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This sounds like the perfect type of computer to use as a thin client, such as LTSP or perhaps ThinStation. No local maintenance, not even any local power requirements. Just plug into any PoE jack and go.

So many projects, so few acronyms.

Hereyou go.

Spellbound. http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

cheeck it out.

spellchecking in every text box you want.

Based on his past record and interests, I wouldn't get my hopes up. Graham represents the attitudes and narrow focus that has turned off so many people from Lisp in the first place. And for a language designer to comment that he "intends it to be a hundred-year language" is just moronic and show a complete lack of long-term perspective.

The best attempt at a new Lisp I have seen is the Lisp Universal Shell (lush), which, despite the name, is actually a high-performance Lisp implementation.

Hi (Kent@work here),

yup, rhythmbox has a few shortcomings. But it's under active developement and most flaws will be gone pretty soon (give it 6 months or so).
I don't understand your point about "out-of-the-box radio stations"? I couldn't care less about presets, it's not hard to find sites that list hundreds of stations in any genre. And usually I only listen to my 3 or 4 favs anyways...

Well, having said all that, I must repeat that I'm not using rhythmbox anymore but have switched to madman some months ago. Give it a shot.

Once again I remind us of

http://tor.eff.org/
http://www.i2p.net/
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/

and also
http://www.cryptophone.de/
GSM can now be decrypted in almost realtime, and the recieving hardware is only a few thousand dollars. Though personally I'd prefer a freeware OSS push to talk GPRS program because not many can make data calls

The CPiA webcam driver supports the QX3 on Linux.
CPiA webcam driver for Linux
Just turn on CONFIG_VIDEO_CPIA=m when you build your kernel. You can even use /proc to turn the microscope lights on and off.

CPiA is not made any more. Maybe the QX5 uses a similar webcam chip.

Old slashdot story about the QX3

Have you checked out Mute? It implements an anonymous P2P network, as you describe.

http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/

I realize it's kind of a repeat of the AC, but check out DosBox. So far, nearly every old game I have tried running in it has run great. And you don't have the jumpyness of MoSlo or the like. There are versions available for both Linux and Windows.

This is my configuration. Gentoo server with 600GB of storage connected to my 802.11G home router and a $25.00 DLink GbE card was added so I can connect my PowerBook to it.

Server (with all it's fans and all) is in the basement, PowerBook stays on the main floor. I can connect everywhere in the house with my WiFI and I can get GbE speeds wherever the 25ft Cat6 cable can go. Firewire is generally good for 6ft.

To connect I don't use samba. Instead I use version 2 (not 1 - very important!) of Netatalk http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/ and NFS for my all media drive. Netatalk 2 has a lot of features and overhead, NFS has few features but a lot of speed.

One small note: OSX will see the 1GbE connection as a better route than your WiFi - so I'll have to turn on IP masquerading.

it's my answer after i was forced to install SP2. using Linux is rather a pain for me, but i need raw sockets.

my project http://larytet.sourceforge.net/btRat.shtml supports spoofing of IP source address and Linux and older Windows is the test equipment i have.

the last drop was preview of Longhorn. i understood that i am not going to buy machine with 1GB RAM only because of OS. if guys working for MS have money, i welcome them to run this thing on dual core monsters. me ? sorry. i pass this round.

The funny thing is that i did not need this patch. in the last 3 years i proved that you don't need any security pacthes and AV software if you have simple firewall and avoid commercial software like MSN.

Yes I was just thinking the same, XP has always had this feature.

The only bad thing is you need to be syncing between two windows machines. Now I sync my work docs onto our Linux box using dirsync available here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=64303

I'd rather use rsync but can't get it to run properly on windows. If anyone knows a better solution please post it.

Who says it _can't_ play oggs? Just install Oggplay application.

All I care about is myself. And I want to use software I like. If everyone uses MS Office, I am forced to use their dc/xls/ppt file formats. If eveyone else is using Windows I will have to deal with wmv files. Many properitory plugins are not available on platform I want to use (because of small user base). As 90% people use IE website will refuse to work with browser I use. I dont care what other people use. I just want everyone to follow (open) standards. If MS Office supports open document format, IE is standards compliant and wmv is replaced by ogg I dont care.

RMS is right. Proprietary software hurts everyone, purist or not. It enables DRM. It allows for draconian EULAs (think MS's clause that states that you cannot use MSWord to create documents critical of MS). It allows for software that cannot be controlled by its owner (the owner being the owner of the computer, not the "owner" of some abstract "intellectual property" rights). It creates corporations that lobby for things like software patents in Europe. If this did not affect me, I would not care.

As the parent said, as well, these engineered incompatibilities of MS's "embrace, extend, and extinguish" policy make my life difficult. If I want to create a website with transparent PNGs, I just have to accept that IE will not be able to handle it (and 90% of the users on the Web will not see it as intended). I even had to have a friend help with a hack to display transparent PNGs one time (the effect of the site was still ruined because IE cannot properly handle fixed background images).

The other is driver software. If Linux or MacOS or BSD or whatever had more users, there would be more hardware drivers available. If those drivers were open source, the hardware they interface with would be available to everyone. Open source drivers are quickly ported to many platforms. I am sick of having to search for hardware before I buy it just because MS has a monopoly. I actually got laughed at once because I asked if I could buy a laptop without Windows on it. I did not even ask to have another OS, I just did not want Windows. If I want to buy a laptop in any store, I am forced to pay MS. Caveat emptor. This sort of thing is so anti-free-market, I do not know where to begin.

MS wants to tell me how I am going to use my computer. They want to log my files. They want to "authorize" software I put on my computer. The only way I can avoid that is to use another OS. The only way another OS will be usable is for the userbase to be large enough that hardware will be supported by that OS.

Freedom is why I want more people to use Free Software. I did not ask for my freedom to depend on other people. It just does. If you do not believe that, think of the phrase "majority rules". When a large enough group of people decides that Free Software is a good thing, I will be safe(r) from the MSs and Adobes of the world who would keep information from me -- keep me ignorant, in effect -- to further their monetary goals.

It works great. I'm not sure if it supports stereo operation (the standard Symbian sound device was mono-only until recently). If it doesn't, the source is there and everything is well documented so it shouldn't be too hard to change that.

Can supercast deal with file formats other then mp3?

Should we be concerned that Supercast hasn't been updated since 2002?

Well, that capability has been out for at least a couple of years. I've been using ssh on my Nokia 3650 for a while now. The version I use is Putty for Symbian, but there is another SSH client written for the Java VM that comes on most cell phones.

Try this http://supercast.sourceforge.net/.

If they include this in the official release, than they should also include some other graphical stuff such as Porthole to manage Portage graphically. It doesn't do much good to help a newbie through the install process graphically and then expect them to use a Portage from the command line.

Still, it's a good thing. Even people who have been doing Linux-related stuff for a while can miss or screw up some steps in Gentoo installation. Anything that can simplify the process should be welcomed.

One router, and one software firewall constitutes two firewalls. If he wanted his home office network to be separated by his family's computers, having a third firewall makes sense.

After all, if his kids inadvertently get a virus, why let it spread on the network? (depending on the virus, of course)

Sometimes I have a "Password Day" where I change every password I own on the same day, just in case someone might happen to have one of my passwords. I frequently change my passwords after traveling.

Fair enough. If you have something like keepass, going down the list of passwords isn't too hard. Then again, I wouldn't change the password of something stupid and insignificant (like a dating site account) very often, especially if it's a strong password that I don't use anywhere else.

I use very long passwords for everything, even with the lamest accounts I have.

If you have keepass, why not?

I require my kids to use at least 14 character passwords on our home network and I'm considering issuing them smart cards. No one else, not even my wife, knows my network password.

Why the hell not? Shouldn't you be teaching your children good security practices anyway?

I don't just throw out shredded documents; I spread the shredded bits into my garden to use as mulch.

Oh yeah... Just what I want... my backyard to be flooded with little bits of paper. Lovely.

I used to tell my clients to set files in their web content directories to read only. Some thought this was too extreme and too much of a hassle, but then along came a worm named Code Red that failed on all the clients who followed my advice.

And linux people have known this for how long?

I use a unique, secret e-mail address for each sensitive online account I have. I have always done that. I guess this would look paranoid to most people, but when I get e-mails from my bank, I can check the address the e-mail address they used to see if they sent it to the secret address.

Does this matter? The only real concern here is phishing. If your bank sends you an email, you TYPE IN THE URL YOURSELF. That is good security.

Plus, he doesn't mention who his emails are with? A hotmail or yahoo account? Bad choice. If you're really serious about mail security (and not spam), why not have one email account on its own dedicated machine... running qmail... with iptables blocking all incoming ports but 25 and 22 (but limit port 22 to your private IP). Check your mail locally using pine, so that POP3 or IMAP isn't open.

I keep my PC's turned around so I can tell if anyone has installed a hardware keylogger.

If you're running keepass, you don't need to worry about that for sniffing of passwords. Just copy and paste your password in.

I never check in luggage when I fly.

Does this matter if your laptop is WITH you?

I do my Internet browsing from a locked down VMWare box that has no rights on my network.

If your office documents are important enough, why not? If you work from home, if you have the money and the space, why not do work on a separate machine with limited rights / access? Or the other way around?

I use terrafly.com to see what others might be able to see about my home.

Crackheaded. If someone knows your address, there's a lot more they can find out about your house than what's on an aerial map.

It takes five passwords to boot up my laptop and check my e-mail. One of those passwords is over 50 characters long.

BIOS, OS, Email Account? What are the other two? Also, passwords should be out of the range of brute force crackers. Not insanely unreachable. 20 characters should do it.

I also delete unused services on my server

That would be gopchop for the non-MS crowd. Works pretty well, too!

Everyone needs to download Media Player Classic from sourceforge, and replace all the file content resolves on their Windows XP system to use this Windows Media Player replacement; it is smaller, less bloated UI, faster to launch and load and play; and because it is downright fun to be alternatively non-Microsoft yet unpermissively and authoritatively hacking an original Microsoft crap product into a fixture that has some better use than when it was released in Windows 3.x.

Oh, here's the FREE P-P-P-Power Lesbian Strapon Porno that you've all be waiting for!

Not bad

Could be better

Dirty little bitch! (This is why we need to segregate sausage from plastics. It just doesn't mix well!)

Christine Young (She is the new Tracy Lords, and I for one welcome this Young ontop-n-overlord)

Does she look like she had a sign on her poop-chute that says "exit only"? (I don't think so...)

I welcome additions, not stileproject links please. My last porn post was modded insightful, so lets not haste Slashdot discussion into any technologies people realy don't want to discuss. Har!

It never stays dead. What some build and let die, others resurrect. Example: Armagetron. ;)

More information on EMX is here if anyone's interested...

A few points:

1. Most of the "management" apps are written by people who are not experts in the Java language, thus tend to fubar it pretty well. This is changing, but slowly.

2. Sun is aware of the remote X issues. This is something they are being slow about addressing, but I believe 1.5 should show a marked performance improvement.

3. P2P programs tend to eat a lot of system resources during operation. This doesn't have so much to do with Java as in the way they are designed.

4. The majority of "good" Java software is outside of the area of Desktop applications. Desktop is still an underdeveloped area for Java.

5. Java programs will always take more resources on a mainstream machine. This is due to the fact that the JVM replicates a lot of the functionality of the OS. In instances where the JVM *is* the OS (e.g. embedded development) the difference in resources is insignificant.

Here are a few examples of Java Desktop programs that do their job extremely well:

Azureus
Wurm Online
JGoodies JDiskReport
DataDino Database Explorer
A few games I wrote for a 4k contest.

There was a similar discussion on the CDex forums some time ago, about distributed ripping and encoding of CDs.

I think the final verdict was that if most encoding nodes also have ripping drives, and they only grab material from the network when they have nothing local to chew on, the problem is minimized and almost irrelevant. If you only have one drive supplying multiple encoders, things get complicated.

Don't forget the software layers on the NFS/CIFS/etc server! I'm not aware of how other OS's are optimized, but under win98, accessing a lot of small files will max out most CPUs before it saturates a 100mbit link. Large files should minimize the effect, but depending on the interface drivers and protocol stack, your server might have to worry about more than link speed.

Side note: If you're considering posting to Ask Slashdot, take a look at Ask Metafilter instead. It's made for this, and you'll suffer a lot less mocking from people who find the answer obvious.

F. In an effort to track usage and maintain accurate records of the
Subject Software, each Recipient, upon receipt of the Subject
Software, is requested to register with Government Agency by visiting
the following website: http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov. Recipient's
name and personal information shall be used for statistical purposes
only. Once a Recipient makes a Modification available, it is requested
that the Recipient inform Government Agency at the web site provided
above how to access the Modification.

1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
4. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Recently, several large corporations, which (apart from other things) develop commercial software, released a number of projects on sourceforge.net. Among them were: Microsoft (3 projects), Google (4 projects), IBM (30 projects), Adobe (1 project). The reasons they gave for such move are often somewhat "foggy". My personal opinion is that it finally became "cool" to have a project on sourceforge.net, which is great of course.

Recently, several large corporations, which (apart from other things) develop commercial software, released a number of projects on sourceforge.net. Among them were: Microsoft (3 projects), Google (4 projects), IBM (30 projects), Adobe (1 project). The reasons they gave for such move are often somewhat "foggy". My personal opinion is that it finally became "cool" to have a project on sourceforge.net, which is great of course.

NASA WorldWind has been on SourceForge since September. Though most development happens over IRC.

There's epoll and AIO
There's no need for that (kqueue) bloated interface in Linux

I must mention irate radio (http://irate.sourceforge.net/) as a very interesting example of free music downloads.

It's a simple java applet that downloads free MP3s for you. You listen, say if you like it or if it sucks, and on the basis of your reply it downloads other music that it thinks you might like.

This sort of thing is the future of music. Things like garageband mean that musisicans can make music cheaply. Make some of it freely available. Then, a blogger I trust recommends it, I download it, like it, go to your web site, and buy some more.

And the "Long Tail" dictates that this is the best way to find music that I really like.

Take my current favourite artist. Now, lots of people like her music, but enough for a record company to make a profit on her CDs in a record store? Probably not, hence her current lack of a deal. But I don't care. I bought her latest couple of CDs direct from her on the web. Paid what I'd pay in a record store, but I have a warm glowing feeling because none of that money paid for some wanker in a marketing department to interview focus groups. It paid to put groceries on her table.

Oh, and on her web she recommends another artist I'd never heard of who she is working with. More free downloads. I liked that too, so that's another CD sale. And I went to see them both play a gig in London (which was utterly superb) and as soon as their support act finishes their first CD I'm going to download that as well.

You see how it can work? That's what, 4 CDs and a show ticket, no marketing wankers required.

However, a format is not "open" if it is "available for licensing". "Available for licensing" implies that the creator of the format retains some control, and that is not acceptable, no matter who the company is that created the format.

My understanding is that products based around Metro will be available for licensing, not the format itself. Heck, based on the articles, it seems that it's Global Graphics developing the licensed products, rather than Microsoft itself.

Being developed under one company does have the downside of having them control the format. Butchering the format with time or making it intentionally arcane for their own benefit would defeat the purpose of such a format, though, and shouldn't become an issue if the format is properly defined and versioned to begin with.

Meanwhile, WiX has yet to be undermined in such a manner.

Fortunately, D-Link has a firmware upgrade that fools Telstra into thinking that I'm running their braindead Windows-only client. :)

Have a look at BPALogin, if you're looking to use Bigpond cable on a non-Windows box (or even on Windows, if you dislike the "braindead" official client).

It'll be just another part of the KDE-on-native-MS-Windows port. I look forward with incipient hilarity for Microsoft's first MS-Access-on-native-Linux port.

You want this.

http://gaim-extprefs.sourceforge.net/

Were this and the ability to disable file transfer and direct connection built into mainstream GAIM, I'd never look twice at any other client.

I've recently heard of another protocol for sending messages to people who are offline. It seems well tested, and at the moment there are many people using it.

There are several clients available, here, here, and here, and there are many others. Hope that helps.

I agree. Giving your variables descriptive names is a good practice, but it's not nearly enough "commenting". If you have a piece of code that manipulates the values of those descriptive variables with bit masks to spit out a value, how is someone supposed to know what you just did? I think the adage "you don't document your code, but you code your document" is a little extreme, but it gets across the importance of code documentation. I'm working on an open source project of my own right now. I went back to modify a piece of code that I hadn't touched for nearly 4 months, only to make absolutely no sense of what the hell I was doing there. Luckly I commented it extremely well so after reading the comments I was able to get that "Oh yeah..." feeling and make the appropriate modifications without breaking the code. Lesson: commenting code may take you some more time now, but it's going to save you a hell of a lot of time later.

On that topic, what are some good examples of well-commented code? Rather than just see words, I'd rather see real-life applications of these practices. For starters, here's typically how much I comment my code: Allacrost source code (note: not all files were written by me, by I try to stress heavy commenting on the rest of my team)

My question on the JR forums, answered very nicely, I think.

https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id= 1273463&forum_id=113529

There once was a GPL program called glGo.

The FAQ even said: "I believe that open source is the better and more productive way to develop software. gGo [glGo's predecessor] has been made closed-source for a couple of ugly reasons and troubles I encountered. I plan to steer clear of these troubles [...]".

Then in late 2003, he must have been hired by the guys who run the "Panda" Internet Go Server. The webpage's last news item (December 2003) says "please visit the glGo webpage on IGS". At least initially, that webpage was identical, except for the FAQ, and the absense of the "open source" logo. New releases of glGo have appeared on that webpage, without source, or any mention of "open-source".

(There's a "sourcecode" link, but it's for the libraries they use, to comply with the LGPL, and a tarball of .o files. It's not glGo source.)

I don't know what incentive they had (Panda IGS or the programmer) to not release source. It's not as if it helps security -- there are a dozen open-source IGS clients, including glGo prior to 0.7. There are open-source IGS-like servers. And the protocol is pretty trivial to read.

All they did was alienate some of their x86 Linux users, and probably all of their BSD and non-x86 Linux users. Oh, and prevent me from helping out, because it looked like a neat project that I wanted to hack on. (I could still work on the old GPL glGo, but it hasn't been touched in a couple years, so I'd basically have to take over the project.)

highly anticipated features including tabbed messaging and logging

Highly anticipated? Crap, we've had these features in GAIM for a while now.

Guess AOL is behind, as usual...

Gaim, my own preferred IM client, is available as a free downloadable win32 exe. It supports just about every protocol (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, jabber, IRC, etc), has tabbed messaging, and also lacks ads.

Since it's gtk2 based, you can apply whatever themes you want to it (and it will also integrate into your desktop that way if you happen to run it under linux). And the free gaim-encryption plugin allows secure messaging as well, in an easy to setup/use interface. In addition to all these features, it's Free, unlike Trillian.

Try gaim-vv

And licq and ickle and Trillian and...

Gaim has plug-ins

AIM is actually the IM platform with the most users, so no, not only AOL.

As for size, the normal version is only a few MB.
However, if you really are concerned about size, take a look at TerraIM, which stands at about 600KB.

I live in Canada so have never used AIM. I am, however, an avid user of Trillian and GAIM over ICQ and MSN. Now I'm not sure if it's just me, but offering tabbed chatting and logging features doesn't seem that impressive to me. Honestly, I wouldn't use a client that didn't log conversations and offer some type of window control.

I didn't RTFM, but I hope that those aren't the best features that Triton has to offer...

adds highly anticipated features including tabbed messaging and logging

I've been using this for quite a while, though. It's called Gaim.

Sounds familiar