts
Sent
Documents
Photos
Videos
Public
Deleted

This allows more flexibility, I can even save a document and photo in the same folder which contains my email about the same topic for future reference.

For true flexibility this unified HOME directory would be hosted on a server, so I can access from any of my netbooks, and weblogins.

500 gram GNU+Linux netbook - £70

Disgo Net Browser 3000 is sells in China for £70 with Windows CE 5.0. With its 7 inch display (800 x 480) it would make an excellent GNU+Linux netbook coupled with Firefox. Buying whole sale would be even cheaper. When the average *new* netbook price is £200, this is an absolute bargain.

So why has no one done it already?

• Needs an ARM distro (OpenZaurus, Maemo, openmoko or other embedded disro might make more sense than a regular Ubuntu distro).
• Only 64MB RAM, bloated firefox would consume that immediately, so Fennec is probably the way to go.
• Only 2GB NAND Flash, distro can fit in that, presumably it is also writable so can be partitioned for a HOME partition.