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Mac OS can do the real thing too -- and with more eye candy than Windows or Linux!

So yeah, actually ALL major operating systems can do virtual desktops, just not by default (and Linux doesn't do it by default either, since it defaults to TWM!)

Anyway, Here are some movies of the RMP running the Player Robot Server (GPL, naturally). If you want to try programming a Segway RMP, but haven't got one sitting around, you can use the Gazebo robot simulator with Player - your code won't know the difference.

(Please, please somebody mirror these movies before we brown-out Southern California. Sorry Andrew...)

Anyway, Here are some movies of the RMP running the Player Robot Server (GPL, naturally). If you want to try programming a Segway RMP, but haven't got one sitting around, you can use the Gazebo robot simulator with Player - your code won't know the difference.

(Please, please somebody mirror these movies before we brown-out Southern California. Sorry Andrew...)

While obviously not a total solution (what really is?) I use MenuMeters to show me major system info in real time. Here's a screen shot of my menubar showing how mine is set up.

From left: my various desktops, network i/o (outgoing in red, incoming in black), memory allocation, swap/paging, disk i/o (none at that moment), user (black) and kernel (gray) CPU graph, total CPU percentage, clock.

And although it's said that this particular rootkit can bypass it, I strongly recommend shelling out a few bucks for LittleSnitch so nothing can see the 'net without your permission. I assure you, wou *will* be amazed at how much software phones home.

Any time my computer "feels slow" I can expect at least one of those indicators to be pegged. I then investigate and can brutally murderize the offending process if I so choose.

Perhaps Anjuta would be more use to them in conjuncion with gcc? Here are the features and here is the eye candy.

Products like C++ Builder are not only fancy IDEs and compilers, but they come with very rich class libraries. If someone has invested years of development time creating applications using these class libraries, thier discontinuation is a disaster if they are to continue to develop their application without rewriting it from scratch using different libraries, or in a whole new language environment.

Perhaps Anjuta would be more use to them in conjuncion with gcc? Here are the features and here is the eye candy.

Products like C++ Builder are not only fancy IDEs and compilers, but they come with very rich class libraries. If someone has invested years of development time creating applications using these class libraries, thier discontinuation is a disaster if they are to continue to develop their application without rewriting it from scratch using different libraries, or in a whole new language environment.

Perhaps Anjuta would be more use to them in conjuncion with gcc? Here are the features and here is the eye candy.

Products like C++ Builder are not only fancy IDEs and compilers, but they come with very rich class libraries. If someone has invested years of development time creating applications using these class libraries, thier discontinuation is a disaster if they are to continue to develop their application without rewriting it from scratch using different libraries, or in a whole new language environment.

I recently needed to find something similar for an old Thinkpad 365 I bought for my wife.

Imagine my surprise when a group of charitable and enterprising geeks have produced the very thing, in my own backyard (I live in Guelph, a few miles down the road from Kitchener.)

It's called the Working Center Linux Project, homepage, and in their words:

The Working Centre Linux Project is a Debian-based distribution geared towards low-powered computers (25mhz 486s w/16MB ram/400MB disk). The project exists to provide cheap, legal software, familiar software for refurbished computers - software usable for those who have never used computers, or those who have only used a Windows environment.

List of previous attempts:
MSN WebTV
AOL TV
Virgin Webplayer
ThinkNIC
3COM Audrey
A dozen more

Try DietPC

Yeah oh yeah - DRM and 'Trusted' Computing are just the first two examples that come to mind. [ ... ]

Which is precisely why I never download updates to Windows Media Player (and no one else should, either). I use vlc and Media Player Classic.

Schwab

...apt-get update;apt-get upgrade folks ;) At least for the debian folk ;>

Unfortunately for the team, the need for open Audio DSP is diminished by EMU10k1/2, which has online manual. In addition, it has more I/O than the concept FAC2222M FPGA, and low latency features (depending on driver and/or programming skills). Creative aside, you can get TMS320C67x processors, which also include free development kits from TI's web site.

I think they are just cutting costs at our expense. I remember buying a video card, video capture daughterboard, and an integrated PCI TV tuner card as a bundle from them, when such a thing cost upwards of $300. This was a big investment for me at the time, but I was itching to edit video and DV wasn't big yet. These cards had excellent capture quality with hardware compression, so I invested big time in the whole Matrox system. Win2k came out a month later and they decided not to support it. Win2k was a leap ahead of 98, so many ditched the hardware.

Hundreds of calls and emails went to Matrox, especially on the part of people simply trying to get them to release specs on a single chip (MGA-VC064SFB-C) so linux drivers could be written. The 4 non-matrox chips on the board, including the Zoran capture chip - had publicly available datasheets. This wasn't a big part that was missing, but was necessary. Two open source projects started, and made progress, but halted or decided not to support the older generation of hardware, due to lack of specifications! Matrox even ignored a petition with nearly 400 signatures!

Other people were willing to do the work that would have given real value to the Matrox name - as a maker of rock solid hardware that continued to be a workhorse, even years after purchase. All they had to do was release some specs - the hardware was impossible to beat in price/performance at the time and the linux community would looked to Matrox with appreciation because a solid capture board that did hardware based compression wasn't easy to find or afford for linux. An asinine move if I'd ever seen one.

This was before they released open source drivers for a newer generation of cards, and it showed their true character before they cancelled open source drivers for the Parhelia line.

Simply put, don't buy closed source Matrox. They have a history of cutting development early for closed source drivers and not releasing specs!

There are actually many games that are either written for or will run on Linux. Just go to the sourceforge games section and see for yourself.

You may be thinking of FSP which is a UDP-based FTP analog. FTP, however, uses TCP.

and virtual desktops (again -- maybe they exist for OS X, but I don't see built-in to the OS ...),

and virtual desktops (again -- maybe they exist for OS X, but I don't see built-in to the OS ...),

Awhile back, Via released the specs to the CLE266 chipset, which is an on motherboard graphics chipset most commonly used on their mini-itx boards. They have also bought S3. A few months ago S3 released the DeltaChrome S4 and S8 in Europe and Asia, no North American release yet. They have claimed they are going to release open source linux drivers for the card at some point in the near future. The price point for the performance they are offering would be just about right with open drivers. Also they are releasing a version of the card called OmniChrome which has a tv tuner powered by the Techwell TW9905 which already has linux support. Here is a Techbits.ca review of the OmniChrome. If they do pony up the open drivers, an S3 graphics card will definitely be the next graphics card I buy. We'll see if it happens. I'm gonna go read the lkml thread the kernel trap article refers to now. Should be interesting stuff.

If you want to untap the DSP, you would need AS10k1 Online Manual, which includes help on writing your DSP program for video purposes. Don't expect too much though.

Get SB Live/Audigy! There are ALSA drivers for that purpose. And unlike the GPU tightwads, Creative not only released GPL drivers, but also the register specs!

Not quite

When Brian Howard and I were writing the Pascal Manual for Apple Computer, I discovered that the syntax chart that had been published with previous Pascal books was incorrect.

Modern C++ libraries do not have that problem. Here's one.

One of the big problems with C++ is that the syntax is so messed up that you can't even express it with a chart like that.

For video editing, you could use LiVES. I am the author of this application, and I am willing to help in any way I can with implementing this as part of your curriculum.

I've already got copies of the windows binarys for portable firefox, portable thunderbird and filezilla on my USB memory stick; this sounds like just the ticket for cross-platform goodness. I'd certainly be willing to paypal the creators of this when a final version is released.

...I use Ogg Vorbis and it works just fine. All my music is in one place and, it's all legal (ripped from CDs I purchased) and I can listen to it anywhere thanks to icecast+OpenVPN. Power to the people baby! ;)

Maybe not running Microsoft's latest software but quite happy to get by with; http://www.microsoft.com/xbox/ and then http://www.xbox-linux.org/, http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbox-linux/

Sorry, I don't think this should get modded up. Irrlicht is a "game engine" (Well, mostly a graphics engine). Its not the answer to the question. He would have to redo all his code to fit in the Irrlicht framework.

I was going to say, use CEGUI but it isn't pure C. It is a very actively developed GUI system, with renderers for DirectX, OpenGL, Ogre3D and Irrlicht.

Firebird is what you are looking for. Check it out

RealVNC: the original.
TightVNC: optimized for low-bandwidth
Ultra: tons of extras - file transfer, chat, video driver, NT/AD security
Tridia: get around firewalls, more management features

I miss anything?

Win2VNC: One virtual desktop across two computers, using kbd/mouse of Win2VNC machine to run both(even does copy/paste correctly between screens if you use a good modern server like Ultra.) BTW: I've been told that the Win2VNC link I posted above has been superseded by a new version that adds support for mouse wheels, Alt-Tab, and other useful stuff. You can find it at Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win2vnc/ Caveat: I haven't tried this one yet, but you can bet I will when I get a chance...

X2VNC: Same thing, but "master" desktop (the one with the shared kbd/mouse) is on a Unix box.

But what are these alternatives you mention that are so much better suited for every possible scenario?

There is, of course, no tool that meets the needs of every possible scenario. Instead, there are tools that meet the needs of common scenarios. Most of what MySQL is being (improperly) used for could be easily replaced with PostgreSQL. Postgres offer similar performance, but takes a minor hit for data integrity. As a bonus, you gain sub-selects, stored procedures, SQL-92 compliance, and other features of a "real" SQL database.

MySQL is quite decent for something like a blog, but why even bother with a complete server in those cases? An embedded database such as Berkeley DB or HSQL (formerly Hypersonic) would provide better performance and would get rid of security issues inherent in running a complete database server.

In still other instances, SQL databases are misused for large object data storage. In many of these instances, an Object Database such as ObjectStore (or your favorite open source choice of the 1000+ options) will provide better performance, without sacrificing much in the way of database management. (Standard database management tools are usually insufficient for dealing with databases containing large amounts of LOBs.)

Basically, the choice in database and database technology should be carefully weighed against the application instead of saying "I know SQL and MySQL is 1337!"

Some other database options include:

DaffodilDB
SAP DB
FireBird DB
Cloudscape (Soon to be open source)
Xindice (XML Database)
ObjectDB
DB4O
Prevayler

But what are these alternatives you mention that are so much better suited for every possible scenario?

There is, of course, no tool that meets the needs of every possible scenario. Instead, there are tools that meet the needs of common scenarios. Most of what MySQL is being (improperly) used for could be easily replaced with PostgreSQL. Postgres offer similar performance, but takes a minor hit for data integrity. As a bonus, you gain sub-selects, stored procedures, SQL-92 compliance, and other features of a "real" SQL database.

MySQL is quite decent for something like a blog, but why even bother with a complete server in those cases? An embedded database such as Berkeley DB or HSQL (formerly Hypersonic) would provide better performance and would get rid of security issues inherent in running a complete database server.

In still other instances, SQL databases are misused for large object data storage. In many of these instances, an Object Database such as ObjectStore (or your favorite open source choice of the 1000+ options) will provide better performance, without sacrificing much in the way of database management. (Standard database management tools are usually insufficient for dealing with databases containing large amounts of LOBs.)

Basically, the choice in database and database technology should be carefully weighed against the application instead of saying "I know SQL and MySQL is 1337!"

Some other database options include:

DaffodilDB
SAP DB
FireBird DB
Cloudscape (Soon to be open source)
Xindice (XML Database)
ObjectDB
DB4O
Prevayler

From UltraVNC's old FAQ Ultr@VNC is an enhanced VNC distribution, for Win32 platforms only (for now). It's based on RealVNC, features TightVNC smart cursor handling and encoding, almost all the special functionalities that can be found in eSVNC and Vdacc-VNC, and a LOT more.

Plus, at the time it was the only one with 128 bit encryption (via a plug-in) and still might be. The encryption not only protects the data in transit, it also acts as a second password. You can run the others through SSH, but the plug-in makes in integrated into UltraVNC.

Also, RealVNC now charges for their best version.

2 to bring up firefox and go to SourceForge

3 to type in "Diskless workstation" in the search box

5 to scan the results and find this project.

Oh lookie, you want the server to be debian? Amazingly enough, there is a link.

2 to bring up firefox and go to SourceForge

3 to type in "Diskless workstation" in the search box

5 to scan the results and find this project.

Oh lookie, you want the server to be debian? Amazingly enough, there is a link.

I haven't tried it extensively, but there's another VNC that derived from UltraVNC called MetaVNC.

You may want to check this out too.

Something interesting I read about when I was looking for alternatives to X (even on local lan it can perform poorly).

9600 Baud GSM modem link over vanilla X: Mozilla-1.6 needs 4000 roundtrips and takes 5 minutes.

Why didn't I think of that?

I don't know, but now that you know, feel free to use it in your own projects :).

Actually, for anyone interested in how I typically write easy-to-read code, check out this PDF document (or the HTML version). These are the coding guidelines I wrote up (and follow) for the jSyncManager Project. And yes, they're enforced (albeit not in a draconian manner -- if another developer misses something, I usually just fix it for them as opposed to nailing them to the wall :) ).

Good Open Source code needs to be readable and easy to work with IMO. If you want to attract more developers to your project, and/or want third-party developers to use your Open Source APIs, you need to make sure when they grab your code they can get working with it with an absolute minimum of hassle, and as much information as they need. The last thing you want to make them do is go through all your code with a fine-toothed comb trying to figure out what it's doing. They want to write code, not try to figure out what the existing code is doing manually.

Just as nobody likes to read a novel with no paragraph breaks/indentation, no chapter breaks, and no formatting, nobody should have to read messy code. Writing elegant looking code with useful comments takes very little time (particularily if you're a fast typer), and is always worth the extra effort, especially in an Open Source project that is close to your heart.

Speaking of which, if anyone out there is interested in developing code for an Open Source, pure Java data synchronization solution for Palm OS-based handhelds, or using such code in one of their own projects, send me an e-mail :) ).

Yaz.

Why didn't I think of that?

I don't know, but now that you know, feel free to use it in your own projects :).

Actually, for anyone interested in how I typically write easy-to-read code, check out this PDF document (or the HTML version). These are the coding guidelines I wrote up (and follow) for the jSyncManager Project. And yes, they're enforced (albeit not in a draconian manner -- if another developer misses something, I usually just fix it for them as opposed to nailing them to the wall :) ).

Good Open Source code needs to be readable and easy to work with IMO. If you want to attract more developers to your project, and/or want third-party developers to use your Open Source APIs, you need to make sure when they grab your code they can get working with it with an absolute minimum of hassle, and as much information as they need. The last thing you want to make them do is go through all your code with a fine-toothed comb trying to figure out what it's doing. They want to write code, not try to figure out what the existing code is doing manually.

Just as nobody likes to read a novel with no paragraph breaks/indentation, no chapter breaks, and no formatting, nobody should have to read messy code. Writing elegant looking code with useful comments takes very little time (particularily if you're a fast typer), and is always worth the extra effort, especially in an Open Source project that is close to your heart.

Speaking of which, if anyone out there is interested in developing code for an Open Source, pure Java data synchronization solution for Palm OS-based handhelds, or using such code in one of their own projects, send me an e-mail :) ).

Yaz.

While the driver is not Open Source, it can be freely used with TightVNC (see the LICENSE.txt file, within the distribution archive).

But do you really use comments like "// end-if"???

Yes, in fact I do. It makes it obvious what statement a close-brace goes with, in the event the indentation is screwed up, or if it's on a separate page from the block opening. Take this class, for example.

I'll give you an example of where this is useful:

(Note: I tried typing up this post using <ECODE> with spaces and non-breaking spaces, but /. appears to strip them all out. The code below was intended to be indented, but it doesn't look like /. is going to let me. The point is even more poignant without the indentation, but as very few people code without indentation, it doesn't make for as good an example IMO. So please imagine the code below as being indented).

// The same useless code, but with block-closing comments.
int x=0;
while(x<10) {
if (x%2==0) {
for(int i=0;i<x;i++) {
doSomething(x, i);
doSomethingElse(x);
}
}

This code is obviously incomplete, as it specifies more open braces than close braces. I coded it, but it's up to you to fix it.

However, without knowing the algorithm, where do you add the extra close brace? Note that the first close-brace isn't at the same indentation level of anything else (due to developer typo) -- was it intended to close the if statement (and thus it's the for statement that is missing its closure), or is it the closure for the for statement, and it's the closure of the if statement that is missing?

Using my syntax, this is brutally easy to fix without going through the algorithm to discover what was intended:

// The same useless code, but with block-closing comments.
int x=0;
while(x<10) {
if (x%2==0) {
for(int i=0;i<x;i++) {
doSomething(x, i);
doSomethingElse(x);
} // end-for
} // end-while

Thus, it's the if statement that is missing its close block. The code should look like:

// The same useless code, but at least it's syntatically correct.
int x=0;
while(x<10) {
if (x%2==0) {
for(int i=0;i<x;i++) {
doSomething(x, i);
doSomethingElse(x);
} // end-for
} // end-if
} // end-while

You may think that looking at the indentation might tell you where the closing brace is missing -- but just try working in a development group sometime where some developer is using 2 or 4 character tabs instead of 3 character tabs, or where they're using spaces instead of tabs (or tabs instead of spaces). Indentation is easily munged in such a case, and it can creep into source very easily. Without close-brace comments, a missing close may be very difficult to insert in the correct position.

So yes, I do add such comments to every close tag. They're quick to type, but generally I set-up my code editors to either insert them automatically, or to at least assign a macro to insert them. It makes the code easier to maintain if someone accidentally forgets to close off a block, and makes it easy to determine what statement a given close goes with if the close is on a different page from the block opening statement.

Yaz.

I prefer MetaVNC as it is a "window aware" VNC, and allows a gnome desktop, for example, to coexist with a Windows desktop.

Or, perhaps not read this...

Okay, I know that there are a lot of professional developers out there who follow some of the "rules" in the article, especially those involving ignoring warnings. I've been in professional programming environments, and I've seen this sort of thing excused all too often (personally, my code isn't done until it compiles 100% cleanly). However, for good or bad, this is typically hidden in closed-source projects -- how many compilation warnings does Microsoft get in its nightly Windows builds? I have no idea.

Unfortunately, in Open Source Software everyone gets to see where the developers ignore warnings, and IMO there isn't much excuse for it. Honestly, there are far too many Open Source projects which seem to do the things this article "advocates". And everyone gets to see it.

I remember all of the warning messages I get when building the Linux 2.4 series kernels. And I recently looked into forking the recently cancelled JPluck, but its near complete lack of code commenting makes the effort exceedingly difficult.

This has long bothered me. If you're going to release your code as Open Source so others can work with it, it should at least have some comments in it (even just simple things like the expected input.output values for procedures, functions, or methods, expected use for variables/fields, etc.), and it should generally build without a single warning [1], in order to make it easier for others to work with the code, and to ensure them that there aren't going to be any unexpected results due to ignored warnings.

Yaz.

------------

[1] Okay, I know someone is going to call me a hipocrite when they go and grab the sources for the Open Source project I administer (the jSyncManager), build it, and find well over 100 warnings. I just want to preempt this by stating that these deprecation warnings occur because I've specified parts of the jSyncManager API to be deprecated to ensure developers currently using these deprecated classes move their code over to their replacements.

For our part, here's what we've settled on:

x11vnc -forever -passwd mysecretpw

Yeah, I'm to stupid to live. This is it

Turning in my geek card...

For Mac OS X, there are several options; what I believe to be the best options are below.

On the server end of things, there's OSXvnc, a nice free VNC server for Mac OS X. (There's even an OS9vnc, on the same page.)

The best free client for Mac OS X, in my opinion, is Chicken of the VNC.

At the commercial end of the spectrum is Apple Remote Desktop 2.1. Apple Remote Desktop is much more than just a remote control solution; it provides desktop and systems management tools, software distribution tools, mass screen sharing, scripted actions, and all sorts of other features. But as of version 2, the remote screen protocol is based on VNC. With one checkbox, any VNC client can connect to any machine running Apple's VNC server software (which it confusingly calls "Remote Desktop Client"), and Apple's client software (which it calls "Remote Desktop Admin") can connect to ordinary VNC servers on any platform. Apple Remote Desktop does automatic resolution scaling, full screen, etc., and as of 2.1, even supports multiple monitors - even when using free VNC clients to connect! The VNC server piece (the one Apple calls "Client") is free, but there's a catch: at least one copy Remote Desktop Admin is required to be "legal", but then Remote Desktop Client can be installed on an unlimited number of machines in your organization.

UltraVNC because their website has a picture of a girl.

Other than that, the only thing that is iffy is the airport extreme--broadcom isn't coming forward with documentation and etc to get that to work correctly

We need something like ndiswrapper for PPC, that would let you use OSX drivers under PPC Linux.

You should check out Desktop Manager for OS X. It will even use those neat user-switching animations to switch desktops (e.g. the cube, etc.). I used it briefly, and it's cool, but I ditched the idea completely, simply because it's so easy to just do "Command+h" to hide the current application. Also, I do use Expose, and that helps.

Zilla.app. It lives on in spirit as Zillion.