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I dunno...but, if you want to make their tracking data useless for you...start trying to encrypt ALL your internet traffic.

Grant it....it will slow you up a bit, but, will make you far less traceable. Set up anon. browsing, set up nym accounts for email...that will help your mail at least be encrypted, even from those who don't know how to use pgp.

• Tor - For anonymous browsing
• Freenet
• Anonymous Email (look for Nym section)
• Free Proxy servers (some https and anon listed)
• Set up and use Mixmaster anon remailers

it is going to be tougher to sell ring tones in the future. people start to look for low quality MP3s and this kind of files you can download from any place including your own PC/Linux/Win32...

I agree, but not for the reason you mention. With mp3 ringtones, easy access to audio editing software, and bluetooth file transfer, you can make your own in a very short amount of time. It took me about 5 minutes to import an old Cream song, cut out everything but the guitar riff at the beginning, and export to a 32k mp3.

I'm pretty technically savvy, but my 11-year-old, not so much. It took him about 15 minutes to make his own.

Microsoft has a web site for Robotics Studio. There's a free download version.

From reading the available documentation and tutorials, it all seems very primitive, sort of like Lego Mindstorms meets ".NET". You can issue commands to actuators and get events from input devices. That's about all you get in robotics functionality. No sign of the hard stuff, like vision processing, map building, GPS/INS integration, motion planning, forward or reverse kinematics, or any serious robotics stuff.

The target (on the robot) apparently has to run at least Windows Server 2003 with ".NET". That's a lot of baggage for something that does so little. You'd expect that the target would run Windows CE or something, but apparently not.

The whole thing is very event-oriented, like Windows, rather than real-time cycle-oriented, like most real robotics applications. It seems to be an extension of Microsoft Web Services. It even uses SOAP.

Their simulator is so weak it can't even handle something with joints. (They bought into Ageia, the "fast but dumb" approach to physics). That's disappointing for 2006. We were doing better a decade ago, and by now, everybody else serious has joints working. Simulation for robotics has to be considerably better than that for games, and most of the game simulators cheat quite a bit to get the speed up. That kills you in a robot simulator.

For now, Yobotics and Player/Stage remain way ahead.

If you're happy enough to use something marked experimental, psi now has support for libjingle (Google Talk voice) in cvs (uhh, darcs). It's disabled by default, but it was simple enough to compile... A little sensitive with versions of stuff, but it seems to do the trick...

Also, Tapioca VoIP apparently has some support for Gtalk and libjingle...

So its FreedroidRPG all over again.... Check it out, http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/

Every robotic system I've ever worked with was controlled by software running on Windows (or DOS)

First I've heard of those, so it's a googling I go.

*Check*

Hmm. Guess I'll go looking into the Gaim fork. Thanks for the heads up :)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gaim-vv/

1. You either use the migration tool included with your new mail product, or you write a script to walk through the users and export their data one at a time.

2. Contacts are included in my earlier post example.

3. Calendar items are included in my earlier post. iCal support (kind of) is in Outlook since XP version, but its not implemented very well. Probably your best bet is to use a 3rd party plugin, like this:

http://outlook2ical.sourceforge.net/

Better iCal support is scheduled for Outlook 2007 released later this year, for what thats worth.

4. Actually, a spreadsheet is not the most useful format to export it in. PST file is the most portable, as nearly every other mail product on the planet knows how to import from it.

And I'm not sure what format you're talking about when you say 'plain email files', unless you mean just a text representation of the email. With that you'd have to then write software to parse out the individual fields and import it to another format, and that doesnt really buy you anything compared to PST or CSV, other than an extra step of software to write. But even if you did have that, it still wouldnt help you with calendar, tasks, contacts, etc etc.

5. I cant speak to that, but a lack of good competitive clients to Outlook doesnt mean the information isnt out there.

For example, here is a link to the MAPI SDK which includes the full API:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/mapi/html/83f1e307-095b-4d27-a3ec-f f4aa22f471a.asp

Heck, there's even information in there about how it maps to X.400 and the wire-level protocol.

After looking through it for a few minutes (first time I've done that in years), its possible that its just very complicated, probably much more complicated than IMAP. So there's a real diminishing level of return on your investment, given that Outlook is free if you own Exchange (so no cost advantage to writing your own client), plus its a mature and well-developed piece of software. Starting your own would put your a decade behind MS on the client. Of course, if you started one in the Outlook 95 time-frame, that wouldnt have been the case.

There is a Yahoo IM client with video and voice support, gyachi. I have been using version 1.0.3 for the last few months. It is clearly a work in progress, with lots of rough edges; this version, for example, locks up if you try to talk, but will work fine as a listen only client. This works for me since I frequent a room where others play music (yean, not exactly high quality, but...whatever).

There is a version 1.0.4 that is current, but I found it had some degraded functionality so I've regressed back to 1.0.3, which is a kludged gtk/python (for the voice part) package.

Here's an OS written in C++ that boots by itself and is generally a functional OS:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ekp/

Complete? No, but it's written in a high-level language, and it doesn't need a "host OS" to boot.

signature goes here

Facts:

Orbit is open source.
Microsoft makes a number of OS's, office suite, a number of servers, development tools that were better 8 years ago than any FOSS IDE TODAY (Visual C++ 6 VS kdevelop, ajunta, etc to name a few).

To be so much outside reality and insulted by some truth you must be a very passionate Linux advocate, or even a contributor to some useless open source projet that doesn't even compile.

Install SpamBayes:

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

It's fantastic, trainable, and most of all:

Doesnt require setting up an elaborate set of MTAs and mail servers. It plugs right into Outlook as a COM add-in, and works in real-time.

It's one of the best ones out there, due to its bayesian trainability, plus its python based and open-source. Can't beat it.

Just started out with Vex http://vex.sourceforge.net/. It looks to be a pretty neat XML editor, based on Eclipse, with the DocBook DTD http://www.docbook.org/ built in.

I have been a longtime user of LaTeX http://www.latex-project.org/ and have found TeXnicCentre http://www.toolscenter.org/ to be a nice front end for LaTeX. I have tried word-processors, but haven't really played with OO.org long enough to understand the sectioning and styles feature. Now, I recently re-stumbled over LyX http://www.lyx.org/
I think I will stick with LyX/LaTeX till I understand DocBook better.

On a side note, I came across NaturalDocs (http://www.naturaldocs.org/) yesterday. It looks to be a neat way to generate documentation without messing up the whole thing with tags.

Now, it would be a nice idea to take all these diverse ideas and combine them together into a single tool that can work as a driver for various formats (somthing like GCC, which can compile multiple languages). So, you need to know 1 tool, which can parse reST, NaturalDocs, Doxygen etc. You know, the great unified theory of text processing ...

As others have mentioned, there's no reason that it should look like this by default.

The package for Windows should use GTK WIMP. Here's what GTK WIMP apps look like:

http://gtk-wimp.sourceforge.net/screenshots/

Reading this thread on evo-win32-devel mailing list I suspect novell is not investing resources to this project, and given that most of the evolution programmers work for novell, it's not a good idea to use it on production environements.

XML formats aren't very friendly to code or edit in, either

Manage security on inboxes so that say George Smith can also access my mailbox?

be able to interact with the meeting requests that are sent out and the like.

Where you actually using the quicktime player, or an alternative one such as media player classic in the first case? I play .mov files fine with the official quicktime 7 standalone + mpc.

Of course, heavy usage could be difficult.

On the other hand, I did all my Numeric Methods, and Numerical Methods for Differential Calculus homework on Octave.
I even used it lightly for Automated Learning, in order to solve QR systems within a Java program. No problems whatsoever. Of course, people who need Matlab, do need Matlab, for example for binary compatibility, or running existing programs, but Octave is worth a try, if you need a package for numerical stuff, and you know Matlab.

There a nice community at http://octave.sourceforge.net/ where you can find implementations of common algorithms, when you find the base package lacking.

have you tried mpui?
http://mpui.sourceforge.net/

The Ur-Quan Masters!. The Best 2D Game Ever.

Wow, looks like a sweet machine.

My advice, if you really want to be sure, take the time to go through the hardware specs and check the kernel source for drivers for each thing you definitely want to have running (be careful of versions)

You could also check out the linux on laptops site

Finally, I've noticed that the biggest problems for me in the past have always come in with ACPI support. This is where the most noticable improvements(*) in the kernel have come for me lately. You might want to check out the ACPI4Linux site to see if there's anything special that's been discovered about your system yet.

* It's actually not a problem with Linux, it's a problem with the way some OEMs do ACPI using tools from M$ that the kernel guys have been doing a better and better job of working around. Who needs standards when you think you pwn the world.

With this module you can support H.323 on a connection tracking/NAT
firewall.

This module supports RAS, Fast-start, H.245 tunnelling, RTP/RTCP
and T.120 based data and applications including audio, video, FAX,
chat, whiteboard, file transfer, etc. For more information, please
see http://nath323.sourceforge.net/.

This has long been a concern of Flickr users. I was one of them, so I wrote an application that will allow you to download your pictures back from Flickr. I know it doesn't solve the entire concern of moving your library, but it is a start. You can check it out here.

What's wrong with Boot & Nuke? http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Everything is cake when you are an undergrad, and one week's or even one summer's experience with C++ and .NET is just scratching the surface. The C++ specification book (Stroustrup) is a thousand pages and very densly written. .NET is enormous and also takes a year to years to master. The best thing you can do during the summer job is learn from the more experienced people working there (their methods, working with the customer/management, etc.). The programming aspects of the job mainly just bolster the buzzwords on your next resume and provide talking points during interviews.

While you make some good points, you also have a couple of mistakes there. First of all, it's been quite a while since any of Stroustrop's books was really the C++ spec. Anymore, the spec. is the 2003 edition of the C++ standard (aka ISO 14882), and before that it was the 1998 edition of the same. Oh, and FWIW, while it's certainly densely written, it's less than 800 pages long. :-)

.NET is huge, but that's not necessarily very closely related to the time it'll take to master it. In fact, I'd almost go so far as to say that .NET simply isn't oriented toward toward what I would normally consider real mastery. At least from my viewpoint, it's a rather "flat" library -- very large, but not a lot of real depth. Most of the functions just "do what they do", and that's the end of it. To a large extent, "mastery" is mostly a matter of sufficient familiarity that you can quickly find the functions you want/need at any given time.

That's a direct contrast to, for example, the Boost Library or the Loki Library, which are a lot smaller, but a whole lot deeper. Here much of mastery is simply wrapping your head around some of the concepts involved. A few people accustomed to Lisp, Scheme, Ocaml, etc., may already be accustomed to some of them, but most typical programmer have never even considered doing the kinds of things it covers (and even the Lisp crowd is likely to find a fair amount of it somewhat challenging as well).

To put that contrast a bit differently: if you were accustomed to Java (for example), using .NET would mostly mean learning different names for classes and member functions, but the classes and member functions would still be on the same order as you were used to (a bit cleaner in some places, a bit grungier in others, but ultimately the same general kind of thing). By constrast, either Boost or Loki is much more likely to cause fundamental alterations in how you think about and solve your problems.

If it isnt the pay thats important to you, you may want to consider a balance, maintianing much of your free time yet finding new exciting projects to keep you busy where you are part of a team, and expected to fulfill your role in that team. look into a few things like your local LUG (linux users group) or http://sourceforge.net/. both are places always looking for help, and both are worthwhile causes, linux users groups because you can be part of your community, get out and be involved, and still write code for them. Sourceforge for becomming part of a team working on a new upcomming project, maybe they need exactly someone with your skill set and you'll help write the next apache. Sourceforge would probably be my second choice even though it is more directly related to writing code, because the LUG will find a person who knows what they are doing and is willing to help others around them as an invaluable asset, so you'll get that good feeling of helping your local community as well as still getting to code some.

Perhaps there's some GUI tool based on SQLite?

I find myself bored with every project I start on my own.

http://moto4lin.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page

Sorry for this very short answer

...therefore, I'm all for it! Well, just kidding, I'm sure he's not a bad guy, but really, who wants to use Windows on their cell phone, after putting up with it on their desktop for so long? Microsoft has done a great job of marketing "Windows Mobile" as if it were really just a scaled down "mobile OS" version of Windows XP, through its interface skin and marketing materials (although any reasonable person like Mac user little ole me won't like it). The need for a robust OS that is user-friendly enough to be used on phones and other devices is so overdue that people like myself are practically ready to write it themselves.

Of course, this doesn't make me a fan of cell phone companies, I think they're the worst when it comes to thinking of users' needs. Now if Linux Mobile were just a little bit farther along, we'd be all set...

Who said Gaim "is try mimic MSN functionallity"? Gaim itself sure doesn't! http://gaim.sourceforge.net/about.php Besides, the parent might just have been joking...? "When will these people learn (as Microsoft have) that not being allowed to destroy our own machines and everyone else we know and spend days trying to get back to where we were is not a feature - it's clearly a bug. We enjoy rebuilding operating systems." I'd almost think you were joking, but there is nothing funny in your post.

i don't like gaim, the layout strikes me as very odd

in the past i was a zealous amsn http://amsn.sourceforge.net/ fanboy but since
version += 0.94 amsn has become full of bugs and very slow ... i've found a imo better java based
msn client now although it's freeware and not Opensource

it's called Mercury and i love it http://www.mercury.to/
anyway people not happy with their *Nix msn clients should really give it a try

"Gaim 2.0.0 beta 2 does not include voice or video ("vv") support for any protocols. We've done some work toward vv compatibility for Google Talk, but it isn't ready for the general public yet. It is unlikely this will change for the final release of Gaim 2.0.0, but vv will be a primary focus for the next major release of Gaim after that." (emphasis mine) As per their news page circa January, 2006 (link)

Or you could just use GAIM for windows.

So I connect to the MSN network but through a nice free little app called GAIM.

My friends often try to send me files or pictures or videos through the MSN network and it doesn't work. They get annoyed and tell me to "just use MSN." I'm told that GAIM is stupid & crappy for not supporting these features.

Really makes you wonder if the people who developed gaim couldn't figure out how to make the videos/pictures stream through the chat box ... or if it was a design decision by choice to avoid hidden viruses that the codecs unpack in the media files. Probably the latter.

GAIM also works on a number of other chat networks--as chat clients should. Another thing about chat clients is that they should stick to limited functionality. There are way more secure ways to transfer files. I don't want a profile, I don't want it integrated with my operating system (married to the kernel), I don't want media streaming, I just want to chat.

Don't bloat your software.

Why should file sharing crash an OS?

Even cheaper -- and also "from Google's Book"
GmailFS and FUSE

-----------
Get 10^91 or so free GMail accounts for googolbytes of free storage!

There is an even easier way: aalib.

The Ur-Quan Masters game.

Pretty good game.

I recently set up ejabberd and JWChat (AJAX-based web client) at my office. ejabberd authenticates against our Windows domain using LDAP, and using JWChat means there's no client to install. I tried a couple of other jabber servers, but ejabberd was the easiest to integrate with JWChat.

I haven't had much buy-in yet, but that's another story.

Waste may be an option: http://waste.sourceforge.net/ I haven't implamented it, but a while back I was looking at it to use for my dev team. It's opensource and I believe it was created by the NullSoft (Winamp) guys. I haven't looked at it in a while, so I don't know how stable it is but you could give it a try.

I recommend giving the IRC servers you have now a try, but use Gaim to access them. It works very well and is very familiar to most users who use other IM clients at home.

Streaming XML parsers definitely would raise an error on the lack of well-formedness if you requested that portion of the document... The trick is whether only a subset of the document needs to be read or not. A SAX-based parser is the classic example, with a parser available for JavaScript.

All I can do is wish that there was a sane, well-crafted, easily-parsed, fault-tolerant binary specification which enjoyed the same ubiquity.

Well, it doesn't solve all of the above, but YAML is a great alternative, I think, particularly for config files or anything human readable. It doesn't quite have the ubiquity or breadth of support for parsing/querying, but it's got uses.

The interface logic most certainly is appropriate to be highe level, but the database engine itself is probably better off as native code. Ditto for the operating system kernel.

Thank you. In that one, concise post, you have provided the only credible answer to the question in the title: no.

As always, we should use the right tool for the job. For anything where processing performance matters, native code blows away anything interpreted, and always will. I loved this little bit of rhetoric in the original post:

Regardless of the negligible performance hit compared to native code, major software houses, as well as a lot of open-source developers, prefer native code for major projects even though interpreted languages are easier to port cross-platform, often have a shorter development time, and are just as powerful as languages that generate native code.

Negligible performance hit? Don't make me laugh. I write high performance maths libraries for a living, and there's a reason almost everything in this business is still done in C, C++ or FORTRAN.

Moreover, we probably port our libraries to some platforms that Java doesn't even have VM for, so the whole portability argument is FUD, too. If you want to be seriously impressed, go check out the work of the ATLAS project.

Of course more powerful, higher-level languages can make developers more productive in terms of getting projects finished faster. I don't think anyone's disputing that. If you can solve a problem effectively using a high-level language as glue and combining pre-built components, go ahead and knock yourself out, that's what the tools are there for. But somewhere along the line, someone has to write those components, and if performance matters, there's always going to be native code involved sooner or later. This is something the parent poster appears to understand, but the original asker apparently doesn't.

An open source program called "Primary Cryption" seeks high security over speed.
But since you get the source code and it is well-commented, you could probably modify it yourself to be less secure ( you decide how much) and a lot faster.
It works under Linux/Wine, and It can also handle multiple files. (Confession: I wrote it, and need to make myself write a helper program to keep track of keys and make it easier to handle multiple files, but I haven't had the time.)

1. Lisp is interactive.

This is about the only statement you got 100% right. Lisp is interactive and it is a plus, IMO. It's nice that a drops back to a REPL when condition (execptions in Java/C++) is signaled. I can query the environment state, inspect variables, or provide restarts. But, it does not have to be.

2. Therefore, Lisp is interpreted.

Not necessarily. Most Common Lisp implementations can either interpret their code or have their code compiled.

3. Therefore, Lisp uses non-native code.

Most Common Lisp implementations can be compiled into native fast-loading files (FAS) or byte code. Some implementation can even create stand-alone executables.

4. Therefore, Lisp runs in a virtual machine.

Not really. Common Lisp run in an environment and executes either native code or byte code, depending on the implementation. CLISP is the only major Common Lisp implementation that I know of that does not compile to native code. Hey, it was good enough for Paul Graham when developing Viaweb. I was even shocked by that.

5. Therefore, Lisp is incapable of direct memory addressing or interrupt handling.

Not sure. There are some people creating Lisp operating system, it might be possible, right?

6. Therefore, Lisp can't be used to create an operating system!

Hmmm. I guess creating a Lisp machine in hardware is not enough, huh?

I used to do something very similar until I got my Palm. Now I just use GNU Keyring to store all my passwords, locked up behind a single strong password.

...and those two are not the only two either: http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/