Slashdot Mirror

• enBoot (English Bootstrap to introduce a few concepts and structures)

• Security (for both robot and human safety and for housekeeping)
  • HCI (Human-Computer Interaction for the operator of an AI)
  • Rejuvenate (for cyborg immortality -- death comes only by misadventure)
  • psiDecay (for the gradual deactivation of concepts over time)
  • Ego (for resurrecting an artificial intelligence when perhaps brain-dead by misadventure)

• Sensorium (audition, taste, smell, etc., including exotic robot senses)
  • Audition (for an AI robot to have a sense of hearing)
  • Listen (necessary for event-driven hearing and for detecting verbal input)
    --- audSTM (auditory Short Term Memory with associative tags for pattern recognition)
    --- --- audRecog (auditory pattern Recognition of heard sounds and phonemes)
  • oldConcept (for the recognition of words already known to the AI)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate (to create an instance or concept-node on a concept-fiber)
    --- Activate (to reactivate the concepts of words already known by an AI)
    --- --- spreadAct (spreading Activation by association from concept to concept)
  • newConcept (contributes to machine learning of new words and new concepts)
    --- enVocab (English Vocabulary, and potentially any known human language)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate for creating new concept-nodes or instances of any learned concept

• Emotion (fear, love, hope, etc., so that AI robots and cyborgs may have human-like feelings)

• Think (for the generation of a chain of thought by spreading activation among concepts)
  • Activate (for the reactivation of known concepts in spreading activation)
  • spreadAct (spreading Activation from concept to concept by association)

• enBoot (English Bootstrap to introduce a few concepts and structures)

• Security (for both robot and human safety and for housekeeping)
  • HCI (Human-Computer Interaction for the operator of an AI)
  • Rejuvenate (for cyborg immortality -- death comes only by misadventure)
  • psiDecay (for the gradual deactivation of concepts over time)
  • Ego (for resurrecting an artificial intelligence when perhaps brain-dead by misadventure)

• Sensorium (audition, taste, smell, etc., including exotic robot senses)
  • Audition (for an AI robot to have a sense of hearing)
  • Listen (necessary for event-driven hearing and for detecting verbal input)
    --- audSTM (auditory Short Term Memory with associative tags for pattern recognition)
    --- --- audRecog (auditory pattern Recognition of heard sounds and phonemes)
  • oldConcept (for the recognition of words already known to the AI)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate (to create an instance or concept-node on a concept-fiber)
    --- Activate (to reactivate the concepts of words already known by an AI)
    --- --- spreadAct (spreading Activation by association from concept to concept)
  • newConcept (contributes to machine learning of new words and new concepts)
    --- enVocab (English Vocabulary, and potentially any known human language)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate for creating new concept-nodes or instances of any learned concept

• Emotion (fear, love, hope, etc., so that AI robots and cyborgs may have human-like feelings)

• Think (for the generation of a chain of thought by spreading activation among concepts)
  • Activate (for the reactivation of known concepts in spreading activation)
  • spreadAct (spreading Activation from concept to concept by association)

• enBoot (English Bootstrap to introduce a few concepts and structures)

• Security (for both robot and human safety and for housekeeping)
  • HCI (Human-Computer Interaction for the operator of an AI)
  • Rejuvenate (for cyborg immortality -- death comes only by misadventure)
  • psiDecay (for the gradual deactivation of concepts over time)
  • Ego (for resurrecting an artificial intelligence when perhaps brain-dead by misadventure)

• Sensorium (audition, taste, smell, etc., including exotic robot senses)
  • Audition (for an AI robot to have a sense of hearing)
  • Listen (necessary for event-driven hearing and for detecting verbal input)
    --- audSTM (auditory Short Term Memory with associative tags for pattern recognition)
    --- --- audRecog (auditory pattern Recognition of heard sounds and phonemes)
  • oldConcept (for the recognition of words already known to the AI)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate (to create an instance or concept-node on a concept-fiber)
    --- Activate (to reactivate the concepts of words already known by an AI)
    --- --- spreadAct (spreading Activation by association from concept to concept)
  • newConcept (contributes to machine learning of new words and new concepts)
    --- enVocab (English Vocabulary, and potentially any known human language)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate for creating new concept-nodes or instances of any learned concept

• Emotion (fear, love, hope, etc., so that AI robots and cyborgs may have human-like feelings)

• Think (for the generation of a chain of thought by spreading activation among concepts)
  • Activate (for the reactivation of known concepts in spreading activation)
  • spreadAct (spreading Activation from concept to concept by association)

• enBoot (English Bootstrap to introduce a few concepts and structures)

• Security (for both robot and human safety and for housekeeping)
  • HCI (Human-Computer Interaction for the operator of an AI)
  • Rejuvenate (for cyborg immortality -- death comes only by misadventure)
  • psiDecay (for the gradual deactivation of concepts over time)
  • Ego (for resurrecting an artificial intelligence when perhaps brain-dead by misadventure)

• Sensorium (audition, taste, smell, etc., including exotic robot senses)
  • Audition (for an AI robot to have a sense of hearing)
  • Listen (necessary for event-driven hearing and for detecting verbal input)
    --- audSTM (auditory Short Term Memory with associative tags for pattern recognition)
    --- --- audRecog (auditory pattern Recognition of heard sounds and phonemes)
  • oldConcept (for the recognition of words already known to the AI)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate (to create an instance or concept-node on a concept-fiber)
    --- Activate (to reactivate the concepts of words already known by an AI)
    --- --- spreadAct (spreading Activation by association from concept to concept)
  • newConcept (contributes to machine learning of new words and new concepts)
    --- enVocab (English Vocabulary, and potentially any known human language)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate for creating new concept-nodes or instances of any learned concept

• Emotion (fear, love, hope, etc., so that AI robots and cyborgs may have human-like feelings)

• Think (for the generation of a chain of thought by spreading activation among concepts)
  • Activate (for the reactivation of known concepts in spreading activation)
  • spreadAct (spreading Activation from concept to concept by association)

• enBoot (English Bootstrap to introduce a few concepts and structures)

• Security (for both robot and human safety and for housekeeping)
  • HCI (Human-Computer Interaction for the operator of an AI)
  • Rejuvenate (for cyborg immortality -- death comes only by misadventure)
  • psiDecay (for the gradual deactivation of concepts over time)
  • Ego (for resurrecting an artificial intelligence when perhaps brain-dead by misadventure)

• Sensorium (audition, taste, smell, etc., including exotic robot senses)
  • Audition (for an AI robot to have a sense of hearing)
  • Listen (necessary for event-driven hearing and for detecting verbal input)
    --- audSTM (auditory Short Term Memory with associative tags for pattern recognition)
    --- --- audRecog (auditory pattern Recognition of heard sounds and phonemes)
  • oldConcept (for the recognition of words already known to the AI)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate (to create an instance or concept-node on a concept-fiber)
    --- Activate (to reactivate the concepts of words already known by an AI)
    --- --- spreadAct (spreading Activation by association from concept to concept)
  • newConcept (contributes to machine learning of new words and new concepts)
    --- enVocab (English Vocabulary, and potentially any known human language)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate for creating new concept-nodes or instances of any learned concept

• Emotion (fear, love, hope, etc., so that AI robots and cyborgs may have human-like feelings)

• Think (for the generation of a chain of thought by spreading activation among concepts)
  • Activate (for the reactivation of known concepts in spreading activation)
  • spreadAct (spreading Activation from concept to concept by association)

• enBoot (English Bootstrap to introduce a few concepts and structures)

• Security (for both robot and human safety and for housekeeping)
  • HCI (Human-Computer Interaction for the operator of an AI)
  • Rejuvenate (for cyborg immortality -- death comes only by misadventure)
  • psiDecay (for the gradual deactivation of concepts over time)
  • Ego (for resurrecting an artificial intelligence when perhaps brain-dead by misadventure)

• Sensorium (audition, taste, smell, etc., including exotic robot senses)
  • Audition (for an AI robot to have a sense of hearing)
  • Listen (necessary for event-driven hearing and for detecting verbal input)
    --- audSTM (auditory Short Term Memory with associative tags for pattern recognition)
    --- --- audRecog (auditory pattern Recognition of heard sounds and phonemes)
  • oldConcept (for the recognition of words already known to the AI)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate (to create an instance or concept-node on a concept-fiber)
    --- Activate (to reactivate the concepts of words already known by an AI)
    --- --- spreadAct (spreading Activation by association from concept to concept)
  • newConcept (contributes to machine learning of new words and new concepts)
    --- enVocab (English Vocabulary, and potentially any known human language)
    --- Parser (for the identification of parts of speech in word-recognition)
    --- --- Instantiate for creating new concept-nodes or instances of any learned concept

• Emotion (fear, love, hope, etc., so that AI robots and cyborgs may have human-like feelings)

• Think (for the generation of a chain of thought by spreading activation among concepts)
  • Activate (for the reactivation of known concepts in spreading activation)
  • spreadAct (spreading Activation from concept to concept by association)

Pocket Warrior

open source and GPL ta boot.

If Tux Racer and StepMania have proven themselves worth of being converted to commercial arcade games, doesn't that redeem them a bit? (Pun semi-intended, as arcade Tux Racer spits tickets.)

On what basis do you call NetHack with one of the new GUIs "lame crap"? I bet several dozen geeks are ready to descend upon thee.

And don't forget about proprietary games available to NVIDIA video card owners at no cost beyond bandwidth, such as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

Encrypt IM encrypt file sharing encrypt your email

Encrypt IM encrypt file sharing encrypt your email

Your wish is my command! :-) But I even got something better: fairshare

8:33pm up 2 days, 22:20, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
37 processes: 35 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 0.0% user, 7.0% system, 0.0% nice, 93.0% idle
Mem: 2582324K av, 353544K used, 2228780K free, 0K shrd, 82364K buff
Swap: 1073016K av, 0K used, 1073016K free 90972K cached

[root@somewhere]# ipsec eroute | wc -l
393

Dedicated Hpaq Proliant DL380 G3 server, Xeon 2.8Ghz CPU, 2+GB RAM. Multiple site-to-site tunnels up to about 130 sites across WAN links of varying speed, but mostly between 3-8Mbit/s. Handles about 1.2GB of 3DES/MD5 encrypted/authenticated traffic per day. Runs like a champ, the box barely notices the encryption overhead, it just takes a while (2-3 minutes) to rebuild all the tunnels when you restart FreeS/WAN.

Only headache is deciding which open-source VPN/ipv6 software to use now that FreeS/WAN is at end-of-life.

Par, it works.

Link

One note: EVM2003 is our demo software only. The Open Voting Consortium is the name of the group working on a solution to the black-box voting problem.

I got my first burner in 1994. Just a couple weeks ago I was playing with the newest DosBox which emulates a 386 with sound card. I wanted to play some old DOS games so I got out one of the very first cds I had burnt from 10 years ago and it read without error. I tried several others burnt at about the same time and they also read fine. All were on Verbatim media and were stored in jewel cases for the first 5 years then put in booklets and kept in a cool dry environment.

I think as long as you use quality media and use proper handling and storage precautions they will last a long time, definately longer than 5 years.

You're better off storing audio as FLAC or so; the format's open, lossless, streamable, error checking, robust, and has a proper metadata standard. Use the space it saves to make a bunch of PAR2's, and you're laughing.

Support for this stuff's not going to disappear overnight; you can keep specifications and reference implementations about if need be.

What about the university bandwidth? I for one am glad that my workplace is cracking down hard on all P2P use. I want a working net for doing my job. So, run a client, get caught and after one warning you're expelled/fired - doesn't matter if you are staff or a student.

Woah, there -- back up a sec. There's nothing wrong with P2P use in and of itself. I'll say it again (just for effect): There's nothing wrong with P2P use in and of itself. Unless you're a government like the Chinese government who is afraid of giving people a voice, you have to understand that P2P is an incredible tool that can make everyone their own publisher. It can make everyone their own record label, and everyone their own private movie studio. Just because people are (widely) using P2P for piracy doesn't mean that it's automatically a horrible thing. It's a great way to distribute content for a small amount of resources.

University bandwidth? Are you kidding? You think that every chunk of bandwidth that doesn't go to P2P goes to educational use? That's not right -- I went to college within the last 10 years, and I know what we used the bandwidth for: Porn, games, music, websurfing, screwing around. Sure there was some research, but if you think that the majority of that bandwidth is used for research, you're kidding yourself.

And no, you can't just pipe the stuff over another port or encrypt it. Your bandwidth use, source+destination IP and a variety of other things will give you away.

This statement is just plain wrong. Check out Freenet. This is a network which anonymizes content creators and allows people to share with confidence. If you don't want to spend alot of time researching it, here's a basic summary. It's partially intended to be a tool to get around folks like the Chinese government (who are afraid of giving people a voice) by encrypting the data and distributing the content in a way that's anonymous.

I wonder how much longer it will be until someone produced a dedicated app just for doing machinima. The engine has to look good, and be easy to use, but realtime requirements don't really exist.

Currently, our 3d modelling and animation programs have interfaces that are designed around extreme control, but take *forever* to actually model something. If someone can produce an effective visual side to an animation with nothing more than some people walking around (but can't draw worth a damn or act well), having tools to suit them would be quite useful.

This could actually make an interesting open source project, maybe using something like Crystal Space. Tradtionally , games have not done well in the open source world because of the way games work. Until a game is about 90% complete, it's generally not much fun to play. Open source generally needs interested people using a piece of software and identifying features that they'd like to have -- and implementing those features. In a game, this unbalances things. In a game engine used for machinima, it's possible to later on add in a "flying" feature and still benefit from the existing software that doesn't have such a feature. In a game, adding "flying" would severely unbalance the game.

Crystal Space might be a good base for this.

Grip pretty much sucks in terms of speed. I dunno why since it's just a GUI wrapper over standard CLI tools, but it does.

Try something better. The combination of cdparanoia and lame is the classic. From cdparanoia you get good speed, error correction, digital ripping, and from lame you get quality encoding.

If you want a graphical ripper, I've discovered a little gem called oggre (not to be mistaken for the other OGGre which is an OGG reader written in Java.

The oggre I'm talking about is an XMMS output plugin which writes OGG to files:

1. Set your CD Audio input plugin to digital mode (analog won't work with oggre).
2. Load the playlist with tracks from the CD.
3. Select all tracks and use "get advanced info" (or whatever it's called) to load info from CDDB.
4. Set oggre as the output plugin, with quality 4.99 (recommended best quality/size ratio, read the oggre README to see why).
5. Make sure the play mode is not random or loop.
6. Press play, sit back and watch ripping work at a very nice speed.

About the only thing wrong with oggre is the fact that it uses a fixed output dir, so if you want dirs named after the CD you have to make them by hand. The files, however, do use song attributes in their names.

Oh, and the guy who wrote oggre also wrote out_lame, but that one has fewer features. I don't mind choosing OGG over MP3 so I don't care.

StreamRipperX

StreamRipperX Files

And for those who need immediate gratification, a direct link to the DMG

StreamRipperX

StreamRipperX Files

And for those who need immediate gratification, a direct link to the DMG

StreamRipperX

StreamRipperX Files

And for those who need immediate gratification, a direct link to the DMG

There is indeed a linux client, it's for the command line and it's taken me a little fishing in the .pls files to get the right urls, but here's the link:

http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

For me it was a simple tar -xvzf, make, su, make install and it was ready to run. Seems to work really well; I think I'm about to start using a lot more bandwidth :)

Rip to FLAC then transcode to whatever format you want via dBpowerAMP

Hard drive space is alot cheaper than wasting my time to re-rip a bunch of CDs

If you can find a game "backup" on some retro gaming site, it installs and runs nicely in the dosbox emulator.

You can use ASFRecorder, or, what I've been doing lately, use MPlayer with the -dumpstream option to save absolutely anything. I've recorded Windows Media video (with audio), RealMedia streams, MP3, and more. Works like a charm.

Alright, I have to reply to this one.

Yes, there are p2p applications that do prevent tracing. There's MUTE, which seems to have promise, although it's not particularly well documented. There's also GNUnet , which seems to be really intelligently designed, but I have no idea how well it works in practice, I don't think it's ready for mainstream use yet. And of course, freenet with FROST , but it's as slow and unreliable as the rest of freenet.

Ultimately, I think we can all agree that anonymous internet, especially filesharing, is coming and is going to render the RIAA's efforts useless.

As far as stream ripping, however, I think the idea was just that you could leech mp3s all day long and make a collection of whatever the stream is playing, not as an anonymous way of getting specific mp3s you want.

Alright, I have to reply to this one.

Yes, there are p2p applications that do prevent tracing. There's MUTE, which seems to have promise, although it's not particularly well documented. There's also GNUnet , which seems to be really intelligently designed, but I have no idea how well it works in practice, I don't think it's ready for mainstream use yet. And of course, freenet with FROST , but it's as slow and unreliable as the rest of freenet.

Ultimately, I think we can all agree that anonymous internet, especially filesharing, is coming and is going to render the RIAA's efforts useless.

As far as stream ripping, however, I think the idea was just that you could leech mp3s all day long and make a collection of whatever the stream is playing, not as an anonymous way of getting specific mp3s you want.

Alright, I have to reply to this one.

Yes, there are p2p applications that do prevent tracing. There's MUTE, which seems to have promise, although it's not particularly well documented. There's also GNUnet , which seems to be really intelligently designed, but I have no idea how well it works in practice, I don't think it's ready for mainstream use yet. And of course, freenet with FROST , but it's as slow and unreliable as the rest of freenet.

Ultimately, I think we can all agree that anonymous internet, especially filesharing, is coming and is going to render the RIAA's efforts useless.

As far as stream ripping, however, I think the idea was just that you could leech mp3s all day long and make a collection of whatever the stream is playing, not as an anonymous way of getting specific mp3s you want.

One of the cooler new ways of sharing music with my friends that I've been playing around with is the ml_www plug-in for Winamp (It was one of Justin Frankel's farewell gifts). The application lets you or anyone else access your media collection from anywhere, and stream or download your audio/video through a browser interface. Of course you can set up passwords and access privelidges. You can pick a song to listen to on your home computer while in the office; stuff like that.

All you need is a Winamp running with the plug-in, and someone--probably someone you trust--drops in your IP in a browser and one of these two windows pops up, depending on which template you're using. You can download the newest versions here.

There's a sourceforge project going on for the plug-in, but they haven't really brought that site up to speed yet. Most of the progress is in this Winamp Forums thread, with some occasional updates on Winamp Unlimited.

This guy will never appreciate open source defense projects like OMGS that contain SQL statements like:

UPDATE Base SET Belong.To='Us' WHERE Belong.To='You'

There's also the free Nebula Device released under essentially a BSD-style license. It's created by Radon Labs in Germany. Their site appears to be down right now, so here's a link to the archived version. Check out the screenshots for their upcoming Schwarzenberg game. Looks like a nice engine.

Yea that must be why they release a ton of things for free, including their very own opensource server AOL runs a linux shop and they even have an AIM linux client. They just dont have the main aol software for linux simply because there isnt a market for it. If you still don't believe that AOL doesnt support open source software, instant message ZolaOnAOL, AOL's IM Bot, and ask her what the greatest operating system in the world is. There are a million other ways that AOL supports OS software including Mozilla. Just open your eyes and be thankful that we have companies like AOL. They may wind up being a push behind a major migration to Linux simply because they are good at making things super easy. Just wait and you'll see.
Regards,
Steve

Mind trying out sloppyadm which sets this up (currently a bunch of redhat w/ap t & gentoo specific things, but what mostly needs to be done is a bit of modification to get slack, etc to work) I do need to update it some, but it works great for a lab that has cups+samba+ldap w/windows and linux clients, it even has provisions to install common config files (all distros) and distro-specific config files. Of course, it doesn't have a gui (yet, I am working on it!) (but frankly it's the best one I have come upon (primarily becasue it does what I want it to do, because I wrote it:) )

I do this everytime the subject of archiving paper comes up. I believe that Lizardtech does archiving, or at least sells what you need. Really one with a good high-resolution book-friendly scanner (one that allows you to hang part of the book off the edge without distortion) can do it with the free software (Epson makes some good ones, if you can afford them?)

FWIW, Hotmail also has a modified IMAP interface that is accessible via Outlook Express. One wonders if they will follow AOL's lead in this; it would not be all that difficult for them to do so.

It is not IMAP, it is called HTTPMail and is a derivative of WebDAV. And it is not just for OE, hotwayd is an neat little gateway that allows any POP3 client to access hotmail mailboxes.

Both Proteus and Fire support all the major IM platforms on OSX. They also let you group contacts together, so if you have a friend with accounts on ICQ, MSN and AOL they appear as one person, something you have to pay for on Trillian. Personally I'm using the beta for Proteus 4.0.

Little does he know that we only want to know where we can download his ebooks for free.

I know you're trolling, but I think my experience regarding this is interesting.

I like Neal Stephenson's writing, if for no other reason than that I thought that Snow Crash was an absolute blast (if you like Gibson, you're probably going to like Snow Crash).

I own three copies of Snow Crash.

I was mucking about on kast, one of the more interesting (if unlikely to take the world by storm) P2P systems out there, and took a look at the ebook broadcast channel, and there was Snow Crash. Well, I've never had an electronic copy of SC, so I grabbed it. I figured I'd give SC another re-read...but it just plain was too much of a pain in the ass to sit in front of the computer and read the thing. Really, I want to be able to read my books in the bathroom, while sitting on the couch with some chips, while walking somewhere or waiting for someone outside...ebook readers just aren't nice and cheap enough to compete with books yet. The medium itself is an effective piracy deterrent, kinda like CD-ROM games in the days before broadband.

The main reason that I'd like to use ebooks is that I find it incredibly frusterating that physical books go through "printings" -- you have to grab a physical book when it comes out, or you can't have it. Screw that. I want to be able to buy a book I liked ten years from now if I want. Having just spent a while obtaining an out-of-print hardcover book that I wanted, I know how expensive and how much of a pain in the ass it can be to get something even a few years after the printing date. I'm accustomed to the digital world, where one doesn't have to put up with this kind of stuff.

As another aside -- I would pay for an ebook, if I could get a nice, inexpensive, copy in an open format (nothing that requires a reader that isn't going to be produced in three years). I wouldn't pay a lot, but...

Here's an example. I remember the Sampson the Church Cat picture book series from my childhood. The books are wonderfully done -- they have perfectly serious text, and beautifully detailed watercolor illustrations. The text is quite serious, but can be interpreted in a humerous manner by seeing the illustrations. The books are, however, long out of print. I would love to obtain ebook copies at $2 each or so from an automated website, but I can't.

Here it is: Postgres on Windows in a single executable.

Yahoo POP3 access is available to all, thanks to SourceForge!

They just got a way to make the proper submissions through the Yahoo web interface for your POP3 client to retrieve mail through their utility. Yahoo mail is sweet. I have used it for several years, and it has these excellent things going for it:
I have been able to keep that email address through 3 different ISPs so I don't have to keep changing my email address.
Since they are free, I just have a separate one for junk stuff only, so I can give that one out wherever I want, and I just check up on it a couple times a week to see if there's anything I want.
They have a really good spam filtering system built in. It goes into a Bulk Mail folder and doesn't count against your space quota, so you can take a look in case they mis-filtered something.
It's accessible everywhere without having to set up a mail client to access it.

on another not, i have found strong evidence
that linux was build by fanatic to support war and other evil dids.

Since the Beging of the Age
Linux served the evil side, it is
Loaded with big guns
To not say RBG(Really Big Guns)

All this because of little and violent pingun (which bite linus)

You probably shouldn't be using a dos-box to play Star Control II when there's Windows/Linux/OSX versions available.

Yes, TNL can easily handle 60 players who all have line of sight to each other. TNL takes a different approach - for most simulations the TNL server allots a fixed amount of bandwidth per client (Tribes 2 was 3K per second), regardless of how many objects are visible to that client. For each packet the server sends, it proritizes objects based on relevance to the client and then writes updates based on that priority. TNL performs a bunch of other tricks to reduce bandwidth usage as well. Take a look at the design fundamentals for more in depth info.

I used to use GeekLog for my personal site, and it worked pretty good. I've since moved to a combination of phpBB, and an addon for it called phpBB_Fetch_All.

The advantage of using phpBB is you can easily expand your site into a larger community or something in the future.

Hmm... I guess I really should have hit preview.

I meant to say:

Other network layers to look at are OpenPlay and SDL net, both of which are also also free and OpenSource.

MUTE has enough encryption and other fun stuff to effectively dodge this sort of thing, even if it does take a long time to download stuff (in my experience at least. This might just be because there aren't enough users, or my NAT is slowing things down). Or, if you want a more personal network, use WASTE.

I've looked at the torque network layer while it was still part of the torque engine. It's well suited for developers who want a small scale (32 players or so) network game, particularly if its a first person shooter.

I wouldn't even consider it for a mid-size or larger multiplayer game, as it lacks important security features and IMO doesn't give enough control over the actual network protocol due to the emphasis on RMI.

Other network layers to look at are OpenPlay and , both of which are also also free and OpenSource.

Disclaimer -- I contribute to OpenPlay.

My problem with the iRiver is that you can't browse the contents by the ID3 tag content - only filenames.

To explain to everybody else: The iRiver comes with software that scans the portable's drive and builds a database from your ID3 tags. You can then flip an option in the iRiver's menus and it will let you browse by the contents of this database, rather than by filenames.

There are a couple of problems with this, though. First, the software is Windows-only. Second, it only supports MP3s, even though the device itself understands OGG comments. Third, it's buggy. Apparently there are unnatural limits on the length of the filenames and the paths to the filenames.

Then I discovered that there are, in fact, a couple of projects either ready or in the works to build iRiver database software for other platforms:

• iRipDB is the oldest. It's written in C, and compiles on Linux. The easiest way to get it to compile on BSD or Mac OS X is to track down JFTW, which implements the missing routines needed to walk a filesystem. You'll also need the appropriate third-party libraries for OGG and ID3 support (unlike the supplied software, it handles both). It doesn't seem to have the filename/path limitations of the supplied software. It's command-line only and a little clunky, but thankfully the author has also supplied documentation for the database file format, so you can use this as a basis to write our own software in some other language, if you choose.
• This guy seems to have taken that spec and written something in Python, which requires the appropriate ID3 and OGG libraries for Python. I don't do much mucking around with Python myself, so having got the C version working I didn't bother with this one, though it might be superior.
• ihptool is another utility, written -- mysteriously enough -- in C#. Haven't looked at this one much.
• iFish wants to do it in Java, which sounds like a good, cross-platform idea, and he claims things like fast database updates that only write the changes; but so far hasn't released anything.

I'm told the iRiver can do searches on the whole database, which might be handy. But I quickly realized that the main reason it would be handy was because ID3 tags are often corrupted. If you have albums by "Police" and "The Police," they'll show up in two totally different areas of the ID3 navigation. Not so if you manually threw them both into the same directory in the filesystem. There's no way to manually modify ID3 tags with the device; anytime you spot errors, you'll have to go back to the PC, update the tags, and rebuild the database.

In the end, I decided it was much more efficient, and much more forgiving of weird tags on downloaded MP3s, if I just managed the organization of the thing myself, using old fashioned files and folders.

P.S. And if that post doesn't earn a +1 Informative, I don't know what does!

My problem with the iRiver is that you can't browse the contents by the ID3 tag content - only filenames.

To explain to everybody else: The iRiver comes with software that scans the portable's drive and builds a database from your ID3 tags. You can then flip an option in the iRiver's menus and it will let you browse by the contents of this database, rather than by filenames.

There are a couple of problems with this, though. First, the software is Windows-only. Second, it only supports MP3s, even though the device itself understands OGG comments. Third, it's buggy. Apparently there are unnatural limits on the length of the filenames and the paths to the filenames.

Then I discovered that there are, in fact, a couple of projects either ready or in the works to build iRiver database software for other platforms:

• iRipDB is the oldest. It's written in C, and compiles on Linux. The easiest way to get it to compile on BSD or Mac OS X is to track down JFTW, which implements the missing routines needed to walk a filesystem. You'll also need the appropriate third-party libraries for OGG and ID3 support (unlike the supplied software, it handles both). It doesn't seem to have the filename/path limitations of the supplied software. It's command-line only and a little clunky, but thankfully the author has also supplied documentation for the database file format, so you can use this as a basis to write our own software in some other language, if you choose.
• This guy seems to have taken that spec and written something in Python, which requires the appropriate ID3 and OGG libraries for Python. I don't do much mucking around with Python myself, so having got the C version working I didn't bother with this one, though it might be superior.
• ihptool is another utility, written -- mysteriously enough -- in C#. Haven't looked at this one much.
• iFish wants to do it in Java, which sounds like a good, cross-platform idea, and he claims things like fast database updates that only write the changes; but so far hasn't released anything.

I'm told the iRiver can do searches on the whole database, which might be handy. But I quickly realized that the main reason it would be handy was because ID3 tags are often corrupted. If you have albums by "Police" and "The Police," they'll show up in two totally different areas of the ID3 navigation. Not so if you manually threw them both into the same directory in the filesystem. There's no way to manually modify ID3 tags with the device; anytime you spot errors, you'll have to go back to the PC, update the tags, and rebuild the database.

In the end, I decided it was much more efficient, and much more forgiving of weird tags on downloaded MP3s, if I just managed the organization of the thing myself, using old fashioned files and folders.

P.S. And if that post doesn't earn a +1 Informative, I don't know what does!

Please give us links!