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Think. Stop.

It's more annoying than you might think. I've done it, all my friends have done it, my cousin's done it and our dog will be doing it soon.

Don't don't don't. It's a VASTLY under subscribed and overly competitive market. Once you think you're the best, and you're successful, you become too reliant on a core group of customers who won't last for ever.

There are reseller accounts available with lots of ISPs, but few are on a commission basis (ie: you're the one who has to cover your client's costs and invoice them). Flat fees are usually available to dedicated servers licensors @ £50/m+ - but the market is changing and I'm not at all surprised if they're cheaper.

Plesk - possibly the worst thing I've ever used. Convoluted backend I couldn't hack on to extend pop-before-smtp the way I wanted.
CPanel - the original but very costly 6 years ago when I last used it. Has some impressive addons
EnsimDirectAdmin - Not one I've used personally, but I hear its ok.
VHCS - Freeware. Never used it personally. But there are many OS projects and forks out there if you look hard enough ]

Cubepanel and BlueQuartz worth a mention.

Most of these project offer "lite" versions which are free for restricted personal use. The only major difference between the free and paid versions is that the latter has multi-user and reseller capabilities.

I'd recommending taking up a decent Linux or BSD distro with a proven track record of security fixes. "apt-get update" is sufficient for the home user, but realistically, you want to track purely security updates. Consider an enterprise OS (CentOS?!)

Matt

use hamsterdb! it's a file-based database for C with wrappers for C++, Python, Java and .NET.

it supports database cursors, multiple databases per file, can run as in-memory database, and the next release will support logging/recovery.

license is GPL 2 or later.

oh, and i'm the author ;)

http://hamsterdb.com/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/hamsterdb/

Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will also be included.

Dude. That game has been available for several years and works great with the latest version of Perl. Unfortunately it's only been tested with Windows but since it's Perl we should be able to port it easily to Linux.

Where have you been man ;-)

"zsync is a implementation of rsync over HTTP. It allows updating of files from a remote Web server without requiring a full download or a special remote server application. It uses a metafile, which is created on the server, to determine which parts of a file the user already has; it then downloads the remaining parts via HTTP."

Congratulations. You've just reinvented Freshmeat!

Note the parks within easy running distance if the police should happen to interrupt your B&E and the hospital if you throw out your back hauling all that stuff out to your truck.
  Also, Jeff is a contributer to Open Source software so please don't steal any of the media (CD's, thumb drives etc) since you can probably download much of it from Freshmeat or his own website
 

I found two odd things when googling Jeff; first, that he lives in apt #5, not #4 so perhaps Jeff is trying to arrange that an annoying neighbor get robbed?
      Second, he once posted a number of conspiracy theory pages that are now all 404. So perhaps this isn't really Jeff issuing this invitation? perhaps it's the CIA looking to take him down for posting the Truth?

I'd post more but it is really hard to do invasive, privacy violating searches while bouncing a toddler on one's knee and keeping him away from the keyboard.

My local shop uses this, for cash and card transactions. http://freshmeat.net/projects/qpos/

http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=Point+of+sale&section=projects&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

The pieces to implement any sort of reasonable retail POS setup using FOSS are all available.

There are two things that it sounds like you're going to have problems with though:

1. Budget - Doing this sort of project poorly is worse than not doing it at all - you're going to want to cough up the money for a real barcode scanner and a real POS cash drawer to replace your current register.
2. Realistic features - This problem has already been solved, and well, but if you make up a bunch of random features beforehand (like OO.o spreadsheet output) you can be sure that none of the existing solutions will have the exact feature set that you're imagining. Unless you're prepared to write an entire system from scratch, see what exists and adapt to it.

The last time I looked into this specific problem the nicest looking piece of software for my requirements was L'âne, but you'll want to actually do the research yourself (try searching on Freshmeat and Sourceforge at minimum).

Try searching freshmeat before asking questions about software. http://freshmeat.net/projects/ibookshelf/

Damn straight. Seriously, what? Who's gonna spend hundreds of thousands dollars putting up something they're not sure is going to work? That's what test suites are for. And those are just a few open source test systems. There's a ton more commercial suites. Sure, you may get much more traffic than expected, but you should plan for that too. Build scalable systems and have a plan for how to get more hardware in place quickly if demand for the service is greater than you thought it would be.

For the User/Developer, among the best are ... "Open".

Apache FOP: http://freshmeat.net/projects/fop/
Apache FOP: http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/download.html
    NetBeans: http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.0/final/
    Alfresco: http://www.alfresco.com/

Good Guide: http://www.vrcommunications.com/PDFs/ditaotug141-03122007-pdf.pdf
Title DITA Open Toolkit User Guide: Fourth edition, December 17, 2007. Based on release 1.4.1 of DITA Open Toolkit. All files copyright 2006-2007 by VR Communications, Inc., unless otherwise indicated. Licensing Edition, release, copyright and usage of this document and related materials is regulated by a Common Public License (CPL) granted by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), http://www.oasis-open.org/ . DITA Open Toolkit is an open-source, reference implementation of the OASIS DITA standard (currently DITA 1.1).

JAVA: http://www.java2s.com/Open-Source/Java/CatalogJava.htm
Open Office: http://www.2008-official.com/openoffice/

> Which is why the answer to your previous question about seeing shrink wrapped Linux software anytime soon is: no.
> Supply and demand

You are correct here, but not for any of the reasons you specify. The reason there is no shrink-wrapped software for Linux is (a) because there is a categorically better and more cost effective distribution system (package repositories) and (b) the revenue model for off-the-shelf shrink-wrapped software is much much much worse/lower-yield than most people believe. Developing software is extremely expensive, then add licensing, packaging, and distribution. A package has to sell a horribly lot of packages in order to offer ROI.

And there are a lot of desktop packages available for Linux from Office Suites, to accounting packages, to project management, and on own the line. People who can't find them don't know how to look - http://www.freshmeat.net/

Draw some static graphs of functions of interest using CodeViz http://freshmeat.net/projects/codeviz/

Call graphs are nice, but call graphs of large applications done via static code analysis are so huge and dense that become useless. Call graphs taken from run-time profile data, with all those irrelevant nodes pruned out, are IMO much more useful, as they naturally direct you to the most interesting parts, where the action is.

ETrace : Run-time tracing http://freshmeat.net/projects/etrace/

This book is worth a read http://www.spinellis.gr/codereading/

Draw some static graphs of functions of interest using CodeViz http://freshmeat.net/projects/codeviz/

Write lots of notes, preferably on paper with a pen rather than electronically.

ETrace : Run-time tracing http://freshmeat.net/projects/etrace/

This book is worth a read http://www.spinellis.gr/codereading/

Draw some static graphs of functions of interest using CodeViz http://freshmeat.net/projects/codeviz/

Write lots of notes, preferably on paper with a pen rather than electronically.

Maybe this?

sqlmap

I haven't tried it.

I really think that it depends on the scope of the project.

There are a few times where I suppose I could have used objects in my shell scripts, but then I'm insane sometimes. A shell script utilizing objects is probably more effective in another language.

An example where I could see using objects in bash might be in my getrss

Ah, I found one.

Visopsys.

I have gotten it to run successfully under vmware. It isn't ready for prime time, but it does work, and it's kind of usable.

linky

You explain /exactly/ why my first stop for Windows "freeware" solutions is SourceForge, my second stop is Freshmeat, and my third is Google to look for an original author's site. Heck, I haven't even looked at Tucows in a couple of years. Problem solved. :)

Skype is closed source, Opera is closed source, Acrobat is closed source, Google apps are closed, Vmware, etc. Really the list goes on and on. Just have to go to http://freshmeat.net/ to get an idea of what software is under what license. I know this is a copied story that's used for flamebait but whoever wrote it limited themselves just to one way to do things and didn't really educate themselves to the rest of what was already available. It happens a lot and it obscures other realistic avenues for developers within the community. Considering that the NYSE has a dedicated IT staff then the they should focus a lot on in house programming much like most of the corporations and hospitals out there. Now, trying to profit off of someone else's work by reselling that work with your modifications is another thing in which this story implies. For which should be said, shame on you. It's like saying that everybody out there that offers suggestions to improve Microsoft products now owns all the rights to Microsoft software. Microsoft doesn't work that way so why should Linux. Patents can still be transferred or have their licenses changed. Just look at what happened to XFree86 and the whole xorg joyride. If you want to exploit an innovation then choose another license but make sure you don't profit off of somebody else's work behind their back like SCO tried to do with Novell.

When I decided to by mine, I just set up a script that checked Amazon every minute or two.

I'm doing the same thing for Duke Nukem Forever - no sign of it yet though.


Rumor has it, you missed the release. It's available for download right now!

Yeah, I know, it was a joke. Programming it in Perl was enough to convince me :D

That is a bad example. I don't know about gOS, but Ubuntu comes with Synaptic installed. No apt-get command line required. Even though I think it is a piece of crap, any MS Windows user would probably be comfortable with it.

In person? Oh, really. Just what browser implements TLS-PSK today?

Not a general solution, but no need to go that far: It is EASY to set up a personal CA for your own use with something like TinyCA, a click-n-drool GUI wrapper around openssl. A "CA" is little more than a key pair used to sign further public keys at heart, after all. So, for the case of people trying to secure SSL comms where they can meet up and verify keys, they could just both set up a personal CA and exchange/verify then import/trust eachother's CA certs.

When you pay for a server cert for a web shop, in part you're paying for the fact you don't need need to convince your users to import/trust a new CA cert to their browser, the CA cert that verifies the signature on the server cert is already there and trusted (unless the user has gone through the browser preferences and untrusted and/or removed the CA certs).

Here is a more comprehensive listing (than the cnet list) of open source software and their proprietary counterparts:
Open Source Alternative http://www.osalt.com/

Pricelessware is a fairly good resource for finding free software in general (lot's of propriatary freeware) http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/

freshmeat gets updated daily with lots of OSS. Though it has a Linux bias, there is a LOT of cross platform software available http://freshmeat.net/

SourceForge seems to be updating its list daily now as well. The front page listings are much smaller than freshmeat however http://sourceforge.net/

When deciding on what OSS to use, I often check the start date of the project and see if it is still actively being developed. The age of a project and developer involvement is a fairly good indicator of the quality of the software (i.e. you know bugs are constantly being fixed, and improvements made). There is no real reason for me to even think of buying most proprietary software much less downloading warez. There is still a lack of quality OSS games compared to the commercial market, but even this is changing (slowly). I'm still waiting for some of the more advanced and interesting looking games to get out of Alfa or beta stage.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/snapshot/ And I'm sure I saw a similar, but less well documented, project before this one.

Postgres is under the BSD license. I wonder whether a developer could port the MySQL GPL code directly to Postgres, and release the Postgres diff as patch, under the GPL. Does the GPL prohibit using a GPL patch on a BSD app?

I guess the Burmese government hasn't heard of open source software.

Linux has had it since 2.6.12. I don't see how ignorance is Informative.

However Flash doesn't work in my browser because I'm running a 4 year old architecture - AMD64, and the creators of Flash haven't deigned to recompile the Linux version for 64-bits.

You probably are re-inventing the wheel.

There are a number of existing free software POS apps. I'd suggest going through the list with a fine tooth comb and making sure that none of them even comes close to meeting your needs before trying to start a new project.

http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=point+of+sale&section=projects&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

First off, you really need to check SourceForge.net or FreshMeat.net first. There there are plenty of POS software projects listed at both. Find one that looks like what you're wanting to do and hasn't run out of steam, and give it a shot in the arm with some cash. Maybe spread your cash around two or three of them.

That said, the question of how you start and attract talent to an open source project... I'm not professor on the history of open source, but the most successful projects I've seen are ones where a coder or small group of coders put out an alpha of their project and it was playing with the alpha and seeing the possibilities in it that got people excited enough to come on board and start pushing things forward.

So, if you're not happy with any of the POS projects you can find on SourceForge or FreshMeat, and since you clami to know "little to nothing about programming," I'd suggest going over to eLance or RentACoder and spend a good chunk of your seed money on getting an offshore firm to build your alpha for you. While they're coding their hearts out for you (they'll want 2-3 months to work on your contract), take that time to get to know the open source community and how people launch their open source projects.

Then, when your offshore coders come back to you with a decent alpha, pick an open source license (BSD, GPL v2, GPL v3, etc.), and use the knowledge you've picked up in the prior few months to get the word out and spread the code around. If you did your homweork well and spread the word well, that seed you planted may well sprout.

But remember this, a strong open source project needs a strong leader who can handle the big picture outlook, keep all the volunteers in line and focused on the goal, and drive the project forward. You're going to have to approach some strong personalities one-on-one and try to recruit that project leader. Without a strong leader, failure is a definite possibility.

Just my $0.02.

- Greg

I've wondered about this myself, but ages ago. Since then I've found that in my particular situation it's not needed (VPN/SSH/WEBDAV). But a quick check on Freshmeat shows at least 2 possibilities: scponly, rssh.

I get that using a wrapper program like either of these is kind of cockeyed, but SFTP *is* the most commonly supported secure transfer protocol (webdav/ssh, but not nearly as drop-in for Dreamweaver users, etc).

Anyway, I think it's safe to say the *nix community is now big enough that most itches have at least been attempted to scratch. And FTR, there are assholes in every community, sounds like you just had a spot of bad luck.

check out elinks or lynx and apparently w3m

http://freshmeat.net/projects/lynx/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/links/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/w3m/

check out elinks or lynx and apparently w3m

http://freshmeat.net/projects/lynx/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/links/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/w3m/

check out elinks or lynx and apparently w3m

http://freshmeat.net/projects/lynx/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/links/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/w3m/

There are many, two of which just mentioned on /. today:

http://www.zimbra.com/
http://www.bongo-project.org/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/desknow/
http://www.google.com/a

The list goes on and on.

I'm really tired of people whining about how ugly some GTK app is. Ok, it's brown, or whatever it is you don't like...

So here, knock yourself out. I'll bet it's easier than trying to skin Windows, and I'm not even sure you can skin OS X or iTunes.

I use e3 for my editing needs. The staticly linked binary is just under 13k.

I have a different interest in this. With documentation, even SVGATextMode can be enhanced to run at higher geometries, and adjust modelines to better fit various displays ... on the new ATI hardware. But someone will have to hack it, given the many years that SVGATextMode has been stagnant, and that may end up being me.

There are two free (GPL) 3d electromagnetics FDTD solvers, RadarFDTD and Tessa.

There are quite a number of options, but it can depend on what your using (OS wise). I remember using a nuclear power station simulator in physics once that was kinda kewl. But its been years since i was at school too. I would suggest searching on code.google.com, sourceforge.net and freshmeat.net. I know sourceforge.net and freshmeat both have quite a few visually based software packages that revolve around physics and maths.

This might be a good example: http://freshmeat.net/projects/physics3d/

The tricky thing for me would be to try and apply visual aids to maths, depending on the level required and what type of math it is. As has been suggested though, the ability to modify notes and distribute them on the fly would be a big plus. Sitting there writing down what the teach was saying (while it does seem to increase the ability of the human mind to retain things) was always an annoyance! :)

Probably not the most useful post however!

Seriously, is this any surprise? Every time I go looking for some generic piece of software (as opposed to some specific software I already know and trust), I usually have to sift through a bunch of crap links to sites that exists for no other purpose than to collect ad revenue.

When searching for software I use (and suggest) http://freshmeat.net/ !

(Especially if you're looking for OSS.)

Single sign-on is possible, you just have to stop with the bad idea that logging in gives the server enough information to impersonate you. Some sort of public key auth like SSH uses makes much more sense. It has the minor privacy downside that if you use the same key everywhere, then your identities could be linked together for data mining, but that can be trivially worked around by having multiple keys, just like people use multiple usernames to avoid that now.

Man-in-the-middle attacks are a serious concern. Of course, HTTPS handles them, so we are only talking about unencrypted HTTP. As far as I can tell, any HTTP-only auth mechanism existing can be trivially attacked with a man-in-the-middle attack. SSH handles them by showing the user the server fingerprint and leaving it up to the user to confirm it. Realistically for web auth, server keys would have to either be validated the way they are now, by CAs + auth over HTTPS, or via web of trust which could be used for a more flexible auth mechanism.

Two separate projects exist for making OpenPGP based HTTP auth systems: enigform (and mod_auth_openpgp) and gpgAuth.

OpenID is also a good idea because it moves the authentication process away from the server being logged into. Eliminating the entire problem, although likely adding others.

Microsoft *may* have already tried to evolve a Windows-like Linux Desktop OS -- with the help of Caldera (now SCO). Anyone remember Redmond Linux? http://freshmeat.net/projects/redmondlinux/
It debuted just after IIRC Caldera got a whole lot of unspecified MS money from the settlement of a long-standing suit over DR-DOS, which Caldera inherited from Ransom Love, who got it from his friends at Novell when he left that company to start Caldera. Caldera used the MS settlement money to purchase SCO's business and some licenses over which SCO and IBM, Novell, and others are in court at this moment.

The question I would like answered, however, is not whether they will build or support the building of a Linux Windows (whatever that might be) but whether they are after agreements that would allow MS to use Novell's Unix patents and licenses. Perhaps they bought SCO's story of owning that IP and funded work with that company (including the threat of suit against Linux users and actual suit against Daimler-Chrysler for IP infingement) in order to secure full legal rights to use Unix patents and licenses and other Novell IP (networking, for example) to make a Linux-like Windows clone that gets around the GPL and is functionally similar, that is, Posix compliant but with embracement and extension?

That would make Linux a much harder sell than it seems to be right now.

One final question: has the tipping point been reached, with respect to Linux being used by top-tier manufacturers, and is it too late for MS to counter the Linux/GNU/GPL combination?

Sorry to reply to my own post, but my current set of bookmarks is limited to this:
http://www.redferni.uklinux.net/visio/
and:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/vsdump/
And I'm sure there was a third one, one that went even further, but I've lost him.

Freshmeat lists 23243 projects under the GPL category.

Possibly http://freshmeat.net/search?q=erp may give you a place to start.

From what I've heard, http://www.compiere.org/ is a good one.