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I see this possibility...if VIA has a problem with it I will pull it off my web site (I probably should anyway, my upload bandwidth is hurtin'...). However VIA has not given any reasons for removing their page, for all I know they are having server problems (though I doubt this is the case). Other posters have mentioned that the original GPL release was invalid...this may be so, but if AOL was really interested in it why have they not taken action against the sourceforge project? Either way I'm happy no matter what happens here - even if I have to remove my copy of the code. I think a lot of you /.ers are paranoid. :)

Actually, the url is
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=36 8414

There was an unintentional "space". Weird. Even my post is getting the space added in the visibly displayed text (though the link appears to be ok). That must be some sort of slashcode bug. The space appears in the previewed post, but not it is not in the textarea that I edited the post in.

No, that went up about a day after the Waste program was initially posted to Nullsoft. If Via based something off of it, I'm pretty sure they knew about Waste's history.

Removing the program probably has a lot more to do with Via's failure to properly credit Waste's developers despite lifting files directly from them (see here and here).

VIA hasn't posted their reasons for pulling the code. If that is indeed the reason, I will remove my copy. If everyone thinks that there is proprietary code/licensing problems with WASTE, why is the sourceforge page still up? Why hasn't AOL sent them C&D letters? VIA based PadLockSL on WASTE, which as far as I can see, is a legitimate project, it's been there for months and the whole world has known about it. Granted, little work has been done on it, possibly because of licensing fears like this.

Well, if that's the case, why haven't they threatened the development of gaim-e or gaim-encryption?

Well, if that's the case, why haven't they threatened the development of gaim-e or gaim-encryption?

As a side-question, have you considered using Markov Chains?

I think it's about time there was a re-write of StarCon2 with modern graphics, sound, and a true 3D galaxy.

Not 3D, but high resolution and open source: Star Control: TimeWarp. Looks like it's melee-only at the moment, but it seems to be pretty active.

Alternatively there's The Ur-Quan Masters, which is a more straightforward remake based on the original source code (to the 3DO version), if you just want to play the original on a modern PC.

[...] and she just goes into windows to use the Family Tree Program now.

Show her GRAMPS

A friend of mine was working on the Music Analysis Toolkit (MAT) while he was still thinking of pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science. The toolkit does just this kind of music recognition stuff, and he was working a lot with the psychoacoustic model and using LAME to filter out inaudible stuff. It's been a while since I've talked with him about it, but it's definately interesting.

I'd be willing to bet this is based on lots of the same stuff.

yep, Bluetooth hasn't really taken off.

However, I have a Sony Ericsson t68i mobile phone and purchased a USB Bluetooth dongle off ebay for ~20 GBP. I downloaded the excellent floAt's Mobile Agent software which interacts via Bluetooth with Sony Ericsson phones.

Now when I walk into my room, my phone clock automagically syncs with my computer's clock. All my text messages and my phone book are archived. If a text message arrives, it is displayed on my computer screen, and I can reply using my qwerty keyboard rather than the predictive text. I can also control Winamp, Powerpoint and WMP but I don't really use them much. All in all it is very usefull for me, but it could have been better.

I am suprised it hasn't been built into more devices. I would have thought sony would have built them into more of their devices, especially televison sets. Rather than using an infra-red remote control they could use a bluetooth remote (marketing would love it), they could then allow you to use a Sony Ericsson phone to control your TV instead of a remote and I'm sure there are many other possibilities that I just haven't thought of. When the clocks went forward, my mobile and computer automatically changed but my watch and radio alarm clock didn't but if they had bluetooth then they would have been able to. I googled for bluetooth alarm clocks and watches, but there are none. It turns out no one has made one. A bluetooth clock radio would be easy and I'd buy one, when I get a job!

Give her a COBOL compiler under Linux.

what your grandma needs is for her windows to burst into flames when she closes them.

K.

- self healing DVD-RWs: having many Reed-Solomon code based parity blocks of for arbitrary data recovery and error detection (a parchive, allowing the player to find and compensate for errors in the disk media on the fly, possibly even repairing them in the process.

Last time I checked patches where text files. So what do you mean by a binary patch?

Um, possibly something like this or this or this or this or any of the dozens of other binary diff/patch utilities?

Last time I checked patches where text files. So what do you mean by a binary patch?

Um, possibly something like this or this or this or this or any of the dozens of other binary diff/patch utilities?

Well, if you want Attack, you'll want psDooM. Excuse me while I go frag that zombie child process...

noiz2sa - SDL
Aleph One - SDL/OpenGL
BZ Flag - OpenGL
Egoboo - SDL/OpenGL
PoopemUp - SDL/OpenGL
Neverwinter Nights - SDL/OpenGL
Not to mention all the Loki titles that used SDL (heck, didn't they develop it in the first place?): Myth, Rune, Civ3,Sim City 3000, Tribes 2, Alpha Centauri, and so on
Don't forget the billion or so Doom/Quake/Wolfenstein 3D ports/spinoffs.

noiz2sa - SDL
Aleph One - SDL/OpenGL
BZ Flag - OpenGL
Egoboo - SDL/OpenGL
PoopemUp - SDL/OpenGL
Neverwinter Nights - SDL/OpenGL
Not to mention all the Loki titles that used SDL (heck, didn't they develop it in the first place?): Myth, Rune, Civ3,Sim City 3000, Tribes 2, Alpha Centauri, and so on
Don't forget the billion or so Doom/Quake/Wolfenstein 3D ports/spinoffs.

The driver made by IOXperts runs my Logitech QuickCam 3000 Pro just fine, and gives me much more flexibility than Logitech's stinking software does. There are lots of options for changing the video size, and the video and audio compression. I was pretty upset when I first bought my mac and learned that Logitech has orphaned the QuickCam Pro 3000 on mac OS X, but as soon as I had it up and running with the IOXperts driver I was happy to have better software anyway. (Logitech's customer support recommends buying the QuickCam Pro 4000 for use on OS X. Jerks.)

I also tried macam, but it didn't seem to work very well. Perhaps I was using it incorrectly.

From the article:

> However, the system's commercial future is uncertain.
> "The question is: how much are people prepared to pay
> for it, and how often will they use it?" says Rob Morland,
> of technology consultants Scientific Generics near Cambridge.
> "That's a tough one."

I've posted earlier on this...

The solution could be to use cell phones + cameras + GPS to effectively do collaborative cartography. i.e. units could be both consumers and producers of information - both raw picture data and processed maps - like much of the internet today.

A person could take pictures or video, each frame having a GPS timespace-stamp, and load it onto his computer at home, which could then participate with thousands of other computers in feature extraction using freely available mapping sources like TIGER data. Annotations to mapping information could include: GPS timespace stamps, voice or text annotation, accelerometer data (for data on observer orientation and acceleration). The latter could also help improve feature extraction from multiple images in a video (for eg: Intel OpenCV vision library uses stereo cameras for feature detection).

Throw in concepts like local P2P exchanges by mobile units (for eg: my PDA has GPS, your cellphone has a camera & GPRS, both can communicate over bluetooth --> potential for a win-win situation for us both), distributed image storage and feature extraction, novel types of feature recognition (eg: ATM screens, McDonald outlets), multiple freenet-like distributed cartography servers --- the concept can get quit interesting. - for users, also potentially for cartography vendors even though they will have to improve their value proposition.

Shame is that you need IRIX 5.3 or below to run. All my systems are 6.5+

However there is fsv - 3D file system visualiser available for Unix/Linux.

as a visual effects developer, i'd like to point out that there are some very nice (better?) effects that can be achieved with 2d effects. eye candy that would make you drool.

check out my burning dialog box movie.

K.

as a visual effects developer, i'd like to point out that there are some very nice (better?) effects that can be achieved with 2d effects. eye candy that would make you drool.

check out my burning dialog box movie.

K.

Check out WebScarab, which is available from the Open Web Application Security Project.

The feature you are interested in is:

• Interception Proxy - captures traffic between the browser and the web server and alllows the user to modify HTTP on the fly.

...too long since i've played that

Not sure if anyone has seen this but... Linux 3d add on [sourceforge.net] This program allows a 3d environment to appear when you want to change between virtual desktops... Once again looks cool... But useful? Not really...

Well, as I said, the default Gentoo kernel build didn't support it, but the following HOWTO gave me the info I needed to patch the kernel with a custom DSDT override. Everything works great.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=122145

The ACPI4Linux project which was mentioned in the gentoo forum post above was where I ended up finding the most info about the problem

http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/

Why not investigate some of the alternatives while the site is ./ed.
http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/
Sun's attempt
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/A.Steed/3ddesktop/

Virtual desktops. Not in Aqua, although you can kind of simulate it by creating multiple users & doing fast user switching.

Or just run Desktop Manager. OSS and very very good.

There are some real annoyences in getting fink to accept that you are using Apple's distribution of X.

You just have to install system-xfree86 via Fink first. You shouldn't have any problems after that.

is pasmal

> Can somebody tell me why it seems everything
> requiring a cross-platform C++ gui widgets
> seems to be written with QT?

It's largely because Qt is really, really insanely easy to use. The object classes are very intuitive for programming.

Regarding licensing issues, there is a GPL version for native Win32. It's not being actively updated, but it did get far enough to the point where most of my programs (the ones that didn't use other libraries, at least) would cross compile and run pretty decently. There were some speed issues, but most of them disappeared after I figured out how to get the compiled programs running without popping up a stderr command window.

--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main

you know, back when this happened, i asked rms about the issue. he basically told me that they would have to recode it from scratch in order to not violate the gpl. just because someone gpl'd it, doens't mean they had the authorization to do so...

here's the link to the discussion.

They may think they are offering choice, but mindless copying of Windows means they don't test alternatives sufficently that you can use them. In KDE, turning off the click-to-raise also turns off the ability to raise windows by clicking on the title bar, which is not very useful or user friendly. Also all CDE-style window managers (and Windows) have a bug where if you raise a "child" window, it also raises it's parent to immediately below the child. This is just as bad as raising a window when you click inside it, and I have not seen a single modern window manager that does not have this bug. (my window manager flwm does not have this bug, so at least it proves that it can be avoided).

More importantly, as long as programs cannot assumme they can avoid click-to-top, they have to work around it. This means making child windows even when they are not modal, and using single-window/dockable/tiled/MDI type interfaces.

The biggest annoyance is that if they would just turn it off, it is trivial for programs that want click-to-top to turn it back on (all they have to do is raise themselves in response to a click). The opposite is not true, I have no way to avoid raise-to-top (except elaborate kludges with messing with the TRANSIENT_FOR property which can fool some window managers). If they would turn this off permanently they would really be offering "choice".

decent free beer formats?
Ogg is more than decent, it's the best lossy audio format out there and it's free as in free speech and beer.
How come u don't even know about theora? u suck! are you a windows XP user or what? Why should we care about MPEG that steals our money when we can use free ogg instead? do u work for them or are you just stupid? (guess u have no idea what FLAC and speex are either)

Mac apps are usually installed by dragging the application from the mounted DMG file (a compressed file system) into the Applications folder. Much easier than apt-get or Windows installers.

That's because those Mac apps are archives organized to be fully self-contained, so they are ready to go instantly.

What I mean by "self-contained" is something somewhat similar (in certain points) to Zero Install.

If you want another analogy, imagine compiling a Linux application for i386, with --prefix=/opt/appname (which means etc/, share/ everything gets under /opt/appname for that app), and shipping the /opt/appname tarball with some special files in it that will alow the unpacker on the target systems to do some nifty tricks with it .

So it's not such a different thing from a .deb or a .rpm package, it just puts a different twist on the user experience.

Yes, but you can always play Ogg Vorbis on it:

http://symbianoggplay.sourceforge.net/

and isn't that what's really important in life?

Jef Raskin
Joel Spolsky
Bruce Tognazzini

when all your games/applications/movies/music suddenly require it, you can either deal with it and not use them or budge and use DRM.

Then you've made a wrong decision in the first place to rely only on games, applications, movies and music that require digital restrictions management. There exist Free 2D games (and a few Free 3D games), loads of Free apps (except in those niches that are cluttered with patents, such as color print work), no-cost Flash movies, and quite a bit of no-cost music on irate. As long as PC companies continue to sell PCs and not Xbox consoles, it remains straightforward to stay in the Free World.

None of those are fundamental problems with open-source software at all. My open-source software (Audacity) may not be perfect, but it doesn't suffer from most of those problems, and it's very popular (millions of downloads). Mozilla, especially FireFox, doesn't have those problems. There are hundreds of other smaller, special-purpose open-source programs that are easy to install, easy to use, and have great documentation.

So clearly it's quite possible to create open-source software with all of those qualities.

But anyone can make open-source software, and open-source software can survive and be moderately successful without any of these traits. This is a good thing. Unfortunately it means that for every stable, easy-to-use project on Sourceforge, there are a thousand unpolished or impossible to use programs, and that's not counting things that are just plain unfinished or in beta-testing. People need to realize that:

1. Open-source software can be just as good (and better), easy to install, easy to use, well-documented, stable, and supported as any commercial software. It requires a lot of commitment from many people to bring it to this level, but when there's enough demand, and a usually a few generous sponsors, it's quite possible.

2. Most open-source software is not at this level. That's okay, nobody is forcing you to use it. You can either contribute (either help improve it or document it yourself, or pay someone else to do it) or you can find another solution.

From the abstract, emphasis mine:

This paper discusses five fundamental problems with the current Open Source software development trend, explores why these issues are holding the movement back, and offers solutions that might help overcome these problems.

Seems they are only "fundamental problems", if everybody accepts the premise that the highest goal is to become the premier choice of "the general public." I personally don't agree with this agenda at all. In no particular order: Innovation? Quality? Free-as-in-possible-to-use/distribute/complete-acc ess-to-understand/modify/contribute-back-to-the-co mmunity? Etc.

In any case, briefly looking at the list of these "fundamental problems":

1. The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary software's more intuitive interface.
Do you agree? Is there consensus on this? Is that really a fundamental problem? I'm on fluxbox when I can choose, but are KDE/GNOME/et al. so divergent and/or different from Windows or OSX?

2. Open Source software tends to lack the complete and accessible documentation that retains users.
Huh? As opposed to what, having the same amount of documentation of e.g. the Windows APIs as Microsoft's own coders (who are the competition - Office apps, media players, browsers, etc.)? Oh, wait - it's talking about user docs. Ok, but isn't that always a problem, everywhere? The article offers "Documentation should always cater to the lowest common denominator." The best doc you read was a dumbed-down so anyone could understand it? I'm unconvinced.

3. Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that they have a solid core.
Feature-creep is hardly more prevalent in open source?!? "Shipping the prototype" is such a standard practice in the closed-source corporate world it's not even funny. Additionally, the article writes about the small 'core' tools doing few things well - I thought that was a fundamental design principle in *n*x.. and subsequently GNU/Linux, BSD, etc.? E.g. mplayer doesn't contain any of the bloat found in MediaPlayer or RealPlayer (been a while since I saw them though, they might've become better..?).

4. Open Source programmers also tend to program with themselves as an intended audience, rather than the general public.
I don't understand this at all, what is the problem? When did Joe User become more important than making the software do what you want? And making it free, Joe User can use it to his heart's content - within the terms of the licence under which you release it. Why is creating software to solve your problem a flaw? If your motto is "General public acceptance or death", it seems to become one..

5. Lastly, there is a widely known stubbornness by Open Source programmers in refusing to learn from what lessons proprietary software has to offer.
One problem might be lack of source ;)? But seriously, is it so? Stubborness in hating/flaming Microsoft, etc., perhaps, but surely not using ideas from them (the GUI, Mono, and so on)? If anything, I'd like to see even more divergence from "industry standard 'best practices'".

(to bring up the obvious - there is no open source clippy)

There isn't?

Or, of course, you can use perl with CamelBones.

Stallman's response, an enlightening read, highlights a good deal of what I consider the difference between Open Source folks like Jorrit and Free folks like Stallman.

That was quite a good link, explains the difference between Free and Open Source software extremely well.

Longhorn won't come out until 2006. This gives GNU/Linux at least two more years to establish a foothold on the desktop.

Unless and until Sony makes an SACD Discman or SACD car stereo, I don't see Red Book CDs going away any time soon, and Linux can play those with cdparanoia | oggenc. If you want to download music, GNU/Linux lets you listen to music customized to your tastes.

If you want to watch videos, then install (wink wink nudge nudge) libdvdcss into your distribution's Xine player, or just connect a $50 DVD player to the TV that's much bigger than your 17" monitor anyway. Given the installed base of DVD players in region 1 alone, I don't see MPAA abandoning DVD Video any time soon, even if it does introduce HD DVD in parallel. And even then, there's still Newgrounds and the Macromedia Flash player for Linux.

> it means 20-minute mailing list searches,

Although SourceForge will be much faster now that PlayFair has moved to Sarovar :-)

No, but seriously, folks. If the top 10 projects moved off of SourceForge, I bet that'd eliminate 75% of the load. eMule alone gets downloaded a quarter-million times a day...

and for Python users out there, here's the very capable PyObjC.

GForge: Fork of Alexandria code by former Sourceforge developer. Rips out foundries and is for optimized PHP and Postgresql and Apache. Patches for Oracle in beta, refuses mysql patches.

Why? No seriously, I wouldn't support a project once I encounter this kind of attitude. People often go "Well, it's their project so they have the final say about it.", which is bullshit. If you're going to start your own OS project and be a complete jackass to people who use it, ( In short, your developers, bugtesters, QA people, support staff AND users all in one. ) then DO NOT START A DAMNED OS PROJECT. Look what's happening to Xfree86 for example; they went anal about licensing and voila, the OS community gave them the collective middle finger and it's highly likely that in a few years time Xfree86 wil be nothing more then an interesting little footnote in computing history. Remember people, don't just open your source, alos open your mind. And for the love of Eris, get rid of that crap "No matter how fucked up/lacking things are, my will be done. Infidel." attitude.

On a slightly different note, doesn't this whole idea about SF, one of the flagships of the OS community, is actually closed source and used to promote offshore outsourcing seem painfully ironic? Especially when one considers Slashdot is actually part of VA Software? Don't you subscribers love to know that your hard-earned money might one day be used to A) buy these people a penis extension on four wheels with an engine and B) fire this guy and replace him with Deeptendu Chakrapani from Bangladesh? At least the spelling will improve, though...

Yeah, minor issue though - SourceForge is owned by VA Software (LNUX on Nasdaq) who has reaped millions from their IPO. Sourceforge is no more open source than www.microsoft.com is.