We only want to produce Blockbusters

The recent Blowup about HP exiting the PC/WebOS Business reminds me of an old story about when Sony bought MGM, the movie makers.

The story goes like this; executives were briefing Sony Management about how profits were generated from the Movie Making business. One accountant described the process such;

“Well we make a hundred movies a year, about 10% are Blockbusters and we make millions, 60% make a modest profit, and pay for themselves, and the about 20% Lose a small amount, but help maintain our reputation, and then there are 10% that are serious bombs.”

The Japanese executives looked at each other and carried on a small side conversation and then stated;

“We only want to produce Blockbusters”

HP is like this, they only wanted to produce Blockbusters, as if this was merely a simple decision, “We only want to make Blockbusters”. As if there was no effort involved, no trial and error involved. And when the first effort fails, quit and run from the first attempt as if shedding the failure is the only responsible choice.

And I thought that the Executives of Sony and Nokia were failures, Looks like there is a Plague of idiot CEO’s out there.

NOTE 1: It looks like bad decisions MIGHT have repercussions as HP might oust Apotheker

Committed to Maemo 5

I gone and done it, I’ve committed to a pre-order for a Nokia N900 from Amazon so sometime in the next X Days I’ll be on the Maemo 5 bandwagon. After pondering Android, Vodafone 360, Palm WebOS and Maemo, I had to choose a platform based upon HOW I USE a phone rather than as a Carrier would have me use one. It’s the one phone that most mimics my current use, a Palm T/X with a tethered Nokia 6300. Since Vodafone has killed my tethering of the Nokia, I’m reduced to using the T/X WiFi only, and there is a dearth of free WiFi sites in Ireland. Given that the Blazer browser in the T/X is functionally obsolete pointed me at a ‘Full’ OS device like Maemo. And while I can, and have booted Angstrom on the Palm, it’s inability to connect WiFi and Bluethooth make that configuration interesting, but useless. Android, and particularly the Hero was especially appealing, and was my second choice. But Android appears more like a ‘Widget marketing’ platform where only the underlying core was open source. Maemo is a full fledged Linux, although not mainstream, I can hack Linux. And while the current lack of Java is curious and worrying I do know, and it has, other programming language support, even MySQL (older version).

So what is the N900, it’s a portable Linux system, with a phone app in it. more or less what I have already. I understand that! Now all I have to do is be patient until my new toy ships. Here’s hoping is ships early. 🙂

I will miss the Palm T/X, but it’s already been repurposed as a Internet radio on it’s desk stand in my office. The Nokia 6300 will also be missed, I wonder if the wife will let me keep it around as a standby?

UPDATE: More reasons for my choice Software freedom and someone else who agrees with me Maemo offers more freedom

Last Hurrah for TealOS

The Palm WebOS emulation ‘skin’ that is called TealOS has been forced to stop starting on Monday.

I’m sorry to say that at Palm’s request, as of this upcoming Monday, March 30,
we will no longer be selling or distributing TealOS.

So if you want it, go get it now. I did, and it works great. I did this to protest Palm’s move to block their own customers from enjoying the WebOS look and feel. Even in the face of Apple’s threat of legal action against WebOS, they struck first against a Palm Developer that has been supporting them for years.

Bad Play! Palm

PS: Don’t forget to download the more current Beta of TealOS 1.48 Beta here

Palm WebOS for the T/X

I may be a bit wishful after seeing the demonstration of the Palm Pre but knowing that you can get Angstrom Linux on the Palm T/X, there isn’t any reason that you couldn’t get the Palm WebOS shoehorned into it. But I’m assuming that CPU power and memory will be issues. Still one can be hopeful that since the Linux Kernels are nearly the same version, the WebOS environment is the only portion that needs to be ported. It might be a bit sluggish, but the Angstrom installation has built-in over-clocking of the T/X processor so that hurtle could be overcome.