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....Regina

Use XSLT to transform your XML to DocBook, then use DocBook XSL to convert to XSL-FO, then Apache FOP to generate a PDF.

Alternatively, skip the DocBook step and transform straight to XSL-FO.

Way back when they tried to sue Neomail for the rights to the name Neomail, which they were using to brand their webmail service. The basis of their claim was that since they had 'thousands and thousands' of users, they had rights to the name.

Though I do realize your intent for humor, rexx is available under the GPL (LGPL actually).

Rexx with tcl bindings also exists, though sadly, is not called called T/Rexx, but Rexx/Tk

You can find them both at:
http://regina-rexx.sourceforge.net/

Isn't this exactly the problem that Freenet was designed to solve?

You can get Nethack for DOS too. http://falconseye.sourceforge.net/

I gather you never heard about regina rexx (I never really did any rexx programming so I don't know how it compares with IBM's implementation)

ELKS

My girlfriend had her birthday yesterday, and I bought her a iRiver iFP895. The more I play with it, the more I want to keep it for myself. By default it uses a proprietary file system you need "iRiver Music Manager" to access, but an optional firmware can turn it into a mass storage device. Both works on Linux (The prop. file system can be mounted using this).

And yes, it plays Ogg.

I've been doing this with my 128mb USB watch for quite awhile now. There's a few USB jumpdrive linux distros out there.

Here, Here, Here, and Here too.

But this is all provided whatever PC you hook it up to allows to boot from USB (usually USB-ZIP).

http://ipodlinux.sourceforge.net/

Gates: What the consumer wants is pretty clear: a single remote control that lets them navigate photos, music, videos, TV in a very rich way. They want to see that on any screen in the house and then have a great portable device where they can take that stuff wherever they want anytime. The full realization of that dream is still years away, but we've taken a dramatic step in delivering that with Media Center.

I think it'd be great if we could beat Microsoft to the punch by offering all of this and more using Linux and open formats (not WMA Bill!). It seems like there is already a lot of work in the area going on (MythTV, Freevo, Mister House, VLC) but is any of this ready to be easily set up by the average Joe? Is there any work being done to put all the pieces together. Perhaps a modded distribution geared specifically to creating and setting up a Media Center type environment. Not only could a Linux based solution put anything from MS to shame it could also force Movies/TV/Music industries to support open formats if the Linux Media Center becomes the dominant player.

Am I dreaming or can the open source community take the lead here?

I did find one written in C however: Agar. It's also being actively developed, so might be worth a shot.

I did find one written in C however: Agar. It's also being actively developed, so might be worth a shot.

Go get iRate.

I would be very surprised if Google Desktop Search doesn't have this functionality by the time Tiger is released. Are there other ways in which Spotlight goes "WAY beyond"?

In reality, it simply gets an image from any web-enabled camera, does robust error correction for 24x7x365 operation, and creates a daily movie of the resulting images.

It's open source, and they can easily modify it any way they need to (or ask me to incorporate the changes they need).

The important thing right now is that we use this momentum, and that we continue to innovate. Here's some issues I believe are important:

• SVG support. It's incomplete - but I think it is unwise not to have at least some level of SVG support in mainline Firefox 1.0 builds. "Build it, and they will come": both web and Mozilla developers. SVG is really a key technology for next-generation web design based on open standards. As an example, Wikipedia has a nice extension called EasyTimeline for rendering graphical timelines. These are currently ugly, non-zoomable PNGs -- SVG would be perfect here, as it would allow timelines with a changing level of detail as you zoom in. Much of the stuff that is currently being done with Flash can be done with SVG.
• Leverage XUL. Whenever I show people demos like MAB and Robin, they tend to be impressed: easy, powerful, instantly deployable web applications. In my opinion, XUL should get a lot more exposure within Firefox - both the product and the website. Make a promise to XUL developers: If you use XUL to write open source applications, and it meets our quality standards, we will add it to the default Firefox bookmarks, and promote it on our website.
• New UIs. Tabs are great, but they're not the Holy Grail of UI design. For example, they don't scale - managing more than 20 or so open documents in one browser is not feasible because you just have lots of "..."s. At this point, I would rather have a vertical, scrollable list of open documents with a nice, dynamic (incremental) title search to instant-switch to a window of your choice, and some other cool navigation tools ("skip to next website from another domain than the current one" etc.). There's no reason why a modern browser shouldn't make it easy to manage 50 or 100 open documents.
• Better editing controls. Yes, I know what you're thinking: Keep Firefox lean. But having a good integrated text editor for things like wikis or even this form into which I'm typing into right now makes life a lot easier for the average user.

Now, if you really want a glimpse of the future, imagine, if you will, that a HTML textarea worked like SubEthaEdit and allowed you to invite other users to edit with your collaboratively, in real-time, a wiki page or weblog entry. But even this really just scratches the surface. The point is, the browser is an immensely important platform. With Firefox, we now have the chance to give an incredible amount of real power to end users. It's not "just a browser" - it's one of the key components of future information and collaboration devices.

Congratulations to the Mozilla project for getting us where we are right now. We still have a long way to go. I hope in 10 years, open source technology will be used by virtually everyone to access the rapidly growing digital commons.

there is at least one Fortune-500 company that has a "no F/OSS unless absolutely neccessary" policy that is a direct result of SCO's rhetoric.

At my home, on my network, we have several computers and several printers. We can change the print quality, and turn duplexing on and off for our DeskJet 970C.

Most of our applications are GNOME applications, and the GNOME native print dialogs let you choose most of the settings you want.

For applications that don't have GNOME print dialogs, such as FireFox, we use gtklp for printing. This collects the print job in a file and then pops up a nice dialog interface that lets you select options.

steveha

Here's something that Montavista has contributed to the Linux kernel - PRAMFS. A quote (emphasis mine):

Many embedded systems have a block of non-volatile RAM seperate from normal system memory, i.e. of which the kernel maintains no memory page descriptors. For such systems it would be beneficial to mount a fast read/write filesystem over this "I/O memory", for storing frequently accessed data that must survive system reboots and power cycles. An example usage might be system logs under /var/log, or a user address book in a cell phone or PDA.

[...]

2. If the backing-store RAM is comparable in access speed to system memory, there's really no point in caching the file I/O data in the page cache. Better to move file data directly between the user buffers and the backing store RAM, i.e. use direct I/O.

They've described that they want to use this stuff in a cell phone or PDA, yet have described an NVRAM technology that does not exist (as fast as system memory?). Methinks that they're working with Intel on some new fangled NVRAM, (hint, look for Ovonic). Samsung appears to be working with PRAM as well.

So this MontaVista file system is a PRAM-File System, maybe...

MakeAVI (free, source available) is a GUI only tool for making ... AVIs. Quick and simple to use.

the basic command was be something like:

jpeg2yuv -v 0 -f 24 -I p -b 0 -j frames/%06d.jpg |
mpeg2enc -n n -a 2 -F 2 -f 2 -b 2800 -q 2 -2 1 -4 1 -o MOVIE.mpg

Not all of those switches are necessary and ive left out other that might be needed. but thats what man pages and experimentation are for. Mjpegtools, though not particularly easy to use, is capable of making finely tuned and broadly portable video.

Either transcode or mencoder might be easier or better for you; look at them too.

OOo is incredible, considering how young the project is. Currently, I consider it to be about as good as MS Office 97.

Stop whining about the UI and MS compatibility; they will both improve.

My main concern is BLOAT. OOo is a memory hog, and its integrated PDF export is *extremely* inefficient. Don't get me wrong, PDF export is a killer feature, but I usually use CUPS-PDF on Linux or PDFCreator on Windows. Both produce more compact files.

Good work OOo team! You're well on your way to producing a VERY strong product!

There isn't one. But PDFCreator does a damn good job ;)

And you need the full version of Adobe Acrobat to get access to that add on.

Or you could get a free version here.

But yes, PDF Export is not native to MS Office.

>This sounds great but unfortunately, rarely works in the real world. Most people create documents for others to view, and in today's corporate environment, that means .doc format. As simple as that.

And, if your whole company is using OpenOffice... what then? Scrap Microsoft Office? Sounds great!

I run a company and apart from having to install Word/Excel/Powerpoint viewer (free) to deal with other companies files, I've never actually had any reason to buy Microsoft Office. At over $1,000 a seat, I think I'll stick with OpenOffice and spend an hour or two a month dealing with editing the occasional foreign file that doesn't import all that well. If it ever came to the point where I really had to deal with MS files all the time from other companies, I'd probably buy one or two seats of MS licenses (not one for each computer) so that people can use it to massage the document back to reality (RTF) when its needed. Besides, there's always wv when you're stuck, which is far more versatile than MS Office.

All in all, it just works out cheaper. Especially for small businesses.

I indeed wrote such as Abiword (with a link which should have been toward this site).
I used Abiword under both BeOS and OSX where these fit nicely.
Anyway I do not use it intensively as I now work using the Latex port for OSX link, link and link...

And FLAC is Ogg

Why go to the trouble of linking a page which contradicts you?

If I've understood correctly, Ogg wraps FLAC, just as it wraps Vorbis and other streams. And just as FairPlay wraps AAC, and QuickTime wraps all sorts of stuff.

Sure, FLAC can be encapsulated in an Ogg stream, but it has its own lightweight native format that the command-line FLAC tools use, and which exists quite happily without Ogg.

The question, "Does it run free software?" is not a joke, it's important to me.

As far as PalmOS devices go, the answer is yes. The PRC-Tools toolchain is all GPL and can take full advantage of PalmOS. Honestly, Palm has decently embraced open source while not actually using Linux on their devices. On the other hand, I'm not familiar with any way to get an app onto an Axim without using a Microsoft compiler. That is until they get Linux running on them and as quickly as the Axim target is moving, I wouldn't hold your breath.

How about FLAC or OGG?

Ogg isn't an acronym, so don't capitalise it. And FLAC is Ogg.

Oh come on, did you even look at the documentation? Your example isn't even close to correct syntax. It's not as bad as you're trying to make it out to be.

inserts:
INSERT r TUPLE {x 1, y 3};
r += TUPLE {x 1, y 3};

deletes:
DELETE r WHERE x = 2;
r -= WHERE x = 2;
r -= [ x = 2 ];

updates:
UPDATE r WHERE x = 2 SET ( y := 3, z := 4);
r @= WHERE x = 2 SET ( y := 3, z := 4 );
r @= [ x = 2 ] SET ( y := 3, z := 4 );
r @= [ x = 2 ] ( y := 3, z := 4 );

http://dbappbuilder.sourceforge.net/Rel.html

INSERT INTO r RELATION {TUPLE {x 1, y 3}};

INSERT r TUPLE {x 1, y 3};

r += TUPLE {x 1, y 3};

DELETE r;

r -= ALL;

DELETE r WHERE x = 2;

r -= WHERE x = 2;

r -= [ x = 2 ];

UPDATE r WHERE x = 2 SET ( y := 3, z := 4);

r @= WHERE x = 2 SET ( y := 3, z := 4 );

r @= [ x = 2 ] SET ( y := 3, z := 4 );

r @= [ x = 2 ] ( y := 3, z := 4 );

// This is a comment line

/* This is a multi-line
comment block */

Lisps allow usage of SQL-like syntax inside programs without stuff like "SELECT X FROM Y WHERE Z = ? ORDER BY A" or "SELECT X FROM Y WHERE Z = '" + something + "' ORDER BY A". Look here and here.

PearPC does it for linux/X86

Well, if you want a pure OO maximum, rather than a Java maximum, then there would be a maximum method on a collection.

You obviously have not read my definition of a concept cast. A concept cast is when you cannot represent a concept, and use some alternate concept in its place. It's very insidious, and most people don't even realize when it happens.

In your case, you replaced the concept of maximum of N elements with the concept of a collection containing N elements. They are close, but not identical. As a result, semantic noise is introduced, for instance boxing and unboxing, or built-in memory management for lists (it depends on a particular implementation).

Well, if you want a pure OO maximum, rather than a Java maximum, then there would be a maximum method on a collection.

You obviously have not read my definition of a concept cast. A concept cast is when you cannot represent a concept, and use some alternate concept in its place. It's very insidious, and most people don't even realize when it happens.

In your case, you replaced the concept of maximum of N elements with the concept of a collection containing N elements. They are close, but not identical. As a result, semantic noise is introduced, for instance boxing and unboxing, or built-in memory management for lists (it depends on a particular implementation).

HaskellDB
SchemeQL

No it's not. Use PearPC for x86 PPC emulation.

For those interested, the paper describing this language (linked to from the article) is available here. There's a link to the grammar of the language at the end of that paper.

I use SQL quite a lot. It's certainly great for a lot of things, but it does have some limitations here and there. For instance, trying to deal with things like hierarchical structures, or joining on having identical/similar children, is a nightmare in SQL. Even if the query doesn't need to be efficient to run, it can still be extremely complicated to write and test. SQL simply wasn't designed or intended to deal with those sorts of structures.

Unfortunately, short of using external code outside the database, it's so often a choice between using SQL or nothing else for writing a query in a particular database rather than an option between SQL and another language. In some ways it's like being forced to write every program in C or every program in Java or every program in Lisp, where realistically one or another might be better suited to a particular task.

I suppose one of the reasons for only supporting SQL is that a predictible query language makes it easier to arrange data structures so they can be queried most efficiently. Still, it'd be nice to see an alternative front-end language or two supported in one or more of the major databases. Not every query needs to be ultra-efficient, and there have been many times where I would've liked to trade an efficient query execution for a language where what I wanted was more writeable.

Geesh, links to a press release and trade rag article, and not even the name of the project itself? Go read some real information about Rel, look at the examples, download the source, have fun.

Is right here.

From the introduction: "Rel is intended to serve multiple purposes:
-It is a tool for learning, teaching, and exploring relational database concepts in general;
-It is a tool for discovering the power and expressiveness of a true relational language;
-It is a tool for learning Tutorial D;
-It is a relational database server;
-It may serve as a prototype or "working blueprint" for future implementations of Tutorial D or any "D" language (more on this later);
-It may serve as a platform for experimenting with and/or examining database engine internals. "

Almost all the Object Oriented stuff people layer on predicates are, at best, an ad hoc, and poor, means of optimizing execution speed.

Let me explain.

One of the principles of polymorphism is that the same method has the same abstract meaning regardless of the kind of object. A predicate considered as a method subsumes such polymorphism by simply trying the various possible implementations of the method and committing to only those that succeed. If more than one succeeds then so be it -- that's the whole idea of relations as opposed to functions.

So, one reason you want all this OO stuff is the inheritance hierarchies keep you from going through all possible interpretations of a given method when the vast majority of them will fail for a given object.

Another, related, problem is that inheritance provides defaults without requiring a lot of thinking on the part of the computer. What I mean by "thinking" here is the sort of thing that is done by statistical imputation of missing data via algorithms like expectation maximization (EM) or multi-relational data mining via inductive logic programming.

So, the other reason you want all this OO stuff is so you can avoid mining a background database to provide reasonable defaults for various aspects of the data.

Some might be concerned that over-riding isn't absolute in such a system -- that you don't absolutely block, say, more generic methods when you have more specific ones present, and they're right. You don't block those methods -- you lower their priority by lowering the probability of those implementations via the statistical methods of imputation and/or induction. In a microthreading environment they most likely won't get any resources allocated to them before other higher priority implementations have succeeded. In a single threaded/depth-first environment they will be down the list of desired alternatives -- but they won't be discarded until something equivalent to a prolog cut operation kills them off.

However, and this is the important point, the work that has been expended toward OO facilities has vastly outstripped the effort that which has been put toward more parsimonious ways of optimizing predicate systems.

One of the better predicate calculus systems out there -- more promising due to its use of tabling to avoid infinite regress on head-recursive definitions and its optimization of queries using some fairly general theorems of predicate calculus -- is XSB. It has an interface to odbc and a direct interface to Oracle, but it would be better if it had something like a recoverable virtual memory substrate to support its roll-back semantics.

Almost all the Object Oriented stuff people layer on predicates are, at best, an ad hoc, and poor, means of optimizing execution speed.

Let me explain.

One of the principles of polymorphism is that the same method has the same abstract meaning regardless of the kind of object. A predicate considered as a method subsumes such polymorphism by simply trying the various possible implementations of the method and committing to only those that succeed. If more than one succeeds then so be it -- that's the whole idea of relations as opposed to functions.

So, one reason you want all this OO stuff is the inheritance hierarchies keep you from going through all possible interpretations of a given method when the vast majority of them will fail for a given object.

Another, related, problem is that inheritance provides defaults without requiring a lot of thinking on the part of the computer. What I mean by "thinking" here is the sort of thing that is done by statistical imputation of missing data via algorithms like expectation maximization (EM) or multi-relational data mining via inductive logic programming.

So, the other reason you want all this OO stuff is so you can avoid mining a background database to provide reasonable defaults for various aspects of the data.

Some might be concerned that over-riding isn't absolute in such a system -- that you don't absolutely block, say, more generic methods when you have more specific ones present, and they're right. You don't block those methods -- you lower their priority by lowering the probability of those implementations via the statistical methods of imputation and/or induction. In a microthreading environment they most likely won't get any resources allocated to them before other higher priority implementations have succeeded. In a single threaded/depth-first environment they will be down the list of desired alternatives -- but they won't be discarded until something equivalent to a prolog cut operation kills them off.

However, and this is the important point, the work that has been expended toward OO facilities has vastly outstripped the effort that which has been put toward more parsimonious ways of optimizing predicate systems.

One of the better predicate calculus systems out there -- more promising due to its use of tabling to avoid infinite regress on head-recursive definitions and its optimization of queries using some fairly general theorems of predicate calculus -- is XSB. It has an interface to odbc and a direct interface to Oracle, but it would be better if it had something like a recoverable virtual memory substrate to support its roll-back semantics.

Sony seems to be suffering from big misleadingness regarding integration and portability. When I bought my Sony camera, I looked for something that I knew I could use under Linux, so I got an all-purpose CDR-TRV345E DV camera (which accidentally included a USB link too).

The DV part works fine, it works so well that I actually use it to backup my data. The USB drivers are proprietary stuff. If you lose the CD, Sony WON'T give you a copy of your drivers (didn't happen to me, but I found lots of complaints of people on that situation while searching for technical information regarding their "USB Stream", which they don't disclose either).

Additionally, if the software they speak about is that Pixella ImageMixer for Sony, forget about it, you better find something else if you really mean to edit quality video.

Personally I have been sort of disappointed with Sony lately. They were the first brand I used to look for quality electronic stuff, but this is quickly changing.

Well, you can already control Jurassic Park from the Linux desktop. In open source.

Too bad the Jurassic Park code maintenance isn't yet very much possible. There's still no compiler that could compile that badly documented bastard child of C, Pascal and line noise that they used there... one of the raptors ate the language specs.

Why does the mapping have to be direct to be efficient? We've already got JIT compilers for Java bytecode, what makes you think it's impossible to do the same thing with a real world instruction set? Have you even thought about it?

Look at PearPC. They are getting not-great numbers right now (1/15 clock speed even with JIT like you are referring to). Yes, I have thought about it a bit, and i'd love to emulate, but it just isn't there for x86 and unless this CherryOS thing turns out not to be vapor, it probably never will be until the PPC architecture is so old (>5yr) that it isn't useful for running current applications.

GNAP [Gay Nigger Associated Press], ASSEVILLERS, FRANCE - In a move that is sure to redefine the open source community of the future, Gay Nigger Association of America (News | Websites) introduced the first open source corpse after the untimely death of Hans Bakker.

Bakker, a developer for the OpenBSD project, which preceded him in death, was travelling back to Paris after the SANE conference. Unfortunately, known hippie and NAMBLA member Richard Stallman had been dropped off at his hotel and was not in the car when a truck made the first contribution to Bakker's corpse's CVS by merging into it at high speed. Bakker's death was confirmed immediately via IRC by his virtual girlfriend.

The instant the opened skull was declared in the public domain, GNAA member Gary Niger annointed it with Holy Gay Nigger Seed to ensure a smooth passage into the afterlife and robust continued development. Thrusting rhythmically into the still-warm and pulsing brain of the dying man, Gary shouted "FUCK BSD; BSD IS DYING; BSD SUCKS; BSD IS DEAD TO ME; BSD DID WTC LOL" before exploding in orgasmic waves of pleasure as the sensitive nerves at the tip of his penis made contact with Bakker's last semi-conscious thoughts.

Associated bacteria immediately lined up to make their contributions, as did several nearby flies hoping to raise families of open source maggots. However, CmdrTaco of Slashdot, a known scene gadfly and AZT addict, flopped heavily into the area while loudly proclaiming first dibs on the rectum. In response, #GNAA attendee GasJews challenged him. "Tell that fag CmdrTaco that I've got first dibs on this dead anus," he said, "and that I'm going to beat him down, then fuck him tenderly all night long," said GasJews, liberally spraying Holy Gay Nigger Seed over the EMS personnel and local French police, who were delighted.

Since the 1990s, open source has been a popular way of developing free software for the general public, maintained by teams of pimply nerds with angst at their utter uselessness outside of the imaginary world of computers and networks. Much like a religion, it requires absolute obedience to its concept and encourages contributors to vehemently rail against any software which actually functions, including Microsoft's popular Windows operating system.

The future of Open Source Hans Baker Corpse (OSHBC) remains to be determined as the development team is still being assembled. Using the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), developers will be able to modify the corpse to refine its function as a BSD-analogue, something made easier by the fact that both are dead. All interested developers are encouraged to contact the OSHBC project at http://sourceforge.net/.

About Hans Bakker

Hans Bakker was a lowly BSD developer who like many sought to replace a real world life with online presence as a feeble justification that he was "doing something" about the world's dire situation. Most of his days were spent on IRC, flirting with fat girls who had once gone through a gothic phase before deciding on Lesbianism, at which point the resounding lack of attention nearly starved them. Read more at his unfinished closed-source site, http://www.hans.cx.

About Assevillers

Assevillers, France, is a small town of population 228 in the gorgeous pastel-colored French countryside. During WWII, it was home to several prostitutes who slept with occupying Germans, recognizing the dominant cocks of these very hetero warriors as the future of France, which has been a bottom since roughly AD 1250. The French people have fought many wars during that time and have won none of them, distingu

For SyncManager software on Linux I use NDBM which runs on java .. works great. http://neurosdbm.sourceforge.net/ have fun.

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/ (PearPC) runs at around 20% speed, which leads me to believe that not only did the CherryOS people rip off the PearPC project, but they also inverted their ratio.