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It means nothing, it's only a silly scheme to count protesters. See http://yoush.homelinux.org:8079/tech/632305222316434/comment-page-1#comment-4549

I guess this is what kind of tactics have to be taken in Soviet Russia to protest elections. At least they still do that in the East unlike we...

I really can't praise Gtk2-Perl enough. Using Glade to quickly build your GUI, and Perl to quickly build your logic, it's a knock-out combination. The end result looks just like a gnome application ( using Gtk2 ), and for 95% of cases, runs as fast as well. I liked it so much, I wrote some database classes, Gtk2::Ex::DBI and Gtk2::Ex::Datasheet::DBI ... see: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis/.

I predicted this in my blog on that bastards a couple of days back. Simple solution: boycott them. The world has enough browsers controlled by monopolistic corporations already. Support Firefox.

I find the Chrome interface quite revolting. But what's even worse is the psychotic bitchings of Ben Goodger, former Mozilla developer. My response to Ben discusses the issues he raised.

What a stupid post! What an idiot you must be! Clearly you've never programmed before, as your oh-so-light-on-substance first sentance 'GTK isn't as nice as everyone makes it out to be' has absolutely nothing to do with your 2nd assertion 'Basically what everyone has been doing is talking red hat, and suse and making their product work on that' which also appears to be remove from your arse without any sanitising.

I have written applications and libraries ( http://entropy.homelinux.org/ ) that 'just work' on Windows, Linux and OSX using Gtk+, and I've not any any issues you are attempting to allude to.

Macro support in Base? Hmmm.

I did some extensive testing of Base a little while back. It's OK for very limited use, but let's be brutally honest ... you don't create solid, complex systems on Base.

But people still want to create database front-ends on Linux, and have to use God-aweful web-based UIs.

Despair no longer - I have created a cross-platform, open-source framework to implement 'forms', 'dataasheets' and 'reports'. I'm even part-way ( 30% or so ) through creating a GUI builder to tie everything together. But the libraries are already complete and in production ( heavy use, I might add ). To download / view screenshots or just check out what's going on, it's all on my website: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis/

As mentioned in my blog, I think if politicians are so keen to 'clean up the internet', they should start closer to home, in their own PCs. How many times have we seen Australian politicians in various compromising positions ... 'chair-sniffing', kiddie-porn scandals, and of course Prime Minister Rudd can't even remember his night out in Vagas where he had lap dances etc paid for by the Aussie taxpayer.

Of course this is less Labor's fault than fucking Family First, that bunch of ultra-conservative freaks who openly admit they want to turn Australia into a fundamentalist hell-hole, dissolving the separation between religion and state, and enforce their own sexually perverted vision on 'the right way' down everyone else's throats. Their backers include the Assembly of God nut-cases, who are outright hostile to democracy, prevent their own members from reading any non-God-related material, force their children into slave labour for the church, spread vicious lies about progressive political candidates, and support terrorist attacks on abortion clinics. They're a real piece of work! But on the other hand, it's enlightening to see Labor - the so-called 'alternative' party ( inside the 2-party system of course ) backing this lunacy.

The game has been in development for 20 years

I would say that "in development" is a bit misleading.

The current version, 3.4.3, was released in December 2003 -- 5 years ago.
Since then, nothing.

I counted 423 reported bugs for this version, 405 of them are classified as "fixed in a future release" or "fixed in the next bug-fix release" and still, according to the Dev Team, this does not warrant even a minor release.

Oh, sure, there are unofficial patches but some people like the consistency that vanilla provides. Especially when playing on different servers.

Some time ago I've set up my router to make pretty graphs out of bandwidth usage at home.
This is how it looks so far (javascript req'd): http://rwx.homelinux.org/rrdtool/date.html

It has been reduced to 23 or less actually: http://cubezzz.homelinux.org/drupal/?q=node/view/117

In fact, Rokicki has shown that there exist configurations requiring at least 20 moves to solve. That's why the author said that for any arbitrary cube configuration, it takes 21, 22, or 23 moves to solve it.

Same here. I get a 60/100 on Opera 9.50b1 (i686, Linux 2.6.23).

"Fog shrouds Channel, continent cut off." http://www.stunet.homelinux.org/quotes.html

Yup, I think SQLite is a great alternative against Access, however could someone suggest a good GUI for SQLite with similar properties as MS Access?

No, we need personal database software.

I'm working on it:
http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis
In particular, see the 'future' link.

Last time I used Vista at a friend's place, I was quite happy to get home again and fire up my Linux-only laptop and get back to Gnome / Compiz Fusion. I'm not sure what part of the OS is supposed to be 'dated'. My experience is the opposite. Each incarnation of Windows feels dated to me. My Linux ( Gentoo ) is constantly evolving. There are a plethora of examples of this. On the printing side, the last year has seen major improvements in CUPS, gutenprint and ghostscript. On the display side, the last year has seen major improvements in Mesa, AIGLX and EXA ( and of course Compiz / Enlightenment etc ). That's just a few examples off the top of my head, as and end user.

As a programmer, there have been significant improvements in GTK+, MySQL, and of course my own collection of Perl modules ( at http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis - I'm about to release another round early in the new year ).

I think the problem with the article is that it's written by a tossbag who can't get his head around any software, but is at least claiming to understand closed source software, because of his frustration about not being able to run a Linux desktop like his more intelligent friends. Whatever.

Try my project as as Access replacement:

http://entropy.homelinux.org/. I'm also working on a new website ( with updated screenshots and also snapshots of the libraries ), at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_new.

It's written in Perl, and uses Gtk2 for the GUI. It's open-source and cross-platform, and soon will get a GUI object builder ( click the 'future' link for some screenshots ).

Try my project as as Access replacement:

http://entropy.homelinux.org/. I'm also working on a new website ( with updated screenshots and also snapshots of the libraries ), at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_new.

It's written in Perl, and uses Gtk2 for the GUI. It's open-source and cross-platform, and soon will get a GUI object builder ( click the 'future' link for some screenshots ).

I've been working on my own Access-killer for a couple of years now. It's a suite of open-source, cross-platform Perl libraries, using Gtk2 for the GUI. The old website ( complete ) is at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis/. I'm right now working on a revamped website ( incomplete, but with up-to-date download links and new screenshots ) is at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_new/.

There are 3 main components: a form object, a datasheet object, and a reporting module ( which exports to PDF via PDF::API2 ). I'm also working on a GUI object builder that exports XML for all 3 objects. Click on the 'future' link to see some screenshots of it in action. Note that I'm also looking for developers to help out, and maybe create a commercial project out of it ( I'm as-yet undecided whether to do this or not ).

I've had a number of large, complex production systems built on these libraries in use for about 2 years now. Please try it out, comment, report bugs, help out ... :)

I've been working on my own Access-killer for a couple of years now. It's a suite of open-source, cross-platform Perl libraries, using Gtk2 for the GUI. The old website ( complete ) is at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis/. I'm right now working on a revamped website ( incomplete, but with up-to-date download links and new screenshots ) is at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_new/.

There are 3 main components: a form object, a datasheet object, and a reporting module ( which exports to PDF via PDF::API2 ). I'm also working on a GUI object builder that exports XML for all 3 objects. Click on the 'future' link to see some screenshots of it in action. Note that I'm also looking for developers to help out, and maybe create a commercial project out of it ( I'm as-yet undecided whether to do this or not ).

I've had a number of large, complex production systems built on these libraries in use for about 2 years now. Please try it out, comment, report bugs, help out ... :)

It looks allright (using the static QT version) under XFCE, which happens to be a pure GTK+ desktop enviroment. Stock configuration - i only adjust toolbars and such.

A KDE developer used it and made a patch for arts on his blog. I look forward to what other developers find and fix.

I think BSD ports is the best packaging system.

And for those who think BSD ported portage ...

From
http://axljab.homelinux.org/Gentoo

"Since there wasn't anything going on with Gentoo, Daniel switched to FreeBSD. He liked what he saw. Especially the "Ports" system. And he returned to the Linux world. Along with the help of other developers like Achim Gottinger, Gentoo was back on track & charging ahead. The whole package management system was redesigned & called Portage."

Glad you asked. I do. And I like it. Got a problem with that?

How responsive is your application?

Infrared beamer? Don't they realize that has already been pretty well tested with LEGO Mindstorms 1.0-2.5 and it really stinks? Tell your robot to turn around away from the transmitter, whoops! no more signal!

I much prefer using the Bluetooth of LEGO Mindstorms NXT. That's basically the most important element of the system which makes my web-controllable wireless robot ( http://turbogfx.homelinux.org/legocam ) possible.

Which, by the way, after I spent $91 on 4 500mAh rechargeable 9V's + charger for the wireless camera, is now back online and ready for you pesky slashdotters.

Can you play tic tac toe with it over the 'net?

In a similar fasion that you can drive my LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot over the 'net with live camera?

http://turbogfx.homelinux.org/legocam ;)

Check out this guy's lego robot, controllable in your browser. http://turbogfx.homelinux.org/legocam/ It's got a video feed and you can drive it all over his house.

Your project may be absolutely brilliant, but don't go out of your way to antagonize your potential customers even if your friends also think it's funny.

Sorry. I suppose I could have elaborated a little further.

Axis is a collection of 3 projects:

- Gtk2::Ex::DBI ( forms )
- Gtk2::Ex::Datasheet ( datasheets )
- PDF::ReportWriter ( reports )

They're all cross-platform ( heavyily tested under Linux and Windows 2000 ) and open-source.

The basic idea is that you create your GUI in Glade ( ie Gtk2 ). You then create a Gtk2::Ex::DBI object, pass it your Glade XML file, and it will connect to the table you specify, and 'bind' all the widgets in your Glade XML file with a name that matches a fieldname in the table.

The datasheet module is similar, but instead of creating a GUI and laying out widgets and such, everything goes into a treeview ( datasheet ).

PDF::ReportWriter makes high-quality reports from XML report definitions. It supports unlimited grouping, group functions such as sum, count, etc, intelligent page breaking, page headers & footers, and a WHOLE lot more.

There are plentiful screenshots on the website. All modules are under active development ( ie right now ). All feature requests, bug reports and patches welcome. Check it out :)

http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_not_evil

See my collection of Perl libraries for just such an occasion:
http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_not_evil

No, I wasn't being rude to you either.

The Jackass Project http://jackass.homelinux.org/ on Gentoo fixes a lot of the ebuild and portage problems.

http://asgaard.homelinux.org/top.txt :-(

Why spend that much ($350+), when you can order a dirt-cheap shortwave radio for maybe $40 and just use a simple 455 kHz to 12 kHz adaptor?

SDR is a broad topic. Wide-band digital modes such as the 12KHz wide DRM or even narrow ones such as HamDream are a simple example.

SDR involves a variety of techniques, but the basic idea is using an A/D at an early stage, and performing operations traditionally done with RF components with DSP software instead.

In its extreme, an SDR has a broadband RF amplifier and a DSP.

Some systems use a tuned RF filter before the RF amplifier to improve dynamic range and reduce overload, and others put the DSP after the first analog mixer. Ham equipment that uses IF DSP does this, such as many of the ICOM radios.

Then there are devices that then mix down to somewhere around the audio range, at least to the 0-96KHz or 0-48KHz range handled by many popular PC sound cards. The RF signal is detected by a an I-Q detector, which produces two signals In Phase and Quadrature (90 degrees out of phase). You might notice that this is a decomposition of a periodic wave into real and complex parts, given v=cos(omega)+j sin(omega). Thus, DSP techniques such as FFT can be applied in the complex domain. If you're seriously interested in this math, look up the Hilbert transform. It lets you modulate or demodulate directly in the DSP, and as a result the transmit and receive software and hardware are very similar. (And wouldn't the Professor on Gilligan's Island like to know that you can make a receiver into a transmitter without using coconuts!)

Anyway, once you get the I-Q signals into the two channels of the sound card, you get a view of the RF spectrum all at once, up to the bandwidth of your sound card sampling. So, if you have a 48KHz sound card you get 48KHz of band scanned simultaneously, and can pick and choose what frequency you want to demodulate, and how you want to demodulate it in software (AM, Single-Side Band, FM, various digital modes such as the aforementioned DRM=digital radio mondial). See here and here.

The SoftRock 40 and its replacement, the SRv5, surface mount kits costing in the $30 range, do this. They're an excellent introduction to SDR techniques, without requiring DSP chip programming. People are doing fun things with them. It's not a transmitter yet, but it will be soon with another board and a ham license).

For software, among others, there is Gnuradio, and also SDRadio, a Windows app. And there's DTTSP, a SourceForge project that runs in Linux and also releases a DLL used by the FlexRadio people. DTTSP has a number of front ends in development, in Java and other languages.

A step up is the FlexRadio SDR-1000, alluded to above. It's a 100W transceiver that does the same thing that the SoftRock does, but does a better job, and also use a VFO that allows it to pick what frequency range it operates on, rather than being limited to a particular crystal-controlled band as the stock SoftRock does. It also costs quite a bit more, and they use a 96KHz sound card to get good quality.

I worked out a way to do this recently using Javascript, without changing the href attribute or adding any other attributes to the link. All that is needed is to add two Javascript references in the page head.

The script adds a click event handler to each link found on the page. When the link is clicked, an AJAX-style request is sent to the server, with the URL and link text. Meanwhile the user goes on to the link destination. You can also limit the event handlers to a particular HTML element by class or ID attribute.

Yes, it could be used for nefarious purposes... but from a site administration standpoint, it is useful to see which links are being clicked. It goes beyond just server logs... you can see which areas of your page are most visible or draw the user's attention, for instance.

I posted some of my code for this last month. (This is a link to my site, which has no commercial purpose and does not employ tracking of any kind, including the technique described above.)

I came to RoR with the same questions, having used Smarty for everything I did in the past. It took a couple of online tutorials before I came to the conclusion that Smarty-like templating isn't really necessary, or even helpful, with RoR.

I realized that the views themselves are the templates, and that I could get the same Smarty functionality, without having to learn new syntax, because you can use Ruby as the templating language as well. If I'm not mistaken there's a templating system for PHP (fasttemplate rings a bell) that does the same thing.

It's not too difficult to adapt to, unless you're a little slow like me... :)

Take a look at http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html and http://rails.homelinux.org/

I've also really enjoyed http://poignantguide.net/ruby/

Most of what makes Edubuntu different from *buntu isn't actually relevant for home use. To quote the Design Goals:

Centralized management of configuration, users, and processes, together with facilities for working collaboratively in a classroom setting.

...and the Application Selection criteria:

Target Market for applications - while applications for the learners are required, the main requirement now is for teacher tools, to enable teachers to create teaching content, worksheets, cross words, tests.

So if you ignore the child-friendly artwork (not that it's entirely insignificant), what you have (beyond standard *buntu) is:

1. An easy-install/control LDAP-based network environment
2. A Learning Management System
3. A bunch of pretty basic and standard educational applications - although the Timetabling app isn't to be sniffed at

Unless you're home-schooling (and ideally, homeschooling several families together), or your school is using Edubuntu and you want to standardise on it at home too, this isn't going to be much more helpful to you at home than any other *buntu.

Actually, I have successfully managed to install X windows on OpenBSD using VMWare 4 and 5 workstation edition. It did use VMware tools as well. You just have to follow the instructions found here: http://www.vmware.com/support/gsx3/doc/tools_insta ll_lin_gsx.html(freebsd version) and then the ones found here: http://frogger974.homelinux.org/

With a minimal amount of tweaking, you should be able to get it to work no problem.

I haven't seen any Microsoft easter eggs in a long time. Rumor has it that due to government requirements for software, "Microsoft can't include undocumented features, including Easter eggs, in its software." This started with Windows XP, but I haven't seen Office easter eggs since the legendary Excel 97 flight simulator.

Not like Linux has been any more fun -- I think the printer on fire error was removed at some point. Spoil sports.

Just running some quick, conservative numbers, here is how much Windows boot time is costing my company:

My company has more than 160 facilities with more than 37,000 total employees. Approximately half of those 37,000 employees use a PC to do their jobs on a daily basis, but for the sake of argument, let's just say only one third of those employees use one - 12,333 employees. Now multiply 12,333 times the boot time of 5 minutes (yes, that's conservative) and what do you get? 1,027.75 hours of boot time each day, 5,138.75 hours of boot time each week (based on a 5 day work week), and 231,243.75 hours each year based on 225 working days (which is based on 365 days minus 110 days for weekends minus 30 days for vacation and holidays). And yes, everyone shuts down their PC when they leave for the day.

1,027.75 hours of boot time each day would be $15,416.25

5,138.75 hours of boot time each week would be $77,081.25

231,243.75 hours each year would be $3,468,656.25

Coincidentally, if you want to read more, my research post went up today on my blog (shameless plug).

How old are you?

Overally, in any analyses involving a factor like pharmaceutical enhancements will be statistically confounded with time (and its elements).

One thing that I feel people should keep in mind is that Rails is more than just the scaffolding. After many of the breathless "zero to web in 15 minutes" articles it seems like Rails is no more than a simplistic CRUD framework. While you can go from nothing to a basic app in such a short time, it will be using the Scaffold, which is just that, something to get you started.

After the first few tutorials I read my impression was almost "that's it?" There demo/article Four Days With Rails gives a better view of going beyond the scaffolding, as does the Pragmatic Programmers' rails book.

Then after clicking a few links, I found Fernando Magariños, Ramón Morales López, and Mauricio Hernandez.

I'm sure there are countless others...

Interesting. It's good to see a number of people taking on the project of providing RAD tools with database access.

I have a competing project: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_not_evil

It's a collection of Perl modules:

- Gtk2::Ex::DBI ( forms )
- Gtk2::Ex::Datasheet ( datasheets )
- PDF::ReportWriter ( reports )

It's all open-source, cross-platform goodness. It of course uses Gtk2 as the widget toolkit ( which is now a push-over to install on Windows thanks to a number of people providing single-click installers ).

Admittedly my project isn't quite as polished ( in terms of point-and-click setup of objects ) as TurboGears, but in my defense, there's only one of me, and I've only been programming in Perl for just over a year.

We can outcompete with anybody

I recently switched a project from J2EE to RoR (with a Postgres 8 back end). Rails lives up to a lot of the hype!

It takes a little work to get from some of the simplistic tutorials on the web to larger-scale apps, especially if you are working with an existing database schema as I was. However, I've found that RoR really offers huge productivity gains.

Compared to the J2EE project I was working on, where I was evaluating persistence frameworks, J2EE vs. Spring IoC for the business logic, presentation/templating frameworks, etc., RoR is a one-stop framework. For the most part, everything you need is just there, and it already works together beautifully.

IMHO, one of the real strengths of Rails is Ruby itself. Compared to Java, the syntax is simple, clean, more pure OO, and a heck of a lot of fun to write. It embodies some ofthe best parts of a lot of languages I've used in the past such as Smalltalk , LISP, etc.

Here are some links to help get you started:

Curt Hibbs "Rolling with Ruby on Rails":
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html

Four Days on Rails:
http://rails.homelinux.org/

why's (poignant) guide to Ruby (this one is reason enough to learn ruby...Chunky Bacon - need I say more?)
http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby/

Heh, earlier this morning, I threw up an article on my blog about junk mail - that crap is the WORST! It takes time out of my day to shred that kind of crap. I know a bit about mass mailers and how they work, so I threw this up. I'm hoping some will follow suit. Pardon the shameless plug. The most recent two articles pertain to junk mail.

I've created a PDF'd form letter I add with my return envelopes too which is also downloadable there. Enjoy.

Heh, earlier this morning, I threw up an article on my blog about junk mail - that crap is the WORST! It takes time out of my day to shred that kind of crap. I know a bit about mass mailers and how they work, so I threw this up. I'm hoping some will follow suit. Pardon the shameless plug. The most recent two articles pertain to junk mail.

I've created a PDF'd form letter I add with my return envelopes too which is also downloadable there. Enjoy.