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Sourceforge is open source, why not go d/l that. YOu can use CVS as an easy way to switch around and do upgrades. YOu can develop a site, then run upgrade via cvs and if something unexpected breaks, downgrade via cvs. Once you get the infrastructure in place things like that would be a breeze.

mlterm

I use shell scripts for many things under Windows using the free version of many Unix utilities found HERE. Scripts are fast, and don't break (short of being over-written). Many times, scripts can be written that perform the functionality of expensive Windows programs, with the advantages of being free, not easily broken, and not subject to dll version issues, continual upgrades, etc, etc, etc.

Shell Scripts are really The Cat's Pajamas.

If someone is looking for alternatives, look at XGGI, part of the the GGI project. Together with directfb or KGI(currently focussing at BSD, but the Linux core is there too) it's really powerfull.

HOWTO - Install Debian Onto a Remote Linux System

I imagine it would be relatively easy to modify the source of debootstrap (the tool used in the process) so as to run on a BSD box - if it even requires any modification. It's basically just a frontend to wget, I hear.

I scripted the entire process for myself, so I could do remote upgrades, but I can't seem to find the scripts. Hope they didn't get wiped.

Search the mailing list archives at dsm.org. I seem to remember some people talking about this, specifically, someone had found a small box that plug in via USB if I remember right, and it had like 24 analog inputs and 8 digital. I think there were even linux drivers for it.

Additionally, if you're car is OBDII compliant, you could order a cable and use FreeDiag to pull the information. All of those sensors feed back to your car's computer anyway, why try to duplicate the data collection functionality when it's already there. Plus, you won't have to worry about skewing the signals received by your ECU when you start tapping wires into things. You won't have to worry about finding the specs on each sensor either (like 0-1 volts == 0-1200 degrees)

I was considering doing a similar thing to you awhile back, and freediag seems like the best way to collect this data. If you manage to get something working, you should start a sourceforge project for it. I'd definitely be willing to contribute.

Also, a couple of years ago, some company came out with an 8" TFT touchscreen that plugged in via USB. They had released a driver for linux that allowed you to run an X-server on it. It was $300 or so. Does anyone remember the name of this thing? It would make an excellent display to mount in the dash.

After all, MS now have enough XBox experience to ensure that only their operating system can be run.

Oh yes...they have a GREAT track record for that...

Well, I don't know of a tool, but how about HOWTO?

Have a good one. :)

First, how much catching up Mac OS X still has to do in some respects to Linux.

Agreed. But sometimes it's about knowing where to look--naturally, the favorite haunts of the Mac community aren't well known outside of the community itself. Versiontracker is the sourceforge of the Mac community--but much of it is indeed shareware, not freeware. Mac OS X Hints serves up nice digestible bits of HOWTO for us; especially appreciated is when a Unix LongBeard chimes in with his experience.

For example, one article in the German magazine "MacWelt" talks about defragmenting the harddisk (!) with Panther.

I don't know what they were talking about specifically, but defragging isn't necessary under Panther--apps self-optimize at launch ("Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering"?). More from Apple on the topic of defragging in 10.2-.3. I don't know how that compares to Linux.

multiple desktops

It would be nice to see good multiple desktop support in OS X; the community feeling is that Apple doesn't implement it out of fear of confusing the grannies. However, Versiontracker lists a number of Virtual Desktop managers; folks like CodeTek's (if you're paying) and I've used DesktopManager and liked it (for free). Not quite as robust as the options under Linux, but closer.

As for your other points: yeah, lots of shareware and not freeware. That's changing, some, as more and more Linux folks try OS X and re-implement what they liked in Linux on OS X; there's a fair few free projects for OS X (Fink is a good example). And yeah, the One Apple Way: that's rather the point. Jobs, right or wrong, thinks that the ability to chose breeds confusion in the consumer and is more difficult to support; look up the history of theming in OS 9 if you're interested. I don't know if I agree, personally--I think The One Way has it's points, but I think that alienated developers and tinkerers in the process, and I don't know which is better on balance.

Finally, But when you get past the cool design and ignore the far, far superior multimedia tools, Tux can hold its beak high and proud. Apple is going to have to peddle really hard if they want to continue to want money for their OS: Apple doesn't, really, want to charge for the OS. They want to sell hardware, and the OS is a loss leader for that. How many stand-alone boxes of the OS do you think that they sell? Here's a clue: besides a EULA, each install has no DRM, not a serial number, nothing. They ask you to please not install a single copy on more than one machine, but take no action to prevent it. And don't forget about the Open Source Darwin; this gives smarter minds than mine the opportunity to bring what they love about Linux to OS X.

Personally, I find this howto more useful. ;-) HOWTO - Install Debian Onto a Remote Linux System

gecko, khtml, mac ie, ...

... in addition to that there are lynx, links and the X11 based browsers.

Fink is your friend in these matters.

The best solution for this I've found so far, is a program called OpenVPN. The thing is easy to configure, runs on most 'nix platforms, tunnels over UDP (I'm sorry, but IP over TCP is stupid), and works wonderfuly.

gad_zuki! said:

Hold on, many people here habitually abuse MS for making the "browser the OS" and certainly can spot feature-creep a mile away, but when it comes to KDE's browser its suddenly okay? I like having a whole seperate browser for web and use Nautilus for file browsing. Keeping WAN and Local/LAN seperate is a big plus in mine, and many other's books.

I think you may have been a little too quick to think that they Free/OSS communities are being hypocritical towards Microsoft when it comes to the whole IE integration thing relating to the KDE and Konqueror stuff. It may be a little bit of a feature creep, but there is no software shipped with the base KDE distribution that can handle the tasks that Konqueror handles. Besides, KDE doesn't have a monopoly to abuse, and Konqueror doesn't break standards like crazy, either, hehe.

As another poster mentioned, the whole KDE environment has been ported to Cygwin. It works, but it's a pain as it has to run inside a whole X session.

However, I know what you mean... and yes I would love a Windows-native Konqueror port! There's one guy who is (supposedly) starting a port. It looks impressive on the front page, but has been stalled for a year and if you browse through the project forums, the guy admits he isn't really a Windows developer and is still deciding on what compiler to use. So basically, are there any skilled C++ hackers out there who would like to get involved in a KHTML -> Windows port? There's a few good reasons:

1) Choice of browsers on Windows. Even if you just ported KHTML rather than the full Konqueror, the KHTML engine rocks and could make great inroads against IE (compared to Mozilla/MozFirebird, which doesn't seem as fast as IE to load or as responsive on low-end hardware, even though it's a superior browser/renderer engine).

2) Porting all of Konq would rock too, as it offers a lot over plain vanilla EXPLORER.EXE.

3) Development, as the parent pointed out. I'm a XHTML/DHTML/CSS/JavaScript/etc. coder, and would like to certify that my projects work in KHTML. It's damn hard currently. And once Windows developers can get pages working perfectly in KHTML, all Konqueror/Safari users win.

4) Giving average desktop users more exposure to OSS. I'm looking at chucking Linux on this box again (last I tried was Mandrake 6 or 7) and wouldn't mind familiarising myself with its apps on a day-to-day basis first.

5) Why not? It's there ;).

As another poster mentioned, the whole KDE environment has been ported to Cygwin. It works, but it's a pain as it has to run inside a whole X session.

However, I know what you mean... and yes I would love a Windows-native Konqueror port! There's one guy who is (supposedly) starting a port. It looks impressive on the front page, but has been stalled for a year and if you browse through the project forums, the guy admits he isn't really a Windows developer and is still deciding on what compiler to use. So basically, are there any skilled C++ hackers out there who would like to get involved in a KHTML -> Windows port? There's a few good reasons:

1) Choice of browsers on Windows. Even if you just ported KHTML rather than the full Konqueror, the KHTML engine rocks and could make great inroads against IE (compared to Mozilla/MozFirebird, which doesn't seem as fast as IE to load or as responsive on low-end hardware, even though it's a superior browser/renderer engine).

2) Porting all of Konq would rock too, as it offers a lot over plain vanilla EXPLORER.EXE.

3) Development, as the parent pointed out. I'm a XHTML/DHTML/CSS/JavaScript/etc. coder, and would like to certify that my projects work in KHTML. It's damn hard currently. And once Windows developers can get pages working perfectly in KHTML, all Konqueror/Safari users win.

4) Giving average desktop users more exposure to OSS. I'm looking at chucking Linux on this box again (last I tried was Mandrake 6 or 7) and wouldn't mind familiarising myself with its apps on a day-to-day basis first.

5) Why not? It's there ;).

Or, since this is /. we might as well use an open source product, such as ASF Recorder.

You should check KDE on Cygwin.

Works nicely, IMHO, but I haven't tested Konqueror if it compiles.

Yup, a native port to OSX acheives one half of this.. in terms of removing all X11 dependencies from KDE. The other half is of course, to to finish Qt/Win32-Free (port of a GPL'd Qt/FreeX11 to Win32), which is about 80% there.. See here for some screenshots

Qt/Win32-Free would eventually allow a KDE not hampered by X11 or Cygwin dependencies on Windows.

A lot of window toolkit designers apparently think they can do a better job--of course they are wrong and it ends up slow and bloated. I believe wxWindows actually does the intelligent thing and uses native widgets.

Now of course we are both going to get modded offtopic into oblivion because we're not singing the praises of Konqueror for Mac OS X. So, uhh, praise be to Konqueror for Mac OS X?

What a great idea!

That IS odd that they could not have ported
that to the Cygwin platform... I mean, X11
is available and all.

Wait, but isnt there already a port of KDE
to Cygwin?

It's new.

...check out asfrecorder...

Download them with asfrecorder, then watch them with mplayer. Makes streaming ASF files play nice.

The movies work fine in xine, too. I had to launch it from the command-line rather than the browser because of the weird protocol (what *is* mms, anyway?)

Here are the commands you want, to save you digging around the page:

xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/mrkippling- birth.asf
xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/johnsmiths- babies.asf
xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/carenz-skul l_gore.asf
xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/sylvania-ro aches.asf
and of course
xine mms://windowsmedia.dvlabs.com/adcritic/honda-cog.a sf
Remove the spaces Slashcode's put in the URLs, of course.

(And there's only one P in "Mr. Kipling"...)

I agree, IPsec is an over engineered pain in the ass if all you want is a simple encrypted tunnel. For that I reccommend openvpn. It is mature, easy to work with and works exactly like you'd expect. And they even have a windows port going on...

Just use dosemu under linux, booting freedos to make a boot disk from the manufacturer's files and instructions. Then boot on the freedos-based boot disk. Simple and you can set it up from within Linux. An alternative to dosemu (which can be a beast) is dosbox which is a dos emulator that runs on any platform and can be used to make boot disks. Although it runs it's own version of DOS, it can be made to make freedos boot disks.

I also have been very surprised that bios manufacturers haven't been using freedos, especially now that Windows 98 is falling out of vogue.

Your desktop must be a total nightmare.

Small is beautiful. You can still keep GNOME and/or KDE libs around if you must.

Avi Player works; but since that site uses mms links, I had to paste the *asf urls to the command line.

KDE already runs on OS X thanks to the Fink folks.

I'm still waiting to see KDE on Windows!

What - you mean something like this?

The programs are for use on the Linux operating system, which is a free alternative to the Windows operating system.

OpenOffice is a cross-platform suite. It's not just for Linux. I use the Windows version all the time.

Free software for the win32 platform is (I think) an important front of the F/OSS movement. Most people are unwilling to take the plunge straight into Linux. Using free software on win32 is a way to wade in and test the waters before jumping in. The win32 port of The GIMP was the first thing that got me really excited about free software, and I have since migrated to more free and open source applications and operating systems. For those of you running windows who would like to check out some free software, follow the links below:

• http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html
• http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/order.html

PomPom have neato modernized clones/rehashes of Defender/Uridium and Robotron. Both are extremely pretty in that they don't fall into the now-standard be-as-naturalistic-as-possible trap ~ the graphics have an abstract and psychedelic feel to it that fit the simplistic arcade game concepts well.

"Egoboo is a 3d dungeon crawling adventure in the spirit of NetHack. It uses OpenGL and SDL. It should run on any Wintel, Unix, and MacOS X system." (I don't really see the Nethack semblance, but oh well. It's kinda wacky in a lovable sorta way.)

Starscape has some Asteroids-ish arcade sequences wrapped inside something more complex. Looks good.

Digital Eel's Strange Adventures In Infinite Space is a 2D Elite-esque space game (obviously) with, I thought, an emphasis on playability rather than complexity or sophisticated-ness. Link is to the screenshots page, they work as a description.

Spheres of Chaos might be a game but it looks quite like an early Amiga demoscene effort to me ~ psychedelic, chaotic, colourful and completely abstract. Something for the Jeff Minter fans maybe?

Thanks for the link at wired
I am making Free Fingerprint Imaging Software and have added you link. I also have the gelatin Artificial Gummy Fingers, link. And a link to Bruce Schneier saying Biometrics are unique identifiers, but they are not keys or secrets I think that biometrics by themselves can be badly misused and have things end up being worse.
I think that Bruce has said something like a false sense of security is worse then no security.
Intrinsicly fingerprints can only provide collabarating evidence if and only if some proper proceduces are in place. Washbins at border crossings might be amusing;-> Another thing though is that for example the 911 people didn't use fake ID, so what was the point again anyway? I think that banks using fingerprints on their customers when the open accounts etc, DMV when people get ID, seems more likely. Only real things I worry about is what about when the Justice system fails and people have legitament reasons to hide; What about stalkers, wife beaters,etc; What about the witness protection program, secret agents, etc;-> The government would have real problems getting proper cover stories for people if biometric information on people was widespread. I don't know why they are pushing it as much, it might actually end up hurting them more than it helps.

• Coyote Linux
  
• LEAF
  
• LRP (now dead)
  

Just get an older computer (200-500 mhz), setup IPCop with some bandwidth shaping and throttle those ports down. Heck, I'd even firewall it to maybe web, mail (pop3/imap, no smtp), aim/icq/msn/irc, and possibly ssh. The next version of IPCop will be even better for wireless setups. For hardware, consider something like the Netgear WAG311 "dual band" adapter, and cover all the bases.

pam_smb:
pamsmb.sourceforge.net

pam_smb FAQ:
http://pamsmb.sourceforge.net/faq/pam_smb_faq.html

Features (v1 and v2):

• Authenticates Linux users against SMB servers in user mode(95, NT, samba etc). Will not authenticate against share level systems.
• Supported OSes: Linux (any PAM supporting distro), Solaris 2.6 or greater.
• Supports NT/Lanman encrypted passwords.
• Any service which uses PAM can authenticate against NT.
• Can setup to ignore lack of a local password entry when something else provides the users information such as RADIUS.

• HP/UX 11 and FreeBSD 4.8 or 5.1 support.
• Caching support.
• Username mapping of Unix usernames to NT usernames.

pam_smb:
pamsmb.sourceforge.net

pam_smb FAQ:
http://pamsmb.sourceforge.net/faq/pam_smb_faq.html

Features (v1 and v2):

• Authenticates Linux users against SMB servers in user mode(95, NT, samba etc). Will not authenticate against share level systems.
• Supported OSes: Linux (any PAM supporting distro), Solaris 2.6 or greater.
• Supports NT/Lanman encrypted passwords.
• Any service which uses PAM can authenticate against NT.
• Can setup to ignore lack of a local password entry when something else provides the users information such as RADIUS.

• HP/UX 11 and FreeBSD 4.8 or 5.1 support.
• Caching support.
• Username mapping of Unix usernames to NT usernames.

From the README of Noiptun:

If you've been paying careful attention you will have noticed that there has been no mention of any mechanism to prevent the traffic from continuing on to its intended destination, i.e. the IP address the server was using to route the traffic to the client machine. The answer is that noiptun has no way to handle this issue and it must be dealt with through other means if deemed important enough. Some of the ways this can be solved is by creating an appopriate Hogwash or inline Snort rule to drop the traffic, using firewall rules to filter the traffic is also possible. Please note however that noiptun makes no attempt to deal with this issue whatsoever and it's up to you to make sure the traffic is dropped and doesn't waste unnecessary bandwidth.

Xiph.org Stream directory

"Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet." --Bruce Schneier, CRYPTO-GRAM, May 15, 2001. This applies to streams too.

I have a ATI TV Wonder VE, its based on a brooktree 878, though I think its using the connexant version of the chip. The problem I have is that the while the signal I'm receiving (coax cable) looks good on a regular Television (Sony Trinitron, a few years old) the captured version is full of noise. The closest example I can find is here:

tvtime screenshots

The noise I refer to is quite noticeable in the full resolution pngs. I'll note that this is no ill reflection on tvtime. Then again, reading about the specs of the BT878, its supposed to have higher fidelity than a television monitor. Hence, I'm confused where I'm going wrong.

Any suggestions?

On one hand, I'm breaking out the wine for a little celebration.

If true, it would certainly be time to break out the wine!

This is because we ourselves can rerun the tests if we want to on Linux,with the sources from here. In fact, I intend to do this on my brand new Dual Athlon system.

• Dual-head with tv-out so you can have a movie display on the TV while working on your monitor
• Very good high TV-out quality (some say it is one of the best out there)
• You can pick it up cheap on ebay
• Perhaps the best supported graphics hardware under linux
• Special support in mplayer for beautiful movie display
• Hardware MJPEG compression for capture
• Nice break-out-box with RCA in/out as well as svideo in/out
• All this in one AGP card

• Current Linux driver does not do DMA for plain v4l (non-MJPEG) capture -- it does memcpy() which is CPU intensive. I'm looking to add support to the driver at some point when I finish reading the SPECS.
• Capture driver does not play well with the framebuffer driver. Again I'm looking to help fix this at some point

I have used PowerPoint upteen times over my career as I occassionally speak on Computer Security issues from general to specific audiences. I have always been forced to use PowerPoint simply because there seems to be nothing better out there at the moment. I have looked at KPresenter , Prosper, OpenOffice's Impress, and maybe one or two others. I love Keynote's features and gloss, but the expense of buying a very powerful 15" Powerbook to get it to work smoothly is somewhat of an obstacle to me. I'd love to have it, but I need it to run smoothly, and I'm not sure I can justify a $2000 expense for something I do about once a quarter.

Seriously guys - is there something out there I don't know about? I hate to open PowerPoint, but there doesn't seem to be anything even close to it right now. We have one Mac for checking web sites (G3 iBook), and otherwise run Linux and WinXP. I'd prefer to avoid WinXP if at all possible!

Suggestions? I'll look at ANY alternatives to PowerPoint!

I have used Powerpoint upteen times over my career as I occassionally speak on Computer Security issues from general to specific audiences. I have always been forced to use PowerPoint simply because there seems to be nothing better out there at the moment. I have looked at KPresenter , Prosper, OpenOffice's Impress, and maybe one or two others. I love Keynote's features and gloss, but the expense of buying a very powerful 15" Powerbook to get it to work smoothly is somewhat of an obstacle to me. I'd love to have it, but I need it to run smoothly, and I'm not sure I can justify a $2000 expense for something I do about once a quarter.

Seriously guys - is there something out there I don't know about? I hate to open PowerPoint, but there doesn't seem to be anything even close to it right now. We have one Mac for checking web sites (G3 iBook), and otherwise run Linux and WinXP.

Suggestions? I'll look at ANY alternatives to PowerPoint!

Prosper

I read that tvtime uses many of the same algorithms that dscaler uses.

I'd say so, based on the screenshots, especially the bottom image capture. They'd be foolish not to anyway; the dScaler filters are excellent and very well tested by a very active and vocal user base.

I read that tvtime uses many of the same algorithms that dscaler uses.

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net
is the generic windows driver for 848/878 cards.
Works just fine.

echo 'print "hello world\n"' >hello.rb

echo '#!/usr/bin/ruby' > hello.rb
echo 'print "hello world\n"' >> hello.rb

So did I win this dick-shrinkage competition? (-:

Under Linux, you can use the kernel bttv driver, the current CVS of lirc, and MythTV to make a PVR that works better than the software bundled with the card. If all you want is simple TV playback, tvtime will do that. (tvtime's useful to keep around for TV-card debugging anyway, and it's more polished than xawtv.)

(If you buy the NTSC version of this card and want to use it under Linux, you'll need to edit drivers/media/video/bttv-cards.c so that the tuner will be set up properly. Search for "Leadtek WinFast 2000/ WinFast 2000 XP", scroll down to the .tuner_type= line, and change it from 5 to TUNER_PHILIPS_NTSC. If you don't do this, the tuner and the remote control won't work properly.)