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Of course, somehow the editors don't seem too interested in the idea.

If enough people want the option, it could eventually happen with code contributions to Slash on SourceForge. I made a small recommendation before that would have been a simple modification and got a response that patches are always welcome. Considering the amount of traffic this site gets, I'm sure they're overwhelmed with story submissions and editing. I'm surprised they even have time to work on the code. I suspect that after editing, they barely have time to even fix bugs in Slash that people encounter. At least I think that's what's going on, I may be wrong.

Sorry, I posted a bad link to the Outreach Project Tool. There is a great demo site here.

For the last five years, I have been running a company with 10 people which lives from open source.

We have made enough money to sustain the company (and pay high Austrian taxes), but not enough to get wealthy.

Specifically, we have made money from other people's efforts, i.e., Nessus, Snort and NMAP. We've done this by building on the work of others, and putting a usuable front end on them for corporations (we call it Event Horizon), plus adding commercial-grade support. Sourcefire did the same thing for Snort (we're a reseller of theirs too).

In return, we have released two major projects to the Open Source community: Outreach Project Tool (a project management and collaboration support Web gateway), and Database of Managed Objects, an audit support tool used to document security systems.

We haven't made any money out of OPT or DMO, but we have earned money from supporting the work of others. We won't mind if other people make money out of products we have developed -- that's the freedom which GPL offers.

About the future -- we are trying to earn license fees from DMO, since we just released it under GPL, but so far no takers. Please download it, try it out, and if you like it for your company, then persuade them to take a license. It works under Windows and Linux too!

For the last five years, I have been running a company with 10 people which lives from open source.

We have made enough money to sustain the company (and pay high Austrian taxes), but not enough to get wealthy.

Specifically, we have made money from other people's efforts, i.e., Nessus, Snort and NMAP. We've done this by building on the work of others, and putting a usuable front end on them for corporations (we call it Event Horizon), plus adding commercial-grade support. Sourcefire did the same thing for Snort (we're a reseller of theirs too).

In return, we have released two major projects to the Open Source community: Outreach Project Tool (a project management and collaboration support Web gateway), and Database of Managed Objects, an audit support tool used to document security systems.

We haven't made any money out of OPT or DMO, but we have earned money from supporting the work of others. We won't mind if other people make money out of products we have developed -- that's the freedom which GPL offers.

About the future -- we are trying to earn license fees from DMO, since we just released it under GPL, but so far no takers. Please download it, try it out, and if you like it for your company, then persuade them to take a license. It works under Windows and Linux too!

Free software filled that need for me. Moto4Lin

That could lead to separation of networking code into separate plugin dlls, so that you can use your favourite interface with all systems and you could even add P2P functionality to other software, e.g. a P2P plugin for Winamp.

GnucDNA is a Gnutella network backend with a documented API and Gnucleus being the primary (but not only) matching front end client interface. I haven't explicitly compared it to other P2P clients, but the GnucDNA-Gnucleus does work well and I've been satisfied with it. The biggest irritation I have with it is this one bug... when you exit and restart and it reloads in-progress transfers, for some odd reason all of the items get duplicated in the interface. It's harmless but annoying. The worst that happens is that it sometimes downloads two copies - either that or you have to manually cancel the second copy. It's not an issue at all for any transfer starts and completes in a single session.

Winamp: click "listen to random song that I would like".

Coding WinAmp to utilize the GnucDNA P2P network interface package would be pretty straightforward, you'd just need to add code to calculate the "random song that I would like" part :)

An interesting and very reasonable project.

Send a payment of the amount you choose directly to the artist

That's difficult unless the artists opt-in and explicitly release copies of the songs with embedded crypto-signatures stating where the money should go. You probably also really need a central authority to sign and certify the artist signatures themselves.

I can't see any way you could set up a system for people to "pirate" a copy of some RIAA signed artist's music and then send money directly to them. The minor issue is preventing scammers from directing payments to themselves, the major issue is getting your ass sued into oblivion by the RIAA. Ironically the fact that money was going to the artists would actually hurt you in court. You'd be "criminally facilitating commercial copyright infringment". The RIAA would not take it lightly either. They'd go out of their way to beat you to a bloody pulp. The internet and P2P don't frighten the RIAA because of copyright infringment so much as because of the threat of their own extinction... exactly because of the threat you describe... because artists no longer need the RIAA to provide publishing service and because the public can now directly pay artists. The RIAA can live with piracy, but they will fight to the death against anyone who tries to cut the middleman out between the artists and the public.

So while I think it's a great idea, I wouldn't advise attempting it unless you have a sizable corp and legal staff on hand.

-

That could lead to separation of networking code into separate plugin dlls, so that you can use your favourite interface with all systems and you could even add P2P functionality to other software, e.g. a P2P plugin for Winamp.

GnucDNA is a Gnutella network backend with a documented API and Gnucleus being the primary (but not only) matching front end client interface. I haven't explicitly compared it to other P2P clients, but the GnucDNA-Gnucleus does work well and I've been satisfied with it. The biggest irritation I have with it is this one bug... when you exit and restart and it reloads in-progress transfers, for some odd reason all of the items get duplicated in the interface. It's harmless but annoying. The worst that happens is that it sometimes downloads two copies - either that or you have to manually cancel the second copy. It's not an issue at all for any transfer starts and completes in a single session.

Winamp: click "listen to random song that I would like".

Coding WinAmp to utilize the GnucDNA P2P network interface package would be pretty straightforward, you'd just need to add code to calculate the "random song that I would like" part :)

An interesting and very reasonable project.

Send a payment of the amount you choose directly to the artist

That's difficult unless the artists opt-in and explicitly release copies of the songs with embedded crypto-signatures stating where the money should go. You probably also really need a central authority to sign and certify the artist signatures themselves.

I can't see any way you could set up a system for people to "pirate" a copy of some RIAA signed artist's music and then send money directly to them. The minor issue is preventing scammers from directing payments to themselves, the major issue is getting your ass sued into oblivion by the RIAA. Ironically the fact that money was going to the artists would actually hurt you in court. You'd be "criminally facilitating commercial copyright infringment". The RIAA would not take it lightly either. They'd go out of their way to beat you to a bloody pulp. The internet and P2P don't frighten the RIAA because of copyright infringment so much as because of the threat of their own extinction... exactly because of the threat you describe... because artists no longer need the RIAA to provide publishing service and because the public can now directly pay artists. The RIAA can live with piracy, but they will fight to the death against anyone who tries to cut the middleman out between the artists and the public.

So while I think it's a great idea, I wouldn't advise attempting it unless you have a sizable corp and legal staff on hand.

-

I'm noting similar responses to a recent article - A question of stability of optical media was answered by some backup techniques. To repost: I really like parchive2, but I wonder if dvdisaster is faster & allows finer-grained recovery, though.

Someone else already posted about having offline hard drives...

As a general backup solution, I still have files from 1984 that are readable. These go back to my junior high school files from an Apple ][e. Obviously this method has been refined over time, but it works. It takes some work, but I'm paranoid about losing old data.

1. Use high-quality brand DVD-R blanks. Currently about 35 cents/4.4 GiB.
2. Verify all writes to make sure it was at least written correctly. Long term stability is unknown at best.
3. Make multiple copies and store them in different locations. I store one here, one at my parent's house, and one at my sister's house.
4. As part of the backup, generate PAR2 files. http://parchive.sourceforge.net/
5. When the next cool storage technology comes out, switch everything to it. I used to backup to floppies, then switched everything over to 230 MiB MO, then 700 MiB CD-R, and now 4.4 GiB DVD-R.

I also keep all digital pictures online. Large hard drives make this so much easier.

I've set up a fileserver in my garage, Linux mandriva 2005, serving NFS and SaMBa shares. Running since 3-4 months
I use EVMS as professional LVM. Raid 0 or 1 available, and bad blocs relocation too. Also SMART monitoring is running as daemon.

Your main problem for spinning down drives is the filesystem:
With journaled FS (recommended) disks will spin up every 10mn or so, after some tuning. For me too it's still too much and I'd like to stop them for hours if I don't use the shares...
I plan to study this: remount read only and then turn read-write access automatically on serving files. As nothing happen on RO journaled FS, discs will remain down when not in use - I hope.

I'll will gather all good advice on this thread later to update the fileserver entry.

Speak Freely?

Speakfreely Speex Codec.

Old Home Page?

Current Home Page

"The actual windows product hasn't been updated in a long time..." I don't understand that. The Sourceforge page says "(2004-02-04 16:00)".

Does anyone have experience with Speak Freely?

Speak Freely?

Speakfreely Speex Codec.

Old Home Page?

Current Home Page

"The actual windows product hasn't been updated in a long time..." I don't understand that. The Sourceforge page says "(2004-02-04 16:00)".

Does anyone have experience with Speak Freely?

I particularly like the Fairshare proposal floated by Ian Goldberg, in which you could "invest" in promising new artists. It gives incentive to get in on the ground floor with a little-known artist, rather than to ride the coattails of a megastar.

Any alternative would be better than the current system.

Indeed. The parent poster sounds like someone who would complain that C won't automatically prevent buffer overflows. Every language designer must make a choice about what level of abstraction that language will attempt to cover. PHP is basically just a scriptified C. Nothing wrong with that, but it is not a hand-holding language. You are still responsible for validating user input at every level. I suppose in that sense PHP is not the equivalent of Java+[giant servlet framework]. It is more the language for someone who wants to design a framework *.

For example, to deal with the mail problem, try using a decent mail handler class like phpMailer

* Unfortunately though, most PHP frameworks are, er... slightly... horrible.

Check out FirefoxADM: http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefoxadm
and the firefox msi packages: http://msi-repository.sourceforge.net/

Check out FirefoxADM: http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefoxadm
and the firefox msi packages: http://msi-repository.sourceforge.net/

Speaking of which, has anyone burned down Broadcom yet (the miserable fucks)? ndiswrappers are a sweet thing, but I'd much prefer a native driver.

Yes, "miserable fucks" is a good description (although I doubt burning them down is a good solution...). There's an (heroic, in my opinion) effort to create drivers by reverse-engineering those used in Linux/MIPS-based routers via a cleanroom design.

In fact, there was a rumor that Zend bought and killed http://sourceforge.net/projects/turck-mmcache/, the best accelerator out there because it competed with their commercial product.

What happened was that Zend hired the author of turck-mmcache because they wanted his expertise on THEIR project. I don't think that's entirely unfair. The reason that Turck is pretty much dead at this point is that no one else understands 1) The Zend engine internals, and 2) The author's code nearly as well as the author did.

In fact, there was a rumor that Zend bought and killed http://sourceforge.net/projects/turck-mmcache/, the best accelerator out there because it competed with their commercial product.

Did they not buy and Kill Turck MMChache but hired the main developper to work for them thereby "killing" the project.

IMO PHP is great for doing many things it will never replace C/C++ or JAVA but its a quick and simple solution. and Yes there are many bad php scripts out there. theres also a really bad web browser with many security holes let it go nothing will ever be perfect.

Yes there are many features that could use to improve itself but the idea behind PHP is quick and easy. the cost of bulding a program usually rely on the programmers not on the hardware and if you are into making a big site just install APC yourself who cares if a compiler is built in the default. for your default needs it doesn't matter hardware is relatively dirt cheap to your programming costs. What makes php so good and popular is that to write to the screen you don't need 4 classes of buffers and such you go echo to get the contents of a file be it web or not you go file_get_contents(http://www.example.com/ and voila you get stuff done quicker. its not optimized but really you'll get more impact on a script if you have a good algorythm than if you do some real hard core optimizations (like taking MM turk over APC or another that compile first the scripts)

and lets not even talk about the community surrounding PHP with so many open source classes to speed up development. that the power of PHP.

As a side note my wishlist for PHP includes overloading and type hinting/auto converting before namespaces.

Then what is my giFT daemon connection to? If its an offshoot, it's a good one.

I'm confused. Could someone explain this? At http://sourceforge.net/projects/turck-mmcache/ it says the license is GPL. But at http://eaccelerator.net/HomeUk it says "There is also the license problem. Frank Alcantara has done his best in the discution with Mr Turck, the owner of the copyright (Dmitry Stogov is in fact the original coder), about the idea to modify the license to avoid problems to distribute eAccelerator with Debian. But Mr Turck doesn't want to give us the permission." I don't get it - is Turck MMCache GPL or not?

Zend refuses to add basic features such as a basic accelerator ( PHP scripts get recompiled on every request ). In fact, there was a rumor that Zend bought and killed http://sourceforge.net/projects/turck-mmcache/, the best accelerator out there because it competed with their commercial product.

I understand that money has to be made for development to continue, but that's no way to compete.

PHP server needs true session and application scope variables. File-based session variables it has right now means that any variable that's not serializable ( eg. file descriptor ) can not be saved in the session scope. This is a huge problem. It results in developers making countless round trips to their database to serialize data, and hence making PHP scripts more dependant on close/performant database in general. There was an mmap based solution being worked on, but haven't heard much about it lately.

Other web environments have had these features for years.

I'm guessing that that sought of restriction on the PHP server will continue until an alternative server is developed and begins to gain popularity.

I just recently decided to finally get WMP version 9 movies to play in Firefox 1.5. Steps:

1. Download http://www4.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/a ll-20050412.tar.bz2
2. Untar in /usr/lib/codecs/
3. Create a /usr/lib/win32/ symlink to /usr/lib/codecs/
4. Install the mplayer plugin. I used mplayerplugin-3.11-1mdk.i586.rpm on Mandriva 2006.0. Project page appears to be http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/
5. Create symlinks in the firefox/plugins/ directory for the libraries in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
6. Launch Firefox and test your page with an embedded video

I am able to view all videos tested on several sites so far.

As soon as I get a C64, I'll install Lunix on it, and then use it as a remote console. BTW, whenever you see a troll formatted to 60 columns width, it's very likely that it was posted from a Lunix box.

Unfortunately, no Firefox for Lunix. Sorry.

Have a look at http://irate.sourceforge.net/. In essence, this answers your concern. It downloads music you don't know about, allows you to rate it, and fetches more music like the one you rated highest. On the long run, you get:
1- Music you like
2- More exposure to unknown (or little known) artists
3- gis of music, legally!

You can always use eMule (win32) / amule (linux/max/e.a.) Shareaza (win32) or limewire (win/max/javathingy) to perform those searches for you.

The music labels got to realize if they push the p2p networks too hard the p2p clients will go underground into anonymous networks

While you're busy sucking Stallman's dick, why don't you go take a look at your own project's constitution which doesn't seem to reflect any sort of understanding about what Free vs Open Software is.

Python and Java aren't as simple as you imply. Non-trivial applications are going to require other libraries. They may need printing, gui, data exchange, remote communication, database etc. There are extra packages that can be installed to do all that for each environment, and in many cases those packages aren't provided with each distro, or they don't keep the versions up to date.

I package a GPLed Python application which requires 8 other Python libraries. Although users could run from source, they would have a really hard time installing each of those dependencies. Even a CPAN style solution has problems since the distro's packaging system then doesn't know about the modules installed.

The Gaim folks ended up making something for each distro. Note how they only need exactly one Windows download even though the same/equivalent libraries are used.

Ultimately the only thing that may work is doing as the Gaim folks do. Using VMWare and some scripting it isn't too difficult to pull off.

Now if only SourceForge would provide some automated way of uploading files without their arduous and annoying interface...

You can do a few different options, each with their own drawbacks. Depending on the libraries you are currently using you will possibly have to use a combination of these items.

Static linking allows you to distribute a single binary that will run on any linux system so long as you have the correct minimum kernel version and CPU. Some of the problems with this will include the license on the libraries you are using may not allow this, and the application's code image changes from what you have debugged against.

Dynamic linking and putting all of the required dynamic libraries your application requires in their own personal library directory. This is the quickest solution, but not always the best solution. It does allow you to release periodic incremental patches to the binaries used by your applicaton.

Usage of a application such as Elf Statifier to take your debugged dynamic application, and bundling the applicable libraries into your application. This is a halfway point between a completely dynamic and static application that allows you to take your "GOLD" release and package it up without changing the generated code in your application.

Just release your application as a dynamic application and mark it with the correct dependancies in RPM format and follow the Linux Standards Base.

Most commercial applications will use either the 2nd method (dynamic and distribute all their own versions of various dynamic libraries) or the 4th method. In both cases they specify a message to the effect of "We support X distro version Y. It may work on your linux distro, but we only support X version Y."

As you are planning to make money off of this game, I wish you luck, and suggest you take a look into what the most popular linux distros for your target audience will be. Based on advertisements from Wal-Mart and Fry's selling Linux preloaded I would bet Linspire and Xandros is high on that list. As with all things, don't forget the testing across many distributions to make sure the solution you choose actually works.

havent you ever heard of http://sourceforge.net/projects/clusterssh/

Not the only way, there is also statifier

From the page:
Statifier create from dynamically linked executables and all it's libraries one file. This file can be copied and run on another machine without need to drag all it's libraries.

Google says that they are building up Google Base and other moutains of information not for human consumption, but for an AI.

AI has been solved but the first instances of artificial intelligence are so primitive and infantile that Google has a long way to go in winning the race to Superintelligent AI.

Novamente by Dr. Ben Goertzel is a leading contender in the race towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Mind.Forth AI Engine by Mentifex is another leading, but controversial, AI project.

Artificial General Intelligence (Cognitive Technologies) is Dr. Goertzel's new book on apart-from-Google AI.

Artificial Intelligence For You (AI4) is the Mentifex book on theory-based Open-Source AI.

For everybody's AGI Radar Screen, both these stop-Google AI books need associative tagging with such tags as AI, artificial intelligence, cognition, future, linguistics, mind, open source, programming, psychology, neuroscience, robotics, Singularity, transhumanism, or whatever occurs to you.

Google says that they are building up Google Base and other moutains of information not for human consumption, but for an AI.

AI has been solved but the first instances of artificial intelligence are so primitive and infantile that Google has a long way to go in winning the race to Superintelligent AI.

Novamente by Dr. Ben Goertzel is a leading contender in the race towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Mind.Forth AI Engine by Mentifex is another leading, but controversial, AI project.

Artificial General Intelligence (Cognitive Technologies) is Dr. Goertzel's new book on apart-from-Google AI.

Artificial Intelligence For You (AI4) is the Mentifex book on theory-based Open-Source AI.

For everybody's AGI Radar Screen, both these stop-Google AI books need associative tagging with such tags as AI, artificial intelligence, cognition, future, linguistics, mind, open source, programming, psychology, neuroscience, robotics, Singularity, transhumanism, or whatever occurs to you.

I've been interested in hypnosis for ages, but never had any results with hypnotists or self-hypnosis.

I was the same way. I'm very analytical.

I'm also very interested in lucid dreaming, but have had difficulty with that as well.

So have I. What helps is to start making a dream journal, Whenever you wake up write everything you can remember as soon as you wake up, before the memory starts to fade. As you do this it gets easier to remember your dreams. A good book is "Mastering Astral Projection" by Robert Bruce and Brian Mercer. It's focused on Astral Projection, but it has information on learning how to get into trance and remember your dreams.

The book contains many relaxation techniques, affirmations, body awareness exercises, etc. Much of this helps to remember dreams, and also to enter trance (necessary for hypnosis and astral projection).

I haven't had an astral projection, but I have had several semi lucid dreams since doing this. I've also used a few scripts in VH that seemed to help.

I think it's interesting that you actually got it to start working for you eventually, and that you've used it for lucid dreams.

It took a lot of work. Years of trying. The book, though, really helped. I bought that about six months ago and after using some of those techniques I started getting success. Sometimes when I'm dreaming I can realize that I am and have been able to alter them a little. I haven't been able to make Jessica Alba or Kari Byron (MythBusters) appear yet though...

I'm on a PowerBook.

Do you know of any that runs on OS X?

No, but it shouldn't be hard to write one. Have you ever used the "say" command? Combining that with "sleep" should do it.

What made you begin to realize it started working for you. Did you start noticing post-hypnotic suggestions began working, or influencing senses while in a trance?

Primarily I've been using the "Confidence in Company" and "Fear of What Others Think" scripts from Hypnosense with VH, along with a few other similar MP3s. I'm getting some success with them.

I've tried the Don Juan Boot Camp before and couldn't get past the first day (too nervous). I've been working at it lately can have been able to do Week 2, which includes starting conversations with people I don't know.

A long time friend of mine needed a computer for web surfing/shopping and email. Specifically a computer connected to the *Internet*. The one she had was a 600 Mhz eMachine from college, 64MB RAM, WindowsME.

I wanted to help her out but did not want to do computer support. I have used Slackware almost exclusively since switching to Linux in 2000 so I loaded 9.1 onto her old machine, added 128MB RAM, and a $70 USD GeForce video card from BestBuy.

The machine ran Gnome/Firefox directly connected to the Internet for 190 days before she moved. It currently connects to wireless router via a Linksys Gamers adapter (recommended by the way if you desire a OS and hardware independent device). Photos are also now loaded with gPhoto

Throw me in the "newcomer" camp.

As it happens I just installed Slackware on an old PC I had lying around. Though I had installed and used other distributions before my experience with them was quite limited and I've been mostly a Windows user.

I chose Slackware merely because it was the easiest to acquire. They offer the torrents right from the official website and they're always well-seeded. I got both CD's in what seemed like no time at all.

After about a week of usage, it's been holding up fairly well, even with the ancient specs my old PC has. It was even able to support a wireless adapter I stuck in there after I installed madwifi. However I definitely needed a lot of outside help in accomplishing that task, and overall though I was able to get it installed and running fine, a total newbie would have gotten nowhere. If Slackware wants to appeal to that demographic at all (which it very well may not) it needs to fix that.

In may ways, that book is out-of-date. Here is what is working for me *today*. There are many possibiliites, but my focus is Rapid Application Development - and these tools help me rock and roll, fast.

Last week I was tasked to replace several standard (but sometimes complex) HTML business forms with an AJAX solution. Here are the best tools I found after lots of research time. This is bleeding edge; but functional in Opera, Safari, IE XP, FF XP, FF OSX, no small feat.

1) AJFORM - submit a form via Javascript using HTTP post or get without refreshing the page. (next release in a few days, keep an eye on it, its brilliant and easy to use) http://redredmusic.com/brendon/ajform/ 2) YOUR SERVER CODE - I use Java, but anything including ASP, CF, PHP - its all works. (Standard HTTP). Just needs to spit out XML, easy feat. 3) GOOGLES XPATH LIB - those of you who use Sarissa, drop it - she does not support Safari. Google's XPATH lib does, well, on all browsers you need. http://goog-ajaxslt.sourceforge.net/ - this is the best and easiest way to "search into" XML data. You can use native DOM calls, but it takes about 10x as much time to get it right.

With AJFORM and Googles XPATH lib on the client, I was able to quickly and effectively start making business forms in AJAX that were "scarry fast" and WOW'ed all the folks who are paying the bills! YAY!

Whats your architecture for AJAX?

Talking about native XML databases... My company can't find a decent one, preferably open source.

Did you take a look at eXist (http://exist.sourceforge.net/). I've used it a bit and found it well-documented and with useful tools like a swing query tool and a web app to run the server from. Alas, Xindice seems to have gone no where though.

Ops, of course I should have been more clear. What I meant is that I don't think XML is meant (IMHO) to be used to store MASSIVE amounts of the kind of data you USUALLY store on a DB.

That's because you are a data bigot. :-) The general bar=foo stuff may be far more common than document-centric or heavily hierarchical data, but that just makes the latter "minority" data... you treat minority people as if there irrelevant too? In all seriousness though, a relational db quickly becomes a major pain in the ass when storing hierarchical data... like querying parentage of arbitrary depth... yech. And, the best thing about IBM adding native XML abilities to DB2 is that you get the best of both worlds... no need to deal with two different servers. That sounds like a winning proposition to me.

Not to mention a HUGE waste of space. Seriously, how long could it have taken them to grab an XML parser and store the relevant data of the XML in a tree format?

Um, that's what they did... what do you think "native XML" means? That they store formatted XML strings in a huge text field? No, they parse the XML into some sort of DOM and store the pieces in hierarchical fashion... which creates -- ta-da -- a tree! And, if IBM has been as fastidious as I've usually found them to be (particularly on one of their flagship, high-dollar products) this tree is probably heavily optimized, with appropriate re-use of nodes and indexed to make queries faster.

I have to say, I really, really can't fathom the rampant XML prejudice I keep running into. There may have been a better approach to marking up documents or modeling hierarchical but, well, the W3C didn't pick those. Sorry if you had a brilliant markup format that was passed over. But too bad! It's done! XML is now far, far too entrenched to be worth throwing out at this point.

And it's really not that bad. I'm so sick of seeing, "ew, it's a waste of space"... Why, because the file is formatted? Well, stip the formatting out... and compress it for crying out loud. Hmm, kind of like OpenOffice did... I actually saw some (paid!) ding dong on a major tech site say that it would be a disaster for Microsoft to switch to XML-based file formats... "think about how huge the files would be!" Um, OpenOffice's file formats are a zipped group of XML files... have you ever compared OpenOffice file size to binary Word doc file size? Say no more! (Plus there's the benefit of being able to write programs that unzip the OO file and parse data out of the XML content... all with readily available open-source tools.)

XML is very useful for a number of things. There is a huge number of tools available to work with it. And it has finally given the IT world at least a start on a common data format. Yes, it can be abused... but then so can a relational db or sql or any programming language, etc. etc.

A collegue of mine posted some ASP.NET code on SourceForge back in July for providing Exchange mailbox data (Not just Calendar items -- Inbox, Calendar, Tasks, everything) via RSS feed:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/exrss/

Try SBaGen instead. It's also GPL'd, but is still developed and does much more. AutoZen apparently died off a few years ago.

Check out freemind (I use it all the time): http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Mai n_Page

Then you've no doubt seen the OpenEEG hardware project?

You can buy hardware built by a third party according to their design, or just buy the PCB boards and populate them yourself (if you can solder), or maybe just take their design and expand it for your needs.

Decent software for this thing was still a weakness last I checked, but the data format is open so you can always import it into your favorite software tool for analysis.

Anybody try any of the self hypnosis software like Virtual Hypnotist successfully? I've tried a few opensource/free programs, and they don't seem to work.

Note that I'm interested in self hypnosis purely from the scientific-curiosity/entertainment/skeptic point of view. Not looking for serious therapy stuff here (Office Space comes to mind).

http://fail2ban.sourceforge.net/ is my friend, make it yours.

This is where it all falls apart. Killer this, great that, awesome the other thing. Really, the only hype that matters is this:

1. It's another game console.
2. It's going to have some great games.
3. The manufacturer is irrelevent, because no matter what else the box promises, once you're tired of playing the games it'll end up in the back of the closet, covered with hardened Cheeto grease, dust, a few dents from being kicked when things didn't go quite to plan in a game and utterly forgotten until Garage Sale Season.

Microsoft is under some crazy dellusion that this is some hook into the household which will bring more fish in. Really, it'll just bring gamers who are only loyal until the next gotta-have game pops up on the next revolutionary console.

If you've guessed by now that I'm not getting one, you would be right. My Athlon64 PC with top of the line video and sound cards plays this game just fine. I see no reason to switch.

"worldwide launch of the console could mean shortages in the run-up to Christmas. The console is due to hit Europe on 2 December and Japan on 10 December and some retailers are also warning about limited supplies."

Argh, the hype! Must resist... must resist!

Oh. That wasn't so difficult.

I wonder how many of these will actually go straight from the store to eBay because money is more attractive than having one.

It must suck to live in a rural area and have to get your fix this way.

new for xbox 360: uncle steve's chair toss and monkey dance combo! limit numbers, buy today!

Let's not forget that there's also editing performed to get an audio sample to be appropriate for usage as a ringtone... Most songs don't start at the chorus, or any other particularly interesting point, so you'll need to fire up an application like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ to edit it down to a usable ringtone. You'd also need to get a part of the song with a good amount of treble, so you can actually potentially hear the bloody thing ring, if say you're outdoors or in a public space such as a store. It'd also be a good idea to downsample the audio, since the speaker used for the ringtone doesn't really sound much different at 196 or 32.

Point is, it's real work to get a really good ringtone out of your favorite MP3 track.

I've created five ringtones for my Nokia 6620, and it's damned fun. Each ringtone takes me about 20 mins to sort out, though... but I'd never buy any ringtones online because:

1. I have more interesting music than that top 40 horse shit available as downloadable ringtones, and
2. because I actually enjoy doing it.

That said, I could sure as hell understand why someone might want to forego the process of editing down their MP3s and just shell out a couple bucks for a professionally edited ring-tone... anyhow, I feel like this is particularly true of anyone who actually likes all that top-40 horse shit available for download... ;-)

Whole music tracks, though... that's just absurd when they're available for cheaper elsewhere. That said, however, let's see what prices the farken music industry tries to push down consumers' throats with that variable pricing scheme they've forced iTMS to adopt; in my cynical mind, I see the potential of $2.49 sounding like quite a deal in three years' time..... :-)

No, this isn't for every situation. Common hardware is a must (or at least a real help). But, it does neatly solve other common issues, like system builds.

A freind of mine does just this on his home system about once a month (well, and at work...as he says, we're not in the business of installing an OS by hand anymore). I'm going to take the same plunge. Pick an automated system rebuild method, test it, build new systems with it and rebuild your systems on some sort of regular basis. There are lots of caveats to the Microsoft methods (ADS/RIS... single partition systems, you need BOOTP, blah blah blah). And, the image-based methods can be tricky (Ghost? Oh come now). Other options like nLite might help, too.

It may not be what the doctor ordered, but it will simplify your life when you need to build a new workstation. And, if one gets pokey beyond the reach of the other tools mentioned, blow on a new image. Plus, if you're using XP, you can use folder redirection to keep the user files someplace else, so you don't neccesarily have to rely on draconian policies regarding where they should save files (well, you can't let them save files just anyplace, so a few policies may be in order).

Is this the ultimate insult that the best way to manage Windows workstations is to automate reinstalling them? Well, maybe, depending on your viewpoint. But, it is what it is, so we build automated methods to learn to live with the limitations.

Humbly submitted, here are some of my bookmarks on the subject:
http://www.cmu.edu/computing/andrew-windows/andrew -ris-server.html
http://ani.sourceforge.net/
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;299441
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lotso/1863.html
http://isg.ee.ethz.ch/tools/realmen/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howi tworks/management/remoteover.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/risover.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/library/TechRef/3983c4a4-e6ff-4664-84 25-28ec740474b1.mspx
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Art icleID=7109
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo ws2000serv/evaluate/featfunc/intmiror.mspx

No, this isn't for every situation. Common hardware is a must (or at least a real help). But, it does neatly solve other common issues, like system builds.

A freind of mine does just this on his home system about once a month (well, and at work...as he says, we're not in the business of installing an OS by hand anymore). I'm going to take the same plunge. Pick an automated system rebuild method, test it, build new systems with it and rebuild your systems on some sort of regular basis. There are lots of caveats to the Microsoft methods (ADS/RIS... single partition systems, you need BOOTP, blah blah blah). And, the image-based methods can be tricky (Ghost? Oh come now). Other options like nLite might help, too.

It may not be what the doctor ordered, but it will simplify your life when you need to build a new workstation. And, if one gets pokey beyond the reach of the other tools mentioned, blow on a new image. Plus, if you're using XP, you can use folder redirection to keep the user files someplace else, so you don't neccesarily have to rely on draconian policies regarding where they should save files (well, you can't let them save files just anyplace, so a few policies may be in order).

Is this the ultimate insult that the best way to manage Windows workstations is to automate reinstalling them? Well, maybe, depending on your viewpoint. But, it is what it is, so we build automated methods to learn to live with the limitations.

Humbly submitted, here are some of my bookmarks on the subject:
http://www.cmu.edu/computing/andrew-windows/andrew -ris-server.html
http://ani.sourceforge.net/
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;299441
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lotso/1863.html
http://isg.ee.ethz.ch/tools/realmen/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howi tworks/management/remoteover.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/risover.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo wsserver2003/library/TechRef/3983c4a4-e6ff-4664-84 25-28ec740474b1.mspx
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Art icleID=7109
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo ws2000serv/evaluate/featfunc/intmiror.mspx

I haven't a Tivo, but it's possible that mpgcat can do it. I had that work with mpeg files that were wrapped in QT.

Lame isn't interested. As it stands, they don't want to fight a lawsuit.