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Every man and their dog seems to be mentioning Eclipse, and I've seen a couple of mentions of KDevelop, but nobody has mentioned Anjuta. I've tried Eclipse briefly, and found it highly confusing - I must admit I gave up fairly quickly. I haven't tried KDevelop, and don't particularly want to, because I've never liked KDE or Qt and don't want the libraries taking up valuable space and time (yes, I use Gentoo - go on, laugh if you like :P ) on my machine.

Now, Anjuta claims to be written in - and for - GTK/GNOME, but in reality it's just a GTK front-end to the Autotools and GDB which happens to come with a collection of GTK-oriented project templates. I must admit to not knowing what Eclipse and KDevelop generate in terms of a build system for projects, but what I like most about Anjuta is that it uses the Autotools completely and utterly: adding sources and targets (programs/libraries) simply adds entries into the relevant Makefile.am files, adding external library dependencies (it can automatically find and add support for anything on the system which uses pkg-config) adds to configure.ac, and those files are the *only* place that information is stored. When you load an "Anjuta project" up, it re-creates the project hierarchy by parsing those files back in; it doesn't store any metadata you'd be particularly bothered about losing, which means that if the person sat next to me wants to, they can work on the exact same project using Vim and a terminal. After all, building the project is no more difficult than any other Autotools package. :)

Its GDB integration is good, the editors - you can choose either a Scintilla-based one or a GtkSourceView-based one - are capable, and if you *do* happen to want to develop a GTK/GNOME app, things like DevHelp integration just help make life easier and make the whole thing feel that little bit more "professional". My only real complaint is that it can't automatically write configure scripts to look for non pkg-config libraries, but I know how difficult that can be for humans at the best of times. ;)

The apps that self-update frequently on my computer are:
Google stuff
Adobe stuff (PhotoShop, Acrobat, etc) - please don't talk to me about GIMP, I need PhotoShop for professional reasons
Firefox
ATI drivers
Apple software (iTunes, Quicktime)
HP stuff (printer, scanner drivers)

Now, almost all of this has open source alternatives, or can be configured not to update, but IF these products were available in Linux, they would probably all have auto-update features (reference: Firefox).

Well, actually, most of those things already exist on Linux, and no, they don't have their own built-in autoupdating mechanisms, they leave that to the package manager, as they should.

In Linux:

• Firefox - Does not update itself.
• ATI drivers (including fglrx, the ones from ATI themselves) - Do not update themselves.
• HP stuff (HPLIP, as provided by HP) - Does not update itself.
• Acrobat - Haven't used it myself, but several other commenters have pointed out that it does not update itself.
• Google stuff - I don't use any of it, so I don't know.
• Photoshop and Apple anything - Doesn't exist natively.

I don't see this changing, because apps autoupdating themselves is a behaviour created by Windows* applications to fight a Windows* specific problem (the lack of a package manager), and this problem doesn't exist on Linux, thus there's no reason to waste time trying to solve it again.

* Mac OS probably has the same problem as Windows here, as it doesn't have a package manager either, but I haven't really used Mac OS at all, so I won't discuss it here.

Well, it is convenient for the developer, rather than the end user, to be able to read the stream. But I agree, there should be a standard binary format for proven applications. I believe standards have been developed for binary XML, but nothing in widespread use. Also, because of the structured format, XML is incredibly compressible, and I use xmill to save my XML data files in a few percent of their expanded size.

You can play with k3dsurf http://k3dsurf.sourceforge.net/index.html and have a look at inspirations it gave http://www.evolution-of-genius.de/3d/ The rendering is very good in 3D

The images described in the summary (which are not really representative of most of the stuff in the gallery, just Fields's stuff) are generally known as iterated function systems, and perhaps belong to the subset known as fractal flames. The description is fairly accurate, but the images he has made are rather unimpressive compared to ones I've seen (and made myself). Probably the best known example of a fractal flame program is Electric Sheep. However, another good program for making fractal flames is called Apophysis (regretfully, it's Windows only, but does work fairly well under Wine). I've been working with Apophysis for about 3 years now, and trust me, there's a lot of more artistic stuff out there that uses fractal flames. Even some of the stuff on Wikimedia Commons is better than his stuff.

Coincidentally, my captcha was "artful".

Here and Here

Use Audacity, a free/open source program. Available for Mac OS X, Windows, and the platform it originated on, Linux. Ask it to generate a 25,000Hz sine-wave tone for 10 seconds. Then take a listen to the results. Can you hear the tone? I can.

The issue is that the pivot point on Mac laptops tends to be lower, so your screen is a little less likely to get crunched by the dude slamming his seat back onto you.

Older Thinkpads had plastic hinges that did not withstand abuse very well. The metal hinges introduced around the T40 or so fare much better.

My house has an Intel Mac Mini (hiding behind the HD-TV), and old 12" G4 Powerbook, a T43 running Ubuntu (old work machine), and a T60p with XP for work. I love them all. Using Synergy I can hook them up into a 4-monitor virtual machine, which is actually useful from time to time.

I remember when Firefox first started it was meant to be a faster and more secure replacement for IE. Well, the longer I have been running it (many of you know that I was probably the last Slashdot IE6 holdout for various reasons) the more I realize how slow and awful it can be -- especially the last few versions.

K-Meleon is your friend.

I think it's psDooM http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

Well, there's this tidbit I stumbled on awhile back:

http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

Thanks, that's helpful. There's actually quite a bit of crap coding in Notepad++, and now that I've taken the leap and downloaded/installed the new version of MS Visual Web Developer Express I might just chuck it in the virtual bin.

The syntax highlighting is nice, but I simply can't stand programs in the 2008 that don't have working menu bars:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1865630&group_id=95717&atid=612382

WTF, Notepad++!?

Open Source True AI spent the last ten years in development and achieved True AI functionality on 22 January 2008.

Mind.Forth Artificial Intelligence User Manual tells it all.

Your looking for this for your SSH logs: http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/
It will automatically detect and block the attackers and optionally add them to a gobal block list.

We've seen what kinda of profits spam brings in. I wonder how profitable this is.

Heck, spyware/adware, or some shady P2P programs could have something like this. Reminds me of what happened to http://www.shareaza.com/. It's claimed by a group that be like this. That address used to be shareaza's main site, and it easy for many to not know to go to http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/ for the new updates.

http://iterm.sourceforge.net/ - tabbed terminals! \o/

Not the same as what you did, but I find it extremely useful - often having multiple terminals, some to do work, so to tail -f log files.

That's actually a good way of doing it. There's an open source build server called Unattended that can provide a fully patched Windows build automatically - you provide the installer CD and it will pull down all the updates - and it recommends rebooting after each patch. That sounds like the same thing across a local network. I can recommend it as an alternative to ghost by the way: it will boot any PC that can be booted with PXE or bootp.

I've been playing w/launchd on my mac.. seems pretty cool, with neat little tools to keep things like ssh port forwarding always running...

It's open source. Is there a licensing issue that keeps this from becoming popular on various distros?

Well,

In a more primitive form, it's the Sun/IETF-driven XDR format http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4506.html. Many other binary protocol uses and respects parts of the XDR-format, even if not completely. XDR however is in no way general-purpose, as it does not include enough information about the implementing formats in order to make extensible simple formats based on them.

Then there's EBML - Extensible Binary Metadata. It's a bit underspecified, does leave room for extensible protocols, semantically resemble XML in many ways, very fast to implement, but do have some shortcomings in terms of flexibility, and neither does include sufficient metadata to do intelligent things by just watching a message/document. Also it can never implement some kind of generic editor.

Then there's my own little dormant project, runestone. http://runestone.sourceforge.net/ It kindof combines the greatest strengths of XML, with the strengths of binary languages, and then some. It implements extensibility on two levels, both on the same ad-hoc decentralized level as XML, but the format itself is from start designed to be modular and extensible (although in a more synchronized central-control fashion). It allows for features like semi-transparent encryption, compression, checksumming and cryptographic authentication. It's pretty much written with XMPP and SVG in mind, and features things like arrays of uniform data-types, (Excellent for a graphics-format like SVG) prefix-length encoding of all datatypes with variable length, allowing an XMPP-server to "fast-zap" over things in the communication it doesn't need to know. (Like the payload of messages). But it also would enhance protocols like HTML quite a bit by, I.E. faster parsing, embedded inline binaries (like images without an auxiliary http fetch), and options to authenticate parts of a transferred data-stream.

Most important of all, the Runestone format would allow for generic content editor, much like a text-editor is pretty generic for many formats today, but in a way that does not mix information with visual representation. (I.E. your editor not only could, but MUST choose indentation and other styling according to it's own or your preferences). The format simply won't contain them. I think this feature, above all, is critical for a general-purpose binary format.

Other than that, a general-purpose binary format could allow for some very neat indexing opportunities whereas indexers doesn't really need to understand the semantics of a specific document-type, but only the syntax which itself when using the index some of the semantic may be guessed from the syntax. I.E. looking for everything where "author=John Doe", indifferently of document type, based on any document that somewhere in it has an attribute with the value John Doe.

Also, things like version-control of more arbitrary data would be possible, through tree-deltas. Could improve things like ODF a little.

I'm not saying Runestone is the way to go. It's not even, contradictionary to it's name, a format set in stone yet anyways. But I DO think some of the possible characteristics of a binary generic language somewhere along that spirit could prove _very_ useful.

It is my understanding that DKIM is for use in mass mailing where individually encrypting the messages or attaching a relatively large digital signature would not be feasible. Thus, there are better options for personal use.

What I would do is set up a large file on each machine, and export it using nbd - I think they do a Windows version.

Then, gather all these NBDs together at the server, using RAID to add massive redundancy to cope with users switching off their machines/crashing/whatever.

Finally, apply strong cryptography (eg. Truecrypt or LUKS) to the RAID volume, so that all the data sent across the network and stored on the machines is unintelligable to anybody except you.

There's project dedicated to this on Linux, http://nbd.sourceforge.net/.

If there's nothing similar for windows, you might be able to run it through cygwin.

Actually, this claims to run on Windows: http://www.vanheusden.com/Loose/nbdsrvr/

If you wanted to do this on Windows just download UnixUtils

http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

for and findstr on Windows can do most of what xargs and grep can do, but you sometimes need sed.

WASTE, "that one by Nullsoft," is still alive and kicking...

You recall wrong: Linux doesn't use any assembly syntax (unless you mean the Linux source code, which indeed uses AT&T syntax in the places where it uses assembly). The assembler syntax you use depends entirely on the assembler you use. If you use gas (which you also do if you use gcc inline assembly), you of course use AT&T syntax. However, if you use nasm, you use Intel syntax (or something very close). Of course, the assembler isn't part of Linux either.

That's what you think. I'm working on a scalable multi-thread port of Storm Worm. Check out our site at http://sourceforge.net/

I used to believe this until I started the web2newsportal project whose client component is a pure AJAX web app. The prototype javascript library and getElementsByTagName does a lot to remove the clunkiness of XML. Also, I am uncomfortable with the script injection vulnerabilities of JSON.

Number 1 rule of message board self-promotion, when you refer to your project ALWAYS provide the link you want people to use.

I found an interview with iRATE Radio Creator Anthony Jones, a SourceForge page, and the Wikipedia article.

Number 2 rule of self-promotion, explain why I should care. In the case of iRate, you should probably say something like:

iRate is a Legal Mp3 aggregation tool that finds highly rated, copyleft music that matches a users preferences and automagically downloads it into the user's library.

Number 3 rule... get it posted on the message board mainpage when it is ready for general consumption. Because people are less likely to check it out if it is only posted in a comment.

Let me ask you this: what use is authentication without identity? Identity is generally irrelevant when making authorization decisions, particularly when using capabilities. Identity-based access control is the single cause of our vulnerable computing infrastructure. Identity-based security can be locked down somewhat, with Polaris being the epitome of what's achievable on Windows, but it has fundamental limits associated with the amount of information available to make appropriate authorization decisions.

Capabilities change the whole security game, as they enable principle of least authority designs to be easily constructed. Identity-based controls are not composable, so fine-grained permissions are simply impossible.

Capabilities are not the only authorization-based access control of course, but they are perhaps the most well-known. You can even start playing with capabilities today.

Why use a webmail interface at all? I never understood the obsession with GMail's interface or any browser-based interface for that matter. There are dedicated email-reading applications that do a much better job than a browser ever can, and with Blue HttpMail you can use your Hotmail account as if it were IMAP. That way, you are not at the mercy of whims of a webmail administration crew, who can decide to change the interface or requirements or ads whenever they feel like it.

Go and use UPI, then:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/upi/

Just because you can't use tools made for processing text in Unix line-based format, doesn't mean there aren't tools for this purpose. You can even find tools inspired on awk for XML processing, like xmlgawk (also here).

However...

I agree with you that XML is not the answer for everything. For instance, I just hate XML configuration files, exactly because you can't reliably grep, sed, awk, ex, them. Editing XML with vi is not the nicest task either. For config files I usually like INI-style files, for which there are modules in Python and Perl, and you can easily get around with simple shell tools when you just need a dirty hack. A config file usually has a simple enough structure to allow you to specify anything you need in the constraints of INI files (if it doesn't, you should probably rethink your config, it's probably bloated!).

For other tasks such as tabular data, CSV or just plain text delimited by tabs or ":" (think /etc/passwd) are more suited than XML, exactly for the ability to use simple universal tools (grep, sed, awk) on the data. It's even easier to visually inspect a table if it's in CSV or tab-delimited than it is to inspect an XML file and try to see through the tag soup.

Your comment about logfiles is right on the spot! Log files are just made to be grepped. Anything that doesn't write all relevant information of an action on one line, at the time the action happened, really defeats the purpose of logging.

JSON is fit mostly for communication and transfer of simple data between JS and server side scripts through object serialization. But it remains limited. You can compare JSON to XML only if your knowledge of XML stops at the X in AJAX
Beyond that scope comparing these two unrelated "things" is irrelevant.

The tools and libraries available for XML go well beyond JSON's scope. DOM, RSS & ATOM, OASIS, Xpath, XSLT, eXist DB are just few examples of tools and libraries surrounding XML.
XML is designed to let you create your own protocols and formats while using only one simple base format (XML), one simple descriptor language (Schema or DTS) and you can convert your formats and protocols using one transformation technology (XSLT).
There are languages to query XML files and collections, XLM databases and many more examples including scientific, vectorial and 3d imaging formats.
I believe the word Interoperability was created with XML in mind... Or maybe the other way round... whatever.

Bruce Schneier wrote about the long password requirement and how it can backfire because users can't remember them. My dad keeps his passwords in a text file on his desktop because his job requires them to change it every month, have letters and number and be different from the last 6 passwords. While that's good in theory, it's counterproductive because he doesn't (and can't) keep the passwords safe.

That's because Halo 2 doesn't actually need directx10. It has a 'is this vista check', and it might use a couple of minor new directx 10 direct3d calls (which can easily be captured and reimplemented in direct3d 9).

Correct. A lot of the rest, well, not so much. And I appologize in advance for tearing into you over this, but I do 3D graphics programming for a living and it just pisses me off to no end how MS's marketing statements have somehow morphed into technical truths when they are clearly not true at all.

In a nut shell, DX10's rendering features can be (and are, under OpenGL) implemented under the old driver model. Vista's shiny 3D desktop and ridiculous DRM (which are separate from Direct3D 10), however, cannot. Microsoft consistently choses to confuse the two, but they are distinct technologies that shouldn't probably don't rely on each other to any significant degree. Details follow.

The real features of directX10 like Video memory virtualization and gpu multitasking (which allows Vista to have multiple direct3d accelerated applications (including the desktop) all running at the same time in (possibibly overlapping windows).

This is all possible on XP with both OpenGL and Direct3D 9. Seriously, get a couple of 3D programs that run in windowed mode and drag them around your monitor. Overlap them. It works fine on XP. Managing the GPU resources is simply done inside the driver. All Vista's model does is move some functionality that used to be common to all drivers up into the kernel, because refactoring things this way allowed them to remove some of the overhead from most D3D API entry points - overhead that exists in D3D 9 (which is obviously not crippled or useless because of it).

The D3D10 feature set could be implemented in XP without rewriting the kernel. There might be more overhead when calling rendering functions, but it probably wouldn't be worse than calling D3D9 functions (and D3D9's API is a lot chattier than D3D10's). There is no D3D10 feature that requires the Vista kernel rewrite.

If you don't believe me then go put a GeForce 8 series card in a XP machine, install the latest driver, and then download GLEW. Get it to dump out a list of available OpenGL extensions (visualinfo.exe in the bin directory, assuming you downloaded the Win32 binaries). Note these extensions in particular: GL_EXT_geometry_shader4, GL_EXT_texture_array, GL_NV_transform_feedback, as well as a few others I don't care to list. Those are all the OpenGL equivalents to the new D3D10 feature set. If NVIDIA can expose D3D10 generation features through OpenGL on an XP driver running on the old XP kernel, Microsoft can do the same thing through Direct3D 10. They simply choose not to.

The only thing the old driver model can't actually do is share graphics resources among multiple processes, something that pretty much no 3D graphics application would ever really do in the first place (because launching processes and getting them to talk to each other is really expensive on Windows), and something which is not required for useful D3D 10 support. Read on to find out why they stuck in a useless feature.

You aren't going to get a proper Compiz or Aqua class desktop for XP because XP simply can't do this stuff. Vista/DirectX10 can.

The shiny 3D desktop thing in Vista is the only thing that really requires the new driver model, as it is what actually makes use of the ability to share D3D resources among multiple processes (it basically shares any 3D app's render surface into its own texture set). And note that the shiny desktop doesn't even use D3D10. It just uses D3D9 plus the extensions to D3D9 that are only available under the new driver model - extensions which only serve to notify applications that their device will (almost) never be lost (mundane window/D3D device setup thing, has nothing to do with actually rendering) and expose th

1) Figure out the genes involved via a bioinformatics database.
2) Order the genes - look up oligonucleotide synthesis companies, or DIY with the open source machine.
3) Download the biokit for do-it-yourself genetic engineering.
4) ??? (tanks, supplies, tissue culture, obtaining zebra fish and feed ...) 5) See-through zebra fish.

Both the 5mx and Netbook have been used successfully by mountaineers; the Netbook in particular was used by a Hungarian team while climbing Mount Everest. They have been out of production for years but it shouldn't be difficult to pick them up (probably used) for a small fraction of what a normal laptop would cost.
http://www.psionteklogix.com/public.aspx?s=us&p=News&POid=367
http://www.project-himalaya.com/news-00-shishapangma.html

I have never used a Netbook, but was pleased with the 5mx that I used years ago (though not for world travel or mountain climbing or anything like that). It fit in my pocket, had a VERY comfortable keyboard for its size (I could type at roughly 2/3 of the speed that I type on a full-sized keyboard) and ran for a good 30 hours or so on a pair of AA batteries. It survived a number of short falls--about 3 feet onto hard surfaces--without any problems.

Both use CompactFlash for removable storage, and can be used with a cell phone or modem for Internet access. The Netbook has a PCMCIA slot as well, which (with appropriate cards) adds Ethernet or wireless capabilities.
http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?p=321802

The 5mx probably won't be of much help when it comes to creating backup copies of photos, but the Netbook might with appropriate accessories (either sending them over the Internet or mailing home CompactFlash cards).

And yes, both will run Linux if you choose, though there are some limitiations.
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/howtos/netbook_new/index.htm
http://staff.washington.edu/dushaw/psion/openpsion/
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/howtos/series5mx_new/index.htm

Both the 5mx and Netbook have been used successfully by mountaineers; the Netbook in particular was used by a Hungarian team while climbing Mount Everest. They have been out of production for years but it shouldn't be difficult to pick them up (probably used) for a small fraction of what a normal laptop would cost.
http://www.psionteklogix.com/public.aspx?s=us&p=News&POid=367
http://www.project-himalaya.com/news-00-shishapangma.html

I have never used a Netbook, but was pleased with the 5mx that I used years ago (though not for world travel or mountain climbing or anything like that). It fit in my pocket, had a VERY comfortable keyboard for its size (I could type at roughly 2/3 of the speed that I type on a full-sized keyboard) and ran for a good 30 hours or so on a pair of AA batteries. It survived a number of short falls--about 3 feet onto hard surfaces--without any problems.

Both use CompactFlash for removable storage, and can be used with a cell phone or modem for Internet access. The Netbook has a PCMCIA slot as well, which (with appropriate cards) adds Ethernet or wireless capabilities.
http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?p=321802

The 5mx probably won't be of much help when it comes to creating backup copies of photos, but the Netbook might with appropriate accessories (either sending them over the Internet or mailing home CompactFlash cards).

And yes, both will run Linux if you choose, though there are some limitiations.
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/howtos/netbook_new/index.htm
http://staff.washington.edu/dushaw/psion/openpsion/
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/howtos/series5mx_new/index.htm

http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/

Ubuntu/Debian: http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/truecrypt-5.0-ubuntu-x86.tar.gz

Windows: http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/TrueCrypt%20Setup%205.0.exe

http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/

Ubuntu/Debian: http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/truecrypt-5.0-ubuntu-x86.tar.gz

Windows: http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/TrueCrypt%20Setup%205.0.exe

http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/

Ubuntu/Debian: http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/truecrypt-5.0-ubuntu-x86.tar.gz

Windows: http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/TrueCrypt%20Setup%205.0.exe

FYI, http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php links to http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/downloads/TrueCrypt%20Setup%205.0.exe.

The site is down, but the sourceforge page is not.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/truecrypt/

http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/truecrypt/IMPORTANT--Official_TrueCrypt_distribution_packages_can_be_downloaded_only_from_www.truecrypt.org.html

As of November 2, 2005, all official TrueCrypt distribution packages can be downloaded only at:

http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php

SourceForge.net mirror servers are no longer used. For more information, visit www.truecrypt.org