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Open Source Projects:
BSD Ports http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/
APTGET http://fink.sourceforge.net/
X11 http://www.xdarwin.org/
A lot of OS X and cross-platform projects http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=309
Gentoo anyone? http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/
Freshmeat has a lot of OS X and cross-platform projects http://freshmeat.net/browse/839/
http://www.opendarwin.org/
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

As you can see, contributing the OS X platform does not mean abandoning OSS or cross-platform software development.

You can contribute to Open Darwin or to the many cross-platform software projects on freshment or sourceforge.

I've been using MythTV and really like it.

For those who want a fast install, check out KnoppMyth

Of course there's always Freevo

Can i from a mac conncet in an easy way to Windows (mean both "map up a drive"

smbfs (the SMB client file system that comes with OS X) and/or DAVE (third-party SMB client file system) are your friends here.

and thru "terminal server like software")?

Microsoft has Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac, Citrix has an ICA client for OS X that might work, and rdesktop is an open source client for the Remote Desktop Protocol which is available in Fink but that might require X11.

If i run iphoto and itunes can i have the actual songs/pictures on server running windows or linux?

iTunes stores the music in your home directory; my home directory at work is NFS-mounted, and that seems to work, so that might work with a Linux server if that's what your home directory is mounted from. I don't know whether it'd work over SMB to a Windows server.

I haven't tried iPhoto over NFS (or SMB), so I don't know whether that'd work.

Can i from a mac conncet in an easy way to Windows (mean both "map up a drive"

smbfs (the SMB client file system that comes with OS X) and/or DAVE (third-party SMB client file system) are your friends here.

and thru "terminal server like software")?

Microsoft has Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac, Citrix has an ICA client for OS X that might work, and rdesktop is an open source client for the Remote Desktop Protocol which is available in Fink but that might require X11.

If i run iphoto and itunes can i have the actual songs/pictures on server running windows or linux?

iTunes stores the music in your home directory; my home directory at work is NFS-mounted, and that seems to work, so that might work with a Linux server if that's what your home directory is mounted from. I don't know whether it'd work over SMB to a Windows server.

I haven't tried iPhoto over NFS (or SMB), so I don't know whether that'd work.

You don't need a big budget for a good story line. My favorite game in the old dos days was Star Control II. At the time, there was no voice, simple tracked-music, and graphics that were nothing special. But the game was *fun*, and had a great plot.

One person in the article mentioned that you shouldn't stereotype characters. Perhaps, but then again, if you start with a general stereotype and then run in wild tangents from there, you can end up with great results. Case and point: the spathi. My favorite alien race from any game I've ever played.

Small groups can make great games. The key is utilizing tools made by others. For example, check out UFO: Alien Invasion. A couple of quake-modders who liked X-com is making a stunningly beautiful freeware version of the old X-com games. Great music, eye candy, and fun gameplay.

However, my powerbook purchase brought the joy of computing back into my life. I frequently read the comments of those who decry the overpriced Mac when compared to constructing your own box (which I used to do - and I still believe that a Mac is equivalently priced with Dell/Gateway/IBM hardware, when all things are factored in properly) and while true on one level, it misses the mark on the total picture. That is depending on your interests and usage desires:

• Time spent on system administration tasks is time not spent on other activities. Time is a non-renewable resource and I'd rather spend it writing software, using software (i.e., playing a game or other activity) than fiddling with the system to figure out why things arn't working or what's gunked up the box. I never see this factored into "cost" metrics -- that is, if you figure conservatively, your time at $20 per hour (maybe more, maybe less, I'm just gauging on median 40K salary), each additional 10 hours you spend a month administering your Win box is $200 per month difference. Which means in the span of 3-6 months, the Mac OS X will prove its cost superiority.
  
  
• It really is the best of both worlds -- the shiny, eye friendly Aqua GUI plus having a full fledged *nix/BSD system at your disposal. Running MySQL/Apache/Perl/Python/PHP all on a local box where I can have my own testbed sandbox before presenting to clients. Yes, Win platform is capable of doing same thing, but to me, it's a kludge, and again, back to that time thing, where I waste time setting it all up and then dealing with the discrepancies between that environment and the *nix environments where the software will eventually run. And running PuTTy or Exceed is a weak substitute for an anti-aliased terminal window, custom setup. The one major thing that bugged me about OS X, that I missed from running Linux, was the virtual desktops, until I discovered this gem.
  
  
• I realize there are specialized software needs that may not be met with OS X, but for most, the available software plus the F/OSS normally primarily in the domain of Linux OS is available to run on Mac OS X. And I don't even run Fink anymore, I just have a few X11 apps (Gimp, and a few others...) that I compiled and built and placed them within the X11 environment.
  
  

Life got a lot simpler when I replaced my wife's Win XP box with an iMac. No more weekly degunk sessions, antivirus, malware consternation and constant admonitions for her to be vigilant about keeping her machine clean were necessary. And she took to it like a charm -- things were unfamiliar (and still sometimes she stumbles on a Win -> Mac how-to-do question) but she is enthralled with it now and spends more time on email/web browsing than she ever did on the Win box. The iLife/iPod deal is just gravy and really we've experienced firsthand on how much more hassle-free life became after the Mac switch.

So, I'm not swayed by saving a couple hundred dollars. Just like I wouldn't buy a Kia or a Yugo, I'm not going to opt for a bargain basement PC over a quality machine like a Mac. No, it's not perfect and presents its own set of flaws, but at this juncture, it seems to be the product of greater quality for me.

Spell checkers work for dyslexics, too.

In other news, there is a spell checker available for Firefox now.
http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

Then why isn't Openstep more popular? Is it that if you have a Mac you don't need it? Or is it because most of the 'switchers' are recent converts, and Openstep will pick up in popularity for their non-Apple systems later?

It would be really cool to use Cocoa / ObjC to write a GUI application and be able to run it on an x86 machine with GNUStep. But from what I hear, GNUStep is at least a step behind Cocoa when it comes to functionality. You can't just recompile and go. If you have a Mac, you have Cocoa, so if would be a disadvantage to use GNUStep instead. If you already use GNUStep, you probably worked on a NeXTStep machine at some point, and probably do have a Mac. I really enjoyed the interview yesterday with Jonathan Rentzsch, and he picked apart some of the more frustrating parts of using Objective C (garbage collection is a particular nuisance), and he also mentioned using Python (PyObjC) which would be my inclination. What would be really cool would be some framework using Interface Builder and pure Python. I know (okay, I've heard) you can use Interface Builder with pure Java. Since Python comes standard with OS X, maybe that's around the corner.

Does that at all answer your questions?

oh, and its much lighter than eclipse. (and in case you're wondering, yes you can compile with mtasc too)

Maybe you're looking at the wrong homepage: http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/

I used to be a rabid blackbox user, and helped contribute a patch or two (both to blackbox and to ROX-Filer so it would play well with blackbox). The big selling point for me was its small memory footprint -- this was especially important on my aging 366MHz machine.

However, a couple years ago, it felt like development towards 0.70 had stalled... and this after being on 0.65 for a year or two. I started investigating other window managers, just to see what was out there.

I discovered that xfwm4 had a similar footprint, but was already emwh compliant and offered some great eye candy as well. Not long after, I started trying OroboROX (visit the ROX website's software index for links to it). OroboROX offers similar functionality to xfwm4 with an even smaller footprint.

When I saw 0.70 had come out a few weeks ago, I wanted to see how things had progressed. It's certainly a nice window manager, and the emwh compliance is very well done. However, I did some benchmarking against OroboROX... and discovered that OroboROX actually used a smaller memory footprint than the new blackbox! And still has more eye candy!

So, kudos to blackbox, for finally getting to the 0.70 release... but I won't be using it.

Sorry, but what competitors to VB6 does the OSS community have?

I personally think that all these window managers with so called "features" are just a big bloat. I use evilwm.

Hint: if you try it, get the source packet (eg `apt-get source evilwm`) and compile yourself, because you probably want to change some of the key bindings, at least if you have non-US keyboard ;-)

Also try the bb4win 'alternate flavours' bblean and xoblite

Tried out Gaim encryption for Gaim ?

Actually you need not install any of these.

There are alternatives to play existing media formats, including the open source media player classic which can play windows media, quicktime and realplayer formats without a problem.

Well, fuck me.

<URL:javascript://alert('i_smell');>

Too FUCKING hard for some?

http://thetao.sourceforge.net/_screenshots/yangscr eenshot3.jpg

Gambas

Are you suggesting that drag and drop programming is a good thing? Maybe it allows for faster implementation but it provides much slower and far more stupid solutions than true programming. I am not even sure that it can be consider true programming.

The problem with tools like that isn't that they aren't really programming. (I agree; they aren't.) It's that people mistake one for the other because for simple projects the results look the same. Because of that, marketroids shamelessly sell low-end, user-targeted tools as equivalent to real code written by professional programmers.

All those companies that went for the easy way out in '97 deserve to suffer the consequences.

True. On the other hand, there are an awful lot of VB apps, Access apps, Perl CGI scripts, and shell scripts that are just fine for the people using them, and always will be.

The problem comes when people try to push tools like that beyond their limits. And no matter how much warning you give that your quick little hack will need to be replaced eventually, people forget that because it *looks* solid. My favorite solution is to make quick hacks look like quick hacks. It's a shame all VB apps don't look like that.

" why wouldn't you be using encrypted IM clients,"

I guess im sort of unskilled amature, but i have never heard of a high encryption version of any instant messenging client.
im going to go google that now.
hmm looks like a company does carry this magical product you speak of. oh wait? whats that from their FAQ

Send instant messages to any other X-IM user

oh so now ill just convince all my friends to use X-IM. Thanks jerry!!

or perhaps you meant pssst

hmm that actually looks pretty nice, works with ICQ and everything.

I guess ill just roll that ou.. OH WAIT me instant messenging some 45 year old man pretending to be a 18 year old co-ed doesnt really NEED any sort of encryption. MAYBE just MAYBE people should have some secuirty instead of NO security as you seem to advocate with your all or nothing approach.

This guy, albiet stupid a stupid newbie, knew about mac filtering and WEP on a wireless connection, wich, IMHO is more than yo mama knows about it. So in conclusion: stop ripping on ppl with that tired elitiest low user ID attitude and maybe tonight you will get laid.

Aarrgh, they moved it. Here is the correct link.

I sometimes wish Linux had a application packaging system like MacOSX where you have the option of brining tons of libraries with you hidden under a file system pretending to be an app icon. It just works (most of the time). I'm tired of ldd.

ROX has this.

I'm not sure you understand the original comment. On the Mac, everything is packaged in a single directory w/a metadata file so that the Finder views it as an application. Double clicking the icon runs the enclosed executible, which in turn has all of the libraries it needs right there.

To install the Mac version of the Gimp, I download it, mount the disk image and drag the app icon to my applications folder. Run it, and I'm good to go (assuming X is running). If I need to, I can still enter the directory and mess with those files....but usually I don't have to.

Of course, there is a convenience vs redundancy tradeoff here. Disk space is plentiful, but a commonly used/prepackaged library having a massive security flaw could cause problems, but nothing 15 minutes of terminal work and some shell scripting couldn't solve (terminal still sees is as a normal directory).

-T

Everybody has Bruce Schneier's Password Safe right? Far from from a cure-all but at least you have to remember only one really high-entropy password.

Now can anyone tell me the best way to keep my password out of my Windows swap file (other than switching to another OS)?

Just because Sun java isn't free doesn't mean there aren't alternatives out there.

Kaffe,
GCJ,
Jikes RVM,
Cacao,
and
others. .NET has Mono and DotGNU. That's two. So how is it "much more free"?

Just because Sun java isn't free doesn't mean there aren't alternatives out there.

Kaffe,
GCJ,
Jikes RVM,
Cacao,
and
others. .NET has Mono and DotGNU. That's two. So how is it "much more free"?

Don't get me wrong. I love the OS X appfolder system. I just don't think it is right for Linux at this time.

Is this more a conclusion you arrive at by feeling or is it the pure logic of understanding the situation and adding up all the plusses and negatives? You have to admit, the end result from the appfolder scenario is much better for the PC user than the package scenario we have now, IF we can solve the puzzles elegantly. Better to start the Linux movement on appfolders NOW when it's still in flux than to wait until the Linux scene has been totally set in it's ways.

This /. article has made me read pages on the Zero Install site. I was already convinced that, from the end-user's perspective, appfolders are better. But on this page of their site, they make a good argument about security being better with their system, so from a system's logic point of view it is probably better as well.

Ofcourse it's THEIR site so you might find ways their arguments are faulty but I'm convinced this is the way to go over packages for most programs.

I'm not talking about the ROX desktop, only the program installation part of that system, Zero Install. Let me know what you think.

Don't get me wrong. I love the OS X appfolder system. I just don't think it is right for Linux at this time.

Is this more a conclusion you arrive at by feeling or is it the pure logic of understanding the situation and adding up all the plusses and negatives? You have to admit, the end result from the appfolder scenario is much better for the PC user than the package scenario we have now, IF we can solve the puzzles elegantly. Better to start the Linux movement on appfolders NOW when it's still in flux than to wait until the Linux scene has been totally set in it's ways.

This /. article has made me read pages on the Zero Install site. I was already convinced that, from the end-user's perspective, appfolders are better. But on this page of their site, they make a good argument about security being better with their system, so from a system's logic point of view it is probably better as well.

Ofcourse it's THEIR site so you might find ways their arguments are faulty but I'm convinced this is the way to go over packages for most programs.

I'm not talking about the ROX desktop, only the program installation part of that system, Zero Install. Let me know what you think.

Does anybody know of any grammar checkers for Linux ???

... courtesy of Password Safe, http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

There are two open source grammar checkers available (Language tool and Queequeg ). Both have strengths and weaknesses and could do with a lot more work to improve on the number strengths they have. Unfortunately people with the necessary expertise rarely have the time needed to get involved on these kinds of projects. If anybody is interested and has some expertise then send me some email. Perhaps we produce something better.

There are two open source grammar checkers available (Language tool and Queequeg ). Both have strengths and weaknesses and could do with a lot more work to improve on the number strengths they have. Unfortunately people with the necessary expertise rarely have the time needed to get involved on these kinds of projects. If anybody is interested and has some expertise then send me some email. Perhaps we produce something better.

I read the Eiffel book, but I've never been in a position to actually write code in it. But I love the concept of programming by contract.

I just use assertions to do preconditions, postconditions, and checks. Invariants are a nice idea, but in practice seem to be a big performance hit. I just do invariant-like assertions as needed.

I assert the heck out of my code. You can see some of it here.

I don't see too many assertions in other people's code. Then again, I don't see too much that looks like planning or insight in other people's code most of the time, so why should I be surprised. I can't believe how sloppy we are as a profession. Like my coffee cup says...if builders build buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpeckers that came along would destroy civilization.

I agree with the comment about Version Control and Finder. I use TortoiseSVN on win32 and love it. When I code on my mac, I greatly miss this significant integration.

The beauty of TortoiseSVN (CVS) is that they integrate to the Windows Explorer, which is in turn used by *most* applications in windows for managing files allowing the version control to be very well integrated with the entire operating system.

[...]

If Apple could allow for Icon overlays and adding of file attributes similar to Windows Explorer it would be a huge improvement to the usability of OSX for GUI based hacking.

So you mean the Finder plugin I've been using doesn't exist? Or is it lumped in with the "other projects out there" you mentioned?

To be fair, it's not terribly polished; you do get badging of files, but they don't always update properly. And it requires a command-line Subversion installaion, either via Fink or through some standalone Subversion packages. But a new version is supposed to be coming that includes the necessary Subversion libraries, and I believe they're supposed to fix the badging issue at the same time.

Jay (=

Gimp doesn't have 16 bit support nor some other features which escape me right now.

// It is truely insane we have to stat() the file system in order to
// discover the size of an in-memory data structure.

No, it just means that those myths don't apply on the Cell-phone platform. Thats not surprising, I doubt Cell Phones do JIT compiling, and their hardware is so different from PCs and each other, that you're stupid to think you aren't going to get away without testing.

And to reiterate, Java is nearly as fast as native code. Some of it's libraries aren't as fast as C equivalents though. I should know

Still, Java is appropriate for those devices, since it allows the manufacturers to change their phones frequently without rewriting much software, and allows consumers to use the same software on multiple makes/models of phone.

Yeah, it'd be great if Adobe could spend a bit of time cutting off some fat from their products. Acrobat Reader chugs compared to xpdf, which has a Windows version if anyone's interested:

I wonder what the new Photoshop's system requirements will be?

I love how it mentions WiX. WiX has generated enormously good will for microsoft, at least with me.

I don't ever see them releasing all of windows open source, but just releasing small utilities like that open source for others to toy with is a HUGE step forward. Pretend that microsoft hadn't released WiX, and it stayed as time called it, insignificant. No one would have bothered with it except MCP's and others, and they would have used WinInstall LE or whatever.

But because microsoft released it free and OSS, an enormous buzz has been generated and an enormous amount of good will as well.

From the ROX site:

"I've only got dial-up; won't Zero Install be too slow?

No. Because Zero Install only downloads the parts of the software that you actually use, you'll typically download much less this way. For example, if you don't read the manual for version 2.1.2 of the filer, or use the french translation, then they will never be fetched. If you download traditional tarballs, debian packages or RPMs, then you end up downloading a lot more stuff you'll never use.

For reference, running ROX-Filer for the first time though Zero Install took 1m48s when the internet connection was an irDA link to a mobile phone connected via GPRS (download speed approx 2.5 Kbytes/sec). If you use a normal modem it will be faster than this, and broadband will be faster again, of course."

They present a new piece of Free Software, that is supossed to help the hacker community, and they use proprietary software (Flash) to show the software to the public?

Can any code using GPLFlash play that demonstration? Or does it use features not supported by GPLFlash?

It needs to be an open standard, with an open-source client.

I forgot to mention GNOME.SlackBuild.

This is another great GNOME package for Slackware.

[ Amendment IV ]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Want to read my stuff? Go ahead and crack it - no warrant necessary.

Get the rabbit installed on a machine behind your firewall
==> http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Faster than freenet
==> http://www.i2p.net/
Encrypt Jabber
==> http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/Jabber/jabberd.html
Onion Routing
==> http://tor.eff.org/
Emerging Network To Reduce Orwellian Potency Yield
==> http://entropy.stop1984.com/
Free Internet telephony
==> http://skype.com/
GNU-ified P2p
==> http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/


DO NOT DENY yourself about 2 hours @ InfoAnarchy.org
OMG! ==> http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Pag e
LearnLearnLearnLearn ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography

=================EMAIL ENCRYPTION===============
GPG (Free PGP)
==> http://gnupg.org/
Integrated with Thunderbird
==> http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
Mutt can't be beat as a mailreader and integrates GPG wonderfully.
==> http://mutt.blackfish.org.uk/
==> http://www.mutt.org/links.html
==> http://wiki.mutt.org/index.cgi?UserPages

!!! Please do not immediately send newly created keys to the keyservers (as many HOWTOs instruct new users to). They are already overflowing with "test keys" and other people's experiments from over the years THAT HAVE NO EXPIRATION and will never be deleted. These keys are "orphans" and most will never be used. As keyservers sync together, and most keys are never deleted once submitted - GET YOUR KEY SETUP CORRECTLY AND HAVE PRACTICE WITH IT BEFORE SENDING IT OFF TO THE KEYSERVERS!!! Otherwise storage requirements will continue to grow and using these in the future will become more difficult FOR ALL. Please, if you are just starting out with PGP or GPG or GnuPG or anything similar (the last two are in fact the same thing) use manual key distribution to begin (ascii armor your public key with

$ gpg --export --armor my@email.address.org

and copy and paste it into an email body or attach it to an email

$ gpg --export --armor my@email.address.org > myPubKey.txt

to gain practice with GPG before uploading your key. This way if you need to create another you won't have uploaded your mistakes. Many choices need to be made and it's worth getting things right before "going public" with your new digital ID. Experiment with yourself and a few different email accounts or with some friends first.)

SET AN EXPIRATION OF 2-5 YEARS OR SO AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR PREFERENCES THE WAY YOU LIKE THEM BEFORE SENDING TO A KEYSERVER! Better yet is to HOST YOUR KEY ON YOUR WEBSITE (or try using http://biglumber.com/ instead to host your key and help c

Autopackage looks excellent and will make it easy for all developers to roll out one package for all distros. Another system also interests me alot however...

With the Zero Install system, applications aren't actually installed (as the name errm suggests), instead they run from a cache immediately after download. You click to download and then it runs - all dependencies grabbed from the package host. The next time you run it it loads immediately as it's already cached. Quite innovative.

http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/

http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/

A young project but quite revolutionary. Applications run from cache. A GUI to this for those not friendly with the CLI could be significant.

Make sure you read the page to understand what it offers and why.

By the way I prefer the Debian way of installing software, it's a no-brainer.

I use the CLI but my 10 year old cousin uses http://kefk.net/Linux/Distributionen/Allgemein/Fed ora/Versionen/Core.1/Screenshots/kpackage.png KPackage as an interface to apt.

Just Works TM.

What pushed me over the edge to buy it is definitely the potential. In addition to some of the things linked already, the register has an article about a potential email and web browser which, when combined with this keyboard that popped up, might just make me think twice about upgrading my laptop.

Email/web browser aside, I'd love to see writeable UMDs come out though some how I doubt sony would give up the memory stick market so easily. Still, that would definitely make this a killer gadget IMHO.

Oh, and the games are fun too.

Try DOSBox!
Versions for Windows and probably packaged by your distribution of choice.

The Gminis do support a proprietary database format, ARCLibrary. If you create the database and enable this functionality you can use it as well as the directory structure. Archos tells you that you need to use MusicMatch Jukebox to create the library but now there's an open source program that does it.

Regarding navigation, scrolling through a long list like a list of all albums is kind of annoying. However I organize my music in a more intelligent hierarchical way and I don't have any complaints about navigation.

I do have some complaints about other things though. The Gmini 220 sometimes ignores button presses while the hard drive is being accessed. The FM remote crashes once in a while and needs to be unplugged and plugged back in. The player also sometimes skips for no good reason.

Ipodlinuxinstl.sourceforge.net

The iPod can run linux. It adds more games and even the ability to record through the headphones. In all, it's a very neat thing to do with the iPod.