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I use a Nokia N810 for reading. It is a true "mini-laptop", excellent for web browsing, always-on and readable in direct sunlight (of course, E-ink looks much better in sunlight but I can always find a viewing angle that works)

The question: is a pdf reader the best way to read a document, of even to read a pdf? My pocket devices have always had a small landscape format screen (first psion 5, then N810), and many pdf's use ample line spacing and have large margins which means that I have to zoom carefully to make the text fill the screen, and hope that the text still fits there when I turn the page. Even then only a small number of lines is visible. Moreover, with a 400Mhz processor, flipping pages takes time.

What I have always done: convert the pdf to a set of .png images and use a good image viewer to look at them. The (home-made) conversion script makes the lines fit snugly within the screen width and reduces line spacing somewhat.
(Have a look at the same page, in a pdf viewer and as a converted png) Pages flip instantly, no fiddling with zoom settings. Of course, searching and hypertext features don't work.

This begs the question: should a pdf viewer always show a faithful represenatation of the printed page, especially on screens which look very different from a book page? As far as I know, no pdf viewer does what my little script does (identify the useful bits on the page, rearrange them a bit and make them fit the screen).

Of course, any markup language viewer (e.g. a web browser) will do this automatically. But very few books and articles have been published in HTML,and even then, hard line breaks and hard-coded page widths often spoil the fun

I use a Nokia N810 for reading. It is a true "mini-laptop", excellent for web browsing, always-on and readable in direct sunlight (of course, E-ink looks much better in sunlight but I can always find a viewing angle that works)

The question: is a pdf reader the best way to read a document, of even to read a pdf? My pocket devices have always had a small landscape format screen (first psion 5, then N810), and many pdf's use ample line spacing and have large margins which means that I have to zoom carefully to make the text fill the screen, and hope that the text still fits there when I turn the page. Even then only a small number of lines is visible. Moreover, with a 400Mhz processor, flipping pages takes time.

What I have always done: convert the pdf to a set of .png images and use a good image viewer to look at them. The (home-made) conversion script makes the lines fit snugly within the screen width and reduces line spacing somewhat.
(Have a look at the same page, in a pdf viewer and as a converted png) Pages flip instantly, no fiddling with zoom settings. Of course, searching and hypertext features don't work.

This begs the question: should a pdf viewer always show a faithful represenatation of the printed page, especially on screens which look very different from a book page? As far as I know, no pdf viewer does what my little script does (identify the useful bits on the page, rearrange them a bit and make them fit the screen).

Of course, any markup language viewer (e.g. a web browser) will do this automatically. But very few books and articles have been published in HTML,and even then, hard line breaks and hard-coded page widths often spoil the fun

In theory this is impossible.

If suddenly such an überantispyware appeard, that can detect everything better than anyone else, it'll suddenly become "teh new target" that every spyware-writer will try to circumvent. And with so much effort put on this, of course there will be new spyware that won't be detected by it.

Historically the same has been seen with anti-virus software :
- When Thunder Byte AntiVirus was out, it was THE holy grail of anti virus. It had a heuristic (simulator) engine, whereas other antivirus software were signature-list based. While not all signature-lists were able to detect every last single polymorphic virus, TBAV was able to detect even new unknown virus.
- Quickly it became the software against which all virus creator tested their latest creation, and started to design special virus which were able to detect and cirumvent TBAV's new generation engine.

Why not do it yourself with rlwrap?

It's the way readline should be used!

• Producing text mixed with music examples (large ones between paragraphs, tiny ones in-line) is tiresome with traditional music notation packages, involving a lot of copying and pasting between notation and text processing programs. Lilypond-book makes this easy (there is only one source file that contains both text and music) An example: source [knoware.nl] and output [knoware.nl].
• Automated production of different output files from one source file is easy (using a script or a makefile). I routinely produce a violin and a viola version of all my teaching materials. Whenever I change something, it is automatically re-done in both versions.
• Even on a simple PDA one can create a lilypond file (all you need is a text editor and a few kB of memory). I am often away from home and I do a lot of my notation this way, in trains and between rehearsals.

• Producing text mixed with music examples (large ones between paragraphs, tiny ones in-line) is tiresome with traditional music notation packages, involving a lot of copying and pasting between notation and text processing programs. Lilypond-book makes this easy (there is only one source file that contains both text and music) An example: source [knoware.nl] and output [knoware.nl].
• Automated production of different output files from one source file is easy (using a script or a makefile). I routinely produce a violin and a viola version of all my teaching materials. Whenever I change something, it is automatically re-done in both versions.
• Even on a simple PDA one can create a lilypond file (all you need is a text editor and a few kB of memory). I am often away from home and I do a lot of my notation this way, in trains and between rehearsals.

I realise that OpenNap is probably no longer fashionable, but I still occasionally browse it using the Linux Napster Client (nap). It has to be kept up to date though, as various OpenNap changes seem to break it with some frequency (the last was the disappearance of Napigator).

rlwrap is a great program for adding history and editing to braindead database vendors' command line clients (e.g. DB2, Sybase).

The nice thing about w3m is it works so well as a HTML viewer for mutt and snownews. In fact, even on my X11 desktop I keep a w3m window open next to Mozilla for quick lookups.

Ade_
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Well, most user couldn't be bothered but the creator of a distribution will probably be interested. I'd imagine it could be some sort of wrapper, just like rlwrap, (providing readline capabilities to any program by passing the program as a parameter to rlwrap).

• Producing text mixed with music examples (large ones between paragraphs, tiny ones in-line) is tiresome with traditional music notation packages, involving a lot of copying and pasting between notation and text processing programs. Lilypond-book makes this easy (there is only one source file that contains both text and music) An example: source which may not be everyones cup of tea) But after that, producing a new piece of sheet music is really much faster and easier than with the traditional notation packages, and the result is a lot better.
  
  

• Producing text mixed with music examples (large ones between paragraphs, tiny ones in-line) is tiresome with traditional music notation packages, involving a lot of copying and pasting between notation and text processing programs. Lilypond-book makes this easy (there is only one source file that contains both text and music) An example: source and output.
• Automated production of different output files from one source file is easy (using a script or a makefile). I routinely produce a violin and a viola version of all my teaching materials. Whenever I change something, it is automatically re-done in both versions.
• Even on a simple PDA one can create a lilypond file (all you need is a text editor and a few kB of memory). I am often away from home and I do a lot of my notation this way, in trains and between rehearsals.

• Producing text mixed with music examples (large ones between paragraphs, tiny ones in-line) is tiresome with traditional music notation packages, involving a lot of copying and pasting between notation and text processing programs. Lilypond-book makes this easy (there is only one source file that contains both text and music) An example: source and output.
• Automated production of different output files from one source file is easy (using a script or a makefile). I routinely produce a violin and a viola version of all my teaching materials. Whenever I change something, it is automatically re-done in both versions.
• Even on a simple PDA one can create a lilypond file (all you need is a text editor and a few kB of memory). I am often away from home and I do a lot of my notation this way, in trains and between rehearsals.

RGB is standard on most equipment as it is included in the SCART connector usually found on any TV/VCR/DVD sold in the last decade.

...and they still can't make an sqlplus client that supports readline.

Have you tried rlwrap? It effectively adds readline support to command-line interactive programs that don't have it. I've used it successfully with SBCL and other relatively complicated command-lines -- so I'm going to guess it'll work with Oracle's too.

Haven't you ever put a CDR in a microwave? Pretty lights! (I take no responsibility for any damage to your microwave...)

I'm sick of all these smaller and smaller devices. They are ruining the user experience. I think I'm going to go pull out my first portable computer. FYI, if you visit the link, they have a ? next to the year. Mine was 1979.

I should like to nominate SCART connectors as the crappiest ever. Generally made out of cheap thin metal plates, completely easy to bend & distort. Generally overloaded with a relatively heavy cable loom which the connection friction is incapable bearing. French. Ugly. Stupid. Did I say French?

Check out the benchmarks at this site. The scores reflect the time in seconds it took the computer to run a specific sequence of pre-defined events. AMD and Intel are KILLING Sun when it comes to price VS performance.

I'm really not sure what Sun can do to stop the tidal wave that appears to be heading toward them. In the early 90's, engineering workstations were REQUIRED for high-end work such as CAD, but nowadays, you can get the same (or better) performance with a sub-$5,000 machine with a great graphics card.

You might be able to use a TV as the "monitor" -- see here for instructions. Requires TV with RGB SCART input. Gamers may already know what SCART is, but for the rest of you, it means "Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs." SCART is for connecting dissimilar A/V systems together. It's popular in Europe where they have those funny Pal systems :) Here is a little info. And here is some more.

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1. They generate evidence of them trafficking drugs.
2. They generate evidence of them being involved with terrorist groups.
3. They stick a couple large and well armed ships in the vincinity.

I think Sealand needs to operate like swiss bank accounts used to work. No questions asked. They don't do anything explicitly illegal but they don't do any checking into the legality of what they're storing either.

The RIAA and friends have billions of dollars to throw around, they've bought large segments of the government, otherwise DMCA and other anti-consumer actions such as shutting down implementations of algorithms wouldn't happen. How much money do you think it would take to silence the conscience of people who are used to being bought and payed for anyway?