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Another engine that is open source (LGPL) and possibly a bit more mature than Irrlicht is Crystal Space 3D.

From the about us-blurb "Crystal Space is a free (LGPL) and portable 3D Game Development Kit written in C++. It supports: true six degrees of freedom, colored lighting, lightmapped and stencil based lighting, shader support (CG, vertex programs, fragment programs, ...), mipmapping, portals, mirrors, alpha transparency, reflective surfaces, 3D sprites (frame based or with skeletal animation using cal3d animation library), procedural textures, particle systems, halos, volumetric fog, scripting (using Python, Perl, Java, or potentially other languages), 16-bit and 32-bit display support, OpenGL, and software renderer, font support (also with freetype), hierarchical transformations, physics plugin based on ODE, ... See the extensive list of features for more details."

Read more at http://crystal.sourceforge.net/

Another engine that is open source (LGPL) and possibly a bit more mature than Irrlicht is Crystal Space 3D.

From the about us-blurb "Crystal Space is a free (LGPL) and portable 3D Game Development Kit written in C++. It supports: true six degrees of freedom, colored lighting, lightmapped and stencil based lighting, shader support (CG, vertex programs, fragment programs, ...), mipmapping, portals, mirrors, alpha transparency, reflective surfaces, 3D sprites (frame based or with skeletal animation using cal3d animation library), procedural textures, particle systems, halos, volumetric fog, scripting (using Python, Perl, Java, or potentially other languages), 16-bit and 32-bit display support, OpenGL, and software renderer, font support (also with freetype), hierarchical transformations, physics plugin based on ODE, ... See the extensive list of features for more details."

Read more at http://crystal.sourceforge.net/

We've been looking at Crystal Space, as well as Irrlicht and others such as the Nebula Device. In the end, we ended up buying licenses for Torque from GarageGames, because it has been used to do several games and it has lots of integrated tools built right into the engine. You can move and reshape just about everything inside the running game. Now, it is a bit dated, but there will be a newer version out hopefully soon with all those shaders the kids like. For now, it is definitely good enough for most people. Most people couldn't produce content to match the newest engines anyways... ;-)

Really, Crystal Space or the Nebula Device may be better in themselves, but if we were to use them, we'd have to recreate all these tools ourselves. Hint: if you are gonna do a game of any serious magnitude, you will need tools, and lots of them. If Crystal Space wants to start seeing games built, they should include starter kits (as in something simple to start modding instead of starting from scratch) and more importantly tools. Tools for manipulating terrain, creating particle effects, placing objects and so on. Being able to import stuff from Quark or Maya is not enough. DO you as a level designer want to place everything in your game by entering numbers in a text file? I thought not... =)

As for Irrlicht, I really like it a lot. It is cool, it is really, really easy to get something up quickly in, it has good performance and plenty of good examples to get one started. However, it is nowhere finished enough (but I can wait) and it is not a game engine - it is a 3D rendering engine that could very well be used to power an awesome game engine. I think some people over there are working on such beasts, though I don't know the status... if any of them also read this, remember the tools boys! ;-)

I guess Irrlicht is pretty good then...

Irrlicht Documentation

It is NOT GPL. Read the freaking web site.

for roughly $65, you can buy a linksys wrt-54g which runs linux out of the box. add to this some free third-party replacement firmware and you get full control over the unit and loads of features - VPN, packet shaping, advanced packet filtering, captive portals, and all sorts of other stuff. the unit is very flexible, reliable, cheap, and most of all it is supremely hackable - especially if you know your way around linux.

if you do go down this route be sure to avoid sveasoft's firmware, for reasons illustrated here. basically, the guy writing it is a total cockbite. last time i questioned his (ab)use of the GPL here on slashdot he banned me from his forums, so if you do intend to send him $20 you'd better be nice.

for roughly $65, you can buy a linksys wrt-54g which runs linux out of the box. add to this some free third-party replacement firmware and you get full control over the unit and loads of features - VPN, packet shaping, advanced packet filtering, captive portals, and all sorts of other stuff. the unit is very flexible, reliable, cheap, and most of all it is supremely hackable - especially if you know your way around linux.

if you do go down this route be sure to avoid sveasoft's firmware, for reasons illustrated here. basically, the guy writing it is a total cockbite. last time i questioned his (ab)use of the GPL here on slashdot he banned me from his forums, so if you do intend to send him $20 you'd better be nice.

There's another OS 3d engine called crystal space 3d. It's been in development FOREVER now, and I'm still waiting for a completed cross-platform game, but it looks like a cool proejct. Anyone feel like porting this to mac?

The Beehive forum software has a terrific admin control called "worm" that lets you quietly isolate problem users. They don't know that the only people that see their messages are your admins. Everybody else sees their messages as deleted. You can download Beehive here. You can also check it out on my message board too.

Also, it's Gaim or gaim, never GAIM.

I second this. I have one and recently went through a few firmware changes. The stock firmware is actually not bad, and can has a decent amount of options.

Although Sveasoft stirrs up mixed emotions around here, you can get the image for free, and it's very good. You just can't see the forums unless you pay. I personally haven't needed the forums, but your results may vary.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mcmntl/satori/Firmwar e_Satori-4.0G.zip

If you are one of those people that don't agree with Sveasoft's forum policy there's Wifi-Box on sourceforge. I installed this one too and its very good also, although I prefer the Sveasoft image.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wifi-box/

There are some others floating around, but I did not try them as they seemed too alpha. Cratering my WAP isn't currently a priority.

There are 3 different models of the WRT54G actually. If you count the WRT54GS there are 4. I suggest ebay as a source for the early 20 LED (V1.0) model. This model has more flash ram than later models, and of course looks cooler with its 20 LEDs.

http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/viewtopic.p hp?t=1176

Of course there are the other WAPs based on the Broadcom chip:

Linksys WAP54G
Linksys WRE54G
Belkin F5D7130
Belkin F5D7230-4
Motorola WR850G
Trendnet TEW-411BRP
Asus wl-300g
Asus wl-500g
Dell Truemobile 2300
Buffalo Airstation WBR-G54
Ravotek W54-RT
Ravotek W54-AP
Microsoft MN700
Apple Airport ExtremG

I don't have experience with these so I can't vouch for their performance.

Have fun!

-ft

Many people seem to think similarly about their font selection. That is why someone has created the Extended Prefs pluging for gaim. It allows you to change the font size of incoming IMs as well as simplification of the IM window. Very convenient.

They knew they would be slashdotted of course! (at least according to this sourceforge.net forum post)

The question is, will gaim be /. again when 1.0 comes out?

For those of you who are sick of using the Sametime client, Meanwhile is a plugin for Gaim to let you use Sametime.

It's availible from http://meanwhile.sourceforge.net/

Gaim VV says:
Your check is in the mail.

Not to burst anyone's bubble... but i've been waiting for this story to hit the front page just so i could!

This isn't a 1.0 release it is a 1.0.0 release: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?threa d_id=5592699&forum_id=33079

All it means is that future releases will be in X.Y.Z format. X will mean a change to the API breaking old plugins, Y is any other change, and Z is pretty much meaningless.

gaim-vv

Long discussion on name change. To sum it up, just because.

Just an FYI, the Linksys WRT54g is just about the most hackable $60 box you can buy. I'm contemplating throwing out my sparc5 w/ 4pt ethernet and replacing it with this smaller, quieter, and cooler (temp) box.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/wifi-box/

http://openwrt.org/

There's lots more out there, I'm sure.

You can even add a serial port to it! Hack the voltage and get 200mw (or something) out of it!

Four years ago when I setup this sparc, it was the easiest solution available for a wireless router and firewall. But now it sits on my shelf and is by far the loudest box I own. Meanwhile my girlfriend has a *silent* firewall and access point for roughly half of what I paid for my sparc. Maybe I'll make the thing diskless so it's not so noisey, but I it might be time to retire it...

You can pick up a Dreamcast for about $15 USD at your local EB, and you can get it to run BSD or Linux. The only issue is you'll need the Boardband Adapter, and that will set you back a pretty penny. They go for about a hundred on Ebay, but if you can find a friend who is willing to donate one, you're all set for a small, low power server. :) You'll also need a DC keyboard, or a PS/2 -> DC adapter, which run about $15.

Hey, I'm one of the engineers at IMVU. I thought many of the coolets things about IMVU weren't even mentioned in the article, and figured I'd post a link. Please feel free to post your comments. Oh, and if you're interested in joining one of our many free software projects, drop me a line.

For those of you too lazy to click here is some text from our About Us page:

Our philosophy

* Censorship-free micropayment economy - We're creating a marketplace for digital goods that (as one of our customers put it) is "for the people, by the people." We have worked hard to prevent the IMVU experience from ever being overtaken by our opinions, preferring to leave it up to our customers to decide what they want to create and do with IMVU.

* Open platform - We know that good ideas come from all over, not just from our office. So we're committed to creating every opportunity to open up our platform to new kinds of creativity. Let us know if you've got a good idea.

* Eat our own dogfood - We've set up our business so that if our developers don't succeed, we don't succeed. We like it that way, because it prevents any distinction between our developers' interests and our own. Developers use the exact same tools we do to create content for IMVU, and can sell in our economy just as well as we can.

* Release early, release often - We are committed to fast fixes and rapid iteration, and strive to incorporate as much feedback as humanly possible. We think the fastest way to grow a successful product is to release the product as early as possible and to improve it over time in collaboration with our customers. We appreciate everyone's patience, and believe that we will all share in the reward of seeing IMVU's exciting and rapid evolution.

* Free and open-source software - IMVU would not be possible without the countless contributors around the world that have developed, tested, and maintained the many open source and free software projects we use. We strive to use free and open-source alternatives whenever they are available, and actively engage with communities that produce the software we use. We are contributors to many projects, and have even started a few of our own.

Hey, I'm one of the engineers at IMVU. I thought many of the coolets things about IMVU weren't even mentioned in the article, and figured I'd post a link. Please feel free to post your comments. Oh, and if you're interested in joining one of our many free software projects, drop me a line.

For those of you too lazy to click here is some text from our About Us page:

Our philosophy

* Censorship-free micropayment economy - We're creating a marketplace for digital goods that (as one of our customers put it) is "for the people, by the people." We have worked hard to prevent the IMVU experience from ever being overtaken by our opinions, preferring to leave it up to our customers to decide what they want to create and do with IMVU.

* Open platform - We know that good ideas come from all over, not just from our office. So we're committed to creating every opportunity to open up our platform to new kinds of creativity. Let us know if you've got a good idea.

* Eat our own dogfood - We've set up our business so that if our developers don't succeed, we don't succeed. We like it that way, because it prevents any distinction between our developers' interests and our own. Developers use the exact same tools we do to create content for IMVU, and can sell in our economy just as well as we can.

* Release early, release often - We are committed to fast fixes and rapid iteration, and strive to incorporate as much feedback as humanly possible. We think the fastest way to grow a successful product is to release the product as early as possible and to improve it over time in collaboration with our customers. We appreciate everyone's patience, and believe that we will all share in the reward of seeing IMVU's exciting and rapid evolution.

* Free and open-source software - IMVU would not be possible without the countless contributors around the world that have developed, tested, and maintained the many open source and free software projects we use. We strive to use free and open-source alternatives whenever they are available, and actively engage with communities that produce the software we use. We are contributors to many projects, and have even started a few of our own.

I've got to disagree with you on the whole C/R thing.

Probably since I employ it (ASK, http://www.paganini.net/ask/) behind some bayesian filters (ASSP, http://assp.sourceforge.net/). Considering that my domain receives thousands of UCE/UBE each day, I have no choice but to take militant actions.

ASSP automatically whitelists everyone I mail to, and sets the TTL to 90 days. So any reply is going to be automatically accepted by ASSP.

ASK on the other hand is set that if my "key" (in this case, my PGP Key ID) appears anywhere in a message to me, it blindly accepts it.

Considering that my PGP key appears in every one of my messages, as part of my signature, this isn't usually a problem.

The problem lies in the fact that certain CRM applications like Kana, etc., insist on changing the from-line for each message they send out, and don't include the original message in the reply. How the hell am I supposed to know which address to whitelist when it comes from something like: ?

I consider THAT to be a broken CRM.

Simply closing a ticket without working on it shows poor customer service on your part, and you're not helping your company much by doing so.

How many potential customers have been told by your customers that your company/ service sucks because tech support or customer service was unresponsive?

Tivo's "Home Media Option" (used to be an option - it's now part of the standard service) actually does most of this including mp3 and photo support (hosted by your networked computer), and an open source project called JavaHMO provides additional capabilities as well, such as Shoutcast streaming, weather and cinema listings, etc. Combine that with a TIVO/DVD combo player such as a Toshiba SD-H400 and you've got what you're looking for.

Best get your homepage link fixed.

Your modesty shines through, you missed the chance to really plug your software, so here you go:
http://smtpfilter.sourceforge.net/introduction.htm l

Wish you the best of luck.

There's also MythPhone

MythFM Radio, MythRecipe

and MythTivo

simultaneous video record and playback requires an even faster machine, especially for higher resolutions. We'd recommend something over 1 Ghz if you want to use that feature when it comes out (based on the hardware needs of mythtv).

Freevo doesn't support what the other two software packages in this comparison support, the ability to pause live tv, rewind it etc.

Run Azureus in a virtual X session via VNC. 24/7 Bittorrent - works like a charm.

...the only guy working on a linux driver for a MyHD mdp-120 card packed up and went on a Mormon quest until Nov. 2005. http://myhd.sourceforge.net/

Well, 1 appears to be taken care of...

If you install KnoppMyth, 2 is taken care of (using the ATI Remote) by executing the command 'install_ati_remote' see http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/index.php?page= ATIRemote

I already use MythTV to record on a computer sitting in one room, and play video content through a much quieter computer in my entertainment center that I have set up as a front end. If you want to use a Windows box rather than a Linux box as your front end, have a look at http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/index.php?page= links/MythContentOnWindows or http://winmyth.sourceforge.net/

I seem to recall there being instructions as well for using an Xbox as a front end, though I have not been looking for those. From one of the Wiki links you can do a search for Xbox if that is of interest to you, or search elsewhere as well.

Have a great weekend.

-Rusty

• It screwed up the acpi detection on install, so I had to manually add "acpi=on" to my lilo.conf
• Installed acpid to capture events from my hardware buttons / functional keys. All buttons work for me.
• Althought suspending to RAM (sleep mode 1) works, it didn't shutoff my screen or backlight before doing so. I had to write a custom script to do that.
• Suspend to disk doesn't work for me. At all. Didn't spend much time on it though since it's not a big deal for me.
• Installed cpudynd to manage CPU power consumption. My laptop easily lasts 3-4 hours on one battery, with WiFi.

I fully understand that for other people, other solutions are more appropriate, but I really prefer a dedicated ReplayTV unit right now, especially for the consistency and reliability, not to mention the cool remote, though I may roll my own when I eventually move to HD (there are no Replay HD or Replay+DVD offerings announced, and Tivo's HD is too encumbered out of the box for my needs).

Not to beat a not-dead-yet horse, but ReplayTV recently dumped a lot of their 5040 units for $50 each, or $30 with a special coupon code (the latter seems to have been a mistake that they cancelled quickly). These are previous-generation models that can transfer shows to other Replay units of the same 50xx model line, something Tivo has not been able to do natively, before, and which is unfortunately dropped in the 55xx line. The 50xx line also has the controversial commercial advance feature, which was dropped on the 55xx line for legal reasons(it sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, but is nice when it works). With lifetime activation at $299 (or monthly fees that now vary depending on number of units), that means RTV is still a platform worth comparing against. Especially when you consider third-party tools like DVArchive (java-based!) that exploit the XML interface of the units to copy programs off for safekeeping and later streaming, without any hacking of the box or transcoding of the native .mpgs or weird versions of mplayer, unlike Tivos, again.

Oh, one more thing: people outside the US have managed to set up their legitimately-subscribed ReplayTVs with another tool called WIRNS (which you can find in AVSForum, to scrape local show listings. I mention this because, even if ReplayTV as a company dies, owners will still have alternatives to keep their schedules from going dark. And a lot of owners are also joining Poopli, a website with the objective of making transfers between Replays easier.

(No, I don't work for anybody making or selling these, nor do I own any of these websites. I'm just an owner of a 50xx that I've bumped up to 200GB with a simple patch-and-swap, very much like a Tivo owner would do. Before I bought my box, I had almost given up on tv entirely. Now, I'm looking forward to my next hard drive upgrade. And I really regret not buying another unit on sale).

"It doesn't have support for ATI AIW products"

I haven't done it... but couldn't you use the gatos project drivers with Myth, or no?

just a thought...

e.

Everyone forget about Freevo? This is a kickass product too...

I'm curious to know where Freevo stands in all of this. I installed MythTV and found it to be very clunky. I recently installed Freevo from the debian packages and had it up and running in literally 30 minutes! It seems a lot smoother than MythTV when using it, and it seems to be more extensible. On the downside all of the Freevo setup is done by editing a text file, but I've found it to be more solid than MythTV so far.

Admittedly I only looked at MythTV for about a day on and off. Does anybody here with more experience with MythTV have an opinion of how MythTV and Freevo compare?

Funny, the Slashdot blurb accuses him of saying that no other system today does SSI, while according to the article he simply said their (future, potential) SSI plans will beat GNAA/Linux's (present, working) SSI clustering.

Anybody have thoughts comparing the DragonFly SSI [shiningsilence.com](warning, PDF) and the GNAA/Linux [sourceforge.net] one?
(Open)Mosix has had craploads of work done on it, and by the time DragonFly's is done, it will be even further ahead. I somehow doubt DragonFly's will end up being better.

PK ow

Funny, the Slashdot blurb accuses him of saying that no other system today does SSI, while according to the article he simply said their (future, potential) SSI plans will beat GNAA/Linux's (present, working) SSI clustering.

Anybody have thoughts comparing the DragonFly SSI [shiningsilence.com](warning, PDF) and the GNAA/Linux [sourceforge.net] one?
(Open)Mosix has had craploads of work done on it, and by the time DragonFly's is done, it will be even further ahead. I somehow doubt DragonFly's will end up being better.

PK lsi

Boycott RIAA products, if you disagree with their approach. Here's an alternative.

Ok, I see that improved laptop support is one of the touted features here. My question is, how good is it?

I just switched back to windows (rather painlessly, thanks to the excellent QtParted and, strangely enough, a windows ME boot disk [for an XP machine--needed to restore the MBR]). I can't tell you how greatly it pains me to do so--as far as i'm concerned, linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for some time. ACPI-based laptops though, are another story. I've been trying for weeks to get my battery life to come close to what's possible under windows, and while the Software suspend project seems to work for a lot of people, i could never get it to work on my laptop (or maybe just my kernel). I've tried various distributions, from suse to xandros to straight debian to knoppix and even the simpler ones such as DSL and none of them allow me to really use my laptop for more than about an hour (give or take a quarter) without plugging in, which is just unacceptable for my purposes.

So i finally gave up and dropped the linux partitions and reinstalled the boot sector (oh how that final 'fdisk /mbr' pained me!) but at least i can spend three and a half hours at a coffee shop without needing an outlet. cygwin takes the edge off, but its a bit like methadone if you asked me.

so anyway, for anyone who's tested and/or used the new version of MDK on a recent laptop, what's your experience with the ACPI support? Battery life? Suspend functionality? dare i ask--functional keys? (yes, i know that's not really related to acpi, but mandrake is generally pretty conscientious about things like that, i thought perhaps they might have integrated a solution.)

For a good time, try Nick's Math Puzzles

Or, try Perl Golf

You mean like http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/?

Or perhaps you don't understand just what Open Source is?

No, I don't expect my little djrpg project programmed in vbdos 1.0 and given away for free to be held to the same standard as the 500 dollar USD Microsoft Visual Studio.

What a hypocrite I am! How dare I give away my work for free and expect my philanthropy to be held to a different standard than commercial software!

How dare those assholes who develop mozilla and the monsters here on slashdot feel that way!

In other words, both of you need to grow up and join us in the real world. Open Source Software is presented with nearly no strings attached, free and open in every sense of the word(except with GPL'd OSS, which forbids you from taking the code and closing it again). If you don't see why it should be held to a different standard than commercial software, you're both as clueless as the ivory tower acedemics who have been gloating about how linux is ready for the desktop for the past five years, every single year.

In case you didn't catch my drift, it's held to a different standard because it was given to you as a gift. Stop checking the horses teeth, already!

That's not what this is... you can capture mp3 streams using wget. Streaming mp3 just writes out a comlete mp3 file, which clients don't happen to save to disk. All you have to do is save the output and you've got a complete, original mp3 file. So, you can do this using anything that downloads, wget, curl, a web browser, anything, though there are specialized tools like streamripper that have certain conveniences.

What this thing does is it wraps mp3 data into an RSS file, so you can do (more or less) audio blogging, posting and checking for small updates.

(disclaimer: I help develop this program) Dowser Web Search. It runs on your local machine and keeps a record of searches, pages clicked, the contents of the page, grouping, page history, etc. It also auto-summarizes. We're going to release a Beta in a few days.

Are you serious? In fact the potetial loss rather the control over the dominant client platform. Just think a bit about what you get with proper completely cross platform GUI rendering engine with nice development bindings and wide install base. Just take a look on this .

The official harden* packages are purely virtual. Their only purpose is to conflict with other packages which are insecure. In contrast Debian hardened wants to change the contents of the insecure packages.

Their project page contains deb's for a a hacked (binary only??) 2.4.26 kernel image.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/debianhardened

BTW: Yesterday they write on debian-legal:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/09/msg00 235.html

Hi Martin,

El mar, 14-09-2004 a las 17:40, Martin Michlmayr escribió:
> * Lorenzo Hernandez Garcia-Hierro [2004-09-08 16:26]:
> > I want to know if i can use the trademark "Debian" on the name of a
> > project that i've started , "Debian Hardened" which i want to see as
> > an official Debian sup-project.
>
> I personally feel that this name has the same problems that "Trusted
> Debian" has - it suggests that "normal" Debian is not secure. In any
> case, I think you should post your question to debian-project rather
> than -legal since -project is more appropriate and might get more
> feedback.

A "normal" Debian is secure, depending on how the sysadmin works with
the packages and how he confgiures them.

But, if you have, for example, ProPolice/SSP compiled packages, there
wouldn't be anyway to exploit a buffer overflow condition in the
package.

That's the same with kernel packages...you can choose a better secure
kernel or a simple one, the difference is just what you want to choose:
secure or not secure as the other...

Security stays OK until somebody breaks it, and you can't predict when
it will happen (and also you can't predict how it will happen!).

I want to see Debian Hardened as an official Debian subproject, it's not
a "better, more secure" un-official version of Debian, it's just a
hardened tree of official Debian packafes for official Debian versions!

(Also i'm working with a friend to make some enhacements for the Linux
entropy pool engine, using an external TRNG device).

Cheers,
--
Lorenzo Hernandez Garcia-Hierro

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Free Sans and Free Serif are horrid. In OpenOffice and AbiWord, the vertical spacing is (when set to single spacing) is almost identical to Times New Roman and Arial at 1.5 spacing. This is unacceptable. I wish I knew how to fix this sort of thing.

That's no excuse! There's now a speaking version of Emacs for the blind.

And for Vi users, in both Linux and Windows, there's screen reading software like Jaws and Speakup.

Blind != cut off from the text-based world

No, VxFS makes nearly no difference, perhaps 30% faster than Solaris UFS on the big directory operations? (e.g. creating or removing a few tens of thousands of files - simply copying lots of data sequentially is much the same on similar hardware, of course). Admittedly my last major testing was with Solaris 7.

Linux has been running rings around Solaris in basic filesystem performance for as long as I can remember - ext2/ext3 versus Solaris UFS and VxFS of course, but all the other modern filesystems too - ext3+htree, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS... There is a reason that ZFS is so needed!

That's not to say that VxFS isn't useful in a legacy Solaris environment, it is. I do hope http://ext2resize.sourceforge.net/ gets merged into the standard kernel sooner rather than later... but then again VxFS has always been an add-on, too.

Try Real Alternative, all the support of Real player with none the hastle.