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For a Windows install my choices are :

1. ZoneAlarm Basic - Mandatory firewall
2. Windows Update - Mandatory updates
3. Mozilla - Why would you use Internet Explorer any longer?
4. Winrar - This little program is doing its job
5. Winamp
6. Acrobat reader
7. Putty - An efficient ssh client to communicate with your Linux boxes
8. OpenOffice.org - Word processing
9. Microsoft Office - Sometimes OpenOffice.org can't do the job...
10. Adobe PhotoShop

For Linux my choices are :

1. Update your installation - yum, apt or up2date
2. xmms-mp3 - Enable mp3 playback (freshrpms.net)
3. mplayer - The best video player (mpg, avi, dvd) (freshrpms.net)
4. perl-Video-DVDRip - Add a movie collection beside your music collection (freshrpms.net)
5. CodeWeavers CrossOver Plugin - Enable Microsoft plugins in Mozilla
6. Quicktime (via CrossOver Plugin)
7. Windows media player (via CrossOver Plugin)
8. Shockwave player (via CrossOver Plugin)
9. CodeWeavers CrossOver Office - Run Windows application in Linux
10. Microsoft Office (via CrossOver Office)

• Putty - A free (GPL) SSH terminal emulator
• Winzip - Yeah, you know what this is
• VLC - Free media player
• OpenOffice.org - I should stop doing these descriptions, its not as if youve heard of these things before!
• GIMP for windows - Yup, the infernal/eternal image editor
• Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
• Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port
• Thunderbird - Mail client
• Firefox - Web browser
• Adobe Acrobat Reader - PDF Reader
• PDFcreator - GPL PDF print driver for windows
• MessengerPro (Clickatell) - Non free SMS sender for windows, company does good bulk buy sms rates, i buy 500 at a time for less than $5
• Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot SS - For the essentials in life
• Topstyle - Free version of the excellent CSS editor for webdevelopment, if anyone knows a good free alternative, im open to suggestions :)
• SmartFTP - Great free for personal use FTP client, not found a better one yet! (I have, Filezilla it is excellent AND fully GPL, none of this non free shit, bub. :-) )
• MySQL-Front - Old version of the MySQL windows front end, much much better than the new one you pay for. Source isnt open and the old developer discontinued development, possibly one of the best advertisements for why OSS is good :(
• Editplus - Possibly the best editor ive found, not free im afraid, costs around $25

VLC -, like you mentioned, Free media player is a great media player, it blew me away. Better then Window's media player, and I know that my porno viewing habits are not going straight to Bill Gates.

One you didn't mention is Filezilla which is a good GPL ftp program instead of SmartFTP if you want to try another one out. (I must confess I use LeechFTP since I haven't gotten use to Filezilla just yet, although if you are into hosting files Filezilla is even better).

• Putty - A free (GPL) SSH terminal emulator
• Winzip - Yeah, you know what this is
• VLC - Free media player
• OpenOffice.org - I should stop doing these descriptions, its not as if youve heard of these things before!
• GIMP for windows - Yup, the infernal/eternal image editor
• Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
• Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port
• Thunderbird - Mail client
• Firefox - Web browser
• Adobe Acrobat Reader - PDF Reader
• PDFcreator - GPL PDF print driver for windows
• MessengerPro (Clickatell) - Non free SMS sender for windows, company does good bulk buy sms rates, i buy 500 at a time for less than $5
• Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot SS - For the essentials in life
• Topstyle - Free version of the excellent CSS editor for webdevelopment, if anyone knows a good free alternative, im open to suggestions :)
• SmartFTP - Great free for personal use FTP client, not found a better one yet! (I have, Filezilla it is excellent AND fully GPL, none of this non free shit, bub. :-) )
• MySQL-Front - Old version of the MySQL windows front end, much much better than the new one you pay for. Source isnt open and the old developer discontinued development, possibly one of the best advertisements for why OSS is good :(
• Editplus - Possibly the best editor ive found, not free im afraid, costs around $25

VLC -, like you mentioned, Free media player is a great media player, it blew me away. Better then Window's media player, and I know that my porno viewing habits are not going straight to Bill Gates.

One you didn't mention is Filezilla which is a good GPL ftp program instead of SmartFTP if you want to try another one out. (I must confess I use LeechFTP since I haven't gotten use to Filezilla just yet, although if you are into hosting files Filezilla is even better).

1. Firefox
2. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
3. mplayer
4. Flash and Java plugins for the browers

Windows:

1. Putty
2. Firefox
3. Mozilla
4. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
5. Spybot S&D
6. Flash/Java/Acroread plugins for the browsers
7. WinSCP
8. Cygwin (including XFree86 and Windowmaker)
9. OpenOffice

The only Windows I use is Windows XP Professional as a unix admin in a corporation, so some items may be notably absent. My entire Windows list is software that can be used royalty-free for commercial use )with an obvious emphasis on Free Software).

For example, I use XFree86 shipped with Cygwin for my X server, WinSCP for secure file transfer, Spybot S&D (and not AdAware, which is another excellent product, but would require a licensing fee be paid).

I don't use Winzip at all, since that functionality is built into the explorer interface in Windows XP Professional (don't know about the others), and is also available through Cygwin.

On the occasion I'm visiting a friend who runs Windows on a personal desktop, I also recommend Zinf, the audio player, since it's free software and just plays the music without any corporate spyware tie-ins, eg., contacting a server based on mp3 header fields as WMP and Winamp have started doing.

1. Firefox
2. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
3. mplayer
4. Flash and Java plugins for the browers

Windows:

1. Putty
2. Firefox
3. Mozilla
4. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
5. Spybot S&D
6. Flash/Java/Acroread plugins for the browsers
7. WinSCP
8. Cygwin (including XFree86 and Windowmaker)
9. OpenOffice

The only Windows I use is Windows XP Professional as a unix admin in a corporation, so some items may be notably absent. My entire Windows list is software that can be used royalty-free for commercial use )with an obvious emphasis on Free Software).

For example, I use XFree86 shipped with Cygwin for my X server, WinSCP for secure file transfer, Spybot S&D (and not AdAware, which is another excellent product, but would require a licensing fee be paid).

I don't use Winzip at all, since that functionality is built into the explorer interface in Windows XP Professional (don't know about the others), and is also available through Cygwin.

On the occasion I'm visiting a friend who runs Windows on a personal desktop, I also recommend Zinf, the audio player, since it's free software and just plays the music without any corporate spyware tie-ins, eg., contacting a server based on mp3 header fields as WMP and Winamp have started doing.

1. Firefox
2. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
3. mplayer
4. Flash and Java plugins for the browers

Windows:

1. Putty
2. Firefox
3. Mozilla
4. The Adblock extension for Mozilla/Firefox
5. Spybot S&D
6. Flash/Java/Acroread plugins for the browsers
7. WinSCP
8. Cygwin (including XFree86 and Windowmaker)
9. OpenOffice

The only Windows I use is Windows XP Professional as a unix admin in a corporation, so some items may be notably absent. My entire Windows list is software that can be used royalty-free for commercial use )with an obvious emphasis on Free Software).

For example, I use XFree86 shipped with Cygwin for my X server, WinSCP for secure file transfer, Spybot S&D (and not AdAware, which is another excellent product, but would require a licensing fee be paid).

I don't use Winzip at all, since that functionality is built into the explorer interface in Windows XP Professional (don't know about the others), and is also available through Cygwin.

On the occasion I'm visiting a friend who runs Windows on a personal desktop, I also recommend Zinf, the audio player, since it's free software and just plays the music without any corporate spyware tie-ins, eg., contacting a server based on mp3 header fields as WMP and Winamp have started doing.

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Microsoft Office
3. PuTTy SSH Client
4. WinRAR (will check out Izarc too)
5. WinAMP
6. POPFile, an Email Filter
7. SmartFTP, gonna FileZilla a try though..
8. IrfanView, a free picture viewer
9. NetTransport download manager, also downloads media streams
10. Windows Media Player 9-- its actually pretty good!

Since /. decided to post this story, I guess they really badly want to know what software I use. So here goes.

I only use operating systems that will run the bulk of software developed for Linux and/or *BSD. I'm assuming that compiler toolchain (cc, make, ld, etc.), net utils (ping, ftp, etc.), ssh are installed.

screen (terminal multiplexer)
netcat (tcp and udp from the command line)
elvis (lightweight vi clone*)
Some X11 implementation (usually XFree86)
WindowMaker (window manager with efficiency)
Mozilla Firefox (great web browser)
mutt (fast and versatile mail client)
Gaim (multi-protocol instant messenger)
wget (download over http or ftp)

* I personally think vi is a prime example of horrible interface design, but it proved hard to find a text editor that is similarly efficient and powerful as elvis. I only with they would get rid of the HTML (and Latex?) view mode and just show me the source so I can edit it.

and for Linux - postfix, squirrelmail, screen, apache, mysql, squid, php, courier-imap, rsync, cvs - in no particular order

posted this list at my blog too - First Ten Programs

Considering the frequency with which I reinstall, here's my list for Windows (post-driver updates):

Mozilla Firefox - a must. even if it's not a necessity straight off as a browser, popup blocking makes it worth having immediately.
Trillian - what friends don't enjoy the logging on and off every 2 minutes as you have to reboot your comp for new settings to take place
SmartFTP - as a web developer this is a must, can't pretend to work without an FTP client.
Winamp (5) - I use it for everything media now. I'm an addict.
WinRAR - I know it's shareware but I still like it's ease of use and modifications to the Windows context menus.
Nero - my burning software of choice
ConTEXT - my editor of choice; see SmartFTP
Google Toolbar - unfortunately, I end up doing a lot of testing in IE and without this, I might as well kiss my peaceful browsing goodbye.
Spybot Search & Destroy - not so much of a necessity immediately, but the immunization qualities are great to set up from the get-go
Ad Aware - see Spybot

1. PuTTY (secure client)
2. Cygwin (Linux emulation layer)
3. Gaim (instant messaging)
4. Scite (editor)
5. Firefox (browser)
6. TortoiseCVS (version control)
7. Spybot S&D (malware detector)
   
8. Privoxy (filtering web proxy)
9. Gimp (graphics)
   
10. CacheSentry (to fix IE's cache, in case I use it)

After installing all the appropriate device drivers, the first ten items on my list would be -

1. Symantec Drive Image 2. OpenOffice.org 3. Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 4. NOD32 Anti-Virus 5. PestPatrol 6. iolo System Mechanic 7. WinRAR 8. Mozilla Firefox 9. UltraEdit 10. Nero Burning ROM

1st, the "asker" did not have to specify that he used Windows. To my knowledge, that OS is the only one that needs a booster shot every 12 months or so. Disclaimer: I don't know much about Windows, but I did use it for a while a few years ago. Anyway, the top 10 software installs are very different depending on who you are, and I would guess that you know better than I or anyone else what you need to install.

On windows, can't you just do a print screen or something with the "Installed Applications" section of the control panel? Go through that list and simply put a check besides the ones that you "need" and chalk the other apps as something that was just an experiment. You could also take a look at your "Program Files" folder if thats any easier or different than the control panel.

I also found it interesting what programs you picked to install. I havn't heard of Trillian, Azureus, GKrellM, or PowerDVD. Most windows users throw Office on there in minutes of an install. A small percentage install a more featurefull web browser. Many throw a bunch of games. On a Windows system, I personally had to install VIM, UN*X toys like ncftp, cygnus, Perl, and whatever the latest mozilla variant that does web stuff. Of course Putty so I can go to other machines too. Oh yeah, I also think its necessary for windows to have antivirus software and that antispyware stuff too. (Fun!)

Instead of asking millions of strangers what software you should install on your computer that you use all the time and apparently have been for multiple years to know what kind of maintence that you have to do to keep your system running, maybe you should ask yourself if its really worthwhile to spend this much time annually to do such a thing. I have never reinstalled Solaris, Linux, or anything for that matter besides Windows and DOS. I have only done minor OS/kernel upgrades, its not worth my time to upgrade or fix somthing that is not already broken. I get a new personal machine every 2.5-5 years, and spend about a month or two tweaking it to how I want, and its a pain. During that time I'm always finding something that I missed, and need to go out to download it. I like getting new hardware, but I hate the time spent to get it up to par. So, can anyone else help this guy figure out what software he needs to put on his computer? (Ask Slashdots are getting worse here laterly).

1. Fink - get the GNU POSIX environment on!
2. OSXVNC - get somewhere else
3. OO.o
4. Mozilla / Firefox / etc. - and the plugins:
   • Flash
   • Acrobat Reader
   • StumbleUpon toolbar - it's like having your own personalized fark (not that I read fark, but this is probably why)
5. MPlayer - it handles just about all the codecs
6. WS Manager - Multiple desktop manager. I'm too cheap to pay to upgrade from OS 10.2 to 10.3 for Exposé, even with my wife's educational discount.

• gentoo linux
• FreeBSD
• bash
• vim
• perl
• ruby
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• Apache
• PHP
• links www browser
• wget
• K Desktop Environment
• Mozilla Firefox
• xchat
• gimp
• Openoffice.org

1. Cygwin - get the POSIX environment on!
2. PuTTY - the only terminal I've found that handles colors and stuff right.
3. TightVNC - get to some other computer
4. OO.o
5. vim - I'm not even a VI guy, but it's fast and has nice hooks into explorer and I'm too lazy to deal with registering TextPad or whatever. JEdit's also nice, but way too slow for casual use... I usually go straight to emacs for that kind of editing.
6. Mozilla / Firefox / etc. - and the plugins:
   • Flash
   • Acrobat Reader
   • StumbleUpon toolbar - it's like having your own personalized fark (not that I read fark, but this is probably why)
7. Winamp - get the groove on
8. MPlayer - it handles just about all the codecs
9. MultiDesk - usable multiple desktops for Windows... like getting that 10% productivity improvement for having dual monitors without having to pay 100% more in displays. If only it had a visual pager...
10. Windows PowerToys - because every little option matters

More on Linux and MacOS X later, I guess...

1) 7-zip. Like WinZip but Open source!

2) Mozilla. 'nuff said

3) SciTe. Excellent text editor. Open Source

4) AutoIt. Scripting/automation language for Windows, also open source.

5) FinePrint. Best shareware Ever. N-up printing, universal print preview, extract to image, text, metafile

6) rjhExtensions Add "Copy Path to Clipboard" and "Command Prompt" to right-click menu.

7) IrfanView good freeware image viewer

8) Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1--because I hate 6.0 and GSView is not quite good enough yet :(

9) Microsoft Office.... yeah I know, I know

10) TweakUI

OpenOffice
Crimson Editor (programmer's editor; free, not open source)
Audacity (WAV editor)
CDex (ripper)
Firefox
Thunderbird
Navicat (MySQL admin tool)
MySQL Snap (MySQL backup tool)
Top Style (CSS Editor)
Photoshop (Gimp ain't ready for primetime yet. Sorry.)

That's 10. Next up: WinAmp, WS-FTP, AdAware, and 17 million IE/Win patches.

OpenOffice
Crimson Editor (programmer's editor; free, not open source)
Audacity (WAV editor)
CDex (ripper)
Firefox
Thunderbird
Navicat (MySQL admin tool)
MySQL Snap (MySQL backup tool)
Top Style (CSS Editor)
Photoshop (Gimp ain't ready for primetime yet. Sorry.)

That's 10. Next up: WinAmp, WS-FTP, AdAware, and 17 million IE/Win patches.

Besides what was stated in the news story, and what is grabbed on Windows Update...

Miranda
Lightweight ICQ/IM app with plugin support for IRC/Jabber/etc..

FilZip
Free zip, rar, etc... util

PuTTY
Best SSH client for windows, and it's free

WinSCP
SFTP/SCP Client, free

Crimson Editor
Text Editor / IDE, supports color-coding source code and such. Very handy.

Mozilla
FireFox is nice, but I need a decent mail app and I like Moz for that.

Media Player Classic
Best. App. Ever. As long as you've got the codec installed, this handy thing will play the media files for you. This includes QuickTime, RealPlayer, and even Flash movies.

Nimo Codec Pack
A compilation of video and audio codecs as well as stream switchers, extra directshow filters, and nifty bits. Rather than hunting down individual codecs for XviD, 3vix, OGG, etc... this pack does it all in one operation.

Well, I use my PC as a game box with some browsing only (with SSH if I need to access one of the unixish machines) so here's my stuff:

10 : Spybot Search & Destroy (Excellent spyware killer)
9 : Spyware Blaster (Recommended by Spybot author to run concurrently)
8 : Some form of browser.
7 : PuTTY (SSH client w/ tunnelling)
6 : Thief (awesome game)
5 : Thief 2 (more Thief!)
4 : Darkloader (allows one to run custom fan missions in the Thief games)
3 : System Shock 2 (creepy sci-fi rp/fps)
2 : For those days I feel like a slug-fest? Doomsday and the ol' Doom games. (adds real 3D and all the video card eye candy to Doom/Heretic/etc. A MUST HAVE!)
1 : Half Life You know it! (still has one of the best stories of any game around)

I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird, as it has good, integrated spam filtering, and it runs on Windows!

I have to say, I think web-based customer support is better, when tied together with email notifications to the customer. You can present your corporate image, as well as upsell advertising, and enable them to see precisely what is happening with their ticket.

The project is called Vixen.>

"Vixen is designed to be a Visual XUL IDE similar to Visual Basic, Delphi, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Glade, but for the XPToolkit technology developed by the Mozilla project. The initial goal of Vixen is to allow developers to quickly develop professional quality dialogs and windows without having to write any (or at least much) XUL or CSS by hand. The long term goal is to create a comprehensive development environment for rapid development of XUL applications."

What I want is XUL and GTK-xml to merge, along with Glade and Mozilla Composer. I'd like to be able to drag and drop menus, use table wizzards, define popups and buttons, and then save it as XML, and use it to create the gui for webpages and linux apps. Seems like C, C++, and Java (at least) could be targets.

The layout for a table is just that, the layout for a table. Abstract it, and use that abstraction for *every* table (so merge with OpenOffice's XML too).

Why not go another step, since java is the OpenOffice extension language, and merge Glade/Mozilla Composer with NetBeans?

Ok, now its time to wakeup and come back to reality...the xml for XUL and GTK-xml are (pretty radically) different... but why is that? Why is the xml for a table in OpenOffice different?

*sigh*

• XUL Maker
• Vixen

>Some ppl browse Slashdot while at work

Ask yourself: IS THIS GOOD FOR THE COMPANY?

P.s., you're fired -- the boss.

I'd use Mozilla if I could shift+click and get a new browser window. But every time that I install it, I end up removing it because of little annoyances that happen from my IE habits. I can't expect to make others use it (I deploy many PCs) if I don't do it myself.

That's like saying I'd use Opera or Konqueror, if I could press CTRL-Click and have it open a new tab for the link.

You know you can change keybindings? Look here: http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#keys

Why would I want to run win32 programs? I can't think of one Windows program that doesn't have a better equivalent for Linux.

OpenOffice, LaTeX + emacs, eclipse, blender, gimp, mozilla, maple, mathematica, ut2004, etc. What do _you_ need Windows for?

That's a good idea.

To get around the sticky problem of storing people's private keys, I think it'd be handy if Gmail just took care of the encrypting side of things, and let people decrypt things themselves. (Especially if they allow POP access, as some mail clients have GPG plugins and such.) If Gmail just stored public keys and organized them in a keyring for you, when you sent something to a user whose public key they have, they could encrypt it before sending it on its merry way.

As for not being able to stick ads in the way with encrypted email -- well, I'd bet the amount of encrypted email Gmail gets will be vastly overshadowed by plaintext mail, and it wouldn't really cut into profits. Or perhaps the software that analyzes mail and matches up ads could be tailored to recognize GPG-encrypted messages, and display ads for security programs?

We need to inovate, not litigate. Spyware protection should to be built into the computer not regulated by the government.

I was reading through some of the other comments and thought, "yes, clarification or ammendment to this piece of legislation would make things better," but then saw this comment and realized that destroying the root of the problem is much better action. A large part of the problem wouldn't exist if Microsoft hadn't added the stupid ActiveX feature, or at least didn't make it so insecure.

ActiveX needs to be disabled by default, at least for the Internet zone. A firewall needs to be installed by default to prevent unknown outgoing access, and present a simple interface for allowing programs access to the Internet. I think this will be in Windows XP SP2, anyone want to correct or clarify?

Some of the problem arises from non-wizard computer users who blindly click Yes to dismiss dialog boxes requesting the user make a choice. In cases where such behavior would be dangerous to security, the request shouldn't exist in the first place. Default to the safe, secure choice and provide a mechanism for manually enabling the potentially unsafe behavior elsewhere. Don't ask the user, as that will provide a path to uninformed unsafeness.

Applied to ActiveX, this would mean that the prompt to download ActiveX controls shouldn't even exist. Controls shouldn't be downloaded at all unless the user specifically wants it. If a website depends on an ActiveX control, it can provide a page to help the user enable downloading for that site. Of course, the easier solution is to switch to Firefox, especially since all these suggestions are worthless when wild IE exploits exist that take advantage of unpatchable security holes. I know, I encountered one.

Actually, how about embedding the .ogg in a data: url in a web page? That might get around things if they check each file individually. And if need be, you can use steganography to put the song in a .png, and then embed that in a data: url. How cool would that be?

/. apparently mangles data: urls but you can see some in action at http://www.mozilla.org/quality/networking/testing/ datatests.html

I'm not sure why this is really valueable to anyone

The point here is that AOL can now eat its own dogfood, using the MUA whose development it once funded.

IMAP isn't the easiest thing to setup

Server hostname, user name, password, and encrypted or not, what's so hard about setting up an IMAP client?

Mozilla Thunderbird. They've even recently added IMAP IDLE support! (It's in the nightlies.)

See this and this slide on programming languages.

Extend existing Python support to match chrome JS

See this and this slide on programming languages.

Extend existing Python support to match chrome JS

Found this in Firefox's config files. Check it out (and read the full URI):

There is no data. There is only XUL

Warning In the past, I've had versions of Explorer crash on me when looking at that page, so you may want to try it only in non-IE browsers (YMMV).

You mean, like this?

There is a Mozilla QT port, but sadly it was removed from Mozilla base. From the webpage, it suggests that it's languishing in a underdeveloped fork.

Maybe if someone could read this book and combine Mozilla with Trailblazer we would have the best browser ever.

And don't suggest me. I'm far too lazy. ;-)

I've already been thanked.

Now I'm saying "you're welcome."

There are other currency systems than "money", you know.

I heard about it here on /. and installed it the same day. At first it marked ALL my mail as spam because I'm on a few list servers, but the adaptive learning function of it is getting much better. After I "unlearned" my list mails as spam, it'd still let about 60% of spam through. Now it gets about 40 out of the 42 spams I get a day. I don't mind deleting two (or hitting "j" for junk), and recent searches through the junk folder show no false positives.

Check it out...

Agreed, but JavaScript nonsense can be blocked with an extensible browser. Flash's real usability flaw is that it mandates a single interface. By binding together content and representation, it prevents any client side presentation-fiddling. One could build JavaScript into a text browser and have things like popups behave in usable ways. (Like the split windows in Vim.)

The hatred of Flash over JavaScript isn't because of the stigma of it being a language for "graphic-design type people." One could say the same thing about Apple -- it's been historically targeted for designers and artists. But your average splashdropper will spray his spiderman underoos with life itself at the sight of a G5. Extensibility, transparency, verily.

I didn't hear any complaints from slashdotters about the evils of Java.

Crap, I didn't realize you were trolling. Glory to you, good man!

Yours in Christ,
eSolutions

Yes, clearly it would be complete lunacy to write video games in garbage-collected LISP, like Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank and so on.

It is a misrepresentation to claim that those games were "written in LISP".

One can say that the "behavioral and game logic" processing was written in LISP, but that's a minor part of the overall software work- especially if you count it in terms of percentage of CPU usage. (Which, since you're talking about performance, is what actually matters)

Games have used LISP to control higher-level flow since the 80s, but to claim that they're written in LISP is no more accurate than saying Mozilla was written in XUL.

And those massive overheads ensure that we'll never see NASA using LISP to control space probes.

Another misrepresentation. Actually reading that article plainly says that the performance-critical elements of the space-probe were written in C.

Furthermore, you cannot use LISP as an example to defend all GC. LISP programs naturally give the compiler more information, allowing it to make better optimizations. Frequently it can eliminate the need to actually execute much of the GC at runtime (converting it into logically static or stack allocations). But with an imperative language like Java, the overall code is less analyzable, so the GC can't reach the same heights of performance.

Yes, Apple makes good products -- I just bought an iBook as my new laptop and would buy one again. It's a good machine. The hardware is well designed if expensive, the software good, if not the best of breed. But Apple is a bunch cut-throat-DMCA-loving-money-grabbing capitalists like Microsoft, just without the monopoly, and Steve Jobs eats his chocolate one bite at a time, just like everyone else.

Good software? Yes. Great software? No. Mac OS X doesn't play well with others, it drops those pissy little .DS_Store files in every single folder of a network it can find. iMovie can't deal with letterbox DV (like even Kino can). Mail doesn't know TLS (which even the Beta of Mozilla Thunderbird can do). iTunes can't natively play Ogg Vorbis. Listing the ways that DVD Player is inferior to VLC would take pages, and don't get me started on all the hacks that have been installed to cripple the iBook to make the PowerBook look better (starting with the stupid Spanning Block that is supposed to make sure that only what you see on the screen can be sent to a second monitor or TV). Good, yes. Great, no.

Dear astroturfers, on the long run you'll help Apple more by giving a balanced, fair view of what is offered instead of this mindless drooling cheerleading. These machines are, so to speak, merely human, not gods, and even at 10.3, OS X has lots of room for improvement.

See stories first! Pay extra to get your own "fp" post. WOW!

Get notified if someone "friends" or "foes" you. As opposed to, JUST LOOKING. Again, WOW!

Get an asterisk to identify each other There goes another sucker. Mod the poor bastard up. He can't help that he's stupid. WOWOWOWOWOWOW!

Exclude more topics from homepage See less slashdot. Now there's an idea.

Karma, moderation bonuses Here's the crux

It's all about the mod / meta mod advantages! The next time you see a subscriber call a troll pathetic, bear in mind that person is willing to pay extra to feel like the "big man", to gain an illusory advantage over another on a hacked together, woefully amateur, ugly, glorified bookmark. How wonderfully sad! How utterly revealing! Give a slashbot some meaningless milestone "Blue Skies Badges", "Imaginary Freedom Points", or "League of Excellence Merits" and they fall over themselves to pay you discuss them, collect them, and act as if they're somehow significant. I bet some Slashbots talk to their therapists about them. "I lost three Karma points today. I feel sad about that, like when my father died." Taco, I salute you!

Subscribers - roll up, roll up! I have a bridge to sell you! (By the way, for more of the karma you so desperately need to validate yourself, just reply by saying "Oh - but I subscribe to support this wonderful site. You, troll, wouldn't understand that." Guaranteed +5 Insightful. But I give you "-5 predictable" under the Good Justice Doublegood Motherfucker Pesetas system, so you can't have it all. I mean is there any subscriber, anywhere, who can justify this without using the aforementioned cliche? Anyone?)

Instructions for trial subscriber account. Go to mozilla.org and scroll down to "Firefox 0.8". Select your OS from the list just below (Note: if you are unsure what OS you are using, phone any Computer suppliers premium rate helpline). For Windows: Select "Save" in the dialogue box and save the installation file. Make note of where you saved it. Once the download is completed, double click the file. Follow the on screen instructions. Once Firefox has installed, start it up and, once connected to the Internet, go to the Firefox extensions page. Search for and select "Adblock" extension. Follow the instructions. Now go to slashdot. Right click on an ad. Select "AdBlock Image". Click OK. Repeat for all ads.

Then, please uninstall Firefox after the trial period. Please buy our subscriber accounts. ....Is anyone there? ...Hello!...Hellooooo?

1. How long before someone writes an open-source google toolbar clone that will kill popups and allow you to search from the toolbar? 2. Does this exist already?

Yes, it's called Mozilla.

Or were you expecting programmers to waste time trying to salvage IE?

It's not privacy people are yelling about; it's the PERCEPTION of privacy. Lots of folks have known all along that these little spies have been getting installed on people's computers. Some of them have actually done something about it; they install and run software like Spybot Search and Destroy. A few will even switch to an alternate browser like Mozilla to help keep spyware off their machines. But largely they don't care unless it jumps up and bites them on the backside. GMail was planning to do just that, by targeting ads based on message content. Never mind the information would never be audited by a human, it's just the reminder that it's not private that's rankling.

"Symbolism over substance", as Rush Limbaugh pointed out; to most people, it doesn't matter if they have privacy so long as they can pretend they have it. Just like they can vote for people who lie their asses off (and I'm not even going to draw a distinction between either Republicrat party), just so long as they can PRETEND they're electing people who have their best interests at heart.

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goatse. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

Mozilla!!

Same thing with Mozilla's custom keywords.
And you can do that with most web searches (using http GET, I believe there's a way to use POST but I haven't find any good links).

IIRC, FireFox does not need to be installed on a machine, it can just be plopped in a directory and run. Heck you could run it from a USB thumb drive if you wanted. Now that doesn't gaurantee that it will make it past your firewall, but if you are looking for alternatives it may be worth a shot.