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Analyzing the Data

After you've taken measures to collect the information, your next big decision will be the analysis tools that you can bring to the table. If you have built your own system, your primary analysis tools will be tcpdump and the strings command.

Analyzing the Data

After you've taken measures to collect the information, your next big decision will be the analysis tools that you can bring to the table. If you have built your own system, your primary analysis tools will be tcpdump and the strings command.

JDC: I'd like to see more tools that enhance developer productivity, we have Unified Modeling Language (UML) modeling tools, and wizards to help us generate code. Can we tie these together better?

Another way to enhance productivity is to manipulate the Java source code itself (rather than generate code from the outside.) A good example of tool doing just that is Moka. In short, Moka is a Java-to-Java translator which allows you to extend Java in many interesting ways. For instance, there is a plug-in that allows you to remove any method or class whose name begins with 'debug'. There are other examples on the web page. I believe it's easy to use, and it makes up for various shortcomings of the language itself.

Invented at VA Linux, it became a de facto QA suite for SGI, Redhat, and some of the Linux kernel people. By default, it checks most of your subsystems concurrently which is more realistic and useful than just checking RAM or just checking hard drives, etc. It runs on Linux on ia32, ppc, and maybe others. Its strength can be set as high as you want, and its scripting engine can be set to do anything with any hardware combination and network. At high strength, it's been known to set machines on fire (sorry, no pics), but not at the default settings.

I'm looking forward to somebody starting over some day and coming up with a language that supports generic programming as well as C++, but which doesn't have the terrible syntax of C++ templates. It must be possible.

It's possible. The language is called LX.

True, but the commercial program Partition Magic does support shrinking NTFS partitions. I wonder why no distribution's installer does...

Maybe because Partition Magic is not free software and no distribution vendor is willing to pay for a bulk license? And because there is no free program out there that can resize an NTFS partition? And because NTFS itself is pretty much undocumented (unless you sign an NDA with Microsoft, which is probably how the PM people wrote their NTFS support), and a complex enough filesystem (including metadata journalling, I believe) that in several years, Anton Altaparmakov and the other Linux-NTFS hackers still do not support read-write mode?

If you know more about this stuff than I do, I'm sure the Linux NTFS crowd would be happy to take your contributions, as would the GNU Parted people.

might even be possible to put FreeDOS and the Seal DOS GUI to use for such systems, although the software to interface with certain bits and pieces would need to be written for it, this would give you a free win9x a like system.

This functionality would be very difficult to provide if it had to be created from scratch.

You ever use aspell?

you can apt-get SuSE 7.3 and 8.0. More information about it at apt4rpm.sf.net. You only need to install 2 rpms (libapt and apt) and tweak the sources.list file :))

You can apt-get SuSE 7.3 and 8.0! Refer to http://apt4rpm.sf.net for more information. Follow the link called "apt-rpm reps".

rocks! (it's also in Debian, of course :)

Actually, it'd be nice to find one for a reasonable price. There has been some work on reverse-engineering the Dreamcast's proprietary expansion port (one link provided below).

Wish Linux Dreamcast Project would finish their homepage!

Linux Dreamcast Project at Sourceforge

"Bitmaster's" Dreamcast Development page

Do a Google search too.

This is the reason I can't justify buying one yet.

KDE is a big bag of shit.

GNOME is where it's at: Anjuta.

...What the deal is with C++. It's a terrible language with NO pre-thought design

Then do something about it! This 55000 lines project has received exactly two (2) outside contributions (to the makefiles :-) in its two years of existence as an open source project. And yet everybody keeps complaining how C++ is bad! I'm keeping it in the >90% percentile at SourceForge, but all by myself. Where is the community when you need it?

It's great to see that Microsoft considers people like Herb to improve the quality of their C++ implementation.

It's sad that after more than 10 years, C++ compilers all over the place still have a lot of trouble compiling C++ code. It's already bad enough that C++ is too difficult for most programmers. It's definitely a severe problem for C++ that most compilers can't deal with advanced C++, and fail compiling things like Loki. And yes, I'm talking about G++ too :-)

What draws people to Java is not only the simplicity of the language for programmers. It's also the fact that most compilers have no trouble compiling your code on all platform. I think that's a point that most C++ folks (including Herb in the article) fail to understand. But to get this, you give up many handy features, notably templates.

I personally believe that there is another way, and that new programming languages are still a good idea.

It's great to see that Microsoft considers people like Herb to improve the quality of their C++ implementation.

It's sad that after more than 10 years, C++ compilers all over the place still have a lot of trouble compiling C++ code. It's already bad enough that C++ is too difficult for most programmers. It's definitely a severe problem for C++ that most compilers can't deal with advanced C++, and fail compiling things like Loki. And yes, I'm talking about G++ too :-)

What draws people to Java is not only the simplicity of the language for programmers. It's also the fact that most compilers have no trouble compiling your code on all platform. I think that's a point that most C++ folks (including Herb in the article) fail to understand. But to get this, you give up many handy features, notably templates.

I personally believe that there is another way, and that new programming languages are still a good idea.

SDL seems like it makes it pretty easy to support Linux and Windows

Not only SDL, but also ClanLib and the very widely used Allegro library. Apparently, ClanLib and Allegro have a richer set of features than SDL (such as graphics primitives), but all three SDKs can talk to the various platforms' OpenGL implementations. With tools like these, publisher-developers have little excuse not to write cross-platform code (other than bribes from Microsoft).

How about testing out Freenet with this stuff.

> - Bash IS available for OS X. You don't even have to recompile anything. [osxgnu.org] It took me 5 seconds to find this on Google.

>- Vim IS available for OS X. Again, no recompile needed. [imdat.de] About 3 seconds, again Google.

Bash, Vim and many others are available, together with Debian's dpkg, from Fink. That means everything from one place together with package management.

Fink fails short of being Debian for Mac OS X, but it’s the second best thing next to Debian itself you can get running in a Mac, perhaps together with NetBSD.

If you start a process on a node and that process opens a socket, opens a file, or uses shared memory, then that process is stuck on that node.

From what I gathered from the OpenMosix Internals paper (which is very informative, BTW), when a process that has been migrated to another machine wants to perform network or file I/O, it communicates over the network to the UHN (Unique Home-Node), where the actual I/O operation will occur. The same goes for machine-specific system calls (gettimeofday() was used as an example).

"One drawback of the deputy approach is the extra overhead in the execution of system calls. Additional overhead is incurred on file and network access operations. For example, all network links (sockets) are created in the UHN, thus imposing communication overhead if the processes migrate away from the UHN." There's probably a more specific quote in the paper.

You seem to be right about processes using shared memory: "For applications using shared memory, such as Web servers or database servers, there will not be any benefit from OpenMosix because all processes accessing said shared memory must resided on the same node."

Don't worry, games aren't addictive

Of course games aren't addictive. Games were addictive! Today I was playing Day Of The Tentacle for something like 18 hours, thanks to the brave guys from ScummVM! Special greetings to Ludvig, great work! I'll send you bills from my oculist! :) OK, now must sleep...

Don't worry, games aren't addictive

Of course games aren't addictive. Games were addictive! Today I was playing Day Of The Tentacle for something like 18 hours, thanks to the brave guys from ScummVM! Special greetings to Ludvig, great work! I'll send you bills from my oculist! :) OK, now must sleep...

All programming languages have a limited lifespan. There are many reasons, but one of them is that Moore's law impacts the complexity of programs that become possible. After a while, it becomes necessary to create a new language simply to accomodate the growing complexity.

See Mozart - The Future of Programming for a more in-depth discussion on this topic.

And if you want to be the first one to use tomorrow's language, check out LX

All programming languages have a limited lifespan. There are many reasons, but one of them is that Moore's law impacts the complexity of programs that become possible. After a while, it becomes necessary to create a new language simply to accomodate the growing complexity.

See Mozart - The Future of Programming for a more in-depth discussion on this topic.

And if you want to be the first one to use tomorrow's language, check out LX

I don't know what I would use if not for mozilla, but I'm sure it would not be as cool.

Galeon is basically more featureful than Mozilla, and it uses Gecko. Plus it's not as painful to use on my Celeron 366 :)

Forgive me for not being better educated on this but can they legally obtain a warrant for suspected copyright infringement? Furthermore, what about the data itself? Specifically, what if it wasn't in MP3 format? Suppose the files were stored via a proprietary file/compression system leaving the data totally useless to anyone who doesn't have a key it can't be proved that anyone has a "key"? Is it still piracy or just useless data? Woud this hold true for streaming data as well? Better yet, why not stego them into client-attorney documents ;) thereby rendering them (AFAIK) un-seize-able even with a warrant. This is why projects like Freenet are so vital and intriguing. Does anybody know more about the legality of this or other ways of further muddling the legal issues involved? has anybody ever called 1.800.BAD.BEAT?

But I'd like Apple to take a look at Red Hat's up2date.

I'd rather see them look at debian's apt-get.
It's already available via fink for accessing ported unix software, why not make it the official system update mechanism too?

And, as another post mentions below, rh's up2date has that nasty account requirement, which nobody is a big fan of. Why do we need a profile on their server? Why not create a local profile, and let the client request the stuff it wants? WHY?

I long for the day that apt-get is the standard package management tool accross unices.

Everyone is still using old formats like GIF and JPEG.

But there are other, more powerful formats.

For a non-descructive compression, the PNG format is fortunately getting more and more popular, although the late inclusion in Internet Explorer slows down its wide adoption.

But when it comes to a destructive compression, there's an excellent (and not new) format made by AT&T and called DjVu. It was one of the first wavelets-based format.

DjVu is really better than Jpeg. Images are better looking (more contrast, less pixels with odd colors), and files are way smaller. Plus you can smoothly zoom any DjVu image without getting big and ugly blocks.

DjVu has been available for a while as a plugin for common browsers.

There's a 100% free implementation of the format called DjVuLibre .

However, nobody uses it. I don't understand why. Some times ago, it may have been because compression was slow. But nowadays, it's no more a valid point.

People are enthusiast for Jpeg2000. But why would Jpeg2000 be adopted while DjVu has never been?

IMPORTANT - READ CAREFULLY: This Undisputable Corporate License
Agreement (UCLA) is a legal agreement between you (either an
individual or a single entity) and the copyright owner or owners of
the licensed Product (the AUTHORS), which includes computer software or
data and may include associated media, printed material and online or
electronic documentation (collectively "PRODUCT"). Special Section "A"
of this UCLA only applies to you if

a/ you or the company you work for expressed concerns about the
"viral" aspects of the GNU General Public License, or

b/ if you otherwise seek relief from some of said "viral"
aspects, or

c/ if you or the company you work for are considered a monopoly by
the United States Government.

By installing, copying, listening to, viewing, smelling, hearing
about, inspiring yourself from, thinking about or otherwise using the
PRODUCT, you agree to be bound to the terms of this UCLA. If you do
not agree to the terms of this UCLA, do not install, copy, listen to,
view, smell, hear about, inpire yourself from, think about or
otherwise use the PRODUCT.

X10 is great. Any product that makes MSIE users subsidize me (by looking at popunder ads) is fine by me, cruel as it may sound. I use dillo and don't worry about ads.

:-)

Take a look at the Fink project.

They're going a great job of porting a whole bunch of apps across to OS X, and they use apt too!

I had a ATI Rage Pro with an old ISA ATI TV card, worked great in linux and FreeBSD, all I had to do was install the drivers for X from the gatos website (http://gatos.sf.net/), restart X, and run a TV program. Admitedly the quality of my setup wasn't great, HOWEVER, it did look as good as windows.

As for PVR type functions, I'm not shure, there are tools out there, but I wasn't interested in that so I didn't look into it.

Hope this helps :)

ATI does not support any of their consumer products under linux. However the GATOS Project supports most function under linux, including the remote.

There is OpenGL support for Radeon and Radeon 7500 is in XFree86 4.2.0, (4.1.0 also has this but it doesn't have the pci id of 7500, works on normal radeons). However the TCL features of the radeon line aren't in this driver, but there is a developement branch in dri cvs (tcl-0-0-branch) that has it.

As for Radeon 8500 support, I don't know the status of that, there are rumors that ATI would be working on this and would release them with a similiar system as the Matrox drivers.

As for Video4Linux, I'm not sure if it supports 7500 yet. It's maintaned by the gatos project.

GATOS
DRI

There is OpenGL support for Radeon and Radeon 7500 is in XFree86 4.2.0, (4.1.0 also has this but it doesn't have the pci id of 7500, works on normal radeons). However the TCL features of the radeon line aren't in this driver, but there is a developement branch in dri cvs (tcl-0-0-branch) that has it.

As for Radeon 8500 support, I don't know the status of that, there are rumors that ATI would be working on this and would release them with a similiar system as the Matrox drivers.

As for Video4Linux, I'm not sure if it supports 7500 yet. It's maintaned by the gatos project.

GATOS
DRI

Here's one.

Unfortunately, my laptop screen is 1024x768, so I don't have a lot of real estate to show off. Note the menu transparency.

Frankly, I'm disapointed by the other options in the PDA market today. It's sad, really. So, to try to recreate a little of the Newton spirit, I'm working on Dynapad, which isn't a Newton clone per se, but a PDA environment that will embody many of the core ideas and goals of the Newton, as a truly personal communicator, a computer, and an information device.

shameless plug out...

May be this license (Section "A" in particular) could get them a clue about what they are doing wrong...

ATI All In Wonder in Linux

http://gatos.sf.net/

Worked for me under FreeBSD + ATI Rage Pro + Old ISA ATI TV card.

Whoops, I spoke too soon!! Clearly, the massive influx of poop pixels from Google must now be going to make Slashvertisements. My apologies to Carly Fiorina. :-)

--
Fink - now with INTERCAL. No, really.

Page and Brin developed groundbreaking technology for converting poop to pixels, the tiny dots that make up a monitor's display. The clean white background of Google's home page is powered by this renewable process.

With just a little Makefile hacking I got most of KOffice to compile. Now it runs nice and fast on my older UNIX servers! I'm looking forward to the next version with a compressed protocol that will improve speed on slow terminal devices.

The Bill of Rights and Constitution protect individual liberties from the government, not the "right" to steal music, so even considering constitutional arguments with regard to copying music makes no sense.

Most people would consider it an individual liberty to be able to use what they paid for in any way the choose, whether it be ripping a CD to mp3, ripping a DVD and encoding to some other format (requiring DeCSS), or just owning a computer that has an unrestricted memcpy() . It's considered a basic right to bear arms, so are you telling me it's not, to own something that can copy bits?

Reasonable people agree that the creator of a work should compensated for his efforts, hence copyright - but it has no basis in the constitution.

First, who exactly decides what "reasonable people" are? Second, copyright was originally more "reasonable" at a 7 year term, then more "reasonable people" came along and now look where we're at. Finally, "it has no basis in the constitution" is just wrong, because the Constitution is the sole source of authority for the Federal Government to make laws. If copyright didn't come from the Constitution, then it is an illegal law.

MegaCorp Inc. wants everything regulated, which is never going to happen.

Hellooo, DMCA, SSSCA. We said the former was "never going to happen", and it did. The latter... won't pass this year, maybe. The future is not a very bright one, though.

Slashdot types want everything free as in beer, which doesn't encourage creation.

Uh, hello, first off "Slashdot types" (of which I believe I qualify) likely want more: everything free as in liberty; free as in beer is just a nice extra. This "doesn't encourage creation"? What do you call these:

• The Linux kernel. (Free as in beer, liberty)
• Most of the software on Freshmeat.
• All of the software on SourceForge.
• The Debian, RedHat, and multitudes of other distributions, some of which make money, some of which are purely nonprofit.
• All the other free software not mentioned here.
• All the music written and art created (and on record) for thousands of years done for whatever reason besides making a buck. (Hint: being an artist for a living was traditionally very hard, and few made it.) I personally know a number of people who write music purely because they enjoy doing it. If this isn't creativity, what is?

So until someone finds a decent way of paying artists aside from CDs, books, etc. people are going to keep stealing digital things because it is a better way to distribute.

Or maybe that business model just isn't going to work anymore, so they better get a different job or find a different way to make money. There is no guaranteed individual right to make money on a given venture. The reason we originally had the copyright was to further society, not line corporate pockets. Artists can control their work, possibly making money for a short period of time, then work is returned to the public domain. That's not how it works anymore.

As usual, the extremes on either side of the argument need to be tempered to find a workable solution. And it isn't going to be found in the Constitution.

No. The end has already been determined. Like a Myrddraal, MegaCorp Inc. has already been killed, but they're too dumb to realize it, and it doesn't mean they're not still dangerous (see DMCA and SSSCA).

A 800Mhz duron can do realtime 640x480 MPEG2 encoding with a bttv capture card, why pay extra?

Yeah, I've tried FFMpeg too.

Do you think this even compares to a $3k hardware encoder? A real-time software encoder is cutting corners everywhere: integer math (probably in the form of MMX), fixed "one size fits all" lookup tables, and little if any motion detection. You know, it's easy to make a real-time MPEG encoder if you only use I frames, but then you basically have motion-JPEG. The real compression payoff in MPEG comes from motion detection with P (predicted) and B (bi-directional predicted) frames. Simply put, the real-time software encoders will produce crap output. That may be acceptable for your PVR-knockoff (I know, I've been using VCR with DiVX under Linux for abouta year now), but it isn't for DVD production. And that's what this card is for.

A 800Mhz duron can do realtime 640x480 MPEG2 encoding with a bttv capture card, why pay extra?

Yeah, I've tried FFMpeg too.

Do you think this even compares to a $3k hardware encoder? A real-time software encoder is cutting corners everywhere: integer math (probably in the form of MMX), fixed "one size fits all" lookup tables, and little if any motion detection. You know, it's easy to make a real-time MPEG encoder if you only use I frames, but then you basically have motion-JPEG. The real compression payoff in MPEG comes from motion detection with P (predicted) and B (bi-directional predicted) frames. Simply put, the real-time software encoders will produce crap output. That may be acceptable for your PVR-knockoff (I know, I've been using VCR with DiVX under Linux for abouta year now), but it isn't for DVD production. And that's what this card is for.

Here's another one for EJB and Web: XDoclet.

It integrates nicely with ant.

Try K-Meleon - I think it's time to find satans phone number ;)

I installed phpWiki this morning, on one of our dev servers for internal documentation. It's not as powerful as many other systems, but it's incredibly simple.

Getting it to run with IIS isn't, however.

> A valid point, and I may read some more of the articles on the site.

Please do. You may also be interested in some stuff at DMoz Relational Implementations and Model listings... I created these, they have been taken over with no explanations and I could never get back into DMoz, again with now explanations as to why.

> But I'm not likely to buy books merely to understand an argument which appears dubious and impractical.

‘Dubious and impractical’ in which grounds? In fact, it’s hardly dubious because they are the authors and maintainers of the relational model; and it’s not impractical at all because there were already at least two faithful implementations of the relational model already, one currently in beta and other in production usage for twenty years already, not to mention other implementations, partial or not that aren’t perfect but are still more faithful to the model.

> It seems that the core issue is the authors' demand to define 'relational database' in a sense that predates SQL and ignores all recent evolution.

The whole point is that SQL is an involution.

> Has anyone written a true relational database? If not, what are they waiting for? Is such a database vastly harder to write than the pseudo-relational databases being used today?

Yes, as I pointed above. The issue here is that the market has in the eighties taken the ‘safe’ option (IBM SQL/DS) and fell in love with it over the better alternatives, just as it did with MS Windows over Unix and OS/2 in the nineties.

> Sounds like another collision between reality and ideal. In an ideal world, the structure and business model of a company would be known in advance and someone would create a unified data model for the company. In practice, large companies purchase many different software packages that come with their own database schema.

Again that’s a failure in the tools and processes. Even if SQL is fundamentally flawed, if it was really standard integrating all these databases wouldn't be so hard; if it was really distributed it would be a given; if on top of this all these products were properly documented, this job would be almost done already.