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gnuwinII

I am sure that before I have finished writing this comment many people will have already suggested GNUWin, TheOpenCD, Knoppix, Morphix, Dyne:bolic, Debian and GNU CDs but instead of jumping on the bandwagon and posting links to them (even though with no doubt those are great examples of software which every library should definitely have) I will suggest including some software which is less popular but which students might learn much more from (and in the end, is that not the whole purpose of a library?), id est: Debian GNU/Hurd, OpenBSD and EROS. Lots of useful software one can buy with a magazine, but these systems are much harder to find, while much more revolutionary and unquestionably invaluable if we want people to actually learn something important instead of only "clicking" the mouse. It is also very important to note that these systems would introduce students to real security, something which is hard to find and understand, yet even much harder to overestimate in the terrorism era and the invasion of our privacy with things like NSAKEY in Windows and NSAttributedString in Mac OS X. That is why I think that actively promoting them in every library would be the most insightful idea.

• Open Source Software CD
  
• GNUwin
  
• The Open CD
  

Most of the stuff is rather old, but it is still good to have around. GNUwin

In all fairness, you should probably focus on Free Software for Windows, at least to get the project off the ground.

You should check out the GNUWin CD, a CD of lots of Free software for Win32, at least for inspiration on what to give users.

If you can make pop-in-the-drive-double-click-and-run CDs of things like OpenOffice or Mozilla Firefox (i.e., without installing), those would be great for demos. Perhaps an OpenOffice.org 2-CD set: One demo disc, one install CD. That way people could try it and realize how much they want it. :-)

Also, consider pointing them to a good online support forum. It makes a lot of sense to have your own user-support service for your little project, or for others like it. That way, you can say, "Let me just drive over." A PhpBB setup would do fine for that.

Same for me (alright, not the MIT, but still the best I could manage and afford), except I bought the Powerbook to run Gentoo GNU/Linux on it. It runs smoothly, and probably more even than on most of the x86 laptops out there. The hardware is great too.

I was actually amazed to see how polished and clean Mac OS X was. As my experience of proprietary desktop OSes was mainly windows, I was suddenly wondering why so many people wouldn't use Mac OS X instead of that old, buggy ms crap. Yes, games, maybe ...

I will keep Mac OS X just in case, but GNU/Linux on Apple laptops is definitely a bliss.

May I also mention GnuWin (Developped in Switzerland)

Same stuff :
Free(Libre) and OpenSource apps for Windows XP.
The advantages of Gnuwin are : you can view the content online, and download online 1 or 2 apps, no need to download the full ISO. (But you can, and you'll end up with the same content on you CD like the web site).

And I agree too, that one can start slowly by first getting used to the application and then smoothly switch to Linux.
I did it my self :
I first start using DJGPP instead of BorlandC, and then switch from DOS to Linux/CLI. Yes, that was a long time ago.

Consider, for instance, the total amount of sunlight hitting your computer screen. Most people would like an automatic system to control their window blinds to keep that amount to an acceptable level, but the system cannot know a priori what that level will be for a given user. So we let the system set the blinds to a setting deemed acceptable for the average user and use the user's manual interventions to build up a list of bad settings, corresponding to the setting immediately before the intervention, and good settings, corresponding to the setting immediately after the intervention.

The system will then attempt to minimize the probability of the user rejecting its settings by applying Bayes' theorem.

I've done only preliminary exploration of this idea so far but the results are encouraging, and we plan to do a full-scale experiment this summer.

GnuWin is a nice burnable collection of free software for Windows.

I personally always include a "GPL" when I search for Windows software; helps filter out the cripppleware.

I find all this talk about GNOME possibly becoming based on Mono extremely unsettling. GNOME is part of the GNU project. The Mono project is not only not part of GNU, they're even openly hostile to the GNU efforts that they're competing with.

You might want to check out Scala. It is a combination of OO and fuctional that compiles to Java byte code (and supposedly will support .Net compilation in a few weeks). It also lets you interact with existing Java/.Net code.

It does exist.
It's called BioWall and it's curently being developed in Switzerland.
http://lslwww.epfl.ch/biowall/
Click on Application and see the weird usage they are finding for it.... it's seems it can be really used as a big useful computing device, with lot of funny lights on it...

For me, it looks like "Baby play quilt" for engeneers.

That's basically what GNUWin is about -- though it does not provide Windows, of course, and aims more at opening up people to Free Software than rendering Windows useable

You're looking for Scala :)

But as it is I see the tremendous duplication of effort across the world to do the same things in Java and C#, and it just makes me sad.

I think this problem would be solved by writing things in Scala. Scala compiles to .Net or Java runtime and is a far more advanced language than C# or Java.

Have a look at Scala if you are looking for a language that supports both paradigms.

From their site:

Scala is a pure object-oriented language in the sense that every value is an object. Types and behavior of objects are described by classes and traits. Class abstractions are extended by subclassing and a flexible mixin-based composition mechanism as a clean replacement for multiple inheritance.

Scala is also a functional language in the sense that every function is a value. Scala provides a lightweight syntax for defining anonymous functions, it supports higher-order functions, it allows functions to be nested, and supports currying. Scala's case classes and its built-in support for pattern matching model algebraic types used in many functional programming languages.

Just skip this and program in much better JVM based languages than Java:

Scala
Nice

Real science guys :
IAS8-swarmbot-final ;-)

Steph

• 9 degrees of freedom (2 wheels, turret rotation, elevation of gripper (can lift another s-bot), gripper (have 1.5 kg of pressure), mobile arm (3 dof), mobile gripper)
• 19 IR sensors (15 around, 4 bottom)
• 2D camera
• 4 microphones, 2 loudspeakers
• light ring (8 RGB) and light sensors (8)
• torque and speed sensors on major dof
• accelerometer and structural deformation sensors
• 2 temperature and humidity sensors
• 13 PIC uC for local computation
• One homemade 400 MHz X-Scale CPU board
• Wifi
• 700 g, 2 hours autonomy

...but perhaps in a future VM version [Java] will allow primitive generics (obviously forcing a bytecode regeneration)

Allowing primitive type arguments in generics would not necessarily require any changes to the VM or bytecode.

The Java 1.5 implementation of generics is substantially based on the Pizza compiler, which allowed primitive type arguments without requiring boxing (links: the pizza compiler, the GJ compiler it evolved into, some academic papers about the compilers).

If I remember correctly, the pizza compiler generates separate classes for the different primitive types. It needs a different class loader, but generates classes for an ordinary VM.

I guess this might be it.
Then again, I'm no Mac person.

Here's the complete article for THE LASER CHEESE RACLETTE.
Looks like the Swiss got there first, almost 10 years ago in fact.

The programs are for use on the Linux operating system, which is a free alternative to the Windows operating system.

OpenOffice is a cross-platform suite. It's not just for Linux. I use the Windows version all the time.

Free software for the win32 platform is (I think) an important front of the F/OSS movement. Most people are unwilling to take the plunge straight into Linux. Using free software on win32 is a way to wade in and test the waters before jumping in. The win32 port of The GIMP was the first thing that got me really excited about free software, and I have since migrated to more free and open source applications and operating systems. For those of you running windows who would like to check out some free software, follow the links below:

• http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html
• http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/order.html

GNUWin II. Start out small, so the Windows-using masses don't feel like they're losing their investment.

It's not really a transmitter as such. It's a backscatter device and as such, it's not transmitting- it's reflecting.

What do I mean by this? Picture a mirror. Now, picture putting an LCD immediately in front of the mirror. Operating the LCD impinges a modulation on the light, conveying information back to the light source.

In the above example, the mirror did not transmit any energy to convey information back to the carrier power source (the light...). It merely reflected it back.

With an EZ Pass style tag, it's the same sort of thing, only with RF power instead of light. Of course, the tag pulls some energy to power itself up and drive the modulation circuitry, but it's not actually transmitting in the traditional sense of the concept.

For more info, I suggest reading the following links:

http://www.rfid-handbook.de/rfid/types_of_rfid.htm l
http://www.microchip.com/download/appnote/rfid/006 80b.pdf
http://legwww.epfl.ch/research/pdf/back_scattf.pdf

I would have more faith in this project if it was being done by somebody else.

Don't worry, it's not done by him at all. He's only the man in the cockpit

The real team doing it is on this picture.

The EPFL explains much more about the technological aspects. It's in French of course: here.

But for those who cannot read :-), they also have nice pictures

One technological aspect is that by flying very high, they can take advantage of the cold (-55C), which can improve efficiency of electro-magnetic motors.

There are other interesting bits. I guess the page will be translated in English in a few days. (Forget computer translations, unless you want a cheap laugh)

The EPFL explains much more about the technological aspects. It's in French of course: here.

But for those who cannot read :-), they also have nice pictures

One technological aspect is that by flying very high, they can take advantage of the cold (-55C), which can improve efficiency of electro-magnetic motors.

There are other interesting bits. I guess the page will be translated in English in a few days. (Forget computer translations, unless you want a cheap laugh)

GNUWinII can be downloaded here: http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html

Let's try it again: The correct link is gnuwin.epfl.ch

Would GNUWin fall in that category ?

And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them.

It doesn't actually say only open source products. It may be possible to ship, for example, a Windows box with the Gimp installed (a la the GNUWin II project?). The only way to know for sure would be to examine the actual Vietnamese plan, though.

That's a non sequitur. If one wishes folks to stop using Windows, then pointing that an alternative is better is an excellent way to do so. I understand how you might wish for more work to be put into cross-platform projects, but honestly once one has left Windows it's just not a priority. If Windows users wish to port a piece of software, they have the source, after all.

There are projects which provide free software for Windows users. GnuWin II provides such a service well.

I don't think that Windows users are evil, or even that proprietary software is evil. I do believe that proprietary software is less moral than free software, and I've no wish to make it more pleasant to use.

I should note that free OSes typically have the problem that software is not ported to; why then should programmers devote effort porting from them?

Were I you, I'd get a box, slap RedHat 9 on it and go from there. That's what I use at home, and I've never once wished I'd Windows.

gsview and ghostscript provide native win32 PS/PDF viewing. gv is much better, but it's not available outside X11/unix.

• Web browsers - Mozilla, Netscape, Opera
• browser plugins - Acrobat Reader, QuickTime, Ghostscript/Ghostview, Shockwave+Flash, Media Player, Sun Java Runtime, Real Player (and how I hate those plugins that need all their droppings cleaning up afterwards).
• Instant Message updates, MSN messenger, Windows Messenger
• Other tools - Ethereal, Sam Spade, GIMP, UnxUtils, Zip Central, GPG+WinPT

GNU Win II is even better than The Open CD (unless you need the source code).
See the list of GNUWinII applications.

GNU Win II is even better than The Open CD (unless you need the source code).
See the list of GNUWinII applications.

Check here.

I hate to break up the "Browser/email" only discussion here...

All you need to do is burn yourself a copy of GNUWin II and try out everything. Not absolutely everything is available in Linux, IIRC, but the vast majority.

Some of the stuff on there is getting old, though. It's time for an update.

That CD should be bundled with every computer. It's bread & butter stuff.

Check out GnuWinII and The Open CD.

Irfanview - hands down the best image viewer out there for Windows. Free. Windows only (but will run under Wine if you want)

Gimp - if you want to edit images. Free. Linux and Windows.

MAME - for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. Windows and Linux. (Xmame)

CDex - for CD ripping in Windows. Free. Windows only, but several good ripping programs are available for Linux. (search freshmeat)

GNUWin - a collection of free apps for Windows. Worth the download.

Audacity - if you want to create/edit sound files. Free. Linux and Windows.

Winamp - for listening to audio files. Free. Windows only. I like XMMS for Linux over Freeamp.

Opera - web browsing, email. Free. Windows and Linux. I prefer it over Mozilla, but not by much.

ATM on Linux

linux ATM links

As for management authorisation, I was lucky - my manager was cool, he said if I wanted some GPL software to give him a copy of the licence and install the sw, which would then prompt him to read it. That was 18 months ago and he hasn't said anything yet. Oh, I forgot two , perl from either ActiveState or Indigo Star depending upon your particualr OS (Indigo works on older versions and includes Apache) and Regina Rexx because I like rexx (I used to be a mainframe guy) and it's the macro language for the Hessling editor. Of course Cygwin has the option of including perl there too, it's a matter of what you want to do. I went for ActiveState instead of Cygwin when I set up my work box as it was a later version - I should have checked which was the more stable. As cygwin is under continuous development (join the mailing lists) it's probably superceded ActiveState now.
HTH. (i'm sorry if anything is broken, as preview has done just that, if there's a problem I correct when /. allows the next post).

this is so much better than the Free Software Song.

http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/

Since CAML is a functional language, it's probably more productive to compare it with other functional languages than with more familiar procedural languages. Good stuff here and here. In this context, it makes sense to have a particular look at Guile, which is like mod_caml in that it implements a functional language as a means of writing application extensions.

Remember to submit the result to GnuWin project.

Here are some folks who are doing a great job distributing free software for Windows!

something like this:
GNUWin II

GnuWin is a distribution of Free/Open Source software for Windows. It includes among many other things Mozilla, OpenOffice, PHP, Apache, several games, programming languages and tools, and more.

There are several other similar projects out there that might be worth considering as well.

Please check them out. It will cost you little or nothing, and will provide your users a wealth of interesting, Free and Open Source software.

If you read their paper, then they actually did do something kinda nifty.

Short version is that they precalculated a hell of a lot of hashes to passwords.

This is possible on Windows because it uses no salt for the password (no machine specific number to create the hash). So one password generates the same hash on all Windows boxes.

Where they actually did something nifty is devised a way to do an extremely fast lookup through those hashes. You input the hash and it can find it in that 1.4 gig of data within 13.6 seconds, as opposed to 101 seconds using the older fastest way available.

So it's news worthy not in that they cracked M$ crappy passwords, but in that they developed a better search method to do it fast. Read the paper here: http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/php_code/publications/sear ch.php?ref=Oech03