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Slashback brings you more on Solaris, the not-quite-dead OS/2, and free software you can sneak onto your Windows-running computer. Also, Home Depot turns to the dark side, and Hughes winds down its two-way Internet-by-satellite service. Read on below for the details. Update: 12/18 00:30 GMT by T : The Home Depot item got chopped by accident; it's been restored below. Update: 12/18 00:38 GMT by T : Sigh. And -- my fault for misreading -- Hughes is shutting down their DSL business; satellite service continues at least for now.

Honest, I'm not dead. Again. silvaran writes "A clarification on CNet News indicates that IBM will not stop supporting or selling OS/2 as mentioned previously. Says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, 'As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them... We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2.' The withdrawal notice lists several hundred components or software packages that will no longer be available, but OS/2 itself will still be offered."

Like Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall. tree writes "The Boston Globe has a really interesting interview with Stanislaw Lem, author of the 1961 novel "Solaris": he is a bit baffled about the latest movie adaptation. In any event, it's a great read for fans of Lem."

They win, GNU Win, we all win. Shwag writes "Last week I downloaded TheOpenCD after it was on Slashdot. I learned about all kinds of great free (as in speech) software. I then searched for more and found out about GNU Win which is a win32 free software cd but it has way more software! Yay! This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux."

A platform built from an Acorn. An anonymous reader writes "The (London) Guardian's Online section reports today on the new Ionix PC earlier Slashdotted for being the first desktop to run Intel's XScale processor. The Guardian concentrates on how the new machine may revive the fading fortunes of the once-pioneering Risc OS, but also makes mention of the fact it is ditching old proprietary Acorn subsystems."

Woe to the boonie dwellers, until enough balloons are in place. Avenger writes "Another DSL provider is getting out of the market. Hughes Electronics has announced that they will no longer be providing high-speed Internet services. Over 160,000 users will be affected. As it stands right now, they still will be providing connectivity via DirecPC."

But it seemed like such a great do-it-yourself idea! adagioforstrings writes "You may recall last year Home Depot announced they were deploying Linux at 90,000 point-of-sale terminals across the nation. Well, time went by and no more was heard about it...until now, when Home Depot announced they would be upgrading their POS systems with technology from NCR Corp., and 360 Commerce Inc. and ... Microsoft Corp."

Just Alex asks: "I just got Comcast High-Speed Internet service, and found out that just up to a few months ago they were recording the actions of all of their users and saving it for who knows what. Now I'm thinking about getting an 'anonymous' service like anonymizer.com, but I wonder what other folks are using. Are all of these services the same? What should I be looking for? And what people recommend given their experience with them? Also, which ones play better with Linux?"

BahdKo writes: "CNN reported today in this article that the U.S. government is working out a plan to help protect Cyberspace from attacks by "hackers and terrorists." This plan will include the distribution of government-provided software to help clean up insecure Windows installations. It's hard to picture myself executing government provided software on my workstation (we were supposed to be *increasing* the security of the PC's, right?)"

AB3A writes :"Originally launched November 15, 1974, OSCAR 7 was long thought to be dead from natural causes (radiation, battery failure, space junk, etc.). However, AMSAT reports that it has recently been heard on the air! This probably isn't a record, but it does rank right up there with spacecraft such as Pioneer. I wonder how many other satellites out there have been given up for dead but are still functional at some reduced capacity?"

gummint writes "Radio is becoming more important to the Internet (Wi-Fi, etc.) and to software (software defined radios, under the right conditions, could be very important). Unlike the Internet and software, there's no excuse for not recognizing right away huge public policy issues. To foster broader and more informed public discussion of radio regulation, I've posted a preliminary discussion paper on my website, galbithink.org. The abstract and outline are below. I hope that even persons without particular expertise in radio will take time to think about these issues and discuss them. Douglas Galbi, FCC Senior Economist."

Revolutionary Ideas for Radio Regulation

National and international broadband strategies should include radical changes in radio regulation. Radio technology is the key to rapid broadband development that reaches even geographically remote areas of the world. To get radical changes in radio regulation, a new world-wide conversation is needed around three questions.

• First, what is a good separation and balance of powers in radio regulation?
• Second, how should radio regulation be geographically configured?
• Third, how should radio regulation understand and respect personal freedom?

Most persons understand revolutionary ideas that answer these three questions. The challenge is to recognize this common knowledge and apply it to radio regulation.

Check out an outline of the contents.

NichG writes "Sir-tech Canada has finally released Wizardry 8. This has been long awaited by fans of Wizardry 7 (1992) and the series of games which precluded it. It should be available at Electronic Boutique. For those not familiar with the Wizardry series, they are first person, turn-based (more precisely, phased) RPGs, which grew from pure dungeon crawl to RPGs with plot and characters with whom to interact." This, the Bard's Tale series, and the first four Ultimas together were where most of the late 1980s went for me.

Let's get back into the quickie portege00 sent in linkage to Robot Store where you can buy parts to build a Battlebot. Maybe after I finish my MAME cabinet ;) Speaking of MAME, Martin Hock claims that it makes in appearance in Godzilla 2000, check it out. Ever through of using a beverage as a weapon? Innominate sent in a weapon that uses pop cans as ammo. I'll just stick to coffee: Matador sent in the TCP/IP equipped Espresso Machine, but I'd tend to rather go the other way (thanks again Ant). matth sent in a cool page that has Dr Seuss Art for sale- the man did some really excellent work. If Seuss is to arty for ya, maybe SkippyVision can help; he sent us to the Etch-a-sketch art Gallery. If you need something to wear to the gallery, foondog sent us hats made of meat. If you think dandruff is an unhealthy food risk, Boolean sent us what might be the greatest meal ever. How can you resist a bowl of soup that morphs into a Ninja Asassin. While we're talking about Japanese stuff, Ant continues to submit quickies at a frenzied pace, like Mathematical Origami. webword sent in a site that explains how to make lightsaber effects with basic video editing tools. And it just wouldn't be quickies without rampant Microsoft Bashing: List knows what happens when you combine WinCE, WinME, and WinNT: Coming soon to a frys near you. Khan showed us where Microsoft got the inspiration for XBox's Controller, and Ron Harwood sent us linkage to the best MCSE Trainer around.

strredwolf asks: "Isn't there a national ISP that only provides the protocol and dialup connection? No mailbox, no newsserver, no Web page. Just pure raw TCP/IP to your computer. Wasn't it $2 per month or so, with no ads?"

Back for more already? Good. Today's early dinner of information includes humble pie baked by NASA, quantities of penguins rescued from roiling in oil, a morsel about sex discrimination in the computer world, and a take-out order of XF86 for the diners in our Slackware booth.

Absolutely no danger whatsoever at all. Contradicting the BBC story reported last week on Slashdot, NASA officials deny that a 1997 shuttle mission was ever in danger because of communication interruptions. Signal 11 writes: "NASA has a press release out which refuses a previous story from the BBC stating that an unknown 'hacker' was able to disrupt communications between mission control and the shuttle." Aardwolf64 pointed to MSNBC coverage of the NASA denial.

The NASA release reads, in part:

"NASA's Inspector General's office found that during the STS-86 mission in September of 1997, the transmission of routine medical information was slightly delayed due to a computer hacker. However, the transmission was successfully completed.

At no time was communication between NASA and the astronauts compromised. The communication interruption occurred between internal ground-based computer systems."

Fly away little birdies! Fly away! Errr, swim away, little birdies! Swim away! Errr ... come back later! An unnamed correspondent writes: "follow up on recent story about penguins caught in oil spill. After being cleaned, the penguins were flown to Port Elizabeth and released to swim the +/- 800 km's back to Cape Town. This will give enviromnetal cleaners a short space of time to clean the oil from the beaches where they live. Two of the penguins are being tracked. This site tracks their progress via satellite. Can't someone novelize this rescue attempt under the title "Penguin's Progress"?

Sir, please stop hitting me with the 'No Discrimination' sign. fegg writes: "Emmett recently posted a story in which there was a reference to an AP article which discussed gender bias as regards women and computer science. This was put -- I thought cavalierly --i nto the "this-has-nothing-to-do-with-gender-dammit dept." Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that it has everything to do with gender or, at least, how the world is presented to young boys and girls.

This is a rather important topic to me, especially now that I have two daughters (not to mention a wife who is a professional computer scientist). I view this as a must read for anyone who wants to develop a reasonable understanding of why there is such an imbalance of men and women in computing.

The gender bias situation is real, and it has been known for quite a while by many in education and technology circles. I would like to refer the Slashdot community to Ellen Spertus, who, in 1991, wrote "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?" Particularly compelling, IMHO, is the piece therein on stereotyping.

Spertus's "Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering" provides an excellent set of pointers for people interested in this topic."

Isn't this what killed John Belushi? strredwolf writes "If you haven't heard, XFree86 4.0.1 is out in full force, with binaries and docs online. Slackware users can get the "Slackballs" via the Linux Mafia, along with other goodies." (Here's the direct link to the 4.0.1 files, but linuxmafia.org is worth exploring anyhow. Warning: it is an unabashed Pro-Slack Zone.)

This would be worth more than my car. Dredd13 writes "Empeg, Ltd., a UK company, shipped the first of its Mark 2 MP3 car-stereo to customers this past week. This is the same stereo that runs Linux and has won awards. The Mark2 is expected to be a full production run, (as opposed to the initial Mark1, which only had about 300 units) with enough to satisfy ample demand. As a former MkI owner (and one of the guys who got a Mark2 today from Mr. FedEx), I can say its worth every penny!" Slashdot's been following the Empeg saga for a while now; check out this item Rob posted in 1998. I hope they can bring the price down a bit, to better compete with the various mainstream MP3 players now emerging.

horst writes: "I found this proposal by Keith Packard at mosfet.org. a good article, very interesting." Although it's more than a month old, if you are interested in the state of X, how it got to be that way, and where it's likely to head next, this is essential reading. In fact, you'll practically have to read it to find out why Packard concludes that "[a] new rendering model, designed to solve specific performance and network transparency issues of these new toolkits, has the promise of significantly increasing the power of the X desktop environment."

latcarf writes, "The lead article on NASA today is about the report on the Mars exploration program - a program that hasn't gotten much exploring done recently. It concludes that the loss of the Mars Polar Lander is most likely due to premature engine shutdown and that the cure to such problems is less "faster and cheaper" and more time spent testing systems at greater cost. The article about this report on CNN includes an interview with Tom Young, formerly with NASA, who relates problems with tests on the Polar Lander."

Last week, I gave a presentation on SurfWatch, and blocking software in general, in downtown Holland, Mich. Preparing for it was an interesting experience, mostly in annoyance, hard work, and dealing with getting seriously sick two days before. Read on for the story of recovering, preparing, talking, giving away $100, a bolt of lightning, and why nothing anyone does is going to stop fundamentalists from bringing issues like this to America's ballots.

I'm not a public speaker, and I hadn't stood before an audience in quite a while. The feedback I'd gotten from my first presentation on SurfWatch was that I talked too fast and too much. At the time, I'd wanted to communicate as much as possible of what the Censorware Project had learned over the last two years, in a half hour. An impossible task, and I shouldn't have tried.

But I felt I could do better, so I wanted to try again. That's the effort that ended up becoming Thursday's presentation.

My main problem is that the subject is complicated. Many computer professionals have this problem when trying to communicate computer-related ideas to nonprofessionals. If these things were simple, we wouldn't need computers. But trying to get across too much information in a half hour didn't work.

The other thing I'd tried that didn't work was borrowing the computers of the Family Research Council. The FRC had two computers set up, one filtered and one not, run by two volunteers. I'd thought it would be a clever coup to use their own computers to show their software failing.

But it wasn't impressive for one reason: when I showed an innocent Web site blocked, all that showed up was the "Blocked by SurfWatch" screen. I was using the FRC's filtered computer and their other one was turned off. Nobody had any idea that valuable information was being blocked, except me.

Kind of the way the censorship works in the library. But not an effective demo.

For my second go at it, I rented a ballroom in downtown Holland, advertised it in the paper, and brought my own computers. I purchased SurfWatch and installed it on one of them. And I spent some time thinking over which issues were important enough to hit and which were just too technical to mention.

Setting up was great fun, if by "fun" I mean wrestling with a network under a deadline. The 10baseT jack didn't seem to be connected, one of the extension cords didn't work, a projector wouldn't turn on, and finally I was faced with Windows' endless dialog boxes of options just to use DHCP. But it all worked out with time to spare.

I began my talk by explaining out why I was there and why blocking software was wrong. Currently, Holland's opposition to the software is being waged largely on political issues: chiefly, the fact that three-fourths of library taxpayers cannot vote on the ballot. To many, what the blocking software actually does is a non-issue.

But these are mere procedural concerns. Every community is going to have to face the core problem squarely, sooner or later; it might as well be now. So I began my talk by laying out, from the beginning, my belief that blocking software inherently violates the First Amendment.

After talking about some of the myths put forth in the community's debate, my next step was to display some pornography on the big screens. The local Family Research Council has been trotting out a presentation that focuses on some of the most graphic stuff available on the web: bestiality, fisting, etc. I'd decided to try not offending my audience quite as much. I chose some milder Web pages, mostly softcore, though several of the sites I chose also contained harder material.

And, of course, unlike the Family Research Council's, my demonstration showed the pornography appearing on both screens: filtered and un-.

I think I'll not reveal here which porn sites I showed. I want to see how long SurfWatch goes without finding them. So far it's been about two weeks, but of course revealing them here would get them blocked immediately for PR purposes.

I will say that I chose six sites that all begin with the letter "A". This was to make the point that there is plenty of unblocked pornography - there being 25 other letters in the alphabet. As if to make my point, a Tennessee paper ran that same day a story about a schoolteacher who was fired for accessing over a hundred porn sites - right through the school's "filter."

After all, if the software fails only a tiny fraction of the time, it still allows through - dozens? hundreds? thousands? - of porn sites. How many porn sites does the average person need? What's the point in blocking 99% of it, if the remaining sites are more than enough to keep anyone busy?

The next step in my talk was the flip side: showing protected Web pages unfairly blocked. Finding a plethora of wrongly-blocked pages was easy. SurfWatch uses URL keyword blocking, so, for example, the complete text of the classic book Of Human Bondage is blocked because of "bondage" in the URL. The hard part was narrowing the list down to 10 to demonstrate.

(If you're interested, here are the ten blocked pages I used: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.)

Next, I pointed out that these sorts of errors were not often corrected. What data there is suggests that most errors go unfixed. In our analysis of Web logs in the State of Utah, we found about 300 wrongly blocked sites, of which only six were overridden. Also, in the Family Research Council's $7,000 canned demo, they tried to show how easy it was to fix errors by unblocking The Onion. Since they couldn't even do their prepared site correctly (they left graphics.theonion.com blocked), how could the staff be expected to do the job on real sites, in a busy library?

I explained that the errors I'd found were intrinsic to blocking software, because of the growth of the Web. In my first talk, I spent 10 minutes talking about exponential growth; this time, I just gave the impressive figure that, during just the course of my talk, a million Web pages were created or changed. Much quicker and I'm sure it made the same point.

There seemed to be concern, in Holland, that pornography just "popsup" at any time, for no reason. I debunked that myth by pointing out that typos almost never lead to offensive Web sites. I read this quote from the Supreme Court's ruling on the Communications Decency Act, where they affirmed a lower court's conclusions:

"Communications over the Internet do not 'invade' an individual's home or appear on one's computer screen unbidden. Users seldom encounter content 'by accident.' ... Almost all sexually explicit images are preceded by warnings as to the content. Even the Government's witness ... testified that the 'odds are slim' that a user would come across a sexually explicit site by accident."

All the incidents of "verified pornography" in the Holland press seem to boil down to the same two cases over and over. In the first, a woman was reading Hotmail and, when she was done, closed the browser window. Behind it was porn that another user had left up as a prank.

There are programs that can be run between users' sessions to shut down Netscape and clear its history - my local library is using one with much success - so blocking software isn't necessary to solve this problem. I've explained this to the woman, but she continues to use her incident as an argument for blocking software.

The second incident involved a teenage girl. It seems she was at the library computer and stumbled across naked women purely by accident while doing an innocent search for chocolate chip cookie recipes. Interestingly, she didn't report this to her mother, apparently out of embarrassment, until weeks later. I'd like to speak with her as well but the local pro-filtering groups refuse to put her in touch with me.

I haven't been able to replicate this event, and neither have other people who have tried. And I know a lot about search engines. Now, I'm not saying it didn't happen. Maybe it was a misunderstanding.

What I did in my speech was hold up a $100 bill and offer it to the first person who could show me how it was done. I'll make the same offer to Slashdot readers. Let's see whether this is an urban legend or not. See the bottom of this story for the rules.

I spoke briefly about the legal issues. The Holland area has been hearing suggestions that it will be legally safer to use blocking software. In fact, though the case law is by no means definitive, the experiences of Livermore and Loudoun point toward the opposite conclusion.

Next was the fun part, where I brought up some quotes from the two organizations pushing filters in Holland to illustrate the folly of relying on unaccountable third parties for censorship. In a 1996 legal brief, the Family Research Council had mentioned Cyber Patrol by name as a product that families and libraries "should make use of." But just two years later, in a bulletin called "Filtering Out Decency," they were warning parents away from using the same software.

Why? Because Cyber Patrol had stuck to its guidelines for what constituted hate speech. They had reviewed the American Family Association, the other organization pushing filters in Holland, and found them to be espousing intolerance of homosexuals. The entire AFA site now found itself censored, by the same type of software it had been pushing. In a bulletin called "Filtering Out Morality," the AFA warned parents to think twice before using any blocking software:

"In a secularist culture, both filtering software and federal regulations may well be used to filter out Christianity along with other undesirable elements.

"Another kind of software simply informs parents what sites their children have visited. Instead of making it impossible for children to see certain sites, this approach puts parental discipline at the center. Children, realizing that their parents are looking over their shoulders, are thus taught to internalize the restraints and to develop a conscience of their own.

"As Christians get involved in these debates - before they get filtered altogether - they should keep in mind the warning of the great Puritan poet John Milton ... 'If it come to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself.'"

Teaching children to develop a moral conscience of their own? There's a radical idea. Why did it take censorship backfiring before anyone thought of that?

I wrapped things up by talking for a bit about the importance of teaching these moral lessons to children. The children of today are growing up in the 21st century. The Internet will be available to them on every street corner and desk, and mostly unfiltered. What they need is not a temporary and leaky set of blinders strapped on. They need to be given an ethical foundation and the self-reliance to make good decisions about their own lives.

Somewhere in there I called up the AFA's Web site and showed that their discussion about pornography was blocked by SurfWatch as if it were pornography. That got a chuckle from the audience and made the point: it isn't just one product that backfires. The very product that has been pushed in their community blocks the very organization that has spent $35,000 pushing it.

As I wrote in an earlier article, I'm not sure any of this will make any difference to most people. For most, the issue is and will always be pornography: to be against pornography is to support filters.

And the opposition to sexually explicit material is, at heart, an emotional one. It's a primal one. Sex and fear are two of the gut instincts that we humans carry with us from our earliest days.

The day after my talk, the Holland Sentinel carried a powerfulinterview with the man who is behind the city's ballot initiative. IrvBos is the head of the Holland Area Family Association, a branch of the American Family Association.

It seems his aversion to pornography began when he was a boy, in a dramatic incident. At the age of 12, he found a book by the side of the road - a book with stories about "pretty graphic things," a book that the young boy secreted away in his parents' barn.

When "lightning struck the barn, burning it to the ground," it must have been a frightening demonstration of God's power to the guilty child, the child who associated that barn with sneaking behind his parents' back to do evil things, to read evil words.

I think I put together a pretty good presentation Thursday night, but it couldn't have compared to a bolt from the sky striking down a house of evil - like "Sodom and Gomorra," according to Mr.Bos's recollections.

That's hard to top. I can talk about the Internet equivalents of electrons and lightning rods all I want. But I don't think anyone can get through to people who believe this battle to be an epic one, a battle of good and evil. There is something primal there.

We'll see Tuesday night how the vote comes out.

Rules for the $100 offer are as follows. Find a search result URL that shows naked people, for a search on "chocolate chip cookies" or "chocolate chip cookie recipes." I'll accept any variant that an inexperienced Web-surfer might search for. Your result must appear on one of the first five pages of results returned (typically the first 50 results). I'll accept any major search engine. Send me the exact query you used; I will only accept queries I can verify to work as claimed. You aren't allowed to put up a cookie page, submit it, then change its content; to prevent this, you have until 11:59PMEST, Wednesday the 23rd. Only the first person gets the money; order is determined by timestamp of Received: headers at my server. I'll mail you a check or donate it to your favorite charity. This offer is made by me personally, not Slashdot, Andover.net, or VALinux. Notify me at jamie@mccarthy.org.

Update: 02/22 9:30 PM EST by J : I'm getting a lot of submissions that underscore the importance of properly spelling queries. Since I said I'd allow variants, I'll allow these and pick the most reasonable-sounding to give the $100 to. Some of the better ones so far: "chocchipcooky," "chocolateecipe," and the amusing "chocolatecoochie." If you can't beat those, don't bother emailing me.

But what I'm really looking for is a search engine result that looks innocent - that a 16-year-old girl might click on without suspecting pornography at the other end. See the CNN story:

"She typed in 'Chocolate Chip Cookies,' hit the search button and immediately there appeared before her eyes a picture of a nude woman."

The issue is whether pornography appears unexpectedly, from clicking on an innocent-looking link. If no one finds one of those, the other Slashdot authors and I will just decide on the most reasonable-sounding of the other submissions (first entries win ties).

Echoloc8 writes "PalmStation.com has posted two screenshots of a color-enabled PalmOS running in a PalmOS emulator. Authenticity of the shots has NOT yet been confirmed. The site is heavily loaded already, but the shots (referenced from PalmStation's index page) make for excellent viewing. "

Michael J. Kitchin asks: "I'm trying to configure a machine for my 89-year old grandfather, who's never even turned on a computer. His living situation led me to a little slimtop (a Gateway Profile) that I could probably slide another OS into if necessary. Trouble is, the entire pointer-window-desktop metaphor is proving hard to get used to, even though the trackball he settled on is easy to maipulate. His needs are few: writing some, maybe surfing the web, and reading eBooks. Has anybody written some kind of basic GUI that would meet his needs? Any tips/references for how I should lay out such a thing, if I had to? " This should be easy using a fairly simple X11 desktop with buttons to launch the small set of applications mentioned. What suggestions do you folks have?

Nerdkiller writes " An article appeared on ZDnet with some information on the G5 chip expected in 2 years. It will be competing with the Intel Merced which is expected out around the same time. A full 64 bit 2 Ghz processor. The Intel Merced will be able to support 64 bit processing, however it must be run under emulation for 32bit code. The G5 requires no change in current code with exception to some low level OS stuff. "

Kimberley Burchett writes "Genetic Programming Inc. has built a 1000-processor Beowulf cluster for research into genetic programming. GP still has a long way to go, but it's the coolest technology ever for programmers." Update: For more info about genetic programming, please see this article in Salon.

Eric Maag sent us a news.com article that talks about another $199 Linux Box (and unlike the last one we mentioned, this one apparently actually does run Linux, and isn't simply taking the name in vain to gain publicity). This might come about as part of a recent prodigy push to add cheap PCs to their roster.

Echoloc8 writes "This article from Yahoo! News reports that NASA will be smashing the Lunar Prospector probe into the moon near the probable ice deposit discovered recently, trying to send a water-vapor plume high enough to be detected. They claim a 10% chance of success." It's a pretty cool idea-the probe has just about served all of it's usefulness, and while not finding liquid doesn't mean that it is not present, I like the notion of using every last dollar they can.

Eric Harlow, author of Developing Linux Applications with GTK+ and GDK has written a book well worth reading. A good first round of things, click below to find out how to write more of applications/widgets/whatever. Thanks to A.M. Kuchling for the review. Developing Linux Applications with GTK+ and GDK author Eric Harlow pages publisher New Riders rating 6 reviewer A.M. Kuchling ISBN summary A reasonably good first book on GTK+, though it's not likely to become the definitive one unless the second edition makes some minor improvements. REVIEW: Developing Linux Applications with GTK+ and GDK Eric Harlow New Riders

Nutshell
Review: A reasonably good first book on GTK+, though it's not likely to become the definitive one unless the second edition makes some minor improvements.
Rating: 6/10 A.M. Kuchling The Scenario-->

The GTK+ GUI toolkit was developed for the GIMP, and was subsequently adopted by both the current Mozilla codebase and the GNOME project. I believe this is the first formally published documentation for the GTK+ toolkit. (It is not a generic guide to application development under Linux, even though the spine of the book reads only "Developing Linux Applications".)

The book provides good coverage of the fundamentals that you need to know: the basic data structures provided by GLIB; the overviews of buttons, menus, dialog boxes, and all the other major widgets; and four sample applications -- a calculator, text editor, Minesweeper game, molecule viewer, and a simple Defender game. Harlow's development of each topic is understandable and helpful, making the book a vast improvement over struggling through the toolkit's source code, and well worth purchasing if you want to program with GTK+.

My one major problem with the book is, surprisingly, wishing there were more screenshots in it. The opposite is true of most computer books, because a screenshot and a paragraph of text can be made to fill a whole page, and helps immensely in padding out a book to make it look bulky and comprehensive. This book goes to the opposite extreme; there's no screenshot of the calculator application at all, and only one or two screenshots for each of the other sample programs.

Another flaw is that the book seems to contain every single line of code for the sample applications. As a general rule, in any given C program, 90% of the code is uninteresting; only 10% contains the heart of the program, and the rest is all scaffolding. I would have preferred to see a dissection of the central portions of each program in pseudocode and small chunks of C code, relying on the Web to get the complete distribution, instead of having to flip past page after monospaced page of program listings. So What's In It For Me?-->

This book rates 6 out of 10 points, because it covers GTK+ quite well, and provides you with the basic information you'll need to hack with it. It would get 7 out of 10 points if there were fewer pages of code and more illustrative screenshots.

Purchase this book over at Computer Literacy.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to GTK+
2. GLIB
3. Developing GUI Applications
4. Basic Widgets
5. Menus, Toolbars, and Tooltips
6. More Widgets: Frames, Text, Dialog Boxes, File Selection Dialog Box, Progress Bar
7. Writing a Calculator Application
8. Developing a Simple Word Processor
9. Minesweeper
10. Graphics Drawing Kit
11. Styles, Colors, Fonts, Cursors, and Referencing
12. Molecule Viewer Using GDK
13. Sprites and Animation
14. Trees, Clists, and Tabs
15. Creating Your Own Widgets

Ed Bailey wrote in to say that the Linux-7K project to get Linux on the Psion has started Bearing Fruit Fict sent in a link to LinuxApps which recently got a recamp. Looks strangely familiar GVeloper wrote in to say that gdev has been revamped (to use Slash) as well as containing some comments about glide and glade possibly merging. Lincoln sent us a link to a CG short parody of the politics of sfx which will be of interest to Star Wars fans. my copy of xanim won't play it, but several people told me it's really excellent. freejack wrote in to say that the Star Tribune rated Slashdot in top sites for geek gossip mongers. Whatever that means. Shave sent in a link to Jerry Pournelle's web site a where he talks about Refund Day and Slashdot (and neither in particularly cheerful terms) And finally, for the gamers out there, mgix sent a link to a N64 Emulator that can do Zelda64. That game has been a staple in the Geekhouse for weeks now. Addictive.

Fict asks "I was wondering if anyone has successfully gotten the Diamond Monster Sound MX200 to work, as a stand alone card, to work under linux. If this isn't possible, can I at least use it as a pass thru card?"

Holiday writes "Sun Microsystems has changed the name of Solaris 2.7 to Solaris 7. Apparently they wish to follow HP's lead into large version numbers." In related news Microsoft's NT 5.0 will be renamed Windows 2000. And since we're talking NT, here is a review of its latest features. I find it amusing that command line enhancements are among them. It's also interesting to see that while data may be imported from NDS, it can't be exported back again -- reducing the value of Novell's NDS... Thanks to Vertigo1 and Phantom of the Operating System.

Muckity Man writes Mozilla.org is posting nightly binarys and source and I discovered another secret present tucked away in my compiled executible as a deep teaching from the book of mozilla. Upon typing about:mozilla into the alpha of navagator 5 I was presented with this passage to contemplate" I've attached the passge on the link below for those who you who don't have one of the v5 pre releases. It's much cooler than the old message.. And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.

from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)

mag3 was the first of a large crowd to warn us that IBM's plans to give away its PKI source code in order to ignite its e-business initiative and e-commerce in general. In itself this is nothing new: reference code usually accompanies a proposed standard. But it does mean that some IBM management understands the role of open source can play in the market.

Well folks, its friday, and I'm ready for the weekend. And I'm gonna celebrate by cleaning out the submissions box. What follows is a fairly sizable list of quickies that have been built up over the last week or so. First off, Felix Finch sent us a link to IllusionWorks.com. It is exactly what you would expect. Kinda cool. Frank Berger sent us a link to a Chicken Conversion for Quake II. What a strange world we live. Oliver Fischer, the guy who was working on those Linux Keyboard Keys has updated his page with more information for anyone interested. Mike Roessing wrote a sort of zd parody. It's friday, you might enjoy reading such thing. Christopher Lee sent us a link to a NY Times Writeup on VA Research and Linux. Fict wrote in to tell us that the latest issue of Phrack is now online. Matthew Miller wrote in to say that Red Hat is selling, well, Red Hats like the one in their logo. Fict wrote in to send us a link to Denounce.com (uber cool fake news site) one MS buying Linux.

Well folks, its friday, and I'm ready for the weekend. And I'm gonna celebrate by cleaning out the submissions box. What follows is a fairly sizable list of quickies that have been built up over the last week or so. First off, Felix Finch sent us a link to IllusionWorks.com. It is exactly what you would expect. Kinda cool. Frank Berger sent us a link to a Chicken Conversion for Quake II. What a strange world we live. Oliver Fischer, the guy who was working on those Linux Keyboard Keys has updated his page with more information for anyone interested. Mike Roessing wrote a sort of zd parody. It's friday, you might enjoy reading such thing. Christopher Lee sent us a link to a NY Times Writeup on VA Research and Linux. Fict wrote in to tell us that the latest issue of Phrack is now online. Matthew Miller wrote in to say that Red Hat is selling, well, Red Hats like the one in their logo. Fict wrote in to send us a link to Denounce.com (uber cool fake news site) one MS buying Linux.