Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Website 21.2 Revision

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I’ve just launched a minor revision to the site, which brings the version to 21.2. The visual changes aren’t too obvious (just some changes to the shadows and a re-worked footer), but I’ve made a number of background changes.

The site now integrates with the new WordPress 3.0 menu system, and I’ve also reworked my theme so it will work correctly with the WP-Super-Cache plugin. All this really means for you, my faithful readers, is that the site will now probably work faster for you in most situations.

Enjoy and, as always, let me know if you run into any problems!

Neighborhood Fireworks

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For some reason, everybody seems to be celebrating Independence Day (the 4th of July) today, even though today is the 3rd of July. Oh well. I guess we Americans aren’t known for our attention to detail ;-).

Anyway, some of the people on our street were setting off fireworks and, best of all, we are in a neighborhood adjacent to where the South Riding community fireworks show takes place. From our back porch, we had a great view of the official and unofficial shows alike.

To top all that off, I just got a new Canon PowerShot SX20 IS camera. It is a ‘prosumer’ model which is not a DSLR, but is about the best you can get if you’re not serious enough (or are too cheap) for a DSLR. You can see loads of photos below. Considering that cameras don’t handle night or motion well, and fireworks are both, I’m very happy with how things turned out.

Read more . . .

Palm is Dead; Long Live Palm

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Palm, Inc. has one of the strangest corporate stories . . . ever. Let’s see if you can follow this timeline:

  • 1992 – Palm founded by Jeff Hawkins, Ed Colligen, and Donna Dubinsky. The Pilot handheld PDA becomes a big success in the subsequent years.
  • 1995 – Palm is acquired by US Robotics Corp.
  • 1997 – US Robotics (and Palm) are acquired by 3Com.
  • 1998 – Palm’s founders, unhappy with 3Com’s direction for the company, leave and form a new company called Handspring.
  • 2000 – 3Com spins the Palm subsidiary off into an independent company with an IPO on Nasdaq.
  • 2002 – Palm creates an independent subsidiary, named PalmSource, to manage and license the Palm OS operating system and renames itself, the device maker, to PalmOne. PalmOne spins PalmSource off into a separate, independent company.
  • 2003 – PalmOne buys Handspring, bringing the founders back into the company.
  • 2005 – PalmOne buys the rights to the ‘Palm’ name, jointly held by PalmOne and PalmSource, and renames itself back to Palm, Inc. PalmSource, meanwhile, is bought by Access, Ltd. PalmSource/Access struggles to create a worthy successor to the badly aging Palm OS operating system (it never does).
  • 2007 – Equity firm Elevation Partners buys a 25 percent stake in Palm, Inc., giving them a badly needed lifeline.
  • 2009 – Palm finally announces its own home-grown mobile operating system, WebOS, and a new ‘Pre’ smartphone. The system is well regarded, but doesn’t sell especially well.
  • 2010 – Palm, Inc. is acquired by Hewlett-Packard.

Obviously, this timeline had a lot of wrong turns. The splitting of Palm into two companies will likely go down in business history as one of the dumbest things a technology company has ever done, and PalmSource’s failure to deliver a worthy successor to the old Palm OS for so many years is a blight on their record and seriously hurt Palm[One]’s ability to compete in the market. While WebOS is still, in my humble opinion, the absolute best mobile operating system available, Palm has struggled to produce competitive hardware at a fast enough pace to compete with the Apple, Google, and RIM juggernauts.

This week—perhaps as early as tomorrow—Palm, Inc. will cease to exist. It will become part of venerable Hewlett-Packard, Inc. (HP). The expectation is that Palm won’t be a subsidiary (as it was under US Robotics and 3Com), but will become an internal unit at HP. It’s unknown at this time if the Palm name will live on, but it looks like Palm, as we loyal customers have known and loved it for so many years, will be gone.

The good news, however, is that with HP’s backing there’s a good chance that WebOS will land on better and better hardware in the months and years to come, and that HP/Palm/whatever it’s called will live on and regain its former standing in the mobile market. Long-time fans like myself are cautiously optimistic. Palm is dead; long live Palm.

Update: It’s official; Palm no longer exists as an independent company as of this morning (7/1), and is being de-listed from Nasdaq. In other news, PreCentral.net stole my post title! :-) At least in the near term, Palm is being labeled as a subsidiary of HP but it’s unclear if this is a temporary or more-permanent arrangement.

Supreme Court Overturns Gun Bans

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In a narrow 5-4 ruling, the United States Supreme Court has overturned the gun ban in Chicago, Illinois, and reiterated its previous rulings that individuals have a right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.

The Court ruled two years ago in District of Columbia vs. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right, but the ruling was narrowly crafted and some believed it only applied to federal laws and federal enclaves like the District. In today’s McDonald vs. Chicago ruling, the Court explicitly clarified that states must also abide by the Bill of Rights in their legislation, ending any serious confusion about the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment.

Technically, the Supreme Court did not directly overturn the bans, but it did clarify the meaning of its previous rulings and sent the case back to lower courts for consideration. In practice, this means that the gun ban will either be overturned by the lower court or returned again to the Supreme Court to be overturned later.

This ruling will potentially have wide-ranging impact on state and local gun laws across the country, possibly forcing these governments to bring their laws in-line with the plain text of the Bill of Rights.

M

cDonald vs. Chicago

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.