Slashdot Mirror

As a guitar player myself I second the vote for guitarpro. I would also add though that DGuitar is a multiplatform guitarpro implementation that can read up to guitarpro 4 files. If you want to use linux or os x and guitarpro this is an easy solution.

why *can't* they play in my text-based browser, afterall?

Seriously,

All I would use software for is tuning (not even a proper tuner, just a MIDI sequencer and a file that plays an A, and only because I don't have a metronome), Recording (rarely) and some music typesetting or printing. As for recommendations for software I would look into Lilypond (http://lilypond.org/web/) for typesetting, and Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) for recording and tuning (if you don't have a metronome). And as a previous poster said, you will not be using this stuff during a "normal" practice session. You would print music off of Lilypond, and once you have tuned up, you will have no need of audacity unless you are recording which will not often be the case.

I couldn't agree more. In case he's running Linux, I'd like to point out some software he could use.
Audacity - simple audio recording
Rosegarden - audio editor/sequencer
Ardour - digital audio workstation (think pro tools)

They make a frontend to ClamAV already. The also make a few other ones as well.

Enjoy!

I ended up writing a simple perl script to handle the updates instead.

Here's a ready-made Perl-scripted daemon for this kind of stuff: http://ddclient.sourceforge.net/

Something odd just occurred to me. Couldn't you CDR RAID an important archive? Similar to hardrive RAIDing, you could save the data bits across multiple CDRs, with an extra CDR for a checksum. Then, if any CDR failed, you could rebuild it from the others.

Or you could just make 2 copies. But where's the fun in that? ;)

I've thought about it myself, you could use something like parchive to make parity blocks and burn them to a "parity" CD/DVD. Shouldn't be too hard to script something together in Python... It won't be a direct analog to RAID, but who cares. And you wouldn't need to muck around with some big restore/untarring procedure, the original data will still be there as plain files.

Ideally, you should probably automatically generate parity blocks/discs whenever you burn a CD/DVD. Something like, say, 10-15% overhead isn't going to hurt much, at least when you're cleaning out lots of stuff.

Hmm. I should sit down and sketch out something to do this. I'm sure I'll get around to it some day. :-)

ATI put a lot of work into development for the XBox 360

Chromium (http://chromium.sourceforge.net/) is an opengl wrapper lib that can intercept openGL calls and farm them out to rendering nodes - why not do something similar, but your wrapper lib lets the openGL calls go to the local hardware, and then captures the raw pixels coming back from the hardware?

Kind of. It is possible to decode MPEG entirely in software (I know, I've done it) but it is a real nightmare. The only way to do it sensibly is to use hardware for lowest level of the decoding and colour conversion (and everything else, preferably). This is why most graphics cards have MPEG decoding built in.

Oh it's certanly possible. If you've used any open source media player, you've probably used this. It runs fine on a modern CPU without any special hardware.

Would you like sound with that? Works for me, but as always, your mileage may vary.

The article discusses NASA WorldWind but several interesting links are missing. Amongst them: Punt, a WW fork. Heck, you can also see Microsoft Virtual Earth data in NASA WorldWind itself. Even Mars 3D in WW. (I stop here, if this interests you, read slashgeo.org ;-))

I don't know if Stellarium counts as "software for space exploration", but it's worthed. Celestia too.

The reason for the installation is OpenNMS. It is an XML/Java based app. It takes days just to track down compatible versions of RPMs to make it work. Then you have to deal with the "no two linuxes are alike as far as where the files are" problems.

On their website, OpenNMS offers downloads for the following OSes:

CentOS 3, 4: rpm
Debian Woody, Sarge, Sid: deb
Fedora Core 1-10: rpm
Mandrake 8, 9.2, 10: rpm
RedHat 7-9, RHEL 3, 4: rpm
Solaris 8, 9, 10: gz
SuSE 8, 9, 10: rpm

Plus source in tar.gz

I find that actually pretty impressive. If the packages they create for the distros don't work, contact OpenNMS. Their software is GPL, so there should be no problem creating working packages distributable by the distros themselves if they choose. (Ubuntu Dapper at least has none)

Sure. Like the two poster-children of free software applications, GIMP and OOo, both of which run natively without X11... not.

Wrong and wrong. Your only correct move was posting as AC.

How much do hobbyist quality video production, audio production, photo editing/cataloging and DVD authoring suites cost for Windows?

$99. Adobe Photoshop/Primere Elements Bundle. Yes, that's street price.

You can cobble stuff together from OSS/Free, but it's nowhere near the quality and ease of use of either iLife or Adobe, so I simply don't recommend trying. Particularly for the video editing/DVD authoring bit (although, on that front, Nero is decent and can be had for $40).

How much does a PDF creator cost for Windows?

Uh... free?

DevTools? A compiler?

Both downloadable for free, from either MS, Cygwin, or MinGW. But I do Unix development, so it's not of much interest to me. A decent shell is, but that's what Cygwin's for.

A full suite of enterprise capable network daemons such as http, ftp, telnet, ftp, ssh?

IIS is included in Pro (but not installed by default). As is a telnet daemon (not enabled by default under SP2).

FTP and ssh daemons are freely available online if you wanted them. And XP's remote desktop is superior to VNC (admittedly, one of the rare cases of XP being better), so I guess that's why you didn't mention it.

Are you seriously trying to say all of that is worth $1000+? I can replace the software for under $200, as I mentioned. Most of the extra functionality can be downloaded for free.

Wow. I've had some problems with linux as well, but never had to reinstall.

Sounds like your'e trolling, though. I mean, the problem you describe is related to the kernel only. How can that say anything about FLOSS' ability to coopoerate and "run together nicely"?

Examples of open source "running nice togehter" include jack with applications like Hydrogen and Ardour, or media codecs like OGG and FLAC with media players (like XMMS).
In areas where a defined protocol or standard exists, open source excels. I mean, look at projects like Apache, Mozilla-projects, Jabber, libxml and many more.

this is still more or less non-exisitng with only localhost demo, but we make quick progress on the server side. this solution will allow to access text and HTML based services at about zero bandwidth and about zero RAM and CPU requirements. and yes, End-to-End encryption and "no Java" option.

Welcome to the other side :)

I think the tools you are looking for are:
    - HandBrake (free, but donations welcome)
    - Toast ($$)
For your Unix stuff:
      - Darwin Ports
      - Fink
and for others:
      - Version tracker
and mac games:
      - Inside Mac Games

Also be sure to check out Adiumx.com, vlc, MPlayer OS X and the software from omnigroup.com

Is this a good time to plug my open source Eiffel project secom?

Secom is an object-oriented library of portable, reusable components for communicating over serial devices. With secom you can develop an application that will compile and execute on Posix and Windows, with little to no changes to the source code.

Check it out
Check out the documentation

Brian

Is this a good time to plug my open source Eiffel project secom?

Secom is an object-oriented library of portable, reusable components for communicating over serial devices. With secom you can develop an application that will compile and execute on Posix and Windows, with little to no changes to the source code.

Check it out
Check out the documentation

Brian

Really, the absolute best way is to take Japanese courses. I studied many years, but learned more in my first semester of taking university Japanese classes than I had in all the time on my own.

If you just can't take classes, at least buy a good set of textbooks. I recommend Genki for starting out.
A good companion book would be A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, and later the Intermediate book. And of course a general dictionary, but since I haven't found one I really like I'll leave it to others to suggest one.
If you have a palm pilot, PADict is a useful tool, especially for looking up kanji.

And of course, listening and speaking is important.
For listening, anime and games are common enough. Japanese dramas and variety shows are also fairly easy to get.
Speaking is the hardest part. You could practice by writing a penpal, Japan-guide is a great place to find one. Perhaps you could get your penpal to install Skype.

If you're ever able to, spending time in Japan really is a great way to learn. I've been in Japan for 6 months now, and I can tell I've improved a lot. Feel free to browse through my Japan blog.

You can use Mutt and Postfix to read gmail and now you have offline storage as well as all your mail locally if you so choose.

It may not be the be all end all, but it is a great resource and with POP3 and forwarding capabilities I dont see why anyone would not have a gmail account for any non sensitive material.

http://souptonuts.sourceforge.net/postfix_tutorial .html

Also, GDC needs to become more stable and integrated into GCC, or at least appear in most Linux distros' package repositories. A 1.0-release with a stable ABI will also help. And the D-mangling patch for GDB should be integrated...

A stable cross-platform GUI library is also needed. WxWidgets is good on Windows and UNIX but only "OK" on MacOS X. A stable release of WxD will do. DWT (D port of Java's SWT) seems promising also but AFAIK only available as a win32-only alpha release so far. D bindings for Qt 4 would rock!

D is a really great language and I really hope it will catch on! It has a lot of potential to be the next big programming language in the areas where C and C++ rule today, and even in some of the areas where C# and Java rule. Unfortunatly I don't think it will happen because "the market" often wear blinkers but I'd love to be proven wrong. :)

By the way, if you want a de-duplicating data backup solution, there are a bunch of them around; faubackup is a simple example.

BackupPC...

> That's what happened with the Burrows-Wheeler algorithm

The Burrows Wheeler Transform is very cool indeed. Brian Ewins used it to make the PMD duplicate code detector much much faster.

Because the real problem is not so much the used framework but to use a single set of guidelines. The main obstacle of the Linux desktop is the usability, the look&feel of the applications. If one just uses 2 different applications on Linux, one most likely has to learn 2 different ways how to work with. If one uses 10 different application one doesn't have to learn 10 different ways but quite possible 5 to 7.

So I created wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) exactly for this, to finally have a single set of guidelines. And I designed wyoGuide to be cross-platform guidelines since no serious developer codes for a single platform these days. wyoGuide can and should be used on any platform with any framework and any language. Sure I do provide sample code written in C++ with wxWidgets but I'd love to put up others sample code as well. So far nobody familiar with other's framework volunteered.

To stress this point again, the Linux desktop won't become a success unless it can't be agreed on this single set of guidelines. It's possible that everybody sits together and designs yet another set but the outcome won't be much different than wyoGuide. On the other side wyoGuide is still work in progress and I'm open to any suggestion to make it more suitable for anybody.

If somebody doesn't believe me just read the LXer article here (http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/54009/index. html) and follow the links to the sources. Or go and read the guidelines themselves at http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/guidelines/content .html.

What I'm curious about is how the Portland project handles this info, the knew it since December 2005 (http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop_architect s/2005-December/000349.html), they seems to already have forgotten. I've also informed Novell and posted it to LinuxQuestions, almost no reaction. So what else can I do?

O. Wyss

My favorite was vigor, "all the features twice the bugs" which took VI and added the vigor assistant

"You have attempted to move left please press confirm or cancel" http://vigor.sourceforge.net/screenshots/

Now we need to finger out a way to get our Linux on with these systems in a Boot Camp scenario...

First - the Boot Loader / OS Loader
If I recall correctly, Apples BootX boot loader (both PPC/i386 Darwin) supported reading kernels from an ext2 filesystem. I'm just not sure if it actually had the code necessary to boot the Linux kernel. This would be a nice perk for Apples existing EFI BootX loader - if it doesn't already exist...

Second - Filesystems
The FAT32 format should be out of the question for any Windows installation due to potential filesystem inconsisitencies that could render Windows unbootable. Yeck. NTFS is read-only from Mac OS X. Windows has no (native and/or free) HFS+ support. What is the best option for an OS-independent shared filesystem?

Ext3 with Linux! Not only can you then boot our favorite free operating system, but you can also use that same filesystem to store your shared data (from an OS standpoint). The best part is you wont have any limitations like 4.0GB file sizes or read-only support.

There are existing projects for Ext2 on both platforms, as seen here:
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/ - Windows
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ - Mac OS X

I'm not sure if they support Ext3's journaling capabilities, but that would be a very nicely added bonus. Permissions could be a tricky thing if needed.

With some developer support both of these projects could greatly benefit those of us wishing to make use of dual booting, either with Boot Camp or the XOM OnMac solution (recently open sourced under their own license).

Now we need to finger out a way to get our Linux on with these systems in a Boot Camp scenario...

First - the Boot Loader / OS Loader
If I recall correctly, Apples BootX boot loader (both PPC/i386 Darwin) supported reading kernels from an ext2 filesystem. I'm just not sure if it actually had the code necessary to boot the Linux kernel. This would be a nice perk for Apples existing EFI BootX loader - if it doesn't already exist...

Second - Filesystems
The FAT32 format should be out of the question for any Windows installation due to potential filesystem inconsisitencies that could render Windows unbootable. Yeck. NTFS is read-only from Mac OS X. Windows has no (native and/or free) HFS+ support. What is the best option for an OS-independent shared filesystem?

Ext3 with Linux! Not only can you then boot our favorite free operating system, but you can also use that same filesystem to store your shared data (from an OS standpoint). The best part is you wont have any limitations like 4.0GB file sizes or read-only support.

There are existing projects for Ext2 on both platforms, as seen here:
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/ - Windows
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ - Mac OS X

I'm not sure if they support Ext3's journaling capabilities, but that would be a very nicely added bonus. Permissions could be a tricky thing if needed.

With some developer support both of these projects could greatly benefit those of us wishing to make use of dual booting, either with Boot Camp or the XOM OnMac solution (recently open sourced under their own license).

You forgot to mention FASTER, but in my experience Linux is AT LEAST as stable and has UI advantages too. My iBook 600 Mhz G3 running Debian Linux is in many respects more responsive than my year-old Powerbook 1.5 Ghz G4 running OS X. I'm sure if I were to run a benchmark measuring raw horsepower the Powerbook would still win, but for day to day web browsing, moving files around, etc, the iBook/Linux is the champ.

For the sake of argument. . .

I have a Pismo. upgraded with a 900 MHz G3 and a 40 gig drive, which dual boots 10.4.6 and Ubuntu Breezy running Gnome. I actually find 10.4.6 to be a little quicker than Ubuntu in some areas (web browsing) and much faster in other areas (Ubuntu's Samba is borked, which limits it to 10BaseT for transfers, while transferring between two OS X systems us much faster). Now, I am by no means a Linux expert, so there may be optimizations of which I am not aware which could increase Ubuntu's performance. However, for stock, off-the-CD installs, I find OS X to be as fast or faster.

Beyond this, there are other issues. When Ubuntu installed, it didn't support direct rendering to the Pismo's graphics card. I had to google around and find out how to enable this, as well as double buffering and Xft. Last night I had to spend half an hour in the Terminal to get DeerPark to work on the machine. I am finding other problems, too: I have yet to find a way to monitor CPU temp in an application like conky, because there doesn't seem to be support for the Key West bus yet. Etc.

My point here is not to bash Linux, because I am enjoying the learning. But to enter into the argument, But what would be the advantage of running Linux vs. the BSD-based MacOS X. . . one answer is that OS X works out of the box in ways Ubuntu doesn't. This obviously isn't a concern of yours, but I think it's what matter to most computer users, who are somewhere between partially and completely clueless. My brother, who gets along in OS X, would be lost in Linux. So, while someone with your needs obviously gains little from running OS X, I think the average computer user gains a lot from OS X.

I don't think the parent poster is talking about "P2P music crap, or cracked shareware" blah blah.

At my work, open source software is frowned on because it is not part of the admin's sphere of knowledge. I get threatening emails about how such software is "illegal" (at best, a creative use of the word) and how I should remove it immediately. These include VERY useful programs such as FileZilla and even using mozilla (usefulness of the javascript debugger, web developer plugin,etc). These programs are not useful to THEM, so they just don't care.

I geniunely don't feel I am putting any admins, directors or the company at risk by using this software. If I am, then clearly I am doing something that is not making my life easier, nor am I making myself more efficient.

Allowing anyone to install any "crap" is clearly a bad idea. Admins do have a responsibility to make sure systems run smoothly. However, this should not be to the detriment of user functionality.

if you prepare beforehand, it's possible to have a way to check the whole system independent of which distro you use. just run tripwire (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripwire) or some other similar tool and you'll have a comprehensive database of MD5 checksums for everything important in your system. you can even monitor changes to config files. it makes for some nice "immune system" for your *NIX

the package "debsums" also adds a database of know MD5s for most debian packages. even if you don't have debsums or if your RPM database is hosed (that would make rpm -V useless) you can still count with knowngoods.org (http://www.knowngoods.org/ a database of checksums for several default binaries shipped with several linux distros, BSDs and even solaris.

want to know the checkums for solaris 9's /usr/bin/bash ? here

kinda usefull when diagnosing a system

There are many projects out there of smaller size that may be less intimidating.

In fact, the smaller the better. Nobody can be expected to dive right into Mozilla or OpenOffice and start fixing bugs, but then nobody has to. Google is your friend. Start with the API/platform/technology that you are interested in, and seach for projects that use it. You can even find projects specific to a particular development tool (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fastmm, http://www.indyproject.org/). You name it, its out there, and it doesn't have to be mainstream to be useful to you.

AI Minds For Robots are being developed as Open Source Artificial Intelligence for installation in all manner of robots -- beer-fetching or otherwise.

Your Robo-Wife will fetch beer for you any time of day or night.

Mind is an artificial intelligence coded initially in JavaScript for Web migration and in Forth for robots, evolving towards full civil rights on a par with human beings and towards superintelligence beyond any human IQ.

Mind.html in JavaScript has an installed user base of dozens of intelligent entities cached away on hard disks all over the world, with Update and News links for rapid prototyping of state-of-the-art robot AI.

AGI Radar is an advisory "radar screen" of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) projects advancing ineluctably towards a singularity and a cybernetic economy based on robots outfitted with artificial intelligence.

Technological Singularity is now in a countdown to machine take-over world-wide, unless we humans co-operate with our superintelligent planet-mates in a Joint Stewardship of Earth.

While RMS of course is right that the free Java implementations out there don't yet implement all of Sun's features, things are REALLY beginning to look bright lately! The GNU Classpath project, which can be used with free VMs such as JamVM now even include most of Swing and AWT. For those that prefer working in a familiar environment, the version of GCJ that shipped with GCC 4.1.0 introduced a new enough (late-2005, I believe) checkout of the GNU Classpath that most of Swing and AWT were available.
When I started a mandatory course in Java at my university this semester, I was really demotivated by the fact that I would have to develop on a non-free and also unfamiliar platform. Then I discovered GCJ, and I was able to live in a free and familiar world of using the GNU toolchain for everything. Midway through the semester, we started using Swing, and I thought I had reached the end of how far free software could take me. But lo and behold, GCC 4.1 was released at the right moment. What I'm trying to say is: For those of you who want a free Java platform, you really should investigate what's new in the GCJ that ships with GCC 4.1. Or if speed isn't the most important thing to you, an even more feature-complete free Java can be obtained by using a recent GNU Classpath with a free VM such as JamVM.

I can't compose messages in plain text?

I can't have signature lines automatically removed when replying and quoting?

I can't change the name of my outgoing account when composing?

Crazy. Gimme kmail on Win32 and I'll be much happier.

The Appleseed Project could use funding. And a foot massage.

Mostly we'll just settle for a foot massage.

> not until I can copy the timeshifted show to my (Linux) PC, PocketPC. or a CD or DVD

I agree, however you should have said supported, not can, you can:

http://armory.nicewarrior.org/projects/vstream-cli ent/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tivo-vlc
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Yep, and it is called RDesktop . Works great if you have to get your hands dirty on a win box from your good old Linux console.

:-)

Also similar to Internet vs. Web, you can write your own clients for Freenet (for the Freenet protocol). You're not limited to what the developers have provided for you out of the box.

0.7 will, if I understand things correctly, support almost exactly the scenario you describe (queuing downloads within the main Freenet program itself). The spidering part you'll have to write yourself though. Or...

...use Frost, probably the real killer app for Freenet right now; a message board / filesharing client.

(And parent got modded "Insightful" for what amounts to "Internet == Web"? Yikes.)

>if your servers are always online for data retrieval, they can copy themselves over there. There is no panacea no matter how hard you try.

I use for my PC, and all users PC's at my work:

http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
daily images of all on your harddisk, just a click on the log will show the day all your exe files changed, take the files from the day before, clean what else you need from the latest...

>That's good, but "good" malware will...
well bad malware would be similar to bad drm, it would go right to the boot sector... thats what I assumed the article meant, until I RTFA, their just worried about difficulty of installing windows, apps, etc. Even my solution isn't so good at that, we got apps that generated some magical PC-ID, that is tied to gosh knows what, and that just doesn't come back without pain.

boot sector malware is where I think the $100 PC may take over in corporate, throw out the crap to some school/police/investigators/etc, and just buy a standard installed hardware/software package avaliable from multiple vendors for less than a 1/2 day of MIS time, click on my backuppc data files from a good date, gives a zip file, done.

The two basic principles of Windows system administration:

* For minor problems, reboot
* For major problems, reinstall

Unattended
This is a system for fully automating the installation of Windows 2000 Professional and Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

http://unattended.sourceforge.net/

Funny, emacs is my preferred tool for managing and playing my mp3 collection too:

http://emacsmp3player.sourceforge.net/

You mean like FROST?

Any screenshots of the app?

Frost's site has a couple of screenshots too.

"After a week of caching data, anyone monitoring your network will have no clue if you are hosting any illicit data or if you are caching data from another node."

Everything on Freenet has a timestamp. If a wiretap shows your node pushing an original key with a timestamp newer than when the wiretap started, you're the source. They may not be able to pin older material on you (depending on how much they know about your cache size), but if you continue to put new material on (i. e. continue to molest children), a wiretap will catch you.

The FAQ even alludes to this.

"However, I would not be surprised for a jury to rule against you, should a case ever be brought up"

That's what appeals are for.

Are you making the same claims that the creators and owners of usenet, AOL, and MySpace are "actively helping people to distribute child pornography", like you said of Ian Clarke?
No, because child pornography isn't the killer app of AOL, but it is the killer app of Freenet.

Can you provide quotes with links that indicate Clark does indeed believe what you claim he believes?
here and here

Are you making the same claims that the creators and owners of usenet, AOL, and MySpace are "actively helping people to distribute child pornography", like you said of Ian Clarke?
No, because child pornography isn't the killer app of AOL, but it is the killer app of Freenet.

Can you provide quotes with links that indicate Clark does indeed believe what you claim he believes?
here and here

This is a interesting opensource project started by someguys, we're currently testing it out at work, so far theres no issues. voip suite