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Why the hell didn't anyone ever build deathmatch pinball machines? I mean, if airhockey was popular, why not that? That was one of the coolest console games of its time.

Actually, there were a few of these made. Here's some links:

Joust by Williams

U SA Football by Alvin G.

I'm sure there were some others, but these are enough to make you drool :-)

Why the hell didn't anyone ever build deathmatch pinball machines? I mean, if airhockey was popular, why not that? That was one of the coolest console games of its time.

Actually, there were a few of these made. Here's some links:

Joust by Williams

U SA Football by Alvin G.

I'm sure there were some others, but these are enough to make you drool :-)

I see a few major reasons for the so-called recent death of pinball. Back when I stopped playing around 1994 due to RSI in my wrists (a combination of typing and pinball messed up my ulnar nerve pretty fierce), the 'art' of pinball was actually at its highest. Funhouse (1989?), The Adaams Family (1992?) and The Twilight Zone (1993) are arguably the best pinball games ever. Deep rulesets that were well balanced and allowed both novices a fun game, while experts had a variety of goals; a sense of humor; and well-laid out shots.

However, all through the 1990's Data East pinball (who became Sega and are now Stern) continued to pump out mediocre games using licensed themes. Simpsons, Jurassic Park, Tales from the Crypt... even up to South Park recently. (I haven't played any of the new Stern games) The game would suck in the average arcade goer who wanted to play a game tied to the latest hip cultural trend. They'd find a game with flippers that were hard to control (compare an early-90's Data East to a Bally or Midway of the same era for "flipper feel"), and had boring gameplay. Thus, the person attracted to pinball for perhaps the first time, would find that it just wasn't that much fun.

Top that with the need of operators to actually *maintain* the games (hahah!) -- something as simple as a slightly weak flipper could ruin a game with the advent of ramps on the playfield, I belive in Black Knight from 1981 or 1982. The longer gameplay combined with the ability of an expert to get a replay and continue playing for free, and operators simply were not making much money in the same amount of time as with the (then) hit chop-socky games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II -- both of which almost guaranteed a new quarter being pumped in every 90 seconds or so, especially during two-player games. When I was good I could easily play for ten or fifteen minutes for fifty cents on Addams Family, after only about one school term's worth of daily practice.

I think the final nail in the coffin was Bally/Midway/Williams's attempt to update the pinball game by bringing in a video monitor for their Pinball 2000 line of two games - Revenge From Mars and Star Wars Episode One. Unfortunately neither of these games were real barn-burners in the fun department and the setup to reflect the monitor obscured shots and made play difficult. They bet the farm on this idea, and it failed.

Fortunately, pinballs still live on. Stern (who made games back in the 70's, and I'm sure earlier, I'm just too lasy to hit the pinball database) purchased Sega's pinball division, and that's it for currently manufactured games. Let's hope they don't continue the Data East - Sega tradition. Some people are starting to make their own personalized games. And eBay has a nice category of pinball stuff, which, as all things eBay, can be both a ripoff or a treasure.

And, finally I have to mention the simulations. I forget the company, but one group put out "Timeshock" and "The Web" (and, I'm sure, more since then) for both Windows and Mac which struck me as very nice and realistic feeling new-style games with dot-matrix display and all. Another company put out a number of originals ("Loony Labyrinth," "Crystal Caliburn," and recently "Angel Egg") that are pretty good, and two reproductions, ("Royal Flush" and "Eight Ball Deluxe"), all for the PC and Mac. I own 8-Ball Deluxe and found it very fun and pretty good physics, and much as I remembered the original. They had also programmed most of "Funhouse," which many were drooling over, but it was never released. The company apparently split into a Japanese group which is still producting games and the American group doing the reproductions which has been dead for five or six years. Anything with Sierra's name and "3-D" on it is probably a waste, it only looks like pinball but sure doesn't play like it. And, surprisingly, the Game Boy game Pokemon Pinball is an excellent little simulation for the $25 it cost and has given me more pleasure than any Game Boy game I own.

not really true.
pike actually goes back to the late 80ties when lars pensjö first wrote lpc.

check the history of pike here.

if you are interrsted in the history of a language and want to enter the world of lpc read some paragraphs about lpc and lpmuds: history, what is lpc
what is an lpmud, lpc servers (the lpmud servers listed there are essentially lpc dialects)
(Profezzorn, mentioned here, is the author of pike)

another interresting introduction to lpc.
(what is said here in 2.1 and 2.2 is essentially true for pike and roxen: just replace "lpc objects" with "roxen modules" and lpmud with roxen and most other occurances of lpc with pike :-)

here the history to one of the lpc dialects.

go back even further and find out how lpc was started in the first place.

as you can see, pike has a very lively history and a lot of background.

greetings, eMBee.
--

not really true.
pike actually goes back to the late 80ties when lars pensjö first wrote lpc.

check the history of pike here.

if you are interrsted in the history of a language and want to enter the world of lpc read some paragraphs about lpc and lpmuds: history, what is lpc
what is an lpmud, lpc servers (the lpmud servers listed there are essentially lpc dialects)
(Profezzorn, mentioned here, is the author of pike)

another interresting introduction to lpc.
(what is said here in 2.1 and 2.2 is essentially true for pike and roxen: just replace "lpc objects" with "roxen modules" and lpmud with roxen and most other occurances of lpc with pike :-)

here the history to one of the lpc dialects.

go back even further and find out how lpc was started in the first place.

as you can see, pike has a very lively history and a lot of background.

greetings, eMBee.
--

I just double checked and Lysator is, in fact, where Roxen and Pike originated from, according to this page, though its exact words in regards to Roxen are "developed mostly by Lysator members."

The world's largest amateur fantasy and sci fi art/writing site is powered by it. Every page is automatically generated by pike whenever one of the thousands of artists on board update their page. The URL is http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se and yes, I'm a member (though my gallery shall remain anonymous as my intention here is not to plug myself though I will say I joined when there was less than 100 people involved) and a voulentier staff member on the webpage.

I'm not sure, but I THINK that Roxen and Pike were created at the Lysator computer club at Linkopeg university in Sweeden, who as you can see in the above link, are hosting Elfwood. The URL for the Lysator computer club is http://www.lysator.liu.se Of course, there's a high probability of me being wrong about that being where Roxen and pike came from.. but I seem to remember that's what someone told me.

The world's largest amateur fantasy and sci fi art/writing site is powered by it. Every page is automatically generated by pike whenever one of the thousands of artists on board update their page. The URL is http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se and yes, I'm a member (though my gallery shall remain anonymous as my intention here is not to plug myself though I will say I joined when there was less than 100 people involved) and a voulentier staff member on the webpage.

I'm not sure, but I THINK that Roxen and Pike were created at the Lysator computer club at Linkopeg university in Sweeden, who as you can see in the above link, are hosting Elfwood. The URL for the Lysator computer club is http://www.lysator.liu.se Of course, there's a high probability of me being wrong about that being where Roxen and pike came from.. but I seem to remember that's what someone told me.

your comment reminds me of a quote i found on this page (discussing duff's device) that said:

"A second poster tried the test, but botched the implementation, proving only that with diligence it is possible to make anything run slowly."

• Robot Odyssey (another RO page)
  An OLD but GOOD 'game' for 8086 computers. It takes some work to run it on modern computers but I HIGHLY recommend it. There's a small comunity of players. This game features logic gate programming as the main gameplay element.
  
  
• Stunt Island
  An odd mix of flight sim, movie maker and event driven programming. Fairly old software, but it has a small 'web community' to share creations with.
  
  
• Descent w/Mission Builder
  Shoot 'em up involing AI robots. This series by Interplay seems to still be arround. This is heavily GUI but construction of symeterical 3D Levels will bring up quite a few geometric math issues, common to 3D game programming
  
  
• Unlimited Adventures
  An old software tool for creating AD&D advantures in the style of SSI's 'Gold Box' series of games.
  
• Neverwinter Nights
  Upcomming AD&D online game, homemade worlds will be a major part of this game.
  
  
• Creative Writer
  (Front Page Jr). Your kids can create a page with this program, then view and edit the HTML manually.
  
  
• Thinkin' Things Collection 3
  Not sure if this is accualy a game. But one of the elements of it is specifically to indroduce kids to computer programming.
  
  
• LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System
  Mentioned in other replies. "Possibly the decade's most important breakthrough in children's computing and toys". Blah! I's just an improvment on Robot Odyssey (copyright 1984), except the program is loaded into a real world robot intead of a computer simulation. Well it's certianly easier to run than Robot Odyssey. Ya know, I am seriously considering getting one of these, dispite being a loyal Technic user for as long as I can remeber.
  
  
• Soda Constructor
  I'm can't put my finger on it, but I'm sure is has some sort of relevence here. If not, well it's really cool anyway.
  
  
• Robot Battle
  A compition oriented game. Different scripts are pitted against each other in an arena to test them.
  
  

Whoops. I clicked on Submit by accident, but thought I caught it in time. Guess not. Read this message instead... :-\

I cannot argue with the lack of functional, friendly editors for
either *ML or its stylesheets. Have we identified a need? Is there a
place for a WYSIWYG word processor which manages the tension between
local formatting and reuse for the user, which integrates and
abstracts away the management of DTD/schemas and stylesheets? Maybe,
maybe not. Does our friend want to post his chemistry paper to the
web, archive it? Does giving LyX an *ML fluent backend accomplish this
goal?

Well, some applications do keep their documents in an SGML or XML
format: AbiWord saves files
with an abw extension that are (according to file)
``exported SGML document text''. AbiSource's FAQ
states that their native file format is XML (and gives some reasons
and a link to their
DTD). A brief example document might look like the following:

<!-- ================================================== =================== -->

<!-- This file is an AbiWord document. -->

<!-- AbiWord is a free, Open Source word processor. -->

<!-- You may obtain more information about AbiWord at www.abisource.com -->

<!-- You should not edit this file by hand. -->

<!-- ================================================== =================== -->

<!-- Build_ID = (none) -->

<!-- Build_Version = 0.7.7 -->

<!-- Build_Options = LicensedTrademarks:Off Debug:Off -->

<!-- Build_Target = /project/debian/abiword-0.7.7/abi-0.7.7/src/Linux_ 2.3.6_ppc_OBJ/obj -->

<!-- Build_CompileTime = 12:48:12 -->

<!-- Build_CompileDate = Dec 16 1999 -->

<abiword version="0.7.7">

<section>

<p style="Heading 1">This is a major heading, level one</p>

<p></p>

<p>So, here we have a basic AbiWord document.</p>

<p></p>

<p>"Say, Joe, whaddya know?" Hmm, no smart quotes.</p>

<p></p>

<p style="Heading 2">This is a second-level header</p>

<p></p>

<p>Some more plain text that isn't particularly important.</p>

<p></p>

<p style="Heading 3">Here we have a third-level header</p>

<p style="Normal"></p>

<p style="Normal">And we're back to normal.</p>

<p style="Normal"></p>

<p style="Normal"></p>

<p style="Normal">Out of curiosity, we have <c props="font-weight:bold">some bold text,</c> and <c props="font-style:italic">some italic text.</c></p>

<p style="Normal"></p>

<p style="Plain Text">This text is in the plain text style, which is kind of like \texttt. Bizarre.</p>

<p style="Normal"></p>

<p style="Block Text">And this text is in the block text style, which I'm guessing is like quotation or quote or <blockquote>.</p>

<p style="Normal"></p>

<p style="Normal">Looks like I was right.</p>

</section>

</abiword>

AbiWord's interface is very Word-like, including rulers for margin
adjustment and toolbars with buttons to open, save, and close files;
appear in multiple columns; make text italic, bold, underlined, and so
forth; and set justification. As such, it's very useful for people
moving from other computing platforms who are looking for replacements
for their commercial word-processing applications, but that also means
that it's not ideal as a structured SGML/XML editor (without a
significant amount of additional work, at any rate).

Other applications, such as Dia, a diagramming
application, save their output in recognizable XML (file says
``XML 1.0 document text'', and the document looks like XML when you
view it in a text editor).

Finally, as I mentioned previously, Conglomerate is specifically
designed to be an XML editor, but isn't really available yet.
Conglomerate looks like an SGML editor -- it clearly shows the tagging
of various bits of text.

In any case, I'm not sure I'm convinced that a WYSIWYG editor is
the best approach -- I think some sort of simplified syntax (such as
that provided by LaTeX) that could easily be translated to SGML or XML
might be a better solution. I like the ideas shown in the screenshots of
Conglomerate because they make the structural and other markup
very clear without the illusion of control that would be provided by
an interface such as AbiWord's. What I think is needed is an
interface that would make the structure and other tags clear, and
allow tags to be inserted by typing them directly (presumably with
some macro features) or selecting from a mutable menu or palette (that
would only present viable options for the selected text or cursor
location). Although I hate to say it (because I hate them), I don't
know that ``wizards'' would be entirely out of place for help with
some complicated constructs.

I do think that you're right to believe that such tools will evolve
themselves into existence, and that, as they do, more and more people
may find themselves using SGML or XML without even realizing that they
are. Time will tell.

I find it absolutely incredibly that a publisher is shooting
plates from 600dpi laser output, although I can probably guess the
publisher.

That makes two of us. I was surprised that they didn't want the
LaTeX source, shocked when I found out they didn't want the
PostScript, and horrified when I found out what they actually
used.

I cannot argue with the lack of functional, friendly editors for either *ML or its stylesheets. Have we identified a need? Is there a place for a WYSIWYG word processor which manages the tension between local formatting and reuse for the user, which integrates and abstracts away the management of DTD/schemas and stylesheets? Maybe, maybe not. Does our friend want to post his chemistry paper to the web, archive it? Does giving LyX an *ML fluent backend accomplish this goal?

Well, some applications do keep their documents in an SGML or XML format: AbiWord saves files with an abw extension that are (according to file) ``exported SGML document text''. AbiSource's FAQ states that their native file format is XML (and gives some reasons and a link to their DTD). A brief example document might look like the following:

<!-- ================================================== =================== --> <!-- This file is an AbiWord document. --> <!-- AbiWord is a free, Open Source word processor. --> <!-- You may obtain more information about AbiWord at www.abisource.com --> <!-- You should not edit this file by hand. --> <!-- ================================================== =================== --> <!-- Build_ID = (none) --> <!-- Build_Version = 0.7.7 --> <!-- Build_Options = LicensedTrademarks:Off Debug:Off --> <!-- Build_Target = /project/debian/abiword-0.7.7/abi-0.7.7/src/Linux_ 2.3.6_ppc_OBJ/obj --> <!-- Build_CompileTime = 12:48:12 --> <!-- Build_CompileDate = Dec 16 1999 --> <abiword version="0.7.7"> <section> <p style="Heading 1">This is a major heading, level one</p> <p></p> <p>So, here we have a basic AbiWord document. Jeez, its spell checker doesn't even know about the spelling of the application's name? That's kind of lame.</p> <p></p> <p>"Say, Joe, whaddya know?"</p> <p></p> <p style="Heading 2">This is a second-level header</p> <p></p> <p>Some more plain text that isn't particularly important.</p> <p></p> <p style="Heading 3">Here we have a third-level header</p> <p style="Normal"></p> <p style="Normal">And we're back to normal.</p> <p style="Normal"></p> <p style="Normal"></p> <p style="Normal">Out of curiosity, we have <c props="font-weight:bold">some bold text,</c> and <c props="font-style:italic">some italic text.</c></p> <p style="Normal"></p> <p style="Plain Text">This text is in the plain text style, which is kind of like \texttt. Bizarre.</p> <p style="Normal"></p> <p style="Block Text">And this text is in the block text style, which I'm guessing is like quotation or quote or <blockquote>.</p> <p style="Normal"></p> <p style="Normal">Looks like I was right.</p> </section> </abiword>

AbiWord's interface is very Word-like, including rulers for margin adjustment and toolbars with buttons to open, save, and close files; appear in multiple columns; make text italic, bold, underlined, and so forth; and set justification. As such, it's very useful for people moving from other computing platforms who are looking for replacements for their commercial word-processing applications, but that means that it's not ideal as a structured SGML/XML editor (without a significant amount of additional work, at any rate).

Other applications, such as Dia, a diagramming application, save their output in recognizable XML (file says ``XML 1.0 document text'', and the document looks like XML when you view it in a text editor).

Finally, as I mentioned previously, Conglomerate is specifically designed to be an XML editor, but isn't really available yet. Conglomerate looks like an SGML editor -- it clearly shows the tagging of various bits of text.

I find it absolutely incredibly that a publisher is shooting plates from 600dpi laser output, although I can probably guess the publisher.

That makes two of us. I was surprised that they didn't want the LaTeX source, and shocked when I found out they didn't want the PostScript, and horrified when I found out what they actually used.

here's that lock picking guide you were talking about.


"Brute force is the last resort of the incompetent." (Ted the Tool, Guide to Lock Picking)

Trolling is the ancient practice and art of being sarcastic, funny, and sometimes annoying. Trolling is said to date back to the 5th century BC, in northern Mongolia. But, back then trolling was punishable by death. Many troll martyrs have sacrificed their lives in their fight for the freedom of trolling. Trolls have a rich and diverse culture in modern times. They band together and fill our lives with wonder and heartfelt thanks to all that read their witty and insightful comments. But, the cuddly trolls have a dark enemy that threatens their very survival. They are the Moddur-Raetirs (more commonly known as the Moderators). The Moderators have declared all out war against the benign, peace-loving trolls. It is said the Moderators are evil creatures devoid of emotions and senses of humor that want to destroy anything bearing those qualities. But there are Rebel Moderators out there that have aquired these traits by trolling spells, and are helping the trolls in their never ending battle. Let us wish them luck.

Here are some troll links:

ustrolls

The boy who loved trolls

Rare photos of trolls

Troll page

Troll Lovers page

• Comparing SSH and SRP is a bit misleading. As others have pointed out, SRP is an authentication method, and while there are applications that support SRP directly, like secure Telnet and FTP, there is no reason that SRP can't be used, say, as an authentication mechanism for SSH.
• SRP is supported by at least one version of SSH, namely LSH-0.9.
• SRP offers the type of security one expects from SSH with RSA authentication (resistance to MITM attacks) with the convenience of standard passwords.

There's an SSH version of NiftyTelnet that's really nice. You can't use it in the US, though, due to greedy patent nonsense.

This means the movie company feels that it has "lost" $50,000,000, which has been "stolen" from them, since obviously no one will ever see this movie in the theatre or buy their own copy again now that someone has managed to play it under Linux...

I quote from "the Bible" on stupid government hacker punishment, Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown, 4:2 and a few pages down... (feel free to read more, it's all relevant--in this case, I didn't even quote *enough*.)


The E911 Document was also proving a weak reed. It had originally been valued at $79,449. Unlike Shadowhawk's arcane Artificial Intelligence booty, the E911 Document was not software - it
was written in English. Computer-knowledgeable people found this value - for a twelve-page bureaucratic document - frankly incredible. In his "Crime and Puzzlement" manifesto for EFF,
Barlow commented: "We will probably never know how this figure was reached or by whom, though I like to imagine an appraisal team consisting of Franz Kafka, Joseph Heller, and Thomas
Pynchon."

As it happened, Barlow was unduly pessimistic. The EFF did, in fact, eventually discover exactly how this figure was reached, and by whom - but only in 1991, long after the Neidorf trial was
over.

Kim Megahee, a Southern Bell security manager, had arrived at the document's value by simply adding up the "costs associated with the production" of the E911 Document. Those "costs" were as
follows:

1.A technical writer had been hired to research and write the E911 Document. 200 hours of work, at $35 an hour, cost : $7,000. A Project Manager had overseen the technical writer. 200
hours, at $31 an hour, made: $6,200.
2.A week of typing had cost $721 dollars. A week of formatting had cost $721. A week of graphics formatting had cost $742.
3.Two days of editing cost $367.
4.A box of order labels cost five dollars.
5.Preparing a purchase order for the Document, including typing and the obtaining of an authorizing signature from within the BellSouth bureaucracy, cost $129.
6.Printing cost $313. Mailing the Document to fifty people took fifty hours by a clerk, and cost $858.
7.Placing the Document in an index took two clerks an hour each, totalling $43.

Bureaucratic overhead alone, therefore, was alleged to have cost a whopping $17,099. According to Mr. Megahee, the typing of a twelve-page document had taken a full week. Writing it had taken
five weeks, including an overseer who apparently did nothing else but watch the author for five weeks. Editing twelve pages had taken two days. Printing and mailing an electronic document (which
was already available on the Southern Bell Data Network to any telco employee who needed it), had cost over a thousand dollars.

But this was just the beginning. There were also the hardware expenses. Eight hundred fifty dollars for a VT220 computer monitor. Thirty-one thousand dollars for a sophisticated VAXstation II
computer. Six thousand dollars for a computer printer. Twenty-two thousand dollars for a copy of "Interleaf" software. Two thousand five hundred dollars for VMS software. All this to create the
twelve-page Document.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

What does CorelDRAW provide that GIMP doesn't (or couldn't)?

CorelDraw 9 is actually a small suite of packages, including CorelDraw, Corel Photo-Paint, a font navigator, a texture explorer, a bitmap-to-vector tracing package and various image distortion tools. So, to answer your question, the functionality provided by CorelDraw 9 that the GIMP doesn't do is vector-based artwork, rather than pixmap. This is still an area of the Linux application base that is not fully up to speed yet - there are various applications which do vector-art/vector-design on Linux, such as Dia, Sketch, KIllustrator, Xfig (ancient but still useful) and it's successor GTKFig, GYVE and Impress but many of these are as yet incomplete or have fallen by the wayside. That's not to say that CorelDraw 9 is necessarily the best vector art package out there - I'd like to see the latest Adobe Illustrator on Linux too - but it is a welcome filling-out of the application base.

There are several things in the Windows package which it will be very interesting to see what Corel do with regards to porting them, or if they are simply ommitted. For example, the MS Visual Basic for Applications scripting language used for automation of CorelDraw 9 - drop or replace? - and the Digimarc Digital Watermarking software, something I'm currently unaware of anything like this on the Linux platform. Plus the usual glut of a thousand TrueType and Type1 fonts you get with any vector or DTP package these days.

Whether Corel Photo-paint 9 holds a candle to the GIMP (I don't honestly know, since I haven't used Photopaint since v5) is vaguely irrelevent, since it is the vector art package in this lot that will probably be of most interest to most people.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both."

Visit http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jon asw/freeware/niftyssh/ for the info and download.

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

It's what Henry Spencer said.

It's widely known.

There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum commonly makes that contention about Scheme, and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.

That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like

Those who do not understand both Lisp and UNIX are doomed to reinvent parts of both, badly.

That still does not deny the historical fact that what is in my .signature is what Henry Spencer said.

I've got a "cookie file" that populates email and news .signatures with random quotes; not all of them are true, at all. Some represent downright falsehoods; the Spencer quote isn't one of those.

If you are feeling so much feeling towards Lisp, then I'm wondering why you're not running Ocelot or SilkOS or NASOS or the rendition of DrScheme atop FluxOS, or, if you're a Common Lisp partisan, perhaps Genera.

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

It's what Henry Spencer said.

It's widely known.

There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum commonly makes that contention about Scheme, and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.

That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like

Those who do not understand both Lisp and UNIX are doomed to reinvent parts of both, badly.

That still does not deny that what is in my .signature is what Henry Spencer said.

I've got a "cookie file" that populates email and news .signatures with random quotes; not all of them are true, at all. Some represent downright falsehoods; the Spencer quote isn't one of those.

If you are feeling so much feeling towards Lisp, then I'm wondering why you're not running Ocelot or SilkOS or NASOS or the rendition of DrScheme atop FluxOS, or, if you're a Common Lisp partisan, perhaps Genera.

Duff's Device

A nice little hack that embeds a do/while loop somewhat non-inituitively in a switch statement. A true C hack. Although the stated purpose was to force the compiler to generate efficient assembly code, I think the assembly would have been more straight forward and clear.

Duff's device

GNUMERIC: Yes, I've seen kspread; and I've seen gnumeric.

There is simply no comparison. Gnumeric is over 60,000 lines of code (counted by ';') and, this doesn't include dialog boxes which are stored in another form. Kast I checked, kspread was less then 14,000 lines of code, and did a lot, lot less.

Gimp: A GTK+ app. It has been bonobized, which is perhaps the most important bit. Gnomifying it would be fairly easy (and, for the most part, not that interesting, as it's already duplicated most of the code needed)

Gnome-db: yes, it is useable. It's also usefull.

Gill: It's an illustrator. Renders SVG.

Dia: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/

Lsh is not really ready for real-world use yet, but it's making progress. It's based on the IETF spec on the SSH2 protocol.

For developers who want to have a look at what's being done, you can have a look http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/lsh/.

The warp paper mentioned in my other post is at

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/doc/alcubierre/


Also there is a news article mentioning some of the ideas at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid _364000/364496.stm

I'm paying some attention to what's going on with gEDA and PCB. Those are programs for electronics CAD. I can only speak for my self, but I guess many people, like electrical engineers, know their "trade" much better than the inner workings of a user interface.

What I am requesting is a general CAD toolkit etc for which you can write (parts of) your particular application as a plugin. One candidate (though I haven't mentionied this idea to their development list) is dia.

--
Borge

I have no problem agreeing that there will be a point in time at which it will prove necessary to start coding; the point is that there are portions of the system where it is downright invaluable to have purely declarative definitions, which means that you've got a set of code on which you can unleash analysis tools that don't need to worry about the Turing-completeness of a full-scale language like Perl, PL/SQL, or Java.

It would be, for instance, a very interesting idea to compose ER diagrams using a diagramming tool like Dia. Dia generates output in the form of XML.

The really cool next step would be to take that XML and use it to generate the DDL code to generate the relevant tables, so that the diagrams represent not only instructive diagrams for communicating information about the design, but actually the code to define the declarative parts of the system.

(Note: ERWIN has the ability to do this sort of thing, permitting one to both generate table definition code from the diagram as well as to generate a diagram based on SQL DDL code...)

You can do that too. Check out GtkMozilla.

A friend asked me whether this was good or bad. I wasn't really sure -- maybe Microsoft wants to roll it into Office or Visual Whatever or something, maybe they'll fuck it up, who knows.

But one thing is for sure. Dia, for any Unix that can build GTK+, is a great tool and in combination with LyX can produce truly professional results (embedding the dia .eps output into typeset LaTeX for that FrameMaker look) for free with little hassle. The architecture is meant to allow Visio-like plugins for transforming SQL to ER diagrams and vice versa, although AFAIK no one has implemented it (I started to look into it and got distracted).

Check it out:

Dia, a diagram creation program

Dia is a program that is quite similar. It doesn't have all the functionality of Visio (yet), but it's early days. Still, I've heard several people swear by it. Check it out.

I guess we now have all the more incentive to hack on Dia, then.

Matthew.

Bork Bork Bork!

Because any company using Linux is on a free media ride.

NeXTSTEP is *SO* Sexy to inspire GNUStep. (where is the Amiga OS clone?)

GNUStep is a window manager, not an OS clone. Here's an Amiga window manager for Linux:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiwm .html

TedC

YOU, TOO, can get in on this exciting new field in the privacy of your own home! Download RealTimeBattle and begin programming your own software robots for battle!

There's a competition scheduled for September 11, so start writing an entry! Compete for bragging rights and proof and language advocacy!

or, maybe not... I'm writing an entry in Haskell, the ultimate language... you might as well not bother. :-)
(just kidding)

I've never set up PGP because it's pointless. Until we get really good IP-level encryption and logically-impenetrable software (yeah, this *does* require that your assumptions are accurate) at a consumer level, PGP is a strong point...but surrounded by thousands of holes.

This is true, but misses the point.

PGP software should be seamless. I may be greedy, but I want zero effort on my part to use it.

You are being greedy. Public key encryption, like door locks, require a bit of effort to use. That said, I found PGP5's plugin for Eudora on Windows to be pretty close to seamless--point, click, enter passphrase.

Speaking of, why are we pushing pgp? gpg is a free, GLP'd implementation that doesn't involve patented algoritms. A much better option on Linux, anyway.

ssh without authentication...I shouldn't have to establish and propogate private keys then when
installing ssh. That would be nice.

The default setup just asks you if you want to trust this host when it seens a key it doesn't recognize. You can always say 'yes' if you want that level of security.

I have to use a remote college box via unencrypted telnet.

That's too bad. You could always ask them to install something safer...my remote college box turned out to have it installed already. :)

BTW, there is a version of telnet hacked up to use SSL (if it's available) which makes a nice drop-in replacement. I've only used the version that comes with Debian, and don't see the original off hand. However, you can get the source here, or read about it here. It requires support at both ends, though, so it's only helpful if the server admin is friendly.

Using the Mac SSH *is* a PAIN. Especially since BetterTelnet is the best Mac telnet, and I don't know whether it supports the same plug-ins that NCSA Telnet and NiftyTelnet does.

Hmm, what do you like so much about BetterTelnet? I gave up waiting for ssh support and switched to NiftyTelnet some time ago. I haven't had any trouble with it. (here's the encrypting version) BTW, the BetterTelnet faq seems to indicate that there is a working plugin, but doesn't say were to get it. That's an improvement over the last time I checked.

Just trying to help you feel less down on yourself. :)

You! Reading this article! Do you use ssh and pgp? If not, why not? You're part of the problem!

If you're not using PGP (yet), drop by http://www.pgpi.com/ and have a look around. http://www.pgpi.com/cgi/download-wizard .cgi will let you easily determine exactly which version of is appropriate for your OS and location. PGP installation is pretty straightforward and there is ample online documentation and tutorials. Not only does PGP become more useful each time a new person starts using it, but the more people we have using PGP routinely the harder it will be to remove our freedom to do so. There's no reason not to use encryption, except for inertia. And I guarantee it's not as hard to install or use as you may be thinking.

Using a nice pgp-aware mailer like mutt is a nice step, too.

If you ARE using telnet or rlogin or ftp, then you have problems now and you don't even realize it. Did you realize that every time you telnet or rlogin or ftp to a remote host that you are transmitting your username and password in clear text? Sniffing passwords is a trivial task, mostly due to the widespread use of insecure protocols such as telnet. ssh is a drop-in, secure alternative for telnet, rlogin, rsh, and ftp. Not only is it secure, but it's easier to use and more featureful as well. On top of security it adds such features as compression, encrypted traffic, encrypted tunnels, and completely automatic and secure X11 forwarding. Plus with RSA Authentication you can eliminate passwords entirely. A cracker can't crack a password that doesn't exist.

Unix users can obtain ssh from ftp://ftp.cs.hut.fi/pub/ssh/ and have it up and running in a matter of minutes. I recommend the 1.2.27 version of ssh (as opposed to the v2 platform) due to licensing difficulties with the v2 platform. Non-unix users have even more options.

For Win32 there's SecureCRT (http://www.vandyke.com) which is an excellent, albeit commercial solution. There's also a very nice, free implementation of ssh which works with Tera Term. You can grab it from http://hp.vector.co.jp/author s/VA002416/teraterm.html

There's even an opensource ssh for win32 at http://www.chiark.greenend.o rg.uk/~sgtatham/putty.html although I must admit that I'm not sure I trust an ssh implementation done by a guy who refuses to implement RSA Authentication.

For Macintosh, I understand that there's a nice plug-in for NiftyTelnet at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jon asw/freeware/niftyssh/ although I've not used it.

There's never been a better time to be more secure. Simply by installing a couple of easy-to-use applications you could be on your way to a more secure, more private computing experience. Your data is yours, and here are two ways to ensure that it stays that way.

Yeah, I ripped this shamelessly from my .plan -- so sue me, it's still useful information...

• EJBoss : Is an EJB server distributed using the ALL licence (the new name for LGPL).
  From their site: As of now we have about 60% of the functionality outlined in the spec. Namely we have the containers in place and the managing infrastructure. However we are missing the entity beans (which are optionals right now). The latest build is 0.04 and is the first public release of ejboss
• XS Server : Is a more generic server, however it seems to be beer free and not speach free IYSWIM.
  From the web site The XS Server (eXtensible Server) is a framework into which a multitude of different services can be put. These services can then make use of each other in order to implement a certain function. For example, an EJB-service would require JNDI- and JTS-services to be available. By building the server in a modular way implementations can be replaced on the fly.
• Gamora : Gamora does not do EJB, but it is a generic server system, that is being actively developed under the GPL.
  From their web site: Briefly, Gamora is intended to be a server to end all servers. The idea sprung from a late night coding session of a server for a Java app when I realized (As I had probably many times before) that I was writing the same code every time. So, I thought, why not provide a framework for building servers that drastically slashes the time it takes to create servers.

Amiga Linux[1] has existed for many years. It was the first port of Linux to non-x86 hardware, and was done by Amiga people who wanted a better[2] OS.

You talk about the essence of the Amiga coming from it's wonderful multimedia hardware and the people around it, and I agree. My first two computers were Amigas and I loved them. However, time has moved on. After Commodore's bankruptcy the Amiga community has been scattered to the winds, leaving only a tiny hard core, and the hardware and OS that made the Amiga amazing in 1989 are now obsolete.

I don't see any reason why we old Amigans should get excited about this, or even any reason to call the new machine an Amiga: it will be entirely different hardware running an entirely different OS. It will presumably have an Amiga-like GUI but such things are already available[3]. If it runs old Amiga binaries it will in effect be running an Amiga emulator but such things are already available [4]

The Amiga was a wonderful machine in its day but I'm afraid it's time to let it die...

[1] see http://lxr.linux.no/source/arch/ m68k/amiga/?a=m68k and http://www.linux-m68k.org/faq/history.ht ml. Although the amiga version wasn't reintegrated into the linux source 'till 2.0 it did exist as a separate project.

[2] for their definition of better, which is not necessarily yours.

[3] http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiw m.html

[4] UAE is written in C and runs under many platforms and OSes.
Fellow is written in x86 assembler and runs only in MS-DOS but is damn fast.
I recommend having a look at one of these. Certainly brought back memories for me

Eudora and Visio are the only reasons to use a micros~1 product.

If you like Visio, you should try playing around with dia. It's not nearly as powerful, but it can do some neat things with network diagrams, and object/class diagrams. I think it's really coming along nicely.

Yeah, Henry Spencer is way cool. Even if you don't count his work on stuff like the regexp package, there's his postings on usenet, notably in the C newsgroups and the sci.space newsgroups. In a landscape dominated by ignorant flamers, Henry Spencer has always been out there very calmly posting corrections. I've had Henry Spencer autoselected in nn for years.

And man, John Gilmore was one of the founders of Cygnus...

Kids these days, they don't know anything...

• Henry Spencer
• John Gilmore

• www.counterpane.com , Bruce Schneier's company, which hosts a lot of info on e.g. blowfish and the newer twofish cipher. (Twofish is an AES candidate)
• NIST is working towards the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is to take over DES' role as the US-government recommended shared key block cipher.
• www.gnupg.org , the GNU Privacy Guard, a free alternative to PGP. (Currently rapidly approaching version 1.0)
• Lsh ( http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/lsh/.) is a GPL-ed implementation of the SSH2 protocols.