Slashdot Mirror

We could learn off Amazon for our own computer file systems. A metadata/database filesystem where everything is stored all in one folder (rather than organized into directories) would save everyone so much time. The barcode would be replaced by 'tags' or metadata. Popular and recent tags could be accessible via a dropdown. Hunting for files, reorganization, deciding where to store files, becomes suddenly much easier.

More info:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/filesystem.html
http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/01/19/filesystem_sacrilege/
http://dbfs.sourceforge.net/

Linux can work around that.

So, basically Windows 9 is going to bundle the equivalent of the free Classic Shell and charge $25 instead?

That all you got?

Yes, I know. MATE and Cinnamon aren't in the official repositories yet, but that's only a matter of getting a bigger hammer.

To be fair, there is a big difference between having a desktop environment and window manager which run on a system and having all of its features fully integrated and supported. I can quite happily run FVWM on my desktop, but things start getting awkward when I run an application which expects to find a dock or notification area from Gnome.

WTF? Slashdot is referencing a comment on Geekwire as a basis for people installing Linux? How low can it go? Idiot submitters like theodp and symbolset are turning Slashdot into a anti-Microsoft tabloid rather than any place for serious discussion. Not surprising that people with half a brain are ditching Slashdot in droves in disgust.

This is only since Microsoft stopped slapping adverts all over the page ;-)

The guys that run this site and SourceForge have gotta eat you know. If it wanted to be a WINDOWS biased forum it would still have MS advertising. But due to the "viral" nature of SourceForge and most likely Ballmer throwing a chair at the advertising/marketers that were putting adds on Slashdot and SourceForge there has been a recent drop in slashdot revenue.

Also to consider is the fact the Windows is starting up an app store for Win8 and guess who the greatest supplier of real apps that actually do thing like this is? or this? Microsoft wants to compete with Sourceforge and completely eliminate it if at all possible by getting their sheep the hell away from OSS software. One thing they have tried in the past is to state that it is viral and in context tried to convince users that software that had opensource was the reason infections happen on the precious windows machines. The stupid among software users actually believe this so most will actually go along with the bullshit now and buy their safe and secure closed source binaries from Microsoft's new "store".

This is the reality of what is actually going on Microsoft is losing it and the real geeks out there are completely aware of this! Even if the general public is still being lead around like sheep to the shearing pens by microsoft!

If you don't like it there are a tonne of Windows forums out there all ready ...it is just that Slashdot still actually does other things like Science, and technology far better and with many more truly knowledgeable individuals contributing their wisdom and wit.

The more Microsoft pays shills to defame and flame the opensource movement the more truly intelligent people will despise and legitimately chastise them for it.

Slashdot cannot afford to pay shills...others certainly can though.

WTF? Slashdot is referencing a comment on Geekwire as a basis for people installing Linux? How low can it go? Idiot submitters like theodp and symbolset are turning Slashdot into a anti-Microsoft tabloid rather than any place for serious discussion. Not surprising that people with half a brain are ditching Slashdot in droves in disgust.

This is only since Microsoft stopped slapping adverts all over the page ;-)

The guys that run this site and SourceForge have gotta eat you know. If it wanted to be a WINDOWS biased forum it would still have MS advertising. But due to the "viral" nature of SourceForge and most likely Ballmer throwing a chair at the advertising/marketers that were putting adds on Slashdot and SourceForge there has been a recent drop in slashdot revenue.

Also to consider is the fact the Windows is starting up an app store for Win8 and guess who the greatest supplier of real apps that actually do thing like this is? or this? Microsoft wants to compete with Sourceforge and completely eliminate it if at all possible by getting their sheep the hell away from OSS software. One thing they have tried in the past is to state that it is viral and in context tried to convince users that software that had opensource was the reason infections happen on the precious windows machines. The stupid among software users actually believe this so most will actually go along with the bullshit now and buy their safe and secure closed source binaries from Microsoft's new "store".

This is the reality of what is actually going on Microsoft is losing it and the real geeks out there are completely aware of this! Even if the general public is still being lead around like sheep to the shearing pens by microsoft!

If you don't like it there are a tonne of Windows forums out there all ready ...it is just that Slashdot still actually does other things like Science, and technology far better and with many more truly knowledgeable individuals contributing their wisdom and wit.

The more Microsoft pays shills to defame and flame the opensource movement the more truly intelligent people will despise and legitimately chastise them for it.

Slashdot cannot afford to pay shills...others certainly can though.

Six years ago I posted some related ideas on your blog about a workshop the Shuttleworth Foundation held: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/26#comment-397
"[Responding to: "Amazing two day workshop on programming and education" where you wrote: "I'm all fired up after two days of the most amazing work bringing together some very remarkable people to talk about a TSF strategy to ensure that we can give the next generation excellent analytical skills despite the global collapse in the supply of maths teaching capacity."] ... So why build software tools oriented towards schools and a compulsory "curriculum" if the real goal is helping kids educate themselves and become productive citizens of the 21st century? Yes, schools could be made a bit less terrible, but why spend rare philanthropic dollars for such a meager outcome? Someone like Mark Shuttleworth has so much potential as an agent of positive change, but it seems like, despite the fact that his effort will do some small good for some school kids, it is mostly a non-starter as far as significant change."

Have your thoughts changed any since then after trying educational reform the old-fashioned school-based way? See also for more background my 2007 essay which grew out of discussion on the Python edusig list related to your workshop and my trying to create some new free software in a constructivist and unschooling direction:
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change. ... So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."

http://udeproject.sourceforge.net/ Give these guys a chance!

Actually I suspect it to be a constructed case to defame Retroshare. This case is not about retroshare, if is about an offense allegedly done by a person with retroshare. You hardly go to court for infringement. So expect that to have been constructed by the copyright mafia using the notorious Hamburg court. I can't see what the copyright mafia could do against F2F networks. You antigermanism does not cut it.

The Court didn't declare Retroshare illegal. And the nice thing about retroshare is that in F2F relations there is no way to find out and bring the case in front of a judge.

The story is wrong. The judge decided a particular case where the user is said to have used Retroshare. You cannot rule that it was set up to defame retroshare. Nowhere did the Court rule that using Retroshare was illegal. It didn't and it was not entitled to. In reality Retroshare is the future and F2F is a nightmare for the content mafia. Simply because with Retroshare no one would find out that you shared a file, and F2F creates a network of bilateral trust. The CeBit, the largest European computer fair, will focus on shareconomics next year.

"Of course, you're going to have to take my word for it that this communication is not a fabrication, because I'm not handing over my gmail password."

Even if you supplied your gmail password, and I checked your account, a message could still be faked if you had a friend at Google or did funky things with email routing. :-) I'm not saying that message is fake -- it sounds completely like something an assistant of Gatto might say. (He even offered to help resolve a particular point or two.)

I'm just suggesting that a citation may not really "prove" anything if one is hardnosed about it. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Or George Orwell:
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose
"There is no use in multiplying examples. The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Even science as a human endeavor is rife with fraud, group think, conflict-of-interest, learned helplessness, and so on; see this collection of quotes I put together:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

What has happened in the USA is that ideas like compulsory schooling (and a variety of other things, like linking the right to consume to having a job) is starting to bump up again the solid reality of 21st century high technology and the 21st century and ideas spreading across the planet. Bullying growing as a problem in schools and so kids hiding their talents is just one example of many. I wrote my own essay on that a few years back:
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html

Anyway, just because one, or even several, of an author's points can't be substantiated, or are even completely wrong, does not necessarily invalidate a broader message. It depends on how central the specific points are to the overall argument. How many citations do you see in the essays of Mark Twain or the poems of Maya Angelou?

http://www.lee-soft.com/vistart/
http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

I don't know about cleaning Win7, but on WinXP you need to clean temp dirs, clean prefetch, and defragment the registry which cannot be done with the inlcluded defragmenter, which will not defragment open files. You need to use pagedefrag, which is free. Or on Windows Vista or later, UltraDefrag. http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

FOSS to the rescue, you know it had to happen http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/gabeknuth/archive/2012/09/21/relief-classicshell-gives-windows-8-a-start-menu-and-boots-directly-to-desktop.aspx. I couldn't use Windows 7 without Classic Shell http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/. M$ has always produced buggy crap that has to be fixed with other software more often than not FOSS.

Classic shell is a lot free-er
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Bah, link didn't come out

Here it is.

Just what I was thinking. They simply have to reject all of the office97-2003 formats and for the rest there's the OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office which is a Microsoft backed project released under the BSD licence. That's the end of all the headache with those wonky non-standard formats.

,b>Devs cook up 'leakproof' all-Tor untrackable platform Whonix? You'll never find out, The Man

By John Leyden | 11.13.2012

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/whonix/

http://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Home

"Developers are brewing an anonymous general purpose computing platform, dubbed Whonix.

Whonix is designed to ensure that applications (such as Flash and Java etc) can only connect through Tor. The design goal, at least, is that direct connections (leaks) ought to be impossible. "This is the only way we know of that can reliably protect your anonymity from client application vulnerabilities and IP/DNS and protocol leaks," the developers explain.

The main goal is to prevent the determination of users' IP address and location. Not even malware that has buried deep into machines can access IP address information. In this way, Whonix aims to be safer than Tor anonymity software alone.

Whonix can be used in conjunction with VPN technology - routing networks through isolated remote computer networks - for even greater security.

The technology is better described as design approach or platform than as an operating system. In one example, the implementation of anonymity is provided around Tor on two virtual machines using VirtualBox and Debian GNU/Linux. Whonix can be installed on every computer capable of running Virtual Box (virtualisation software), so it supports Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD and Solaris. Running the technology on physically separate machines (a Whonix gateway and a Whonix workstation) would also work, and might provide greater security, say the devs.

The technology is currently only at an Alpha stage of early development, making it suitable for use only for the computing equivalent of test pilots.

In a post to a full disclosure mailing list last week, the main developer behind the project explains its goal and requests help from other members of the development community.

More details on the emerging computing platform can be found in a development Wiki here. The developers are pretty open about the tradeoff in using their technology (more complex set-up, potentially slower) as well as the anonymity advantages of their approach.

Paul Ducklin, head of technology in Asia Pacific for Sophos, said the approach followed by Whonix is different from the Live CDs associated with more traditional anonymity systems. This brings advantages as well as some drawbacks.

"Whonix is different from most existing 'all-in-one anonymity' systems inasmuch as the lead developer decided not to stick to the idea of a Live CD but to go with a set of virtual machines that don't need to fit on a CD or to boot from one," Ducklin explained.

"This allows much greater functionality and easier security updating."

The main disadvantage is that Whonix is more complex than comparable systems.

"The safety and security of your Whonix environment is dependent on the safety and security of your host OS, of the virtualisation software and of its configuration," Ducklin told El Reg. "The anonymity system then becomes, at worst, no more secure than the host itself. So you just took one problem (guest anonymity) and made it two problems (guest anonymity and host security).

"Whonix's size also makes its internal surface area larger than is strictly necessary. That in turn brings its own risks."

Ducklin added that there are many "tricks and traps of anonymity online", many covered by the Whonix developer. He added that users would be well advised to review these before placing their faith in Whonix (or any other approach) to shield their identity online."

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2012/Nov/2

http://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Security

,b>Devs cook up 'leakproof' all-Tor untrackable platform Whonix? You'll never find out, The Man

By John Leyden | 11.13.2012

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/whonix/

http://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Home

"Developers are brewing an anonymous general purpose computing platform, dubbed Whonix.

Whonix is designed to ensure that applications (such as Flash and Java etc) can only connect through Tor. The design goal, at least, is that direct connections (leaks) ought to be impossible. "This is the only way we know of that can reliably protect your anonymity from client application vulnerabilities and IP/DNS and protocol leaks," the developers explain.

The main goal is to prevent the determination of users' IP address and location. Not even malware that has buried deep into machines can access IP address information. In this way, Whonix aims to be safer than Tor anonymity software alone.

Whonix can be used in conjunction with VPN technology - routing networks through isolated remote computer networks - for even greater security.

The technology is better described as design approach or platform than as an operating system. In one example, the implementation of anonymity is provided around Tor on two virtual machines using VirtualBox and Debian GNU/Linux. Whonix can be installed on every computer capable of running Virtual Box (virtualisation software), so it supports Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD and Solaris. Running the technology on physically separate machines (a Whonix gateway and a Whonix workstation) would also work, and might provide greater security, say the devs.

The technology is currently only at an Alpha stage of early development, making it suitable for use only for the computing equivalent of test pilots.

In a post to a full disclosure mailing list last week, the main developer behind the project explains its goal and requests help from other members of the development community.

More details on the emerging computing platform can be found in a development Wiki here. The developers are pretty open about the tradeoff in using their technology (more complex set-up, potentially slower) as well as the anonymity advantages of their approach.

Paul Ducklin, head of technology in Asia Pacific for Sophos, said the approach followed by Whonix is different from the Live CDs associated with more traditional anonymity systems. This brings advantages as well as some drawbacks.

"Whonix is different from most existing 'all-in-one anonymity' systems inasmuch as the lead developer decided not to stick to the idea of a Live CD but to go with a set of virtual machines that don't need to fit on a CD or to boot from one," Ducklin explained.

"This allows much greater functionality and easier security updating."

The main disadvantage is that Whonix is more complex than comparable systems.

"The safety and security of your Whonix environment is dependent on the safety and security of your host OS, of the virtualisation software and of its configuration," Ducklin told El Reg. "The anonymity system then becomes, at worst, no more secure than the host itself. So you just took one problem (guest anonymity) and made it two problems (guest anonymity and host security).

"Whonix's size also makes its internal surface area larger than is strictly necessary. That in turn brings its own risks."

Ducklin added that there are many "tricks and traps of anonymity online", many covered by the Whonix developer. He added that users would be well advised to review these before placing their faith in Whonix (or any other approach) to shield their identity online."

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2012/Nov/2

http://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Security

How does one charge $75,000 bucks for something that can be found in the land of open source?

http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/buildeeg/

Perceptual Image Diff and Find Image Dupes might be helpful. If she runs finddupes with a threshhold of .99 or so, then it is likely just trigger on nearly exact copies. At least, it should narrow down the ones she has to inspect in more detail. On the other hand, pdiff will detect exact or nearly exact copies by specifying how many pixels are allowed to differ (so it can be fooled by addition of random noise). While pdiff is available for Windows as well as Linux, it seems that finddupes is Linux only.

To expand on that, you could also use ssdeep to calculate a fuzzy hash of each picture.

Have you not heard of Bochs? I guess it's not a "popular VM solution", then. As an emulator, it's slow, but it will always support 32-bit x86.

Anyone can compile C into Javascript. Only I can compile C into... Perl.

See cluecc.

(Clue allows C to be compiled, badly, into a variety of scripting languages including Lua, Javascript and Perl as well as Java. Some nutter even contributed a Common Lisp backend. It was an experiment to see whether exploiting certain vaguenesses in the ANSI C spec concerning pointer representation was useful. Unlike Enscripten, Clue doesn't have a big array of bytes representing the C memory; instead pointers are represented as object-offset tuples. It worked really well, but unfortunately nearly all existing code out there doesn't work right on a system where sizeof(int)==sizeof(double)==sizeof(char)==1 and sizeof(void*)==2. Plus, the compiler frontend I was using had a number of major issues. But it works well enough to run benchmarks.)

(And before you ask, yes, compiling C into Perl 5 is a total, utter, complete waste of time.)

Considering there hasn't been a release since 2006 or a commit since 2009 I'd say no, they don't really.

Considering there hasn't been a release since 2006 or a commit since 2009 I'd say no, they don't really.

There are lots of alternatives.

Start Menus:
Classic Shell
Pokki
Power8
RetroUI
Start8
StartMenu8
Start Menu X
ViStart
Win8StartButton

Launchers:
7stacks
8start Launcher
Appetizer
Blaze
Executor
Fences
Find and Run Robot
Key Launch
Launchy
ObjectDock
Rainmeter
RK Launcher
RocketDock
SliderDock
ViPad
Winstep Nexus
XWindows Dock

Take your pick. This is just a small list. I know there are many more out there.

This is extra text because Slashdot is lame and says my comment has too few characters per line:

A computer program (also software, or just a program) is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer.[1] A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor.[2] The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions. The same program in its human-readable source code form, from which executable programs are derived (e.g., compiled), enables a programmer to study and develop its algorithms.

Computer source code is often written by computer programmers. Source code is written in a programming language that usually follows one of two main paradigms: imperative or declarative programming. Source code may be converted into an executable file (sometimes called an executable program or a binary) by a compiler and later executed by a central processing unit. Alternatively, computer programs may be executed with the aid of an interpreter, or may be embedded directly into hardware.

Computer programs may be categorized along functional lines: system software and application software. Two or more computer programs may run simultaneously on one computer, a process known as multitasking.

There are lots of alternatives.

Start Menus:
Classic Shell
Pokki
Power8
RetroUI
Start8
StartMenu8
Start Menu X
ViStart
Win8StartButton

Launchers:
7stacks
8start Launcher
Appetizer
Blaze
Executor
Fences
Find and Run Robot
Key Launch
Launchy
ObjectDock
Rainmeter
RK Launcher
RocketDock
SliderDock
ViPad
Winstep Nexus
XWindows Dock

Take your pick. This is just a small list. I know there are many more out there.

This is extra text because Slashdot is lame and says my comment has too few characters per line:

A computer program (also software, or just a program) is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer.[1] A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor.[2] The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions. The same program in its human-readable source code form, from which executable programs are derived (e.g., compiled), enables a programmer to study and develop its algorithms.

Computer source code is often written by computer programmers. Source code is written in a programming language that usually follows one of two main paradigms: imperative or declarative programming. Source code may be converted into an executable file (sometimes called an executable program or a binary) by a compiler and later executed by a central processing unit. Alternatively, computer programs may be executed with the aid of an interpreter, or may be embedded directly into hardware.

Computer programs may be categorized along functional lines: system software and application software. Two or more computer programs may run simultaneously on one computer, a process known as multitasking.

The article is correct, the DSN has just a couple of letters in common with DTN, and nothing to do with the Bundle Protocol.

Delay/Disruption-Tolerant-Networks have been researched and developed by the DTN Research Group and the Bundle Protocol has been an RFC since 2007. It's possible to download an open-source reference implementation from SourceForge.

Actually NASA also use their own protocol, called ION (Interplanetary Overlay Network).

As another poster noted, you can find it here:

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/index.html

And to block ad servers, I'm not sure. If there are only a couple, then adding entries to your hosts file would do it. But I've also read that Microsoft has started dynamically playing around with that file, so that may not work.

since I use a desktop and have no use for Metro. I use Classic shell which returns a fully customizable 'normal' start menu to Windows 8.

Classic Shell - has btw probably most infringing logo I've seen in a while. Luckily it's probably so insignificant it hasn't been sued for it.

He could just keep the system as it is, but slap a search interface onto it and have it index its files and their content -- to make them easier to find.
http://serverfault.com/questions/40356/open-source-alternative-to-google-appliance-for-intranet-search
http://university-web-developers.1112205.n2.nabble.com/Moving-away-from-a-Google-Search-Appliance-GSA-advice-td6509523.html
https://developers.google.com/search-appliance/documentation/68/secure_search/secure_search_crwlsrv
http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

I assume that Google Drive will get that capability soon, but right now, it doesn't have it.

Security Systems: http://www.zoneminder.com/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8513
http://linas.org/linux/secure.html

Alarm Systems: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/How+to+implement+an+alarm+system+with+Asterisk+and+a+webcam
http://www.linux-support.com/cms/diy-burglar-alarm-system/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/interfacing-disparate-systems

CCTV: http://www.tuxradar.com/content/build-your-own-surveillance-zoneminder
http://www.seattlesurveillance.com/

Building Automation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092658050500097X
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1029022

Engineering Apps: http://loll.sourceforge.net/linux/links/Software_Applications/Science_-_Engineering/index.html

You get the idea I hope. So what can't run on Linux?

I worked at a wireless ISP that serviced roughly 200 customers that were completely unreachable by traditional means. The location was set in the mild to medium forested areas of East Texas. We had a 30Mb pipe that worked quite well for our network we never saw it start to "peak" or be overtaxed. Being that we were on the 900Mhz spectrum, the fastest anyone could run at was 1.5Mb/s - 2Mb/s.

Here area some of my thoughts regarding setting up your own ISP.

1) It is completely doable. However, there are two roads to take. You can do it on the cheap, or you can do it the way that will stand time. My company chose the method that stood throughout time. What I mean is, we were not using off-the-shelf radios. We rolled out the network using the 900Mhz Motorola Canopy equipment. We used outdoor rated cable that had separation of twisted pairs and grease filled interior to prevent water issues.

Our main competitor, who worked on the north and west side of the city went the opposite route. He chose to use cheaper 2.4GHZ equipment, primarily PTP bridges.

2) The technology is out there, you just have to find it at a price that you are willing to pay. When I was servicing the radios, they would cost roughly $350 new from Motorola just for the endpoint Subscriber Module. We instead purchased refurbished models for almost half the price at $200-225. The Access points and other major equipment will set you back, IT IS NOT CHEAP.

3) Backbone and network structure. We may have over engineered our network, but we felt it was necessary to keep subscriber information private. We had a small cisco switch that at each access tower that would assign VLAN to each subscriber module. On the internal side of the switch, the VLANs were removed and went into a bulk VLAN that was specified for that tower. No other subscriber could see any other one without first going to "The Internet". We also created a Management VLAN, so we could service and access the management interfaces on each of the Backhauls and APs. Latency across the network averaged about 50-150ms.

4) Please for the love of all that is holy, do not, run your own Email server. It is a absolute pain in the ass. I was the person who was in charge of ensuring that the systems in place stayed running. This meant, DHCP, DNS, HTTP, Email Services, and Management interfaces.

Remember Virtual Machines are your friend. Buy one or two hefty servers and backup the VMs to each other. That way if you have an outtage, you can get the VMs back up in running in about an hour.

DHCP - Since we had a bit of a robust network, we had different subnets for each of our towers. In total we had about 18 subnets that each had different purposes. This tool helped like the charm that it was. http://phpdhcpadmin.sourceforge.net/ At the time the logout system was broken, however, I patched the code to disable the login/logout functions and wrote a script that would automatically give me the next available IP address.

DNS - No fancy tools here, I mostly just let it roll and didn't touch it. I only touched DHCP when we added a hosted website.(which later went to rackspace)

HTTP - Simple, run Apache, set and forget.

Email Services - Complete Pain In The Ass. No really, I'm not joking. At the time, the powers over me, decided that we would give our customers up to 5 email addresses. So I setup a linux server in that ran Postfix, Dovecot, ClamAV, Squirrel Mail. It provided IMAP, POP, SMTP and SSL(if wanted). At the time, when I arrived the server was already in place and running. However, fast forward, 3 months, and someone decided to run "updates" on the server. Breaks all of the packages, settings, the whole shebang. Not a fun week at all.
Besides that, there were also issue with SPAM. We would constantly get blacklisted by various servers.

Management Interfaces - This was where the heart of out network lay. I have one word, Cacti, http://cacti.net/ For wireles

It will be interesting to see what effect this has on Microsoft Lync (formally Office Communicator). Two advantages of Communicator are that SIPE project provides Pidgin support and that some corporate firewalls where Communicator is used also let MSN through the network.

Skype would be acceptable if it supported third party clients. I use facebook chat purely because it uses XMPP so I can connect to it via Pidgin.

Family members are wanting me to use messaging apps like Tango that require your mobile phone number to work and don't have a linux client, let alone pidgin integration. If they supported XMPP I might be interested. If I used SMS frequently (more than once or twice a week) I might be interested, but I'm not. SMS messages can sit on my phone unread for hours.

There's Atomic OS, OS.js...that building an OS is ECMAScript seemed like a good idea to multiple people makes me cry. For full buzzword bingo, run the local browser in a virtual machine, and host the browser OS code in the cloud.

and I bought Fujitsu mobile notetaker plus. It does not need any special paper. According to forums/internet, it works with linux and there is a project for exporting notes from the pen to computer: http://m210office.sourceforge.net/. It can be used as a mouse as well (so they say). But I did not have time to test this pen neither with Windows (to check if it works at all) nor with linux (which I use exclusively) Maybe this weekend I'll have some time for it. Maybe later. But definitely before Christmas )).

The fact that the FLAC conversion software is released under the GPL tells me that won't happen, ever.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxwacom/forums/forum/236871/topic/4686734

The Wacom Inkling shows up as a drive with WPI files on it. It should work just fine in Linux since the heavy lifting is all done on the pen. And I didn't spend very long looking either.

C++ lacking in expressiveness? You have got to be joking,

Well, how might you add "operator#" to C++? Adding new language features to C++ basically requires a new C++ compiler; lexical closures, for example, only became possible with C++11 (previously, Boost's lambda expressions library got you halfway there). That is a result of a lack of expressive power.

your right there are a lot of poorly defined areas in C++, but many of them stem from the fact that there are 100 different ways syntactically to solve any given problem.

It is mostly due to the standard being written for compiler writers and language implementors, rather than for programmers.

Of course some ways tend to be better than others, hence I'm confused about your problems with constructor error handling. You handle errors in constructors with "throw", combined with good RAII style, you get the benefit of fast code, that is robust to memory errors

Except when your objects are global, in which case throwing the exception means your program aborts, since there is no standard way to write a global catch (set_terminate won't work if the exception is thrown before the entry to main -- which is what will happen if the constructor of a global object throws the exception).

Destructors aren't as clear cut, but the easy answer is not to have fatal errors in the destructor

In other words, destructors should have trivial bodies. Why even have destructors if that is how things have to be done?

One of C++'s strong points (vs C) is that you can create a domain specific environment by careful class design and operator overloading

Unless you want to add a new kind of operator or a new kind of syntax.

As far as debug-ability, or a programmers ability to focus on the problem at had rather than the language, I suspect that is all just a matter of experience.

1. Experienced C++ gurus make mistakes with pointer mechanics sometimes.
2. In the real world, your team will have people with varying levels of experience; the least experienced person will be the bottleneck when it comes to things like undefined behavior, dangling pointers, etc.

In a lot of languages you learn how to do things, in C++ you tend to learn how _NOT_ to do things

Which is precisely the problem here. In C++, you need to know what valid C++ expressions, statements, or programs should simply not be written. Rather than rule such things out in C++11, the standards committee just added more things that you are supposed to know not to do.

Those results have re2, and it beats all the normal regular expression parsers only loosing to a lisp specific parsing/matching system. I don't call that a win for LISP, if you move the goal posts (we were comparing regex) then its not apples to apples. Its not hard to imaging a dozen ways of creating a searching sorting system faster than regex if your willing to wiggle the requirements.

Like I said, this is not a good benchmark; on the other hand, RE2 is not average twice the speed of libpcre (unless you count an outlier):

http://lh3lh3.users.sourceforge.net/reb.shtml

CL-PPCRE does average twice the speed of libpcre/Perl (unless you pick examples that libpcre can handle well):

http://cl-debian.alioth.debian.org/repository/rvb/cl-ppcre-sarge/doc/#bench

I would not draw too many conclusions from the benchmarks alone (there is no direct comparison between CL-PPCRE and RE2), but CL-PPCRE does do something that neither libpcre nor RE2 do: it compiles your regex into a callable function that does not traverse a pointer structure. With a good compiler (n

Bodhi Linux uses E WM

I tried Bodhi Linux a few versions back and while the experience was somewhat pleasing, I found several bugs and gave up. I may try a newer version in the future.

"Bodhi Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution for the desktop featuring the elegant and lightweight Enlightenment window manager. The project, which integrates and pre-configures the very latest builds of Enlightenment directly from the project's development repository, offers modularity, high level of customisation, and choice of themes. The default Bodhi system is light -- the only pre-installed applications are Midori, LXTerminal, PCManFM, Leafpad and Synaptic -- but more software is available via Bodhi Software Center, a web-based software installation tool."

http://distrowatch.com/bodhi
http://www.bodhilinux.com/
http://forums.bodhilinux.com/
http://wiki.bodhilinux.com/
http://www.bodhilinux.com/gallerydotw.php
http://www.chrishaney.com/?linux&distro=bodhi
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bodhilinux/files/

Unless you want to give all your flight details to some random web server operator, you're better off installing something like http://sourceforge.net/projects/zbar/ and decoding yourself.

Have you tried Vrapper?.
It integrates very well with Eclipse as it's implemented as a filter that runs over any text editor, so it does not interfere with any eclipse functionality. Not all vim functionality is implemented yet but the most common stuff is there.

"No one has hit the nail on the head yet how to use technology to properly increase a student's ability to learn. If / when that time does come, teachers / professors will need to make a carefully calculated decision how they will react to it. "

Something I wrote over five years ago: http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change. ...
So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."

See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

That bottom line: modern schools were designed in Prussia in the 19th century mainly to dumb people down and destroy their individual initiative to fit the needs of the Prussian military and the Prussian economy (see John Taylor Gatto). Give them more resources and they will only do that obsolete mission better.

The Surface Pro does. Here is a longer list of Windows 8 tablets with DPI > 150 and a stylus. I find 150 DPI to be the minimum if you want subscripts to be legible when placing a full page on screen (width maximized). Of course, the higher the better.

I've long been frustrate that Apple decided to forgo the stylus (and all others are playing copycat), and I'm really really frustrated that no one else sees the utility and use case in a computer that acts like paper (facepalm). I'll give Windows 8 a try for 5 or 10 minutes, but then Ubuntu and Xournal are going on mine. I'm also really frustrated that all these morons decided a 16:9 TV screen is the only way to make a computer screen: they're substantially narrower and taller than a Letter or A4 piece of paper. But at least they've finally returned to the desired DPI and stylus feature-point. The last time that happened was 2007 with the Thinkpad x61 tablet (with the SXGA+ screen upgrade).

In my comic Genocide Man:

The Palestines and Jews designed viruses to wipe out each other.
Someone in Asia created a plague to kill everyone with red hair.
China was largely devastated when their population fell victim to a targeted airborne rabies.
The global police force used a targeted viral outbreak to crush and occupy Korea.
Oslo, Seattle, Mexico City, and Hong Kong were sites of accidental viral releases that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

...and I think I'm underestimating the actual technology. In my comic's timeline we're not supposed to have targeted plagues until 2030 or so.

Biowarfare is no freakin' joke. It's bad enough when superpowers have them, but when maniacs have the knowledge to design viruses in their own basement this world is going to have serious problems. (How are people going to get that knowledge? In my comic I blamed the Open Source movement...and with projects like AMOS, they may prove me right.)

For Java project a must. Agree on coding standards and then enforce/check them using Checkstyle.

While I concede that to each their own, there's some things with which I want to counter your arguments-

Console games are just...you just start playing already, no need for all the driver-installation fuzz. Very practical.

What's different about PCs? I have installed my graphics driver exactly once - when I first built my PC and installed Windows on it. The time when games required complex setup (IRQ/DMA settings on Soundblaster cards in the DOS days, remember?) is long gone, like with anything else you just install the game and play.

The PC is much more forgiving when it comes to BUG fixes, PC versions tend to have more bugs and bug-patch releases, on consoles - you can't afford this so the games actually comes with less bugs in my experience.

I agree.. but when console games DO wind up with bugs they're much more expensive and time consuming for the developer to fix. As an example, there's talk of a third DLC for Skyrim after Dawnguard and Hearthfire, but the first one is yet to make an appearance for the PS3 after earlier reports that it might not be even made available because it was more complicated to port to the PS3.

Less cheating: One of my no#1 pet peeves when it comes to online gaming, are cheating bastards, they destroy the fun for everyone else, and they can literally WIPE out an entire planet of avid gamers with their stupid aimbots...

100% agree.

Games last longer: This might sound a bit odd, but I love to keep my games forever, and so I keep the consoles forever as well. I still have my Atari 2600, repaired the joystick a 100+ times, but enough OT. The games last longer because the games ages with the consoles. When you purchase NEW PC's or upgrade, you need endless patches and driver updates - buzz killington right there!

One word - virtualization! I use D-Fend Reloaded, a DOSBox front-end to play ancient DOS games like Commander Keene, Fallout 1 and System Shock. I've played several games made over the last 10 years without any problems on Windows 7 64bit, some of them require XP compatibility mode.

If you have a decent graphics card there's no end to gaming on Windows, there aren't as many bugs or driver/hardware issues as there might have been about 6-7 years ago.