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GNASH, Hurd, it's just another one of those GNU/anything projects that has become infected by RMS and think people will use a turd because it comes with a user friendly license. For the longest time they turned away any developer who has ever installed the real flash - perhaps they still do - due to a clause in the license that would get laughed out of court, it's equal to saying anyone who has ever agreed to a Windows EULA can't ever develop Linux. That has made sure the project is stock full of nothing but raving ideological fanatics and no actual doers. The only real traction has come from the Lightspark project, which has happened almost entirely outside the gnash project and is mainly run by one person called Alessandro Pignotti who has done more for flash support in Linux than gnash has done in years. Not to put too much weight on his shoulders, but he's the kind of doer it takes to build a real project just like Linus was for Linux and not just some ideological play toy.

In my experience, this situation is fairly common: FOSS is very good at producing 'tools': useful but unpolished software. Often, they require a certain amount of putting it together yourself, searching for information on how to make X talk to Y. That has its positives: you can make it do more or less whatever you want; and its negatives: you don't get a simple wizard to click through to set up your Google Docs replacement.

FOSS works largely by people "scratching their own itch". It sounds like 'a Google Docs replacement for your own server' is one of your itches. I was trying to suggest work you might be able to use to scratch it yourself.

Bonus links for web presentations: Slimey (editor), S5 Project.

Root the phone, install MPI, and you're set. Add Torque/Maui for scheduling. Or stick Condor on it. You know the drill. We all remember what Sony did to the PS2 beowulfs. >:(

Or you could just run Boincoid http://boincoid.sourceforge.net/ on it while it's sitting on the charger overnight.

Instructions for Linux, but can be modified to suit *BSD, some other OSes. Remember, with firewalls fascism is good.

1. install and configure denyhosts http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/
2. use the reporting/updating feature of denyhosts to coordinate and sync botnet-dropping with other denyhosts users
3. write a script or daemon that checks for updates to denyhost's hosts-restricted file and then tells your iptables firewall to drop all packets to and from those hosts

Example of iptables firewall config file with blacklists:

# Blacklisted IP addresses: uses output of denyhosts daemon
#
# RESERVED_HOST=$(cat /var/lib/denyhosts/hosts-restricted|awk -F ":" '{print $1}')
#
# Blacklisted subnets: place banned subnets here
#
RESERVED_NET=" "
#
# Prevent packets sent to unassignable and blacklisted subnets from
# leaving the firewall (see Blacklist above)
#
$IPTABLES -N SRC_EGRESS
$IPTABLES -F SRC_EGRESS
$IPTABLES -A SRC_EGRESS -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A SRC_EGRESS -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A SRC_EGRESS -s 192.168.0.0/16 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A SRC_EGRESS -s 224.0.0.0/4 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A SRC_EGRESS -s 240.0.0.0/5 -j DROP

        for NET in $RESERVED_NET
        do
        $IPTABLES -A SRC_EGRESS -s $NET -j DROP
        done

$IPTABLES -N DST_EGRESS
$IPTABLES -F DST_EGRESS
$IPTABLES -A DST_EGRESS -d 10.0.0.0/8 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A DST_EGRESS -d 172.16.0.0/12 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A DST_EGRESS -d 192.168.0.0/16 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A DST_EGRESS -d 224.0.0.0/4 -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A DST_EGRESS -d 240.0.0.0/5 -j DROP

        for NET in $RESERVED_NET
        do
        $IPTABLES -A DST_EGRESS -d $NET -j DROP
        done

# Prevent packets sent to or from blacklisted hosts from
# entering or leaving the firewall (see Blacklist above)
#
        for HOST in $RESERVED_HOST
        do
                $IPTABLES -I INPUT -s $HOST -j DROP
        $IPTABLES -A SRC_EGRESS -s $HOST -j DROP
        $IPTABLES -A DST_EGRESS -d $HOST -j DROP
        done

Thanks, its nice to have a conversation about both the goods and bads of *NIX that doesn't devolve into an argument. I think it is easier to have an open mind if you use software pragmatically as opposed to zealously following one sect or the other. I see this time and time again with BSD vs. GPL licensing debates. GPL advocates often see BSD-licensed code as too easily stolen and BSD advocates see GPL-licensed code as "infectious" and too restrictive. The reality is that a developer needs to weigh the different licenses and decide if they want the code free for anyone to take or if they want others to be required to share changes back with them.

By the way, I took a look at the feature sets for qtparted and gparted. There are some screenshots on the respective web pages. I know (k)ubuntu keeps low-level system tools to a minimum, but I would be shocked if neither of these were in the default repositories. Gparted definitely is more feature-rich, but if you don't need any of the extra features I would try QTparted first. Gparted would likely require extra gnome libraries if you are in KDE.

Also, if you want or need to do offline partition management, I would recommend using the Parted Magic live CD.

Lastly, it looks like NDS is still alive and running in SUSE Enterprise Server, but under the name eDirectory. I am not familiar with it, so I do not know if it does as good a job as Group Policy in Active Directory at managing settings for tons of machines remotely. There is also no price listed, and I believe it is sold separately from SUSE Enterprise, so it may also lose out on a cost standpoint.

Thanks, its nice to have a conversation about both the goods and bads of *NIX that doesn't devolve into an argument. I think it is easier to have an open mind if you use software pragmatically as opposed to zealously following one sect or the other. I see this time and time again with BSD vs. GPL licensing debates. GPL advocates often see BSD-licensed code as too easily stolen and BSD advocates see GPL-licensed code as "infectious" and too restrictive. The reality is that a developer needs to weigh the different licenses and decide if they want the code free for anyone to take or if they want others to be required to share changes back with them.

By the way, I took a look at the feature sets for qtparted and gparted. There are some screenshots on the respective web pages. I know (k)ubuntu keeps low-level system tools to a minimum, but I would be shocked if neither of these were in the default repositories. Gparted definitely is more feature-rich, but if you don't need any of the extra features I would try QTparted first. Gparted would likely require extra gnome libraries if you are in KDE.

Also, if you want or need to do offline partition management, I would recommend using the Parted Magic live CD.

Lastly, it looks like NDS is still alive and running in SUSE Enterprise Server, but under the name eDirectory. I am not familiar with it, so I do not know if it does as good a job as Group Policy in Active Directory at managing settings for tons of machines remotely. There is also no price listed, and I believe it is sold separately from SUSE Enterprise, so it may also lose out on a cost standpoint.

Are you kidding, not aware of AROS and ReactOS, or just commenting on how they both still have a ways to go?

Assuming the second, check these out(and possibly contribute, if you want to help speed development):

(1) AROS Research Operating System - The AROS Research Operating System is a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level (like Wine, unlike UAE), while improving on it in many areas.
(2) React Operating System - ReactOS® is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows-NT® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture.

The blurbs next to each link are quoted from the homepages of AROS and ReactOS, respectively, and are not my personal opinion.

A simple few frills terminal, unmaintained and sadly not proper unicode sporting, outliner with some happy users for unixen is hnb

I have tried the chat bots from SeeBorg, Howie, and Rbot but they're not that good. The first two are very old and outdated. Rbot isn't really a true AI chatbot. Are there any others to try?

Use a paper notebook for a lot of things. It's redundant and inefficient but sometimes I'll high-level outline something in the notebook, then retype it into OpenOffice to add detail. Just how I worked, but also this was mostly before I had a netbook to tote around.

Actually had a couple programs on my Handspring Visor, of all things, that I kind of wish they had desktop version of so I could pull the databases in (Progect, Knowledge), if only for nostalgic purposes at this point, since that stuff is years old by now. They're pretty basic, for the most part: Progect is just an outliner with cool features, especially for planning and project management, and Knowledge is just a list maker with cool features and categorizing/tagging ability, and I've never found anything like that for the desktop.

Lately I've been really liking Freemind ( http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ ) for planning and brainstorming ideas.

The NeoOffice UI layer is written in Java, and according to the developers, would have been difficult to implement natively. The Vuze (Azureus) BitTorrent client and InterMapper Remote are also implemented in Java. In fact, Java applications on the Mac can look just like native ones, so it's often not obvious when Java is being used.

"have you tried ionice?" - by larry bagina (561269) on Saturday October 23, @02:43PM (#33997928)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultradefrag/forums/forum/709672/topic/3690136

Find the analog to that in Linux' API's (thread and process level priority control code), & integrate it into your own open sourced code for projects you think needs it (which I imagine MOST of you around here don't operate fluently at sourcecode levels, some do I wager, but most not & even if you do, it takes time to study the flow of any project first).

Still, per your idea? Well - That's how I'd go about it I suppose at this level, and you open source crowd do have that much going for you, which could work out nicely at times.

APK

P.S.=> See, I figure it this way, especially to those of you that code: You've got threads now in Linux (since what, kernel 2.2 or so?? All I know was that around 1998/1999, the Linux kernel wasn't preemptible or re-entrant, & that meant no threads @ the kernel level (usermode "round-robin to kernel" cooperative threads do NOT count, ala Windows 3.x)), vs. forks only, thank goodness...

So, that all said & aside? Well, for "the industrious" & skilled amongst you, yes, this IS doable, because if I can do it in Windows, along with others now as shown above in the UltraDefrag64 project (& even show others also as I have for a 64 bit defragger in Windows) you can in Linux as well is my guess, even across languages (Object Pascal to C/C++ &/or Win32/64 API calls) and you additionally have your "Fresh Meat" sites etc. & Open code to work with... apk

You have to read the description of critterding in order to understand the changes made in critterdrug (as described in TFA). The software actually is pretty cool. It's a simulation of a evolutionary process starting with agents ("critters") with different random attributes. The agents can perform actions like "eat", "procreate", or "bend joint" and have sensors for "food", other critters, their own condition, and so on.

It's semi-random computer-simulated artificial animals moving, eating, breeding, evolving and surviving (or not). The link to critterding doesn't directly state this, but gives enough information that you can reasonably figure it out:

How the program works

Critters are informed by sensors:

• if their head touches food unit
• if their head touches another critter
• if they are able to procreate
• about their energy state
• about their age
• about the state of their joints
• what the world looks like (RGBA vision)

Critters can make use of the following motor neurons (actions):

• bend joint
• bend joint in other direction
• eat
• procreate

At default, the program sets up a small world with a relatively large amount of food units and keeps throwing in critters with randomly generated brains and bodies.

(picture omitted)

After a while, one of these idiot critters will unavoidably be good enough to maintain a small population:

(picture omitted)

Slowly but surely, their behaviour will become a lot less random as they demonstrate increasingly better survival skills:

(picture and video omitted)

K-Meleon

it uses mozilla's gecko engine, even more bare bones than firefox, a little rough around the edges but overall an ok browser. (windows only)

I use Comical. I works pretty good for me. Granted, I haven't tried out a bunch of different comic readers either.

http://comical.sourceforge.net/

ComicRack is simply the best.

No, really, it is. But Comix is passable if you want a leaner program.

    Ya, I just wasn't sure because I've seen some headaches in using graphic intense applications under virtual machines. Even some applications that appeared to not be graphic intensive didn't work. Thinking about it though, that was in the early days of VMWare.

    My biggest gripe with VMWare was the dependence on specific kernel versions, when I was upgrading to get features of new kernels. There were hacky solutions that sometimes worked, and frequently didn't. I haven't run into any of that with VirtualBox. That's why I've adopted it as my VM of choice.

  At work, they have me on a Win7 box. I'm using "Virtual Dimension" so I have 4 desktops. Desktop 2 is a full screen Slackware64. It's been very nice, even though I'm limited on the memory and can't ask for more memory after making jokes about needing more memory for gaming at work. :) I considered reinstalling the OS, so Linux is the host, and Windows is the guest, but they're very production orientated, so I can't waste a day doing it, no matter how much it would help my productivity.

I heavily use virtualization both at work and home. I originally had an ESXi 3.5 server at home but my RAID controller was an Areca ARC-1170 which is not on the VMWare Hardware Compatibility Guide so after reviewing the off-the-shelf community help I learned how to roll my own oem.tgz to include the drivers. The system worked for a while but I then started to experience a lot of stability issues so I switch to KVM running on Fedora.

Unfortunately KVM on Fedora has had a lot of issues with the virt-manager being stable. Right now I'm on Fedora 13 and every time I open the console on virt-manager for a specific VM it causes X to crash and reload. If I boot the VM up from scratch with the console open it's less buggy. I actually had this problem originally on Fedora 11 and am still experiencing it with 13 even from a fresh reload. Fortunately it's not really an issue for me because I can just ssh or use XMing to send my X related apps.

The biggest issue with virtualization is that host memory is your most precious resource. To solve this problem, OS drivers can be installed to support memory ballooning. What memory ballooning does is make sure the guest OS frees up memory resources it is not using to the host. If you're running a lot of Microsoft Windows I definitely recommend ESXi since there are no good memory ballooning drivers available in KVM or Xen and really no roadmap for it. If you're running a lot of Linux I highly recommend KVM since current distros already have the kernel features that make memory more efficient. In fact, it is advantageous to run a homogenous distribution (i.e. all distro-X version Y) because the latest kernels have memory deduplication which will cause memory pages that are the same to be only stored once.

Perhaps not unexpectedly TFA doesn't mention licencing of the software but there are several free software stop motion applications available. I've not tried them all but I've posted that link here if people are interested.

Google is your friend

Multisync

Look what's supported.

Take your pick.

You're welcome.

Even some gifts come with a price. Try not to imagine Goatse. Ha Ha. Got you.

Since the problem as I understand it is maintaining a list of torrents one could simply use a system such as http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/

Agreed. Anyone who hasn't played it is missing out... so try it!
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
It's not the original, but it plays just like it. Reminiscing makes me want to try and take out a fleet of Ur-quan (both Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah) with a single Thraddash ship.

Also, is futurama's Hypnotoad a dynarri?

... Also, even after several years, it still bothers me that closing a window on a Mac doesn't terminate the application. I can understand the philosophical rationale (for what it's worth) behind this, but it seems unnecessary and wasteful.

It's funny, but I actually like the differentiation between closing a window and an application. But I do a lot via the keyboard, not the mouse, so when I want to close a window I use Command-W and know that the application will still be in memory to use Command-O or Command-N rather than having to relaunch the app. If I want to quit then I use Command-Q. I was actually a bit annoyed when they changed "single window/document/view" type applications to exit when their window was closed (though I get the rational.)

I also launch everything from Spotlight rather than spelunking around the Finder. One of the funniest things to me is how people (not saying you) assume that Mac OS X is not for power users and is mouse centric. But if you enable "All Controls" in System Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts, have Spotlight enabled and know the difference between Command-Tab and Command-`, you can do most driving from the keyboard. Add the Automater's Save As Service, the consistent Service interface, applescript and the ability to assign global, application and context sensitive keyboard shortcuts and for me Mac OS X is a power user's dream. All right out of the box. For instance, using the Application's Shortcuts I've bound Command-. to bring up the System Preferences and by creating a "Finder Application.app" in the automator I can use Spotlight to jump right to the finder rather than tabbing through 20 apps or mousing around in expose. Plus Shift-Command-G in virtually any file dialog and Finder and you can type in a path rather than click up and down folder hierarchies.

While I'm in fanboy mode, I'll mention what I love most is the consistency. All (non-MS) application's text edit areas support the basic emacs-like ^a, ^d ^e, and ^k functionality. I'm an old emacs/bash guy, so I'm happy, even if it makes no sense to young-uns. Also, once you know about property lists, you can figure out where prefs are for 99% of applications. And if you can find to the right docs, you can tweak away. It almost sucks that there is no uninstaller, but it rarely matters and if you care - once again the consistency tells you exactly where to look for any left over files. I think that the "application bundle" is a great way to deal with managing all the files related to a program.

Apologies for the fanboyism. I also came from years of Linux experience, which I loved. But for some reason Mac OS X just "clicked" for me.

If you don't have it, I highly recommend TinkerTool which is free "as in beer" to explore some level of system/UI tweaking. Also, Lingon

is a pretty decent open source tool for navigating all the system and user startup services provided by launchd. It's no longer under development, but it's an Apache licensed program and pretty useful so maybe someone will pick it up. I install Lingon via MacPorts (though the git based HomeBrew" is intriguing...)

OK, I'll go away now...

There's Gnofract 4D too at http://gnofract4d.sourceforge.net/ and with even a flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/gnofract4d/

Personally, I like Gnofract 4D. It's quick, has a nice point 'n click interface and it's easy to save images for later use or sharing. I use if on Fedora 13, but there are Windows and Mac versions as well.

Taken to the logical extreme, it sounds like you just want a game where you don't have to micro your units.

Actually, I think the extreme is a game where you write the script then you don't manage your units at all -- and it turns out that games like that are pretty awesome even when you only have one unit to manage, so I can only imagine managing a whole army would be much more fun (presuming the complexity wasn't overwhelming)

"My employer is currently looking at adopting a content management system ... The candidates are currently Plone (OSS) and Confluence (proprietary, closed-source). For those with experience in each, what arguments in favor of Plone could be made to managers more interested in pragmatism than idealism?"

You hit the important point in your post: you cannot use idealism ("FOSS is neat!") to get your manager on your side.

When pitching any new idea to a manager, it's important to note the differences in priorities at each level. For examaple: with a line-level technologist (i.e. most geeks) technical knowledge is important, relationship-building and strategic planning are [generally] very unimportant. I'm talking about what's important to your job, not what's important to you.

But it's pretty much the opposite for managers, especially the further up the management chain you look. At the CIO level, strategic planning is the #1 most important thing, followed closely by interpersonal skills (CIOs often need to navigate lots of committees and meetings to get things done.) Individual technical skill is very unimportant to their work (some CIOs maintain some technical knowledge, but it's not used in their day-to-day work.)

I gave a talk about this very topic at Penguicon 2009, called "Linux in the Enterprise". My 1-hour talk used only a few conceptual slides, but you will be interested in the chart on slide #4. It presents this idea about "framing" very clearly. You can find the presentation at my blog, but the actual presentation is from May 2009. I think the data in the chart originally came from a Harvard Business Review study.

Your question indicated you were going to present this idea to a manager - I'm assuming (based on your wording) that you don't mean an IT Director or a Chief Information Officer, but instead an IT manager (probably your group manager.) Look closely as the chart from my presentation, and note the "Mgr" area of the graph. The "importance" lines all converge for the manager. That's not an error in the graph - that's indicative of managers stepping out of the "team lead" role, before they can make a transition to a "Director" role.

In the talk, I discussed how IT managers often have a hard time leaving their "tech person" role, moving into a manager role, because the IT skills that got them to the "manager" position won't carry them to the next level. And everything tends to have equal importance, because managers act as the filter between the technology teams and the director. So technical knowledge has about the same importance to their day-to-day job as budgeting and strategy. But I digress...

You'll need to make a case to your manager that addresses the points that he or she will find important, while at the same time thinking a step ahead to the level above your manager. Emphasize points that will be important to your manager's director. That means you need to de-emphasize the technology ("it's FOSS") and address the strategy. Does Plone fit into your organization's strategic IT plan? (Does your group even have an IT plan?) How easy can Plone integrate with other parts of the IT infrastructure? Can you tie Plone into your central authentication system? Who supports either package (patches, updates, new features, etc.) Your manager and director will not want to take on this effort, so be sure to mention commercial support options for Plone (usually this means "help desk"), the Plone developer community, and if it's available as a standard package in the Linux distro your sysadmins already run (meaning it would get updates by default as they regularly update the OS - which would be either good or bad, depending on your manager's preferences for testing after patches.)

It's not enough to say "FOSS is free". Especially because it really isn't. Talk about

Thats because the top end calculators are not just for performing arithmetic calculations: they are equivalent of a cut down version of Maple or Mathematica. However much does one of those application cost on the PC?

It costs seven times zip, which still equals zip.

Yes, Maxima costs the same as 7-Zip. Both are free software under a GNU license.

A bit of mathematics is a good start. There are certainly lots of mathematically-oriented free software projects out there that could use an extra hand.

A bit of programming is a problem. If you're new to templates and inheritance then by trying to do any design work you risk doing as much harm as good. Trying to contribute to Boost without being a C++ expert may not be a good idea.

But a bit of eagerness to contribute is a very good thing. The trouble with open source in general is that people focus on the fun work first and the necessary support work second and then leave the grunt work for third or for never. You should have no trouble finding projects that don't have a big enough test suite (or finding projects that don't have any test suite, for that matter), and unit tests and regression tests are something you can create that will teach you libraries that you can use in your own research apps, expose you to others' good code, give you a chance to practice writing your own good code, but still not leave you responsible for creating tricky designs or performance-critical implementations yourself yet.

If you want to contribute to a mathematical open source C++ project which has helpful people on the mailing lists and on Slashdot, my biased suggestion is libMesh. There are lots of other good suggestions here, though; my unbiased advice would be to think ahead to your possible dissertation research topics and pick something that is likely to be useful for them. Doing intellectually stimulating things for fun is great (otherwise you wouldn't want to be a grad student), but it's also good to keep an eye out for when "fun" and "personally useful" can overlap.

In addition to BOOST, you might want to consider looking at other projects. Some that might be a good fit, and might need developers are :

- GSL : The GNU Scientific Library is a scientific toolset for C and C++. These tools are quite modular, and you might be able to find your own module to code.

- Plotting software : Help to any of the plotting programs would be a real boon for all scientists. This could involve developing non-linear fitting algorithms, GUI, or statistical analysis. Look at SciDAVis and possibly GRACE.

- non-linear fitting : C++ Minuit, or a CERNlib project may be a good match--I'm not sure whether these are only developed internally.

good luck!

Sharepoint? You've never used it

Please dont remind me.

I almost break down whenever someone mentions "integration".

*shudder*

Drupal is a lot better from almost every viewpoint.

I've honestly never looked at Drupal. Can it be used in the same way as sharepoint, document storage/versioning and collaboration?

Currently googling for an easy to follow guide, I'd like to point out the Nagios Quickstart guides as an example of how FOSS documentation should look (the Nagios doc's in general are quite good). A bit of a segue but lots of people bitch and moan about how poorly documented some FOSS projects are but no one ever points out when one is well documented. Not that closed source is any better, I've just shelved Civ V until I figure out why Firaxis' FireTuner doesn't work on my PC, no doco on that what so ever.

Until (relatively recently) you *couldn't* run Windows on a Mac

No, that just isn't true. It just didn't run natively. Connectix Virtual PC for the Mac came out in 1997 (It was a Mac product before MS bought it), Soft PC was around in 1996. And later there was the FOSS Bochs x86 PC emulator. Those products had to emulate an Intel CPU, so there was a significant performance hit. I recall MS-DOS running in emulation on a Mac even before the switch the PPC processors.

Awww, just a portable Z-machine interpreter. I was hoping this was a new commercial publication channel for text adventures. You know, TextFire all over again?

That said, text adventures are pretty fun on portable platforms. I used to play some text adventures on Frobnitz (for PalmOS) back in the day, and it was awesome even without keyboard. Didn't really play it that much though...

Note that having apt-proxy installed by default would violate Ubuntu's "no open ports by default" policy. It would be nice if it were a bit better supported though.

I recommend you to use virtual desktops (I use the open-source VirtuaWin http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ ) to organize all your windows.

I myself frequently have as many windows as you have open (including Internet [email, firefox, etc], Code, Writing [word or latex], Research [R, Excel, Gnumeric, etc])

I have 5 virtual desktops where I distribute all my applications according to a specific theme. This not only helps me "declutter" the taskbar (which I use vertically as I appreciate my reading space, and can handle more windows) but also allows me to have all the programs I need to finish one task I am doing at a certain point.

WMI is only microsoft's implementation of the industry standard Common Information Model (CIM). This is used in Mac's, Linux, and other OS's as well. It's also known as WBEM (Web based enterprise management).

Linux has SBLIM, for instance http://sourceforge.net/projects/sblim/

There are other ways to change computer names that don't involve WMI that are basically as simple as your linux example.

Ugh.
I suppose WBEM would be less annoying with a decent management app instead of having to type a bunch of SQL-like statements. A few minutes of digging reveals that apparently Microsoft System Center is one such front-end. ...and it appears to cost about $10,000 for one of my networks--but I can't tell for sure. Microsoft Licensing is sort of a pain in the ass to figure out.

(So you're telling me I just bought Windows Server, and then I bought Windows XP which is a client designed specifically for talking with your server product--and now I have to pay you more money to get your blessing--called a CAL--to let them actually talk?)

(So you're telling me I just bought Exchange Server, and then I bought Outlook which is a client designed specifically for talking with your server product--and now I have to pay you more money to get your blessing--called a CAL--to let them actually talk?)

etc...

WMI is only microsoft's implementation of the industry standard Common Information Model (CIM). This is used in Mac's, Linux, and other OS's as well. It's also known as WBEM (Web based enterprise management).

Linux has SBLIM, for instance http://sourceforge.net/projects/sblim/

There are other ways to change computer names that don't involve WMI that are basically as simple as your linux example.

For advanced users, Windows 7 just plain WORKS BETTER than XP, on pretty much every level. I'm not sure how you can possibly say otherwise.

OK here's just a few examples:

1) In my original post, I gave an example of a problem I had with Windows 7 search. Care to show how to get Windows 7 search to work in that case?

Here is the problem again: say you have a directory called ABC. In that directory there are many text files. A few of them contain the word ABC. The rest don't. Using the Windows 7 search how do you find those few files that contain the word ABC while excluding the files that don't?

Worse, even in less problematic cases, the index often gets out of date, so it finds a file that doesn't have the word ABC in it, or it only finds some of them not all... It basically cannot be relied on.

2) In Windows XP I can set things up so that I can launch/do different things with just a few key strokes. I need more key strokes to do that with Windows 7. How I do it on XP? I switch to classic mode. Then create folders in the start menu and name them stuff like

"1 Explore"
"2 Tools"
"3 Launch"
"4 Command Prompt" ...
"7 Connect to"

So to explore the my desktop I would press winkey, 1, 1. To Explore My Documents I would press winkey, 1, 3. winkey, 1, c for C drive. winkey, 1, F for F drive.
To launch the windows calculator, I would press winkey, 2, c.
To launch an app I would press winkey, 3,
To connect to my home server I would press winkey, 7, 1. To connect to my firewall I would press winkey, 7, 6.

To set this up on a new XP system, I just copy the relevant folders over, and voila it works (the app paths may have to be tweaked of course).

In comparison, the Windows 7 start menu search often requires me to type winkey, ENTIRE FIRST WORD of the app I need to launch - partial match doesn't always work. Furthermore the Windows 7 taskbar pinning thing only allows you to quick launch a max of 10 (or is it 9?) different items (winkey+number).

3) On Win XP I can just right click on a task button I want to close and press C. You need more steps/keys to do a similar thing on Windows 7- the fancy way even requires you to wait for the GUI to pop stuff up first, the alternative is left click on taskbutton, alt+f4 (but that's more keys, a greater stretch and slower :) ).

So Windows 7 is slower for me and I see no way of getting it to do stuff at the same speed as I have on XP.

I would be very happy if you can actually show me how to get windows 7 to do things faster or better than I do on XP.

Most new Windows 7 users are unaware that many of the short cuts already exist for Windows XP. Windows XP also has a lot of short cuts and key strokes, and as my "2)" example shows, you can make your own customized short cuts.

For quick switching amongst more than two different tasks/windows I use my own program (LinkKey http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/ ) whether on XP or Win7.

alt-tab works fine for switching between two windows. Not so well if you need to quickly switch amongst four or more.

Others, off the top of my head:

Sony Imageworks has started to open source a series of components recently. Admittedly, some of them like Pystring are fairly minor, but others like OSL are serious pieces of code.

Disney's Ptex library is also open source.

Then there's the old Cinepaint project from R&H.

Grammar Nazi says: That's gall not gaul. Gauls are French people

Maybe he actually meant "google has the French people to climb on a soap box"? Or he didn't want anyone to think he was referring to outgrowths on the surface of lifeforms caused by invasion by other lifeforms. Gall also means wrath, bile, or a certain color of yellow. Or maybe he was referring to A programming library designed to aid development of applications that use genetic algorithms.

Off course, he mite sim plea bee relaying two mach on hiss spill chucker.

Can I just say one thing, and it might have just been my computer because Guillermo's was fine, but Garage Band cannot be trusted on its own for live recordings

Don't use garage band to record long interviews. It's not intended for that purpose. Use Audacity. Since you didn't even give the details of the resolution you were recording at, I'm not going to mention how that was probably the culprit in your garage band crashes. But when you use Audacity, be sure to set the recording to a low bitrate for an hour+ long spoken word interview.

Seth

Please do include patches/extensions etc from OxygenOffice aswell. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop/

Why invent Makefile writing scripts or even programs when make and Makefiles can easily do all that is required for cross-platform (and cross-target) compilation? http://sourceforge.net/projects/mk-configure/

Both Digital Radio Mondale and IBOC (Ibiquity) are bad. Both require a host of patented codecs to run (go over to the DRM project page and look at the requirements to build it - DRM suffers from the classic design by committee issues.

But IBOC is worse: Ibiquity has, as a part of the required standard, that all transmissions SHALL be encrypted with a key you have to license from Ibiquity. If they don't like what you are doing, NO KEY FOR YOU! For example Griffin was going to offer a IBOC tuner on USB (their Radio Shark HD), that would have allowed you to record the bit stream for time shifting purposes. Ibiquity says "THOU SHALT NOT RECORD THE STREAM" - and Griffin had to cancel the Radio Shark HD (after they had announced it, BTW).

Read that last again: this isn't a "you MAY encrypt, if you want to" - this is "You SHALL encrypt. Get over it."

Personally, I'd rather see a truly Free solution out there, but where's the profit in that?

Or if you're pissed and lazy, you can find others to do it for you.

If you have a PC and a phone with bluetooth, consider using Blueproximity.

From their site:

This software helps you add a little more security to your desktop. It does so by detecting one of your bluetooth devices, most likely your mobile phone, and keeping track of its distance. If you move away from your computer and the distance is above a certain level (no measurement in meters is possible) for a given time, it automatically locks your desktop (or starts any other shell command you want).

Once away your computer awaits its master back - if you are nearer than a given level for a set time your computer unlocks magically without any interaction (or starts any other shell command you want).

http://blueproximity.sourceforge.net/

Windows applications will trigger a "do you want to allow this program through the firewall" prompt, easing setup. I haven't seen that on Linux.

The functionality exists..

TuxGuardian

Linux-firewall.org

What would be the devices "primary" use?
I find it hard to believe you could just create a device solely for this purpose and not run into some kind of legal trouble whether you're including the key or not.

/. is so America-centric. Just make it in a nation where they dont care about trivialities like the DCMA. Not like Intel is going to shut it's factories there.

Besides, who said it had to be a physical device, run everything through a hypervisor, if done right there is no need for the signal to ever hit a physical decoding device. Even if it is a physical device just make the entire ROM flashable and claim it's for upgrade purposes. This is not uncommon, there is already a community dedicated to hacking Samsung TV's where the entire ROM is flashable for upgrading purposes.

Why not just use .NET with PostgreSQL? You can put whatever you want on the back end.

Or you could use Once:Radix or Servoy, both of which integrate with PostgreSQL.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/onceradix/
http://www.servoy.com/