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But you are right in that Conway was also looking for the properties you describe.

At any rate, it appears that consturctions of UTMs in Life have been around for a while. One was published in 1982 in a book by Berelekamp, Conway and Guys Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays .

Hum, there is something similar available under UNIX with 'filerunner'. It's not as good as Diskmaster2, but conceptually, it's the same.

I think that the debate whether 3Dsia is better than 3Dwm is rather pointless. Being one of the core developers of 3Dwm myself, I know that the scopes of the two different projects are quite different. 3Dwm is all about building a general platform for 3D user interfaces (3DUIs), while 3Dsia goes for the William Gibson "cyberspace" approach. This might seem like a fine point, but there is quite a difference. Now, I am not going to stand here and say which approach is best (hey, you know which I prefer!), but I daresay that 3Dwm is a more mature system resting on a more solid system architecture (we use CORBA, heavy modularization, and object-orientation), though.

A common misconception among most slashdotters seem to be that 3Dwm is all about "flat" windows. It is not. This is our fault, since all we've shown on our screenshots are those images of X11 and Windows desktops in 3D, but that only forms one of the cornerstones of 3Dwm (the backwards-compatibility one). 3Dwm is mainly about building 3DUI applications (like the prototype web browser you can see here, here and here) for use in Virtual Reality.

That said, I'm not about to steal 3Dsia's show in any way. Above all, good luck and have fun!

I think that the debate whether 3Dsia is better than 3Dwm is rather pointless. Being one of the core developers of 3Dwm myself, I know that the scopes of the two different projects are quite different. 3Dwm is all about building a general platform for 3D user interfaces (3DUIs), while 3Dsia goes for the William Gibson "cyberspace" approach. This might seem like a fine point, but there is quite a difference. Now, I am not going to stand here and say which approach is best (hey, you know which I prefer!), but I daresay that 3Dwm is a more mature system resting on a more solid system architecture (we use CORBA, heavy modularization, and object-orientation), though.

A common misconception among most slashdotters seem to be that 3Dwm is all about "flat" windows. It is not. This is our fault, since all we've shown on our screenshots are those images of X11 and Windows desktops in 3D, but that only forms one of the cornerstones of 3Dwm (the backwards-compatibility one). 3Dwm is mainly about building 3DUI applications (like the prototype web browser you can see here, here and here) for use in Virtual Reality.

That said, I'm not about to steal 3Dsia's show in any way. Above all, good luck and have fun!

I think that the debate whether 3Dsia is better than 3Dwm is rather pointless. Being one of the core developers of 3Dwm myself, I know that the scopes of the two different projects are quite different. 3Dwm is all about building a general platform for 3D user interfaces (3DUIs), while 3Dsia goes for the William Gibson "cyberspace" approach. This might seem like a fine point, but there is quite a difference. Now, I am not going to stand here and say which approach is best (hey, you know which I prefer!), but I daresay that 3Dwm is a more mature system resting on a more solid system architecture (we use CORBA, heavy modularization, and object-orientation), though.

A common misconception among most slashdotters seem to be that 3Dwm is all about "flat" windows. It is not. This is our fault, since all we've shown on our screenshots are those images of X11 and Windows desktops in 3D, but that only forms one of the cornerstones of 3Dwm (the backwards-compatibility one). 3Dwm is mainly about building 3DUI applications (like the prototype web browser you can see here, here and here) for use in Virtual Reality.

That said, I'm not about to steal 3Dsia's show in any way. Above all, good luck and have fun!

Why am I negative against CoS? Aren't they just another church? Not in my view. A few years back the CoS managed to get the Swedish goverment to break against the Swedish constitution, to preserve the "secrets" of the CoS Bible. They did this through one of their members, an american congressman.

This congressman wrote a very sharp and direct official letter to the Swedish government, threatening with all kinds of retributions unless they made a decision that was (and is) against the swedish consistution, namely to make the CoS Bible secret although it, through clever usage of Swedish law, had been made a public document.

The swedish government yielded to that threat, because the USA is a powerful nation. The congressman, when asked about the letter afterwards, could "not remember writing such a letter"...

Anyways, a "church" that powerful and defensive is not a healthy thing. Politicians that easily convinced to make official threats on account of their religious leaders isn't either.

So I can understand the German government. By making sure that absolutely nothing in official use is made by or (ideally) even influenced by the CoS, the risks of them overtaking (or perhaps rahter "affecting") important parts of the country's affairs is significantly lessend.

I only wish that the U.S.A. would take similar measures. After all, that's where the problem^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCoS originated.

/Viktor...

I'm one of the core developers of 3Dwm, and I've watched with horrid fascination as the webserver was nearly toppled by the tremendous /.-onslaught just recently (have a look at the logs). Now, browsing the comments, I thought I should post and clear up some points.

First of all, yes, 3Dwm is misnamed. 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager, it is a user environment (the beginnings of the 3D-equivalent of X11). However, the name has stuck with us since our first appearance on Slashdot, so we don't want to change it.

Secondly, the main platform for 3Dwm is not normal desktop computers (though it does run on desktop systems), but Virtual Reality devices (like this one). In Virtual Reality, you have some amazing 3D interaction possibilities that few existing applications exploit.

As for VNC support, 3Dwm has VNC client (not server) functionality, just as one observant slashdotter pointed out. This allows us, in a network-transparent fashion that is in keeping with the distributed nature of the rest of 3Dwm, to display graphical desktops of any major windowing system (including Windows, X11, and MacOS) in 3D.

There's always skeptics who wonder what you would use a system like this for when 2D is perfectly fine. To that I can only answer that there are, in fact, areas where 3D could help a great deal, mainly in the fields of design, modelling, and information visualization. Why, take a look at this (and this and this) screenshot for a prototype 3D web browser.

Btw, today marks the one-year anniversary of our last slashdotting (I wrote up a short summary of the comments we got last time). Cool, eh? :)

I'm one of the core developers of 3Dwm, and I've watched with horrid fascination as the webserver was nearly toppled by the tremendous /.-onslaught just recently (have a look at the logs). Now, browsing the comments, I thought I should post and clear up some points.

First of all, yes, 3Dwm is misnamed. 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager, it is a user environment (the beginnings of the 3D-equivalent of X11). However, the name has stuck with us since our first appearance on Slashdot, so we don't want to change it.

Secondly, the main platform for 3Dwm is not normal desktop computers (though it does run on desktop systems), but Virtual Reality devices (like this one). In Virtual Reality, you have some amazing 3D interaction possibilities that few existing applications exploit.

As for VNC support, 3Dwm has VNC client (not server) functionality, just as one observant slashdotter pointed out. This allows us, in a network-transparent fashion that is in keeping with the distributed nature of the rest of 3Dwm, to display graphical desktops of any major windowing system (including Windows, X11, and MacOS) in 3D.

There's always skeptics who wonder what you would use a system like this for when 2D is perfectly fine. To that I can only answer that there are, in fact, areas where 3D could help a great deal, mainly in the fields of design, modelling, and information visualization. Why, take a look at this (and this and this) screenshot for a prototype 3D web browser.

Btw, today marks the one-year anniversary of our last slashdotting (I wrote up a short summary of the comments we got last time). Cool, eh? :)

I'm one of the core developers of 3Dwm, and I've watched with horrid fascination as the webserver was nearly toppled by the tremendous /.-onslaught just recently (have a look at the logs). Now, browsing the comments, I thought I should post and clear up some points.

First of all, yes, 3Dwm is misnamed. 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager, it is a user environment (the beginnings of the 3D-equivalent of X11). However, the name has stuck with us since our first appearance on Slashdot, so we don't want to change it.

Secondly, the main platform for 3Dwm is not normal desktop computers (though it does run on desktop systems), but Virtual Reality devices (like this one). In Virtual Reality, you have some amazing 3D interaction possibilities that few existing applications exploit.

As for VNC support, 3Dwm has VNC client (not server) functionality, just as one observant slashdotter pointed out. This allows us, in a network-transparent fashion that is in keeping with the distributed nature of the rest of 3Dwm, to display graphical desktops of any major windowing system (including Windows, X11, and MacOS) in 3D.

There's always skeptics who wonder what you would use a system like this for when 2D is perfectly fine. To that I can only answer that there are, in fact, areas where 3D could help a great deal, mainly in the fields of design, modelling, and information visualization. Why, take a look at this (and this and this) screenshot for a prototype 3D web browser.

Btw, today marks the one-year anniversary of our last slashdotting (I wrote up a short summary of the comments we got last time). Cool, eh? :)

I'm one of the core developers of 3Dwm, and I've watched with horrid fascination as the webserver was nearly toppled by the tremendous /.-onslaught just recently (have a look at the logs). Now, browsing the comments, I thought I should post and clear up some points.

First of all, yes, 3Dwm is misnamed. 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager, it is a user environment (the beginnings of the 3D-equivalent of X11). However, the name has stuck with us since our first appearance on Slashdot, so we don't want to change it.

Secondly, the main platform for 3Dwm is not normal desktop computers (though it does run on desktop systems), but Virtual Reality devices (like this one). In Virtual Reality, you have some amazing 3D interaction possibilities that few existing applications exploit.

As for VNC support, 3Dwm has VNC client (not server) functionality, just as one observant slashdotter pointed out. This allows us, in a network-transparent fashion that is in keeping with the distributed nature of the rest of 3Dwm, to display graphical desktops of any major windowing system (including Windows, X11, and MacOS) in 3D.

There's always skeptics who wonder what you would use a system like this for when 2D is perfectly fine. To that I can only answer that there are, in fact, areas where 3D could help a great deal, mainly in the fields of design, modelling, and information visualization. Why, take a look at this (and this and this) screenshot for a prototype 3D web browser.

Btw, today marks the one-year anniversary of our last slashdotting (I wrote up a short summary of the comments we got last time). Cool, eh? :)

I'm one of the core developers of 3Dwm, and I've watched with horrid fascination as the webserver was nearly toppled by the tremendous /.-onslaught just recently (have a look at the logs). Now, browsing the comments, I thought I should post and clear up some points.

First of all, yes, 3Dwm is misnamed. 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager, it is a user environment (the beginnings of the 3D-equivalent of X11). However, the name has stuck with us since our first appearance on Slashdot, so we don't want to change it.

Secondly, the main platform for 3Dwm is not normal desktop computers (though it does run on desktop systems), but Virtual Reality devices (like this one). In Virtual Reality, you have some amazing 3D interaction possibilities that few existing applications exploit.

As for VNC support, 3Dwm has VNC client (not server) functionality, just as one observant slashdotter pointed out. This allows us, in a network-transparent fashion that is in keeping with the distributed nature of the rest of 3Dwm, to display graphical desktops of any major windowing system (including Windows, X11, and MacOS) in 3D.

There's always skeptics who wonder what you would use a system like this for when 2D is perfectly fine. To that I can only answer that there are, in fact, areas where 3D could help a great deal, mainly in the fields of design, modelling, and information visualization. Why, take a look at this (and this and this) screenshot for a prototype 3D web browser.

Btw, today marks the one-year anniversary of our last slashdotting (I wrote up a short summary of the comments we got last time). Cool, eh? :)

here is an article on journaling fs

i already posted this once when discussing xfs beta article. anyway there is great article on journaling filesystems at linux gazette.

it explains different features and concepts related to the 4 different journaling filesystems. XFS, JFS, Ext3 and ReiserFS.

i already posted this once when discussing xfs beta article. anyway there is great article on journaling filesystems at linux gazette.

it explains different features and concepts related to the 4 different journaling filesystems. XFS, JFS, Ext3 and ReiserFS.

What you describe here is what I view as Agnostic, not as Atheist. You admit that there is the possibility of one of the current religions being right, but you think they are wrong, but you also admit the possibility of their being a deity of some sort.

Ummmm... not exactly. There's a distinction commonly drawn between "strong" and "weak" atheism which applies here:

When 'god' refers simply to some vague, undefined deity (or "philosopher's god"), I'm more likely to adopt the 'weak' position. However, when a deity is sufficiently well defined to get a handle on what is being described (Allah, YHVH, Shiva, Zeus, etc..) then I'm more likely to adopt the 'strong' position. An interesting thing that I often point out to theists is that they're 'strongly atheistic' towards just about every deity save one. Some then come to recognize that I've no reason to treat they're deity any differently. [quoting from that link]

This was the point I was trying to make: when it comes to Allah, Jehovah and the Easter Bunny, I'm strongly atheistic -- I believe they do not exist, because of both lack of evidence in favor and the strong externally-confirmable evidence against it. Because of this long string of "strong" atheisms, then, I have a "weak" atheistic position on godhood of any variety. And I find this to be different from agnosticism, because agnostics believe you can't truly know, whereas I believe I do truly know, negatively. (If a god were to walk up to me on the street and introduce him/her/itsself, I'd demand several different ID's... and still have my doubts.)

...I believe there are other deities that exist as well as the Christian God. Also, my wife and I have developed a working theory for the coexistance of all religions based on the premise that all rewards and punishments are visited only on those who believe in them. Hence, Saved Christians go to heaven, unsaved go to Hell, worshippers of Satan go to Hell, everyone else is taken care of by their own deities, and Atheists and Agnostics if they are full 100% (Very difficult, most have some underlying background belief) simply cease to exist. It's not exactly scientific, but it's possible.

Huh. Interesting... and not exactly traditional Christian. Mind they don't burn you at the stake!

So where does that leave me? I was raised fundamentalist Christian, and actually preached the Word for a while... until my knowledge of science undermined the fundamentalist dogma, and I started a years-long study of religion from many different perspectives, beginning a long slide which ended in atheism when none of the basic tenants of religion itself proved reasonable to me. (In short, it seems to me that you can't maintain faith without deciding to believe in the first place -- but that first step can be taken in the direction of any religion, which makes the whole thing pointless precisely because there's no objective reason for it.)

Anyways, I don't think you are an Atheist, I think you are an Agnostic. You haven't found anything you believe is correct yet, but you admit the possibility of something coming along.

No, I honestly don't. I admit the possibility of there being more intelligent, more powerful entities in the universe than I, even to the point where they might not consider humans intelligent, but I wouldn't call such "gods." (They are perhaps a bit like the Greek gods, "men writ large," but not supernatural... Clarke's Third Law and all that.)

In spite of all this, I'm not antagonistic toward those with religious beliefs (well, as long as they aren't knocking on my door at 9:00 am Saturday morning... or any other time, for that matter ;> ). I think religious beliefs are personal, and should be kept that way; I also think that folks ought to think about their religious beliefs, rather than blindly accepting what they've been told -- but this goes for all beliefs, IMHO. You obviously fall into that category of "thinking believer," so more power to you!

---

Implementative power is what you can do with a program written in the language, once it's finished; if you're to produce closed-source stuff, that's the only thing you're interested in, and that's why people have been brainwashed by forty years of closed source into not caring about more than it. The language could be "write-only", and "write-once", implementative power wouldn't be less.

Expressive power is the information you can exchange using the language with other people with whom you work. When programming is an incremental undertaking, what you care about is expressive power. That's what people need in the world of free software computing. To be very expressive, the language must be "read-write" and "write-indefinitely".

For instance, a language to describe finite state machines operating on an indefinite tape (Turing Machines) can implement any one-shot computations from integers to integers in asymptotically optimal space and time. But as a tool for interprogrammer communication, it is not nearly as expressive as Cayenne that allows to describe arbitrary functions from arbitrary higher-order types to any other, including the ability to define statically enforced logical invariants. In Cayenne (which compiles into Haskell, which can be compiled into machine code, bypassing C for everything but for system interface and runtime support), you can define a type whose elements are precisely all sort functions, excluding any buggy function that sometimes fail. The language can thus express much more than C or any other implemented language, for that matter.

-- Faré @ TUNES.org

I love it. But then, I'm a NEXTstep lover! postilion is a GUI clone of tkrat, which is pretty mature, so Postilion looks better and should work just as well. Works for me, looks better than Eudora, love it. Depends what look you want, really.

Haskell has CGI and animation libraries, as well as a system for writing music. There are foreign library interfaces and highly optimizing compilers, database interfaces and graph visualizers.
Libraries and Tools in Haskell
Haskell in Practice
Here are some books and papers about how to program in Haskell and functional languages in general.
I particularly recommend Hudak's book; Paul himself is a very clear teacher and lecturer, as is Zhong Shao, who does research in ML (Standard ML of NJ). I think SML is the only functional language around whose semantics are completely specified.
Follow these links and learn about Erlang (in massive production use at Ericsson), high level abstraction through functions defined via structural induction over datatypes, monads, layered functionality used to build parsers (via parser combinators), and a type theory for object-oriented programming.

You can find a Swedish robot project at http://humanoid.fy.chalmers.se/.
Featuring Elvis (named so because he moved his hips when he learned to walk), who is a tad bit smaller but has learned to walk all by himself (genetic programming).

I was not belittling you. I belittled the your love for Lisp. There are many like you, who get introduced to Lisp, as THE functional programming language... I wish more schools taught modern languages, as opposed to outdated languages (*cough* Prolog *cough*).

Automatic currying of functions reduces the amount of parens needed, when using functions of one argument or N arguements. Lisp has a parens fetish that gets a little messy now and then. Its not to not have to use them as much, as Haskell allows.

"Referential transparency" does not exist when there are side effects. Referential transparency allows transparent threading of your application. Think about have your app automatically run on 4 CPUs, without any code rewriting. Referential transparency also allows more simplistic proof of the properties of your code.

Please hook me up with some good resources on advanced Lisp type systems. Last time I checked, standard Lisp had no type system. A horrid weakness.

Universal lazy evaluation means that your data structures and functions are evaluated in a lazy manner. If you do not understand what I mean by that, then there is no way you can truely experience the beauty of modern functional programming. I know that Lisp may have lazy lists, but I know that overall, it has strict evaluation over its functions/data structures. Here is an example:

f x y = x + 10


Lazy evaluation:
] f (sqroot 2349 + 7/346) (sqroot 343568 + 7/346)
~ (sqroot 2349 + 7/346) + 10
~ (48.4867...) + 10
~ "After this point, the remainding expression is returned. If it needs to be evaluated furthur, because a function needs a more reduced form, then it is automatically reduced. However, it will only be reduced furthur, it is needed."

Strict evaluation (like Lisp, but using Haskell syntax):
] f (sqroot 2349 + 7/346) (sqroot 343568 + 7/346)
~ f (48.4867...) (586.1669...)
~ (48.4867...) + 10
~ 58.4867...
Notice how strict evaluation does more work than is needed? Sure, my example is trivial and silly, but there are cases, where it is not as trivial. Lets say I wanted to define functions over a boolean data type:

And True y = y
And False y = False


Lazy example evaluation:
] And (Not False) (And (Not True) (And True False))
~ And True (And (Not True) (And True False))
~ (And (Not True) (And True False))


Strict (ala Lisp):
] And (Not False) (And (Not True) (And True False))
~ And (Not False) (And False (And True False))
~ And (Not False) (And False False)
~ And (Not False) False
~ And True False
~ False

Note how strict evaluation continuously evaluates the second argument of And, even when it is not needed (the first arguement was False). If real life applications, Lazy evaluation allows for greater modularity in application design. Here is a paper, for you to read, if you care to furthur your knowledge of functional programming and the great benefits of lazy eval: Why FP Matters

I am sorry, but you have to learn why Lisp has been outclassed to understand. Its hard to just show people with a few examples. The paper I linked should be a good start. Many of the parts of Lisp that have been outclassed, cannot just be added on to Lisp. They are fundamental changes that would have to take place, to modernize Lisp. It would no longer be Lisp at all.

Also, read this entire book (its good, trust me): Good FP Book

I argue with you because you show potential. I won't even bother to discuss FP with most of the other people on this board. Many of them truely thing that Perl is a really good language. Its not even worth trying to argue with someone that burried.

not really true.
pike actually goes back to the late 80ties when lars pensjö first wrote lpc.

check the history of pike here.

if you are interrsted in the history of a language and want to enter the world of lpc read some paragraphs about lpc and lpmuds: history, what is lpc
what is an lpmud, lpc servers (the lpmud servers listed there are essentially lpc dialects)
(Profezzorn, mentioned here, is the author of pike)

another interresting introduction to lpc.
(what is said here in 2.1 and 2.2 is essentially true for pike and roxen: just replace "lpc objects" with "roxen modules" and lpmud with roxen and most other occurances of lpc with pike :-)

here the history to one of the lpc dialects.

go back even further and find out how lpc was started in the first place.

as you can see, pike has a very lively history and a lot of background.

greetings, eMBee.
--

A guy called Zenon Panoussis made copies of the CoS "bible", and delivered it to a lot of swedish authorities. Any document sent to a swedish authority is public. Thus, anyone could, by reffering to the principle of publicity, read a copy of the CoS bible in any of the offices to which he sent copies.

After this, all kinds of weird things happened to Zenon. Among many other things, his apartment was apparently being monitored 24 hours a day. And he was not just being paranoid.

If you're interested, there is a rather complete story here, but it does not cover the latest developments when the swedish government made a decision to, in this particular case, disregard the principle of publicity and make the Cos "bible" secret without cause. Strictly in conflict with the swedish constitution.

If you want Netscape as a "texture" on one wall then you should look at this which is a demo for 3Dwm that seems to be shaping up quite nicely.

In terms of zombie processes REALLY becoming zombies then you definately want to be playing with Doom as a tool for system administration.

If you want Netscape as a "texture" on one wall then you should look at this which is a demo for 3Dwm that seems to be shaping up quite nicely.

In terms of zombie processes REALLY becoming zombies then you definately want to be playing with Doom as a tool for system administration.

I've used filerunner a bit---it's quite good, too. Check it out here.

Actually, something very similar happend several years ago in a case involving the Church of Scientology, in which some of their secret "scriptures" were entered as evidence and therefore freely available in any government office. I believe the case took place in Sweden.

Check out this link for the story. It's a rather amusing read.
Dan

This is actually not the first case where this tactic has been used. A guy in Sweden used it against the Church of Scientology which was sueing him for copyright violation.

This site has the details, there are a lot of good tactics in here that we might be able to use. In any case, it is an amusing read:

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d 1dd/cos/zenon-eng.html

FWIW, it was actually in Sweden. Read all about it here.

94304-5533 is a zip code in Palo Alto, California.

• Coincidence? Or something far more sinister?

Perhaps someone should modify XTraceRoute to show the physical location that corresponds to the current time_t.

Right. The only reason we called it "3Dwm" was because people generally know what window managers are (I guess we could have called it 3Dws for "windowing system"...) and thus would be more likely to understand what 3Dwm was all about. And yes, it is indeed a proxy Xserver (a hacked version of Xvfb) which communicates with the actual 3Dwm application using shared memory.

As for the relevance of simply displaying plain old 2D applications in 3D, again, you are right. But 3Dwm is really a prototype for im3D, the Immersion3D User Environment (no homepage yet, but there are some docs on the 3Dwm website), which will be a full 3D windowing system but which will still retain support for running normal X applications, so hopefully, things will improve here...

Unfortunately, I was notified by this thread a bit too late, so I guess this entry is getting a bit stale, but I thought I should post my thoughts here nonetheless.

As many of you might have guessed by now, 3Dwm is a 3D-User-Interface research project at Chalmers Medialab. We're currently in crush-mode, as we're going to host a demonstration of the system on Friday (if you happen to be in the vicinity, be sure to drop by! Check out this page (Swedish only) for more information.), so we're currently putting a lot of time and effort into the system.

I see a lot of concern about 3Dwm just being a fancy way to display plain 2D applications in 3D. This is true. Yet 3Dwm is more of a prototype than a full project, and we will be addressing the questions of fully three-dimensional applications in our current core project, im3D, the Immersion3D User Environment. If you think 3Dwm is cool, then imagine having apps that are built for three dimensions. A modelling program might look like a workshop you may step into and use when designing your 3D-models. Your plain ole' debugger (gdb) might have a fancy 3D-dimensional interface to allow you to look at different threads of execution, stacks and heaps in an intuitive way. The plain 2D-VRML browser is now a gateway into the actual model which allows you to step into and actually explore the world from within.

Well, that's some of the hype, anyway. 3Dwm and im3D is still under heavy development, but we hope to be able to release the code under a fairly free license (as in GPL, but we don't know at this point) and post it for the rest of the community to enjoy. Yes, it helps if you have a CAVE or a HMD, but we'll support (and already do) normal desktop systems as well.

If you have any specific questions, comments, flames or criticism which you really want to make sure reaches us, then mail us at 3dwm@medialab.chalmers.se. Thanks for all your feedback!

Unfortunately, I was notified by this thread a bit too late, so I guess this entry is getting a bit stale, but I thought I should post my thoughts here nonetheless.

As many of you might have guessed by now, 3Dwm is a 3D-User-Interface research project at Chalmers Medialab. We're currently in crush-mode, as we're going to host a demonstration of the system on Friday (if you happen to be in the vicinity, be sure to drop by! Check out this page (Swedish only) for more information.), so we're currently putting a lot of time and effort into the system.

I see a lot of concern about 3Dwm just being a fancy way to display plain 2D applications in 3D. This is true. Yet 3Dwm is more of a prototype than a full project, and we will be addressing the questions of fully three-dimensional applications in our current core project, im3D, the Immersion3D User Environment. If you think 3Dwm is cool, then imagine having apps that are built for three dimensions. A modelling program might look like a workshop you may step into and use when designing your 3D-models. Your plain ole' debugger (gdb) might have a fancy 3D-dimensional interface to allow you to look at different threads of execution, stacks and heaps in an intuitive way. The plain 2D-VRML browser is now a gateway into the actual model which allows you to step into and actually explore the world from within.

Well, that's some of the hype, anyway. 3Dwm and im3D is still under heavy development, but we hope to be able to release the code under a fairly free license (as in GPL, but we don't know at this point) and post it for the rest of the community to enjoy. Yes, it helps if you have a CAVE or a HMD, but we'll support (and already do) normal desktop systems as well.

If you have any specific questions, comments, flames or criticism which you really want to make sure reaches us, then mail us at 3dwm@medialab.chalmers.se. Thanks for all your feedback!

Unfortunately, I was notified by this thread a bit too late, so I guess this entry is getting a bit stale, but I thought I should post my thoughts here nonetheless.

As many of you might have guessed by now, 3Dwm is a 3D-User-Interface research project at Chalmers Medialab. We're currently in crush-mode, as we're going to host a demonstration of the system on Friday (if you happen to be in the vicinity, be sure to drop by! Check out this page (Swedish only) for more information.), so we're currently putting a lot of time and effort into the system.

I see a lot of concern about 3Dwm just being a fancy way to display plain 2D applications in 3D. This is true. Yet 3Dwm is more of a prototype than a full project, and we will be addressing the questions of fully three-dimensional applications in our current core project, im3D, the Immersion3D User Environment. If you think 3Dwm is cool, then imagine having apps that are built for three dimensions. A modelling program might look like a workshop you may step into and use when designing your 3D-models. Your plain ole' debugger (gdb) might have a fancy 3D-dimensional interface to allow you to look at different threads of execution, stacks and heaps in an intuitive way. The plain 2D-VRML browser is now a gateway into the actual model which allows you to step into and actually explore the world from within.

Well, that's some of the hype, anyway. 3Dwm and im3D is still under heavy development, but we hope to be able to release the code under a fairly free license (as in GPL, but we don't know at this point) and post it for the rest of the community to enjoy. Yes, it helps if you have a CAVE or a HMD, but we'll support (and already do) normal desktop systems as well.

If you have any specific questions, comments, flames or criticism which you really want to make sure reaches us, then mail us at 3dwm@medialab.chalmers.se. Thanks for all your feedback!

• JSetiTracker, and add-on Java application to the Seti@Home command line client.
• Binary Genetic Algorithm Tool.
• Nova, an IRC client application.

You might also want to try Postilion, a client derived from TkRat (although I've always had better luck with TkRat myself).

I have been thinking about doing something like this for years.
But I never seems to have time.
But if someone started a open source project I would like to get
involved.

I can do the GA algorithms, so we need someone to do the network code
and someone to put together the web site.

By the way take a look at this.

On the 17. of July Roland Olsson posted to comp.ai a message saying he had made a program
using ADATE
The program searches after a SAT solver.
The satisfiability problem (SAT) is one of the fundamental problems
in theoretic computer science.
If we had a fast algorithm to solve this problem, we could solve a big
class of very interesting problems.
Example factoring of big integers and solving the travling salesman problem.

Your can find more problems with instances
here, if your are interested.

So if your computer got some spare time, give it a try.

It exits already, umm.. 3dwm was one thing I heard of, don't know its status. Another was Objective Reality, a commercial 3D UI for linnux. And ggi has some nifty stuff of things like putting different X sessions on sides of a cube. Really cool stuff. You can try these out if you wish.. Xfree support will be cool tho...

Check out the 3Dwm website for something quite similar... This is a three-dimensional window manager for X with OpenGL support. It's still in early development, though. Another cool app is GLACE, which supports running X applications on 3D surfaces.

Location via internic.net lookups? Somewhat simplistic a solution, no?

sighhh... it'd be nice if programs like xtraceroute could work without having to use massive IP location tables. For some reason I can't help but feel like a James Bond villian when I see my network hops neatly displayed on a map of the earth }:-)

I hear there's an RFC in the works that will help with this (or is it part of IPv6?)

Just have the party on 22/7 - the Pi Approximation Day.