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> A niche ISP such as this with a globally insignificant user base

Free is not that kind of ISP. See http://francois04.free.fr/estimation.php for estimations of Free's number of subscribers.

> will only run properly if the graphics depth is set to 16bit.
Sounds like shitty Win16 or Win32 programming. Are they doing GDI or palette calls by chance?

Why don't you just trace the Windows API calls the app is using?
i.e.
http://jacquelin.potier.free.fr/winapioverride32/

or for even more tools:
http://billauer.co.il/blog/2010/07/strace-ltrace-win32-api-dll/

Certainely not "Heinlain" or whatever...
"Je voudrais, et ce sera le dernier et le plus ardent de mes souhaits, je voudrais que le dernier des rois fût étranglé avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre."
It's from Jean Meslier (1664-1729), who was... a catholic priest !

There's no presumably about it. When White Men Can't Do Math, Stereotype threat and the intellectual performance of African Americans (and pdf). Stereotype threat and the academic underperformance of minorities and women.

You can put anyone down, make them feel bad, and make them less than they are. And then we all lose what they could be contributing.

http://guismai.free.fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Simpsons_nelson_haha.jpg

That may be so, but computing the prime factorization of 15 is not in that class.

Well, it's O(n^2 log n), which is pretty high. http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Algorithms/splitting.html If you have a machine, that can do it with large numbers in an instant, but only with 50%, it would be awesome. But I agree on the rest of the argument, still way to go...

It reminds me about the easter egg in the Thomson's MO6 ROM, when you pressed the keys M, O and 6 simultaneously:
http://cyberpingui.free.fr/mo6.htm

Since it's from 1985, it's a little bit older than Apple's one.

Here's a Linuxquestions thread outlining multi-disk backup strategies.

The gist of the discussion is to use DAR.

"because they do slow down(not sure why? spotlight db getting bloated? fs getting fragmented?"

If you are in the habit of turning your Mac off when it isn't in use, there is a great possibility that many of the maintenance scripts the OS runs on a schedule are not getting run. Also, caches for things like apps, spotlight, fonts, and so on can get fragmented or even corrupted over time and use. There's an app for all this:

Onyx. It's free. I recommend running it every few months just to keep everything running well. Also, it doesn't hurt to check the filesystem once in a while: Diskwarrior is your best friend. Between Onyx and Diskwarrior, there is very little else you will need in the way of system utilities to keep your Mac in top working condition.

You're welcome.

Here's what the "controller" (really just a TV remote) on mine looks like.

As for the games, it's mostly smartphone-type games (Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Gameloft's stuff, etc...).

If you want to organise your address book with a joystick or find the nearest restaurant to your television, not at all. But if we're talking about games, I don't think there are "millions" of great games for Android. ISPs who already resell TV channels may have one or two ideas about how to licence games. For example, you don't need to read French to spot the logos and brands on this ISP's website

I haven't listened to them all yet, but the Ishizaka's recordings sound really good. I think the Goldberg Variations can tolerate a range of styles.

I few years back I wanted to know what the Goldberg Variations might sound like "uninterpreted", at least as far as that is practically possible. I downloaded Dave Grossman's midi files and the Blanchet 1720 Harpsichord soundfont. I played a little with the registers and cleaned up the midi files a touch. Then I recorded them with timidity using a dash of reverb and used lame to turn out some mp3s (so all done with open source tools on linux).

Download: The Goldberg Variations realized on the Blanchet 1720

I'm biased, but I *really* like them, far better than any of my other recordings. Case in point, compare the 13th variation with Ishizaka's. While I enjoy different interpretations (I like her version, too), I also think the uninterpreted version keeps any one melody from being emphasized too much, thus preserving a balanced polyphony a little more.

They are also CC0 license, so copy them or sell them, or whatever. If you like them, drop me an email (in the license).

So where along the spectrum does something like this fall? http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=7497
At first hand it seems implausible that something like this will matter. It doesn't show up in standard THD measurements (though it does show up in Hawksford-style pseudorandom filtered noise measurements). Yet later a few things came out: 1) it's a rediscovery of an effect that was initially confirmed decades ago in tube circuits (though the time constant in tubes is much bigger, far below concern audio frequency), 2) other people measured it, and 3) people built amplifiers that minimize the effect by minimizing variation in power dissipated across the primary gain devices (for example http://peufeu.free.fr/audio/memory/img/complete-schem-1.gif ). In discrete circuits it's not likely to be audible, but one wonders if it might be audible in ICs, especially given the tight thermal coupling between sensitive input stage and high power output stage in the same package. Given this, though we don't know, a perceptible effect to some ears is at least plausible. Just because no one has performed an ABC/HR test to confirm it doesn't mean we should dismiss it.
I guess my point is that it's too easy to make an error when seeing an "interesting idea and no data" and dismissing it. A cursory examination and making a quick call on whether a perceptible effect is audible is bound to lead to sometimes throwing out a baby or two with the bathwater.

If anyone was curious like me for a proper article on these upside-down glasses experiments, here is a link though be warned that it is a PDF.

The paper doesn't state that "(the) brain can flip your vision if you wear inverting glasses for prolonged timeperiods", it just states that the subjects adjusted to the new perception of space throught motor learning.

If anyone was curious like me for a proper article on these upside-down glasses experiments, here is a link though be warned that it is a PDF.

According to this: http://aciers.free.fr/index.php/2012/02/02/china-has-started-the-building-of-an-80000-ton-press-forge-us/ China's largest press is 40K. Although it does sound like America should investigate building an 81K press.

It wasn't repaired, it was replaced. It has 14 main heavy components. This article: http://aciers.free.fr/index.php/2010/10/01/siempelkamp-breaks-own-world-record-us/ Says the German company made the 14 main heavy components...

Google docs has an interesting 14 page manual for the beast, but slashdot thinks the url is too long...

A comment from the article mentioned this link about a new Chinese forge that is even bigger.

The Chinese have started building an 80,000 ton forge press

http://aciers.free.fr/index.php/2012/02/02/china-has-started-the-building-of-an-80000-ton-press-forge-us/

I found it pretty terrible too. After uninstalling it, I came across Avidemux which is much easier (for me) to use. I've been using that since.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

Sam's Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours This looks to be the entire book online!

There is also Sam's Teach Youself Java in 24 Hours, and Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours. If he wants to do web programming there is Sam's Teach Yourself HTML in 24 Hours, however it doesn't go into Javascript so you would need to get another book as well.

I would say the big languages are C, C++, and Java for main-stream languages. If you want to do Windows programming, there is C# and I guess Visual Basic(C# is better in my opinion but Visual Basic is taught to IT professionals who aren't programmers so it may be easier to learn)

I love the Sam's series, especially when I was in High School. Just enough information to make something useful, yet you don't need to be an expert to read it. Definitely a great first book into a programming language, it just highlights the basics and possible differences if you know another language.

Animated SVG have been around for a while. Check out this clock.

With the above mobile offer 15€99 per month, you can call (from France) US fixed phones AND CELL PHONES for free for unlimited time (no additional cost) :-)
http://mobile.free.fr/ (sorry, French only)

Great, now I'll have that Timberwolf tune stuck in my head for the next couple of days.

For all who don't know what I'm talking about:

http://frededison.free.fr/

or Thomas Timberwolf on youtube...

Hahah! Now I'm going to have that stuck in my head for the next couple of days. ;-)
But seriously, thanks -- nice link.

Great, now I'll have that Timberwolf tune stuck in my head for the next couple of days.
For all who don't know what I'm talking about:
http://frededison.free.fr/
or Thomas Timberwolf on youtube...

The ASBO stuff seem very arbitrary. Like going back to the bad old days of having an all powerful king. I thought the English did that Magna Carta thing?

What's the big problem on them exploring the station? It was an abandoned station (as per the link).

By the way the french seem to have maps of the underground: http://carto.metro.free.fr/cartes/metro-tram-london/index.php?gpslat=51.513962&gpslon=-0.114629&zoom=4

Not that surprised though: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_ux/all/1

Which have been found to work in a vacuum.

Furthermore, those "tests" done by some that "prove" a lifter doesn't work in a vacuum are as flawed and absurd as a test of a car being driven into deep water and upon being found not to work, being declared by engineers that this "proves" internal combustion engines (ICE) don't work underwater.

Well one of the central features of an ICE is combustion and water getting into such an engine prevents that.

As for how this relates to lifters, it's as such: A lifter is composed of 3 main parts, a dielectric, and two asymmetrical conductors. Now virtually all lifters to date have been constructed using air as the dielectric, therefore when a lifter is placed in a vacuum it won't function as one part of it is missing, which in this case is the dielectric.

This is of course not because the lifter doesn't work in a vacuum anymore than an ICE can't work underwater. When an ICE is protected as it is in a submarine it works perfectly well and when a lifter has a solid dielectric like plastic instead of air it works in a vacuum.

Hopefully experimentalists take note of this fact and work to bring this highly useful technology to society.

Which have been found to work in a vacuum.

Furthermore, those "tests" done by some that "prove" a lifter doesn't work in a vacuum are as flawed and absurd as a test of a car being driven into deep water and upon being found not to work, being declared by engineers that this "proves" internal combustion engines (ICE) don't work underwater.

Well one of the central features of an ICE is combustion and water getting into such an engine prevents that.

As for how this relates to lifters, it's as such: A lifter is composed of 3 main parts, a dielectric, and two asymmetrical conductors. Now virtually all lifters to date have been constructed using air as the dielectric, therefore when a lifter is placed in a vacuum it won't function as one part of it is missing, which in this case is the dielectric.

This is of course not because the lifter doesn't work in a vacuum anymore than an ICE can't work underwater. When an ICE is protected as it is in a submarine it works perfectly well and when a lifter has a solid dielectric like plastic instead of air it works in a vacuum.

Hopefully experimentalists take note of this fact and work to bring this highly useful technology to society.

An intriguing response, but the ion wind argument has been made years ago and been found to be wholly inadequate to account for the propulsive effect found in lifters.

So as has already been established, lifter devices work in a vacuum and ion wind can't account for the propulsive effect found with lifters.

So what's the actual mechanism to account for the propulsive effect? Unknown, but that's what makes the scientific endeavor interesting.

As for scaling up the device, one need only look here to see its tremendous potential.

"Tremendous potential"? It needs 40-70 kV to lift its massive weight of 6 grams - what does its power source weigh?

"Volts" is not a measure of energy.

As for scaling up the device, one need only look here to see its tremendous potential.

"Tremendous potential"? It needs 40-70 kV to lift its massive weight of 6 grams - what does its power source weigh?

And given the knowledge that capacitors with solid dielectrics work in a vacuum we can see that with higher K dielectrics, more advanced materials, and an on board power source such as a hybrid engine, such technology could be put to use to create a vehicle suitable for air, land, sea, or space travel.

Given enough handwavium, anything's possible.
I'll get on board with ionocrafts when they can actually lift themselves AND their powersource. Currently, that's not even theoretically possible without handwaving.

All fair concerns.

As I recall though the first rockets were little more than fireworks used for entertainment purposes.

And the 1st recorded device in history that used "steam power", the aeolipile was little more than a curiosity at the time. But the science it was based on would be put to use thousands of years later in steam engines to spark the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century.

As for scaling up the device, one need only look here to see its tremendous potential.

And given the knowledge that capacitors with solid dielectrics work in a vacuum we can see that with higher K dielectrics, more advanced materials, and an on board power source such as a hybrid engine, such technology could be put to use to create a vehicle suitable for air, land, sea, or space travel.

which is a good thing, because the source code was lost when my old laptop died

Try http://java.decompiler.free.fr/ .
It usually produces compilable source code from class files. For non-obfuscated code the sources often look exactly like the originals (minus the comments). Also, it can convert a whole jar to a source zip at once.

People who think that conspiracy theories are cool definitely should read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Twice. It's not the conspiracies that are dangerous.

And on that subject, do have a look at his latest, The Prague Cemetery. Very scary stuff.

(Speaking of FP, if your trip takes you anywhere near Paris, make sure to visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers! You can see the working Pendulum in the church next door; plus, the museum itself is Nerd Heaven, and the nearby Métro station is a brilliant bit of steampunk décor.)

R

There is nothing that beats it on any platform. Some links:

http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~ajrs/R/r-gallery.html
http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/index.php
http://opencpu.org/
https://r-forge.r-project.org/
http://hlplab.wordpress.com/
http://rseek.org/
http://www.r-bloggers.com/

VHDL Cookbook is a good, though dated, intro.

Use ghdl to learn vhdl, without the need to have hardware, as it compiles VHDL to an executable. Icarus is similar, but for Verilog. gEDA has good tools, including the gtkwave waveform viewer. Combined, ghdl, Icarus and gtkwave are a pretty useful simulation suite. You can go a long way with simulation, since the normal design flow is to get the system 100% using simulation, then as a last step program the FPGA with maximal probability of it just working. As Bruce said, the actual partition, place and route tools are proprietary and specific to each FPGA vendor, and a google search will come up with a number of cheap FPGA boards.

Keep an eye on left field though. There is a convergence in progress between desktop CPU's, GPU's, parallel systems and FPGAs (which can be seen as an array of massively parallel simple processors). One day all I wrote may be obsolete and you will be able to program your FPGA in CUDA, or whatever results when mainstream programming figures out how to handle parallel systems properly.

VHDL Cookbook is a good, though dated, intro.

Use ghdl to learn vhdl, without the need to have hardware, as it compiles VHDL to an executable. Icarus is similar, but for Verilog. gEDA has good tools, including the gtkwave waveform viewer. Combined, ghdl, Icarus and gtkwave are a pretty useful simulation suite. You can go a long way with simulation, since the normal design flow is to get the system 100% using simulation, then as a last step program the FPGA with maximal probability of it just working. As Bruce said, the actual partition, place and route tools are proprietary and specific to each FPGA vendor, and a google search will come up with a number of cheap FPGA boards.

Keep an eye on left field though. There is a convergence in progress between desktop CPU's, GPU's, parallel systems and FPGAs (which can be seen as an array of massively parallel simple processors). One day all I wrote may be obsolete and you will be able to program your FPGA in CUDA, or whatever results when mainstream programming figures out how to handle parallel systems properly.

You can go back further and say apple copied touch screen tech... they RIPPED it off...

http://cdecas.free.fr/computers/pocket/simon.php

You can stop sucking steve jobs dick now... hes dead btw...

Or here (free downloadable PDF, 1995 edition): http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf

You should yell at Amazon too, since the kindle .jar files are laid out the same way.

it's a typical way to make things "interesting" for someone being nosy with something like this.

Don't think so; this brings mrs. Vandergilt to my mind.

Thank you too, in return. I just used that point on fish and water writing to someone else today, coincidentally.

I've been trying to get Richard Stallman and the FSF to consider supporting a campaign (suggesting maybe run by me for pay, so I'm biased, but OK if it was someone else) for fostering the cataloging, creation, and discussion of free software that explores conventional and alternative heterodox economics for a 21st century of abundance for all, based on this appeal:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."

Also related indirectly:
"RSA Animate - 21st century enlightenment "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo

So, it is more than a lack of visionaries. The world has no shortage of would-be visionaries, like Paul Hawken documents:
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
"Paul Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up, in every city, town, and culture. and is emerging to be an extraordinary and creative expression of people's needs worldwide."

The problem is more like visionaries are filtered out or bought off or changed or isolated or starved or turned into wage slaves doing unrelated stuff to survive. Example:
"The murdering of my years: artists & activists making ends meet"
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_murdering_of_my_years.html?id=iBA7vACOwngC

Related articles on how dissent in academia is systematically suppressed:
http://disciplinedminds.com/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

Yet, things progres anyway, as a tribute to the better side of human nature. Here are examples of GPL'd software that could serve as a base for moving further into exploring alternative economics:
http://p.seppecher.free.fr/jamel/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.ryzom.com/en/

There is also a lot of other softwar

I have not tried it myself, but I've read that a lot of people use PuTTY Connection Manager:

http://puttycm.free.fr/cms/

It is only for Windows and requires .Net framework to be installed, which turns some people off.

I still wish PuTTY would have native tabs without the need for the Connection Manager which is way to bloated for my need (tabs). I just need PuTTY, Pageant and then automatic tabbing when there is another PuTTY window already open.

That could be a problem with an overzealous firewall/IDS, see http://schplurtz.free.fr/wiki/envrac/reseau-bizbiz-ssh

That is mainly false (maybe your american point of view that Europe is backwards?).

But sometimes you have to choose your provider carefully before you start hoping for a service. For example, Free in France and BE in the UK mean unlimited. And although the latter has a "fair usage policy" that isn't available anywhere, after 2 years with them I haven't triggered it yet (and boy do I try!).

http://www.free.fr/ does it as a business. There must be others too.

Are YOU willing to pay an extra $5/mo for IPV6

I've actually chosen an ISP that provides IPv6 (Free.fr) over a very slightly cheaper one that doesn't.

It's not that I actually need native IPv6 (Miredo works just fine), but providing native IPv6 indicates that the ISP is likely to be less clueless than its competitors when IPv4 addresses actually start running out. The assurance that they'll still be around next year is well worth the couple Euros I'm paying extra.

per my other post see: http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/

I like R because:
1) It can handle the large (million or more) ata sets I need to crunch and compare

2) Seriously, the latest versions of Excel seem to choke on larger datasets. The "Oh no! Excel is bogging down and getting ready to crash!" sensation is far too frequent. R is much more stable

3) You can do nice graphics in R you can't do in Excel. See http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/

4) There is a huge number of pre-rolled *serious* statistical libraries already written, and open sourced (including GPL'd) for it. FFT, geospatial stats, multivariate linear and non-linear statistical modeling, time series analysis, linear algebra, and more. Including OOP. I jam ust exploring how R does OOP now.

5) The scripting language is in the Lisp family. It works the way I think.

6) You can compile and link in your own packages in Fortran (pick your flavor 77, 88, 95, '03, or '08), C, C++, etc. If it links, you can link it.

Sweet. Also more stable than Matlab (and cheaper), and more user friendly than SAS.