Slashdot Mirror

I'm not saying that I don't agree the docs could be better. But that's nothing new for 99% of all projects, especially opensource, imho. Some of what's in /docs is seemingly ~4 years old. As far as slashcode goes, there've been many people who've complained the docs aren't great.

However, that you _can_ follow the INSTALL instructions and have a working slashcode system, you can't knock that. I guess when you ask "that's the best you can say?" I don't see anything wrong with that.

"lack of a full releass" kills the entire point of Slashdot users working on the Slashcode

Yes, it surely does. And the upgrade process from 2.2.6 to current is well, abysmal. It's do able with some effort (following the documentation), more so obviously if you don't know the project well. The lack of a "slashupgrade.pl" that site admins can run is a turnoff for many people still running 2.2.6. The lack of a current release just plain puts people off from even attempting to run the latest. And even if you are the running the latest, or somewhat the latest, you have to apply updates - by hand. There's no stock-included upgrade tool to go from T_2_5_0_128 to T_2_5_0_133.

Slashdot's complaining programmer user community is a huge pool.

Slashdot's surely is huge. Slashcode's, I don't agree with you there. Just look at the activity (or lackthereof) on the listserves. Slashdot and Slashcode are two different things. Which is kind of sad, because you'd think with the pool of talent Slashdot itself attracts there'd be many more people trying to help with Slashcode.

If the Slashdot org encouraged us with better docs, not just silence or the arch, obnoxious attitude you just displayed, more of use would join the team to produce a better Slashcode.

Obnoxious? ha.

The 'silence' is what's frustrating for me. Not knowing where the code is heading is aggravating at times.

And if you think that none of the many programmer users would have noticed the index datatype change in one scope but not the necessary one in another, you don't even understand Slashdot.

Well, no one noticed there could be a problem with that index in the stock code, obviously. The schema for comments wasn't changed for how long? The code's out there, been out in the open source land for years now. There's nothing stopping anyone from grabbing it an analyzing it. I still doubt that any "normal traffic" site would have noticed this limitation. Should someone have caught it? Sure. But most sites don't have the traffic slashdot has, so about the only site that'd ever run into this limitation with the slashcode code is Slashdot itself.

In fact, you've just shown you don't understand how OSS projects work

Oh? Please explain.

though you apparently understand how the OSS code works in this one

I think so, yes, at times, anyway.

Exactly my point. No wonder the Slashcode project is so unpopular, and therefore irrelevant. Which you seem more than happy about - defensive of, even. Congratulations.

Defensive? No. If my comment came off that way, that wasn't my reply's intent.

However, frustrated, yes. Frustrated that people pop into a project, claim "this sucks" but don't give any concrete examples where it sucks. Or, better yet, how about some constructive criticism and pointed suggestions such that if someone were to spend their own time helping trying to help with what's pointed out, the project *could be improved*.

I'm not saying that I don't agree the docs could be better. But that's nothing new for 99% of all projects, especially opensource, imho. Some of what's in /docs is seemingly ~4 years old. As far as slashcode goes, there've been many people who've complained the docs aren't great.

However, that you _can_ follow the INSTALL instructions and have a working slashcode system, you can't knock that. I guess when you ask "that's the best you can say?" I don't see anything wrong with that.

"lack of a full releass" kills the entire point of Slashdot users working on the Slashcode

Yes, it surely does. And the upgrade process from 2.2.6 to current is well, abysmal. It's do able with some effort (following the documentation), more so obviously if you don't know the project well. The lack of a "slashupgrade.pl" that site admins can run is a turnoff for many people still running 2.2.6. The lack of a current release just plain puts people off from even attempting to run the latest. And even if you are the running the latest, or somewhat the latest, you have to apply updates - by hand. There's no stock-included upgrade tool to go from T_2_5_0_128 to T_2_5_0_133.

Slashdot's complaining programmer user community is a huge pool.

Slashdot's surely is huge. Slashcode's, I don't agree with you there. Just look at the activity (or lackthereof) on the listserves. Slashdot and Slashcode are two different things. Which is kind of sad, because you'd think with the pool of talent Slashdot itself attracts there'd be many more people trying to help with Slashcode.

If the Slashdot org encouraged us with better docs, not just silence or the arch, obnoxious attitude you just displayed, more of use would join the team to produce a better Slashcode.

Obnoxious? ha.

The 'silence' is what's frustrating for me. Not knowing where the code is heading is aggravating at times.

And if you think that none of the many programmer users would have noticed the index datatype change in one scope but not the necessary one in another, you don't even understand Slashdot.

Well, no one noticed there could be a problem with that index in the stock code, obviously. The schema for comments wasn't changed for how long? The code's out there, been out in the open source land for years now. There's nothing stopping anyone from grabbing it an analyzing it. I still doubt that any "normal traffic" site would have noticed this limitation. Should someone have caught it? Sure. But most sites don't have the traffic slashdot has, so about the only site that'd ever run into this limitation with the slashcode code is Slashdot itself.

In fact, you've just shown you don't understand how OSS projects work

Oh? Please explain.

though you apparently understand how the OSS code works in this one

I think so, yes, at times, anyway.

Exactly my point. No wonder the Slashcode project is so unpopular, and therefore irrelevant. Which you seem more than happy about - defensive of, even. Congratulations.

Defensive? No. If my comment came off that way, that wasn't my reply's intent.

However, frustrated, yes. Frustrated that people pop into a project, claim "this sucks" but don't give any concrete examples where it sucks. Or, better yet, how about some constructive criticism and pointed suggestions such that if someone were to spend their own time helping trying to help with what's pointed out, the project *could be improved*.

I'm not saying that I don't agree the docs could be better. But that's nothing new for 99% of all projects, especially opensource, imho. Some of what's in /docs is seemingly ~4 years old. As far as slashcode goes, there've been many people who've complained the docs aren't great.

However, that you _can_ follow the INSTALL instructions and have a working slashcode system, you can't knock that. I guess when you ask "that's the best you can say?" I don't see anything wrong with that.

"lack of a full releass" kills the entire point of Slashdot users working on the Slashcode

Yes, it surely does. And the upgrade process from 2.2.6 to current is well, abysmal. It's do able with some effort (following the documentation), more so obviously if you don't know the project well. The lack of a "slashupgrade.pl" that site admins can run is a turnoff for many people still running 2.2.6. The lack of a current release just plain puts people off from even attempting to run the latest. And even if you are the running the latest, or somewhat the latest, you have to apply updates - by hand. There's no stock-included upgrade tool to go from T_2_5_0_128 to T_2_5_0_133.

Slashdot's complaining programmer user community is a huge pool.

Slashdot's surely is huge. Slashcode's, I don't agree with you there. Just look at the activity (or lackthereof) on the listserves. Slashdot and Slashcode are two different things. Which is kind of sad, because you'd think with the pool of talent Slashdot itself attracts there'd be many more people trying to help with Slashcode.

If the Slashdot org encouraged us with better docs, not just silence or the arch, obnoxious attitude you just displayed, more of use would join the team to produce a better Slashcode.

Obnoxious? ha.

The 'silence' is what's frustrating for me. Not knowing where the code is heading is aggravating at times.

And if you think that none of the many programmer users would have noticed the index datatype change in one scope but not the necessary one in another, you don't even understand Slashdot.

Well, no one noticed there could be a problem with that index in the stock code, obviously. The schema for comments wasn't changed for how long? The code's out there, been out in the open source land for years now. There's nothing stopping anyone from grabbing it an analyzing it. I still doubt that any "normal traffic" site would have noticed this limitation. Should someone have caught it? Sure. But most sites don't have the traffic slashdot has, so about the only site that'd ever run into this limitation with the slashcode code is Slashdot itself.

In fact, you've just shown you don't understand how OSS projects work

Oh? Please explain.

though you apparently understand how the OSS code works in this one

I think so, yes, at times, anyway.

Exactly my point. No wonder the Slashcode project is so unpopular, and therefore irrelevant. Which you seem more than happy about - defensive of, even. Congratulations.

Defensive? No. If my comment came off that way, that wasn't my reply's intent.

However, frustrated, yes. Frustrated that people pop into a project, claim "this sucks" but don't give any concrete examples where it sucks. Or, better yet, how about some constructive criticism and pointed suggestions such that if someone were to spend their own time helping trying to help with what's pointed out, the project *could be improved*.

"You know, stupid fanboy comments like this are really annoying"

According to this all that's required in adding entries to /etc/hotplug/blacklist.

http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/

Ya'll should use ASSP. It rejects spam at the SMTP level so the sender gets a nondelivery message. This is nice for false positives because the sender gets notified. It also saves some bandwidth because your server doesn't have to send a message, it just sends an error code during the SMTP session.

Features:
- RBL
- SPF
- Bayesian
- Detects forged HELO
- Message delaying
- Automatic whitelisting of email addresses you send email to
- Email interface to reclassify spam/nonspam messages for training

BTW, SPF isn't that good. Spammers have adapted and many have valid SPF records.

http://assp.sourceforge.net/

I'm working on a sender stores system for a distributed social networking software called Appleseed based, in theory, on Internet Mail 2000. I figured early on that since the system was distributed, which means that anybody could set up an Appleseed social networking "node", that it would suffer from the same problems as any mail system if I used the standard reciever-stores system.

I don't harbor any illusions about a sender stores system being able to eliminate spam entirely, but the reason I went with it, especially after reading this indepth critique, was that it created a system of accountability. You may not be able to stop spam, but you have much better tools for knowing exactly where the spam came from.

The disadvantage is that it becomes, ideologically anyways, incompatible with current email systems. I consider this a small price to pay to allow admins to have better control and protection over their systems.

The system I'm building is rudimentary for now, and only uses direct HTTP->HTTP connections to send notifications and retrieve messages, and won't have any of the fancy abilities that email has right now, but it's a start, and there's no reason that those features can't be added as it evolves. It's gonna be a big experiment, and I'm expecting a whole lot of unforseen issues, but this whole project is a big experiment, so I'm excited about the possibilities in general.

There is the bug link on the side bar: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id= 4421&atid=104421

If I were you I'd raise a bug about your problem there. At least then the developers will know about it.

PyMOL has an Open Source tool, but the manual is not really free for use, although it's browseable online. Where I work, they wanted to use the software, and I realized that we really couldn't quite do it legally without buying a subscription, which I told the money people, and they ante'd up. This is a pretty good model--you want the stuff to be free for the people who can't pay, and there to be just enough legal nip to cause those who can pay to decide that it's more reasonable to do so. http://pymol.sourceforge.net/

It would surprise me if these bots were not capable of running javascripts as well. Mod parent up.

http://bfilter.sourceforge.net/ <- HTTP proxy capable of running javascript.

http://www.project-open.org/, http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/project-open/


Allows you to create and track invoices, based on timesheet information.

Firefox was terrible on Windows and Linux. Internet Explorer was slightly better

Buddi (http://buddi.sourceforge.net/) is another free GPL budgeting program which I made to help budgeting. It is very simple and does not include a bunch of unused features; however, what it does it does well. It is written in Java 1.5. As of this past week, it is expandable via a plugin architecture, and there are a number of people currently working on plugins for it. If you want a simple budgeting program which does not require an accounting degree to use, this is for you.

There was recently a review of it at Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/11 /5/5866).

Cheers
--Wyatt

I've been extremely impressed by my Pentax DSLR, the *ist DS has nice ergonomics, good high sensitivity performance, a very nice viewfinder as DSLRs go, not as good as the old ME Super but better than the nikon D70 and certainly most other similarly specced cameras. K mount lens compatibility is good, they don't have a physical aperture coupler ring anymore so M series lenses need to be stopped down to metre but the Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7 and 40mm f/2.8 produce such nice results I don't mind. Of course A series lenses and any third party lens with the electrical contacts for it will work in auto and program modes.

Of course now every pentax user is watching (im)patiently to see if the fabled K10D will a) ever be released and b) be the pentax camera they've been waiting for since ever since the first emergence of DSLRs. Among all the other new features, they're putting a real pentaprism finder back into their K digital line!

Oh, the pentax RAW format, version produced by my camera anyway, seems to be handled fine by the UFRaw photo loader for GIMP, just pull gimp-ufraw from your repo.

Now that Gnucash is written in GTK2, however, I expect a Windows port?

There are some free-as-in-RMS alternatives that run fine in Windows.

I started out running GnuCash on Linux, but now that I spend most of my time in Windows I've switched to jGnash, a Java-based package that's based on the same principles. It's not as robust or feature-complete as GnuCash, but it does what I need, and it's far less of a pain than fiddling with X11.

http://www.turbocashuk.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/turbocash/

lots of countries supported and open source (inc windows)
plus lots of support

I for one do not like that train of thought:

It still sounds like a GPL violation to me. Now, we have to watch what FSF does. They own the C library that literally every program on Novell Linux uses.

Novell has had several long standing lawsuits over technology used by Microsoft. This clears those out of the way. This is not exactly a new business or legal process. The GPL can't be used to prevent Novell from sharing Linux with Microsoft. (I'd assume that downloading an opensuse.org source DVD would have been cheaper.) As long as the GPL parts are licensed and re-distributed under the GPL there is nothing the FSF can do.

Microsoft has their own C library. A C library that has been proven to support most userland UNIX utilities. With enough patches you could ship SuSE with something other than glibc (that engineering feat is left as an exercise for the reader.) Not that I would want to call SuSE 'Linux,' let alone GNU/Linux if such a horrible thing came about.

The biggest worry is that Novell pollutes open source projects with known patent-infringing code. Or that several large patents are being violated by FSF's C library and Linus's kernel and SCO just wasn't smart enough to find them. Linus et al had tried to play innocent by not looking at any patents while developing kernel code. Unforunately, just because you never saw widget X and independently developed it later the holder of the patent papers still wins in court. It just makes is easier when the patent holder can show you ripped off his designs directly. Either way, it might be prudent to watch the code checkins from @novell.com as if they came from @microsoft.com.

Furthermore, a lot of the GNU/Linux libraries important to a GUI shop such as Microsoft, such at GTK, are LGPL on Linux - not GPL. Microsoft can write Office against them and sell the binaries without so much as a line of Microsoft source code distributed. Far be it from me to be the first to point out that you can compile and sell traditional, proprietary applications on Linux. I hear this little company called ID Software does this a lot (it even ports some apps to Micosoft Windows the last time I checked.)

Solaris turned BSD into a commercial closed-source UNIX because the BSD license lets you do that. This is the danger that people warn about with LGPL software and it's lack of "viral" teeth. Microsoft could turn SuSE into another Xenix via this hole. Consider the competition in the market for commercial 'Enterprise grade' Linux and the potential for the community to cut off a pariah. Infecting SuSE would kill it off in the process. One less competitor; killed from the inside by a bad case of Mono and on the outside by public fear of software patents.

As I understand it, the Nikon DSLR bodies will accept old F-series lenses, but they will require manual focusing. Canon EF-series lenses for the EOS system will work on the Canon DSLR bodies. Older third-party EOS system lenses (e.g. Tamron) may need to be rechipped for use in Canon DSLRs.

Canon's .CRW format includes a large JPEG "thumbnail" in addition to the raw image dump. This can be useful as a rough guide during postprocessing.

Dave Coffin's dcraw program will decode a wide variety of raw image formats, including Canon, Nikon, and Pentax. It is also used within the ufraw package, which can operate in a standalone mode or as a GIMP plugin.

First of all, the Carriers have little choice here. Fully functional Reference kits are available in the under $1000 range. For GSM, you can get them for about $200-300. These are the kits that companies who build cell-phones use to jumpstart their designs. So what's a Carrier going to do? Outlaw these? And kill development for cell-phones? I don't think so.

The most they might do is to tighten down on the registration. But that involves overhead and hassle. Unless these kits prove to be an issue, it's not going to happen; at least not with the GSM market. And not worldwide.

You are also wrong about the "time wasters" who supply low volume and low profit phones. What the Carriers want (at least some of them) is to sell the airtime. Some of these Carriers really don't care where it goes, as long as they get paid for it.

There's a whole resale market here which underscores the point. You want to to become your own cell-phone company? You can, if you have the money. And if you don't think *those* resellers are hungry, you're kidding yourself.

I admit that as far as the standard view about "time wasters" goes (for the big companies) you are correct. And it's explicitly been this attitude which has severely hindered innovation in the cell-phone market. There are a plethora of uses for small markets. Some of the hungrier carriers fully realize this, and are supportive of anything which will make them money.

Finally, the lockdown on GSM transceivers is a bit silly. The interface is extremely simple; it's a variation of the old Hayes Modem interface. I kid you not. "ATDT....". There's even an Open Source Project for this. Here's the link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/libgsmc

Finally, there's even a group dedicated to a fully Open Source phone. Namely, the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club. They are having a meeting tomorrow night in San Francisco. Here's a link to their mailing list archives:

http://telefono.revejo.org/pipermail/svhmpc_telefo no.revejo.org/

Check out the list, and the information on various associated websites. There's really a groundswell building in this area. And those Carriers which close things off are going to miss an opportunity that their competitors are actively interested in.

Don't say The Gimp -- it can't edit RAW images.

This is not strictly true, there are a few plugins available for RAW image support.

UFRaw
There is also a basic plugin available from the author of dcraw.

"Even if the original developer stopped working on it, somebody should have been able to pick it up and maintain it easily"

Yes.

"See http://www.pysol.org/ - last release was in 2003."

See http://sourceforge.net/projects/pysolfc - last release was in 2006-11-07 :-)

From the slide show:

When it comes to open source, IT doesn't mind if the open source community is holier than thou if they can save them time, money, interoperability pain and more.

28% of surveyed agreed that major open source projects are run by sanctimonious elitists. Were the other 72% of the respondents the actual sanctimonious elitists?

Or are thanks in order for the 72% of major open source projects not run by sanctimonious elitists? I for one would like to thank the FileZilla team for building something better than the commercial competitor WS_FTP. And I would like to thank the sourceforge team for providing a repository of plenty of good software not sanctimoniously delivered.

I'm an electric bassist and personally, I care not for Guitar Hero.

I mean, I've got a freaking bass & a computer with Linux & audacity in my living room ... why play guitar hero? To play with the bands? If I want to do that, I strip the low end out of an MP3 on my computer and just play along with it.

I find it odd that someone who probably has their pick of basses/guitars & effect pedals would prefer the not as rewarding feeling of playing Guitar Hero. Well, to each their own I guess. I think the guitarist of Korn should go buy some Rickenbacker guitars ... I can't imagine ever getting tired of those.

The funniest thing is that my friend wants to play guitar ... so he buys Guitar Hero. Which provides you with no guitar skills whatsoever. This summary hits it right on the head that it improves your rhythm but does nothing for your melody or style of playing.

PS2 + Guitar Hero = $300. Decent acoustic starter Yamaha guitar is about the same. Take your choice. I suspect Guitar Hero would be a great toy for working on your sense of tempo ... but it's still a far cry from the coordination to play any other instrument.

Other posts stated "it depends on what you are going to do with it" and that Python is of course not suited for every task (like squeezing out every frame of GL apps). But let's pick a very basic daily omnipresent task: substitute some text.
Feel free to look at png2wx.py and compare with the perl counterpart, png2wx.pl. Or maybe encoded() and octal() were just poorly coded, but I doubt that, given their simplicity.

Other posts stated "it depends on what you are going to do with it" and that Python is of course not suited for every task (like squeezing out every frame of GL apps). But let's pick a very basic daily omnipresent task: substitute some text.
Feel free to look at png2wx.py and compare with the perl counterpart, png2wx.pl. Or maybe encoded() and octal() were just poorly coded, but I doubt that, given their simplicity.

I prefer core programming in qore: http://qore.sourceforge.net/ :-)

Not so with a built-in trackpad. As to it not being a requirement to function in the OS, perhaps you can tell me how to get a list of suggestions for an incorrect spelling without using it. Of course, this issue doesn't exist in the newer machines, which allow you to control-click by holding two fingers on the trackpad...

Not so with a built-in trackpad. As to it not being a requirement to function in the OS, perhaps you can tell me how to get a list of suggestions for an incorrect spelling without using it. Of course, this issue doesn't exist in the newer machines, which allow you to control-click by holding two fingers on the trackpad...

For the desktop, there are some 3D(-ish) ones as well, e.g.:

http://www.linuxgames.co.za/projects/noegnud/scree nshots/

http://glhack.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

http://pysol-osx.sourceforge.net/

This is why there is so much interest in a Python compilier--compiliers are much faster than interpeters. There are some starting projects--such as psycho and Python 2 C Module Generator

Java and TCL have certainly had many more years and manpower to optimize thier implementations. I don't know much about Ruby. I'm sure in a few years, Python will improve too.

It also depends heavily on whether you're using idiomatic Python. If you're doing a straight translation of algorithms from another language, chances are you're unnecessarily introducing performance problems. Quite often, the optimal approach in C/C++/Java is not the same as it is in Python. Often the "obvious" approach in Python is the fastest (in particular - use the built-in types!).

For example, in C/C++/Java a switch is often the fastest way to make a multi-choice decision. Python does not have a switch, and so Python beginners tend to use an of if/elif[/elif...]/else statement. A better way to do this is to encapsulate each branch into a function, then build a dictionary of values to functions (once - there's no point building the dictionary every time), then simply do a dictionary lookup and call the result.

Also, check out Psyco: http://psyco.sourceforge.net/ - it can often give a significant speedup.

However, most of the time Python will be significantly slower than well-optimised C/C++/Java. OTOH, because Python is so easy to write, it's a lot simpler to get it right first, then optimise.

...and it need not be said.

Between Pyrex and Psyco, there's really very, very few applications that a language like Python isn't appropriate for. Premature optimization is the far more common programmer sin these days than choosing a language that's "too slow." Except for a few, specific application domains (that only a minority of coders are writing) dynamic languages like python are an excellent choice on today's hardware. And if you need it to be faster, just profile, find the couple of spots that matter, and pull out Pyrex.. or even the C/Python API if it makes you feel manlier. :-)

Plus, with things like PyPy + LLVM, Parrot, and IronPython emerging, things are only going to get better.. don't be the last one on the dynamic boat!

I happen to use Linux, OSX and Windows, and the number one annoyance for me is a lack of clear "native-looking" GUI or OpenGL toolkit offering that is reachable by scripting languages like Perl and Python.

wxPython is native on X11, Windows and Mac OS X.

I used PyOpenGL a few years ago and it was a very pleasant experience. It was easy to translate C examples to Python, without all the annoyances of using C. Obviously you wouldn't want to write a full game engine using Python, but it is nice for experimenting with OpenGL.

WxPerl looks fairly native to me. I tried it out a few years ago, but haven't stuck with it since I switched to an OS that it doesn't support.

Lets face it, it is just not possible to enforce this kind of law.

With Onion Routing Networks, Mixmaster Type II Anonymous Email, GPG/PGP Type I Anonymous remailers , and bidirectional encrypted anonymous e-mail addresses that can deliver to a news group
Add to this the use of unsecured 802.11 networks and there is just no way to stop a person that truly wants to be anonymous on the internet.

Unfortunately most do not know how to use them, so most of the internet is only sudo-anonymous.

• Games
  
• Multimedia/Graphics/Audiovisual content in general
  
• Diverse hardware support
  
• Superficial user friendliness. You can be competent in Windows more or less straight away, but if you want to go beyond the basics, you'll have to invest as much time with it as anything else.
  

• Anything related to software development/automation/programming (It was originally intended as a programmer's system)
  
• Security. (It makes sense that an OS developed within a phone company would also be based around networking more or less from the ground up)
  
• Robustness. (There has traditionally been a tradeoff between robustness and user friendliness, at least in Windows' sense of the term...when one goes up, the other tends to go down. RPM is the abomination that it is primarily due to its' degree of complexity; this I suspect is also why I've been hearing about Ubuntu having more problems recently)
  
• Portability. (Per The UNIX Hater's Handbook, there were other early operating systems around at the time that were considered more desirable in other respects. However, UNIX was originally developed on a machine not much more powerful than a Commodore 64. Linux's ability to run on older hardware is due to it having inherited this necessary conservatism of design)
  
• Transparency. As intimidating as you might find a command line interface initially, once you learn your way around, you'll find it incomparably faster and more accessible, especially for operations involving large numbers of files/actions. GNOME's abominable GConf is also the only equivalent I know of to Windows' registry.
  
• Versatility. Given that UNIX was originally designed to be Windows' polar opposite in a number of ways, the fact that Linux has been able to mimic Windows as closely as it has is a testament to this characteristic. True, the hardware and multimedia support in particular aren't there yet...but give it time.
  
  d) Get Slackware, and ignore the trolls who respond to this and say that I'm wrong for recommending Slack. If you want package management, get FreeBSD...ports is the only sane form of package management that I can recommend in good conscience. Ignore the Debian trolls who will potentially object to that as well.
  
  e) For dialup ppp, you can use WvDial.
  
  Insane software installs.
  
  Ports will go a long way towards solving this problem, although admittedly you can still have sticky situations. As far as an IM client goes, you also could have got Gaim, which doesn't need Qt AFAIK...although it does have its' own deps.
  
  In terms of documents which use fonts...which application are we talking about?

so even when I told her what to type over the phone, she didn't remember it.

PNG does *not* work fine for photographic images.

JNG came to mind since having that magical A in RGBA makes for so many useful applications of JPEG that are not available right now.
So, I checked.
http://pmt.sourceforge.net/SVG-patents/jpeg.html
"This matter is of interest to MNG Development because MNG uses the JNG subformat which is simply baseline JPEG wrapped in PNG-style chunks.

It would be very useful for someone to scrutinize the patent to determine exactly which, if any, of its claims are infringed by JPEG codecs. There has already been some preliminary analyses by compression experts. Tom Lane of IJG was quoted (in the July 19 Infoworld article referenced above) to say that it does not. Mark Nelson has also said in the comp.compression newsgroup (search Google Groups for "jpeg patent nelson") that there is probably no overlap. "

A few helpful sites: Opera Firefox K-Melon"

the core implementation is in python of all things, not so tiny.

Get a life man. protocol != implementation.

There are BT protocol implementations in C, C++ and Java.

Check out http://unattended.sourceforge.net/

I have been using this at our companies for the past two years and has GREATLY simplified our redeployment strategy. If you have different clients who use different computer systems that all run Windows. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Here's what scares me: The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) and the Remote Management and Control Protocol. (RMCP). Many machines in the field implement these protocols in the network controller, independent of the operating system.

These are UDP-based protocols, on port 623. They can be sent from anywhere on the Internet; not just local machines. They provide total power over the target computer. Functions include:

• Change boot device for next boot, including boot from network.
• Turn machine on, off, or reboot.
• Disable keyboard and user on/off switch.

Supposedly machines come out of the factory with an empty set of IPMI remote management passwords in their nonvolatile memory. Supposedly. All it would take would be to slip in a password load somewhere before the machine reaches the customer, and the customer would never notice that they're 0wned. Even a complete reload of the OS won't fix this. You can switch the machine from Windows to Linux and still be 0wned. Or worse, the IPMI hardware could have a built-in password (perhaps for "factory test") that you couldn't even detect unless you knew it. Because all this remote management stuff is already there, it takes a very minor change to make large numbers of machines very vulnerable.

Run IPMItool and find out what machines will talk to you. Try not to reboot your whole server farm by mistake.

>>Windows XP? I'm still waiting for a compelling reason to upgrade my Windows development box from 2K Pro. Let me know if you spot one.

>CnC95 (Command and Conquer, upgraded from DOS to Win95 App) doesn't play nicely with 2k, but plays fine in Win95 Emulation on XP.

Eh, DOSBox all over your ass.

Just crashing browsers is easy enough. Even just with HTML. Remember this story?

(A bit of self promotion.) I took his idea and incorporated it into a genetic programming system that manages to crash most browsers. It also finds HTML source that causes browsers to work for a looooonnnggg time to render a single page (in one case 19 hours for a page). The HTML is not particularly legal, but then there is no guarantee that any web page you load into a browser will follow any particular standard. Source (Java) is available at sourceforge - unpack and look for subdirectory "html". (Warning: As this is an evolving program subject to random hackery to "enhance" things, it is commented sketchily, way underdocumented and far from pretty in most places.)

I'm in the middle of an open-source project to implement Disposable Phone Numbers to complement my current long list of disposable email addresses. Just like the email addresses, all the phone numbers will point to the same destination, but I can turn them on and off as desired. There are also some commercial services that offer this capability.

I'm also implementing Stop Rude Calls to act as a captcha for incoming calls, but that's a longer-term project.

I'm in the middle of an open-source project to implement Disposable Phone Numbers to complement my current long list of disposable email addresses. Just like the email addresses, all the phone numbers will point to the same destination, but I can turn them on and off as desired. There are also some commercial services that offer this capability.

I'm also implementing Stop Rude Calls to act as a captcha for incoming calls, but that's a longer-term project.

I'm a Opera user

and i keep wondering why do ppl adamently use a software which keeps crashing

yet they find a reason to either bash it (IE) or support it (FF fanboys) saying there is such and such workarounds.

Why don't ppl switch to the browser with fewest bugs/security holes.

Don't give me the crap by saying IE has lot of users so the attackers target IE.

While it may be true, a common security analyser like Secunia.com has identified fewest bugs in Opera compared to FF and IE.

and yet the slashdot crowd is so much in love with FF.

and look at the comments above from FF fanboys, they just keep writing suggestions and saying how it is not a flaw.

If the posting had IE instead of FF, we would've seen hundreds of posts scolding IE and Bill.

Talk about hypocrisy.

The Cimg homepage is here. But if you want to see what it can do, check out some of the sample image restorations on page 6 of this paper. It does a very credible job of restoring missing parts of images, e.g. features hidden behind text.

I think there's an Outlook plugin you might appreciate.

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

There's rawstudio or cinepaint. Ufraw I guess too which can act as a stand-alone editor and also has a gimp plugin. If you don't mind closed-source then there is Bibble too.

Rawstudio is looking quite promising for such an early bit of software.