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What, you all use Lunix? What country do you live in? I mean, it must be pretty poor if you're running C64s everywhere!

• Cygwin Linux emulation
• Mozilla
• Vim
• XFree86
• OpenOffice
• MinGW gcc
• Apache
• KDE

The name is being filed as a trademark and is apparently pretty unique. I was at first leery of another name change, but this should hopefully sort things out once and for all. Also the new fiery-fox-on-globe logo is really cool and firefoxes (aka red pandas) are just soooo cute.

BTW, the long delay in the new 0.8 release -- which adds a MSWindows installer, a new default theme for MacOS X and improved filetype, XPI and download management and other stuff -- is explained by the time taken to verify that the new name was unique and to file the trademark.

There is more info about the name change in the official FAQ and a lot of unofficial detail on Ben Goodger's blog

...here. The other open source project in question is a database (obviously) called Firebird.

The mail client is still called "Thunderbird", which IMHO introduces and incongruity in the naming schemes. But then again, what's in a name, eh? Besides, "Thunderfox" would sound dumb.

As stated in the press release, "[t]o avoid overlap with another open source project". That would be the Firebird database.

I've been stunningly underwhelmed with the general sturdiness of Apple's laptops.

I can't speak from an authoritative standpoint, but while most of our work TiBooks have been in and out of the shop over the years, a lot of friends with Pismo's, WallStreets, and IceBooks are humming along fine. I carried around a two year old 1st gen TiBook for a year. Scuffed as hell, but everything remained functional. I've been carrying around a 12" AlBook everywhere for about half a year now. Kept in a Booq bag, no marks, problems (except for the power pin of an old power adapter breaking off).

On the up side, Apple laptops had chronic problems for *years* with the port-covering panel breaking off. Apple seems to have fixed this, as the panel is firmly attached on his Mac.

The new Apple laptops don't suffer these problems at all as all the ports are on the sides now.

OS X is usable without being incredibly irritating, a la Windows, but it still isn't Linux. You are stuck with a single mouse button trackpad, and you should be aware that purchasing a Mac is more than the initial purchase price -- software and hardware from Apple is pricy and a lot of software that Linux folks take for granted as free are quite expensive packages on the Mac. Finally, the PowerPC isn't what it once was -- the PPC used to be an incredibly cool (thermally cool) processor back in the day, but it's steadily consumed more and more power.

The single button trackpad is my biggest bane in day to day use. It's one of the prices you pay. Software however, isn't one of the prices you need to pay if you don't want to. Just about every major piece of open source software runs on OS X, if not natively (Mozilla) then on X. I run Apache, MySQL, gVim, etc. fine. There's also lots of free and Free software available only on OS X (ie, I could run Gaim if I wanted to, but I run iChat or Adium instead). Agree w/ the PPC comment, however Apple's power management still beats the pants off of any Windows/Linux laptop. Apple laptops go to/come out of sleep pretty much as you open it. Whenever I'm stuck on a PC laptop, I really feel the difference. Those extra 5-10 seconds really add up over the course of a day.

While it *does* have a CLI, it lacks the GNU utilities, which is *incredibly* annoying to anyone who has gotten familiar with them. If Solaris or BSD (well, sans GNU utils) drives you nuts with the more limited featureset in the CLI utilities, you are going to be equally irritated with the Mac OS.

The first thing one should install before using the OS X CLI is Fink (well, actually Apple's X11 packages, but then Fink). Fink is also the easiest way to get GNOME and KDE up and running, all with an easy to use apt-get interface.

If you're aware of what you're getting into, Macs can be a good deal.

Agreed.

Note that, before people get crabby about me bashing Apple, I have a Mac right next to me at the moment, and I've used and coded on Macs for years in the past. I think Apple's done some good stuff, but that people also tend to get an overly rosy view of their

I agree that some people can get... overly enthusiastic. And there are bad things about the Macs. But I think a lot of the caveats you mention, while perhaps once were issues, aren't really anymore.

One thing to consider, and this is coming from someone's who used to love tinkering/building his own systems and who currently hacks in front of xterms all day and administers half-a-dozen linux boxes, is that it's quite a refreshing experience to have a laptop that does everything you want and 'just works' (for me, that's letting me do all my development and use all my accustomed Unix tools, but at the same time, handling stuff like attaching to wi-fi networks, projectors, waking/sleeping etc seamlessly).

Also refreshing is that I've literally never had to do a clean OS reinstall on any of my Macs (well, except for that OS X Server that I converted to Gentoo ;)

The only way to counteract Government and corporation's attempts to censor the internet is to use p2p technology that prevents this, usually anonymous p2p technologies. Freenet and Mute (both on sourceforge) are good places to start.

Also show people this article on internet censorship:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimat ur/

The only way to counteract Government and corporation's attempts to censor the internet is to use p2p technology that prevents this, usually anonymous p2p technologies. Freenet and Mute (both on sourceforge) are good places to start.

Also show people this article on internet censorship:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimat ur/

Nope; it's short for "MPEG Audio Layer 3", where the MPEG is the first version, later called MPEG-1. (References: mpeg.org, Fraunhofer.)

AAC was developed for MPEG-2, and improved for MPEG-4.

I'm a tad confused by this paragraph...

I was trying to put the restrictions on AAC into a context people would be familiar with. As you say, it's not treated exactly the same as MP3, but it's very close in most respects, as compared with WMA, FairPlay-protected AAC, Real, or other formats.

I have yet to encounter a single consumer implementation of an AAC encoding/decoding piece of software other than Apple's.

I came across FAAC earlier today. As you say, there's not a lot else; but considering the high usage of iTunes, QuickTime, the iTMS, and the iPod, I expect to see more in future. (MP3 took a while to take off, too.)

> This guy posts the exactly same

I do it because it's interesting. It's interesting to see this aspect of an open source codebase - what sorts of things are duplicated? What does the code look like surrounding the duplicate chunks? Often you'll see comments like "whew, gotta clean this up" in the vicinity - it's provides some insight into the program that you might not otherwise see.

If I got modded to Offtopic every time I posted these, I'd stop. But they usually get modded way up, and the links get clicked on a couple thousand times. That's because, I think, a lot of other folks find these reports interesting, too.

Note that I'm not selling PMD or CPD - they're open source, free, on Sourceforge, and are an ongoing project to which many folks have contributed.

Also, I don't post the the reports inline - I just post a link so you don't have to scroll through ten pages. So if you don't like them, you can just hit the down arrow once or twice and you'll be past it.

This article just highlights that nothing really has changed in the Nautilus/Gnome world.

Development on how to take 31337 screenshots is given a priority, when screenshots are taken often, if at all. (I think I've taken 1 in the past three years, and that was done with xv's "grab window".) Screenshots simply aren't something worth spending time on.

Nautilus still sucks. Yea! It defaults to selecting everything before the extention! It STILL FOUR DAMN YEARS LATER doesn't support icon arranging. You either have them all messed up, or flush left in alphabetical order. What the hell? It still seems slow, and doesn't have decent plugins. I'm not a KDE guy, but Konqueror is heads and shoulders above Nautilus.

Nautilus sucks and needs to be replaced. Hopefully Velocity or Endeavour2 will mature enough to actually replace that dog.

fsv

Even Mozilla.org has said that Mozilla is really not the preferred browser to use. They suggest Firebird. If you're using GNOME, I'd suggest Galeon. It still has the same plugin installation issues, I'm sure, but in general I find it to be a much better browser.

I'm talking about a completely decentralized network with no central body allocating addresses, with strong encryption at the link level and end-to-end, guaranteeing privacy and freedom of speech to anyone who can connect to it.

Freenet and the Freehaven project's second-generation onion router have laid a lot of the groundwork, but they're designed to be internet overlays. What we need is a truly decentralized packet-switching network, independent of the internet, capable of operating over an ad hoc collection of wireless, leased line, modem and (for the moment) internet connections. The internet can function as scaffolding but nothing in the new network's design should be internet-specific.

It's already possible to build small networks of this kind - see Mute, for example. Each machine's address is derived from its public key, and you find routes by broadcasting. But broadcasting every query isn't scalable, so in my PhD research I'm looking for scalable ways to route packets across a large, untrusted network with no address aggregation. If you have any ideas, please reply and I'll send you my email address. :-)

Sun's Java Desktop System seems to be doing quite well.

10,000 to the United India Insurance Company, 500,000 to 1,000,000 per year to the China Standard Software Co, and approval from the UK government for a 5 year purchase agreement.

Downloadable Java applets seem to be doing quite well on the internet, including for games, custom user interfaces, security applications, etc.

At the company I work at, one of our main design tools is a java application that you just copy from the server (essentially download) and run. The developers came from another company where they were doing the same thing.

NASA is using Java to control the Mars Rovers, and track satellites.

More and more tools built by Computer Science researchers are in Java, like this Bayesian Network tool, or are switching from other languages to Java, like this static program verification tool.

In short, I think you completely missed it with your answer.

C:\photos\1997\1997_01_05

I find that to be overly redundant. Do you really need the year twice? I'd do something like this:

C:\photos\1997\01\05

But then again, I like directories :)

Here's how I store my photos, however, it works great so far: /home/rbpark/Galleries/Title/100_####.JPG

The idea is, I leave the raw filename from the camera intact, just so that an alphabetical sort will put them into the order that I took them, and the "Title" is just something to help me identify what the pictures are.

Then I use digikam, and it puts an xml file into each directory with various metadata about the pictures, like comments for each pic, etc. I just started using it a couple of days ago, but I think it's a pretty cool program so far. :)

Trivia: Most digital cameras roll over after 9999 photos, it gets annoying.

Yeah, I figured that's what would happen after it got to 9999. I'm at 0700 or so right now, so I should be fine for a while.

Also SourceForge.

Mine has even less. Cheers; it and Firebird make the web fun.

That GNU-Darwin people decides not to link to proprietary libraries is, of course, a result of them using the GNU Public License so extensively and now because of that decision the primary Darwin development platform is no longer supported in this project!

This makes me shake my head and wonder what the fuck? This project is not only shooting itself in the foot by choosing a platform not fully supported by the OS, but is also screwing over the real meat of Darwin's userbase: PowerPC owners. This move is akin to opening a car garage (in America) whose mechanics are all experienced in servicing American cars, and then changing policy months later, stating that the garage will only work on foreign models.

Where is the fucking logic?

Seriously, am I the only one who is wondering who the Hell is in charge at that project? Kool-Aid Man? This move makes so little sense I can't tell if the people at GNU-Darwin are really that stupid, or if I am waking up in alternate realities every damn morning. I almost kind of hope for the latter.

This is the GPL in action, Mac faithful. Get down on your knees and kiss Apple's butt for choosing the BSD license.

That and weird little things like not being able to use wildcards in the file open dialog boxes.

Yeah, that's real weird. In fact, I wonder why no-one's ever written a file manager that can select files based on regexes.

Oh wait, somebody already did.

Second, how will you ensure that this stream isn't diverted to somewhere else -- say, a hard drive? Once people start saving it, it's only a matter of time before their entire library is available on Kazaa. Programs such as StreamRipper32 already make it trivial to save shoutcast radio streams to mp3 files; I imagine this effect will be duplicated fairly quickly to save these streams.

Second, how will you ensure that this stream isn't diverted to somewhere else -- say, a hard drive? Once people start saving it, it's only a matter of time before their entire library is available on Kazaa. Programs such as StreamRipper32 already make it trivial to save shoutcast radio streams to mp3 files; I imagine this effect will be duplicated fairly quickly to save these streams.

I thought 2.2 was safe. Then again, we thought they were not going after copyright infringement. I'm guessing that is a typo.

It's not a typo -- I suspect you just got a bit confused by all the version numbers getting tossed around in that paragraph of the filing.

The 2.2.1 reference is to a version of the EVMS project over on SourceForge -- they're not talking about a Linux kernel version there. EVMS provides administrative tools for storage management.

Table B, a few lines down, addresses the Linux kernel files/lines related to EVMS, and they're only talking about 2.4 releases of the kernel there. (Or, more accurately, a 2.4.x kernel after applying the EVMS 1.0.0 kernel patches.)

SCO's objection is to the code and kernel patches that IBM contributed to the EVMS project. SCO is not making any allegations against the 2.2 Linux kernels in this filing.

I remember the scores of Chicken Littles that came out of the woodwork when Anders got 'fished' from Borland. Regardless, under the hands of Chuck J and others, it still went along swimmingly.

It's actually pretty interesting the ties between some parts of Borland and Microsoft's .NET team. (I was at BorCon a couple of years back when Anders did a keynote speech, and did demonstrations of ASP.NET... using Delphi 7's .NET Preview Compiler to very good effect.) They've had to face a number of the same challenges. .NET actually has to approach the Windows API in the same manner as many decent class libraries have (glad to see that the .NET framework is miles away from the spaghetti vomitus of MFC, likely in part an Anders influence). Borland had to work around the idiosyncracies of the Windows rich-text APIs in making their TRichText control. Such experiences are valuable. In return, Borland gets some excellent heads-ups on the technology.

I've had a chance to use Delphi 8/for .NET, and I must say that Danny Thorpe, Corbin Dunn et al have done a marvellous job in making porting to .NET easy. Compared to porting to Kylix/CLX (which 'everyone wanted', but nobody would pay for - *laugh*), porting to .NET was a breeze. I even ported DUnit across while I was at it :)

As to missing generics, I, too, missed some sort of generics. I loved Ada's model for generics, loathed the way most C++ compilers handled templates (more specifically at the time, how they handled errors and tracing :), although I got good mileage out of them.

I have an implementation of Rossen Assenov's generics for Delphi (using a trick similar to that in C++ before the 2.1 standard) here on my web page. A few limitations (which you can get around if you're not averse to 2-layer-deep includes :), but works like an absolute charm, and it does still work in Delphi for .NET (though you will have to ensure you aren't using pointers in your list classes if you want to be managed-code compliant :).

He (or she, I suppose) is right. It was originally the Nullsoft SuperPiMP Install System... RTFS :-)

links and lynx are two different browsers.

Make sure you purchase a phone that follows the SyncML standard (which is what Apple iSync uses) and you'll be able to get the phone to sync with many popular PIMs (if the PIMs don't support SyncML yet, they probably will soon). I sync my SonyEricsson T616 on a Linux box running Mandrake (Cooker) with Evolution 1.4.5 using Multisync .81 via Bluetooth. Things pretty much work 'out of the box' as far as syncing goes, but it's definately not as smooth a process as when I sync the T616 with my iBook. Additionally, I use Multisync to sync my Sharp Zaurus with Evolution also.

P.S. not tryin to brag, just noting that all this stuff does work 'easily enough'.

First of all, IBM has taken great pains to insure that anyone on their Linux team has never had access to AIX or Sys5 code. It was setup as a clean room exercise.

While this may be true for some things (although, really, has IBM actually said this?), it's definitely not true for the RCU stuff, which very clearly says it was " based on original DYNIX/ptx code".

I think this probably won't matter, since IBM can definitely make a good case that RCU isn't derivative of SysV/"SCO" code even though it was implemented in Dynix -- but the path through which this got into Linux seems pretty clear.

In case you were wondering what kernel version 2.4.1-01 is and why the files/line numbers shown in the complaint are not there/all bogus: apply the RCU patch found here, bottom of page, to kernel 2.4.1.

Alex

Replying to my own post here ..

There has been further analysis on Groklaw. The rclock.h, rclock.c, kmemdefs.h and kmemdefs.c files are here. This is an RCU patch seemingly provided by IBM, but which (as another contributor pointed out) were never included in the kernel by Linus.

As has been pointed out on Groklaw (and on here earlier) SCO are clearly dropping the "Linux is all stolen code" article in favour of the "IBM stole our code and put it in Linux" article. This fact needs to be shouted from the rooftops. I'm quite sure IBM can defend themselves .. (evil grin)

Don't even think about looking for this code in linux-2.4.x. Not a single line of any of the mentionened patches has been merged into linux-2.4.
You can find the code in these patches provided by IBM:

EVMS evms_aix.h
JFS ref/jfs_inode.h
RCU-2.4.1-01

Something remotely similar to the rcu patch was eventually merged into 2.5.43 and into United Linux. The EVMS header is used by the compatibility module for AIX partitions and is also in United Linux but nowhere in an official linux. The jfs inode header is not used anywhere, because it is the OS/2 file and was provided only for reference.

Let us know where it's gonna be hosted if you do. I think it could be useful. Googling found this:

http://kernelbook.sourceforge.net/wiki/?KernelWiki
but it seems to have been inactive for a long time. Anyway, good luck to ya.

A little more about BitPim.

The test version of BitPim currently the LG VX4400 and VX6000 (phonebook, calendar, wallpaper and ringtones), and the Sanyo SCP-4900, 5300, and 8100 (phonebook and calendar only). It probably actually works on a few more Sanyo models, and more Sanyo phones and perhaps a Samsung may be added in the coming months. I believe the goal is to support most phones with Qualcomm 3G CDMA chipsets.

BitPim makes a nice stand alone application and has some import capability. Another goal is to have full import, export and sync capability for hte phonebook and calendar. Developers contributing in these areas would be most welcome by the project.

I am looking for help on SCTP . Is there any one using it right now in linux as it is merged into 2.6 kernel.

I'm using Multisync with my Siemens S55 (connected via Bluetooth). Via IrMC, it can sync mobile phones via IrDA, Bluetooth or serial cables. Providers for SyncML, Evolution, OPIE (Sharp Zaurus or HP iPAQ running GNU/Linux), WinCE, LDAP, Palm and Backup exist as well.

The 3650 and other Nokia series 60 phones can sync with Outlook using PC Suite, but that's all. That works fine for me, as Outlook is dictated by our IT people at work.

However, at home we have XP and OpenOffice, and no Outlook, so my wife can't synch her 3650 with anything. In fact, in order to put new listings into her phone directory, the best way is for me to load it into my phone at work, then Bluetooth or MMS the item to her phone.

For Linux, the SyncML-based MultiSync, which supports Ximian Evolution, seems to be coming along (I have not tried it). But in general, SyncML is still long on promise and short on reality.

I've recently stumbled across MultiSync. It synchronizes information between Evolution, PIM, phone, Palm, LDAP, etc. Haven't installed it yet, but it sounds very powerful. If your phone supports either IrMC or SyncML-based synchronization, then you're in luck.

It's a complete money pit, but hey, if you have fun and can afford it, good luck to you.

Everybody is complaining about how expensive it is, and that is true to some extent, but I put my best deck together for under $10.

The truly thrifty player can play online using Mindless Automaton which is compatible with but superior to Apprentice the windows version.

Since you mentioned Sprint I assume you are in the USA. You can also get BitPim which works with LG CDMA phones (Verizon) and Sanyo CDMA phones (Sprint) as well as the embedded filesystems of other CDMA phones. It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac and is open source (Artistic License).

The version number is currently 0.7 for the "test" version which about accurately reflects its functionality (as with many open source projects, various things are incomplete :-)

It is also often in the top 100 projects on SourceForge and hence is somewhat lively.

Smart BootManager is a personal favourite bootloader for me. My favourite feature is probably useless for what you intend to do, but if you stick it on a floppy, it will let you boot from the CDROM of a computer ancient enough that it doesn't normally support CDROM booting. This has saved me from pulling out my hair numerous times to boot, say, a Windows install CD, or a Debian install CD, or whatever you may need to install that is too big to fit on a disk or USB drive.

It has a nice asciigraphic menu, is completely runtime-configurable, and fits in 30kB. Really impressive, in my opinion. If you can partition your USB drive in a way that it understands, it should be able to do what you want.

Sony Ericsson T68i along with Multi Sync will sync with Ximian Evolution and others.

BTW, for those reminiscing about text-based gopher don't forget GopherVR that came out just as http/html hit. An interesting experiment in 3D virtualization of online resources I've yet to see it equalled for other protocols.

Other now-obscure technologies from the same era:

• ph
• fsp
• wais
• archie
• z39.50
• veronica
• prospero

// Ulf Harnhammar

...is when Mark Heise, counsel for SCO at this hearing, was asked why SCO needed IBM's source code to AIX to determine if there is any infringement occuring, when SCO has certified that Sun and HP are not infringing without having shown any source code.

Heise replied (not sure of the exact quote, transcript isn't available yet) "As for HP, there is a fundamental difference in that they haven't said they are contributing to Linux". Dave Marriott, counsel for IBM at the hearing, replied that HP has, in fact, contributed to Linux.

Talk about not having done your homework...

Jay (=

...is when Mark Heise, counsel for SCO at this hearing, was asked why SCO needed IBM's source code to AIX to determine if there is any infringement occuring, when SCO has certified that Sun and HP are not infringing without having shown any source code.

Heise replied (not sure of the exact quote, transcript isn't available yet) "As for HP, there is a fundamental difference in that they haven't said they are contributing to Linux". Dave Marriott, counsel for IBM at the hearing, replied that HP has, in fact, contributed to Linux.

Talk about not having done your homework...

Jay (=

...is when Mark Heise, counsel for SCO at this hearing, was asked why SCO needed IBM's source code to AIX to determine if there is any infringement occuring, when SCO has certified that Sun and HP are not infringing without having shown any source code.

Heise replied (not sure of the exact quote, transcript isn't available yet) "As for HP, there is a fundamental difference in that they haven't said they are contributing to Linux". Dave Marriott, counsel for IBM at the hearing, replied that HP has, in fact, contributed to Linux.

Talk about not having done your homework...

Jay (=

...is when Mark Heise, counsel for SCO at this hearing, was asked why SCO needed IBM's source code to AIX to determine if there is any infringement occuring, when SCO has certified that Sun and HP are not infringing without having shown any source code.

Heise replied (not sure of the exact quote, transcript isn't available yet) "As for HP, there is a fundamental difference in that they haven't said they are contributing to Linux". Dave Marriott, counsel for IBM at the hearing, replied that HP has, in fact, contributed to Linux.

Talk about not having done your homework...

Jay (=

For those looking for mplayer on Windows, you can get Media Player Classic here. I've just tested it on RealAudio files (from Marketplace) and it works fine :).

Check out http://www.kde-look.org/.
Good even if you don't use KDE, they have lots of Linux related wallpapers for instance.

One app I have fallen in love with is
SuperKaramba, a clone of Windows XP Samurize. It enabels easy Python scripting of widgets on the desktop, enabling such things as weather forecasts, system information, Mac OS X style dockers on your desktop, or even some very beautiful themes complete with new toolbars, XMMS skins etc.

Try aterm. It does pseudo transparency as well.