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> I bet you could easily hire aware the developers of that project.

Right, that comes up occasionally: the "what if someone hires Tom Lane" (*) question. It's a legitimate concern. But it'd be hard to hire all the PG core developers since they don't all work for one company.

Also, what's the chance of a core guy taking a job that requires him to stop working on PG? On a much smaller scale, I wouldn't take a job that required me to stop working on PMD; there are lots of other jobs out there. Don't want to damage my book sales, either!

(*) Tom Lane is a PostgreSQL uber-guru

It's true, if you want to realize a vision you also have to do the work. It's almost impossible to transfer visions to other people, so Mark should have at least participated in the work himself.

I've myself a vision

http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html

let's see how far I come.

O. Wyss

Well I understand that in 2003 cross-platform development wasn't possible as it is today. So I think Mark Shuttleworth should try again but start with wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) as it's base. wyoGuide also uses wxWidgets as does Chandler. I'm quite sure the outcome would be completely different then it was in 2003. The success doesn't only depend on the people in the project but also on the tools these people can use.

Besides wyoGuide can be used for any cross-platform development project.

- Btw, anyone want a GMail account?

Yes, reach me via http://wyoguide.sf.net/

O. Wyss

I wonder if Google hasn't heard of the term "cross-platform" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-platform). I think Google should delve once into this "http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html ".

That's about Windows Media Connect which can be used on a standard XP computer to stream pictures and music. No Media Center or Vista required for that. Unfortunately, though the protocol involved here supports video streaming as well, the Xbox 360 is crippled so it'll only stream video from a media center.

And that's not just HTTP... the Xbox 360 functions as a media center extender and uses RDP and a secondary channel for audio/video. So for Linux video streaming in the future, my eye is on xrdp.

Whenever I hear or read something from the EFF it sounds like "don't", "no", etc but never "do" or "yes". I thought this here

http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html

would mean quite a lot of freedom but the EFF doesn't even answer my mail. Doesn't EFF work for the freedom or doesn't EFF understand what it means? What shall I do so this freedom sinks into their minds or what can I do to make this future become true?

O. Wyss

Whatever computer you run it on stores enough info in your home directory so it automatically opens your account file from the stick too of course. Good news is that it can import GNUCash files.

Projects like gaim have taken gtk2 based apps and ported them to here and everywhere, but that's only due to rampant popularity (and some Google support). Even then, I would need to actually store 3 binaries on the usb stick, and at that point I am wasting more space and time trying to find the right icon to click on.

I would say that overall GnuCash still has the most features, so if you're an aspiring accountant then... go for it.

Just recently, I tried some fairly straightforward code (http://pdcurses.sf.net/ in Borland 3.1. I wondered why it came with an option set to disable register variables, and tried turning that off. Weird errors resulted -- specifically, trails after the bouncing balls in "newdemo". But it still worked OK in Turbo C 3.0, as well as Borland 4.0. (Not to mention all the other supported compilers.) I could never figure out the problem; to me, it looks very much like a compiler bug.

For example, on my pet project I use GPL rather than BSD because I want to make sure that every derivative will be free-software, that's what I care about protecting. If I release content and someone has the right to make a DRM-encumbered version of it, this freedom is lost. To protect (the freedom of) that content, I use a license with anti-DRM clause.

That's because Azureus is written in Java. Native implementations (like very well written libtorrent) are usually much more CPU efficient. I think that encryption wouldn't be such a problem in general, although there should be an option to turn it off and encrypt communication only with peers that require it - most users do not have such a bad ISP.

As a side note, it should be said that KHTML is also available for GTK.

The OSGi framework mentioned is very cool indeed. It's best known usage is the Eclipse IDE. It can also be used in web applications, where especially the Wicket component web framework delivers a very good integration. There are several users working with OSGi compliant frameworks (most notably Oscar, which is in the Apache incubator under the name Felix), and Wicket. I have used Oscar and Wicket in a commercial product and we were very satisfied with the runtime re-deployment of new components.

Well, even though I've used QEMU quite a while (and even wrote the first version of its Wikipedia article!), I have to say that I prefer VMware myself. For one thing it's a lot faster – very important if you need to test the next version of a Linux system right now without any delays – and I also just like the program better.

And then there's the licensing issue – while I appreciate QEMU being free and all, I don't like how the KQEMU module's proprietary software that can't be freely distributed. I'd much prefer to just have a completely proprietary solution that works than to have a half-free solution that doesn't really do much for me. Although if I knew how to write virtualization software I'd have my own solution anyway ;-)

Oh, and remember Bochs, what we used to have before QEMU? I remember spending hours just toying around with that program... ran Windows 95 pretty nicely, and before I switched to Linux it was rather nice to have a virtualization program that ran reliably on Windows 98SE.

Although now I'm a Linux user and addicted to VMware, so why should it matter? ;-)

That's what he means by "fuzzy." Coming up with a hash that will catch *mostly*-identical mails (and, one hopes, not pick up too many false positives). Razor/Cloudmark does things this way, and has a fairly goot detection rate even though spammers have beentrying to use hash-busters to defeat it for at least 4 years.

You have to realize that, for the vast majority of programmers, that the structure is necessary. Those programmers working in dynamically-typed languages fail; they produce spaghetti. Sure, you *can* maintain structure in a dynamically typed language such as Smalltalk or Ruby. But programming is a constant struggle to keep the code from descending into chaos.

What gets me though, is that people will make these sorts of comments all the time, and yet when you suggest that it's quite easy to take the same idea just a little further it all of a sudden becomes completely unpalatable and "too much work". Never mind that that's the same argument the dynamic type people use against static types. Never mind that for the extra work of contracts or specifying a little more than just type signatures you can get static checking gains and improvements in maintainability on par with what you get from using static types over dynamic types.

If you really believe that specifying static types really does help reduce bugs and improve maintainability (and it certainly can) then check out the options for doing a little better again.

Jedidiah.

Yes, D is a wonderful language! The main thing it is missing for it to take off for real now is a stable GUI library. For me, cross platform is a must for me to even look at it. Cross platform is at leastMac OS X, X11 and Windows.

Currently the most promising project is WxD but it's still not ready for production use. I'd love to see bindings for Qt 4, because it feels much more "native" (user-wise, without #ifdef'ing code for each platform) than Wx currently does, especially on OS X. Also, I find Qt to be better designed.

I'm firmly in the static typing camp. Not only does it make things more reliable (due to compilers catching errors)

There's a lot more in the way of errors that can be caught statically with very little extra effort - you just have to use a different tool (one specifically designed for the task) to check for errors statically instead of the compiler, and provide a few appropriate hints about your intentions (in a language that's very expressive for stating your intentions) as you write your code. For Java the tool is ESC/Java2, a very powerful static checker. It will catch all the errors a compiler will, plus a vast array of potential errors that mere compilation will never spot.

If that sounds good, then it's worth pointing out that the extra annotations you need to add to explain your intentions can also be automatically converted into runtime assertions during the etsting phase, can be used to automatically generate JUnit unit testing frameworks, and can be automatically included into your Javadoc documentation. For the small cost of adding a few extra annotations - things you would be documenting elsewhere anyway - you get far better static checking, a powerful testing framework and harness for free, and it all goes into your documentation automatically.

Check my sig, or head directly to the JML website to get an idea of what can be done.

Jedidiah.

Oh, weird. It shows up in Firefox fine. Although I think there should be a clearer link to the downloadable versions (which are on the sf project page). I'll chase that up now. Cheers.

To me static checking (that is consistency checks that are done at compile time) are like an Engineer designing a plane, he does it with tools that declare the wings and the parts of the plane sound, even before the tests that have to be done to confirm the project.

And I think something that static typing advocates who use this sort of argument need to realise is that static types are not the be all and end all of declarations you can make to ensure consistency with intended function. In theory the Curry-Howard isomorphism means that indeed types are propositions. In practice most type systems provide a very poor syntax for clearly stating your propositions. The best way to get around that in most languages is to provide extra syntax that allows expressive descriptions of your propositions, or, if you like, your assumptions. Yes, the type signature of a function declares certain properties that ensure a certain amount of consistency that can be checked statically. There is a lot more in the way of assumptions you can decalre that will ensure far more important consistency properties that can still be checked entirely statically.

Check out JML and ESC/Java2 for Java to see how much extra static checking you can get above and beyond simple type checking. The same sorts of things for C are provided by Splint. If you're someone who prefers ML then take the time to check out EML which adds the ability to define and check axioms in Standard ML.

Jedidiah.

For this kind of work wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) is probably one of the best approaches. It has fully functional sample appliaction, which can easily be extended with your code. Just look once at the tor manager sample (http://wyoguide.sf.net/index.php?page=tormgr.html ) which was built in about one week.

For this kind of work wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) is probably one of the best approaches. It has fully functional sample appliaction, which can easily be extended with your code. Just look once at the tor manager sample (http://wyoguide.sf.net/index.php?page=tormgr.html ) which was built in about one week.

Apparently I spoke too soon... it seems that my problems with SpellBound were actually caused by a conflict with All-in-One Gestures. I've disabled the latter for now, and will report the issue upstream.

I should also add there a nice serial comms component(library to you!) for buider and delphi which you can use. See http://sf.net/projects/tpapro which would make the serial part easier.

Just a note I teach a course that uses borland builder. It is designed at people with little or no programming experience and most are producing great GUI's after 3 months. A programmer of any experience should have no issues.

And now download this great game!

Surely you mean Ur-Quan Masters, not Star Control 2

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Hash: RIPEMD160

Lam1969 wrote:
> the possibility of companies breaking laws, whether for data-loss
> disclosure or regulatory compliance, is growing dramatically.

This is exactly the sort of scenario I had in mind when I designed
eCryptfs:

http://ecryptfs.sf.net/

Admins in the IT department can deploy an eCryptfs policy on employee
workstations that indicates, for instance, that any data written to
external storage devices is automatically and transparently encrypted
according to a certain cryptographic context. We are working on
implementing full policy support by the end of the summer, but in the
meantime, eCryptfs will at least provide mount-wide passphrase
protection today. For instance, eCryptfs will be able to be told, via
IT policy, that ``any data written to /mnt/usbdrive must be encrypted
with a public key with a certain ID, which is dynamically retrieved
from the corporate PKI at the time that the file is created.'' For a
preview of how we will go about doing this, check out the
``experimental'' branch from the CVS repository. In the meantime, if
you want something functional today with only mount-wide passphrase
support, get the ``testing'' branch. The tarball and the main branch
will work too, but the ``testing'' is where I keep what I consider to
be the most interesting version (it usually takes a week or so for
changes in ``testing'' to migrate to the main branch).

Oh, and it's Linux only. Of course. ;-)

Mike

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Broadcom is one of the only vendors that doesn't provide a mechanism for native Linux drivers.

Personally, I've never been happy with Broadcom's chips, and even less happy that they refuse to support the Open Source community even with a closed-source or partially closed-source driver. Even Atheros is supporting us with MADWifi and their closed-source HAL... Broadcom could do something similar.

Most of the projects either have support from chip vendors (Intel, Atheros, Agere) or there has been some reverse engineering done (TI).

TI ACX1xx chips: http://acx100.sourceforge.net
Intel Centrino chips: http://ipw2100.sf.net and http://ipw2200.sf.net
Atheros-based chips: http://madwifi.org

I think the wrapper stuff is interesting for the geek factor, but it makes me shudder when people (who don't really know what they are doing) try to use it as an end all be all solution for their wireless needs in Linux, but I'm happy for those who have actually been able to make this solution work for them. ;)

My advice is to shop around very careful, and choose a card that does what you need it to... don't just go with the cheapest thing you can find. A lot of OEM cards have the same chipsets... you can still find some decent stuff for cheap, but it's quite likely you'll run into something that doesn't have good Linux support.

Broadcom is one of the only vendors that doesn't provide a mechanism for native Linux drivers.

Personally, I've never been happy with Broadcom's chips, and even less happy that they refuse to support the Open Source community even with a closed-source or partially closed-source driver. Even Atheros is supporting us with MADWifi and their closed-source HAL... Broadcom could do something similar.

Most of the projects either have support from chip vendors (Intel, Atheros, Agere) or there has been some reverse engineering done (TI).

TI ACX1xx chips: http://acx100.sourceforge.net
Intel Centrino chips: http://ipw2100.sf.net and http://ipw2200.sf.net
Atheros-based chips: http://madwifi.org

I think the wrapper stuff is interesting for the geek factor, but it makes me shudder when people (who don't really know what they are doing) try to use it as an end all be all solution for their wireless needs in Linux, but I'm happy for those who have actually been able to make this solution work for them. ;)

My advice is to shop around very careful, and choose a card that does what you need it to... don't just go with the cheapest thing you can find. A lot of OEM cards have the same chipsets... you can still find some decent stuff for cheap, but it's quite likely you'll run into something that doesn't have good Linux support.

<aol>Me too!</aol>

Seriously, though--ipw2200 is one of the best Linux wireless drivers I've seen. Intel puts a good amount of effort into creating these drivers, and seems to be the only company that actually cares about Linux driver support. I will also tell you that the "Centrino platform" does provide pretty awesome battery life under Linux. I would encourage you to patronize Intel because they are actually attempting to be friendly to Linux users!

Support is very good.

Support is very good.

Ofcourse Gaim, Adium and Miranda IM all use Meanwhile for their sametime libraries.

Regards
elFarto

I hear that this is a good place to check as well as here.

I hear that this is a good place to check as well as here.

I just don't bother asking. I figure they came to me to have their computer worked on and SP2 is a major 'fix' so why bother them with the worry? When SP2 first came out, it did kill a few student laptops (BSOD on reboot) which was a pain, but all it took was a clean install which I've got automated thanks to Unattended.

Looking forward to gplFlash.....

What's new in JHymn 0.9.2:

Fixed a compatiblity problem in the FairKeys feature caused by a recent Music Store change. (JHymn is still not compatible with Music Store accounts with which purchases have been made using iTunes 6, however.)

yep, was fortunate to be one of the townships in Northern New Jersey to get it, 5th in my own! Speed has always been consistant as advertised. My only complaint is the disconnection for long-periods of FTP/rsync-based file transfers on both directions, from what I have seen. It must be a mechanism to prevent users from running servers of some sort. But as long as I can pipe everything on port 22, it's all good. :) Prior to that, I was with OOL (optimum online service) for a few years. It's an "ok" service if you're not a heavy file uploader. The quality of service degraded once I discovered & started using Gallery - http://gallery.sf.net/ - to manage my digital photos. both HTTP/ftp-based uploads got my connection capped with no detailed explanation provided other than "there are our policies, sir". Nuff' said. FIOS just simply, ROCKS. can't wait for IPTV, dhcp or static-ip to arrive for home users. :)

A device that plays DVDs, AND can read files from a SMB (Windows, or Samba) share. Maybe something else. I don't care, as many of the available devices force you to navigate a directory heirarchy anyway. Plays mp3, ogg, mpeg2 and 4, avi (Divx and xvid), qt, etc. Preferably with the ability to update codecs/container formats as required, but even being able to play what was current a year ago today would be nice.

1. Get an xbox for 100 bucks
2. Softmod it
3. Install XBox Media Center
4. There is no step 4.

from what I've seen, most free, opensource linux frontends are lacking a lot. namely control using something other than a keyboard/mouse.

allow me to plug a project of mine: AFX

a fully extensible frontent for linux which is designed to play media and games and is designed to be fully controlled with a joystick (no need for a keyboard/mouse).

its still in development with no releases.

Since its pop3, you can get that protection for hotmail yahoo and other web-based email with: http://mrpostman.sf.net/ and http://freepops.sf.net/

Since its pop3, you can get that protection for hotmail yahoo and other web-based email with: http://mrpostman.sf.net/ and http://freepops.sf.net/

Take a look at the OpenCA project http://www.openca.org/ or http://sf.net/projects/openca/

Ever since I started using TMDA (http://tmda.sf.net/ my spam has dropped to almost zero (I probably received 2 spams in 2005). TMDA isn't a perfect solution because valid senders have greater difficulty in getting through, however, since I don't know they are trying to email me, I don't miss the emails :)

Personally, I prefer losing an unknown amount of email rather than manually checking the Bayesian filter to see if there are any false positives. Is that so wrong? :)

divx playback (no FF/RW)

which is handled by the codec via Direct Show,
if it (the player aka WMP core) wont ff/rw try installing FFDShow and use that for handling DivX/Xvid
i have had no problems with MCE and DivX/Xvid/mpg.
sometimes if an .AVI file hasnt been "indexed" (a process that should of been done at creation,missing for various reasons) ff/rw can be either be non existant or very slow, rebuilding the avi with something like DivFix (google it) can fix this

regards

Aj$

Here are a few things that might help:

http://gmail.google.com/ (webmail with a reasonably good spam filter)
http://spamassassin.apache.org/ (good spam filter for non-web email)
http://bogofilter.sf.net/ (another good spam filter for non-web email)
http://spamcop.net/ (free anti-spam service)
http://spambob.net/ (free receive-only/forwarding/black hole email addresses)

It's not the 20 services the GP promised, of course, but it might help, although experience shows that those who complain the most about spam are also the ones who aren't willing to actually try anything to make it stop, so I'm not sure your cousin will find this useful (your description of a "12-year old airhead" certainly doesn't inspire confidence).

counter = 1
while counter < 10:
    do something...
    couner = counter +1

I am a Java programmer by profession but I wanted to give Python a shot because it seemed like fun.

As a programmer experienced with OO programming and some other types of "scripting" languages, all I needed to read was Learning Python from O'Reilly. Great book, great language.

On a shameless side note, if you're a Scrabble fan, come check out my online, multiplayer Scrabble program written in Python. PyScrabble

I'm the author of the Embedded filesystems library. (http://sf.net/projects/efsl)

I've read the patents, they all cover the long filenames ability in the FAT filesystem. So basically as long as I do not implement long filesystem support, the EFSL should be free from patent problems.

If anyone with a deeper understanding of legalese is willing to comment on this, I and the users of EFSL would be grateful.

Since EFSL is targetted at embedded devices, it is used commercially (I am using it in a commercial product as well, and I know of several other projects that are doing the same) and thus the companies using it should know wheter or not they can use EFSL without paying a fee to microsoft.

FAT is about the ugliest filesystem around, it's a shame they dare to ask licensing fees for it.