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This timing, of course, is not coincidental. The open-source hack tivodecode has made .tivo file decoding possible on non-Windows platforms. Tons of people are using tools like the TivoDecode Manager to replace the functionality not available from TiVo officially...until now.

0) Don't "roll your own" security unless absolutely necessary. Find someone else's implementations and work with those.

1) Design the code for security, code to that design. I've seen of security bugs creep into code because it was never designed to be secure.

2) Use static code checkers--such as Splint for C/C++ and FindBugs for Java--that look for security vulnerabilities.

3) Peer reviews/code audits. Sit down with your code (and have others who know how to look for security vulnerabilities sit down with your code) and do a full review.

Nothing is foolproof, but every little bit helps. It should be noted that all of the above also improve the overall quality of the code and reduce the number of overall bugs: Finding existent implementations of features that can be used can reduce maintenance and reduce bugs; Designing the code and putting it through a proper design review can catch a lot of logic problems and ensure that the code fits the requirements list--I've seen a huge number of synchronization bugs in Java simply because the author didn't know how to use synchronization properly; static code checkers find a lot more than just security bugs; and Peer Reviews/Code Audits can help isolate a variety of problems.

No, I think he meant Links, which is a more advanced text based browser.

But maybe he should have meant ELinks, an even more advanced derivative that's actually in active development.

Make that "Lynx" ..... (www.lynx.org) which is a 'command line only' browser.

No, I think he meant Links, which is a more advanced text based browser.

This is a breeze since you already have a Knoppix CD as a parachute (it DOES connect to the net with your system so you can surf for info just in case?).

Boot Ubuntu.
Download a 98SE .iso (small file size being the main reason) from P2P and burn it. You own one, so why not? You can scan it with ClamAV if you wish.
Test that it boots, but do not install yet.
Backup everything you want to save from both OSs.
I know Knoppix has the tools, but I'm fond of the Gparted live CD. I'd download that too.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Blow away old Windows partition, create replacement FAT32 partition for 98SE.
Install Win98SE to fresh partition, then upgrade to 2000. Your GRUB CD covers you there.

No, the GP was right. Here. And here.

No, the GP was right. Here. And here.

Make that "Lynx" ..... (www.lynx.org) which is a 'command line only' browser.

No, I think he meant Links, which is a more advanced text based browser.

http://links.sourceforge.net/

I use python almost exclusively for my research work (it's quite common in my field, computational linguistics) and the performance when I use Psyco is often pretty close to that using a compiled language, especially when I/O is a factor, where python's optimised routines are very quick. Sure, it is sometimes a little slower than what I could code up in C, but when I can develop the python code several times faster, most of the time python wins out.

:inoremap <tab> <esc>
:inoremap <esc> <tab>

http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/

Yo yo, Borland C and joe both use default keystrokes derived from WordStar. When I switched from DOS to Linux in the mid-'90s, I found it quite easy and natural to pick up joe, and I've been using it ever since. Check it out!

Ever hear of SSHFS? Or the infinitely slow Tramp?

Where do you even find the original vi?

Or more likely 'joe' is a reference to joe, Joe's Own Editor, which has been around since the late eighties. In fact I used it exclusively back when Slackware was distributed on floppies--my temp files were always named bob so I could type 'joe bob' to edit them. Of course this was before I "did the right thing" and switched to vi. :-)

There _is_ a portable gVim here. And for built in vi, Firefox has the ViewSourceWith plugin, which works just great with gVim. It lets you edit any textarea using the editor of your choice. (I'm not affiliated with either of these, they're just good software.)

Well, it's not exactly vi, but portable gvim is useful nonetheless.

[ 1629250 ] Ignore stories submitted by foe. How about a feature that allows me to ignore stories submitted a user that is my foe? I envision that this feature could stop all the bickering about Roland Piquepailles stories. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=deta il&aid=1629250&group_id=4421&atid=354421

I've used both shell + dialog and python + dialog, and can vouch for the usability of the library. It's an excellent choice for any text-based UI programming. For python, I'd use this nifty little wrapper - http://pythondialog.sourceforge.net/.

It has probably already been posted but I haven't noticed the open source COBOL compilers that already exist so here are a couple of free Cobol compilers that I've played with.

  Cobol for GCC http://cobolforgcc.sourceforge.net/ is dead

  Tiny Cobol http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/index.php last release was in 2005

  OpenCobol http://www.opencobol.org/ Still has one developer working on it.

I like the OpenCOBOL the best, it takes your COBOL code, converts it to C, then compiles it using GCC. You might be able to kick start your project by looking at what these guys have done.

It has probably already been posted but I haven't noticed the open source COBOL compilers that already exist so here are a couple of free Cobol compilers that I've played with.

  Cobol for GCC http://cobolforgcc.sourceforge.net/ is dead

  Tiny Cobol http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/index.php last release was in 2005

  OpenCobol http://www.opencobol.org/ Still has one developer working on it.

I like the OpenCOBOL the best, it takes your COBOL code, converts it to C, then compiles it using GCC. You might be able to kick start your project by looking at what these guys have done.

If the programmers and/or managers still think COBOL is useful, why not let them deploy its applications. If COBOL has survived it is only because it is relevant, or make easy to understand its legacy systems. It is well standardized by several organizations and have several commercial and free implementations. Compare for instance Java, which IS NOT standardized yet, have a few (SUN alone is the standard) implementation, and is a moving target!

If I would choose a language to port COBOL applications, I would prefer Common Lisp. That's because I like it. It gives me control and power. There are many things impossible to do in Java or C++ (and COBOL too) that's easy in CL (real macros anyone?).

Of course, for business applications, or better saying, for the junior programmers that are able to write COBOL or Java code for finnancial applications, Common Lisp is a nightmare with its complex concepts. For a seasoned programmer, there are, along with CL (Common Lisp), a handful of other interesting languages such as Ruby, Tcl, Python, and others.

But remember, there are tricks in COBOL that no other language (except CL, of course, that may implement the syntax you need) which features a MOVE (with type conversion according its PICTUREs), MOVE CORRESPONDING, a precision "money arithmetic", several verbs like INSPECT, STRING, etc. People get used to work with those features! That's why COBOL still lives and will live for much more time than you Java-only programmers (Java morons) expect.

In Brazil there's a saying "don't change a team that's winning".

BTW, I'm NOT a COBOL programmer, but I'm a proud implementor of TinyCOBOL (http://tinycobol.org/ or http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/), a free (GPL, libraries LGPL) COBOL compiler that peaked 4,000 downloads/month. I prefer to write my code in Tcl, Common Lisp (including CLOS, its object system), Prolog, C (not C++, which is ugly), yacc/lex/ox (compiler tools), TeX, Postscript, Smalltalk, Forht (I've implemented a derivative of it called "Filia" in the early 70's), and othe less known animals...

Rildo Pragana -- "Adventures in Linux Programming" http://www.pragana.net/

It's nice to see another language designer on here. I've recently released my pet project on sourceforge, called 2e (as in two e's, or ee, which stands for expression evaluator). Feel free to grab any ideas / code from it -- currently it is mostly just an expression evaluator, but it supports function calls (built-in and user-defined), and it supports an inline conditional like C, plus an iterative inline conditional -- so it can get by without an if/else or while/do statements.
But the code is designed to be embeddable, and if you want to you can rip apart the expression evaluator and integrate it into other interpreters.

You could go from Windows 2000 to Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server and run it as desktop operating system.
I have heard that after some tweaks Windows 2003 Server apparently becomes a decent Windows desktop OS.

Run it in a virtual machine as other suggested might be a good idea too.

Or you could use Mozilla Firefox, use a hardware firewall, disable unneeded services, close unused ports. Harden the system with software such as 'xpy' and 'CMIA', etc.
* http://xpy.whyeye.org/
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmia/

Use Windows Update. DO NOT use Internet Explorer.
Use an restricted account, do not use the administrator account.

To any Windows users weary of using Linux because of its looks - worry not. I started using KDE around version 3.1 and was humbly surprised by how nice it looked. Many of the default screens don't do it justice. If you want to give KDE (or GNOME, for that matter) a new look you can hop over to KDE-Look or GNOME-Look respectively. For the users who prefer a more minimalistic interface you could always try out Enlightenment, a fantastic looking window manager.

That being said, I have no doubt that KDE 4.0 will make everything good looking and functional I love about KDE much better, so there is always that to look forward to.

I can hardly wait to be able to run KDE apps on MacOSX without having to start an X server, and have proper copy-paste support, correct window stacking and native look an feel. There are KDE applications like Krusader for which there is hardly any alternative on the Mac.

Check this out : http://tvision.sourceforge.net/

Yep, the old turbo vision. Very useful, object oriented, shortcut keys built-in. Mouse handling, very fast, very well debugged. Great stuff

Check out gaim-text. It uses a new ncurses based toolkit that emulates GTK+. If you are familiar with GTK+, you will like it.

When I was writing text-based PC apps in the early 90s, Borland's TurboVision blew me away. It was very easy to work with and it made building nice, windowed user interfaces a snap. Not only that, but full source was provided and that source was clean, elegant, and such an excellent demonstration of proper object-oriented design that I built an OO design class around it.

Borland released TurboVision to the world after it was obsoleted by the takeover of GUIs, and some enterprising folks have ported it to gcc/ncurses and fixed up some of the few defects in the original library.

I haven't actually used this library, but its existence almost makes me want to go write some text-mode code just for the fun of it.

Borland's Turbo Vision UI was rather nice, considering it was all Text. It's even been ported for GNU toolsets: http://tvision.sourceforge.net/

Screenshot from the link of it on QNX: http://tvision.sourceforge.net/tv2-QNX-tvscreen.jp g

The nice thing about it is that it's OO... one of the very first OO TUI's, if I remember correctly.

I have absolutely no idea how it'll work over a terminal. XTerms an option?

Borland's Turbo Vision UI was rather nice, considering it was all Text. It's even been ported for GNU toolsets: http://tvision.sourceforge.net/

Screenshot from the link of it on QNX: http://tvision.sourceforge.net/tv2-QNX-tvscreen.jp g

The nice thing about it is that it's OO... one of the very first OO TUI's, if I remember correctly.

I have absolutely no idea how it'll work over a terminal. XTerms an option?

I have set up BackupPC: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

For the off-site portion of things, the entire disk that backuppc runs on is periodically rsynced to an external USB drive and taken away to be exchanged with the one at the owner's house.

I ran the rsync daemon on windows as the method for BackupPC to get to the windows disks. Sharing everything via samba kept leading to stalled copies that would suddenly start up again when you started pinging the stuck machine, that sort of thing.

That's not as far-fetched as it sounds. The ELKS project will run on an 8086 PC, and the kernel is only 36k. You even have room for sh, cp and rm (You can use the -i switch to emulate ls) on that 128k floppy. The bad news is that you'll need to port the boot code to the IIe yourself.

There's a pretty cool 3D robotics simulator( open source and GPL'ed ) called Simbad at:

http://simbad.sourceforge.net/

Written in Java and leverages Java3D and has scripting via python along with a couple of
extensions: Neural Network library (PicoNode) and Evolutionary Algorithms library (PicoEvo)

Seems like a good start for the graphical simulator tool.

LoB

Yup, sure looks like Microsoft purchased advertising space for the Bill Gates marketing piece. The content is simplistic and naive while he goes on and on about Microsofts new robotics effort. And putting Mundie on the project just stinks of opposing current GNU/Linux open source efforts in robotics.

BTW, notice the ads for Microsofts 3D rebotics kit?

Too bad they didn't mention the opensource 3D robotics simulator called Simbad( http://simbad.sourceforge.net/ ).

LoB

I just visited the appleseed site. http://appleseed.sourceforge.net/

The idea looks cool, but you've got a problem with your page (at the top).

Warning: main(inc/header.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/groups/a/ap/appleseed/htdocs/index.php on line 2

Warning: main(): Failed opening 'inc/header.inc' for inclusion (include_path='') in /home/groups/a/ap/appleseed/htdocs/index.php on line 2

http://lives.sourceforge.net/

when you see the picture, it really looks like an
azureus http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ fork even the icons are similar

Social networks should soon start seeing interoperability like email.

I've been working on an open source software that uses a distributed protocol. It's called Appleseed

if they don't open up and embrace standards allowing greater interoperability among the different networks.

It makes perfect sense for people outside of these corporations to see that... But from within, how do you balance interoperability with the business necessity of maintaining your users? For-profit sites aren't interested in that balancing act. They'll keep their walled garden as isolated as they can.

I've been developing an open source, distributed social networking software called Appleseed, and honestly, I think the solution is going to have to come from an open source solution. As long as profit and market share are the main motivating factors of companies like Facebook, Friendster, Myspace, etc., there is absolutely no incentive to design things properly.

Appleseed, and open source in general, has the freedom to be able to do things right. Create an interoperable network of social networking "nodes" which use a standard protocol to connect and interact. It's very simple, and the rules of business that these companies have to follow is the only thing keeping that from happening from within the proprietary world.

I see it as analagous to the old days of email. Back in the day, you had Compuserve, you had AOL, and Prodigy, and other competing services that attempted to monopolize their user base by refusing interoperability. But eventually, they had no choice but to adopt standard E-Mail for their users.

Let's face it, in this day and age, there is no single, good technological answer for why a user on MySpace can't send a message or a friend request to a user on Friendster, other than "We [myspace] doesn't want them to." Which is not an answer that people will tolerate for long.

This is an itch, and open source (namely, Appleseed, since it seems like the solution which is the farthest along) is the only way to scratch it.

if they don't open up and embrace standards allowing greater interoperability among the different networks.

It makes perfect sense for people outside of these corporations to see that... But from within, how do you balance interoperability with the business necessity of maintaining your users? For-profit sites aren't interested in that balancing act. They'll keep their walled garden as isolated as they can.

I've been developing an open source, distributed social networking software called Appleseed, and honestly, I think the solution is going to have to come from an open source solution. As long as profit and market share are the main motivating factors of companies like Facebook, Friendster, Myspace, etc., there is absolutely no incentive to design things properly.

Appleseed, and open source in general, has the freedom to be able to do things right. Create an interoperable network of social networking "nodes" which use a standard protocol to connect and interact. It's very simple, and the rules of business that these companies have to follow is the only thing keeping that from happening from within the proprietary world.

I see it as analagous to the old days of email. Back in the day, you had Compuserve, you had AOL, and Prodigy, and other competing services that attempted to monopolize their user base by refusing interoperability. But eventually, they had no choice but to adopt standard E-Mail for their users.

Let's face it, in this day and age, there is no single, good technological answer for why a user on MySpace can't send a message or a friend request to a user on Friendster, other than "We [myspace] doesn't want them to." Which is not an answer that people will tolerate for long.

This is an itch, and open source (namely, Appleseed, since it seems like the solution which is the farthest along) is the only way to scratch it.

Just use http://ncrypt.sourceforge.net/ to wipe data. It offers Gutmann and Military grade wipes.

Not sure about the language itself, but there are interpreters with various licenses available including one on Sourceforge with unknown license: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openapl (feeling too lazy to make a link, sorry)

BTW, J is the descendant of APL which doesn't require some kind of wacky keyboard to use. It's probably the one to look into if you are looking to pick up APL on a standard PC.

No, it's still free and open sourced; everything else from that company/site isn't though.

Eraser Main Site
Eraser Sourceforge page

Nope, not completely unrecoverable, just difficult. Using an SEM anything written to a modern (mid 90's or later) HDD can be recovered even after many passes with "secure" delete patterns. Peter Gutmann wrote about the problem years ago. Although he doesn't specifically mention flash ram I would imagine the problems facing DRAM and SRAM would be even more prevalent with flash due to wear leveling and other protection techniques meant to keep data safe on the flash device. When the data really needs to be secure physical destruction is the only way to go =)

"Java is a bit nicer than C++ but it just can't perform at the level of C (how many OS'es are written in Java?)"

http://www.jnode.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaOS
http://lejos.sourceforge.net/

I admit, JavaOS is dead and lejos is for Lego bricks, so that leaves jnode.org. Note that there are already many OS's out there, and end-users typically don't care what kind of language the OS is written in. Most bricks of operating systems are found in C/C++ libraries, with nice GNU or BSD licenses.

I work at a small ISV which just bought SourceForge, Enterprise Edition which is an Apache/JBOSS/PostgreSql/CentOS app for managing SDLC. For a company of our size, they package this as a VMWare image. Installation is incredibly easy. I can definitely see how free virtualization can be a big boon to companies selling and/or consuming web applications for small deployments.

Well, you might like 2e then, esp. once I add some object oriented capabilities to it. I designed it to be super simple (it is mostly just an expression evaluator), yet flexible enough. Currently only interpreted, but I may eventually code up a compiler for it (most likely using C as the intermediary language).

so it's not like we're going to see an Indiana Jones trying to come to terms with teh Intarwebs.