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I dumped my music selection down to just what I knew I liked and started searching for new stuff/styles.

I rediscovered 4ad Records, but now mostly I listen to indie (mp3.com indieradio.org)..in case your curious.

And not to plug them, but emusic.com is all you can download for $9.99 a month and they actually have some good music...

Experience suggests that the scans will be of mediocre quality (missing some pages, missing parts of other pages, frequently having insufficient contrast to be legible, and losing any colour or greyscale information present in the originals).

What type of experiance? The quality of the scans is of course dependent on how carefully they are done. Notice that the National Yiddish Book Center/Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library did just that to a lot of the books, and produced high enough quality scans to make new books from them.

Also, I sometimes scan public-domain books into the computer. I just sent scans of several books to someone with webspace and a preexisting site. If you look at those scans, you may get the impression that the contrast and grayscale was lost. What you probably don't realize, is that those are scaled for the web, at 90 KB for two pages. It's not feasible to put up the original 4 MB scans, and few really care about the difference. I would assume that other projects would be similar; you can get excellent scans if you talk to the person, but they aren't going to waste webspace and bandwidth offering huge high-detail scans to everyone who wanders by.

>PS, PPC chips are 32bits. IBM Power chips are
>64bits but they are actually different from PPC >chips.

This is not accurate, the Linux-ppc64 folks used to run (and still do) most part of the userland in 32 bit mode. Modern Power processors, in particular IBM's Power4 are well behaved PowerPC Book E 64 bit implementations, the only think they lack compared with Motorola's 74XX is AltiVec (which is not part of the standard) see LinuxPPC64for further info.
I don't know if MOL (Mac on linux) has been sucessfully run on Power(3,4) systems, but it looks doable.

Regards
roberto at spock dot cl

What I found of interest at that site was Jorgen's story (and data) of his UFO Magnetic Field Sensor.
.

Having said that, I'd also like to say that I hate the term "electronica", as it really only describes the range of electronic music that MTV and MuchMusic dare to tell you about, and doesn't even hope to cover a wider range of electronic music that doesn't necessarily include techno.

Here are some electronic artists with a bit more diversity:

Genesis P. Orridge (Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV)

Kraftwerk

Brian Eno

Laibach

Nash The Slash

Coil

David Thrussel (Black Lung/Snog/Soma)

Pieter Bourke

Boards Of Canada

David Kristian

cEvin key (Skinny Puppy/Download/The Tear Garden/and more...)

Brian Eno

Merzbow

CPI/DXM

Tribes Of Neurot

Lab Report

Thighpaulsandra

Atari Teenage Riot

Now that you've got a real place to start, find out who the artists you listen to collaberate with, and who they are influenced by, and listen to their music too. You'll discover a whole new world of electronic music that mainstream music outlets will probably never even hope to tell you about.

...and still be a billionaire, according to the current figures at the Bill Gates Wealth Clock.

But seriously, it's interesting to read the comments here. I think the poster who said that we don't have enough "political capital" said it best. It's a large simplification, but in a democracy, this basically means the majority of people don't want to go. They've got other things they care about more. In the decades-old "billions for space vs. other stuff" argument, other stuff is winning. I would suggest that this will remain the case in the forseeable future, unless the world climate changes considerably, or proponents find a more compelling argument for the general populace than "let's do it to see what's there".

I'm not sure where I stand. I'd love for people (preferably me :-) to go, but it's a tough argument when many people live in abject poverty and the world has many problems. I don't believe these could be solved just throwing 20 billion at them, but I'm sure we could all find a lot of ways to help disadvantaged people with 20 billion. In any case, if someone DID come up with the cash, might it not be better to spend the cash on the so-called Space Elevator? Similar costs have been quoted for that project, and it would seem to me that would bring more tangible benefits for the world. Making access to space cheap would make all space exploration, research and commercial exploitation (including manned mars missions) much cheaper, thus making a greater range of potential payoffs available to us. What do others think?

for those of you interested in bands that promote the distribution of their live material try FurthurNet It's very similar to Limewire in look/feel but only allows the trading of music by artists that allow the taping of their shows (and videotaping as well).

Thanks for the suggestion. I've mostly gone back to listening to my own CD collection, but for a long time I was listening one of the various SomaFM streams, sitting back, coding, and occasionally writing down the name of a new group or album that I had never heard. I have made dozens of CD purchases based on that list. That source is gone now, and the list (along with CD purchasing for the last few months) is frozen with its departure.

Another funny anecdote: While driving (the only time I ever consider subjecting myself to broadcast radio) recently, I actually heard a song I liked. Missed the name of the artist, but I paid close attention to the lyrics to see if I could pick out keywords. Went home, logged in to the nearest P2P network and had that exact song in less than 30 minutes.

If someone would develop a system with that kind of response time, that would allow me to download what I want by the song, I'd pay for that. The RIAA has had at least half a decade to develop such a system, yet instead they have tried to legislate the technology back into Pandora's Box.

This disgusts me to no end, and I think I'm now fed up enough where this will now become a personal crusade for me. These leeches do the public, and the arts no good. They've refused to evolve, so now it's time for their extinction.

Here is their Editorial Forum ...

Right now there is quite a discussion going on. I posted this in response to the topic at http://www.audiogalaxy.com/pages/thread.php?&t=211 83323

====

Do you people not understand? The RIAA is a collective of almost all (if not all) of the major record labels. A lot of the money spent on CDs goes to the RIAA, not the artists. The artists are lucky if the see more than 30% of their actual sales. The rest goes to the Labels and the RIAA. There are very few truely greedy artists. Metallica comes to mind, but I have since come to respect them because they attempted to go at Napster /THEMSELVES/, not with the support of the RIAA (at first). The RIAA is like the IRS, it sucks in cash, keeps a portion for itself and gives the rest to its members and in turn the members give the remaining pennies to the artists. If the RIAA would wake up and start to give more money to the artists instead of gobbling it up themselves, then artists themselves would be after peer-to-peer, and /that/ would be respectable.

So who do I think is to blame for Audiogalaxy's probable demise? Not Geoff et al. I met Geoff last summer, and he was a good guy. Albeit a little too early on the surrender, he and the Audiogalaxy staff were smart to settle out of court so they could have some money left over. If they wouldn't have done this, by the time the court ordered them to do what they have done now, they would have no money left. Pro bono lawyers are like DeLorean Automobiles. Those who know about them wish they had one, but they are so hard to find that one may never even see one in his entire life.

So what's in store for Audiogalaxy from my point of view? First, massive amounts of users will leave, probabaly migrating to Kazaa, which has provisions in its ToS that can /really/ screw one over, not to mention its spyware-laden installer and codebase. Morpheus is too caught up in its wrapper technology to realize what's going on. Gnutella: beware, it's going to have lots of users because of its true decentralization. I have been an AudioGalaxy user since its first public release. I remember when I would have to hop on Napster every now and then because I couldn't find something that hadn't hit AudioGalaxy yet.

Absolute-Logic: I can see from where you're coming. However the RIAA does not realize that they are attacking an invisible monster. If they would stop spending money on attempting to regain money, they would have a lot of money to be firing at legislation rather than lawsuits that may yield a few thousand dollars. Peer-to-peer technology cannot die as long as it is legal to have a computer, have Internet access, and have the ability to write and compile programs. If the RIAA /really/ wanted to stop filesharing, they would need to *sue every single person who owns a computer that has been on the Internet*. Good luck, and perhaps if you were to donate another $100,000 to the RIAA, they may be able to hire enough lawyers to sue a classroom full of college students. At least it's a start...

That may be so in the case of LA, however the city we're talking about is Sydney, which has a substantially smaller population. When you're talking about shutting down the CBD of a city of 4 million people, you're effectively shutting down the entire city. Quoting from the article

It will fly west along Bridge St to George St before turning left towards Martin Place, passing the Intercontinental Hotel, the AMP Centre, the Royal Exchange building and Macquarie Place, at times less than 600 feet above the ground.

Those streets, for Americans and other aliens, are pretty much all there is of what you would regard as the 'city' of Sydney. Most of the major companies in Australia have their headquarters there, and it's one of the busiest shopping areas in the country. Unlike other cities in the world, Australian cities like Sydney and Melbourne have developed with the city centre and the CBD being essentially the same place. And when you take into account that they'll have to close off access to those streets, plus providing parking for crew and unit vehicles, emergency services, catering, security, and so on, it's a hell of a lot of space. Furthermore, there's no such thing as a perfect shoot. They might plan to shoot the sequence over two days, but the chances of actually getting it _done_ in that time are minimal (ask anyone who crews. They'll tell you what it's _really_ like) And because it's a stunt sequence, there's not a crewbie in the country would touch it if the proper precautions aren't taken. We do tend to be a sight more stringent with regard to on-set OHS here. In essence, closing the CBD of Sydney is effectively shutting down the city completely.

Can't wait till this hits stores, after burning out on MMORPGs it should be good to play a "good" RPG with friends again. Also nice to see them supporting the modding community a whole lot more than other RPGs have, with tool set demos [Planet NWN] out before the actual game!

Turns out they do.

I openly admit that I do not fully understand all the issues which Mr. Lawrie is trying to address in his push to ensure that there is a capable, competent, lawful management of the .za TLD going forward. However, I have to ask what kind of response we would see from ICANN... Are we looking at a complete backout of .za? Will this be an across-the-board version of the Usenet Death Penalty or just saber-rattling and name-calling among those involved.
From what we have seen here, it does appear that the South-African Department of Communication has it's head in it's arse, but as an arm of the government, it may be impossible to prevent them from the heavy-handed actions they appear to have endorsed with the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill.
Does anyone have any information on what the ICANN (or anyone else for that matter...) is saying/thinking/doing about this? I for one would be very interested in this. how often do you get to watch a pissing match over a TLD... the mind recoils in horror.

Solar energy is a pratically infinite source of energy, and we have not even begun to tap its potential. Sooner or later we are gonna run out of oil, and solar is the future. this shows that we dont big ugly solar farms to get the same result

The main problem is the terrible efficiency at which the current collection methods operate. It turns out that once you add everything up, you come up with a power/pollution ratio for solar energy which is far above that of fossil fuels.

Sandia Labs Solar Thermal Facilities

DOE Whitepaper

Concentrating Solar Power

IMHO, this technology could be that disrutptive technology (ala GNU/Linux) that could upset the current status quo in energy generation. If these systems were deployed equitorially around the entire globe, it would definitely be a good start to significantly reducing our dependence on non-renewable fuels.

As for solar panels power/pollution ration, I'd be interested in seeing some actual stats. I have heard it stated that there has been an enourmous amount of politics (go figure) surrounding various solar cell efficiency studies sponsered by the DOE since their initial rise to fame in the 70's. The Oil industry has a vested interest in keeping us hooked up to their pipelines.

As with any disruptive technology, there are likely large forces at work to supress it's wide spread deployment. The powers that be have no vested interest in producing non-polluting, cheap energy for the masses. It would shift the power of production away from large industry and back to common man. Of course, this is just my opinion, and I have been known to be wrong.

Also, people like to bitch a lot about the aesthetics of large scale solar installations (of any kind) but they never seem to talk about the blight of fossil-fuel based production plants and pipelines, nor the environmental impact that the latter have. I'd rather have millions of acres of large reflecting mirrors and photovoltaic systems producing renewable clean energy over environmentally damaging fossil fuel systems any day.

EOM

I had used this very chip as an example of the problems of searching with Google in a prevous /. post - I was trying to find electronic forms of the datasheet, and was using it as an example of why I felt Google needed boolean searches.

The really funny thing is, that while this created a bit of a message thread on /., I can find that thread with neither /.'s built-in search nor with Google.

Making fake releases is a tradition many organizations (and /. ;>) follow - go read QST, for example. Why, I even heard Microsoft is getting into the act - they released a fake news release about focusing on security and reviewing their code, but I think they jumped the gun by a couple of months....

The problem is with IE NOT Mozilla. You could be referring to one of two CSS property/values pairs:

• position : fixed;
• background-attachment : fixed;

Mozilla gets both right. IE/Win has no support for the first, and implements the second incorrectly. The CSS spec clearly states that background images should be fixed relative to the view-port and NOT the element box. IE/Win does the opposite. So, why not take the trouble to know what you are talking about before posting nonsense like this?

If you have followed GNU/Linux for the last few years you know that GNOME has long been a stronghold of C, Perl and Python GUI programming. With Ximian's work on Mono, C# seems also to be a language that will see wide use in GNOME. Sun's involvement should also make Java applications integrate strongly with GNOME. But what about C++? Even in the GNU/Linux and Unix world this language has received many advocates and developers. I sat down with Murray Cumming, lead developer on the gtkmm and gnomemm C++ bindings for GTK+ and GNOME to get some information on the status of C++ development in GNOME.

Christian: What is your background and what puts food on your table in real life?

Murray: I'm a freelance developer, though that's difficult in the current market. I do C++ development on Unix, on all kinds of projects, such as protocol implementations, compilers, interpreters, data converters, management systems, and GUIs to make sense of all these. I've lived in Munich, Germany, for the past 3 years, but I'm officially a Brit. I love Munich's healthy outdoors lifestyle and easy-going socialising. I try to put the Lederhosen out of my mind.

Over the past ten years I worked my way up through paper-shuffling, data-entry, typography/design, tech-support, database consultancy, and Windows development. I didn't learn programming at a college, and I still stubbornly believe that it made me a better developer. You have to really care about something to teach yourself in your spare time.

I didn't use any Unix-like systems until Linux was widely available. People forget that before Linux you had to go to University to use Unix. Some companies had big Unix boxes, and the staff who used them generally earned huge sums because they knew how to move files around. Naturally they didn't let anyone else near them.

I've grown to love the control that Unix gives you but I've done hardcore GUI development on MacOS and Windows, so I know there's more to life. Unlike lots of GNOME developers, I know that the Mac is a worthy influence but that Windows gives us nothing to chase.

Christian: How did you get involved in developing gtkmm and gnomemm?

Murray: I was originally just a user, more attracted to the up-to-date gtkmm than the awkward (and then non-free) QT. I did the carthorse work necessary to get gnomemm 1.2 usable and stable, and that's how I learned about the general issues involved.

Then I decided to make a big effort to get gtkmm2 going, when it didn't look like anyone else was going to do it. Karl had the beginnings of gtkmm2, but it didn't build and he was reluctant to show it to the world, fearing that people would expect a certain amount of work from him. He didn't have time to do much more on it, but I did persuade him to put it on the gnome cvs. I worked on it gradually, sending progress reports to the list in case anyone was interested, and so that other people could learn too. After about 4 months I understood what it was doing, and it was able to run simple example code. As soon as I reached that stage lots of people started helping out.

Christian: What are the main design ideas of gtkmm and gnomemm?

Murray: We aim to provide the interface that a skilled C++ coder would expect, based on his experience of the language and the standard C++ Library. We try to use the standard language features wherever possible, just as any sensible C++ coder should. There would be nothing unusual about this if it weren't for bizarre C++ libraries such as QT and MFC. Is sanity really a design decision?

It's not really a design decision, but we are particularly proud that C++ allows us to simplify the underlying C interfaces. For instance, GtkTreeView has a great deal of flexibility, but gtkmm doesn't expect you to worry about that functionality unless you actually want to use it.

Christian: Okay, as you told me you made an effort to get gtkmm going, what where your aims when starting out with it?

Murray: I had 2 aims for gtkmm2:

1) Refactor it until both the interface and the implementation were ridiculously clear. I did not want any lingering doubt about the code just because people couldn't understand it. I believe that even a dull-witted person, with enough time, and enough notepaper, can make sense of anything. If he's not dull-witted then he'll make it easier for the next person.

2) Get more developers involved. This becomes easier after 1) when people can understand the code enough to improve it, but it's also necessary to:

• Present a clear vision so people know what's happening. To this end, I make a point of pre-announcing all major changes, discussing them, and announcing my interpretation of the consensus before proceeding. Everybody now understands that that's how we work, and that's why we've been successful. We only have to point to the list archives to justify our decisions in detail.
• Nurture people to get them started. We do this on the mailing list and in the #c++ IRC channel on irc.gimp.net.
• Let people know that their contributions are valued.

I know from commercial software development that money alone doesn't motivate people. In both proprietary and open-source projects, a team can only succeed if its members feel valued and involved in something worthwhile. That requires constant attention, but it pays off eventually.

Christian: That sounds good, so what is the current status of the C++ bindings for GNOME 2?

Murray: We are approaching API stability for gtkmm2, I think. Our code generator warns us about any functions that we've forgotten to wrap, and we are keeping track of API coverage manually too. We are spending most of our time now perfecting and simplifying the complex TreeView and TextView interfaces, and I see the end in sight there too. Lots of people are using gtkmm2 now and the response is overwhelmingly positive.

gnomemm 2 is progressing more slowly, mostly because it's more difficult for people to install all the latest GNOME 2 libraries. While it's still in development. Gnomemm 2 is much more integrated than gnomemm 1.2 - you can even download and install it as one tarball to get wrappers for libgnomeui, libglade, and gconf, among others.

I recently shared the gtkmm maintainership with Daniel Elstner because he's been doing so much good work on fundamental stuff. With two committed maintainers, and several regular developers, the future should be secure.

Also, we just announced support for the Forte C++ compiler that Sun will use for GNOME 2 on Solaris. And we are on the threshold of supporting Windows. Both of these platforms should be of great interest to commercial in-house developers.

Christian: Do looking ahead, what are the future directions of gtkmm and gnomemm?

Murray: For the future, we need to work on more Rapid Application Development stuff. The idea should be to add convenience without adding complication or straying from existing standards.

I'm working on some libglade additions that should make it easier to link custom code with separately-designed user interfaces. libglademm's syntax is already simpler and more helpful than libglade.

When GNOME's Anjuta2 is released, and when I can easily install KDevelop for KDE3, we need to add helper features for gtkmm.

We need to add things such as:

• Application-creation wizards so people can get started quickly.
• An "Add a signal handler for this widget to this class" feature
• An "Add a member variable for this Glade widget to this container class" feature.
• A widget creation wizard.
• A Bonobo control creation wizard.

• Add a class, deriving from this widget class.
• Add a method to this class.
• Override this method in this class.

Christian: OrbitCpp is being integrated to ship as part of the core ORBit2 package. What will this mean for C++ developers working on GNOME apps?

Murray: The Bonobo bindings are progressing well, but until ORBit2's C++ support is merged in, just after GNOME 2, we must supply bonobomm separately. I'm particularly proud of the Bonobo bindings - the lack of API clarity in Bonobo has long irritated me and this is an opportunity to show that it's not really that difficult. I've explained the issues in more detail elsewhere. C++ is the natural language for CORBA, which is inherently object-orientated - CORBA in C was always a freakish idea so it's no wonder that it's difficult.

So this means more people can use Bonobo. And the API clarity should mean that the Bonobo interfaces receive more scrutiny, because people will understand them well enough to criticize them.

We're really lucky that Michael Meeks decided to support our efforts by merging the C++ mapping into ORBit2 itself. It gives it a mainstream future.

Christian: The release of GNOME 2 is approaching fast now, how does the GNOME 2 platform look from the view of someone producing language bindings for the GNOME platform? Will there be any significant design changes introduced into the bindings due to the changed in the GNOME 2 platform?

Murray: Language bindings should now be much easier. The GTK+ and GNOME authors are more aware of the needs of language bindings and the various bindings are cooperating more, particularly with the .defs interface-definition files. For instance, we use James Henstridge's .defs generation scripts for pygtk.

The transition to GNOME 2 has allowed us to make previously forbidden interface changes to the underlying libraries. We developed gtkmm2 while GTK+ 2 was being developed. With gtkmm 1.2, we just complained about problems in GTK+ 1.2, but this time we fixed the problems in GTK+ as we found them.

gtkmm2 (for GNOME 2) is significantly different than gtkmm 1.2 (for GNOME 1.x). Some of these changes are due to changes in GTK+, but most are just lessons that we learned from gtkmm 1.2. GNOME 2 rationalizes its interfaces a lot by deprecating its more crufty stuff, and we make our interfaces even clearer by omitting those deprecated parts completely.

Christian: What are you favourite applications that has been developed using the gtkmm and gnomemm bindings?

Murray: I use Gabber every day as an instant messenger client - I love how it Just Works. I'm trying to persuade Julian to start the gnomemm2 port, even if I have to code it myself.

Cactus's Guikachu is also pretty impressive - it has made me want to do some Palm development.

There's a bunch of specialist apps out there, though not so many have been ported to gtkmm2 yet. I think that a lot of our users are doing in-house stuff. C++ is much more popular than C for that kind of thing.

I have high hopes for my own Glom app. It's meant to be a very easy-to-use database application that embodies my years of database design experience. But I've been too busy working on gtkmm2/gnomemm2 to port it properly. In the meantime, I released a small file utility, PrefixSuffix, which is a pretty good gtkmm2 example.

Christian: What are your thoughts on the future of the C++ language? Will it continue to be one of the major computer languages or is it set to be replaced by languages such as Java and C#?

Murray: In my opinion, Java and C# are much closer to interpreted languages in their design. By this I mean that much more is decided at runtime than at compile-time. I'm bored by discussions of executable speed, but I do feel that compile-time checking verifies designs and speeds development. Java and C# offer object-orientated improvements over scripting languages such as Perl and Visual Basic, but I see no competitor to C++'s feature set. I expect it to maintain its current high level of popularity.

Christian: About two years ago there was a lot of noise around gtkmm and gnomemm, with Havoc Pennington having started the Inti project, and with the leaving of Guillaume Laurent from gtkmm development, after which Guillaume was quite vocal in why he felt that gtkmm wasn't what thought is should be, in fact he called it a 'throw-away prototype' for a GTK+ C++ wrapper. Two years is a lot of time in the software world so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the issues debated on back then, and how you see today's versions of gtkmm and gnomemm responding to any real issues raised back then.

Murray: I wasn't involved in those discussions, but I was annoyed at the schism. I like to think that I would have found an acceptable consensus. Most gtkmm users and developers strongly disagreed with Inti's design decisions so we carried on hoping that we would prevail. We did, and Inti didn't, and it's all history now. Inti died because it never involved a community of hackers, whereas I like to think that people preferred to work on gtkmm's design and felt more welcome in the gtkmm community.

RedHat's whole Inti framework never made much sense to people. Havoc is such a pragmatic developer that I still don't believe it was really his brainchild.

But Inti did create confusion among users, and even prompted one of the gtkmm maintainers to give up. My guess is that Guillaume never really got a handle on the gtkmm codebase and took the opportunity to jump clear of something that daunted him. When I was building gtkmm2 I sometimes felt the same but I chose instead to radically refactor it until it was manageable. I believe Guillaume felt certain anyway that, with RedHat's backing, Inti would succeed and gtkmm would fade away.

Guillaume uses QT now. He has stated that it was more important for him to have a full working toolkit than a perfect API. gtkmm2 will go stable soon - then we will have both in one toolkit.

Christian: What are the main differences of coding with gtkmm and gnomemm compared to coding with QT and KDE?

Murray: I addressed this in my GUADEC talk (1) and (2).

Basically, QT isn't developed publicly so it makes a number of mistakes without the benefit of any real criticism. Chief among these is its modification of the C++ language and the use of its own non-standard string class. It isn't necessary, as we've proved. These are just two ways that we've kept more up-to-date with the state-of-the-art in C++. It's then easier to use gtkmm in combination with other C++ APIs. I believe that you'll love gtkmm if you love C++, and that gtkmm is a better role-model if you're learning C++.

People sometimes complain about a lack of gtkmm documentation compared to QT, but that hasn't been true for a long time(*).

And perhaps most importantly, if you find a problem with gtkmm you can submit a patch or discuss it with the developers.

Christian: What is the advantage of using the bindings when creating GNOME and GTK+ applications in C++ compared to just accessing the C widgets?

Murray: Again, the GUADEC talk mentioned this (1) and (2).

gtkmm applications tends to be more organized than GTK+ programs. That's mostly because it's laughably easy for us to derive new widgets just to organise our code. In comparison, the structure of GTK+ code tends to be defined by the path that data happens to take through the code, rather than the layout of the source code itself.

Christian: What would you say to a developer who is trying to decide whether to write his application in C or whether to use gtkmm and gnomemm and C++?

Murray: I believe it's easier to develop software with C++, even if you're not very experienced, because the structure is there in the code, not just in your head. If you're as good as the GTK+/GNOME developers then maybe you can deal with the underlying C interfaces, but, in my experience, most coders want an easier life.

I'd recommend that people compare the C and C++ versions of the examples before deciding.

Christian: You made a presentation at GUADEC 3 this year. What is your impression of the GNOME community, is it becoming more language agnostic or is there still a strong favouring of C among the hackers you talked too?

Murray: I think people accept now that there will always be active language bindings for GNOME, and many of the core hackers now routinely use more than one programming language. There is still some general Unix-style dislike of C++, but interest has grown as people have seen that gtkmm is very much alive and useful.

Christian: For anyone wanting to learn how to create applications using gtkmm and gnomemm, where should they start looking? Are there any applications out there that you think a newbie would find a easy starting point to look at before starting creating their own applications?

Murray: Assuming that you're already a C++ coder, you should be able to get started easily by looking at the examples and the 'Programming with gtkmm' book. In fact, we have a particularly good documentation overview page with quick links into the manual and the reference documentation: http://www.gtkmm.org/gtkmm2/

We have converted all of the GTK+ examples and demos and added some of our own. I believe it's easier for a C++ coder to understand the gtkmm examples than it is for a C coder to understand the GTK+ examples.

I strongly suggest that you start with gtkmm2 rather than the stable gtkmm 1.2, because we have obliterated several confusing things.

People should also join the gtkmm-main mailing list and the #c++ channel on irc.gnome.org. We are a helpful bunch.

Christian: Okay, thanks for taking the time to talk with me Murray.

Murray: No problem, it was a pleasure.

In the current climate in the US, producing goods and services are becoming incidental part of the operations compared to branding. Naomi Klein's book No Logo describes this trend... "This formula, needless to say, has proved enormously profitable, and its success has companies competing in a race toward weightlessness: whoever owns the least, has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed to products, wins the race."

Dura lex, sed lex translated from latin is
the law is hard, but it is the law

check out this pagefor more translations of Favourite Latin Sayings

Up till now I was trying to rationalize getting a Fujitsu.
Lots of websites on how to put linux on it and it also comes with a DVD/CD-rw. That and 5 hours on the optional battery....

I'm not a laptop guy - they are like infants - although the actual package is small, all the other junk you need to bring along: power supplies, extra battery, mouse, network cord, phone cord, teething ring...
Right now I have a Dell c400 which is small, but still a monster next to the transmeta types.

Oh well, after the recession. I promise I won't waste the next upturn!

"This is something that people elect to have in their homes." Yes, for now. Perhaps, however, the technology will become so cheap to produce, so very prevalent, that it will be V-chipped into every set. Perhaps then, perusal of your favorite programs will be conditioned on you physically sitting there watching advertisements. (See, e.g., this article on LawMeme @ Yale.) And perhaps -- just perhaps -- other, more nefarious uses for the damned box will be discovered. They're doubleplusgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'

Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.

'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but ~more~ merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except for the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.'


Happy Saturday!

Granted the bitrate is shitty (128), but if you really like it, buy the CD.

As long as ripping groups keep on ripping and releasing in IRC 192kbps, high-quality MP3s, I will not buy an eMusic subscription. The underground is far more sophisticated and dedicated than any (current) music download corporation. Once that changes, you can bet I'll look into it. Until then, zerodaymp3.

I live in South Florida, and our situation re public transportation is probably similar. We have it, but would I use it if I didn't have to? No, probably not. For me, the buses aren't convenient. They aren't frequent (both in time and space)enough. Plus, we have room. I'm in the West Palm area and there's lots of freely available parking. It's not a problem finding a spot, and for the most part, the only place you're going to find parking meters is in downtown West Palm. (Parking garages too.) On a side note - Tri-Rail travels from West Palm to Miami, with northward expansion in the works. This is probably the shining spot in our system. (Plus they have really decorative trains. Click and see.)You can go to and from Miami on the weekend for $4. Plus, once you get to Miami, there IS a decent public transportation system. (Metrorail, Metromover, buses) That's a deal you can't really beat, especially since it makes for a really cool day trip.

Will the community embrace this PDA and support it? I find it a bit odd that Gnome and KDE both so throughly support the Palm Pilots; yet, support for the Zaurus is completely absent despite the developer units being availiable since late last year!

Anyone have any news regarding Zaurus Support in Linux??

OPT in on everything is required and a federal fine of $1000.00 per incident of releasing the unauthorized information and every use of it thereafter.

You're opting in by giving them your information in the first place. . . especially since they could conceivably state, "By filling out this form you agree to opt-in to the butt-ramming you will receive at the hands of our marketing department." The only thing that "opt-in" might prevent would be the "We just reset all your preferences" garbage; but even then, I'm doubtful.

Do the safe thing--presume that once your information leaves your hands en route to any sort of sign-up, subscription, online membership, or otherwise unencrypted commercial website, it will become available to the general public--the question is not, "will it be available," but "how easy will it be to obtain?"

"If only they would devote a little bit of the millions of dollars they're spending on this ad campaign to help stop illegal downloading ... but that wouldn't help them sell more CD burners, would it," said Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Now let me get this straight? The RIAA, MPAA and others (through the Disney Senator) want to take away many of the rights that hardware manufacturers have in building their systems. And now they want these same companies to spend money to help keep the horrible music system in place? At least movie stars make money. 99% of artist's don't. Read This article [Salon.com] by Courtney Love if you want to know why I personally don't like the RIAA.

I applaud Gateway for this, and I really hope that this helps bring them from the brink of going out of buisness. I plan on supporting them through corporate purchases (which I oversee). I hope supporting companies who endorse (publically) our ideals will win in the long run

Whats that sound? Thats the sound of every >18 year old rushing to out to cancel their accounts to avoid all 12 year old "suxorsmedonkee" players about to get an account.

They will, in one quick swoop change EQ from a MMORPG to a MMO???.

Oh well, im waiting for PlaneShift or the (really far out it seems) WorldForge -- though it seems the latter is FAR to ambitious to produce any playable MMORPG anytime soon.

The jpeg2000 page that both links in the story refer to has not been updated in a while, as can be seen by going to the wayback machine page and typing in the url to get the revision history. The current page seems to have been last updated in October 2001. And this last edit seems little more than a book ad and background color change:) How is the statement "These free plug-in's are expected to be available later this year." backed up?

You must of been going to the wrong site Slashdot is built on open-source so it can never break and crash like propietary solutions

We could start with the companies listed at the MPAA:

Walt Disney Company;
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.;
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.;
Paramount Pictures Corporation;
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.;
Universal Studios, Inc.; and
Warner Bros.

...and the huge list of companies at the RIAA.

Quoth:

If such a message came from a company with not a bad reputation (winamp comes to mind), i would install the program

I guess you didn't realize that Winamp is Nullsoft is America Online whom is also the proud owner of Time Warner, among other things.

Is there really a reason to go about trusting, implicitly, this "winamp" organization of which you speak?

You should have included a link. Remember most people read at 1 or 2. Not many read at 0 or -1.

They didn't remove the site its still at Xenu.net. They used a cunning battle tactic ... remove the idea that there is more information.
As we all know the search engines are how the majority of the web pages are found, and yet there is still approx. 90% to 95% of the web(can't remember exact stat) left to the black ether of the unknown.

Somewhere else, on this site, Scientology has been accused of using their large network of sites and members to do the same thing, driving searches for "Scientology" and related words to their own sites rather than those of debunkers. Again, this takes a large and concerted effort, which is a virtue of Google rather than a vice.

It doesn't seem to be working very well. A Google search for "scientology fraud" returns everything else but the official Scientology homepage (at least on the first page). Still working...

That being said, I would hate for Google to become useless.

Why don't we just turn the rest of the stars on their flag black? After all, what's another half a $billion?

In response to slashdot making their service pay only I have established my own news site. We will truely bring you STUFF THAT MATTERS. We have our finger on the PULSE of the INTERNET COMMUNITY and we will BRING IT TO YOU FOR REAL DAWG. And best of all it is 100% free! No hidden charges! go now slashdot 2.0!

It's a well known fact that Apple, since its inception, has been a haven for "free thinkers" and "progressive thought," heralded by none other than famous acid-tripping Steve Jobs and his hippy buddies from California. It was on one of the famous beach parties, notorious for getting out of hand, that Clarus was born.

It was a balmy night in August, 1983, that Jobs held yet another beach party, this one with a special theme: who could come up with a mascot for the Mac development team? Of course the Apple II team was there and tensions, as always, were high. That didn't deter the Mac team from bringing their "pet," Clara, a cow they'd been raising on the Apple campus since birth.

Clara was birthed by the Mac team when they'd held a party on the Apple campus and had hired a bull-breeder as entertainment. All night long, the bull-breeder studded Hercules, his prize bull, with an assortment of cows. As the festivities continued on throughout the night, a strange moaning was coming from one of the trailers. One of the cows he'd brought with him was, unbeknownst to the bull-breeder, pregnant! The Mac development team, being the resourceful hackers they were, helped give birth to the calf, the mother losing its life in the process. The bull-breeder was so taken by the Mac dev team's efforts he let them keep the cow, which they named Clara.

Now, at the August 1983 beach party, the Mac team lobbied for Jobs to adopt Clara as the development mascot of the Macintosh. The Apple II team, spurned and bitter because of dwindling sales and neglect at the hand of Jobs, had brought their own mascot-- Cletus, a vicious Rotweiler they'd bought from a ruddy-faced streetman in the ghetto of Cupertino for $25. Cletus was a frothing, flea-and-mange ridden terror that barked at the least provocation. The Apple II team fed it raw goat meat and corrupted 5.25 floppies to make it mean. They also kicked it and made sure its chain was too tight at all time. Here at the party was their chance for revenge at Jobs and his favorite Mac development team.

As the night wore on, both the Apple II and Mac teams got drunker and drunker before Jobs called for a company vote on the mascot. What met the company's faces was something none of them could have imagined, however.

In their drunken, stoned stupor, the embittered Apple II team had snuck into Clara's trailer and cut the rear end of off Clara! Drugging her with ether to staunch her cries, they had used an electic chainsaw and cut her back legs and rectum cleanly off and taken them to the bonfire to cook and eat. They'd even fed some to the drunk Mac dev team! After they'd done this they forced their Cletus the foaming Rotweiler into the gaping hole in Clara's rear end. Eating away at his first real meal in months, Cletus became lodged in Clara's colon and couldn't break free. So when the Mac dev team opened Clara's trailer and led their pet down the ramp, they were met with a bloody, gut-strewn mess and a weird, unnatural animal call of "moof!"

The entire company was sickened by this and soon the sand was dotted with puddles of vomit. Cries of "moof, moof!" filled the air as the joined dog-cow trundled terribly along the beach, seizuring with each step, vomiting an icky mass of hair and blood, with a glazed look in its cow eyes. With a final shudder, the dog-cow fell and died, and the party-goers surrounded the putrid mess of bovine/canine flesh. Of course it didn't take long for the Mac dev team to discover the Apple II team's treachery and a bloody brawl ensued over the death of Clara. By the end of the night, the cow, the dog, and the Apple II team were simple piles of broken, bloody bones.

In light of the events that night, Jobs had no other choice to commemorate the tragic events that had unfurled and therefore made Apple's development mascot the dog-cow, "Clarus," a merging of the two animals names-- Cletus and Clara.

And that, for those who didn't know, is the origin of Clarus the dog-cow. Every time you click on a Mac OS easter-egg that utters "moof!" you can look back to the terrible events that August, 1983 night at the Apple beach party that brought you the Clarus, the dog-cow.

802.3 is fixed ethernet, see this page.

Ask HIM.
That's how I found his music, and I've bought one CD, and am going to see him on the 5th at calvin college in GR.

Now, I ask the RIAA, is he losing money because of napster? seems funny that he would write a song entitled, "this is my napster song". You can also check out his stuff here.

just another napster success....
*watches RIAA shake in it's boots*

"Little/Big endian has no effect in the performance of the system." Note the problems this has brought up. And that's just a tiny part of it. And about the idea that the rest of the industry is playing catch-up. SPARC's have led the way in making new things happen on chips. And they have a process that makes more sense and isn't trying to keep things working back to the 386. That was my point. Sorry if I looked like good flamebait to you or whatever you felt like. I wasn't looking for someone with a big ego, I was simply saying that Intel tends to be more about keeping the suits happy than making new cool chips.

There are a number of critical factors in this process that you haven't told us. The issues of display devices, gamma, and implementation details all play an important role in your ability to visibly distinguish between two colors.

What sort of monitor are you using? Have you correctly callibrated the display? What software are you using to display the colors? How does this software deal with display gamma? Other important details include the brightness of the surrounding environment, other windows and such on the screen which can distract the eye and interfere with your visual processing of the colors.

If you haven't already read the books and web pages by Charles Poynton, they cover all the details. Color issues always seem simple, but actually this is an extremely complex and subtle issue. Also, people's ability to visually distinguish color varies quite a bit. A surprisingly large percentage of the population is color blind to at least some portion of the spectrum. Also, display devices vary widely in their ability to correctly display different colors.

Anyway, to sum it all up, I'd be really surprised if you can use any sort of theory to predict whether you can visually distinguish between different colors. Even with correctly callibrated equipment, and experienced researchers, I doubt that your problem is easily answered!

Best of luck,

Daniel Wexler
www.flarg.com

I host a project at sourceforge, and I've been more than happy with the service I've gotten. I have CVS space, ftp space, mailing lists, discussion boards, and web space. And as far as I can tell, they have nothing from me except for some slightly useful information from my profile.

Big whoop.

There is nothing they can take from me. I have the source code. I update my local cvs daily. The project webpage is garbage, and half of the discussions about development are in email. The greatest benefit is that the package I run has been difficult to find, and now it has a 'permanent' home.

I'd have more problems with, oh, say, Comcast changing the TOS. Or M$. Or AOL. When those guys change things, I always get the "I changed the bargain, just pray I don't alter it any further" impression. With sourceforge, I AM A LEECH. I live at the whim of my host.

If they piss me off, it's off to the FSF hosted site. No problem.

Hey, I don't like the VA Systems->Linux->Software scam. I'm part of the gang whinging about the 'post'. And I often question the integrity of folks. But sourceforge.net never promised anything, and they haven't disappointed me yet.

Nothing to see. Move along.

The idea is no dumber than plenty coming out of the Whitehouse (under either recent president) regarding the Internet. Maybe if you knew a little about the EU you would appreciate that this is just somebody's idea and that it would have to go through the European parliement, the member parliments and all manner of subcommitees before it is enforced- and during this time it will be dropped when it is realised to be unenforcable, checks, measures, etc. are cool, things like the DMCA suggest the Europeans might be ahead here...

Oh, and when you say the EU should build it's own Internet do you mean GEANT, The Fastest Backbone on Earth? :-)

.NET has distinctions between managed and unmanaged code. Furthermore, managed code has distinctions between safe and unsafe code. Unmanaged and unsafe code (as I understand things) need much more liberal execution permissions than does safe, managed code. If you want much more in-depth information, you'll have to go to the documentation for the System.Security namespace and look at the api. There is a tutorial on it from MSDN magazine
here.

They didn't answer all
Because

Your comment has too many words (-764E+7)

Read the rest of this comment.....

is weird

goatman
sings!

I love pinball, always have. Been playing it since the 70's when arcades were dimly lit, grungy holes in the side hallways of malls [or the basements of bowling alleys] where the walls were covered in carpet to cut the noise.

The silverball has always won my heart, because - if your good . you can play for hours. Robotron, great game - but I remember overhearing an operator at my local arcade say 'Yeah .. crank that difficulty up .. all the way' on saturday. At least with a pinball machine .. you saw what you were up against.

As for their demise .. well .. Cleaning and maintaing them really is a labor of love. As more and more arcades became huge chains, with corporate # employees, they cared less and less about the machines. The individual arcade operator had to buy their own machines, so they took care of their investment. The kids making $4.25 an hour in the 80's couldn't be bothered.

And lets face it .. I own five machines (kept in my basement) all mid 90's games .. and they are a PAIN to keep clean sometimes. My Attack from mars EATS bulbs.

But two real kickers helped put the nail in the coffin I think :

Street Fighter II, and WMS' reaction to it.

Street Fighter II was a phenenomon (With mortal Kombat on its heels). A $3000 arcade machine (about the same price as a new Pin at the time) was making $2000-$3000 in coins a week, EASY ! Never before had a machine been able to pay for *ITSELF* in a single week of operation .. when you included in the costs of 2 new joysticks a month (and 2-3 buttons) your still WELL into the black.

This put a lot of $$ in a lot of operator's pockets .. whom .. I must say .. probally didn't deserve it. Business wise i mean. If 'bill's arcade' is run by Bill , a guy who pays for his girlfriend's car out of the till - then wonders why he cant pay rent - we'll its no surprise when he goes out of business. Now all the Bill's of the world have 1/2 a dozen street fighter machines that are giving them phat cash every week- and can hold on. Do they buy different machines, and revitalize their arcades ? no .. they buy more Street Fighter Machines .. after all THATS their cash cow. [forgetting the pinball machines that kept them afloat before SF II came along]

[this same phenonomin happened with Comic Book shops in the early 90's with Magic Cards - Many hole in the wall shops that should have died - we're given free 'fad' $$ .. and did stupid things .. like 50% discounts, or whatever to try to keep up with all the idiots making a quick buck out of their garage because the $$ was good. The closest example today would be the folks on E-Bay that were selling X-Box Boxes, easy $$ .. once one managed it .. about 60 other people jumped on the bandwagon in about 10 mins.]

WMS' reaction to this was 'we gotta make pinball machines *MORE* fun !! Twilight zone, the ungodly beast that it is .. has MORE stuff stuck on it (breakable stuff mind you!) than almost any other pin. They made GREAT $$ for operators, while they worked. Thats the key phraze, while they worked. As Bally,Williams and Bally/Williams put more and more 'gimmics' on the machines (talking heads anyone?) they broke easier and easier.

Of course that cost more .. so pin prices went up, thats one of the REAL kickers, to compeate with cheap video games .. pins started to cost more. Mid - late 90's .. running out of cash .. they got back to the basics. Compeating on price of machine rather than interest level. and *POW* they started making $$ again. Attack from Mars was HUGELY successful [just TRY to find one with a decent playfield .. i was damn lucky with mine.] and it was a stripped (narrow) playfield.

The end all though .. was a business decision. Do you manufature 'fruit' machines ? [for casinos] that you can sell for $12-15k a pop by the hundred ? or pinball machines where the manufacture count is 1,000-2,000 machines that sell for under $4k each ?.

At least we still got Stern pinball .. trying .. Hopefully Monopoly will dig them out of the hole their last few games put them in. [it plays more like a bally/williams machine than any of their previous tries.

Nothing.

1986 - Sperry and Burroughs merge to form Unisys Corporation. Sperry introduces 2200 Series, forerunner of the current ClearPath HMP IX system.

In 1982, Sperry had something called OS1100

And Burroughs had A-Series mainframes running an OS called...


wait for it...







MCP!
I kid you not!

It's quite possible to recover files, because, much like PCs nothing actually gets 'deleted'. The inode is marked as 'available for reuse' and removed from the directory entry, but doesn't actually remove anything.
Looking for an undelete? Take a look at the coroners toolkit. There's even instructions on how to recover files from a unix partition (any unix). It's one of those ones which you'd _really_ need to recover the data because it's hard work and a pain, but it is possible.
I don't recall seeing and 'write with zeros' program for Unix. I guess there must be some out there, since at a guess it's fairly trivial. (would dding /dev/zero over a file just prior to erasing it work?)
Of course, there's always disk analysis with an electron microscope, which I've always heard was possible but it's not one I've ever had substantiated.

", but the truth is, that's only true if you can see the one's and zero's yourself, and there aren't many of them.

Otherwise, you're using a device to copy it.
It's like prohibition.
"Pshaw, how can they prohibit ALCOHOL? I can make it myself using nothing but widely available, cheap-priced hardware from the grocery store. Heck, I could grow my own wheat and produce it from that."
Well guess what?
I'm 18 years old, and if I were living in Boston, I would have a great deal of difficulty buying alcohol. Like, to the point that I couldn't do it without someone's help, or without doing something like physically stealing it out of the store. And I'm on the resourceful side.

The fact is, if laws say "New law. Every digital device must now have one bit attached to the end of each packet, or for a stream, one bit every three bytes, even at the cost of special translators on each end of the line. Is your keyboard non-compliant? Then you need a translator before it hits the PS2 slot, so that if your keyboard sets the non-copy bit, it stays set.
Translate that bit across anything that moves stuff. Keep track of that bit in your file system. Have it completely transparent to everything, just an extra bit. And if it's set to 1 at any point down the chain, don't copy it to anything marked a file system."
Sure, hackers can circumvent this. I'm 18, and I know enough programming to grep my kernel source for "copy bit" and insert a few //'s in choice places before recompiling.
Sure this is "trivial", but so is "growing marijuana." I bet you're allowed to own marijuana seeds (hemp seeds?) if you don't grow the plant and don't distribute it. I bet it'll be the same way with kernel source. (Can have it, as long as you don't modify it to get rid of the copy bit.)

Last time the word marijauna showed up in a slashdot article? Never.

We're not complaining.

So let's not complain.

Paul T.

preemptively spelled a la Taco.


Note: this post done as AC because I can't log in to change my password without having it appear plaintext in the URL. Do you people have ANY idea what it's like to see your password plaintext? In the URL? Damn near gives me a heart attack. Same thing when a site "helpfully" sends me an e-post card with it in bright letters:
Username: whatever
Password: tipx9pa
Gah!! It's like having your housekeys mailed to you in a very, very thin envelope.
Of course, it doesn't help if you use 7-word diceware phrases for every password, which have 128 bits of entropy and are such a pain to generate and to remember that you make just one and use it on everything from slashdot to your encrypted file system. 128 bits of entropy. Unbreakable. Until it appears in the URL. And in the came-from logs of whatever site I visit next. And all over the local filesystem of wherever I log in with netscape or I.E. at a computer other than my own. Gah again! (Note: one trick I've learned is that if you want to permanently get rid of all traces of what URL's you've visited in netscape or I.E., simply run your filesystem through a few passes from dev/random. Here's linux on a floppy. for you to boot the target computer off of.)