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Beside big players, like Maya, 3dsmax and Blender, I would like to remark that Collada is gaining a momentum even in the academic environment. MeshLab ( http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/ ) , for example, is a Collada enabled open source tool aimed to the processing of large 3D scanning meshes for Cultural Heritage applications, like documentation, reproduction, restoration planning and didactical uses of 3D technologies.

If you're willing, would you be willing to list them?

DOOM III (with linux binary download),
Castle Wolfenstein (with linux binary download).

The others I bought from tuxgames http://www.tuxgames.com/. They are more expensive and they take a week to deliver to the USA. I'm hoping they open a USA shop soon. I bought from them this year:

Heretic II,
Rune,
Soul Ride (my kids say it sucks),
Airport tycoon,
Myth II,
Heavy Gear,

I plan on buying a few more after Christmas. Wine works well for me for two out of three legacy Windows games.
I enjoy Starcraft and Warcraft II, but Diablo II doesn't work under my Wine config. All my DOS games work fine under DOSBOX http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

My laptop can't handle extreme graphic requirements and I can play only so much mahjong :).

When I'm on the road with my laptop (P3, neo-magic chipset), I play Heroes III (loki games, discontinued), Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/, and the stock KDE/Gnome games. Try here for some addition freeware games: http://liflg.org/?catid=6. I enjoy Glest and Warzone 2100.

Of course when I'm on the road I'm supposed to be working, but thats why I refused a company laptop and use my own :)

Enjoy,

To be specific, Feeling Software's exporters (ColladaMax, ColladaMaya) and their COLLADA manipulation library (FCollada) are under the MIT licence. The development process isn't particularly open (their Bugzilla is, but their code repository isn't and you have to just wait until the next official release to get any new fixes), but that hasn't been a problem for me in practice - I've had to make some local changes to get FCollada compiling on Linux, but it's easy to do that and to distribute patches since it's open source.

An alternative to FCollada is the COLLADA DOM library, under the SCEA Shared Source License, which is similarly open.

You don't need drivers. Moto4lin works on OS X - or should. I use it on my linux box with no problems. There seems to be other software, too.

I also want to point out that there's a lot more out there than just charging your phone. I use some free software linked from that site (BitPim in particular) to transfer songs and videos to my 1GB microSD card that I got for $25. I use the phone (a V3m) as a music and video (got Season 1 of "The Office" on there right now!) player. Granted, it's not as feature-packed or nice as an iPod, but it gets the job done, and I got the phone for free!

...and here are some more softwares and guides related to privacy, pseudo/ano-nymity and security:

tor.eff.orgonion routing anonymizer
www.i2p.netsecure/anonymous interactive network
freenetproject.orgsecure/anonymous distributed file system
www.turtle4privacy.orgf2f peer network
gnunet.orgsecure p2p infrastructure
www.cspace.insecure p2p infrastructure
www.openswan.orgVPN with opportunistic encryption
silcnet.orgsecure internet live chat
ihu.sourceforge.netp2p VoIP with crypto

wiki.noreply.orgHow to give anonymous talks
azureus.sourceforge.netazureus over p2p
cryptnet.netguerrilla software development how to

...and here are some more softwares and guides related to privacy, pseudo/ano-nymity and security:

tor.eff.orgonion routing anonymizer
www.i2p.netsecure/anonymous interactive network
freenetproject.orgsecure/anonymous distributed file system
www.turtle4privacy.orgf2f peer network
gnunet.orgsecure p2p infrastructure
www.cspace.insecure p2p infrastructure
www.openswan.orgVPN with opportunistic encryption
silcnet.orgsecure internet live chat
ihu.sourceforge.netp2p VoIP with crypto

wiki.noreply.orgHow to give anonymous talks
azureus.sourceforge.netazureus over p2p
cryptnet.netguerrilla software development how to

Humor my speculation...

If it lacks beasty memory, I say start thinking about how to utilize the massive arrays of CPUs to compress and store information in the tiny buckets. The PS3 is a standard platform that you can rely on 7 SPEs existing, I'd say do what the game developers do with compressed textures. Linux has a compressed caching module but I can't tell if they are trying to just tackle disk paging (like swap) and not what I'm suggesting for all RAM pages. I'd hope that Terra Soft treats the PS3 as an embedded device and use CramFS or CRAMES in their YDL release for the PS3. But they probably already thought of this.

How so?

The OLPC stuff I've seen has been running GTK+ applications, so presumably anything using GTK would be acceptable. If that's the case then GTK+ WebCore, which Nokia are working on, might be an option. It is, admittedly, alpha currently - but the rendering engine is ported, and it may be worth looking at.

converting downloaded video files to a format that works on the PSP (and would also play on a PS3 if I had one) is a hell of a lot easier than the WMV-or-nothing setup on the 360.

Yeah, the conversion process for each is a pain in the neck. However, I did find a nice project on Sourceforge that will convert anything to anything else provided that you install the libraries separately - including converting MP3 to WMA and back again for free. I'm positive it does movies as well. It's a pretty nice app - MediaCoder.

the PSP and PS3 are surprisingly nice, actually.

Yeah, I think the GP is a bit trollish on this actually. To say that Sony's online support is half-assed is actually pretty innaccurate. They have the store up and running with a few games for the PSP and are preparing the movie offerings now. Just about every game launched for the PS3 save one was online-enabled and the ability to stream movies between the two platforms is coming in March I think. You already can transfer between them with ease.

I think that the Sony movie thing for PSP would be better if you could rent the movies, not buy them. How are you supposed to store them once you've downloaded them? If you can rent the rights for a few days for a few dollars I'd do it as it'd be great to take on the road. A totally fantastic idea would be to allow the PS3 to download the movies you buy and allow you to stream them to your PSP. If you can turn your PS3 into a media server/video game console with a replaceable 60GB hard drive, the $600 pricetag is actually pretty cheap.

is there a Qt for gaming?

Even so, most of the tittles 10 years ago and beyond, do not control timing at all. If you run them in "fast" computers (more than 60Mhz) they will go crazy. Ah... what a pity for my Caesar and Theme Park :(

Does root have access to /proc/kcore? If yes then an attacker with root access can modify the kernel in memory as needed. Heck there's even projects to bring this into the mainstream for carrier grade Linux (no need for those pesky reboots after a kernel upgrade): http://pannus.sourceforge.net/

Also, some grey listing systems are better than others. One that really works well for me is sqlgrey http://sqlgrey.sourceforge.net/ Sqlgrey comes with a fairly decent list of servers to exclude due to their inability to properly follow specs, so you don't lose mail from most of the broken but nonspammer servers. This list is also updated automagically and seems to work pretty well.. makes greylisting actually usable, for us at least.

P.S. Don't want to start any holy wars, but if you're trying to fight mail and want a system thats easy to config and just works, postfix is a really great mail server.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/
Works pretty well for most general purposes, and it finally supports writing.

Also, it begs the question: if the bazaar model is so great, how come the only games that it's produced are cheap knock-offs and clones of popular five or ten year old closed source games?

Open source development of abandoned commercial games doesn't even seem to achieve much: WarZone 2100 was open sourced 2 years ago, and all that's been achieved in that time is a POSIX port, plus the addition of some crash bugs.

This kind of pokes the argument that open source promotes diversity in the eye with a sharp stick.

As an ex professional games developer, I think that the open source guys clamouring to get their paws on Ryzom are in for a shock, if they think it's going to be easy to adopt, adapt and improve it. In my experience, successful games development means running the project with a fist of iron, and ruthlessly preventing developers from falling noff into fugue states where they get obessed with their own little area of navel lint. It will be very interesting to see how Ryzom develops (if at all) after it's open sourced.

psyncx is a graphical front end to psync and works quite well.

at my last job, i backed up a machine using retrospect and an exabyte loader and it was weeks of headaches. nothing went right at all.

psyncx doesn't have the complex options of something like retrospect, but it's perfect for the user of a single machine who wants a basic backup - selected folders or drives copied to another location - done on a schedule of manually, using inexpensive shareware software.

> I don't know what to do to solve this, any suggestions?

1) Address the ignorance factor first. Make sure people are aware of the issue of data security and the seriousness of it. Don't assume they automatically know. Explain it to them in a way that is informative and not condescending.

2) Use a platform designed to keep users in userland.

3) Setup laptops with encrypted filesystems [0] and encrypted connections [1]. Do not give users administrative access. Re-image [2] system partitions for extra freshness. Stop using WEP.

[0] http://rubyforge.org/projects/fusefs/
[1] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/02/2 3/wep.html
[2] http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know, but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net], Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] come readily to mind). Seamless integration with Linux distributions has the potential to make it a much more popular language, and may also result in usability improvements to the environment itself.

In terms of the functionality they offer, those are good programs. But the problem is that they're virtually unusable, even on extremely fast systems with lots of RAM, just because Java's performance is so poor.

I just did some timings (measured with the time command) with Java 1.6.0 on Debian Linux, on a 2.6 GHz Opteron system with 4 GB of RAM. jEdit, for instance, takes 34 seconds to load up initially. That is without other Java programs being executed, so we don't have class library sharing taking place. That is also after having run the SwingSet2 demos apps, just to get the JVM and classes loaded off of disk and into the buffer cache. Subsequent loadings took between 23 and 27 seconds.

Other text editors are far quicker. Nedit takes under a second. KDE's Kate takes 2 seconds. Gedit takes 15 s on the first load, and then 8 s or so on subsequent loads. Regardless, I don't see why I'd want to use jEdit for quick editing tasks when it takes so long to load. I could have edited perhaps five to ten files using Nedit in the same time that it takes for jEdit to load!

jEdit offers some really nice features, but until its performance is improved 30 fold, it just won't be a suitable replacement for other graphical text editors.

Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know, but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net], Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] come readily to mind). Seamless integration with Linux distributions has the potential to make it a much more popular language, and may also result in usability improvements to the environment itself.

In terms of the functionality they offer, those are good programs. But the problem is that they're virtually unusable, even on extremely fast systems with lots of RAM, just because Java's performance is so poor.

I just did some timings (measured with the time command) with Java 1.6.0 on Debian Linux, on a 2.6 GHz Opteron system with 4 GB of RAM. jEdit, for instance, takes 34 seconds to load up initially. That is without other Java programs being executed, so we don't have class library sharing taking place. That is also after having run the SwingSet2 demos apps, just to get the JVM and classes loaded off of disk and into the buffer cache. Subsequent loadings took between 23 and 27 seconds.

Other text editors are far quicker. Nedit takes under a second. KDE's Kate takes 2 seconds. Gedit takes 15 s on the first load, and then 8 s or so on subsequent loads. Regardless, I don't see why I'd want to use jEdit for quick editing tasks when it takes so long to load. I could have edited perhaps five to ten files using Nedit in the same time that it takes for jEdit to load!

jEdit offers some really nice features, but until its performance is improved 30 fold, it just won't be a suitable replacement for other graphical text editors.

Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know, but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net], Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] come readily to mind). Seamless integration with Linux distributions has the potential to make it a much more popular language, and may also result in usability improvements to the environment itself.

In terms of the functionality they offer, those are good programs. But the problem is that they're virtually unusable, even on extremely fast systems with lots of RAM, just because Java's performance is so poor.

I just did some timings (measured with the time command) with Java 1.6.0 on Debian Linux, on a 2.6 GHz Opteron system with 4 GB of RAM. jEdit, for instance, takes 34 seconds to load up initially. That is without other Java programs being executed, so we don't have class library sharing taking place. That is also after having run the SwingSet2 demos apps, just to get the JVM and classes loaded off of disk and into the buffer cache. Subsequent loadings took between 23 and 27 seconds.

Other text editors are far quicker. Nedit takes under a second. KDE's Kate takes 2 seconds. Gedit takes 15 s on the first load, and then 8 s or so on subsequent loads. Regardless, I don't see why I'd want to use jEdit for quick editing tasks when it takes so long to load. I could have edited perhaps five to ten files using Nedit in the same time that it takes for jEdit to load!

jEdit offers some really nice features, but until its performance is improved 30 fold, it just won't be a suitable replacement for other graphical text editors.

That depends on what market we are talking about. Open sourcing Java will make a MASSIVE difference in terms of Java's appeal to the open source development community. Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know [...]

I doubt it. There's an awful lot of Kool-Aid you have to drink to become a Java programmer. Java isn't a language, it's a family of platforms. For a Unix person like myself, something like Python will always win over Java, precisely because it doesn't attempt to be a platform. In fact, Python tries to provide the Unix APIs in a convenient and straightforward way. The same goes for all relevant task-specific libraries. (And if you don't like Python, there are a handful of other popular, free languages at an abstraction level higher than Java, which share the same platform-agnostic approach.)

And meanwhile, Java is stuck on its own little island, and the beaches and the surfing aren't better there than anywhere else.

[...]but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/, Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ come readily to mind).

It's never a good sign when a program advertises the language it's written in by adopting the language's initial letter for its own name ...

That depends on what market we are talking about. Open sourcing Java will make a MASSIVE difference in terms of Java's appeal to the open source development community. Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know [...]

I doubt it. There's an awful lot of Kool-Aid you have to drink to become a Java programmer. Java isn't a language, it's a family of platforms. For a Unix person like myself, something like Python will always win over Java, precisely because it doesn't attempt to be a platform. In fact, Python tries to provide the Unix APIs in a convenient and straightforward way. The same goes for all relevant task-specific libraries. (And if you don't like Python, there are a handful of other popular, free languages at an abstraction level higher than Java, which share the same platform-agnostic approach.)

And meanwhile, Java is stuck on its own little island, and the beaches and the surfing aren't better there than anywhere else.

[...]but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/, Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ come readily to mind).

It's never a good sign when a program advertises the language it's written in by adopting the language's initial letter for its own name ...

That depends on what market we are talking about. Open sourcing Java will make a MASSIVE difference in terms of Java's appeal to the open source development community. Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know [...]

I doubt it. There's an awful lot of Kool-Aid you have to drink to become a Java programmer. Java isn't a language, it's a family of platforms. For a Unix person like myself, something like Python will always win over Java, precisely because it doesn't attempt to be a platform. In fact, Python tries to provide the Unix APIs in a convenient and straightforward way. The same goes for all relevant task-specific libraries. (And if you don't like Python, there are a handful of other popular, free languages at an abstraction level higher than Java, which share the same platform-agnostic approach.)

And meanwhile, Java is stuck on its own little island, and the beaches and the surfing aren't better there than anywhere else.

[...]but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/, Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ come readily to mind).

It's never a good sign when a program advertises the language it's written in by adopting the language's initial letter for its own name ...

OK, we all know how useful and accurate these predictions tend to be, but since it's that time of year...

The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#.

That depends on what market we are talking about. Open sourcing Java will make a MASSIVE difference in terms of Java's appeal to the open source development community. Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know, but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/, Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ come readily to mind). Seamless integration with Linux distributions has the potential to make it a much more popular language, and may also result in usability improvements to the environment itself.

Other languages will grow of course, but I would personally be surprised if Java fades too much except perhaps as the "new toy". There is a LOT of Java code out there, and it is doing important work.

The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal.

I don't understand this. GPL3 will go forward as it is going forward now, with much discussion - I can't imagine any issues Java would raise that aren't already being raised. Anybody with more knowledge of the process and Java know what he's saying here?

Now, just to get into the swing of things, my predictions:

a) Every major Linux distribution will deploy Sun's JRE as a core system component soon after a full open source release is made. Allow six months to replace any pieces that could not be released due to copyright/license issues. The Sun JDK will also see large scale integration.

b) Open source software written in Java that already exists will get a boost in interest and visibility, as it is no longer using a language that is non-free.

c) Graphics performance and native appearance of widgets will be a major focus of interest and effort, possibly resulting in Java applications becoming better integrated visually with the desktop. This may actually cost Java a bit in terms of name recognition, as end users will see less visual evidence of the difference between Java and other languages (I know, I know - that's not what makes Java different, but it's what can be SEEN that counts.)

d) As Linux distributions integrate and include Java by default, it will increase the appeal of both Java and Linux on the server side.

And one that I would like to see proven wrong:

e) No major OEM computer maker will add the Sun JRE as a default part of their desktop, despite it being released as GPL.

OK, we all know how useful and accurate these predictions tend to be, but since it's that time of year...

The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#.

That depends on what market we are talking about. Open sourcing Java will make a MASSIVE difference in terms of Java's appeal to the open source development community. Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know, but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/, Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ come readily to mind). Seamless integration with Linux distributions has the potential to make it a much more popular language, and may also result in usability improvements to the environment itself.

Other languages will grow of course, but I would personally be surprised if Java fades too much except perhaps as the "new toy". There is a LOT of Java code out there, and it is doing important work.

The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal.

I don't understand this. GPL3 will go forward as it is going forward now, with much discussion - I can't imagine any issues Java would raise that aren't already being raised. Anybody with more knowledge of the process and Java know what he's saying here?

Now, just to get into the swing of things, my predictions:

a) Every major Linux distribution will deploy Sun's JRE as a core system component soon after a full open source release is made. Allow six months to replace any pieces that could not be released due to copyright/license issues. The Sun JDK will also see large scale integration.

b) Open source software written in Java that already exists will get a boost in interest and visibility, as it is no longer using a language that is non-free.

c) Graphics performance and native appearance of widgets will be a major focus of interest and effort, possibly resulting in Java applications becoming better integrated visually with the desktop. This may actually cost Java a bit in terms of name recognition, as end users will see less visual evidence of the difference between Java and other languages (I know, I know - that's not what makes Java different, but it's what can be SEEN that counts.)

d) As Linux distributions integrate and include Java by default, it will increase the appeal of both Java and Linux on the server side.

And one that I would like to see proven wrong:

e) No major OEM computer maker will add the Sun JRE as a default part of their desktop, despite it being released as GPL.

OK, we all know how useful and accurate these predictions tend to be, but since it's that time of year...

The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#.

That depends on what market we are talking about. Open sourcing Java will make a MASSIVE difference in terms of Java's appeal to the open source development community. Whether this translates to more Java software or not I don't know, but there are already some very good programs in Java that are open source (Jedit http://jedit.sourceforge.net/, Jabref http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ and JaxoDraw http://jaxodraw.sourceforge.net/ come readily to mind). Seamless integration with Linux distributions has the potential to make it a much more popular language, and may also result in usability improvements to the environment itself.

Other languages will grow of course, but I would personally be surprised if Java fades too much except perhaps as the "new toy". There is a LOT of Java code out there, and it is doing important work.

The use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal.

I don't understand this. GPL3 will go forward as it is going forward now, with much discussion - I can't imagine any issues Java would raise that aren't already being raised. Anybody with more knowledge of the process and Java know what he's saying here?

Now, just to get into the swing of things, my predictions:

a) Every major Linux distribution will deploy Sun's JRE as a core system component soon after a full open source release is made. Allow six months to replace any pieces that could not be released due to copyright/license issues. The Sun JDK will also see large scale integration.

b) Open source software written in Java that already exists will get a boost in interest and visibility, as it is no longer using a language that is non-free.

c) Graphics performance and native appearance of widgets will be a major focus of interest and effort, possibly resulting in Java applications becoming better integrated visually with the desktop. This may actually cost Java a bit in terms of name recognition, as end users will see less visual evidence of the difference between Java and other languages (I know, I know - that's not what makes Java different, but it's what can be SEEN that counts.)

d) As Linux distributions integrate and include Java by default, it will increase the appeal of both Java and Linux on the server side.

And one that I would like to see proven wrong:

e) No major OEM computer maker will add the Sun JRE as a default part of their desktop, despite it being released as GPL.

I'd be pretty surprised if you couldn't find a Mac app to check for wellformedness without being connected to the net. After all, xmlstarlet can do it on UNIX systems from the commandline.

1. first impressions: the article is mostly simple, obvious stuff, i'm surprised to see it on IBM's developerworks site.

2. re: xargs end-of-file warning. as of version 4.2.9, GNU xargs defaults to not having an end-of-file string - worth knowing about, but not really a problem.

3. a far more common "gotcha" with xargs is dealing with space characters (and other characters with special meaning to the shell) in file names. this is especially common if you are working on directories containing HTML (and other) files uploaded by Mac & Windows users. to deal with it, use find's "-print0" arg and xargs' "-0" arg, for null-terminated input.

e.g. to set permissions to 644 on all the html files in a user's public_html directory:

find /home/USER/public_html -name "*.htm*" -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

most of the GNU utils support null-termination for input & output - so if you need to run grep or whatever on the output of find before passing it to xargs, you can.
e.g. to find all copies of Matt Wright's scripts such as FormMail.pl in all users' web sites and disable them:

find /home/*/public_html /home/*/cgi-bin -name "*.cgi" -o -name "*.pl" -print0 | xargs -0 grep -Zzli "matt.*wright" | xargs -0 chmod a-x

make your users use secure alternatives instead - such as the NMS versions of the same scripts. even Matt's Script Archive recommends the use of the NMS versions instead of his own, these days.

I suggest you try BackupPC which is extremely configurable, runs over samba, ssh, and other protocols, makes full and incremental backups, and can back up Windows, Linux and OS X machines. I've used it for years in network settings, and it hasn't failed me yet. --The best part is the restore process; a user can log in to the web interface and select individual files from any of their backup sets and those files will automatically be restored to their computer via the same network interface used for backup.

Yup, their priorities are definitely out of whack especially considering that there are people who have implemented backwards compatibility much better than Microsoft and did it for free.

sanity.pl

http://www.splitbrain.org/projects/sanity

Also,

http://filerenameutils.sourceforge.net/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/miscutils/

sanity.pl

http://www.splitbrain.org/projects/sanity

Also,

http://filerenameutils.sourceforge.net/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/miscutils/

backs up your files and gives you that freshly plundered feeling in the morning
 
  arRsync

Hmm... apparently libgaim has some stun as well.. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/api/stun_8h.html

I am an occasional mac user (bought one for my better half).

I have found that iTerm is superb. tabbed terms, etc.

http://iterm.sourceforge.net/

-T

As other have already pointed out, this a very common technique. It is slowly being adopted as a standard in the VoIP and P2P world (Google Voice uses it, for one). RFC 3489 discusses this very technique, and defines a protocol to be spoken to the central server that is brokering the connection. For a good overview, you could check out the Wikipedia article. There is also a simple, cross-platform and open-source library available that implements the server and client side techniques, making it very easy to integrate this technique into other projects. Nonetheless, the article makes for a nice and simple description of the technique.

Why should he do that? All the source code he needs is over at http://sourceforge.net/

Or even better, get a decent virtual desktop application from Windows like virt-dimenstion which is Free or Virtual Desktop Manager from Microsoft and free or even pay for one.

I do it at work. My mail client is one desktop, my editors are one another, web browser on a third, etc, etc.

http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/tutorials/apt-get -intro/info.html.en

                  snippet here

3.1. Finding packages -- apt-cache search

Whether you're online or not--

How do you find the package that's got the feature you're looking for?
First, do

# apt-get update

so your package list is up-to-date, and then try something like

% apt-cache search tunnel
% apt-cache search 'php.*sql'
% apt-cache search apache.\*perl
% apt-cache search elvis\|vim

      That is how you tell apt to search the packages you've downloaded,
      using REGEX (regular expression, a pattern-matching 'language') -- if
      your pattern uses any keystrokes that mean something to your command
      shell (e.g. [|?*] ) you'll need to quote them so that apt-cache will
      be able to see them, instead of having the shell expand the term to a
      list of file names that mean something else entirely.

      " NOTE -- apt-cache only knows about the package descriptions you've
      already downloaded. To search among ALL known Debian packages just
      browse to http://packages.debian.org/PACKAGESUBSTRING to see what's
      available. For example: [6]http://packages.debian.org/vnc That would
      get you a listing of packages that contain the term "vnc" somewhere in
      the title."

and so on.

If everyone were to switch to buying CDs and ripping them

I already do, but I'm sure as hell not going to consider anything but FLAC for my master archive. Open source, patent-free, and 100% lossless: FLAC is the only appropriate tool for permanent archiving of music that I am aware of.

somebody should check out metalink. the site seems to be down now, but it combines ftp/http and p2p easily. if p2p is blocked where you are, you still get the files by other means. aria2 is a good command line client, but there are others w/ GUIs for Mac and Windows.

I'd say python, or a similar language with a good interactive shell, and similarily equipped with with poweful libraries would be much better, because it would allow the kids to actually do usefull stuff.

On the other hand, if you want to give them a feel for how the computer "really" works, teach assembly programming. C has a place in modern programming, but I think it's a bad choice for a first language.

For just about any language, you can demonstrate basic concepts, and give such thrills as being able to print out your name 10 times etc. But for moving on to doing really cool stuff that you can show your friends, such as consuming rss, doing interactive 3d etc ... python would be an almost perfect fit, especially paired with a couple of modules/packages like http://www.pygame.org/ and http://ipython.scipy.org/.

Java comes a close second, but even using a tool such as http://judo.sourceforge.net/ or http://www.bluej.org/, java requires much, much more setup pr project to get up and running. Additionally java has no transparent compilation, which means you're stuck with the write-compile-test-cycle, rather that just write-test-change-test...

Another alternative would be http://www.squeak.org/ and/or http://www.opencroquet.org/. But it's a pretty steep learning-curve going from c to smalltalk, IMNHO. You're students should have an easier time of it, though.

Give some thought to what platform you and your students will be working on, too. For Mac OS X, I suppose objective-c might be a good place to start. On linux, I'd go with python, on windows, either python or c#.

The one good thing about c, that is also true for assembler *and* python, is simplicity. You don't *need* an IDE to get from idea to working program. Programming java with notepad and javac very quickly becomes difficult to manage, due to classpath-issues. But with c and assembly you'll still need linking for anything but the most trivial programs -- another win for python (or perl, ruby tcl, lisp etc).

Zero-install is another similar click-and-play system: http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/ Klik is another: http://klik.atekon.de/ Each has their ups and downs.

Also you should be able to run the scripts from a file explorer, or set up a "xterm -e" shortcut or something. (can't say for certain since I use the CLI much of the time.)

Anyhow, personally as someone who likes having a fair bit of control over what's going on in their system, I'm not too fond of any of these automagic systems though. I much prefer when software installs in my regular package management system. I see their use in certain environments but if a program was available ONLY via Autopackage or whatever, I probably wouldn't use it. I don't expect I'm alone.

To the GP: this is somewhat of a problem with Linux and standards; getting people to agree on "single unified" anything is basically impossible. It is a strength at times, but it means that you can't really count on something in one person's Linux system being available on another's, be it package management tools or otherwise.

Part of the reason why their job is mind-numbingly complicated is because they need to support legasy software. A whole lot of 16-bit DOS apps written 15 years ago still run on current versions of Windows. These are not ports, or recompilations, but the same binaries. I doubt the same can be said of Linux or MacOS, especially with the latter so efficient at cutting off support of applications with major release.

I guess you've never heard of DOSEMU, a program that uses the Linux kernel call "vm86" to run 16-bit DOS programs in the vm86 mode of 386-compatible processors ? Most 16-bit DOS applications I've tried on it have worked just fine.

Or you could use DOSBox, which is a complete emulator (meaning it emulates the processor too, unlike DOSEMU). The odd DOS app that didn't work under DOSEMU works fine under DOSBox.

It's the support for Windows applications (via Wine) that is less than perfect under Linux, but it is improving. Then again, it could hardly be getting worse ;).

"Come on now, there are some very smart folks at Microsoft, so why can't they come up with ideas and products on their own?"

The problem is microsoft is divorced from the end users reality and the fact that they are spreading the whole company too thin, they are trying to manage too many projects I would think and thats part of the reason why other parts of the company and other products suffer, lack of focus!

Another real problem is that too many technically minded people are designing products they themselves do not use enough (because they are working on them) or even enjoy using and working on. The fact is they really need to hire a bunch of nerdy tech types who have lived among the end users and their problems, especially computer shop techs, or former ones say like me for instance to help with designing programs. I have enormous amounts of ideas and insights from dealing with computer users over the years at all skill levels, all I need is a team to make them manifest and figure out ways to design and implement them, what they need is men and women who have insights into how people use computers and how people use objects in every day life.

Lastly they should move some aspects of designing their products open to PUBLIC scrutiny, i.e. have open wiki's and developer blogs that end users and especially power users / tech head philosopher kings (i.e. possessing the knowledge to make a better product for all end users no matter what level they are at). Take advantage of the hive mind, there is a reason wikipedia is so popular and useful, even with its flaws you have so much distributed computing power out there in the form of human beings you need to tap into it.

The ultimate Design principle:

Keep It Simple Stupid...

There is too much complexity in Windows. Especially the windows registry, I'm sure a lot of us that remember DOS know that those who designed the registry which allowed 3rd party programs to access them to store settings there should have been shot.

Programs should have never been allowed to store their program settings there. What happened to .ini files or self contained configuration files in directories back in the old DOS days or simply storing path's to DLL's instead of piling them up in the windows system directories? You should be able to simply uninstall a program by deleting its directory... PERIOD, shared DLL's and shared functions are the nightmare for end user management, if you're going to make modular components and functions and store them in DLL's which many programs rely upon, then each program should pull an "original" most recent copy from the system directories to the program's home directories, we have more then enough hard drive space today to do that.

Next, interfaces should be natural enough for non-techies to be able to learn naturally on their own without requiring a "for dummies" book. You should not have to read a novel to jump in and get to work in any prospective program there needs to be a "training mode", just like in video games that give novices who are reflexively retarded time to adjust to the controls of a game and tell them which is what.

You can make windows simpler and still keep the complexity for power users and more experienced computer users who would die without windows and much of the interface in programs being the way it is, but less face it... if you take a program like Windows explorer and compare it to a program like 2xplorer or WinDirStats there is huge lack of a good windows file manager as home users are now storing enormous amounts of files and need better management tools - http://netez.com/2xExplorer/ -- WinDirStats -- http://windirstat.sourceforge.net/

I could go on endlessly in this post, but you get the idea. Microsoft as a company has become myopic.

• Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
• RobotFlow (also check out Flowdesigner and MARIE) http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/
• CARMEN http://carmen.sourceforge.net/
• ADE http://ade.sourceforge.net/
• MIRO http://smart.informatik.uni-ulm.de/MIRO/
• ARIA http://robots.mobilerobots.com/
• YARP http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/
• Missionlab http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/resea rch/MissionLab/
• ORCA http://orca-robotics.sourceforge.net/
• GenoM http://softs.laas.fr/openrobots/tools/genom.php
• ROLE http://wurde.sourceforge.net/

• Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
• RobotFlow (also check out Flowdesigner and MARIE) http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/
• CARMEN http://carmen.sourceforge.net/
• ADE http://ade.sourceforge.net/
• MIRO http://smart.informatik.uni-ulm.de/MIRO/
• ARIA http://robots.mobilerobots.com/
• YARP http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/
• Missionlab http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/resea rch/MissionLab/
• ORCA http://orca-robotics.sourceforge.net/
• GenoM http://softs.laas.fr/openrobots/tools/genom.php
• ROLE http://wurde.sourceforge.net/

• Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
• RobotFlow (also check out Flowdesigner and MARIE) http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/
• CARMEN http://carmen.sourceforge.net/
• ADE http://ade.sourceforge.net/
• MIRO http://smart.informatik.uni-ulm.de/MIRO/
• ARIA http://robots.mobilerobots.com/
• YARP http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/
• Missionlab http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/resea rch/MissionLab/
• ORCA http://orca-robotics.sourceforge.net/
• GenoM http://softs.laas.fr/openrobots/tools/genom.php
• ROLE http://wurde.sourceforge.net/