Comment Re: The devices are still great to use now. (Score 1) 9
there is a hack to extend the date beyond dec 31, 2031.. all the way until 2099
Submission + - Working Palm OS Virus Rediscovered After 25 Years (linkedin.com)
ardiri writes: Palm OS developer Aaron Ardiri has rediscovered the original source code of a working, self-replicating Palm OS virus he developed and tested in June 2001, months before the planned PalmSource developer conference in San Jose.
Named "Virii," the virus intercepted Palm OS system calls to progressively infect legitimate applications while preserving their original functionality. Infected applications could then spread between handheld devices through infrared beaming, potentially allowing an infection to propagate among hundreds of developers exchanging software at the conference.
The virus also included a date-triggered payload designed to interfere with system time reporting between October 23 and 27, 2001, potentially causing erratic clocks, unreliable alarms, and missed appointments. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, PalmSource 2001 was postponed until February 2002, and the experiment never went ahead. The virus was never publicly released.
In 2016, Ardiri mentioned the experiment in a retrospective about his involvement in the infamous Palm OS Liberty Trojan incident, believing the original source code had been lost. In October 2026, he rediscovered the complete implementation on a CompactFlash card containing files dated June 2001.
The newly published retrospective documents the original infection mechanism, potential conference-wide propagation, and historical context. The functional source code and binaries will remain private.
Named "Virii," the virus intercepted Palm OS system calls to progressively infect legitimate applications while preserving their original functionality. Infected applications could then spread between handheld devices through infrared beaming, potentially allowing an infection to propagate among hundreds of developers exchanging software at the conference.
The virus also included a date-triggered payload designed to interfere with system time reporting between October 23 and 27, 2001, potentially causing erratic clocks, unreliable alarms, and missed appointments. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, PalmSource 2001 was postponed until February 2002, and the experiment never went ahead. The virus was never publicly released.
In 2016, Ardiri mentioned the experiment in a retrospective about his involvement in the infamous Palm OS Liberty Trojan incident, believing the original source code had been lost. In October 2026, he rediscovered the complete implementation on a CompactFlash card containing files dated June 2001.
The newly published retrospective documents the original infection mechanism, potential conference-wide propagation, and historical context. The functional source code and binaries will remain private.
Submission + - 25 Years Later, a Palm OS Developer Opens His Development Archive (github.com)
ardiri writes: Palm OS developer Aaron Ardiri (slashdot.org/~ardiri) has released approximately 1 GB of historical Palm OS development resources, accumulated during the early days of handheld computing and preserved on hard drive backups for more than 25 years. The collection includes historical SDKs, developer conference presentations, technical documentation, programming examples, limited source code, and development utilities. ROM images, commercial applications, and simulator binaries have deliberately been excluded.
Ardiri previously published the source code for his Palm OS and VTOS projects, including work exploring the capabilities of early handheld devices. This latest release expands those preservation efforts beyond his own software, making a broader collection of development resources available to the retrocomputing community. The archive is available at https://github.com/ardiri/dev-... and is intended for historical preservation, education, and research, particularly as enthusiasts continue working to maintain, emulate, and revive the platform (available at https://www.ardiri.com./
Ardiri has also written an auto-biography and shas started explored the engineering principles behind these systems in his books, including Inside the Machine, which examines computer architecture from fundamental logic through modern computing systems. At a time when much of the early mobile development ecosystem has disappeared into defunct websites and aging backups, this collection offers another opportunity to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing.
Ardiri previously published the source code for his Palm OS and VTOS projects, including work exploring the capabilities of early handheld devices. This latest release expands those preservation efforts beyond his own software, making a broader collection of development resources available to the retrocomputing community. The archive is available at https://github.com/ardiri/dev-... and is intended for historical preservation, education, and research, particularly as enthusiasts continue working to maintain, emulate, and revive the platform (available at https://www.ardiri.com./
Ardiri has also written an auto-biography and shas started explored the engineering principles behind these systems in his books, including Inside the Machine, which examines computer architecture from fundamental logic through modern computing systems. At a time when much of the early mobile development ecosystem has disappeared into defunct websites and aging backups, this collection offers another opportunity to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing.
Submission + - From Palm OS to Foldable Phones (linkedin.com)
ardiri writes: Long-time Slashdot reader Aaron Ardiri, whose Palm OS work has appeared here a few times over the years, has revisited a mobile architecture he developed more than 20 years ago after this week's renewed attention on fold-able phones.
MedHand International began developing medical reference software for Palm OS in 2000, eventually supporting Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Windows and Mac OS X. Because medical publishers supplied content in wildly different formats, MedHand developed its own canonical XML representation—“MedHand XML”—and separated structured content from its presentation.
That work resulted in a patent filed in 2005 describing components, containers, a layout manager, hierarchical information and display-dependent presentation. Its diagrams explicitly show the same information hierarchy being presented differently on a mobile phone, PDA and desktop display.
The interesting comparison isn't that MedHand somehow “invented the foldable phone”—it didn't—but that modern foldables create essentially the architectural problem the software was designed to handle: the underlying information remains unchanged while the available display environment changes substantially, requiring the presentation and visible information hierarchy to adapt.
Ardiri has written a retrospective comparing the 2005 architecture with modern adaptive mobile interfaces. There's also an amusing historical circle: MedHand International built its own XML publishing pipeline before EPUB became an industry standard, while Ardiri has just released his autobiography and Inside the Machine as EPUBs—including on Apple Books.
So how many supposedly “new” computing problems are really old architectural problems waiting for the hardware to catch up?
MedHand International began developing medical reference software for Palm OS in 2000, eventually supporting Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Windows and Mac OS X. Because medical publishers supplied content in wildly different formats, MedHand developed its own canonical XML representation—“MedHand XML”—and separated structured content from its presentation.
That work resulted in a patent filed in 2005 describing components, containers, a layout manager, hierarchical information and display-dependent presentation. Its diagrams explicitly show the same information hierarchy being presented differently on a mobile phone, PDA and desktop display.
The interesting comparison isn't that MedHand somehow “invented the foldable phone”—it didn't—but that modern foldables create essentially the architectural problem the software was designed to handle: the underlying information remains unchanged while the available display environment changes substantially, requiring the presentation and visible information hierarchy to adapt.
Ardiri has written a retrospective comparing the 2005 architecture with modern adaptive mobile interfaces. There's also an amusing historical circle: MedHand International built its own XML publishing pipeline before EPUB became an industry standard, while Ardiri has just released his autobiography and Inside the Machine as EPUBs—including on Apple Books.
So how many supposedly “new” computing problems are really old architectural problems waiting for the hardware to catch up?
Comment Re: woops - better update my profile :) (Score 2) 22
check my blog...
www.ardiri.com/blog/
I plan to do a new release soon, after palmos - I build a cross platform development library, just like you mentioned called SHARK - a precursor to other dev kits like unity, marmalade and heck, even SDL!? I ported it to over 14 platforms.. even the Sony PSP
I currently focus on IoT - specifically security.
www.riotsecure.se
Comment Re:woops - better update my profile :) (Score 1) 22
You seem to have binaries in your repo. Is that correct? Do you know of any emulator that can run these?
binaries are there for people who still have devices that work! (notice - i even posted full registered (unlocked) binaries so no registration system).
as for emulators? we always had POSE and the PalmSim that was part of the SDK's.. there is also this:
Comment Re: I'd like to see more of this (Score 2) 22
You'd need to find the source code of their libraries as well. Looking through the code, it heavily relies on device/os specific libraries like VgaGetScreenMode which I can only find pointing to other PalmOS software made by Handera (which still exists somehow). Converting this to anything useful for other embedded devices would be easier to rewrite from scratch. Some of the frequency conversion stuff for the audio might be useful, but otherwise this might be best suited for emulating the PalmOS and hardware more than trying to convert it to Arduino/ARM/RISC platforms.
most of the PalmOS libraries are pretty well abstracted.. heck; most of the graphics routined i actually rewrote for the VTech Helio - which is the vtos-gfx/ repository which pretty much uses a pointer to the display which is effectively a framebuffer graphics approach. it would be super easy to port. soon i will release SHARK; our cross platform engine that we built just after the palm os stuff - and that has been ported to iOS, android and a slew of other platforms.
Comment woops - better update my profile :) (Score 4, Informative) 22
i'm now bouncing back and forth between Stockholm (Sweden) and Margaret River (Australia) and my main focus these days is security within the internet of things space
Submission + - Palm OS developer releases source to classic games, 20+ years after release (github.com) 1
ardiri writes: Before the iOS and Android entered the scene; heck, even before the smartphone concept was the handheld personal digital assistant, with the likes of Newton, Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Palm OS had a thriving gaming scene; with the likes of emulators and implementations/clones of classics such as LodeRunner, Lemmings, and the classic Game and Watch. written mainlyin C and optimizations in assembler — maybe these games will make their way to the various Arduino like micro-controllers out there; designed for low memory, low processing power environments they would port perfectly.
Comment supporting technology? (Score 0) 36
i surely hope they are not dependent on third party services like google maps as part of the landing process.. they would need to install an infrastructure of sensors, cameras and network communication channels to obtain enough information about the environment as if they were actually there.. otherwise; we'll see planes hit a tree or newly built building that may not be available yet on google maps.
Comment maybe all the smarter; older people quit? (Score 1) 349
and the young and dumb stayed around?
i've been offered positions at google over the years, wasted time with their bullshit interviews and even turned them down a few times - as we get older; we are more inclined to start our own businesses and be entrepreneurs.. it is not a shock that the younger generation of engineers want to work at a company like Google. what they need here is to also bring in relevant data around startups; how many people actually left Google to start their own thing?
Comment subtle easter egg in Caveman (Lemmings clone) (Score 1) 290
I put an easter egg in Caveman (http://mobile1up.com/caveman/) where every day there is a unique unlock code that actually lets you play the first seven levels of Lemmings - complete with music, artwork and sound effects.. it changes on a daily basis - i used to post the unlock codes occasionally on twitter
Comment Re:why start after the fact? (Score 1) 219
Technically the continuously overwritten ring buffer seems hardly more difficult to implement.
One big problem would be battery life. There was a fatal police shooting recently which the police officers' cameras apparently did not record. One reason I heard was that they have 3-hour batteries which are supposed to last for a 12-hour shift. At the very least you have to keep a charger and spare battery in the patrol car to make continuous recording work. Better if you could actually make a single battery last the whole time and take away any plausible reason for not having a recording.
Comment will it really matter? (Score 2, Insightful) 509
sounds like a PR campaign over something that will be effective.. if you look at any footage of ISIS and these extremists; they are a tad behind when it comes to technology - the social networks should be the one shutting down any propoganda efforts from these guys.. smells like "anonymous" is just riding on the publicity behind these tragic events to get noticed.
Comment Re:If the money is used to hire much better teache (Score 1) 143
You (The US) already spends the most on education per student then any other nation and yet have some of the worst test results.
That may be true, but it's not going to teachers!. (Link describes North Carolina, but I think the same is true elsewhere.)
I don't think "throwing money at it" will make it better. Sure, teachers will take home more money but the test results clearly show this doesnt improve the quality of education.
This study disagrees.
