Senate Confirms Roberts As Chief Justice

From Yahoo! News:

Senate Confirms Roberts As Chief Justice (AP)(2 mins ago)WASHINGTON - John Glover Roberts Jr. became the 17th chief justice of the United States Thursday, overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate to lead the Supreme Court through turbulent social issues for generations to come.The Senate voted 78-22 to confirm Roberts -- a 50-year-old U.S. Appeals judge from the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md. -- as the successor to the late William H. Rehnquist, who died earlier this month. All of the Senate's majority Republicans, and about half ofthe Democrats, voted for Roberts.

To find out how your senator voted on Justice Roberts confirmation, visit http://www.senate.gov/.

Judge Roberts Confirmation Vote

The Senate is scheduld to vote on the confirmation of Judge Roberts for Supreme Court Chief Justice in one hour, at 11:30 am EDT.

More to follow. ...

Joe

Palm Unveils Windows Mobile Device

The world will never be the same.

And so it begins: Microsoft has finally made their way into the final frontier: the Palm handheld. Most Palm enthusiasts are livid.

The predecessor to the Palm device was developed at Tandy corporation in 1989 by eventual Palm, Inc., founder Jeff Hawkins, and was named the Zoomer, after "Consumer." I was a Store Manager at Radio Shack when the Tandy Zoomer was still in production in 1994. Microsoft was still nonexistent in the handheld computing business.

Palm Computing was formally incorporated in 1992 with Jeff Hawkins as the only employee. Jeff Hawkins Zoomer was first released in 1993 and, by 1994, 10,000 Zoomers had been sold -- a fraction of what Tandy (the retailer) and Casio (the manufacturer) had anticipated.

Jeff Hawkins next development was the Touchdown, a handheld device that would fit in a shirt pocket. By 1996, hardware and software development was nearly complete. The Touchdown was subsequently renamed Taxi, and later Pilot, and thus the popular Palm Pilot was born. Over the course of ten years, over 38 million devices running the Palm operating system have been sold.

Palm has had a cult following, with devoted Palm Loyalists hosting such blog-style websites as Palm Addicts, 1SRC (One Source), Palm Loyal, Palm Forums, Palm Focus, Palm Insider, and Palm Inspired, just to name a few. There are "PUGs" -- Palm User Groups -- throughout the world. And probably the greatest thing these cultists have in common is an absolute revulstion of the Windows Mobile operating system by Microsoft.

Today, the two worlds came crashing together, as the CEO of Palm, Chairman of Microsoft, and CEO of Verizon Wireless gathered together to announce the release of a brand new Palm device -- the latest in the Palm Treo family -- running Windows Mobile 5. You can read the press release here and view the 59 minute press conference here (56k connection).

Will it be the end of the Palm operating system? Many think it may, as the spun-off company that develops the Palm OS -- PalmSource -- is in the process of being acquired by Access Software, a Japanese software company that creates a mobile web browser for handheld devices.

I started out my handheld experience using a Citizen pocket organizer that sold for $130. I dabbled with Casio pocket organziers and found them lacking before settling on the Sharp Wizard pocket organizer. At the time, I was very anti-Palm OS, telling everyone that I thought it was ridiculous, using a sytlus on a touch screen to enter data. I insisted on a keyboard. I later upgraded to the Diamond Mako -- the U.S. release of the Psion Revo so popular in Europe -- which was based on the Epoc platform. It sold for nearly $400 and had a unique keyboard that actually enabled almost real typing.

But alas, all good things must end, and one day my Diamond Mako bit the dust. As they were no longer in production (Psion pulled out of the handheld market), I had only two choices at the time: Microsoft's Windows Mobile (then called Windows CE, and later Pocket PC), and the Palm operating system.

My wife had a Palm M100 that I bought her as a gift. She never adjusted to using the thing, so I gave it a try, and the rest is history. Since then, I have had the M105, M125, M130, Zire 71, and currently the Zire 72.

I don't personally have much of a problem with Palm using the Windows Mobile platform. It will likely gain them better access to the business market. However, I do hope they continue to produce ture Palm Powered handhelds. I've grown quite used to the Palm OS, and my Palm Zire 72 goes with me almost everywhere I go. I can't imagine how I could ever adjust to another operting system.

So don't abandon us, Palm. You have a lot of Palm Loyalists out there hoping you'll do the right thing.

Joe

Weekly News Brief

I attempted to post a podcast this morning, but there's some issue with the phone lines, so here's my weekly News Brief:

100,000 antiwar protesters gathered at the National Mall in Washington on Saturday to speak out against the war in Iraq. Approximately 400 people gatheredin the same location to show their support for American troops overseas.

Hurricane Rita came and went, causing much less damage than predicted and taking very few lives. Government officials score high marks for preparedness. Some actually say they went from one extreme to the other.

In an effort to boost aid to Hurricane Katrina victims, Beach Boys front man Brian Wilson promises to personally call anyone who donates $100 or more and to match all donations of $100 or more posted from his site. Read the story here:

http://pocket.usatoday.com/avantgo/palm_os/life10846-13127397.asp

CEOs of Microsoft, Palm, and Verizon will hold a joint press conference Monday at 9:00 A.M. Pacific Time. It is anticipated they will announce the first ever Palm device to run the Windows Mobile operating system. You can register to view video of the conference here:

http://metahost.savvislive.com/microsoft/20050926/

Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee John Roberts will go before the full Senate for confirmation this week. While he is expected to be confirmed by a majority, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh (D) and New York Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton (D), among others, have both announced that they will vote against JudgeRoberts.

Have a great week!

Joe

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Sent from my Palm Zire 72.

It's Not as Bad as You Think

I was reading a news article yesterday from MSNBC. The article ran down a list of the many issues affecting our nation and the world today:

Hurricane Rita
Hurricane Katrina
The Iraq War
Judge John Roberts for Chief Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor's Unnamed Successor
Social Security Reform
The High Cost of Oil
Protesters Marching on Washington
North Korea and Nuclear Power
Iran and Nuclear Power
Israel and Palestine

As I was reading, it struck me that some of my problems may not be so big after all:

Driving 4 hours a day to Work and back
Stress at work
Paying the bills
The price of gas
Having a two-year old son
Having a pregnant wife

The list could go on and on, but somehow it just pales in comparison to the many worries of President Bush, and I'm sure there are several more the American public doesn't know about.

See, it isn't as bad as you think.

Joe


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Sent from my Palm Zire 72.

Senator Bayh Opposes Judge Roberts

If you thought Senator John Kerry was a flip-flopper, consider the following contradictions from Senator Bayh himself:

Senator Bayh's comments before the Senate Judiciary Committee while introducing Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee Judge Roberts:

Today Senator Bayh made the following flip-flop announcement:
As you can see, Senator Bayh now OPPOSES the "fellow Hoosier" who is "so talented and so successful" that Senator Bayh was "proud" to introduce to the Senate Judiciary committee. Why? Not because he isn't qualified, because Judge Roberts is highly qualified for this position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Senator Bayh opposes Judge Roberts for only two reasons:

1- Senator Bayh is a Democrat, and Judge Roberts is a Conservative Strict Constructionist who will INTERPRET the Constitution, not legislate from the bench. All Democrats FEAR such a Justice on the Supreme Court.

2- While Democrats would ask Judge Roberts to pledge to vote one way or another on key issues, Judge Roberts refused to discuss such issues that might come before the court as it might have an unfair outcome on potential future cases.

The bottom line is, Judge John Roberts is much more qualified for the post of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court than Senator Bayh is for his current office, much less the Office of President of the United States.

If you live in Indiana, contact Senator Bayh today to voice your support for Judge John Roberts. you can reach him via email from his official website, by mail, or by calling one (or all) of his offices at the numbers listed here.

If you do not live in Indiana but are an American citizen and plan to vote in the next Presidential election, be sure to cast your vote AGAINST Senator Evan Bayh, from the Primary through the General Election.

Joe

http://defeatevanbayh.blogspot.com

Book Review: Eldest (and Eragon) by Christopher Paolini

Christopher Paolini started writing his first book, Eragon, at the age of fifteen. He became a New York Times bestselling author when it was published in his nineteenth year. I read Eragon, and thought it was a wonderful book. I'm not a big fan of fantasy (to be a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy does not require that you be a fan of fantasy), but something about the book intrigued me when I first saw it. I picked it up and couldn't put it back down.

Christopher Paolini weaves a tale of action, adventure, and mystery, and creates truly believeable characters in truly realistic worlds, much as Tolkien himself did. After reading Eragon (which I highly recommend), I eagerly awaited book two of this author's planned trilogy - Eldest.

I'm sad to say that I made it through 116 pages of Christopher Paolini's latest addition to his Inheritance trilogy. I found Eldest to be a much more difficult read than it's predecessor. The author seems to try to delve deeper into the Tolkien style and goes so far as to create his own language for the book -- a language which he uses frequently as characters converse with no direct translation for the reader. Not only is it very exhausting trying to phonetically sound out the arcane words, but there is no reward to the task as you have no idea what you've read when you reach the end of a sentence. Of course, the author has planted some contextual clues throughout to hint at the conversation, but after a few sentences of gibberish, I found it difficult to remember what the context of the story was. That's the main reason I didn't finish Tolkien's Silmarillion.

Unfortunately, I don't anticipate that I'll be finishing Eldest, and I assume that means it will be difficult for me to read book three in the trilogy when it is published. I may try anyway. I'm sure Mr. Paolini is quite a gifted author, but I prefer my reading to be a pleasant relaxing experience, not a taxing test of my ability to decipher code. Eragon was a very pleasant read. Eldest, on the other hand, was not.

Joe