[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux in a wristwatch

[greenglow484@juno.com]

In case anyone missed this on Linux Today or wherever, it's a cool
article.  It's an interview with an IBM scientist, about IBM's putting of
an entire Linux OS into a wrist-watch-sized appliance.  The article has 3
photos of the device; it's really quite astounding to me.

The articles are at:  Main article:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9330943155.html

and "fact sheet" (which also has 3 photos of it) at:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5153961039.html

Something which really affected me was several statements by the
scientist in the interview, about Linux.  Maybe some of the statements we
won't agree with.  A brief quote from it, the first URL above:

"RL: It almost seems like Linux is, in a sense, a technology almost like
C or C++, that can do practically anything you want. Isn't that what
you're demonstrating here with the wrist watch project? 

"Morrow: I think it's almost as much a community as a technology. It's
certainly a technology, but it's also the fact that people understand
each other when they talk about the things they'd like to do to perturb
Linux to do something different. You can pull a team together and say,
'Wouldn't it be great if we could turn this roller wheel into a mouse?',
and they know what you mean by writing a driver to turn the roller wheel
into a mouse. It's a community [consisting of] a large number of people
who enjoy pushing the limits, and if you can find a way to do it with
technology they understand, they get incredibly excited and they go off
and solve problems that you never imagined could be solved. That's what's
happened here. 

"RL: So, one of the benefits of 'community' seems to be shared
creativity, and shared technology components. 

"Morrow: Right. Exactly. There's the community of people who know Linux
because it's an open source environment. They can get the sources, and
they can talk to each other about specific things they need to do. 

"RL: How could any proprietary technology hope to compete with that,
except in specific niche applications? 

"Morrow: It's an interesting question, and one that's very much at the
center of this discussion of open source vs. proprietary source software.
You're absolutely right. That's a good question. I think it's still an
open question, but the fact is, the thing that's going to make a
difference is the number of people who get excited about working on a
technology. For us, right now, people are very excited about working on
technologies where they can get access to all the source. And so here we
have a situation where we can do that on a very tiny device, which is in
itself exciting, so it's a doubly exciting project. When we show the
watch to students, they get incredibly exited (sic) about it, and they
want to go to work on it immediately. So this is a project which, by
itself, seems a little strange -- but it's really a project that pushes
the limits of what you can do with computing."
--
  Douglas D. Darnold	Principal/ Attorney
  LAW OFFICES OF DOUGLAS D. DARNOLD <greenglow484 at juno.com>
  P. O. Box 12461	Dallas  Texas 75225-0461	Voice: 214-368-0068
 

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