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Just buy a USB cable and use bitpim to put whatever files you want on your phone, which include ringtones, wallpapers, etc. Also, if you have an LG vx4400, you can change your WAP setting (just research how to find your secret menu) to whatever site you'd like. Unfortunately, most brew applications need to be signed by qualcomm, but I'm sure there are ways around that, but I didn't tell you that.
A good site for the LG vx4400 is http://aeonnfluux.com. They have all sorts of info on the vx4400, which is a very "hacakble" phone, especially with the cable.

It will also be harder to put on a computer screen in a good size simply because said computer screen will be unable to fit both screens at a large size within its aspect ratio.

I've already solved one problem. By all guesses, this new system uses a pair of GBA-size LCD panels. That would make the total display 240x320 pixels, which is coincidentally the same size as the Pocket PC display. Scale2x the emulated display to 480x640 pixels, and you have something that could comfortably fit in a window on a 1024x768 pixel PC display.

WASTE is a secured P2P file sharing system that allows for IM and Chat inside it. You need to exchange PGP keys somehow, but once your P2P network is up, it is for all intents, secure from eavesdropping.

I bet you've already seen the answer to your q in the threads here, but for anyone else who missed them:

fredrikj's post on Psyco, and
(another) AC's post mentioning both Psyco and Py2Exe, among other useful things.

Second, by definition, a JIT compiler runs immediately before the bytecode in question is to be executed. A system that turned the bytecode into native machine code would just be a plain ol' compiler.

Third, Psyco might come pretty close to what you want, except that it doesn't write out a compiled binary.

OK, I've been thinking about making "the big leap" to a Linux distro for a while, and this Windows application compatibility looks really intriguing. Can someone give me an idea of how well it works, and any configuration / compatibility snafus it might have?

The only things, at this point, that would really prevent me from wanting to use Linux as my primary OS would be the ability to run Windows apps well (let's face it, I have a lot of apps on my system that work well already, and I don't want to have to lose access to them or have to reboot into Windows to use them), and the ability to play games / DirectX-based programs (I've heard WineX has this ability, any comments on how good it is / how easy it is to use / configure?).

I've recently been experimenting with KDE under Cygwin, which works surprisingly well except for a few glitches like not displaying JPEGs correctly (I've heard they fixed this in the latest version). Any comparisons?

I've found the more flexible solution to creating an executable is to use McMillan's installer with UPX. I can create a distributable wxPython app at approximately 2MB with this combination.

Python is lacking in several important areas: Multimedia (i.e., QuickTime integration) and wxPython's lack of a decent rich text widget were enough to force me to use Tcl.

Steve

If speed is critical, it might be a good idea to check out Psyco, which works sort of as a JIT compiler for Python. It's extremely simple to use in your code - just import the psyco module and make a function call to enable it. From what I've seen, Psyco typically makes Python code about three times faster. With "low-level" code, e.g. code that mostly performs arithmetic on ints and could be converted line-by-line to C code, the speedup is greater than that, easily ten times in realistic cases.

I guess Perl is just traditionally what you do these things with. It's not necessarily better. Perl also doesn't support Windows directly like Python does - if you want Perl in Win32 you pretty much have to go with ActiveState whereas Python.org has a Win32 specific distribution. Then again, it's difficult to compete against CPAN's sheer size.

But anyway, it doesn't matter. We use what we want/like and it's cool that we have choices.

However, over the past year or so I've also been looking at Ruby. Not to get into a religious argument (as you say) over which language is better, but if you like Python you should take a look at Ruby. If you're a Windows user there's an installer available, which comes with a full book (in CHM format) that can get you running in no time if you already know Python. As Perl and Python, Ruby has extensions and so on. I do like the OO features in Ruby a bit better than Python.

And least but not least, there's Lua. I wouldn't use Lua the same way I use Python, but Lua is a joy to embed, much more so than Python.

Ahhh, language wars. Cheers =)

Boost.Python
I sort of hope that Parrot will help Perl overcome its introversion, and let it integrate more readily with other languages.
I think that C++ and Python form a dynamic duo. You can put the effort into compiling items that benefit from such, and glue them together in Python most agreeably.
The C++ standard library focused on Platonic abstractions, but Boost is pulling C++ in more mainstream directions. And that's a beautiful thing.
While issuing random plugs, check out Leo. It's not too often you see a fresh interface on an editor.

import psyco
psyco.full()

• Win32All - Windows 32 extensions & the Pythonwin IDE
• wxPython - A GUI library based on wxWindows. Far superior to the included TCL/TK libraries.
• Psyco - Runtime compiler, mentioned above
• Py2Exe - Takes in Python scripts, spits out executables (note: use in conjunction with Psyco for best effect)
• Boa Constructor - A wxWindows GUI design tool. It's a full blown IDE as well, but I have only used it to design GUI layouts, I code in Pythonwin.

import psyco
psyco.full()

• Win32All - Windows 32 extensions & the Pythonwin IDE
• wxPython - A GUI library based on wxWindows. Far superior to the included TCL/TK libraries.
• Psyco - Runtime compiler, mentioned above
• Py2Exe - Takes in Python scripts, spits out executables (note: use in conjunction with Psyco for best effect)
• Boa Constructor - A wxWindows GUI design tool. It's a full blown IDE as well, but I have only used it to design GUI layouts, I code in Pythonwin.

import psyco
psyco.full()

• Win32All - Windows 32 extensions & the Pythonwin IDE
• wxPython - A GUI library based on wxWindows. Far superior to the included TCL/TK libraries.
• Psyco - Runtime compiler, mentioned above
• Py2Exe - Takes in Python scripts, spits out executables (note: use in conjunction with Psyco for best effect)
• Boa Constructor - A wxWindows GUI design tool. It's a full blown IDE as well, but I have only used it to design GUI layouts, I code in Pythonwin.

Visiting a site is giving them implicit permission to bother you with their ads or whatever they're throwing at you.

In fact, it's your browser that requests the stuff you don't want to see. If you don't like the ads, configure your browser not to load them in the first place. Just because some browsers can't be configured properly doesn't mean that "they" (the websites) are forcing you to download things. Just switch browsers!

Please don't get me wrong here. I hate ads just like everybody else. I use w3m (or lynx...) whenever I can, and I do avoid flash sites completely. If the content providers don't care for me as non-flash user, why should I trust them to provide accurate information or good service?

The F-prot antivirus definitions have it, as of the 19th. They have a nice *nix scanner that can be plugged into software like qmailscanner, which can scan all incoming and outgoing messages. They also have sane per-server pricing for ISPs.

I'm looking forward to seeing how much of an impact this will make on our mail server. Currently viruses make up less than 5% of our filtered mail. The rest is spam.

So far, I've submitted copies of this to Symantec, and ClamAV, both of which did not detect it in the latest definitions. If anyone else has submitted this to an A/V manufacturer, or knows of an A/V that currently detects this, please post.

Lily is a CMC (computer mediated communications) server that supports user authentication and discussion history. Lily is mature; the oldest lily server has been in constant service (with only occasional brief downtime for upgrades) for over ten years.

I've been playing with iCal and WEB-DAV servers recently for work, and I really like iCal. But one thing I discovered today is that the synchronization doesn't run both ways -- a subscribed can't updated a calendar that someone else has published.

This is a real problem for me, and I'm glad to hear somebody else mention it.

I spend 90% of my computing time on my PowerMac desktop. About 8% (I'm plainly talking out of my ass here) is spent on my iBook, and 2% on other people's computers (friends, computer labs on my college campus, etc.) I use iCal on my PowerMac as the master calendar, and I publish that calendar to my server via WebDAV. I subscribe to that calendar in iCal on my iBook, and I use WebCalendar to reproduce my calendar on my website. I also sync my Palm and my phone with my desktop regularly, such that I can maintain my calendar on those. This system is really helpful, because I have such a scheduled, busy life that I really couldn't function without a decent calendar system.

The problem, of course, is that I can only make changes when I'm sitting at my desktop. Changes on my Palm or phone are overwritten next time that I sync. (iSync's valiant efforts notwithstanding.) Changes made via the website and are lost, and iCal on my iBook will not permit me to make changes to the calendar, because it's a subscription.

I want to make changes on my iBook the same way that I can read and reply to e-mail in Mail.app when I'm not on a WiFi network -- it should synch next time that I get a connection. Likewise, I should be able to do so with the website version, my phone, etc.

The problem here, as best as I can tell, is that the calendar isn't really stored on the WebDAV server -- it's mirrored on the WebDAV server. My PowerMac doesn't get its data from the WebDAV server, it simply publishes it to that server. I want iCal to use the WebDAV server just like Mail.app uses IMAP -- the server is master, and all else synchs to it.

I'd sure appreciate suggestions or tips from anybody that can suggest a solution to this, or some sort of a hack that's available for iCal to make it work in this manner.

-Waldo Jaquith

This is old news, and has been discussed ad-nauseum in every developers forum for anti-spam software that I've seen.

The "random words" technique is almost completely ineffective at "poisoning" a Bayesian or other statistical filter, presuming it is well-trained. All the random words score in the middle, contributing almost nothing to the final message score. Occasionally, a very "hammy" word will be chosen by the spammer, but just as frequently, a very "spammy" word will show up. It's a wash as far as the filter is concerned.

What's probably happening is that spammers are defeating the program's HTML or e-mail header parser, not the Bayesian model in general. Pick a filtering program with a better parser, and you'll do much better. Try SpamBayes.

I like the ad-blocking hosts file idea... why not just publish a text file called hosts.ads that can be appended to the end of a users existing /etc/hosts file? I have a script that I use to automatically update my pci.ids and usb.ids file(s). These files help me keep the output of lspci and lsusb current on my PC. Why not use a moderated hosts files system to do something similar for AD servers?

Does anything like this currently exist?

Or how about adding a feature to Mozilla, et al. that would allow a user to right-click on an advertisement and anonymously submit the URL/imagesize/etc. of the offending ad so it can be blocked for others.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueler? Anyone?

Get your ISP to install a transparent adzapping squid. Imagine how much faster the net will run if everybody did this: All of the content, none of the ads, and the most common web traffic handled mostly by local proxy hits.

When will people realize that this is so easily fixable with Squid and Adzapper? Why aren't ISPs doing this (as well as virus scanning email the right way) already? Are they afraid they will lose customers by doing the right thing or something?

Seriously.

I try not to play the "My Browser is Better than Yours" game, but with Galeon, you can deny Javascript the right to resize a window (I assume Mozilla does the same), and you can consign popups to new tabs that don't automatically get focus, so at worst, all you see is that a new tab exists. That's all assuming it can somehow get past the fact that "Allow unrequested popup windows" is unchecked.

My suspicion is that, come tomorrow, I'll notice nothing out of the ordinary (except the level of complaint from Web-surfing co-workers).

Im curious to see how well this actually works. I went to the Unicast website and clicked one of their links, and it actually played the advertisment for me.

This is interesting, since I am using Mac OS X, Mozilla and the Middleman Web proxy (SF.net). I am amused it actually played, but I'm still not sure it will play without me clicking the link..

Hey Mr. ass-backward. Stop the gnome/KDE flamewars and take my comment for what it is: commenting on the philosophical difference between KDE and gnome. Saying Qt is a new or an existing toolkit is just a matter of when you look at it. The main idea remains that the idea of gnome was to to reuse as much stuff as possible (even when it shouldn't have), while KDE wrote much of these "from scratch" and has its stuff "more integrated" (just think about window managers).

If people on slashdot want to be taken seriously they really ought to make use of the freedom they are given and actually use some of the source code we donate.

Maybe you want to have a look at the stuff I donated:
Speex
FlowDesigner (previously Overflow
GLPlot

Hey Mr. ass-backward. Stop the gnome/KDE flamewars and take my comment for what it is: commenting on the philosophical difference between KDE and gnome. Saying Qt is a new or an existing toolkit is just a matter of when you look at it. The main idea remains that the idea of gnome was to to reuse as much stuff as possible (even when it shouldn't have), while KDE wrote much of these "from scratch" and has its stuff "more integrated" (just think about window managers).

If people on slashdot want to be taken seriously they really ought to make use of the freedom they are given and actually use some of the source code we donate.

Maybe you want to have a look at the stuff I donated:
Speex
FlowDesigner (previously Overflow
GLPlot

Hey Mr. ass-backward. Stop the gnome/KDE flamewars and take my comment for what it is: commenting on the philosophical difference between KDE and gnome. Saying Qt is a new or an existing toolkit is just a matter of when you look at it. The main idea remains that the idea of gnome was to to reuse as much stuff as possible (even when it shouldn't have), while KDE wrote much of these "from scratch" and has its stuff "more integrated" (just think about window managers).

If people on slashdot want to be taken seriously they really ought to make use of the freedom they are given and actually use some of the source code we donate.

Maybe you want to have a look at the stuff I donated:
Speex
FlowDesigner (previously Overflow
GLPlot

I think Qt is released under different licenses for different platforms. It isn't GPL for Windows.

Really? What's this then? Sure looks like a GPL Windows port of QT to me. Maybe I can't read, though.

So the router should block, but what if they can't see the content they're filtering?

That's being worked on, sort of, under cygwin. See http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/faq/main.php#8.

>> Flac decompresses faster

> when I looked [...] FLAC took about twice as long to compress

Hmm, according to the Flac comparison page, we're both wrong. FLAC is only about a third again slower at compressing (12:54 vs. 9:44 in their tests), not twice as slow, but it's just a hair slower at decompressing (7:08 vs. 6:31). But that's in the default mode. If you compare "flac -3" vs. "shorten -p8", you'll see that the times are almost reversed, but FLAC still compresses noticably better.

Anyway, they're both slow enough that I would/do run them in the background. :)

I've also got code that encapsulates a Shorten file and streams it

According to the same page, FLAC is already streamable, so you shouldn't need extra code for that. But you can encapsulate it with Ogg if you want. FLAC also has support from a few hardware vendors, if that's relevent.

Drupal is worth looking at.

Or, if you need a technical support forum, perhaps it would be better to adapt something like Double-Choco-Latte (DCL) to your needs?

People are trying to do just that: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/

I'm surprised that nobody has suggested a network of legal content

I believe this is what iRate does.

This would end up working about as well Kazaa's user rating (or whatever it was called) thing. It had been out for how many days before people started showing up with their points maxed out? And it is worth noting that the second and third most common file sharing tools, dc++ and emule are both open source, so that anybody who feels like removing the controls can do so, and recompile.

Peer to peer networks that control what people communicate are possible. As are ones that control who talks to whoom, that people really allow the uploads they purport to, etc etc. As is any software that acts against, rather than for, the person that is running it. We just need to get Palladium in place first. What are you waiting for Microsoft!!!

Yes, but until the release of kernel linux-2.192.367-test54283.tar.bz2, only the 'F', 'A' and 'G' keys work.

To enable the other keys, you have to compile and install a kernel module Neko64, but this will also break the framebuffer support.

Thirdly, not every game used WinCE, most of the ones that needed performance used Katana. The OS was included on the game disc, not in BIOS.

There is also an open source os for Dreamcast, called KalistiOS now available.

Perhaps Slashdotters would like to read Jef Raskin's take on the history of the Macintosh. You can read it here.

He may be opinionated, but he seems willing to back his assertions with facts. From what I know of Jef from his books and web site, I would be more inclined to take his account seriously than that of Steve Jobs or the sycophant news media.

On the other hand, although I do not have any first hand experience with Steve Jobs, I have heard numerous accounts about him from people who have worked for him, (including Bob Peratori, Apple employee #10, and Ken Hodor, former NeXT Hardware Design Manager) and they all mention Jobs' ability to discard the truth when he want to persuade people into doing what he wants.

Proverbs 18:17

Mailing lists (or nntp/www via GMANE) are where all the discussion lives. Between the Plone users, developers, archetypes lists etc, I would guess about a volume of 600 messages a month, and equally that volume on the various Zope lists. The community discussion is VERY active.

Resource hungry? Yes, well so is PHP, JSP, and any other system relying upon a VM. You can serve pages statically out of Zope, even from the filesystem, with the right add-ins. And by simply spending 5 minutes adjusting your caching rules, Apache or Squid will serve from cache 90% of your requests. Also, you can push static files (with plugin product) - use plone on a workgroup server, and render/push static content out of it like some commercial CMS products. Your traffic can just be served as static pages, with only dynamic pages hitting your Zope, if you like.

i don't think so. if they mean 192kbps, then this is a huge step _down_ from 48kHz, 16 bit audio. while something on the order of a 192kbit mp3 is fine by my tastes, it is a huge reduction in quality from, say, a 44.1kHz, 16bit pcm stream from a CD. you just cannot (with current algorithms) losslessly compress an audio bitstream down to 192kbps without losing a good measure of quality. for reference, a pcm CD audio stream runs you around 700kbps. now, things like FLAC can drop this number a bit while remaining lossless. but not that much.

don't mix the GUI apps into the same dir with the command line ones.

It's my opinion that you should be able to install an application virtually anywhere, and there should be a standard way to update the PATH enviroment variable

Just do it with app dirs (aka bundles), like ROX and NeXT and GNUstep and OS X. Then users can install GUI applications by drag and drop and move them around however they wish. (And, I should probably add, this in no way precludes the apps from sharing libs or frameworks; only those need be in hard-coded locations, which users need not worry about.)

Linux will never take over the desktop in 5 to 10 years. Syllable will instead.

You must be kidding? Perl always executes faster for you? Perl, the fully interpreted language?

Maybe "executes" is the wrong word. "Completes work" faster is probably more accurate. In my experience codes up faster, too. I have, on various projects, gone from "we needed this yesterday" speaker phone conversation requirements (the kind you actually get in the real world) to working code faster by my self than the 4 - 6 Java monkeys in the department could. My development cycle time is shorter and for the kind of stuff that is required to run many businesses - code that finds data, analyzes it, reformats and validates it, then stores/transports it - yeah, I have developed the same thing quicker and it "completed the work of parsing the 1.5 Gig data feed, validating, outputing the errorfiles, sending the notifications and loading the rest into the db" faster than java. Being that parsing and pattern matching are often the slowest part of a program and that perl has a number of levels/techniques/blocks of code for optimizing pattern matching, I can see perl programs completing work that involves parsing, pattern matching and/or moving big blobs of data around faster than Java.

The number of lines of code have no bearing on the criticality of that code. And the amount of pain and suffering that went into embodying the complete, correct business requirements is not necessarily proportional to number of lines of code. My experience is that for every 40K line Java program, there are a bunch of 10, 20, 100 line perl/py/rb/etc programs (which would take 5-10 times that many lines in Java) that are just as critical in part because they feed and care for the Java program, its habitat and/or its data - generally, no one notices them because they don't break and they didn't require an "architect", use cases and design patterns - maybe they should use that as the mascot instead of the little castrated Ace of Spades with a nose - Java is the big fatass queen bee that has a hive of worker perl/py/rb/php/sh bees that do the heavy lifting while Java just sucks up royal jelly and craps out eggs...

I'll add that even though Java apologists claim that the bloat is not "Java's fault" the fact remains that the habitat that java, er, inhabits seems to promote bloaty, slow systems - jsp's, weblogic, jms, etc. Of the java web frontend programs I have experienced, most seem be rewrite-able in php, perl, ruby for a smaller codebase with a less complex habitat and a more responsive feel for the user.

On the other hand, I use SmartCache and Freenet both java non-gui "freestanding" server programs that seem competently written and decently performing. Actually, SmartCache might be a good comparison if a similar set of functionality was written in perl.

--
Damn, I was just typing along and I ended up bitter and under a bridge...

You must be kidding? Perl always executes faster for you? Perl, the fully interpreted language?

Maybe "executes" is the wrong word. "Completes work" faster is probably more accurate. In my experience codes up faster, too. I have, on various projects, gone from "we needed this yesterday" speaker phone conversation requirements (the kind you actually get in the real world) to working code faster by my self than the 4 - 6 Java monkeys in the department could. My development cycle time is shorter and for the kind of stuff that is required to run many businesses - code that finds data, analyzes it, reformats and validates it, then stores/transports it - yeah, I have developed the same thing quicker and it "completed the work of parsing the 1.5 Gig data feed, validating, outputing the errorfiles, sending the notifications and loading the rest into the db" faster than java. Being that parsing and pattern matching are often the slowest part of a program and that perl has a number of levels/techniques/blocks of code for optimizing pattern matching, I can see perl programs completing work that involves parsing, pattern matching and/or moving big blobs of data around faster than Java.

The number of lines of code have no bearing on the criticality of that code. And the amount of pain and suffering that went into embodying the complete, correct business requirements is not necessarily proportional to number of lines of code. My experience is that for every 40K line Java program, there are a bunch of 10, 20, 100 line perl/py/rb/etc programs (which would take 5-10 times that many lines in Java) that are just as critical in part because they feed and care for the Java program, its habitat and/or its data - generally, no one notices them because they don't break and they didn't require an "architect", use cases and design patterns - maybe they should use that as the mascot instead of the little castrated Ace of Spades with a nose - Java is the big fatass queen bee that has a hive of worker perl/py/rb/php/sh bees that do the heavy lifting while Java just sucks up royal jelly and craps out eggs...

I'll add that even though Java apologists claim that the bloat is not "Java's fault" the fact remains that the habitat that java, er, inhabits seems to promote bloaty, slow systems - jsp's, weblogic, jms, etc. Of the java web frontend programs I have experienced, most seem be rewrite-able in php, perl, ruby for a smaller codebase with a less complex habitat and a more responsive feel for the user.

On the other hand, I use SmartCache and Freenet both java non-gui "freestanding" server programs that seem competently written and decently performing. Actually, SmartCache might be a good comparison if a similar set of functionality was written in perl.

--
Damn, I was just typing along and I ended up bitter and under a bridge...

MUTE is coming along, version 0.2 now. Still needs work, user configurable time out would be a plus as well as some other things. Some of the impetus towards a secure p2p client may be gone now that that court ruled in favour of Verizon not having to hand over names, but the RIAA could still try to do the same thing via the courts themselves, they just can't twist the DMCA to their purposes.

I think things are getting better - much better, much faster. Soon-to-be-released Plone 2.0 and Archetypes are contributing to this - the learning curve for all aspects of Plone is getting flattened.

Zope has a "Z-shaped learning curve" -- or so goes the saying; this is becuase Zope (well, Zope 2) has a deep tree of class inheritance - a "deeply object oriented" system (to borrow a phrase from Jon Udell, not sure if that's his intended meaning). When someone tells you to "read the source" -- that's usually becuase Python is remakably easy to read -- but you still you end up with a task that's fairly involved and somewhat academic (not to discount this - once you get it it is quite rewarding).

What the CMF and Plone do is put a "wide-not-deep" framework on top of the Zope app server to abstract most of that tedious, academic learning curve for serious developers. The CMF hard-codes a really simple MVC-like design-pattern for best practices for component-oriented development, where lightweight components interact (global "tools" like search/catalog, workflow, etc and content objects in folders/containers (the model) - and UI/automation skin code (view/controller)). Each component is lighter-weight and pluggable (with defined interfaces and unit-tests), and CMF, Plone, and unrelated Zope 3 development are working towards not just pluggable components, but user/admin configurable components. The Plone 2 control panels are a good start towards making this more human. The ease-of-development and deployment story is getting better. The UI is also more configurable in Plone 2 via CSS.

Getting better by the minute: Archetypes is the secret weapon for Plone's future success; Archetypes makes schema-based development for content items, along with relationships among content items, not just easily possible, but much less tedious. It's architecture, in many ways (though it is still maturing), is superior to the same concepts in WinFS in M$ Longhorn. Archetypes will make development of content types easier to learn and develop day-to-day, whether you as a developer prefer to live in Vi (or Emacs), UML modelling tools, or a web-based schema editors. Simple, usable, documented examples for Archetypes development in Plone are popping up every day. Developing global CMF tools (singleton services/utilities for all objects in the site) has always been trivially easy, but underdocumented. Plone 2 is making the UI easier to customize, and I expect that forthcoming books and improved documentation on Plone 2 will make this straightforward.

Keep in mind, the Plone/Zope/Python stack is much less complicated and easier to learn than equivalent technology stacks in Java app servers (and less messy than inline web apps in PHP/ASPX/etc). And seriously, if you have to say WTF, say it on #plone on freenode or the plone-users list - there's a high likelyhood that someone will have an answer to just that question... ;)

I think things are getting better - much better, much faster. Soon-to-be-released Plone 2.0 and Archetypes are contributing to this - the learning curve for all aspects of Plone is getting flattened.

Zope has a "Z-shaped learning curve" -- or so goes the saying; this is becuase Zope (well, Zope 2) has a deep tree of class inheritance - a "deeply object oriented" system (to borrow a phrase from Jon Udell, not sure if that's his intended meaning). When someone tells you to "read the source" -- that's usually becuase Python is remakably easy to read -- but you still you end up with a task that's fairly involved and somewhat academic (not to discount this - once you get it it is quite rewarding).

What the CMF and Plone do is put a "wide-not-deep" framework on top of the Zope app server to abstract most of that tedious, academic learning curve for serious developers. The CMF hard-codes a really simple MVC-like design-pattern for best practices for component-oriented development, where lightweight components interact (global "tools" like search/catalog, workflow, etc and content objects in folders/containers (the model) - and UI/automation skin code (view/controller)). Each component is lighter-weight and pluggable (with defined interfaces and unit-tests), and CMF, Plone, and unrelated Zope 3 development are working towards not just pluggable components, but user/admin configurable components. The Plone 2 control panels are a good start towards making this more human. The ease-of-development and deployment story is getting better. The UI is also more configurable in Plone 2 via CSS.

Getting better by the minute: Archetypes is the secret weapon for Plone's future success; Archetypes makes schema-based development for content items, along with relationships among content items, not just easily possible, but much less tedious. It's architecture, in many ways (though it is still maturing), is superior to the same concepts in WinFS in M$ Longhorn. Archetypes will make development of content types easier to learn and develop day-to-day, whether you as a developer prefer to live in Vi (or Emacs), UML modelling tools, or a web-based schema editors. Simple, usable, documented examples for Archetypes development in Plone are popping up every day. Developing global CMF tools (singleton services/utilities for all objects in the site) has always been trivially easy, but underdocumented. Plone 2 is making the UI easier to customize, and I expect that forthcoming books and improved documentation on Plone 2 will make this straightforward.

Keep in mind, the Plone/Zope/Python stack is much less complicated and easier to learn than equivalent technology stacks in Java app servers (and less messy than inline web apps in PHP/ASPX/etc). And seriously, if you have to say WTF, say it on #plone on freenode or the plone-users list - there's a high likelyhood that someone will have an answer to just that question... ;)

Universe 1
Universe 2
Universe 3

Admittedly, these are the DOS ports (...or rather aren't the Atari ports, I haven't the foggiest idea which version was first), so the nostalgia might not be perfect. Running them shouldn't be a problem for DOSBox. Home of the Underdogs is a beautiful thing :)

Does Adium include Rendezvous support? I consider Rendezvous a worthwhile feature in iChat and I'm even considering switching back from Fire because of that (HHOS). (In due fairness to Fire, Rendezvous support is on their to-do list, though it hasn't been implemented yet.)