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I mostly use cross-platform apps. VLC is a good media player (Get it while you can!). And if you want a familiar text editor you can try gVIm for windows.

I've tried a number of free and non-free virtual desktop utilities, but the one I've settled with is VirtuaWin. It's small and open source. Just changed the settings a bit, and downloaded some nice tray icons (blue 3x3). You can configure it to switch with WIN+(number key), move windows from one desktop to another with CTRL+(drag).

Easy-to-use C++ IDE with integrated edit-and-continue debugging.

Anjuta.

virt-dimension does a decent job at virtual desktops in windows. It isnt perfect but it seems good enough for those stuck in windows. Windows from other desktops don't show up as simply being minimized and Alt-Tab only tabs through the windows on your current desktop. And it even seems to be fast on a P3 600. The only complaint I have is that occasionaly some windows seem to get "stuck" in a "always on top" setting for some reason. Though that might be related to something else I'm doing.

...are here. They weren't kidding about lots of bugs getting closed with this release!

Lynx or links!

-carl

For TOTAL protection go here

Oh, it's nothing like notepad.

Spellbound is your friend. A forms spell checking extension for Mozzy/FF.

Go to http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ grab a copy, and you're welcome.

I've played through QfG 1 through 4 several times on dosbox.

If you wait a few years, you can run these games again on emulated hardware. Almost all of the arcade machines from the 70's, 80's, and most of the 90's can be run through MAME, and similar software exists for Commodore-64, TI99-4/A, Apple ][, NES, SNES, Sega, etc. For your particular quandry, almost all MS-DOS games run on DosBox. It looks as though the next version will run Win 3.x apps as well.

It depends on what you wanna do with a load balanced webserver. If it is servering heavily dynamic content (like PHP), you need good processing power in your webservers. All the webservers should have two gigabit network ports. One should be connected to the switch that is also connected to the load balancer and the other port should be connected to the backend switch, where you can find the database and NFS server. Put some more RAM into the backend servers. Tweak the NFS server settings (rsize, wsize). Try different MaxClient settings in your apache configuration, but don't overdo it, because the limitation is not the CPU, but the I/O.
Most important: Use mmcache, if your site is based on PHP! If I'd turn off the mmcache, our site would be unusable. The performance increase is awsome.

It depends on what you wanna do with a load balanced webserver. If it is servering heavily dynamic content (like PHP), you need good processing power in your webservers. All the webservers should have two gigabit network ports. One should be connected to the switch that is also connected to the load balancer and the other port should be connected to the backend switch, where you can find the database and NFS server. Put some more RAM into the backend servers. Tweak the NFS server settings (rsize, wsize). Try different MaxClient settings in your apache configuration, but don't overdo it, because the limitation is not the CPU, but the I/O.
Most important: Use mmcache, if your site is based on PHP! If I'd turn off the mmcache, our site would be unusable. The performance increase is awsome.

I cant play Xenogears, Xenosaga, most Final Fantasies and a whole host of other games on my PC's.

Sure you can. (Well maybe not Xenosaga... yet)

Well, I didn't want to jump in on someone else's conversation with "check out my project!" :-) , but you're more than welcome:

http://qodem.sourceforge.net/

The point is, in the long run it's just a dinky little program, but it took a lot of effort just to get this much running.

I was just going to say that. Here's the link for those who are lazy: Spellbound

I guess that's something to say about firefox, not the pc in general.

While there's a whole company that sells this type of product mine isn't refined enough to start a commercial venture just on the project. Plus I got a lot out of OSS so I figured I'd contribute.

You can check it out at http://mdaog.sourceforge.net :)

I value my security, that's why after reading those I switched to AOL Server

The only downside that I can see with FOSS is that it doesn't pay very well. :)

You're absolutely spot on here. Look at the aewm project (a good reference implementation of an ICCCM compliant window manager), and then look at how many derivatives it has:

aewm++, alloywm, evilwm, maewm, Oroborus, phluid, Sapphire, swm, Clementine, WindowLab, YeahWM, Spook, wimpwm

Some of these are genuinely innovative but how many of them would exist if their authors had had to reimplement everything from scratch?

You're absolutely spot on here. Look at the aewm project (a good reference implementation of an ICCCM compliant window manager), and then look at how many derivatives it has:

aewm++, alloywm, evilwm, maewm, Oroborus, phluid, Sapphire, swm, Clementine, WindowLab, YeahWM, Spook, wimpwm

Some of these are genuinely innovative but how many of them would exist if their authors had had to reimplement everything from scratch?

You're absolutely spot on here. Look at the aewm project (a good reference implementation of an ICCCM compliant window manager), and then look at how many derivatives it has:

aewm++, alloywm, evilwm, maewm, Oroborus, phluid, Sapphire, swm, Clementine, WindowLab, YeahWM, Spook, wimpwm

Some of these are genuinely innovative but how many of them would exist if their authors had had to reimplement everything from scratch?

You're absolutely spot on here. Look at the aewm project (a good reference implementation of an ICCCM compliant window manager), and then look at how many derivatives it has:

aewm++, alloywm, evilwm, maewm, Oroborus, phluid, Sapphire, swm, Clementine, WindowLab, YeahWM, Spook, wimpwm

Some of these are genuinely innovative but how many of them would exist if their authors had had to reimplement everything from scratch?

You're absolutely spot on here. Look at the aewm project (a good reference implementation of an ICCCM compliant window manager), and then look at how many derivatives it has:

aewm++, alloywm, evilwm, maewm, Oroborus, phluid, Sapphire, swm, Clementine, WindowLab, YeahWM, Spook, wimpwm

Some of these are genuinely innovative but how many of them would exist if their authors had had to reimplement everything from scratch?

Sounds like you've never heard of Fink or Darwin Ports. Which is ironic given that you were berating the GP for not knowing about Linux useability features.

Anyway, I use xkeycaps to show sort of what the keymap ought to be (but the author stopped adding maps after a hundred or so were submitted! And none match my Dell Inspiron 7.5K). And a windowmaker applet I can't find now that shows 9 flags for I think 18 or 27 countries. Maybe wmkeyboard might be useful too. Anyway my Mom's Mac OS X handles other languages fantastically without even noticing how hard it is elsewhere (maybe XP is the same?) but for linux I think if you deal with more than one language this will drive you insane.

...no. You don't need Microsoft for that.

Make sure you have a Plan B

Explain that this CD will remove his spyware

Afterwards it should be easier to get him to go along with Plan A

...RPMdrake to me.

BTW, that screenshot is eleven generations old now. The new ones are even better, but I wanted to make the point that Linux has had this facility since more than a year before OS X was even released.

If you want a piece of software which has not been diskimaged, you need to go through exactly the same rigmarole you posit for Linux, but without URPMI or apt-get or YAST or yum or whatever to help you find dependencies.

Unless you're after something from Fink - a third-party effort which exists because...? Anyone...? [distant chorus: Apple's packaging is deficient]

Same story for Wintendo, of course, only there ain't no WinFink (although CygWin is close) and it don't come with no useful build system at all 'coz Microsoft are really only interested in having dependants, not partners.

The implication behind the diskimage install is that either the Apple apps have no dependencies (interesting concept), or everything gets shipped statically linked. Do your DMGs automatically upgrade with the rest of your system?

The one annoying thing about lineakd, though, is that every so often is just dies and the internet keys aren't respsonsive, so you have to restart it.

For your "if Apple had a Windows-sized market share it would have Windows-sized problems" comment: I will respond with -
standard_reply_1 -- Apache blah blah Windows blah blah, larger marketshare DOES NOT IMPLY more problems. Configuring a system intelligently does a lot to prevent many problems from ever becoming an issue. For more details I refer you to every 8th post in this thread, as well as every 20th post on /. in general.
...as well as:
standard_reply_2 -- The Mac OS is configured to prevent a user from being able to install malware. It is configured to prevent connections from the big bad internet. It has a firewall in place and configured out of the box. You have to enter a root password to install anything. It is not perfect, but by being set up correctly at the outset they have guaranteed that in your marketshare reversal scenario, the Mac users would as a whole, be in better shape than the current crop of Windows folken. By default, your average Mac internet user is already non-privileged and firewalled. That's what we're trying to get Windows users to please please please start doing!

Now a higher marketshare does imply that more effort would be spent on finding Mac exploits, and I fully grant that in turn would create more problems than we have now. But I feel you overstated your case. There is a lot of terrain between "worse than Macs now" and "as bad as Windows now."

And for your distinction between the kernels of NT/OSX/*nix vs. the end user environment: You're doing a little bit of a strawman there. Windows does not allow for you to pull out many of the "extras" and so making a claim that Windows without a browser would be as secure as OSX without a browser is a bit disingenuous. A large part of the security problems plaguing Windows rely on the ability of (eg.) your browser to touch things that a browser ought never to touch.

You made a very good point, however, that Mac users check for updates with less frequency and less urgency than Windows now requires. And as market share increases, yeah, Mac users will have to adapt somewhat. While ease of the updates is a bonus for Macs, the timeline of bugfixes and the average mean time to clicking "software update" both need to mature as Mac OSX takes over your city, county, state, country, world, mwa-hah, hah-ha, hah. Ha ha.

Sorry, almost got out of control there.

Well if you really wanted to you could get OSX to run on x86 right now...http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

p2pbridge is a project that is aimed at using overlay networks to access web pages. Ofcourse, it doesnt work yet.

Dijer was a similar project that was launced sometime ago (I cant seem to find the homepage of that project)

But I guess in this case (where server is required to do work, not for just generate content), we need to write a P2P client that acts like both server and client for searches. In that case, we can just use one of the existing network like Gnutella with a distributed spider ?

"If security is important to you, this demonstration should show that browsers that are redistributions of the official Mozilla releases are never going to give you security updates as quickly as Mozilla will itself for its supported products".

And there are browsers that don't have nearly as many security issues that Mozilla releases do because they don't do their interface in XUL.

I've never had much luck with otto. I have used Icecast to relay ogg files which were streamed from Ices or mp3s from Muse. I'd simply replace "stream" with a dedicated client. You can also broadcast/mix "live audio" (station ids) into the stream using Darkice. I've can also recommend Shoutcast.

I've used the above and am confident you can build a solution around them. Freshmeat shows tons more.

Nokia still chooses Opera, not Firefox, for its browser.

Hmmm... Did you check Gtk+ WebCore, sponsored by Nokia?

They also contributed a bit to Minimo although they probably do not consider it to be fully usable yet.

What about a software-based keyboard/mouse switch? I swear by this thing. It's not for text-mode... but other than that I have the same setup as you- multiple computers (one just for chatting, one for work, one for everything else), Three keyboards, three mice, and only needing to use one set of them.

Have fun.

The only problem I have ever had with it involve clipboard syncronization (read: it rarely works). But if you're currently using two sets of keyboards, you probably wont miss that.

Of course, if you are dead-set against a GUI (I personally love using windows, just to display lots of shells at once), and want to use text-mode, I would recommend using "screen", which you can use with ssh to attach both computers to the same screen session. Keep your ssh session somewhere unobtrustive and click on it when you want to change keyboard focus. That's what I used to do when I was running one text-mode and one windowed computer. (though I dont know if swapping which screen you're looking at can be set to happen on both session instances at once, I've just never had reason to try, as at that time I just had a couple log monitors going on the text-only screen)

Special Bonus: Screen rules!

There is a python script for the shuffle allowing just that...

http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/

You put the mp3's on there in whatever directory structure you like, put the small python script in the root, and then run it whenever you're done adding/removing mp3s.

I am working on a project that aims to better co-ordinate that kind of idea... pulling together ideas and art at various stages of development, making them searchable, retaining credit and license information, and helping people find the other parts of the puzzle they need to get their idea off the ground. This Blender thing goes in a slightly different direction, but the end result should be close to the same: giving people more tools and resources to do cool stuff.

If anyone has any time for PHP goodness, I could use some more assistance (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/cpvs), and for a preview of what I'm planning on beta-testing with (and releasing all my pre-existing assets from), check http://www.dustrunners.com/.

Okay, done now.

</shameless plug>

I read a discussion about this a few days ago on elysiun (Blender-centric site)... the consensus is that there aren't any really solid GPL NLEs out there yet, but there are lots of attempts:
http://www.pitivi.org/
http://kdenlive.sourceforge.net/
http://positron.sourceforge.net/

That, for me, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a fully-open movie... I can't live without my Final Cut Pro. Are there any other options anyone knows about?

I read a discussion about this a few days ago on elysiun (Blender-centric site)... the consensus is that there aren't any really solid GPL NLEs out there yet, but there are lots of attempts:
http://www.pitivi.org/
http://kdenlive.sourceforge.net/
http://positron.sourceforge.net/

That, for me, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a fully-open movie... I can't live without my Final Cut Pro. Are there any other options anyone knows about?

Lock yourself in? You download, you own, you leave. You're free. It's not like you stream off the Apple Store forever.

iTunes not playing .ogg is annoying, yeah I'll admit that. I know there's an open-source plugin that allows you do to that. But your indie player probably won't do stuff like play your music over wireless to your living room (simply) as the airport express does.

But most importantly, I'm an apple fan-boy because my I.T. job is complicated enough. Do what you want. In fact, everyone shut up, including me. Run Linux, run Windows, buy Apple products, don't buy Apple products, go jogging, watch TV, listen to [music genre], hate [music genre], play [sport], ignore [sport]. It's your choice and my opinions don't fit in your choice.

You're thinking of ROX. It looks like a polished bit of software, but IMHO the last thing the world needs is another desktop environment. It would be better to concentrate on adding drag-and-drop saving and the other neat things to GNOME or to KDE.

A friend of mine has been using this plugin for months, and prefers to use it in favor of iTunes. It's hardly new though, the earliest release listed on their Sourceforge filelist is from April 2004.

This is hardly new nor interesting. There are plenty of programs that work with the iPod other than iTunes. Behold just a few:

- Anapod Explorer

- PodUtils

- GTKpod

- GNUpod

And rhythmbox, for example, offers nice integration of music management and iPod operability -- if that's what is supposed to have made this newsworthy.

Actualy my reader must have missed it. My bad. If this is the case, then care should be taken that they include everything. The artical speaks of the plugin as if its limited and a better version is for sale. This version that is for sale would need to be fully compliant as well. It doesnt hurt to care enough to check ;)

For such cases StegFS http://stegfs.sourceforge.net/ or something similar is wonderful. You turn over some keys, but not the ones that can access the sensitive hidden data.

... to join the Free Film Project, instead of making another independent project?

I have a watch very much like the ThinkGeek one (have they stopped selling it?), and on it I have a copy of KeePass that will generate, store and encrypt your password list. This solution is great when you're working on a machine you know to be clean, but I wouldn't plug it into a cafe/library system.