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1 Hype your project, get it slashdotted!
2 Brag about your own project's activity, get it slashdotted again yourself!
3 ???
4 PROFIT!!!

Nice way to keep in the publicity though, could use his PR manager. Self-organizing systems are fun though...

I play all my media files with Media Player Classic and BS Player . I also use Real Alternate and Quicktime Alternate. I just dont see the reason why I would want to install another media player (unless I really wanted bloatware/spyware).

There are good media players out there, you just need to know what to look for and where.

Media Player Classic (MPC) is a shining example of a solid, simple player with a good feature set.

Since you're probably interested in being able to play most video formats, you'll want to download Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative to save you the hassle of installing the invasive Quicktime and Real players. Both QT and Real alternative are codecs rather than full blown players, and allow you to view their respective video formats in MPC.

Top it off with the DivX and XviD codecs, and you should be able to play pretty much anything under the sun with the exception of DVDs.

Unfortunatly I don't know of a free codec that can play DVDs, thanks to the RIAA's work on DeCSS. If you have a registered DVD decoder package, you'll probably be able to use MPC with it's supplied codec.

You can now play all your videos in a single place without sacraficing your privacy.

I hope that helps.

Wet blanket, HO!

This looks like a research project, and the author looks like a researcher. This will never be production code (unless forked).

The source is very hap hazzard right now,
* no LICENSE or COPYING file
* bizzare directory structure
* no INSTALL, README, HACKING files
* no mailing lists (none!)

The head sf admin is head of a bunch of other projects too. I didn't check all of them, but I'm pretty sure he's a _member_ of no one else's project. So you have a guy supporting 10 projects (and maybe more not on sourceforge) who has only written academic code, probably only by himself resume.
He also appears to be gung-ho C++, why not turn the 63k of C++ into 6k of python and worry about features instead of memory management? (bittorrent has proven the bottleneck isn't CPU).

Not a great mix for a successful open source project.

Wet blanket, HO!

This looks like a research project, and the author looks like a researcher. This will never be production code (unless forked).

The source is very hap hazzard right now,
* no LICENSE or COPYING file
* bizzare directory structure
* no INSTALL, README, HACKING files
* no mailing lists (none!)

The head sf admin is head of a bunch of other projects too. I didn't check all of them, but I'm pretty sure he's a _member_ of no one else's project. So you have a guy supporting 10 projects (and maybe more not on sourceforge) who has only written academic code, probably only by himself resume.
He also appears to be gung-ho C++, why not turn the 63k of C++ into 6k of python and worry about features instead of memory management? (bittorrent has proven the bottleneck isn't CPU).

Not a great mix for a successful open source project.

Grub and Rifter have posted alternatives above, and I can also add blackbox to the list of suggestions regarding real usability and minimalism. ...

I know, I know... I have been trolled

As said above, OSDN *HAS* open sourced SourceForge. You can obtain it at the Alexandria Development Project on SourceForge. Please try to do some research prior to saying things like this. That said, it is true that like many open source projects, SourceForge can only be used for open source software development. For commercial, closed source development using the SourceForge system, try SourceForge Enterprise Edition from VA Software, the original developers of SourceForge.

Nevertheless, any Linux adoption is good for Apple, as virutally any software for Linux can be ported to MacOS X without too much difficulty. Just look at all the software that has been ported already.

My apologies, i have only experience with wine on x86 machines, i imagined it would run on anything. How about bochs then? or this looks to be in a pretty early stage though.

My apologies, i have only experience with wine on x86 machines, i imagined it would run on anything. How about bochs then? or this looks to be in a pretty early stage though.

ROX is the most instinctive filer i know of.

I can run Linux on Ipod but will one have the support to house my distro?

I use Desktop Manager, though it's worth pointing out OS X's window management is generally good enough that it's not that critical. (Alt+Cmd+Click on Dock Icon minimises all other app's windows for example)

I like less buttons, controls, widgets, thingies, thingofajiggies, dingwats, bellibops, chingdings, laladoops and whatchamakalits on my screen.

Meet your window manager

If you just want it to show in moz/firebird rather than having to find the link and leech it first, use the mplayerplug-in and quicktime will display in the browser.

That's precisely the sort of thing that Fink is for: easy building and installation of Unix tools on OSX.

Incidentally, it's based on apt-get, that beloved tool of Debian users everywhere.

Furthermore, TrollTech no longer produces a GPLed Windows Qt version. No they don't. But there is a version (based on the cygwin port) Here.

There's a huge number of open source web crawlers available already on SourceForge and elsewhere. Anyone know the advantages and disadvantages of this one over the others?

No... I think you're going to need lzip for this one.

The source download is available on sourceforge.

I doubt it'll get slashdotted, but you never know...

There is no need for two different file managers - one like evolution or kfm and a completely separate 'file picker' used just for Open and Save dialogue boxes. As others have pointed out, they are a prime example of cruft in user interfaces, there because of the limitations of older systems that couldn't manage a multi-tasking desktop.

Personally I think that RISC OS did this the right way. There is a single file manager program ('Filer') which displays windows showing the content of directories. To load a file, double-click on it or drag it onto an application's icon. To save a file, you drag it from the application to the Filer window. This is much more intuitive and also quicker - for example you can have two Filer windows for two directories and load or save files in one or the other without clicking about in the file selector to go up one directory and into another.

This style of drag and drop saving has been implemented in the ROX desktop, but so far the other desktop environments haven't picked up on it, preferring to imitate Windows.

"Acorn got this aspect of GUI design right. You don't need a file selector. Opening or reading things is best done by clicking or dragging from an existing directory browser. Saving or outputting is easily done by dragging an icon that represents your file into an existing directory browser"

Also available in Rox (which runs within your existing Window Manager)

Rox has something like that, the whole filemanagment is basically based on drag&drop, to load a file you drag it on the application, to save it, you drag an icon given by the application to your filemanager. Its pretty neat, but to make this one really work well all apps would need to follow that paradigma and looking at the whole mix of software out there I don't think that will happen in the near future, which is kind of a shame.

Yes, the one thing I am sick of under Linux is the stupid Windows-copy file selector. Every time I want to save a file I have to pop it up and wend my way tediously from the normally illogical default start point. I would love an Acorn-like drag-and-drop system, much like ROX tries to do. Make it globally selectable in KDE/Gnome what file selector module to use so those that prefer the old way can keep it but those that need the drag and drop can have it in all their apps.

Phillip.

So a next-generation save/open box should include comprehensive network protocol support.

With all due respect, I think that this is a really, really awful idea. Unfortunately, Microsoft has traditionally taken this approach (for political, not engineering reasons). The KDE project, which takes a very Windows-like approach to a number of architecture decisions, copied their approach, and GNOME has come uncomfortably close.

The reason why I'm not a fan of implementing network transparency at the KIOSlave or GNOME-VFS or whatnot layers is that this sort of functionality is *not* KDE or GNOME or whathaveyou specific. It just isn't part of the desktop environment. It should be implemented at a lower level, so that *all* programs running on the machine can take advantage of the functionality. There are a couple of projects that do this -- take a look at LUFS for a proper (IMHO, of course) implementation of what you're asking for.

But a buddy was showing me some of his favorite GTK themes on his Gnome desktop, and I have to admit that I was impressed. Unfortunately, when I checked to see how many packages I'd have to install for Gnome, there were over 30 -- Mozilla was one of the dependencies!

So, can any /.ers recommend a... svelt window manager that supports some of this wonderful eye candy?

I thought I'd promote my fingerprint Imaging software. And also mention that this seems kind of bogus. Like others have mentioned none of the terrorists of 911 faked their identities and faking fingerprint with gelatin has been done.

...but again doesn't support animation.
Mm. As noted below, not a lot does wrt renderman, at least, not without paying lotsa dosh. I presume you've had a look thru' the RMR links page - there's a couple of possibilities there, but mostly alpha. The other thing to do would be to get in touch with the people who created this and this rather impressive animation and ask how they did it. You'll probably have to email the aqsis site maintainers to get their contact details.

Also, I forgot to link the brand new Renderman Academy. It's an ambitious project, but there's already a lot of good info there. Nothing on animation yet, unfortunately.

I mentioned Blender above - if you are willing to take on the task of learning to use it, you'll find a very powerful animation engine in there. There's a chap integrating renderman support directly into the main program, but that's apparently on hold until the middle of the year. In the meantime, there's a very adequate exporter called Blenderman (also see this). Of course, if what you're wanting is a directly programmable animation setup ala AL and SDL, this won't help.

Good luck with it - if you have any success, see if you can get it into a Slashback.

...but again doesn't support animation.
Mm. As noted below, not a lot does wrt renderman, at least, not without paying lotsa dosh. I presume you've had a look thru' the RMR links page - there's a couple of possibilities there, but mostly alpha. The other thing to do would be to get in touch with the people who created this and this rather impressive animation and ask how they did it. You'll probably have to email the aqsis site maintainers to get their contact details.

Also, I forgot to link the brand new Renderman Academy. It's an ambitious project, but there's already a lot of good info there. Nothing on animation yet, unfortunately.

I mentioned Blender above - if you are willing to take on the task of learning to use it, you'll find a very powerful animation engine in there. There's a chap integrating renderman support directly into the main program, but that's apparently on hold until the middle of the year. In the meantime, there's a very adequate exporter called Blenderman (also see this). Of course, if what you're wanting is a directly programmable animation setup ala AL and SDL, this won't help.

Good luck with it - if you have any success, see if you can get it into a Slashback.

Informative my ass.

Several companies tried this back in 2001 and discovered that the processor time on your computer is worth less than the overhead cost of using it. Sorry.

Well, sure, it's worth less to companies who are looking to save money in the process or your average 'netizen, who thinks it should be free by divine right). Now if you implemented it with something akin to Mojo so that contributors to the grid could eventually use the grid for their own purposes, that's a different story.
For example, Apple or IBM (who are rumored to place great faith in the future of grid computing) releases a freeware client for users to exchange CPU downtime for, oh, let's call it "Whuffie." (Sorry, Cory Doctorow) Joe Beigebox wants to render a stunning 3-D scene, but lacks the processing power to do it before the heat death of the Universe. He can buy time on the grid by donating his computer's copious downtime to the Grid, earns 10,000 Whuffie, and renders the picture overnight.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be off on a rant.

I'm not talking about Python. Python is positioned as a scripting language, and hence doesn't have a powerful compilation infrastructure. Although, Pysco does some very cool dynamic optimizations for Python.

In contrast, there are many high-level languages like Common Lisp, Dylan, Scheme, ML, Ocaml, etc, that have very powerful native compilers. They do optimizations that C/C++ compilers simply cannot do, because of the low-level C memory model. Literally decades of research has gone into making these compilers, and they have optimizations that (while not quite magical) are very impressive.

Variously:

- There are type-inference optimizations that eliminate the overhead of dynamic dispatch.
- There are heap-analysis optimizations that stack-allocate objects whenever possible, to avoid heap allocation.
- There are analysis that avoid heap-allocating closures.
- There are analysis that eliminate type checking and array bounds checking.
- There are analysis that perform large-scale optimization of class heirarchies, to eliminate the over head of OOP.
- There are memory allocation analysis that reduce the overhead of garbage collection (region inference).
- They do method specialization, allowing the C++ template advantage of generic functions optimized for a given type, without actually having to deal with explicit type parameters.

Some useful pointers:

Apple Dylan Wiki
Lisp vs Java vs C/C++ performane
Bigloo Scheme Compiler
Gwydion Dylan compiler
CMU Common Lisp Compiler
UW Vortex Compiler
MLKit ML Compiler
Ocaml Compiler

OpenTaxSolver is a tax preparation package for GNU/Linux. No GUI yet, and 2003 rules are still in progress, but it works. You provide a text file with the values of the lines that you have to provide (income, interest, etc), and it spits out a file with the value for every line. It does federal taxes as well as the state forms for a few states.

For an open source alternative, look at Delphi Web Script

Consider using Common Lisp as extension language. (For a more controversial aspect: Consider to write your program in Common Lisp) It has a ANSI standard, some very good compilers and all the things you want of a scripting language if you want to use it as such.

I have personally used ECL (Embeddable Common Lisp) to write a Common Lisp plugin for X-Chat which works very well.

Consider using Common Lisp as extension language. (For a more controversial aspect: Consider to write your program in Common Lisp) It has a ANSI standard, some very good compilers and all the things you want of a scripting language if you want to use it as such.

I have personally used ECL (Embeddable Common Lisp) to write a Common Lisp plugin for X-Chat which works very well.

Not as handy as a watch, but there is a MarsClock written for PalmOS.

http://marsclock.sourceforge.net/

--
Eeyore

Or, how about EiC, now hosted at Sourceforge. "EiC is pointer safe."

TinyPerl

Its easy to learn and use (very good if the people using our embeded language are not programmers). Its mature, supposed to be extensible, and if you decide you need something more powerful later on even the current full verion is not that bloated.

Well, if you look at SourceForge, they set up a donation system for the site as a whole as well as individual projects. I'm not sure how much its being used so far, but this is definately a step in the right direction. Its opt-in for projects too, so no one is forcing you to take money.

I haven't tried yet, but if you could attach a comment to your donation like "Here's $50, could you hurry up with a fix for XXX." that might be helpful. Or there could be something along the lines of TransGaming's WineX game voting. As you donate more, you could get more votes to use in the feature request tracker. Various things like this could easily allow developers to easily get a handle on what features people want and are willing to pay for. Things like "Nice User Interface". ;-)

Well, if you look at SourceForge, they set up a donation system for the site as a whole as well as individual projects. I'm not sure how much its being used so far, but this is definately a step in the right direction. Its opt-in for projects too, so no one is forcing you to take money.

I haven't tried yet, but if you could attach a comment to your donation like "Here's $50, could you hurry up with a fix for XXX." that might be helpful. Or there could be something along the lines of TransGaming's WineX game voting. As you donate more, you could get more votes to use in the feature request tracker. Various things like this could easily allow developers to easily get a handle on what features people want and are willing to pay for. Things like "Nice User Interface". ;-)

Right here.

Don't waste money on MTOR. If you want Maya, get Liquid. Production-proven and open source. What more could you ask for?

Now that Mozilla has popup blocking, I don't need that part of adzap anymore, but adzaps banner blocking is great, too.

I know that the idea of a chip which runs java natively has been bandied around already, but I've always wondered why Transmeta hasn't released other architectures under their code morphing software, specifically java. All the arguments I've heard against a java machine have been due to the fact that java is more than just a series of byte codes, it's also an api. It seems to me that a combination of a crusoe chip, the right code morphing software, and the equivalent of JNode as an OS would allow for some fast and efficient java machines. Is this possible?

2.3 I need a write support for NTFS. It exists in kernel-2.4 , but it's not enabled in partimage boot disk. How can I use it ?

NTFS write support, as UFS write support are dangerous and supported only by experimental drivers. It can damage partitions, and corrupt data. That's why it's not enabled in partimage-bootdisk. Users who weren't aware of this problem could lose their data if the support was enabled.

If you need the write support, you will have to use another boot disk. Please , have a look at the question in this FAQ which explains how to build your own boot disk. --Partimage FAQ

Furthermore, both the Old and New drivers listed on Linux-NTFS are read-only (or can only overwrite existing files), which is hardly complete NTFS support. And I can't tell from the documentation if ntfsclone has the ability to resize a partition while imaging. It doesn't sound like it does, since it only copies, and does not alter the partition table.

Thanks for the input, though. And I totally agree with your comment about checking facts.

Umm.... ToySight is for Mac...
And the Xbox doesn't have standard USB-shaped ports, which means they would have to design specialized cameras, or at the very least special connectors, to make it work. Unless you have one of those messy mods.

The ELKS project is a version of Linux designed to run on embedded, specifically MMU-less, systems. It runs just fine on an 8086.

And without the memory management that virtual-mode addressing makes possible, you can't have proper preemptive multitasking.

Were you sleeping in your Operating Systems class? All you need for preemptive multitasking is a timer interrupt. You're thinking of memory protection, and yes, an MMU-less CPU doesn't support that.

And if you haven't got that, it's not really UNIX-like, and that means it's not really Linux, is it?

Why don't you tell that to Alan Cox then. He seems to think otherwise. In fact, he seems right proud of ELKS.

You can use cdparanoia for a good rip under Windows using CDex. Highly recommended ripper. I also suggest using the R3mix VBR quality preset, which did very well in blind-tests against uncompressed audio.