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Maintaining and deploying useful FAQs can be a very tedious process. Luckily there are a number of open source FAQ generation and management tools out there that exist to try and make it a bit easier.

FAQs. No matter how you slice 'em up and package them, at the end of the day are all about content. That's where it gets a bit interesting to try and see what tool (if any) you should consider for your FAQ as there are obviously a number of different type of tools that exist to help manage content. Many of the popular open source content management will have rudimentary FAQ capabilities. That is, they'll have a module/block/content unit that is allocated in its structure for the admin to populate with content. On the other end of the spectrum are Wikis that are usually more general purpose and not specifically geared for FAQs, though often are used for that purpose.

Then of course there are the tools that supposedly have been specifically developed for FAQs, remarkably enough, these tend to have the word FAQ in their title. Projects, like FAQ-IT, Faq-O-Matic, piFAQ, makefaq and phpMyFaq populate the landscape.

For the most part though many of them are only simple page based content management tools that allow the admin to post their own list of questions and answers. Makefaq, for example, is a Python based tool that takes a text file and generates a nicely formatted FAQ page. PiFaq allows users a basic login functionality to update the FAQ remotely but it's still quite simple and basic.

FAQ-O-Matic is a bit more sophisticated in that it has a 'slicker' UI and a very usability-friendly default template, but still it's essentially a glorified text editor. Simple enough though I suppose it's still easier than manually coding pages and uploading, but who does that anymore anyway?

FAQs are of course, Frequently Asked Questions, so wouldn't it make sense for a FAQ application to be a collection of questions, user submitted or admin driven, with a top 5 listing of the most recently asked questions and a top 10 listing of the most actively viewed list of questions. That's where the "frequently" comes in.

PhpMyFAQ

That's the general idea behind phpMyFAQ which, in my opinion, stands out from the rest of the tools that claim to be FAQ focused. The version that I'm using at the time of writing this article is 1.4.1 and is licensed under the Mozilla Public License. phpMyFAQ runs on either Apache 1.3.x or 2.x, IIS, PHP 4.3.8 or greater (including PHP 5) and utilizes a MySQL database of 3.23.x or higher. Installation of phpMyFAQ is relatively straight forward, unpack the archive, set up the MySQL database and then run the included install script. It's that easy.

Setting up a FAQ in phpMyFAQ is a bit different than just a simple text file with a question and answer. This application is all about FAQ's and is, for lack of a better term, a content management system for question management. You'll notice this from the very first interface, the default template homepage, that literally shows visitors the most frequently asked and viewed questions on the site.

Users can add content, ask a question, and view open questions, as well as, search through the FAQ. Basic bread and butter stuff right? Don't worry it gets better, for the actual FAQ detail users can send the FAQ detail to a friend, view/save as a PDF, view a printer friendly version, export as XML, rate the FAQ detail and, based partially on the permission set-up by the admin, provide inline comments.

The admin interface is also jammed packed with features including user administration and tracking, database backup, export of your top 5 latest records and top 10 viewed entries to

It's slowing down, so here's the text:

Maintaining and deploying useful FAQs can be a very tedious process. Luckily there are a number of open source FAQ generation and management tools out there that exist to try and make it a bit easier.

FAQs. No matter how you slice 'em up and package them, at the end of the day are all about content. That's where it gets a bit interesting to try and see what tool (if any) you should consider for your FAQ as there are obviously a number of different type of tools that exist to help manage content. Many of the popular open source content management will have rudimentary FAQ capabilities. That is, they'll have a module/block/content unit that is allocated in its structure for the admin to populate with content. On the other end of the spectrum are Wikis that are usually more general purpose and not specifically geared for FAQs, though often are used for that purpose.

Then of course there are the tools that supposedly have been specifically developed for FAQs, remarkably enough, these tend to have the word FAQ in their title. Projects, like FAQ-IT, Faq-O-Matic, piFAQ, makefaq and phpMyFaq populate the landscape.

For the most part though many of them are only simple page based content management tools that allow the admin to post their own list of questions and answers. Makefaq, for example, is a Python based tool that takes a text file and generates a nicely formatted FAQ page. PiFaq allows users a basic login functionality to update the FAQ remotely but it's still quite simple and basic.

FAQ-O-Matic is a bit more sophisticated in that it has a 'slicker' UI and a very usability-friendly default template, but still it's essentially a glorified text editor. Simple enough though I suppose it's still easier than manually coding pages and uploading, but who does that anymore anyway?

FAQs are of course, Frequently Asked Questions, so wouldn't it make sense for a FAQ application to be a collection of questions, user submitted or admin driven, with a top 5 listing of the most recently asked questions and a top 10 listing of the most actively viewed list of questions. That's where the "frequently" comes in.

PhpMyFAQ

That's the general idea behind phpMyFAQ which, in my opinion, stands out from the rest of the tools that claim to be FAQ focused. The version that I'm using at the time of writing this article is 1.4.1 and is licensed under the Mozilla Public License. phpMyFAQ runs on either Apache 1.3.x or 2.x, IIS, PHP 4.3.8 or greater (including PHP 5) and utilizes a MySQL database of 3.23.x or higher. Installation of phpMyFAQ is relatively straight forward, unpack the archive, set up the MySQL database and then run the included install script. It's that easy.

Setting up a FAQ in phpMyFAQ is a bit different than just a simple text file with a question and answer. This application is all about FAQ's and is, for lack of a better term, a content management system for question management. You'll notice this from the very first interface, the default template homepage, that literally shows visitors the most frequently asked and viewed questions on the site.

Users can add content, ask a question, and view open questions, as well as, search through the FAQ. Basic bread and butter stuff right? Don't worry it gets better, for the actual FAQ detail users can send the FAQ detail to a friend, view/save as a PDF, view a printer friendly version, export as XML, rate the FAQ detail and, based partially on the permission set-up by the admin, provide inline comments.

The admin interface is also jammed packed with features including user administration and tracking, database backup, export of your top 5 latest records and top 10 viewed entries to

LizardTech's DjVu plugin is avaialable for Windows, OS X, and OS 9 here. The Windows version does work on Firefox, although not as well as it does in IE, unfortunately.

The UNIX versions are all based off of DjVuLibre, and are not made by LizardTech. Those can be found at sourceforge.

Can you imagine using a PC with a one-button mouse? I don't think so.

I can use my PC without any mouse at all.

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

I noticed there have been a lot of posts like this in this thread. They're using Linux (already running on the xbox hardware for quite a while) and PearPC, a PowerPC emulater known to be able to run OS X on X86 hardware.

THe main reason this works on the XBox is because it's already possible on x86 desktops using PearPC.

It's just PearPC PowerPC Architecture Emulator installed on Xbox and it's painfully-as-hell slow atm, and especially on Xbox. Nothing to see, move on.

I dunno about your company, but where I work, and a number of other places I know of (friends work there, ex-employment, etc...) there's a lot of stuff on the web-- time cards, change management systems, computer-based training, employee locaterators... and it all requires MSIE. It's either ActiveX, or uses proprietary MSIE broken HTML, or what-have-you, because the webmonkeys that created it know everyone has a Windows box on their desk so they could do it the easy way instead of the right way.

They seem to have focused specifically on the mass distribution issues (some analysis here)and attempted to address those.

They seem to have focused specifically on the mass distribution issues (some analysis here)and attempted to address those.

You mean GAIN, not GAIM.

This sounds an awful lot like Kast/Konspire2b. Basically, "channel" owners broadcast out a file (of any type) to others who in turn broadcast it to others and so on. Everything posted to a channel is downloaded by a subscriber to that channel (provided they are online). Sadly this fairly novel project seems to have died off, much like the original Konspire, which was also fairly novel.

Hell, we have a perl script http://sourceforge.net/projects/netreg/ that does that on our network - will they be comming after us next?

Internet News is reporting that on Monday, some gmail accounts contained an Atom link for reading your email summaries in a news reader.

So I can see my summaries in trn?

If Ipod looks basically like a hard drive once mounted (which i think it does), I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to use streamripper and then snag say WNYC's NPR mp3 stream automatically for whatever shows you want and then move the appropriate streams to your automounted ipod drive in HFS.

If shows that you like are run overnight you could probably cron script this whole thing into a 5 line script that does exactly what you want.

Or better yet, have a script generate the cron scripts for you for each show you want and have a sync script sync it for you.. -bloo

Using bittorrent to distribute movie files is cool. But it is not exactly network broadcasting.

P2P Radio is the way to go. It can stream audio and video using peers. There are some p2p radio stations out there and TV stations are not far behind.

They promised no partisan front-page politics stories until they fixed it...

As others have mentioned, the best cards with open drivers are based on ATI's R200 chipset. These cards include the Radeon 8500 and 9100, and FireGL 8700 and 8800. While the FireGL 8800 is probably fastest, it is also crazy expensive. The 9100 is a rebadged 8500 with different core and memory clock speeds. I have been told the 8500 should be faster, but have never seen any benchmark proving one to be faster than the other.

I am not sure how fast the ViaCLE266 is, but it does not matter since it is a chipset for motherboards, and I do not think it is available as a card. I read a review somewhere claiming it was decent, which given the time since the 8500's release may mean it is the roughly the same, worse, or better. It has totally open drivers.

S3's DeltaChrome (S4/S8) is suppose to get an open source driver released from S3. Also it has been claimed people who are not S3 have received the specs necessary to write drivers for the card. Via is S3's parent corporation, and these announcements were made at approximately the same time Via opensourced the CLE266 driver and the driver for their hardware mpeg decoder. DeltaChrome cards are not yet available in the United States. They were suppose to be available quite awhile back. They are available in Asia and Europe and have been for a few months now. Any DeltaChrome card (even the budget S4) would smoke an anceint Radeon 8500, but I do not know that I would wait forever for DeltaChrome boards and linux drivers to appear.

As others have mentioned, the best cards with open drivers are based on ATI's R200 chipset. These cards include the Radeon 8500 and 9100, and FireGL 8700 and 8800. While the FireGL 8800 is probably fastest, it is also crazy expensive. The 9100 is a rebadged 8500 with different core and memory clock speeds. I have been told the 8500 should be faster, but have never seen any benchmark proving one to be faster than the other.

I am not sure how fast the ViaCLE266 is, but it does not matter since it is a chipset for motherboards, and I do not think it is available as a card. I read a review somewhere claiming it was decent, which given the time since the 8500's release may mean it is the roughly the same, worse, or better. It has totally open drivers.

S3's DeltaChrome (S4/S8) is suppose to get an open source driver released from S3. Also it has been claimed people who are not S3 have received the specs necessary to write drivers for the card. Via is S3's parent corporation, and these announcements were made at approximately the same time Via opensourced the CLE266 driver and the driver for their hardware mpeg decoder. DeltaChrome cards are not yet available in the United States. They were suppose to be available quite awhile back. They are available in Asia and Europe and have been for a few months now. Any DeltaChrome card (even the budget S4) would smoke an anceint Radeon 8500, but I do not know that I would wait forever for DeltaChrome boards and linux drivers to appear.

Does this help? (found using google.

Drivers are only maintained as long as the developer is around. And unless you have the skills to write your own drivers (and most of us, including large numbers of application developers, *don't*)

I do get frustrated with this "poor helpless me" attitude. I didn't know what I was doing when I first ported a piece of kernel code from one kernel API to another. But I learnt by doing it. It's not like the process is shrouded in secrecy; you have the source of a driver that used to work, the specs, and mailing lists that'll help if you can post coherent and well-researched queries. What more do you want, for Pete's sake?! And, as other posters point out, there's also nothing stopping you from finding a developer who'll port the driver for you for money - perhaps raised by putting up a donations webpage where other owners of the same hardware can contribute.

...like with the recent 4k stacks issue...

You mean the "issue" that nvidia had *working drivers* for within weeks after it was *even an option* in the kernel? You mean the "issue" that "open" drivers like *ahem* ATI have and NVidia does not?

Have you got a reference for that assertion? I'm still using 2.4, so I can't provide experience to the contrary, but it would surprise me if that's still true...

--

Does someone wanna give a quick HOWTO and/or a pointer to a suitably high-level explanation? Thanks.

So can FLOSS on windows:

"PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application."

It's good to hear about the Einstein Emulator. I wonder what happened to the GNUton project; it seemed to be working in the same direction and as far as I know actually got a bootable system running through the magic of Python. Granted, there's been no status update since 2000, but I've certainly seen free software projects go dormant longer.

Recently Newton's Library has gone live again; I'm one of the volunteer librarians. If anyone is interested in helping out, let me know. The Newton MessagePad is a great device for reading e-books, and the potential of new hardware certainly can't hurt.

Are there any features you need present in SFTP but not SCP?

While technically, not stolen, I just never paid the license fee to encode my CD collection to MP3 using LAME.

My hardware music player can only do MP3 and WMA, otherwise I would've used OGG.

Really though, it won't matter. If the Induce Act gets passed, we can kiss all of our iPods and similar devices goodbye.

I setup a Linux box with a couple of inexpensive Netcams from http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details /US/EN,CRID=4,CONTENTID=5042. I use ffmpeg http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/index.php to capture the data and provide streams for ffserver.
I then can watch my monkeys playing all day from Windows Media player at work. By the way, I have firewall rules that only allow access to me and other family members. This isn't to watch a baby sitter as much as it is to be a part of the lives of my children. I wish we all didn't have to work and could stay with our children full time. But we can't. Video and audio during the day on breaks is good for me.
--russ

I know what you mean, it's hard to tell whether the songwriter has given permission to the musician to make the track available, but it's up to the musician to get that permission.

I feel pretty comfortable in saying that iRATE's developers don't have anything to worry about in helping others find the tracks that musicians have already posted. All the music download sites I listed appear to me to be legit.

50%? Are you kidding? It's rare to see a Windows computer with less than 100% pure, unadulterated, stolen shit in it

That certainly rings true among the people I know - at least with regards to their home computers. 100% of them run pirated copies of WinXP, pirated photoshop, pirated Office, etc...

Personally I think the likes of Abiword make a perfectly acceptable replacement for Word, at least for home users - and often times businesses would do just fine with it. I think Abiword is an upgrade from MS Word - others my not agree. But it's definitely faster to load, looks just as good (better in my opinion), uses less memory, and has more than enough features to keep home users, college students, and business people happy.

I'm not a huge fan of Open Office - not because there's anything wrong with it. It's just that I don't really need an Office Suite. (I imagine most home users don't.) But for those who do "need" it, I think it's a great substitute for the $300+ MS Office Suite.

For my own spreadsheet needs, I prefer Gnumeric because it feels very light weight while still having all the features I need. Plus I think it looks great and it's a heck of a lot faster to load up than OOo. The only problem with Gnumeric is that there isn't a Windows port (that I know of).

I also have several friends who pirate the "Pro" version of Trillian. I finally convinced my friend to give the Windows Port of gaim a try and he has been using it ever since. Bonus - download the encryption plugin for gaim and have secure messaging.

I don't know enough about Photoshop and image editing to know if The Gimp is an acceptable replacement. I've read several posts where people say it is *not* (an acceptable replacement.) I'll have to take their word for it. My image editing needs are very basic so gThumb is about all I really need.

I have another friend who pirates FTP software. With the existence of FileZilla, I fail to see the point. What can't FileZilla do?

A lot of people pirate WinZip. I have to admit that WinZip does have a pretty interface (if you use Windows), but if you don't want to pay for it, and you don't want to take the risk of infecting your Windows computer with a virus when you download a WinZip crack of Kazaa, then I recommend 7-zip as a free alternative. Also, the last time I saw WinZip (which admittedly was years ago) there were a few archive types it didn't handle.

There are so many great Free and Open Source alternatives available, even if you use Windows.

Get FireFox now

The easiest way to do it is with iRATE radio. It downloads tracks from music hosting services like the Internet Underground Music Archive, using a collaborative filtering system to select the tracks you're most likely to enjoy.

The client fetches the URLs of a few tracks from iRATE's central database server, then downloads them directly from the servers where the musicians have them hosted. When you listen to the new tracks, you rate them according to how much you like and dislike them. The next time iRATE contacts the server, it submits your ratings, which are then correllated with the ratings of other users to find the best tracks for you.

Basically, if you and I enjoy the same kind of music, iRATE will fetch for you all the same music I like. If we disagree on our taste in music, iRATE will avoid downloading for you the music I enjoy.

iRATE radio is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL. A new version, 0.4, is expected to be released within a couple weeks. You can help with testing if you try out the unstable builds and report bugs using SourceForge's bug tracking system.

I discuss iRATE and many other ways to download music free and legally in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

I want every p2p network user to read my article. If you also feel that more people should read it, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog, or from message boards.

Thank you for your attention.

The easiest way to do it is with iRATE radio. It downloads tracks from music hosting services like the Internet Underground Music Archive, using a collaborative filtering system to select the tracks you're most likely to enjoy.

The client fetches the URLs of a few tracks from iRATE's central database server, then downloads them directly from the servers where the musicians have them hosted. When you listen to the new tracks, you rate them according to how much you like and dislike them. The next time iRATE contacts the server, it submits your ratings, which are then correllated with the ratings of other users to find the best tracks for you.

Basically, if you and I enjoy the same kind of music, iRATE will fetch for you all the same music I like. If we disagree on our taste in music, iRATE will avoid downloading for you the music I enjoy.

iRATE radio is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL. A new version, 0.4, is expected to be released within a couple weeks. You can help with testing if you try out the unstable builds and report bugs using SourceForge's bug tracking system.

I discuss iRATE and many other ways to download music free and legally in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

I want every p2p network user to read my article. If you also feel that more people should read it, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog, or from message boards.

Thank you for your attention.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dorgem/

Has the built-in web server, or will upload to FTP, and can save frames to a .avi archive for review later. Works with any video for windows compatible source (basically any cam that works with windows, including my GeForce video card's video in jack), and the author is continually updating it.

Tm

This'll work - take a look at the supported hardware for the Motion package. That list of cameras is bogus - there are so many others that will work just fine. I'll post again if I can find one.

I've set up a few light video monitoring systems before, and here's what I would do... Any camera with a BNC connector would work well. There are several "night vision" cameras that work well for around $100 - $150. If I remember the names, I'll post them. A linux web server is great, since you can buy the BTTV card for it, plug the camera into the card, and run motion, an open source video capture program. It just captures jpegs, but you can configure how often, and the webserver function (if I recall) pretty much allows for full motion viewing. Or, you can have it place jpegs every xx seconds to your web server, and see the images from your phone. The whole solution should come in under $250 - $300, and it's way more fun that any packaged product. Most BTTV cards come with 4 ports, so you can expand from a nannycam to whole house monitoring system fairly easily. Motion supports as many cams as you can throw at it.

"Given the huge number of Linux drivers, those are the kind of changes that Apple can pull off but a near to impossible to do in the Linux world." You trade the freedom to use lots of different hardware (Linux) for the convenience of using Apple hardware. Deciding which is better is personal.

kernel are not that important anymore" I have difficulty agreeing with this comment. Certainly there may be a great deal of interoperability between Linux and OSX (perhaps ignoring the GPL in some cases) but this is not the same as saying that the particular kernels are not important. If your comment were correct, would we need Free Darwin? (Also here and here.)

Actually, I don't know who needs Free Darwin, I don't even know if people actually use it. People who want to install GNU programs and libraries usually rely on less political and more practical distributions, like fink, or open darwin (which is done with some help from Apple) or even gentoo's portage.

A related example is Quake3; it runs much faster under Linux than under Windows. Sometime Windows (applications) run faster under wine than under Windows.

However, OSX has an extra layer which probably does not help speed things up.)

"Given the huge number of Linux drivers, those are the kind of changes that Apple can pull off but a near to impossible to do in the Linux world." You trade the freedom to use lots of different hardware (Linux) for the convenience of using Apple hardware. Deciding which is better is personal.

kernel are not that important anymore" I have difficulty agreeing with this comment. Certainly there may be a great deal of interoperability between Linux and OSX (perhaps ignoring the GPL in some cases) but this is not the same as saying that the particular kernels are not important. If your comment were correct, would we need Free Darwin? (Also here and here.)

Actually, I don't know who needs Free Darwin, I don't even know if people actually use it. People who want to install GNU programs and libraries usually rely on less political and more practical distributions, like fink, or open darwin (which is done with some help from Apple) or even gentoo's portage.

A related example is Quake3; it runs much faster under Linux than under Windows. Sometime Windows (applications) run faster under wine than under Windows.

However, OSX has an extra layer which probably does not help speed things up.)

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, distinguishing themselves primarily by near-instant s

There is always GLIS (Gentoo Linux Install Script):
http://glis.sourceforge.net/

No it's not

"Given the huge number of Linux drivers, those are the kind of changes that Apple can pull off but a near to impossible to do in the Linux world."
You trade the freedom to use lots of different hardware (Linux) for the convenience of using Apple hardware. Deciding which is better is personal.

"kernel are not that important anymore"
I have difficulty agreeing with this comment. Certainly there may be a great deal of interoperability between Linux and OSX (perhaps ignoring the GPL in some cases) but this is not the same as saying that the particular kernels are not important. If your comment were correct, would we need Free Darwin? (Also here and here.)

As the Linux kernel progresses (adding more improved journaled file systems, better smp support, better use of resources, etc.), I believe the same applications which run under Linux and OSX will run better under Linux. (A related example is Quake3; it runs much faster under Linux than under Windows. Sometime Windows (applications) run faster under wine than under Windows. I do not know how OSX and Linux compare in this regard. However, OSX has an extra layer which probably does not help speed things up.)

QT apps are not free to run for the majority of people (who run windows), therefore I believe in GTK for philosophical reasons.

Qt is free on Windows, but not from the original authors (Trolltech), and it is still a work in progress. Remember that there was a time when GTK for Windows was also a 3rd-party effort and an unstable work in progress. There is no difference, philosophically, between these two efforts. The only difference is code-completeness, which is just a matter of time.

http://condorcet-dd.sourceforge.net/ Called Dual Dropping, it is a minimum dropping cost based combination of two Condorcet methods, Tideman's Ranked Pairs and Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping (can also execute RP or CSSD separately). It is actually two scripts, the optional first script converts a preference ballot list into a Condorcet square (a matrix of one on one competition vote totals) which is then utilized as the input for the script that determines the winner(s). It can be used as a ranking for system for anything that generates preference ballots. It is usefull for organization/club voting whenever there are three or more choices.

What are you talking about? All of the sourcecode is in CVS and licensed under OSI approved licenses, with most of the code under the GPL and LGPL.

Where did you ever get the idea that Syllable prevented free access to the source code?

I too use linux for the past X years. But with evilwm [ story on slashdot] -- the minimalist window manager. Heavilly hacked key shortcuts in the code. Rocks. Beats the shit out of any Aqua/GNOME/KDE/Longhorn gui. We are talking about speed here.

Modern game engine development is an enormous task requiring millions of man hours of programming effort, no argument there.

Take the square root of that.
I bet most of the work is really spent on design, graphics, testing, and marketing.

My point is that as soon as one of the big boys releases a high-powered game engine for Linux ... you will see an explosion in free games for Linux.

Just what I could remember offhand:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
http://www.ogre3d.org/
http://crystal.sourceforge.net/
http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
http://www.genesis3d.com/

Modern game engine development is an enormous task requiring millions of man hours of programming effort, no argument there.

Take the square root of that.
I bet most of the work is really spent on design, graphics, testing, and marketing.

My point is that as soon as one of the big boys releases a high-powered game engine for Linux ... you will see an explosion in free games for Linux.

Just what I could remember offhand:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
http://www.ogre3d.org/
http://crystal.sourceforge.net/
http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
http://www.genesis3d.com/

>OOPS, PALM.

For those on the go, Frobnitz is a Z-Code machine for Palm Pilots, but I've found it has some weird display kinks. One really nice feature, though, is that you can extended-click a word on the screen and get a pop-up menu of common commands like Take, Examine, and so on, all pre-selected with the word in mind. It takes longer to explain than to learn how to use.

Blind + Linux = BLINUX. This is the best solution in the long run and it doesn't cost anything, unlike solutions from Microsoft and other proprietary software. I wish you the best luck. The command-line interface is ideal for blind users.

Interestingly (but a tad OT) is that nethack can be configured for blind users as well. All work and no play makes Johnny a dully boy. Other games for the blind would probably include the many, many MUDs out there.

Not only MUDs but also future MMORPG games from The WorldForge Project where people will be able to play with each other on-line on the same servers and in the same worlds using different clients, including 2D isometric, full-3D OpenGL and entirely text-based ones. Not to even mention that thanks to Emacspeak a blind person can play even Tetris. This is not off-topic at all.

And to demonstrate how interfaces such as Emacspeak are impressive and important not only for blind users but for the general public, I am planning to develop a fully audio-desktop based car audio system, most probably using Oralux GNU/Linux, a Knoppix customization with Emacspeak user interface, with emphasis on making as much information and entertainment (music, games, WWW, etc.) accessible to the driver with absolutely no display distracting from the road, which in my opinion is the very direction every car manufacturer should follow to make cars safer. Projects like Emacspeak, BLinux and Oralux freely available make such a system trivial to build using an old laptop hidden somewhere under the seat, some cables and a simple input system, with almost no custom software needed.

I have been thinking about it since I first saw the most stupid idea in the history of car audio systems, i.e. text display of local traffic-related messages in real time. I thought that it is utterly moronic, since such messages should be spoken and in fact even the number of CD track I change to should be spoken instead of displayed in a place I have to look instead of focusing on the road. Hence the idea of full audio car audio system.

by not re-using either the BSD or GNU kernels and toolchains

GNU toolchain? That'll be Autoconf, Automake, Make, Binutils and GCC then will it? Right oh.

by not re-using either the BSD or GNU kernels and toolchains

GNU toolchain? That'll be Autoconf, Automake, Make, Binutils and GCC then will it? Right oh.