Miscellaneous happenings:<\/p>\n
\t\tSony had a very restrictive Internet proxy server; it didn’t allow ssh<\/a><\/acronym>, newsgroup access, or instant messagers (AIM<\/acronym> worked eventually, though). I had the “bright” idea of resorting to a dial-up ISP<\/acronym> with my second phone line. (I split a cubicle with someone else. There was a telephone line for each of us, but we shared one instead, giving us one extra.) Of course, businesses don’t have flat-rate local calling plans like residences do, which isn’t something I realized until after I had racked up many hundreds of dollars’ worth of telephone charges. Oops.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \t\tOne day, on my way to the bathroom, I overheard part of a telephone conversation: “Sony. S-O-N-Y. Like the televisions.” I could only wonder what planet the other person was from; who hasn’t heard of Sony?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n \t\tSony provides an emulator for the CLIÉ handheld. It’s based off of PalmSource’s standard Palm OS Emulator, which is licensed under the GNU General Public License<\/a> (GPL). For anyone not familiar with the GPL, the gist is that any derived work must have its source code available. (This is a gross oversimplification for a number of reasons, but it’s close enough.) Sony sometimes was delinquent at providing the source code. (Developers want tools available yesterday; GPL zealots say nothing should be provided without source. There’s no pleasing everyone.)<\/p>\n