LV PDA 8.2 RANT!!!

START RANT
On Aug 31, 2006 I was approved for the LV PDA beta program. I was finally accepted for the program even though I applied on numerous occassions during the year; I just happened to apply on or about Aug 28 on a whim. I was approved and decided to work my ass off for the next 2 weeks to ensure NI would release a stable product. Other diligent PDA users and myself have uncovered numerous bugs for LV PDA since version 7 and have posted on this forum. I did find bugs using the PDA beta but was left in the dark because the status of my bugs were left unprocessed. Then my profile for the PDA beta program all of the sudden got terminated. I could not log on and check the status of my filed bugs. I believe this was a result of the PDA beta program ending. Thus, I proceeded to email the PDA program coordinator on SEP 18, 2006 9:05:22 am PST the following below:
Hello:
I am concerned at the moment that 10 to 12 bugs submitted by me have not been addressed. Bugs were submitted from 9-6-06 to 9-12-06. I checked the status of the bugs daily at ni.com/beta and the bugs have yet to be processed.
If these bugs are not processed, the LabVIEW PDA will be EXTREMELY unstable. Please check my bug list because as of 9/18/06, ni.com/beta DOES NOT have me as a beta associate anymore!!!????
Thanks
Robert
At the moment, I am compiling my app and it seems these bugs have not been corrected. As a matter of fact, there are one (and most likely more) to be found. Here is a new one, that did not exist with the PDA beta:
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=209946&query.id=195699#M209946
At this point I will have to start of bunch of bug threads and HOPEFULLY NI will be responsive this time! Who cares about a deadline when stability/robustness should be JOB1 with software development tools.
END RANT.
Have a nice day
Robert

Robert,
I am the Beta Coordinator and Product Support Engineer for LabVIEW PDA. I accepted your registration to be a beta user, despite how close the product was to releasing when you registered. The LabVIEW PDA Module 8.2 released on September 7th, and that just so happened to be the date of your first bug report. About a week after the product released, I closed the beta site for LabVIEW PDA. When LabVIEW PDA enters beta again, I will reopen it. Rest assured, you were not removed from the beta.
Even with the beta closed, I can still see your bug reports (6 on 9/7/06, 3 on 9/8/06, and 3 on 9/11/06) and I will attempt to reproduce them in the released product. Many bug fixes and improvements were made to both LabVIEW and the LabVIEW PDA Module between the beta and the release, so I doubt many of these issues will persist. You can also try this out yourself in the released product.
We sincerely appreciate your feedback and desire to help us make our products better, and I encourage you to continue to be involved in the LabVIEW PDA beta when it starts up again.
Michael P
National Instruments

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A rant about C with a question at the end. :P

C is okay. It's just really hard to understand.
So this is my rant about it. It starts out by listing where I've been in terms of programming and then lists my difficulties with C itself.
I discovered C many years ago. I'm not too sure how. All I know is that for many years I've wanted to know what this C thing was all about, but had no way or knowledge of how to. I didn't really know anybody before I got the 'net last year, so asking someone else was out of the question. Plus, I wouldnt've known what question(s) to ask.
As I became more proficient with the whole technology thing, I began to go to the local libraries nearby and use their free internet access to look stuff up. But I didn't get the idea to do any research about C, most likely because I didn't have the mental capacity to plan well and my access was once or twice weekly at best. Plus, the only computer I had at home was 66MHz and ran DOS, and I only knew BASIC around that time which I was comfortable and content with, so wasn't looking for a new language. I think I knew about assembly language but didn't pursue it if I did.
A couple of computer upgrades later, I finally got the 'net at home and began to see the convenience of being able to spontaneously look something up when I wanted to as good, rather than weird. Ideas gradually began to pop into my head that I'd run off and look up, and one day C became one of them. So I did some research on C and finally began to learn what it was: an incomprehensible mess of manually managed memory and low-level trickery. Since I knew a fair bit about assembly language now I decided C was worse than asm (and I had no chance of learning asm back then), and left it at that.
Being the BASIC coder I was (pun intended), I found the syntax and concepts over my head by several miles. But the fascination never died, and kept poking at me again and again. And I just had to keep forgetting about it.
I moved on from QuickBASIC, which I'd been using for just about everything, to FreeBASIC, which was in such a beta state when I tried it, I disliked it enough to move on and discovered PHP.
PHP has been called the BASIC of the 21st century, and I can understand why. There are typically at least 10 ways to do something whether in principle or method, multiple functions do the same or an equivalent task, and overall it just doesn't look like a good language. But beyond all that, PHP made sense to me. As I went along many of the things I expected to perform in a given way performed in said way, which was a huge confidence boost. The model it followed might have been convoluted, but something inside my head "clicked" when I saw PHP, so I liked it, since I could understand it easily.
But recently, I found myself hitting too many walls. I wanted to get into graphical software development, and none of the graphical extensions PHP had available would work for me. PHP-GTK did work but prevented PHP from outputting anything as an Apache module, without throwing a single error anywhere. PHP-QT wouldn't compile on my system. PHP-TK did compile, but both segfaulted when any tk_* function was called and also exhibited the Apache module issue.
So I decided then and there that I needed to switch languages.
The problem was, my current machine happens to be so slow that a GIMP operation that executes in 6 seconds on the lowest generation AMD CPU from 4-5 years ago will execute in 38 seconds on mine. I have no idea why; the machine is, after all, 2.66GHz.
Although PHP is pretty snappy on my system, I don't know how other languages would fare and don't really want to risk the experiment; I want to switch to a language I know will be as fast as, or faster than, PHP. So I decided that a compiled language would have to be it, since I regarded PHP as the fastest language I knew. I was probably wrong, but whatever.
So I set my mind to understanding C. I'd asked around online before, and someone took pity on me and explained the basics of C and I did my best to understand them. This was great for a couple of days, but didn't last all that long unfortunately. So I asked around again, dreading their responses, and with good reason too: most of the tutorials I read often left me boggled and flew over my head at one point or another, which didn't help.
But I got some dreaded tutorial links, and did my best to read them. It took me a couple of weeks to finally convince my brain to understand the point of a language that utilizes variables that doesn't contain any data, but instead references to other variables. I eventually grasped the why, but am still having quite a hard time understanding the how.
So then, after that initial hurdle, I moved onto other topics. Or rather tried to. I quickly discovered that C interconnects some of its issues so deeply that it's hard to learn one thing at a time, move on and learn the next thing - how I best learn. I don't create paths very well by reading information; I create those paths by staying away from information and letting it slowly process in my mind. But to actually remember it in the first place, it needs to make sense, and C doesn't make sense because things are so interconnected and... we come full circle.
To be honest, after about a fortnight of trying to understand pointers, I still don't understand them. I've read what is probably the best the web has to offer about pointers. Has it helped? Not really.
Either the documentation:
- is too terse and I have to slow down, risking losing interest in what I'm reading
- skips over vital points or assumes I know Pascal or some other language
- is hard to understand or is poorly written
- puts segments in the wrong order, so I don't understand everything something might depend on before I reach that something
...and in general I either give up on reading the documentation, give up on C or just cry. I've done the 3rd a few times, the 2nd quite a few times and the 1st pretty much as many times as I've read documentation.
So what are my issues with C?
Let me address the two I can think of right now:
Pointers aren't addressed "simply"; if I declare a pointer to int named x I have to use *x to access what x points to, rather than use *x to get x's location, like one does with non-pointer variables where & is used to get an address. It'd be nice if we used &x to get x's value if x wasn't a pointer and *x to get x's value if x was a pointer, rather than use this convoluted scheme.
Also, I've heard that it's a common misconception that C handles arrays natively. Elsewhere, I've heard that strings are merely arrays of char. I can understand the 2nd, but what do I do with the 1st?
I do understand that if I say printf("%d\n", x[1]) I'm effectively saying x++; printf("%d\n", x), but I don't understand how this fully works. For example, let us consider the following code:
char *filename = "<insert file here>";
int i;
struct stat filebuffer;
int status;
FILE *handle;
handle = fopen(filename, "r");
status = stat(filename, &filebuffer);
char *buffer = malloc(filebuffer.st_size);
for (i = 0; i < filebuffer.st_size; i++) buffer[i] = fgetc(handle);
printf("%s\n", buffer);
You'll of course notice the array notation. Do I understand why if I replace said notation with something to the effect of...
buffer++
buffer = fgetc(handle);
...the program segfaults? No. Likewise, I don't understand why the...
buffer++
*buffer = fgetc(handle);
...in the loop does work, printf("%s"...); causes segfaults and printf("%d"...); does not.
Another thing I found is that declaring a char *, filling it with data, and then using memcpy on said char *, the program works fine, but if I declare for example char x[1] = "hi"; the compiler will shout at me for not allocating enough arrays. Only while writing this did I realize that the 2nd element is for the null byte.
Suffice to say that C confuses me. To bits. Although I have written a 500 line program in it (579 to be exact). All said program does is display a message on the screen via Xlib, but I managed to figure out how to make a word wrapping engine using strsep and how to use XDrawPoint XDrawLine to not only create a nice UI but also let me define various UI "styles" which can be loaded at startup.
Said program uses a very big helping of "if it doesn't work stab it until it does", so not only do I not understand how a lot of it works, it probably wouldn't compile under anything except gcc. Which is from a theory perspective quite a problem, IMHO. Almost every 2nd variable is typecast to this or that type.
So put simply, every tutorial or introduction to C hasn't made a lot of sense to me. Maybe I learn slowly; I'm hoping it's that, because I can't see anything besides assembly language which would be faster than C. I plan to learn asm after I've mastered the very basics of C, but I may end up having to learn the other way around if I expect to get anywhere.
Like I said in the title, I have one actual question in this post. So here it is:
Are there any fun, easy reading tutorials out there that don't visually look like they came out of 1992 and read like http://poignantguide.net/ or http://learnyouahaskell.com/?
-dav7

dav7 wrote:Pointers aren't addressed "simply"; if I declare a pointer to int named x I have to use *x to access what x points to, rather than use *x to get x's location, like one does with non-pointer variables where & is used to get an address. It'd be nice if we used &x to get x's value if x wasn't a pointer and *x to get x's value if x was a pointer, rather than use this convoluted scheme.
Pointer syntax is extremely unfortunate. The best part:
char *a; // It's a pointer.
*a; // It's a character. Good move, guys.
Also, I've heard that it's a common misconception that C handles arrays natively. Elsewhere, I've heard that strings are merely arrays of char. I can understand the 2nd, but what do I do with the 1st?
Insofar as C has arrays, C strings are character arrays. C arrays are just a promise that the system won't mess within a certain set of memory addresses. Array syntax is a concise way to calculate and dereference a specific location in memory, relative to an address that you hope is the beginning of some memory you reserved. array[n] = *(array + n), right? Personally, I would have left out the subscript notation entirely. Regardless, any time you choose to use brackets, you can mentally substitute in an explicit addition and dereference there. You're saying, "Give me the number stored at the memory address I have just calculated, which I know by my science holds something I put there intentionally, and not garbage at all."
One more clarification with regard to pointer arithmetic is necessary: when you add 2 to an int*, the resulting address is actually 2*sizeof(int) bytes after your base address. Same for a double*: 2*sizeof(double).
I do understand that if I say printf("%d\n", x[1]) I'm effectively saying x++; printf("%d\n", x), but I don't understand how this fully works.
It's not the same! First of all, in example #2, you're passing a pointer to an int. In example #1, you're passing an integer, since [] dereferences pointers for you. Any time you use those brackets, it's as if you had typed an asterisk yourself. Second, in example #1 you're not messing with x. In example #2 you're incrementing x by four bytes (the likely size of one integer). Doesn't make a difference in this short example, but if x ever gets used again it will be very significant.
Another thing I found is that declaring a char *, filling it with data, and then using memcpy on said char *, the program works fine, but if I declare for example char x[1] = "hi"; the compiler will shout at me for not allocating enough arrays. Only while writing this did I realize that the 2nd element is for the null byte.
Looks like a counting problem. Arrays are indexed from 0, but sizes are specified from 1 on up. Your "char x[1]" has only index [0]. To hold a two-character string, you'll need at least size three (char x[3]), so that x[0]='h', x[1]='i', x[2]='\0', the null terminator.
Suffice to say that C confuses me. To bits.
Any time you get confused by pointers or arrays (which are the same thing), take a step back and think about what's happening in terms of memory addresses. Draw it out on paper if you think you're making a mistake. In some languages you can ignore low-level details like that and write perfectly fine programs, even though you won't be able to optimize them without knowing how your code maps onto the machine. But in C, everything that looks like a high-level feature is just shorthand for setting a few bytes to different numbers, and the abstraction is so leaky that you can't get by without understanding it. Types are just a way for the compiler to catch dumb mistakes (some people believe this is helpful) and to automate some math, like the pointer arithmetic above. In a running program there are no types, so when you're trying to figure out what a program is actually doing, you need to consider what the types are shorthand for.
If you're having trouble "thinking like a programmer", by which I mean sanity-checking your use of syntax and stepping through a program so you know what it does, you might want to get up to speed in a different language, or by working through a book on algorithms.
Last edited by pauldonnelly (2008-11-03 22:54:12)

This is not a rant, but it's close.

I will be careful not to rant, but I must summon the strength.
Instead, I want to continue to share my ongoing nightmare difficulties with Verizon HSI, Verizon customer service, and Tech Support.
For the previous two years, I was blissfully using Verizon HSI at the 7mb tier with no problems. I won't go into how it had a messy start (wrong pricing, web offer hand doesn't know what the phone offer hand is doing, etc).
There were some uptime issues due to some bad copper pairs, but overall the past two years were okay.
Little did I know that my move to a house one block away would start me on a path of frustration and despair.
If you are so inclined, you can read about the initial move debacle here.
To summarize, I needed to move my service to a different home in the same subdivision, but was forced to go through the entire application process for the new home, as if I was a new customer. After spending more than an hour on the phone the first try, all I (unknowingly) ended up with was a disconnect order for the old service. I called back a second time and finally got an install order, but the install was to be several days after the promised date from the first (failed) call. Customer reps on this forum were not able to expedite the second install order, though I appreciated the attempt.
This background info is important for a couple reasons. First and foremost, I gave my credit card info over the phone to Verizon reps for both install attempts. I gave them a credit card I rarely use. Coincidentally(?), within a couple days, the card was being used for fraudulent purchases at Itunes and Walmart.com. Luckily, the card company was able to recognize the fraud early, and cut it off. Now, I know that is a serious accusation to make, but I stand by it. That card was tucked safely away for years, with no problems. Then, within a couple days of giving the number to two Verizon reps over the phone, it starts being used fraudulently. Not cool, obviously. I'll let the reader decide if I'm being paranoid.
Now, that's not where the fun ends. Since the install, my internet service has been absolutely horrible. The DSL connection to the Verizon Central Office has been beautifully solid, but my internet keeps dropping intermittently. (Let me sneak in a complaint that Verizon will only give me the 3mb tier at the new house, though it is only a block away from the old house that had the new 10mb tier available).
I put a trouble ticket in the second day after the install complaining about slow service and the dropouts. I must have dialed the magical support number, because I spoke to an American who immediately accepted my complaint and filed the ticket. I say that, because I got a diffent call center, when I call later.   While the speed issue improved, the dropouts did not, and I was going to have to call again. As a tech myself, I know how difficult it is to troubleshoot an intermittent problem.
So....two days ago, it went down hard, and would not come back up. Remember, the DSL connection is solid, it's the internet that is gone.
Since I have a dryloop with VOIP, and I don't get cell service at the house, I had to walk a block to a public phone to call in my trouble ticket. Unfortunately, I ended up getting the call center in the Philippines. I have no ill will toward hardworking folks in any country, but foreign call centers are so tightly beholden to the scripts, that is virtually impossible to reason with them, person to person. He insisted I go call him from my house, so he could trouble shoot the modem. I explained that I had done the common sense reboots, I had removed the router from the equation, and the DSL connection was solid; there was nothing I could do from my end. He refused to escalate my complaint, because I wouldn't (and couldn't from the pay phone), log in to the modem, to "check the settings".   I explained the my settings were fine, because everything was working, before the dropouts. Common sense dictated that the problem was not on my end. Even the copper pair was good, because the DSL connection was solid.
Anyway, he ended up promising to transfer me, but just kept me on hold, indefinitely, until I hung up.
So, I walked back to my house, borrowed the neighbor's cell phone (with a different carrier that has coverage in my house), and dialed back. His cell is a prepaid phone, that I ended up using an hour's worth of time on hold, and pushing through the worthless steps that proved what I already told them.
Finally, I was transferred to stateside support, where they transferred me to an actual technician. He quickly realized I knew what I was talking about, so quickly asked if he could work it from his end and called me back. Much can be said for sharing a culture with your tech rep. Things are more easily understood through nuance. I happily agreed to wait for a call, and had to hold my neighbor's cell hostage for a while longer.
He called back to state that while troubleshooting, he found that I was the victim of a router outage, and he was just learning that others were affected. He said techs should have it up and running in four hours. By now, this is almost the whole day, with no internet, a week after installation, in addition to the frequent intermittent outages. He apologized, but I was relieved that my complaint was validated, and seemed to be on the road to correction.
The connection did come up within a few hours, and everything seemed fine. Then, the next afternoon (yesterday), it went down hard again. DSL connection was still solid. I grabbed the neighbor's cell, and received an automated message stating my complaint was ongoing. I opted to speak to a Philippines rep, anyway. He told me (for the first time) that a tech was scheduled to see me the next day (which is now today, Saturday). It was an "all day" appointment, which meant I have to be here all day. I was dumbfounded. How can a bad router at Verizon's Central Office require a visit to my home? I hung up confused, but relieved my ticket was still open.
This morning, the internet is back, though I don't know for how long. I've been copying and pasting this complaint to wordpad as I go, so it's not lost, if my internet drops.
I have a very different IP than I've ever had before, so I suspect I won't see a tech at my door anytime soon. No doubt it was a router that HOPEFULLY has been replaced.
I am really spent. I have dim hopes this long winded story can do some good, because I know big companies can be way too clumsy to make positive changes quickly.
I hope my internet connection stays up. One more debacle, and I'll just have to switch to Comcast. I mean, how much does one customer have to put up with?
It's not supposed to be this difficult.

Thank you for the reply.
I realize Comcast is far from perfect, and I'm going for the lesser of evils, here.
The lesser evil is the one I can actually rely on.
I would not agree that I've been treated with respect. Oh, they're polite alright, (except for the one who put me on terminal hold). However, beneath the illusion of politeness, the geographically and culturally-removed call center people are simply whacking moles. I realize they are answering phones for hours, and are doing the best they can under the circumstances. That is why I do my best to not use them as a target of my frustration. At the same time, I want to convey how fed up I am with the system.
In the old days, you called in a problem, and you'd eventually get a tech to come out and talk to you, face to face. He would explain what actions were being taken, and the customer was reassured that ACTUAL work was being done to correct the problem. You'd at least get feedback over the phone that made you feel like real people are taking real action. I'm tired of the scripted "I'm sorry to hear that..."
I am half tempted to sully the copper pair connection at the terminal, to get a real tech at the door.
The feeing I get talking to the call center is a surreal sense of paralyzation. I'm trying to move my arm, but it won't budge. I start vocally telling the arm to move, and it replies "Expect a result within 48 hours."    Seriously, it's like I might as well be calling AT&T to report this problem about my Verizon DSL.    It is that effective!
My internet was down again, last night, from 4:30pm to 6:00 am, EST. (This is my window of opportunity to check this forum and research Comcast's offerings).
This is after repeated assurances that "everything has been fixed."
Calling in another trouble ticket gets me the "it will be addressed within 48 hours" line. Well, hey, I've been waiting a lot longer than that, already. The only concession I got for my frustration is a credit for one month of service. At least I have that.
The struggle for reliable internet continues...

Application not working on PDA.

Hi All,
I am facing a strange problem.I have made one applicationwhere i am inserting the data in to the backend.when i am doing it from Desktop mi client and Mobile 5 data is getting inserted but when i am using imate PDA windows 2003 all fileds are getting inserted except one. I m using CrEme327a_AX_CE42_PPC_minimal.CAB this version of creme. I am not getting any error as such.Can any one help me in this regard.
Regards
Devendra Phate

Buddy,
JavaScripts are not supported in PIE (your IE on the PDA). You need to enable it.
Go to Microsoft Downloads. Get IETOOLS.EXE from the same. Install that software using ActiveSync into your PDA. Then you'll have the option to enable the JScripts. After which your JavaScripts will work.
Regards
Ak.
PS: Is that a date field that's not getting updated?

How do I use directional PDA buttons in LabVIEW programs?

Hi all,
I've been assigned to get a LabVIEW program to work on a Palm PDA with LabVIEW 7.0 and palm PDA module 7.0. I am basically totally new to LabVIEW, and my possibly very simple problem is, the PC program requires input from a serially connected number pad for the 8, 4, 5, 6, and 2 keys which are used as four directions (8, 4, 6, and 2) and an enter (5).
I am trying to rewrite the input vi to use the directional buttons and middle enter button on the PDA itself but am having trouble figuring out what to use. I am using a PDA simulator because of the PALM OS5 we own. The input demo vi example provided will not build for PDA because of size so I am unsure of how to approach this. Another thing is, we have LabVIEW and PDA module for pocket PC 8.0, and a Dell Axim PDA on order. From what I understand off of this website, the latest PDA module has example button vi's. I would still like to figure out the way to do this on 7.0 so I can have a better understanding of LabVIEW. Eventually the program's endgoal is to be used on a PDA and inputting with a bluetooth keyboard, but we are going step by step right now.
I guess my biggest questions are, how do I assign the directional buttons on the PDA in my program, and will this differ greatly when we switch to 8.0 and pocketPC.
Oh and I did try to look at the example asteroid.vi but from looking at the input subvi, still couldn't figure out how they assigned the buttons.
Thanks,
Stephen

I can't help with any specifics (no access to the PDA module at the moment and I didn't use the buttons anyway), but I would like to say that it probably would make a big difference if you used LV 8. 7.0 was the first version of the PDA module and was extemely limited and problematic (it didn't even have a tab control). 7.1 was somewhat better and I understand that 8 is even better (although still very limited and buggy).
I also remember reading about several differences between Palm and PocketPC and I think you will generally be better off with the PocketPC as it's related to windows and will probably support more stuff.
Try to take over the world!

Pda cursor position property does not work

Hi!
I have a problem with cursor positionX propery on PDA.
I use PDA Module 8.2 and Windows Mobile 5 OS on PocketPC.
Actually problem is only when I try to get value of two cursors, it return the same value for both cursors (you can test it with attached VI), but when I set values it work fine.
I have also worked with PDA Module 8.0.1 in past and I remember that get cursor position value worked, so I have no idea why it doesn't work in newer version.
Thanks,
andrej
Attachments:
cursor test.vi ‏21 KB

Hello andrej,
Unfortunately I also see the same behavior on a PDA using this "active cursor" property. It appears to me that this property is not being written successfully. I say this because it appears that the value displayed is always from the most recently repositioned cursor rather than either the 0 or 1 which is set by the property node.
What I will do at this point is to file a corrective action request so that this behavior is corrected for a future release of the LabVIEW PDA module. I apologize for the inconvenience that this causes for your application. Please let me know if I can help at all as you modify your application to work around this behavior. Thanks,
Mike D.
National Instruments
Applications Engineer

One More Rant as to Fios features and "improvements"

What kind of marketers does fios have that force their programmers to do such a horrid job?
my wife and i got up this morning. beautiful sunny morning, warm for the first time. we turned on the tv, and saw a show we wanted, so i hit record... as she was getting ready for the day, i saw one that we could watch with breakfast. so i paused the movie, and we went to make breakfast... made it, came back, went to watch the movie, fast forward to its start.
my wife then aks for the description of the movie... so you hit play, the menu comes up.. .
it goes away too fast and so she asked me to display it again.
i hit it, and now, for some screwed up reason, it throws me to on demand
i dont want on demand. on demand cant pause, the play back is bad, when its bad you cant restart and move to where you were, you cant skip, and the list goes on on how horrible its implemented.
but you dont have a choice.. your watching a movie from the beginig with full features, and now fios things you want to go to on demand to watch what your watching with reduced features... screwed up
but, when we get back to the channel to see the movie... its now fast forwarded to current time, and fios has deleted the lead time so you cant go back
in fact, fios does this alot... unlike directv, which says, if you save some movie time, dont delete it.
fios says, if you save some movie time too bad, we know better, we will delete it, and peeve you off, then force you to a free on demand of the same movie wiht fewer features.
but now... you go to the movie on demand, click the hd like you had and go to try to watch and what do you get? a completely unwatchable scrambled mess that cant play no matter how many times you try.
so isnt that great... we have a wonderful morning. save a bit of time to cook a great breakfast, sit down happy to watch, and voila... the fios programming is so horrid it ruins your morning... you dont get to watch what you want, you lose what you have, your now **bleep** off at the DVR and you know that as long as your stuck on crap city dvr programming, your going to hae to deal with this oer and over
the new feature to go watch what your already watching is insanely stupid and horrid..
why does fios think that you want to stop what you are watching with longer pause time, ability to go back wards and forwards.. .which is critical to be able to get rid of the audio artifacts that constantly come up and scramble the voice.
this is one reason my wife and i try to avoid watchnig on demand. it not only wont let you back up to get rid of the audio crud, but will lose your location... want to really have fun? watch a movie for an hour and a half be on the last 15 minutes, get audio artifacts scrambling the sound, and now you have to watch 1 and a half hours with commercials to get back to what you were just watching..
oh joy
not to mention another issue is that you pay for 75megs... and then fios takes the time to slowly move your speed down farther and farter unless you watch it and call and spend an hour getting what you paid for.... ie, their norm is to cheat you from what you pay for, to some lower rate and pocket the money.
right now, i pay for 75, i get 50, and sometimes it drops to 30...
why pay for 75, if you only get 50..
why have to keep calling to stop them from cheating you? i earn money when not calling fios.. .
and i know its a cheat as they never make a mistake in your favor.
you never ever subscribe to 50 and accidently get 75.
what a freaking mess..
my wife and i are disussion paying more to get away from this horrid thing.
and its been horrid this way for two years of our subscription
the idea that the DVR delete time you have saved sucks big time.
the fact your disk drive is too small to record everything so this doesnt happen sucks
the fact that they replace commercials with stuff that is connected to google and facebook really sucks
[i went online looked up some stuff and for months had to see the same commercial over and over for some scam options trading book i dont want, never wanted, was never interested in, etc... but i could not shut it off to see other commercials. even worse, they will do this after you buy the product in other cases. i was at work, needed to search for something, now that something my company purchased is unundating me with ads for something i already purchased!!!!]
the idea that fios changes the operation of the DVR then blames you for not knowing the changes, or being used to how it is and you been using it for years...
all that stuff is completely annoying... as is having to get a pin number to log in every time as passwords dont work right. i had to create a diferent forum id, as the system would not let me log in with the one i have... so i have to reregeister to post most times...
they would be the best company in the world if it wasnt for the idea that they leverage the great tech to mistreat their customers, give bad service, program the dvr with substandard choices of operation, cheat them out of bandwidth stealing time from their lives they wont get back to tell them to up it again.. (sorry, i am a programmer in researxh computing, its not hard to know how much bandwitth your delivering and compare that with the contract rate. if i didnt pay my bill, you would harm my credit, my family, and future... but you get to cheat the customer out of bandwith they pay for, and what happens? nothing...
of ourse this rant will go nowhere... why should it?
its not like they will refud me the money for bandwidth they didnt deliver (as i dont have the time to have some person who can barely program tell me to reboot hundred times and waste an hour before saying, its on our side. etc).
its not like they will change dvr programming to presere what you want, and not dump it cause they want to
the way i see it, the only reason for them to dump what your watching to see what your watching is so that they can fluff up the numbers on the on demand services when reporting growth to shareholders... ie. scamming the investors.
there is no other real reason to have that other than scamming or incompetence. and neither are good... are they?
dumping what people are watching for the same thing with less features cant be spun into a postive.. can it?
thats it for now...
rather than watch a movie this morning and being happy, we did not get to have that
in fact, we are thinking why bother with a service that constistently changes a good day into a bad day as a NORMALcourse of business?
[i have been a customer since their bell atlantic days... their tech is great, but this stuff really stinks and with their money and so forth, they could do a lot better... switching back to directv may be the only way to go as that dvr does not do the stupid horrid stuff that fios does, it preserves your shows, and overall, the software is much better, without any artifacts or scrambling all the time...
i suspect that i will lose this online name again... why not? they lost the other one and locked me out of that...

There are settings you can change or disable for some of the issues you mention. you should go into the menu's settings and explore. Turn off promotions, etc..

Pages jumps to beginning of document... and rant...

Pages keeps jumping to the beginning of the document whenever I try to edit text in a table. And my tables keep moving around whenever I try to click on a cell. And since saving is automatic, if I forget to hit undo, the table ends up halfway off the document.
I'm finding iWork for iPad almost unusably buggy and counterintuitive. Where does the Pages formatting bar go in landscape mode? It wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that there's no keyboard shortcut to underline or use italics, so you have to physically rotate the device to get the button to underline titles (after painstakingly selecting the title with the little bars and dots). And keynote NEEDS "start on click" for movies. Is that so difficult? Presenter notes would also be swell, especially since the iPad is already displaying something different than the projector.
Perhaps worst of all, I can't find any kind of "feature request" email link to rant directly at Apple about these (relatively minor) issues. Instead Apple forces users to talk to each other in this forum, where instead of giving feedback to make these products usable we end up debating ad nauseum whether or not the iPad is crap. Or have I missed something?

I have similar problems. When using Pages in iCloud, the document keeps drifting back to the top or beginning of the document. I'm wondering, this can't be an intentional attribute, can it? I looked around for some sort of "anti-drift" or lock setting to stop the drfting, but could not find anything. Pages for iCloud will never catch up with Google docs or Word in OneDrive (formerly Skydrive) for stability and functionality. I will remind myself never to come back to iCloud Pages again. Its a waste of time and an exercise in frustration!

ITunes won't sync (after "upgrading" to Lion because my four year old macBook can't use Mtn. Lion) With a little ranting sprinkled in.

I hope someone out there has the expertise to tell me what I am doing wrong. I expect a learning curve from a new Mac operating system, but I don't expect weeks of problem solving and glitches. Lion...well, they won't let me use that word.
Since I "upgraded" to Lion, when I hit "sync" in iTunes on the computer, I get one of three things: 1. Nothing happens, or: 2. A message appears that there is not sufficient room on the Nano for the changes, which is not true, or: 3. It syncs down to next to nothing on the Nano and I have to hit revert.
Sometimes I'm confronted with a screen that wants me to check or uncheck each and every album (but not songs) that I want synced. I have already kept up to date a more specific and complete list of the same sort elsewhere in iTunes: the "Music" list in my itunes "Library." Today I unchecked some songs and checked some others expecting to easily have the corresponding changes made on my iPod, as I have for years. This is the list that I have refined over the years based on new music acquired, my changing tastes, and room left on the iPod. Am I really expected to duplicate this process on another list only to end up with no options for individual songs I do, or do not, want synced? What is the purpose of this exercise?
I finally got it to upgrade to iTunes 10.6.3. I was repeatedly getting a message in iTunes that there was an upgrade available. I would hit upgrade within that mesage in iTunes. It would go through the process of checking for new software and then tell me my software was up to date. (I was running iTunes 10.6 (40).) Software update also told me my software was up to date. I had to go to the Apple site to find and download and install iTunes 10.6.3. The change made no difference to the above problem. I'm not used to screw-ups like this from Apple.
I can't think of a single change in Lion that I like. Not one. I hate the new calendar. I hate the new Safari, and I hate the new Mail. I hate the combination of Google search and the address bar. I hate the way hiting a hot link in Mail opens a new tab in Safari instead of a new window. And the number of hassles and fixes and problems to be solved in the move from Snow Leopard to Lion has been like nothing I have experienced before on a Mac.
An iMac and a laptop are not iOS devices. And iPads and iPhones are not laptops or desktops. To try to merge the operating systems is a major error in my opinion. Thanks for putting up with my rant. I never expected to be so frustrated by a Mac "upgrade." And I've been using Macs a log time. Any advise would be apreaciated.
"Shinwell Johnson"

In lieu of relaxing on Sunday, I've been working on this.
I tried launching Thunderbird (TB) in TB's "Safe Mode". This launches TB like it's being used for the first time - and it didn't crash, which got me hopeful.
So I deleted the TB profile folder and the TB preference file from the ~/Library folder. Then I manually copied them over from my old Mac to my new Mac - figuring that maybe something got damaged by Migration Assistant. After I installed all of the TB files and folders into the right places in my ~/Library folder, I rebooted the Mac (just to be safe) and tried to launch TB - and it crashed upon launching, with essentially the same crash log as shown above.
So it looks like there is something in my TB Profile that Lion doesn't like (but that Snow Leopard was fine with).
Any suggestions for how to find and fix/remove the offending item? Is there something I could search for in the crash log that would point me to the offending item?

Using my new ipod touch as a PDA

I received an Ipod touch 8GB for Christmas from my husband and I believe he intended for me to be able to use this as a replacement for my Windows Based PDA by Toshiba. I have used a Windows based PDA for many years and really need to have the ability to manipulate MS Office documents, as well as utilize cut, copy, and paste within these documents and applications. I think his main idea was that it has internet access, that needs to be connected via a WiFi hotspot or my home network, which I did not have with my older PDA. I also do not like to look at this tiny screen for internet use, it just doesn't make sense if I have to scroll around to read whatever is on the screen, I'd rather just have it all right there on one larger screen so I don't get carpal tunnel and/or bad eyesight. Also, I need to have access to the files without having internet access, as I have been advised I can use GoogleDocs, but I don't think that I could still manipulate the data even if I store them there.
I was able to sync my contacts and calendar, but without any categories! This is very inefficient for me as I work for a company and am self-employed and have a lot of personal contact information as well, and need to separate out my contact lists. My husband utilizes the same contact files as I do and he ends up syncing the whole contact list over as well (I got him an ipod touch 8GB also). I can not select multiple contacts, or any other multiple list, such as bookmarks, and delete a batch of them, like I can within Windows. I do intend to purchase an Apple based computer in the future, but for now, I need to have the functionality to use with my current applications. This still does not solve the problem with multiple select or copy/paste, mainly because the touch screen moves with my finger movement, so I cannot scroll to select multiple items.
Besides this being a really expensive music and game player with internet access?, I'm really not very happy with the functionality this has to offer for a PDA, so now I get to carry 3 gadgets with me (my phone, PDA, and now my ipod touch).
If any of these issues can be addressed and hopefully solved, can you please tell me what else I can do to make this work better for me. Thanks for listening!

I do not find the Touch is a very efficient PDA for the reasons you have identified. It is essentially a high end media player with enhancements. The calendar is lacking, unable to mass email a contact list unless selecting each one (essentially a contact list on the Touch is just a visual group list with no functionality beyond that, what is the sense of that?).
People will direct you to acquire apps that do add some function, but still lacking in some very basic elements for on the fly document and task management.
Apparently although I have not subscribed, Mobile Me adds to the depth of the on board calendar and email functions allowing you to coordinate and syncronize your Outlook environment and content with your Touch or Iphone, but honestly it is more of a personal data management tool than a business tool. Plus when released over the summer integration with Apples previous service was flawed and the the whole interface crashed for both old users being transferred and new users subscribing.
To me sounds like you should check out competitors (am I allowed to say Blackberry here?)
Jeff

Several issues on my Classic. Contacts, BB Link and Battery Monitor. Help + rant

Hello everyone,
Initially I wanted to make this post specific to my most recent problem (BB Link) but maybe I can get some help with all of my problems in one post.
1. Contacts display and Caller ID - my biggest problem.
I used gmail to sync my contacts when I switched from iPhone to Android and now on BlackBerry. I had no problems with the iPhone and the Nexus 5, but Contacts on BlackBerry is bad. Very bad. I thought that switching to BlackBerry I'd have 0 problems with calling people because it's a "serious" business phone, and business people really need the call function to work 100%. I have only 250 contacts and they are fully synced (2weeks now). I don't have duplicates.
I suspect that the culprit is "smart dialing". The "feature" I can't turn off. Maybe someone can set up smart dialing better than I can.
- I live in Romania so our Country Code is +40 .
- The rest of the number is xxx xxx xxx. (9 characters)
- so, a Romanian number is +40 xxx xxx xxx when dialing from abroad.
When dialing normally (national calls), we have to add the 0 from the country code in front of the phone number. That makes our phone numbers 0xxx xxx xxx. Due to this format, I've set the "National Number Length" to 10. (Same problem with 9). And we don't have an area code.
Just now I received a call from someone and it showed his caller ID. On the next call (same person), it didn't show the caller ID. In the Call Log, I could only see the number. I pressed info and it showed the name. Then I pressed back and the name was associated with the number again in the Call Log. (10 minutes after writing this i check my call log and I notice that there are some numbers that called but are missing right now from the log. its the 2nd time this happened. they will probably show up in the next few hours).
I also cleaned all my numbers and they all have the same format now. It is CLEARLY a blackberry problem. I had NO problems with caller IDs on iPhone or Android even though the format wasnt consistent through all contacts.
And why can't I just copy the numbers locally? I tried selecting all contacts and "Copy" to local but I just can't. Apparently because they are linked contacts. It shouldn't be this hard.
Also, why do I see linkedin contacts when I chose '"hide" in its menu?
2. BlackBerry Link - (and why isn't it integrated with blend anyway?).
- couldn't back-up over wi-fi. iPhone and android backup over wifi on their servers. I think i connected both of those devices fewer than 10 times total to my computer. Everything was done over wifi. Now i have to connect my blackberry weekly so it can backup? I don't mind that BB doesn't make a full backup on their server, but it should be at least possible to do so over wifi on my network. (or maybe I don't know how to do it?)
- photos. Instead of building its own library, or making it possible to sync directly with folders in my computer, BlackBerry Link uses the iPhoto Library (on my Mac) - which I DONT USE. So I set Iphoto properly, but Link doesnt detect the new updates to the library, I still can't find my specific folder in BlackBerry Link.
3. Battery. The battery monitor is completely useless. Once, after a full charge it showed me that I had 70% battery for 4 hours until it dropped under 70%. It is almost funny what I see in the battery monitor on a daily basis.
The battery life is ok, but I rely mostly on luck. Sometimes it would drop 10% in 10 minutes and then hold a 40% charge for several hours. I don't really know how much battery I have but it generally holds for 1 day so I'm not that worried.
The rant:
I wanted to have a BB for a long time. My gf had a 9900 and even though the camera stopped working randomly, it was very reliable. I used the Q10 shortly after it launched and I noticed at that time that I need more apps than BB World can offer flipboard, banking and just a few others, so I didn't make the switch then. Now with the classic, which has android runtime and the toolbelt (which i really liked on the 9900) I thought it's time to make the switch. But I find it surprisingly annoying exactly where I expected to see its strenght - reliability.
I don't mind the blackberry link part so much, or that android apps work a bit laggy. I expected that. But I DO expect to see who is calling me and to have a reliable battery monitor.
Other issues:
- it doesn't completely lock the buttons when in holster. why do I have to be careful how I position my phone in my pocket so I don't accidentally turn it off? Also the holster rubs against the volume down button when inserted (original BB holster).
- weird noises when I change the volume during a song or youtube video
- due to a bug in a webpage or in the browser, it used 600 mb in about 10 minutes while running as an active frame.
Apparently I blew off some steam. I really want to like this device. Hope future updates will make it better.
Edit: After a reboot the call log returned to normal....

First thing I would do is to switch the following off:
Contacts > Settings
Automatically Merge Contacts = Off
Unmerge Existing Contacts = On
Just to clarify, do you have all the contacts phone numbers in the format
+40 xxx xxx xxx ?
This would be ideal.
Blackberry Engineering in Switzerland - Dexion Services AG

How can I construct a custom PDA dialog?

Hi,
I need to display a PDA dialog along the lines of "Do you want to save the data, Yes/No?
The two button dialog in LabVIEW is ideal, but on the PDA module you can't set the button text. OK and Cancel don't cut it, as this dialog presents one option at the start of a process. The process continues whether or not you save the data. The cancel button creates the impression that the whole process could be cancelled, not just the file save.
Does anyone know if it's possible to create a custom dialog? Everything I try displays as a full size screen, I have found nothing I can adjust to appear like a pop-up dialog box.
Doas anyone know how this can be done, or is it a non starter?
I'm using LabVIEW and PDA module 8.5 (for Windows mobile, not the Palm version)
Thanks.
Bandit

Hi Bandit
Yes it is possible within labVIEW. The principle of creating a popup dialog box is creating a subVI and changing the window appearance to call the front panel with limited options available.
To do this go into the VI properties either in File>>VI properties or Ctrl I. From here go to the window appearance tab and either select dialogue box or custom and then customize the options that you would like.
To ensure that you have a small pop-up and not a full screen I would recommend resizing your subVI front panel whether on manually by dragging or by changing the window size options in the VI properties again. Remember here to have selected the do not show scroll bars in appearance.
When This VI runs now in your program it should call the front panel and then close it again afterwards.
The method above is a generic for labVIEW which I have not tried on a PDA. If you can confirm that you have done the above and are sure that your size settings are correct and it still is not functioning as a proper dialogue box then I will look further into setting it up on your PDA.
Best regards
Graham Green
Technical Marketing Engineer
National instruments UK & Ireland

Ovi Store - Major major Rant to Nokia - you may wa...

Another classic fail on Nokia's part!
Nokia has announced closure dates for Mosh and Widsets through e-mails and news releases along with the eventual replacement of these services by the new Ovi Store.
However, the smarts at Nokia have not included anything about when the Ovi Store is actually going to launch. Everywhere I read, it says the store is set to launch in May - but what's the date mate!??
A quick search of the Nokia website only adds to the ineptitude: http://europe.nokia.com/A41447096?qt=ovi+store+launch+date&x=19&y=8
In my opinion, the only thing going for Nokia is the fact that S60 has multi-tasking and some of their phones support US 3G (AT&T).
Nokia, you are really trying hard to **bleep** me off:
Customers are screaming what they want to see in the phones - but the honchos are too busy squandering their riches from the past (Programs which work in Silos like Nokia contacts, Friendview, etc).
Specific rants:
1. Ditch the cheap plastic cases - seriously! They are obvious and cheesy - N85 is a big fail because of it.
2. Use capacitive touch - I don't care what the hell your engineers say. Spend one hour with the iPhone and you will see how effortless capacitive is versus resistive.
3. Promote a standardized look and feel for apps through your SDK. Maintain customer expectation/experience and quality across all apps - created by Nokia or by a third-party developer. Does it even occur to you that’s one primary reason the iphone is so popular?
4. E71 - the camera is a joke compared to N73 which is three years older. This is not the precedent you want to set. News to you - technology should move forward - not backwards. The iPhone with a 2MP camera without flash takes phenomenally better pictures in daylight – after 3 E71 firmware updates. Get it? Fire the e71 camera division. It’s even worse when Nokia does not even accept they screwed up. And you wonder why Nokia has no market share in the US (hint the 5800 launch fiasco).
5. Firmware updates across the board!? E61 – just 3 years old – is a business phone. The browser sucks. It crashes all the time or runs out of memory. It’s an older version. UPDATE it! I paid $450 for that. You can’t leave it in the dirt after two years of half-hearted support. Why are your firmware updates 6 months apart? It’s unacceptable. The market and internet is evolving too fast for you to sit on your butt; either reduce the number of devices per service line (that’s another story) if you can’t handle them or hire more/smarter people.
6. EMEA, NAM, etc f/w update versions. Based on the updates you shoot out every 3-6 months, your QA guys are probably smoking crack. Even obvious fails slip through them. I can understand that hardware may differ over region-specific phones but it doesn’t warrant 3 month gaps between the region specific updates. Learn from your competitors – because these things will eat you. The end of your domination is already here – accept it to change things around. The 5800 alone will not save you and based on your price-range to specs for N97, I won’t count on it either (LED instead of Xenon for a $700 phone?).
7. Widgets. Do you remember 2 years ago at an announcement – you mentioned that there will be widgets which will let users input their flight details and the widget will alert then about its arrival or departure delays, airport conditions, etc? The services to offer this information are already here – e.g. FlightStats.com. But I don’t see the widgets anywhere?! What happened? Good idea/selling point but sounds like someone fell asleep. This should have been afocus of multitasking capability in a phone.
8. E-series. Aah… the award-winning phone that no credible reviewer had the balls to take a pock shot at. Instead, reviewers sounded like they were done a favor by getting to play with review handsets by justifing the poor camera, ‘oh it’s a business phone; its primary function is not to take pictures.’ If that’s the case, then why the hell does it pack a **bleep** e-mail client for 4 years even on its newest iteration? And why does the phone not recognize calendar invites!? Even gmail has worked that **bleep** out. Inexcusable! Do you guys use your own devices in a non-Nokia centric environment at all? I didn’t think so. BTW, Nokia email is a paid for app eventually, it is not a replacement for the inbuilt messaging client. A client and service are two different entities and should be maintained so if you want people to use your devices anywhere. For e.g. your browser doesn’t just work with your servers now, does it?
9. RAM. Why do your phones even today have miniscule amounts of RAM – usually just enough to get by - even though the prices have dropped exponentially?
10. Call log – how did you manage to screw this up even more? Call log used to work fine on the E61. But with the FP1 / E71, every incoming call is shown as a ‘cell phone icon’ even if the number is associated with a land line. Also why are you not using different icons for work, home, cell phones? Is that rocket science? BTW, what’s QA been up to – at this point you might want to call a narcotics raid on them. Don’t get me wrong, you had it working right a few years back. I know you’re new to it but repeat after me: technology should move forward - not backwards – with time.
11. Call log 2 – Where does all the information related to the call log get hidden? Because when I used synble, I noticed that ir was able to extract a hell of a lot more information from the call log than the phone's client. This is just sick. Winmo phones allow you to store THIRTY days worth of information. Not only that, I can go into a contact, and view my call history for that contact including durations for every call as long as it was all within the 30-day limit. Obviously synble has managed to pull a lot of it out from my E71. But shouldn't this have been part of your phone? So tell me, do you use any phones from your competitor at all? It might be wise to make a few purchases now. Plus if you want to learn from your competitior, you have to use it as your primary phone for 30 days and then go back to a Nokia and see what you can improve. This is the EASIEST way to improve/add features without investing into any 'smart' people for R&D and probably should have been your first step.
12. Call log 3 – You know how right after you’ve called a contact or received a call, you want to try to call that contact again but at another number from the contact profile? Well guess what – you have to go through the address book to look at the other numbers. Yes, you can’t open the contact profile or alternate calling numbers from the call log itself. **bleep**? Talk about basic UI workflow/routing design. At this point, I’m beginning to think you have someone on the design/QA team with a mild narcolepsy problem.
13. Contacts – Have you ever noticed how ‘easy’ it is to ‘delete’ a contact but hard to undo? I would think by the 5th iteration of S60 you would have got that down to a pat. I can hit the ‘back’ key and get a prompt to hit delete a contact. Nice. But if it’s a mistake, then what? I’m outta luck until the next time I sync. Plus, if my phone is set to sync automatically, then I will lose the information from my PC as well if it comes in range with my computer (I use Bluetooth and sutosync) or if I forget about restoring the information before I re-sync. Did it EVER #$%# occur to you that if you want to make deletion easy you have to make recovery just as easy, huh? Didn't think so. I am now beginning to think, Nokia folks secretly don't use their own phones.
14. Contacts 2: While we’re at it. If you begin to edit a contact and mid-way you decide to ‘cancel’ or discard all changes made to the contact (you haven’t saved yet). There is no way to do that. Seriously. I am sure many of you have noticed that by now – on FP1 at least – which is not that old and has seen tens of updates. From Nokia’s perspective, you probably want to ‘save’ all information on-the-fly as a user is typing to prevent accidental loss; which is a good thing. But would it kill ya' to also add a function to ‘discard’ all changes and revert back to previously saved version of the contact on the phone. It’s not rocket science again. UAT (User Acceptance Testing) – That should have caught this. You might want to schedule a talk with the department head.
15. Standard bookmarks in the browser that can’t be deleted. You asked for the hacking of your firmware. Because those bookmarks are useless and have never offered anything REMOTELY useful. They should have been removed from the browser by the second iteration 4 years ago. Or you should have built a team to develop content that's not discontenting. Besides, what’s wrong with allowing people rearrange those bookmarks? Plus the morons had to go right ahead and build a SEPARATE bookmark item for each link instead of putting them all in one folder called ‘Nokia’s junk’? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Instead of glorifying what you've accomplishe, how about spending some time over the failures? Because it looks like they are being carried over iteration after iteration.
I can go on forever, but I am gonna stop here – cause as usual – you are probably not listening. But for your sake I hope you do!
Times have changed; it’s not just about the hardware anymore – but more about the software. Also, if you can’t make your software to interact with non-nokia phones over the internet then you’re wasting your time (Nokia Friendview, etc). There are many platforms to compute - the internet has always been social and your time as a leader has already been squandered.
This vent was written in 10 minutes – so please excuse typos.
PS What's the ovi launch date?

l have a nokia 700. My problem ovi store,mailbox can't open. Please help me.

Error in pda load image file performance in PDA

hello
i am using Windows CE with labview mobile module 8.6 in evaluation version. When trying to use "pda load imege file.vi" i get an error code 1, regardless of loading a .bmp, .gif or .jpg, of only 80kb (no diference in the color depth i use). I have tryed the same program in the windows mobile 5 emulator with the same error code. When i use "pda load bmp.vi" to load a .bmp, everything is OK. Some hints about this error?
some hints about missing dll are provided here
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=185995&query.id=129565#M185995 -> can that be my problem? but then, why same error in the emulator?
Aditionally, if .gif or .jpg have to be "flatened" to pixmap for opeation inside my VI , is there any difference (in terms of speed and memory allocation) in loading .gif .jpg or .bmp? i have to operate with the raw pixmap data in "real time", and flatened .bmp images (320x220) do not load and update fast enough... any advice for that?

Michiel
acording to the info provided
LabVIEW 8.6 Mobile Module
The
LabVIEW 8.6 Mobile Module includes the necessary Microsoft tools. The
Mobile Module installs ARM Pocket PC and Windows Mobile targets. You
only need to download and install the following additional Microsoft
tools (linked below) if you need x86 emulator targets:
Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0
Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++ SP 4 or later
SDK for Windows Mobile 2003-based Pocket PCs
Note: If you are upgrading from version 8.0 or later of the PDA Module, you probably already have the additional tools.
Since
i have an ARM pocket PC, i understand from the above that no extra
software is needed. Anyhow, i will try to install the recomended tools.
About the VI, well, basically not even the library examples work in my
pocket PC, so, you may try those to see if they work on your devices. I
am afraid that the pocket PC i got (it is actually a PNA and not a PDA)
has a reduced version of WINDOWS CE 5.0 installed and that can be the
reason for the error...
regards
regards

How to load a large image for display on the Palm PDA

Hello:
I have a large image I would like to display on LV for Palm PDA. The documentation states there should be a 64K chunk limitation for VIs to compile on the Palm. Therefore, I decided to break this image up into 2D arrays of less than 64K per subVI. My 3.2 Meg image therefore has about 224 2D array subVIs. My motivation is to somehow use the build array function (with concatenate inputs) to reconstruct the image at runtime. I can compile each 2D array subVI as a test, but my attempt to reassemble and compile is futile. When I try to use the build array with only 8 of these subVIs in a top level VI the compiler complains its still too big of a VI. Using get info, memory for this top level states total ~2
3K of memory usage.
So can someone help me with this problem. Is there another way to load this size of an image into memory so I can display it on a picture control?
BTW, this can build on LV for PocketPC.
Thank you
Robert

Hi Robert,
You are correct in that one of the limitations of the Palm OS is that files cannot be larger than 64 KB in size (as stated on page 5-3 of the LabVIEW PDA Module User Manual). The suggested workaround is indeed to have a top-level PDA VI that calls subVIs, and this top-level VI can then have a total file size larger than 64 KB.
My suspicion is that with the picture control on the Palm OS, even if you are breaking up the image into smaller subVIs, the process of building the array to reassemble the picture is still forcing the Palm to allocate memory for each of those 2D array subVIs to place on the top-level VI's picture control
and thus causing the Palm to complain about not having enough memory. The LabVIEW PDA User Manual also states that "There is a total limit of 64 KB on all front panel array data". Thus, when you are trying to use the build array on the top-level VI, the 64 KB limit on front panel array data is still being exceeded -- even with only 8 of these subVIs.
The following KnowledgeBase article KB 38EJRHFQ: How Do I Put a Picture or Image on My LabVIEW PDA for Palm Front Panel? states that as a workaround, you can shrink the size of your image by using 4-bit or 1-bit data instead of the standard 8-bit pixmap representation.
This is really just a limitation of the Palm OS and the fact that there is simply no way of displaying that much front panel information for your picture. Either way, you would need to build up the array of pixels for your bitmap, and for a 3.2 MB image, I don
't believe there is any way for the Palm OS PDA to display the image in its entire at once.
Sorry about that...
Kileen C.
National Instruments

LV PDA 8.2 RANT!!!

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