Topics

1

General Discussion / Eu Rejects Software Patents

« on: July 06, 2005, 09:11:14 am »

http://za.today.reuters.com/news/newsArtic...NG-20050706.XML

STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Parliament voted to throw out a controversial EU bill to harmonise the patenting of software-related inventions on Wednesday after lawmakers said it pleased nobody in its present form.

The assembly voted by 648 to 14 with 18 abstentions to reject the law and stop a version of the legislation, already approved by the European Union's 25 member states, from becoming law.

The European Commission which drafted the bill said it respected the decision and that it would not put forward any new proposed legislation in this area.

The bill has polarised the technology industry, with large firms like Microsoft, Nokia and Siemens saying the changes sought by the EU assembly would leave products open to copycat versions from China and elsewhere.

Supporters of open-source or free software had welcomed the changes sought by some EU lawmakers to limit what types of inventions can be patented.

This is good news indeed!

2

Security and Networking / Bluetooth Dun Problems

« on: June 16, 2005, 11:49:52 am »

I finally got my Billionton Bluetooth card working on my SL-5500 with a little help from Merlin ROM (Thanks Merli!) and can now scan for devices... (I installed the pinned Bluez drivers and am following the instructions in the HOWTO).

I have an Orange SPV C500 (on Orange UK) which is based on MS Smartphone 2003SE (Booo!).   When Bluetooth is enabled and set to discoverable on the phone, I can successfully pair the devices from the phone, and if I use the Bluetooth Network Applet to create a DUN connection, when I click connect on the Zaurus, the phone pairs, but the Zaurus stays on "initialising modem".   I suspect this is because I am using the wrong channel number (default 1).

(Inncidently I dug out my old Nokia 6310i and put my SIM in that just to see if it would work with that, it pairs and dials up fine.)

So the problem with the SPV is that if I use "sdptool browse" it only returns the MAC address of the phone and no other information.  (With the Nokia it provides a couple of services, and if I attempt it on the train it comes back with loads of service information from other peoples nokias, sony erricsons etc...)

I know the SPVC500 is supposed to work as a bluetooth modem: There are several reports on forums people have it working with IPAQs running PocketPC and I scanned for services on the phone from Windows XP and it reports Dial Up Networking and Serial Port as being available - of course these are both Microsoft Environments.

So... Now I am stuck:  

Is there any other way to find the channel required for the phone?  
Is it worth trying each channel number until it works or is it likely not to work with the Zaurus?   I know the COM ports the phone uses if that is any help?

3

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Root On Sd

« on: June 04, 2005, 12:14:28 pm »

I've been messing around with the various different ROM images and decided I liked OZ the best, so I'm now running OZ3.5.3 and Opie on my Zaurus SL-5500.

I want to move the root to the SD card, so I tried to make an image file as described here: http://openzaurus.org/wordpress/howto/root-on-sd/

I can successfully create the image, however when I try to mount it with

Code: [Select]

losetup /dev/loop0 /media/card/opie.img
mount -t ext2 /dev/loop0 /media/image
I get the following error:

Code: [Select]

mount: Mounting /dev/loop0 on /media/image failed: No such file or directory
Anyone have any idea what could be going wrong?

4

General Discussion / Newbie Question About Alternate Roms

« on: May 25, 2005, 11:11:08 am »

I recently obtained a second hand SL-5500 and am thinking of installing one of the alternative ROMS (e.g. Cacko or OZ) on it.

After some reading i've noticed its possible to install the ROM and use the SD card for storage/home directory etc.   If you do this, what happens if you want to use a different SD card (for example to copy files across), is it possible to do so? Does it affect the running of the OS, or do you have to do anything special?