Slashdot Mirror

• Jörg Schilling, cdrtools
  
• Donald Becker, linux ethernet drivers, Beowulf
  
• thekonst, centericq (a console IM client)
  
• Alan Cox, linux kernel guru (I hate that word, but it fits), including being the primary maintainer of the 2.2 tree
  
• Paul Vixie, Vixie cron, BIND, ISC

The crdrecord guy rewrote gtar, because it is in a state where it is almost no longer maintainable. He committed his version. Maintainers were happy. But Stallman said: We've already got a working gtar and basta!

It sounds like Stallman had a point. You don't go around rewriting things for the sake of it. Does gtar need constant development? No, it's in a stable state. As I recall, automated testing of the GNU toolset compared extremely well with other versions - you don't throw away that stability just because the code is ugly.

Now, if he had refactored the code, step by step, instead of rewriting it, then I'd be critical of Stallman. But from the sounds of it, Stallman is simply being sensible.

Is this the same cdrecord guy whose ideas for ATAPI were also rejected by Linus Torvalds? The same guy that uses his surname to name shared libraries? The same guy whose other tar implementation creates archives that sends itself into endless loops upon extraction? It seems to me that he has a bit of a problem with having his ideas rejected. If Stallman and Torvalds are in agreement about him, perhaps there's a good reason for that.

I never had a single problem with it from day 1 :)

I'd like to mention that with the -overburn flag I can squeeze a bit more of data (above 4.7 billion bytes but below 4.7 million Kbytes(Kbyte=1024 bytes)) when needed.

In addition I update my dvd burners firmware with PXUpdate for UNIX http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employee s/joerg.schilling/private/firmware.html, something which is very important for people that don't dual boot.

As demonstrated in https://expressivefreedom.org/Projects/PVR/Firewir e-Methodology.html a 4gb+ single file (ie a backup tar/bz2ball) can be squeezed in dvd, which is something that propably(I can't say for sure since I haven't used windows for ages) can't be done in windows.

Chris. PS Use the above at your own risk

He wasn't just asking for people to spout the names of various free recording tools. He was specifically asking if any make a good replacement for cdrecord-ProDVD. Which, I think, is a perfectly good Ask Slashdot question.

Anyway, it appears that SuSE and Mandrake have patched versions of cdrtools which are able to write to DVD without restriction. I don't have personal experience with this tool, so perhaps someone else who regularly runs Linux can verify.

Star does though.

Yes, there is an ancient paranoia text adventure floating around. It's reasonably hilarious. It's a bit buggy, and doesn't seem to have any happy ending---so it's pretty faithful to the original. Have fun, citizen. Fun is mandatory.

Cinelerra(video editing)
Transcode(video encoding)
Gear Pro(not free)
mkisofs (for making images with the -dvd-video switch)
linuxvideostudio (gooey)
lsdvd (for listing dvd contents

Since (I'm only guessing) it's all based in software, it will probably not be a feature availble to Linux users.

What's wrong with gunzip, tar?

Have you ever tried to extract a single file from a gzip'ed tar archive? It's not possible without unpacking everything and throwing away the bits that you don't want.

First, use your computer's multitasking capability to uncompress and extract a tarball archive member at the same time:

gzip -dc blah.tar.gz |pax -r blah/haha.txt

Or, for those without the POSIX utility:

gzip -dc blah.tar.gz |tar xf - blah/haha.txt

Second, if you don't want to have to uncompress the entire archive, use gzip and tar in the reverse order (though admittedly without the pipe):

gzip -9 blah/*
pax -w blah.tar blah

You extract and uncompress in the reverse order. You also fail to compress header data (much like with zipfiles), fail to take advantage of redundant data between archive members (same as with zipfiles) and can still extract uncorrupted members from an archive where a compressed member has been corrupted (much like with zipfiles).

There's bzip2 as well. POSIX pax and Jrg Schilling's star follow well-defined standards, and both are able to handle large (>2GB) files, as is bzip2. Last i knew, Info-Zip's zip and unzip showed their age and had troubles with files larger than 2GB on ILP32 platforms....

I have a Sony DVD Writer in a Formac firewire case (not orig combination) and I have had no problems with the drive itself. You can download cdrecord-PRODVD which works pretty much the same as cdrecord. K3b pops up when I put a blank DVD in (kind of it isn't it?) so I can burn the DVD very easily from an .iso image or select my own data. I checked that this drive worked first here: cdrecord site . There is also DVDR tools which I haven't used. Both are free though. I do however have occasional problems with firewire, but under SuSE 9.0 it's not stable yet.

How true. See baud vs bps for a good explanation.

So, have the requests by Jorg Schilling been finally answered?

I thought there was someting based on Alpha at OpenCores. But I went to look and didn't see anything.

So then I went over to the CPU Howto and following a link at the bottom I learned that there is a real problem with the Alpha in that compared to some of the designs we're seeing today it was power hungry. It was scaleable, but not really suitable to a power conscious consumer market.

As others have noted, they have funded Kroupware and gnupg. The German Ministry for the Economy has also funded BerliOS, an ad-free SourceForge replacement and news portal. There are plenty of public school and university projects, effectively funded by the government, and there's a heavily funded education software project which seems to be more concerned with remaining heavily funded than with presenting any concrete results, though. All in all, Germany is very OSS friendly, which may have something to do with the fact that Redmond is not within our present borders.

For anybody that needs fine control
over their CDROMs and DVDs, this guy
(Jorg Schilling) is a genius. His CDRecord
utilities are the best and the homepage is
here

Cdrecord supports DVD-R and DVD-RW with all known DVD-writers on all UNIX-like OS and on Win32.
DVD writing support is implemented in cdrecord since march 1998. Cdrecord writes DVD media similar to CD media.

Getting the stuff to work on IDE drives is
a bit tricky. But a lot of patience can
reap great results.

For anybody that needs fine control
over their CDROMs and DVDs, this guy
(Jorg Schilling) is a genius. His CDRecord
utilities are the best and the homepage is
here

Cdrecord supports DVD-R and DVD-RW with all known DVD-writers on all UNIX-like OS and on Win32.
DVD writing support is implemented in cdrecord since march 1998. Cdrecord writes DVD media similar to CD media.

Getting the stuff to work on IDE drives is
a bit tricky. But a lot of patience can
reap great results.

This certainly looks like a good burner to me. It seems to have some cool features, like Silent Mode, and SpeedRead. (Yes, I did read the article, you should too.) And the SecuRec (encryption) and GigaRec (compression) sound great.

Since the GigaRec feature doesn't compress the data; it just makes the pits it burns on the disk smaller, you could zip the files and then burn them for even more space! However, not all CD-ROM drives can be expected to handle the smaller pits correctly, which is a major downside.

The SecuRec sounds good, because it can be read with any drive, provided you have the SecuViewer software. It is free, but only for Windows. That means trouble for MacOS and *nix users, like myself.

Another issue is whether cdrtools can support all these features. I'm not going to switch back to Windows just to use this burner. It'll be interesting to see how this catches on.

Some people have already mentioned Amanda.

In addition to amanda, I have good luck with star coded by Jörg Schilling. star is very feature-rich, fast, standards compliant and has been around since 1985. Give it a try!

The star-users mailing list is here . You can also look at the man page and finally download it

Some people have already mentioned Amanda.

In addition to amanda, I have good luck with star coded by Jörg Schilling. star is very feature-rich, fast, standards compliant and has been around since 1985. Give it a try!

The star-users mailing list is here . You can also look at the man page and finally download it

Some people have already mentioned Amanda.

In addition to amanda, I have good luck with star coded by Jörg Schilling. star is very feature-rich, fast, standards compliant and has been around since 1985. Give it a try!

The star-users mailing list is here . You can also look at the man page and finally download it

And I thought OS X was a unix variant...

If it still is, why don't you just use this? It was the utility that made a linux box a permanent addition to my home...

The only drives that don't work with that are a little less than a decade old, AFAIK...

I wasn't going to reply to this, but then I saw this little nugget.

You may already be aware, but just in case you're not, there are a few *nix equivalents for these "applications you can't live without":

WinAmp: Try XMMS. It does everything WinAmp does, plus several things it can't, and even looks and works the same (it is 100% skin-compatible with WinAmp). Of all the *nix equivalents, XMMS is probably the closest match. Home Page

Photoshop: Of course, everyone will tell you that The GIMP is a worthy replacement for Adobe's product. In practice, it lacks only a few high-end features (such as CMYK color separation) that professional users require; but for everyday use it's very close indeed. Try the Win32 port first, though, to help determine if it's right for you. Home Page

Flash MX: ...You've got me here. I don't think there's a single Flash solution for *nix, beyond the outdated Flash 5 plugin for Netscape/Mozilla. Anyone with better knowledge?

Nero: Believe it or not, Nero disc images are simply ISOs with a different TLA tacked on, so switching to Linux or another *nix doesn't require giving up the ability to use them. For CD burning and mastering, I've found cdrecord to be an excellent program, almost as easy to use as Nero, and unlike Nero I've yet to make a coaster with this thing. Excellent piece of software. Home Page

Exact Audio Copy: ...I admit it, I don't know what this program is - I've never heard of it. Thus, I can't give an alternative for it, I fear...

Therefore the Unix model of tar and then a separate compression program makes more sense - even though tar is such a crusty and wasteful format.

Joerg Schilling, the author of the famous cdrecord, probably disagrees with you. tar has everything you need, and a lot more. The problem is that all the different tar implementations suck. GNU tar, for example, is _not_ POSIX-compliant. 'file' recognizes this and will tell you what kind of archive it is. gnutar also doesn't support very large files.

Joerg Schilling has written an excellent tar program by the name of star. To overcome the limitations of the "other" tar formats, he has produced his own, without any limitations. Features of star that completely blow away anything else:

- fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1 compatible
- ACL support
- automatically detects several common archive formats and adopts to them. Supported archive types are: Old tar, gnu tar, ansi tar, star, POSIX.1-2001 PAX, Sun's Solaris tar (GNU tar supports only one foramt--its own)
- stores/restores all 3 times of a file (even creation time)
- pattern matcher

As you can see, the "tar" format no longer sucks.
Schilling has written a very good comparison between star and gnutar, entitled STARvsGNUTAR. I highly recommend reading it. Another cool document is a listing of bugs in every other implementation of tar. :)

You can grab LSB-compliant RPMs of this at my RPM page.

Therefore the Unix model of tar and then a separate compression program makes more sense - even though tar is such a crusty and wasteful format.

Joerg Schilling, the author of the famous cdrecord, probably disagrees with you. tar has everything you need, and a lot more. The problem is that all the different tar implementations suck. GNU tar, for example, is _not_ POSIX-compliant. 'file' recognizes this and will tell you what kind of archive it is. gnutar also doesn't support very large files.

Joerg Schilling has written an excellent tar program by the name of star. To overcome the limitations of the "other" tar formats, he has produced his own, without any limitations. Features of star that completely blow away anything else:

- fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1 compatible
- ACL support
- automatically detects several common archive formats and adopts to them. Supported archive types are: Old tar, gnu tar, ansi tar, star, POSIX.1-2001 PAX, Sun's Solaris tar (GNU tar supports only one foramt--its own)
- stores/restores all 3 times of a file (even creation time)
- pattern matcher

As you can see, the "tar" format no longer sucks.
Schilling has written a very good comparison between star and gnutar, entitled STARvsGNUTAR. I highly recommend reading it. Another cool document is a listing of bugs in every other implementation of tar. :)

You can grab LSB-compliant RPMs of this at my RPM page.

Therefore the Unix model of tar and then a separate compression program makes more sense - even though tar is such a crusty and wasteful format.

Joerg Schilling, the author of the famous cdrecord, probably disagrees with you. tar has everything you need, and a lot more. The problem is that all the different tar implementations suck. GNU tar, for example, is _not_ POSIX-compliant. 'file' recognizes this and will tell you what kind of archive it is. gnutar also doesn't support very large files.

Joerg Schilling has written an excellent tar program by the name of star. To overcome the limitations of the "other" tar formats, he has produced his own, without any limitations. Features of star that completely blow away anything else:

- fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1 compatible
- ACL support
- automatically detects several common archive formats and adopts to them. Supported archive types are: Old tar, gnu tar, ansi tar, star, POSIX.1-2001 PAX, Sun's Solaris tar (GNU tar supports only one foramt--its own)
- stores/restores all 3 times of a file (even creation time)
- pattern matcher

As you can see, the "tar" format no longer sucks.
Schilling has written a very good comparison between star and gnutar, entitled STARvsGNUTAR. I highly recommend reading it. Another cool document is a listing of bugs in every other implementation of tar. :)

You can grab LSB-compliant RPMs of this at my RPM page.

Therefore the Unix model of tar and then a separate compression program makes more sense - even though tar is such a crusty and wasteful format.

Joerg Schilling, the author of the famous cdrecord, probably disagrees with you. tar has everything you need, and a lot more. The problem is that all the different tar implementations suck. GNU tar, for example, is _not_ POSIX-compliant. 'file' recognizes this and will tell you what kind of archive it is. gnutar also doesn't support very large files.

Joerg Schilling has written an excellent tar program by the name of star. To overcome the limitations of the "other" tar formats, he has produced his own, without any limitations. Features of star that completely blow away anything else:

- fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1 compatible
- ACL support
- automatically detects several common archive formats and adopts to them. Supported archive types are: Old tar, gnu tar, ansi tar, star, POSIX.1-2001 PAX, Sun's Solaris tar (GNU tar supports only one foramt--its own)
- stores/restores all 3 times of a file (even creation time)
- pattern matcher

As you can see, the "tar" format no longer sucks.
Schilling has written a very good comparison between star and gnutar, entitled STARvsGNUTAR. I highly recommend reading it. Another cool document is a listing of bugs in every other implementation of tar. :)

You can grab LSB-compliant RPMs of this at my RPM page.

Waiting for a DVD to rip.

So:

Go buy any old digital camera and try to download the pics on a RedHat system.

Go buy a DVD-R and try to burn a disc.

Go to any old website showing media (RealPlayer, QuickTime, Windows Media) and see how successful you are at viewing content.

Buy a Firewire DV Video Camera and see how successful you are in getting the video off and editing it.

Try to visit a site that's made for IE.
Go to the store and buy a game. (I'll give you these -- VmWare and other solutions are a serious bitch to setup, and don't work well except in certain Distros)

Buy a PDA and get it to synch up.

Your network card doesn't work, find somebody you know willing to come over and fix it. (Huh? If the card is broken, even your God(s) ain't/aren't gonna fix it.)

>The steps to do any of the above in Windows are very easy

Uhhh, sure... I mean, I mean, if you want to have every two or three DVDs come out as coasters (happens with Prassi Primo DVD for me) sure. Or if you want to use crappy outdated camera software that just lets you easily download one picture at a time through a slow ass serial connection, great (Fuji MX-1200). I've never done DV, but Kino doesn't look too hard. Or you can try Cinerella, which seems more full featured and easier.

>When a DVD-Burner manufacturer is swamped with "Uhh where's the Linux Drivers?"

DVD-R in linux doesn't use "drivers", unless you count the built in generic SCSI support built in linux (since well before DVD was available for most PCs) as a "driver". Try saying that about windows. Especially windows 9x...

HTH. And take it from me, there's NO software in windows that lets you use a Celeron 300 to burn DVD-R at 2x and surf the 'net at the same time.

Linux's motto should be "Spend some time now -- Then do more, quicker".

I just know I've seen this particular robot before.

Hello All,

Check out this URL to see how the scorpion behaves in real-world situations:

Pretty neat.

greetings,
Tom

>Huh? What license key? I've been using a DVR-A03 on Red Hat 7.3 for months, and haven't once heard of a need for a license key.

This key. The "dvdrecord" that comes with redhat is a "knockoff" of the cdrecord source hacked to have DVD support. The author that made CD-Record thinks they did a poor job and reccomends everyone use the official dvdrecord, which requires that license key (unless you're a company, in which case you'll need to buy it).

HTH!

>And by "environment table" do you mean environment variables?

Yeah, pretty much. It's all in that readme. :)

Try cdrecord for Windows.

You'll need an ASPI driver, too.

I believe it will whine about some other missing files, like cygwin1.dll. I'll reply with those filenames and more info later when I'm on a Windows machine. Basically, though, if you just want to burn an ISO, cdrecord is simple, once you figure out what options you want to use. It should be simple, though, to put a GUI on it.

When I found out about this at work, I was exstatic(sp?)! It meant I could legally leave the crufty point-and-grunt interface that came with my HP cd burner. I'm also quite familiar with cdrecord from my Linux machine, which helps.

HTH

Try cdrecord for Windows.

You'll need an ASPI driver, too.

I believe it will whine about some other missing files, like cygwin1.dll. I'll reply with those filenames and more info later when I'm on a Windows machine. Basically, though, if you just want to burn an ISO, cdrecord is simple, once you figure out what options you want to use. It should be simple, though, to put a GUI on it.

When I found out about this at work, I was exstatic(sp?)! It meant I could legally leave the crufty point-and-grunt interface that came with my HP cd burner. I'm also quite familiar with cdrecord from my Linux machine, which helps.

HTH

Try cdrecord for Windows.

You'll need an ASPI driver, too.

I believe it will whine about some other missing files, like cygwin1.dll. I'll reply with those filenames and more info later when I'm on a Windows machine. Basically, though, if you just want to burn an ISO, cdrecord is simple, once you figure out what options you want to use. It should be simple, though, to put a GUI on it.

When I found out about this at work, I was exstatic(sp?)! It meant I could legally leave the crufty point-and-grunt interface that came with my HP cd burner. I'm also quite familiar with cdrecord from my Linux machine, which helps.

HTH

RATFOR was the start of structured F77, but is rather obsolete now.
F90 is ok (that's it)
HPF (High Performance FORTRAN) is not a dream, but one of the best cross-platform opensource parallel languages I have ever seen.
take a look at Adaptor

C/C++ is not a language of choice for vector applications, hpf (High Performance FORTRAN) is, although a crockish hack on f90 it's quite usable, we really need some more vectorable languages. I have made an early atempt at a vector unit (GPL now, disregard copyright) Ganymede but that is far from completion and will never se the light of day. Still we need vector processors though. For a good free hpf compiler check out this: Adaptor

CD-R + cdrecord + mkisofs + Image of a DOS floppy and you're "in the zone".

Sarcasm aside though, I didn't see too many other comments (no other modded up) to the obvious conclusion that its the hardware that is increasing in speed, not the OS. I'm sure if they were running Maya on Windows on their new boxes it would kick the old O2s around as well. I'm not sure they would have made the transition as easily, nor could they have made their custom applications so easily either I'm thinking. However, attributing the speed to linux seems just silly.

I've used BSCW to do shared workspace on a relatively large project. You have to consider, though, that my job was managing BSCW, not actually using it, but the people that used said it was great.
All the people involved were at the same state, but some of them were a city away.
BSCW is based on Python and the server can run on Windblows NT/2000 and most U*NIX. The instalation and configuration are really straightforward and the user interface is quite easy to understand.

...and enjoy virtually rock solid and generally full featured burning for free! Not to mention that you get the code.

This was why I made sure I kept a linux box running 24/7 (at first -- now there's many more reasons). Software like Nero (and all windows burning software, actually) wasn't as reliable or intuitive.

I see no reason why the DVD version would be lacking at all (unless it doesn't support your drive)...

Same with compilers --- the open source crowd loves gcc. Hate to step on any toes but gcc is pretty sucky. Yes it is good for retargeting code, but the performance is terrible....

GCC will be going into the crapper as soon as somebody produces a good fast compiler for linux.

The information technology revolution, fifty years old, is an infant in the scale of human affairs. It is the culmination of the 350-year tradition of Descartes and Modernism, which created an explosion of technology that also threatens sometimes to bury human beings in its rubble. The characteristics of the modern PC are symptomatic of this entire trend: incredible power within a narrow technical domain, but also isolation from the world, difficulty of use, pulling of us into it and away from other people, distortions of wisdom by what can be digitally measured. This workshop is part of the antidote. Here we bring together many of the leading practitioners of the twenty-first century world-after-the-PC, a world after modernism, a world that is characterized by technology in its proper place, not dominating, but cooperating. A world fundamentally more spiritual, and more calming, than today. Here at this workshop we must avoid the academic tendency to fractionalize, to divide, to emphasize our differences. We are on a common mission: how to create technology that truly honors humans. The challenge dwarfs our disagreements.

Ten years ago I started on a journey I call Ubiquitous Computing (UC). I am pleased to see that many people at this workshop took some inspiration from UC, and it has been much improved by your many contributions. UC took its inspiration from an anthropological critique of the PC, which said that an isolating, desocializing, distancing technology would eventually change to accommodate human needs. UC tried to anticipate that change by a series of experiments of putting computers into the environment, starting with wall-sized screens, and moving to book-sized and pocket-sized interactive devices. Our focus was on invisibility, at disappearing the "computer" to let the pure human interaction come forward. I must admit to you, largely we failed. Oh, we learned a great deal about user interfaces, radio systems, hand-held design, pen systems, mobile networks, low-cost electronics, batteries, etc, and by the standards of technological excellence and impact we succeeded very well.

Ubiquitous computing is coming to pass, and our work is widely cited. But we did not succeed at creating the invisibility we craved. We did not because we did not appreciate the enormity of the challenge, primarily the challenge of a proper model of the human being for whom we were designing.

From the work of all of us here at this workshop, we are getting closer to understanding the right model of a human being, a model that would teach us how to put technology in the background, invisibly. From my own work, and from reading your work, I get this model: Consider a human being as a kind of iceberg. Above the water, sticking out into conscious attention, are those objects and thoughts of which we are currently aware. Below the surface, rooting those thoughts, is a much deeper foundation of tacit assumptions and knowledge. At every moment that we go about our conscious affairs, we are relying upon that deep tacit foundation. For example, as you read this text you are taking in whole words, perhaps even whole concepts. To do this you rely on a tacit base of visual processing, line perception, font perception, grammar, word senses, and so on. What is below the surface of the iceberg is the much larger part of what makes us smart, and makes us human. I call what is above the surface the "center". I call what is below the "periphery".

Now there are some important characteristics of the center and periphery. First, the more the periphery is engaged, the smarter we are. No amount of conscious working out can replace the intuitions of the expert. The smartest people are the ones who have built up the thickest periphery, and can apply it quickly to new problems. A fully engaged periphery also goes by the name of "flow state", familiar to athletes. Second, we are constantly moving items into and out of the periphery. Millisecond by millisecond what was just periphery becomes center, and then back again. To move perception in and out quickly is a source of great power and comfort. Third, take the periphery away and we are crippled. Imagine looking at the world through narrow tubes taped to our eyes, blocking peripheral vision: you would stumble, and be constantly surprised, and tire quickly. Digital technology in the PC is like those tubes: it presents a view excessively stripped of periphery.

This model of center and periphery leads to a humble view of the role of technology in human affairs. The ineffable complexity of a given person's active iceberg dominates any situation. The role of technology is to fit in, and not just fit in with what is above the surface, but with what is below as well. In fact fitting with the periphery is far more important, because that is a thicker and richer domain by far than mere conscious attention, and it is also determinative of conscious attention.

"Calm Technology" is what I call the goal of creating technology that truly honors the full model of human beings. I like this name because it begins with a word, "calm", that points us inward to the domain where we are truly human, and only secondarily mentions technology. Unlike ubiquitous computing, "calm technology" does not name a method, but a goal. "Calm technology" stands in sharp contrast to the enfranticing PC of today.

When one follows the iceberg down below the surface, one finds not only tacit knowledge, but also the everyday environment. Part of what lies in the periphery is the situation around us, the physical (and cognitive and emotional) affordances of the everyday world. And this is why a workshop on cooperative buildings is at the cutting edge of twenty-first century life. Because it is our buildings that are the primary physical environment of everyday life.

Is most technology designed today to honor the periphery? Is most information technology encalming? Regretfully not. But in the domain of cooperative buildings, we find very smart and innovative thinkers who are taking this step. Many of you will not find the model I propose above new, because I got it in part from reading your papers. By expressing it to you, I want to move us towards agreement on our common challenge, so that at this workshop we stand on each others shoulders, not each others toes. Let us work together to create a twenty-first century of intense calm. Thank you.

-Mark Weiser

====

-Don

Author: Jim Harris
Posted: 11/6/2000; 4:57:21 PM
Topic: Calm Technology

[Illustration of the Dangling String display]

Calm Technology is what I call the goal of creating technology that truly honors the full model of human beings. I like this name because it begins with a word, "calm", that points us inward to the domain where we are truly human, and only secondarily mentions technology. Unlike ubiquitous computing, calm technology does not name a method, but a goal. Calm technology stands in sharp contrast to the enfranticing PC of today.

More from Mark Weiser.

Weiser comments on Dangling String: "Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, the "Dangling String" is an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway, the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being obtrusive."

Check out The Coming of Age of Calm Technology, by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown.

========

-Don

Check out these pictures. This was published at the User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2001) conference last year. It's a way to combine two monitors without the border problem you're talking about. Not really practical at the moment but maybe if a company made custom hardware like this Panasonic dual head. Anyway, I think they've got unreal tournament in one set of pictures about halfway down the page.

I believe that linux cdrecord has to run over scsi-ide, so make sure to use the scsi-ide module.

The following are some relevant docs:

cdrecord They mention something about dvd-r, so it seems that cdrecord can record dvds. They say it works on most unices.

The frontend i use

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.htm l
and the obligatory HOWTO.

Hope that helps

while Zork is getting the theif to do what you can't do yourself.

... are dagrab to rip (mainly coz cdda2wav was playing up), oggenc to encode, and the very friendlyGrip for the frontend. I highly recommend Grip, whatever else you use for the actual back end stuff.

Basically, I was feeling too slack to find out why cdda2wav was giving me grief, so I had a quick squiz thru' /usr/ports/audio, installed dagrab, and was up and ripping within 5 minutes.
God, I love ports.

Another good paper is Mr.Wiger's Four-Fold Increase in Productivity and Quality which can be found http://ais.gmd.de/~ap/femsys/wiger.pdf

How did you SEE the movie and not get this?

Neo represents a hacker Messiah. He was conceived (not in the way we enjoy) to break humanity from the bondage that is the Matrix -- a metaphor for our drab daily lives where everyone has a "normal" job and dresses in dull-colored business suits. The Matrix also represents the idea that the machines we create will eventually overpower us, something I think science fiction has allowed us to contemplate long enough where it will be handled responsibly.

Anyway, enough history and my take on technology and ethics.

NEO may have gotten away from the agents, and empowered himself by freeing his mind (from the constraints of society -- the Matrix), but now he and the others have to help all the other people in the world realize who and what they are and how they, too, can be freed from bondage. Neo sees the fake world in its code form, and he knows that that's all it is -- code which he can manipulate to his will (kinda cool how Open Source comes to mind in that context). Now he must show the people of the world what he knows, and how to empower themselves.

I don't know why I'm telling you this... it's obvious you saw only the fighting in the movie as having meaning, and paid little attention to the dialogue. Otherwise, you would have caught things like these quotes. If you can't Identify with what Morpheus says, you're probably not living your life to the fullest.

Thought I'd contribute a couple of links to the discussion: LinuxDiscusssions.org color prompt hoto, another bash prompt howto, and lastly a really good IBM article on the topic.

Enjoy,
- Lechty

The idea here is to raise the bariers to market entry. Over the last decade, it had become extremely easy to setup an ISP. The costs associated with such entry into the market were vary small. There's even a Linux HowTo for setting up an ISP.

The goal of the AOL policy is to make it more difficult for indeviduals and smaller competitors to grow and flourish in this market. As the saying goes "Keep ypur friends close, and your enemies closer". With that in mind, allow large players to continue to advertise and operate effectively in the market (to avoid such annoyances as antitrust suits) and squeeze small players out. That way you know exactly who your competition is.

Much as in the telecom industry, the biggest threats come from the small operator who develops and provides the killer app/service. It's sough to keep track of such small operators so instead, raise the bariers to entry into the market to such a degree that small operators can no longer compete, while allowing larger players (that are easy to keep track of) continue to compete. This is just good business, and as much as it pains me to say this, as far as I know, AOL/Time Warner is within their rights to refuse advertising. They can do business or not do business with whomever they please.

--CTH