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"Also, saying "You're being a dick" is not namecalling. It's a slightly ruder way of saying "you're being obnoxious", which is not even a personal insult. This, however, is: If you got out more, you might realize that people say "Don't be a dick" to each other often enough, without taking it personally." - by SanityInAnarchy (655584) on Wednesday June 02, @12:43PM (#32433552)

Oh, really? I felt you were calling me a "penis" basically (lmao)... but, what about your also calling me a "MORON" here ->

"Now you're just a moron." - by SanityInAnarchy (655584) on Tuesday June 01, @08:51PM (#32426264)

I don't think you're going to be able to successfully "double-talk" your way out of that!

---

"Put another way: If you and I met face to face, and you started insulting my clothes, laughing here and there for good measure, I wouldn't want to hang around you. You might insist that I know it's true, and that I should listen to you, you're a fashion designer, whatever, but if you start off with "That shirt looks like dog shit," I wouldn't be inclined to listen, and I would be inclined to tell people you're a dick." - by SanityInAnarchy (655584) ninja@slaphack.com> on Wednesday June 02, @12:43PM (#32433552)

Well, then you had best "thicken your skin", because sometimes? Folks have opinions (which are weak compared to verifiable facts is all). Heck, I am currently helping the folks over @ the "Open Sores"! Well, guess what?? See what I just wrote... I help guys on projects of that very nature in fact, see here:

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

and, more below... AND, over time? On many other freeware apps too when I had time to do so!

(So, yes, I may call it that, in "Open Sores" but it's NOT necessarily a "put down" on my part either... just facts that IF you have sourcecode, it's FAR easier to spot bugs in than attempting to do so via fuzzers or debuggers on closed source... but doesn't mean I don't LIKE "Open Sores", either)

UltraDefrag 64's a great opensource project is why! The FIRST 64 bit defragger for Windows NT-based OS is pretty cool imo!

(So - I helped by first (minor here) sending them a better icon, which he said "looks like SHIT" even though others liked it on the forums there (a moderator iirc)... As you can see there? Well - I didn't mind it. I can take it, as it's opinion only!)

I did that part on appearances, because many of their users don't like the interface Dmitri uses (I don't mind it @ all, it's on par with others like it in fact), but the icon did need help imo to HELP WITH THAT FORM OF CRITIQUE THE OTEHRS THERE GAVE HIM!

Now, I also am in process helping them improve defrag times hopefully, via offering the dev the ability to alter his CPU timeslice priority control API's, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultradefrag/forums/forum/709672/topic/3690136 and some tips/pointers on when you can't "get more" out of your code? You go after HOW YOU PROCESS DATA http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultradefrag/forums/forum/709672/topic/3369133 (I ran into this many times over the past 20++ yrs. now coding here is why, & it tends to get GIANT gains, by working algorithms, rather than being obsessed with code optimizations).

That? That is more "major" form of aid imo @ least (his driver does most of the work, but this can help, some (I've seen it give code I have written a 15%++ gain in completion times before, but there are BETTER ways to do that, & I also offer him that as well in another thread there -> ).

You know, you "busted my balls" for using the term "Open Sores", but they CAN be that, per the ssc

Gnash is, well, pretty crappy. It's slow as heck, doesn't sync audio properly (mostly because it tends to render way too slowly and doesn't know how to frameskip right), and can't handle most nontrivial Flash content. It appears they've ditched the OpenGL backend (which is poor anyway), and the AGG backend is uselessly slow at nontrivial output sizes. I've had better luck with the two years abandoned swfdec than with Gnash. It really ought to be a lot better by now.

I've seen people create weird Flash-player-ish things in a few days or weeks that seem to do lots of things better than Gnash. To me it sounds like the Gnash devs just don't really know what they're doing. Personally, I'm hoping that lightspark will finally become THE decent open-source Flash player.

Will this feed through to things like AVR-GCC for Atmel AVR 8-bit microcontrollers?
I wonder what changes in performance we would see.

http://winavr.sourceforge.net/

What about something like Robocode, that requires programming to compete in the game?

http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

this is just not true.All your needs as a typical windows user are cared for in Linux

http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

Write Java or .NET code to destroy other bots! I haven't played/coded-for this game in several years, but I know somebody with the exact same problem as the Ask Slashdot poster... And the game is genuinely a LOT of fun, as there are lots of other bots freely-available to compete-against, some of which are pretty sophisticated (implement statistical targeting, a genetic algorithm, etc.).

See also IBM's introduction to it way back in 2002 -- which was around the same time a previous Slashdot article pointed me towards the game: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-robocode/

If what you want is to embed tex in html, you can do it: http://asciimathml.sourceforge.net/ But that doesn't do anything about solving the font problem. You need the fonts, otherwise it can't be rendered. Knuth's Computer Modern fonts were an impressive achievement, but they date back to 1992, and the technology they're built on is obsolete and doesn't fit well with the modern operating systems, or with modern encodings such as unicode. Knuth invented scalable fonts before Adobe reimplemented and commercialized them.

Download & setup Privoxy.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/files/
http://www.privoxy.org/user-manual/quickstart.html

Grab a decent HOSTS file & stick it in your %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\

Alternatively, you can install Spybot & let it's Immunize function generate a HOSTS file for you.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linumes/

Instead of making a retro-remake try a retro-re imagined. Here are a few ideas off the top of my head:

* Instead of falling bricks - floating balloons - random spikes at the top and you need to try to position them in such a way to not pop. Points for largest structures.
* How about a 1st person perspective version?
* How about a GTA perspective version set in a decrepit city with falling stuff from crumbling buildings.

http://goldchest.sourceforge.net/
----
Goldbox re imagined.
 

APNG (.png) supports animation in any non-IE web browser.

APNG was also voted down as a standard - MNG is the official way to do animation but no one supports it.

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=3.0.6.32.20070420132821.012dd8e8%40mail.comcast.net

A properly optimized PNG file will often be half the size of a gif, and supports 24bit colour too...

Part of the problem with PNG is that a lot of applications will generate 24bit PNGs for images that would be smaller if they used a palette.

In both cases PNG's official feature set often works against it.

Sort of like this?

I still use it with SecureCRT and Le PuTTY (wished it was updated again and better since it is just a hack) in Windows. SyncTERM has it too, but crappy.

Because it is basic game theory? You want the little hamster to continue running around the little wheel you give him a cookie to work for. If he gets little nibbles of the cookie he'll work HARDER trying to get more cookie, thus giving you more work. Hell nobody is saying they have to give them the actual recorded data in real time, just throw the monkey a reward for pushing the button. Maybe something that ONLY shows how you are doing? Surely that would discourage the cranks while giving the hamster a reason to keep running the wheel.

For those that would like to do a little amateur astronomy themselves, or just haven't heard about it and would like to try some really cool FOSS, give Stellarium a go. The amount of detail it gives is just insane, with my retired NASA engineer neighbor actually able to plan his viewings of Jupiter's moons by running Stellarium simulations beforehand to allow him to find the best times for viewing in our area. It works on Linux, OSX and Windows, is free, and will actually run decently on 5 year old laptops. I'll have to see if the Stellarium guys would like a copy of his latest project, which is using Stellarium to give a visual representation of the objects he is doing spectral analysis of. Stellarium really gives a great presentation and helps the non astronomers to understand what the college astronomy club is doing and the college kids really love it.

If any of the Stellarium guys read this, great work guys. Your software really is top notch and professional. Oh and he is giving full credit to Stellarium for the visuals, as well as making sure the website is printed on all material. He also made a really nice set of graphic art CD covers for Stellarium, which I'll have to find a place to upload.

I find the field really exciting right now. I've built a hexapod driven by open source code and I hope to develop it into either a rapid prototyper or a 6-axis CNC (depending on how stable I can get it)

More info here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpIoI0G7CE , here: http://visual-hexapod.sourceforge.net/ , and here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/SPIDEE-1/113425788691280?v=wall

I'd love some help improving the design & firmware. With the low entry cost for arduino and sensors, the biggest expense is servos. There's no reason you can't build your own 3-axis miller for

But can your PSP play N64 games?

Uh, yes? I'm sure it's slow, but there you go.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/daedalus-n64/ [sourceforge.net]

...

This doesn't even deserve a response. I'm talking about a playable framerate. Not 5fps.

Yes again, PSP have been able to get online via WiFi from day one.

Browsing the web wouldn't be fun with such a horribly low resolution.

or use 3G sticks

Don't you already own a cell phone?

How is this a response? Most cellphones can't tether, so how does that help?

Does your PSP have awesome controls

I don't think they are too bad.

Then you've never tried a Pandora.

a great screen

4.3" is the same size as the Pandora, albeit @ 1/2 rez.

PSP screens used to have HORRIBLE ghosting, and an awful colour gamut. It's still bad, and the resolution is low, but it is better than before.

You can't argue this one. The Pandora's screen is far superior to the PSP's, in every way. (including power consumption, excluding price)

No, but it does have a 10 hour battery life. And the batteries are cheap.
http://www.circuitcentral.com.au/sony-psp-high-capacity-battery-3650mah-aftermarket.html [circuitcentral.com.au]

Pandora batteries cost half as much. Mine was $19.99 shipped, 4250mah.

These batteries get 14-16 hours in real-world tests with WiFi off - so it's not like a netbook where "14 hours" actually only gives 6 if you're running the CPU 100%. This is an actual 14-16 hours. I assume those batteries you linked do indeed give the PSP 10 hours of actual play time?... if you don't mind paying twice as much, each.

Does it run hackable linux, with off-the-shelf compatibility with your favourite tools?

Uh, yes again.

That would be a "No". Thanks for the link though.

Let me make this clear - the Pandora will almost be suitable as a desktop replacement. (form factor ignored) At launch it'll run software like OpenOffice, Firefox, Chromium, etc. - you could load it up with pen testing tools, use VNC/SSH... basically, you've got a fully featured desktop environment preinstalled on it, ready for linux apps to be loaded.

If you want enough of them, its value shoots up far above other handhelds.

Yes & right now there is a $200 difference. No where near enough value for the cost compared to a cracked PSP Slim if all you want to do with it is play games.

If all you want to do is play $50 commercial games, buy a PSP or NDS or some other big-name console and play it. This is a device for developers first, users second. Not the other way around.

I think you've just proven you're a user.

But can your PSP play N64 games?

Uh, yes? I'm sure it's slow, but there you go.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/daedalus-n64/

Can it browse the web

Yes again, PSP have been able to get online via WiFi from day one.

or use 3G sticks

Don't you already own a cell phone?

Does your PSP have awesome controls

I don't think they are too bad.

a great screen

4.3" is the same size as the Pandora, albeit @ 1/2 rez.

a 14 hour battery life?

No, but it does have a 10 hour battery life. And the batteries are cheap.
http://www.circuitcentral.com.au/sony-psp-high-capacity-battery-3650mah-aftermarket.html

Does it run hackable linux, with off-the-shelf compatibility with your favourite tools?

Uh, yes again.
http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/PSP

There's many features that make a Pandora desirable.

Did you miss the part where I said I wanted it to succeed?

If you want enough of them, its value shoots up far above other handhelds.

Yes & right now there is a $200 difference. No where near enough value for the cost compared to a cracked PSP Slim if all you want to do with it is play games.

Private trackers often use whitelists for allowed torrent clients.

Utorrent is always on the list and instantly updated when a new version comes out. Linux and Mac clients like Transmission, not so much.

perhaps you should check out qBittorent

# Torrent spoofing to bypass private trackers whitelisting

as for updates, all my software (not just qBittorrent) gets updated when there is a new release via APT.

http://www.morphos-team.net/ http://aros.sourceforge.net/ http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz/ Some light reading. Of course I am not suggesting that they are leading the pack anymore, but they are not dead. I'm also not going to beat the drum of monopolistic business practice that was the true hallmark of MS success, as we all know this to be the case.

I have been through a similar project - rewriting a solution that did run under OpenVMS using Basic, Java, C++, C and a bunch of DCL scripts (that confusingly enough for DOS persons have the file extension .COM)

Target environment was Linux and language used was Java 1.6.

My experience when rewriting a legacy system that have a crapload of varying solutions that has evolved during 25 years or so you will find that there is always yet another functionality that nobody told you about - effectively doubling the development time. (This "Multiply estimated time by PI factor" statement isn't that far off.)

And there were some traps involved too - migration of the system had to be seamless for the users as much as possible and with minimal downtime. Since there were over 400 different customers with everything from 1 to 1000 users each involved this was to say the least "tricky". Especially since this was a 24x7 system. The solution was to write a replication protocol that replicated data between the old system and the new. The old system used OpenVMS indexed files while the new system runs a MySQL database and the data structures were different too, which made it necessary to write a replication solution. So when a customer was migrated it was effectively done by setting a flag that redirected them from the old system to the new system and they could continue working.

Of course there were bugs in the beginning, and user errors since the new system did have different functionality and behavior compared to the old. Bot none of them were causing any irrecoverable problems. Invoice printing was delayed, but no major amount of money was lost. The majority of the problems appearing didn't affect the end users at the customers, only the helpdesk service personnel and they were prepared for limitations ahead of time.

The amount of downtime for the system during the two years it has been operational has been very low. And this has given a different concern - too few "problems" with a system is also a problem because tech support will almost forget that it exists.

Specific problems with the application - especially in the beginning has been running out of PermGen space in Java. This at least partly due to design mistakes. But memory leaks that grows over time are very low. And the use of FindBugs has been very useful to trap a lot of errors (potential and real).

What the application does? - It's a management application for short-term lease of telephony at hospitals and similar (almost 400) and other services (a few) which enables and disables phone extensions, assigns numbers, allows instant move of an extension and provides invoicing for the rental and phone usage through processing of CDR:s.

the third option is to make Portable Executables (aka windows executables) native to linux. WINE doesnt make PEs native, it runs them in userland.

so the solution is to make a binary format loader for the linux kernel and shared libraries so that it runs like the real deal.

there's a new project doing this too: binfmt_pe

The Wild Fox maintainer seems to think so.

Maintainer? That implies something is being maintained. The Wild Fox project hasn't produced any releases yet. Given the release of WebM and YouTube providing WebM content, I don't think there's going to be all that much call for Wild Fox going forward.

The Republic of Korea has information processing patents?

The Wild Fox maintainer seems to think so.

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/South_Korea

It's already there. AIPLA: South Korea states that information-processing apparatus claims such as "a computer system that does task X by performing steps A, B, and C" are valid. In the case of a video codec patent, X is "prepare video for transmission through a digital channel" for an encoder or "receive video transmitted through a digital channel" for a decoder, and A, B, and C describe a block diagram of the codec.

As one of the developers of freedroidRPG, I'm getting a kick out of this.

It's not exactly a perfect nor complete solution, but this has sure made win7 a lot more bearable for me.

Star Control 2 was amazing - it could to speech & digitized music on the PC speaker without soundcards! For those who haven't played it, it's been open-sourced and you can download it here complete with new remixed soundtracks.

PS: If you want a good message-board system, try BeeHive ( http://beehiveforum.sourceforge.net/ )

No, it's not the same as Google Wave, but the threaded conversations are quite good.

Heh... Try again.

Setting up a (small) Usenet server is as simple as grabbing something like Leafnode on a server and point it to your upstream peer.

Creating new newsgroups...well, there's an art to it. But there IS a HOWTO:

How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup

In short...this was just from googling a smidge. There's quite a bit more info than just these two links.

• A gas is a compressible fluid.

  But it cannot be treated as such when the density gets too low. You couldn't treat the edge of the atmosphere as a fluid. I don't care what it is when I use a CFD, only what it behaves like.

  • The most general solvers are the most handicapped. Even the ridiculously costly commercial solvers (Ansys, Fluent, etc.) solve a limited number of problems. I was working on a project that attempted to numerically simulate the effect of electromagnetic waves on the brain. Obviously, you need to solve the Maxwell's equations in horrible medium that is your brain. That's when I realized how woefully indadequate the commercial solvers (that claim to simulate the problem) are.

  My brain's a medium? I thought I heard some dead people in there. :)

  Seriously, I entirely agree. I don't for a moment pretend that I'm anything like up enough on PDEs or high-end maths problems (it's been a while) to identify the best packages either. The best I can do is say such software exists. I'll list here the packages I list and use - not just for PDEs but for maths and logic problems as a whole. I'll leave it to you and others skilled in the subject to pass judgement on their quality.

  • ATLAS - A nice, optimized BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra System) implementation
  • HOL4 - Higher Order Logic proof assistant
  • Hypre - Preconditioner for linear equation solvers
  • LAPack - Linear Algebra Package that runs over BLAS
  • ScaLAPack - Subset of LAPack optimized for highly parallel computers
  • Overture - A PDE solver
  • PHAML - A PDE solver for 2D elliptic partial differential equations
  • SUNDIALS - An expansive (and rather nice) PDE solver
  • VSIPL++ - Nice little signal processing library

• A gas is a compressible fluid.

  But it cannot be treated as such when the density gets too low. You couldn't treat the edge of the atmosphere as a fluid. I don't care what it is when I use a CFD, only what it behaves like.

  • The most general solvers are the most handicapped. Even the ridiculously costly commercial solvers (Ansys, Fluent, etc.) solve a limited number of problems. I was working on a project that attempted to numerically simulate the effect of electromagnetic waves on the brain. Obviously, you need to solve the Maxwell's equations in horrible medium that is your brain. That's when I realized how woefully indadequate the commercial solvers (that claim to simulate the problem) are.

  My brain's a medium? I thought I heard some dead people in there. :)

  Seriously, I entirely agree. I don't for a moment pretend that I'm anything like up enough on PDEs or high-end maths problems (it's been a while) to identify the best packages either. The best I can do is say such software exists. I'll list here the packages I list and use - not just for PDEs but for maths and logic problems as a whole. I'll leave it to you and others skilled in the subject to pass judgement on their quality.

  • ATLAS - A nice, optimized BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra System) implementation
  • HOL4 - Higher Order Logic proof assistant
  • Hypre - Preconditioner for linear equation solvers
  • LAPack - Linear Algebra Package that runs over BLAS
  • ScaLAPack - Subset of LAPack optimized for highly parallel computers
  • Overture - A PDE solver
  • PHAML - A PDE solver for 2D elliptic partial differential equations
  • SUNDIALS - An expansive (and rather nice) PDE solver
  • VSIPL++ - Nice little signal processing library

You can use Gnuplot to chart data such as signal strength or error rates by location. For example, if you time sync GPS data and your statistics you can emit surface and contour maps (such as the second glass.dat example near the bottom).

The GP neglected to mention which bluetooth device he bought and for how much. This is a price gouging hole because of the lack of options in the market. I found that the OBDkey you linked to costs $160 for the bluetooth, and $350 for the WiFi version.

I had discovered this $50 alternative when I had been looking, but don't know if it will work as well as the more expensive ones. ~$50 is surely a much more decent and reasonable price though.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.16921

You can read the reviews which are ok, and it even works with the open source scantool.net software, ScanXL, Scanmaster, etc. So it can't be all that bad.Several Free OBD2 software tools are listed on this page:
http://www.webpg.net/sc/pages.asp?pageid=60
More open source ones here:
http://www.geekmyride.org/wiki/index.php/Open_Source_OBD_software

I also noticed a similar one on ebay which is more like $25. Again, no idea how good these actually are.

I have also read that bluetooth may not support sufficient bandwidth for realtime monitoring of modern ECUs with a large number of sensors, data etc. Wifi is better, but I haven't found anything actually affordable.

My own goal was a laptop-less self contained logging device that can be handed to my friends to simply plug in and go. That would allow me to log sensor data and analyse it later to diagnose intermittent issues that we cannot reproduce on demand. I didn't quite succeed in this. The most obvious option is the "Carchip", which turns out to be pretty lame. It can only record about 10 or so parameters and that only at 5 sec intervals. Many intermittent issues only last a few seconds so this would be useless for diagnostics. Its more a fleet management solution.

There aren't many other affordable datalogging devices. I finally bought the very expensive Auterra dashdyno, which turned out to be a huge disappointment also. It can log several times a second but is also limited to 16 pids. This wouldn't be such a problem if the user interface was not an absolute horror to use. I will leave that review for another post. This precludes it being used as a plug and go tool. It is for geeks only and needs babysitting.

I guess the next best idea is that I will buy that bluetooth device next and see if any data logging software is available. Also need to upgrade my phone to Android I guess. At least a laptop is not required, but still not the plug-and-log that I want :/

Sourceforge, perhaps?

Indeed. I don't understand why people keep giving them money. Give your money to a project that has actually been started (and actually close to being finished), like appleseed - http://appleseed.sourceforge.net/ .

I realize that this article isn't really about diaspora itself, but I feel it's an obligation to point out that there are other, more promising and further along (nearly finished), projects out there, such as Appleseed, that have the same goal, and aren't being run by people with almost no experience.

forgot the links:

  freediag - Open Source for Linux

  OBD-Diag - Not open source but free

  Easy OBDII - Not open source but free (I use this most often for basic diagnostics)

You might also want to check out the MP3Car forums as they're very knowledgeable on this subject over there, and there are also several source available projects being developed there as well.

Couple more links:

car how to videos
DIY chip equipment, emulators, etc.

For those of you who have a reason to avoid torrents. Shareaza is an excellent (clean and superior) alternative. ( http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/ ). It supports eDonkey2000, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and handles bitTorrent acceptably. It is free software (GPL).

windows only (kinda works on wine)

forgot the links:
freediag - Open Source for Linux
OBD-Diag - Not open source but free
Easy OBDII - Not open source but free (I use this most often for basic diagnostics)

You might also want to check out the MP3Car forums as they're very knowledgeable on this subject over there, and there are also several source available projects being developed there as well.

Try pyobd2 instead. It was typoed in the GP post.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyobd2/

Some of top comments thus far seem to be saying "Oh noes if you touch their special stuff your carz will splode!" Well, that's not true...

Vehicle manufacturers have been required in most places for quite some time to provide OBD standards-compliant diagnostic info. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Board_Diagnostics#Standard_interfaces for some info on the OBD standards...

OK, so that sounds good. But then you have the first snag... the communications protocol.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Board_Diagnostics#OBD-II_Signal_Protocols

So there are a number of "standards" that could be used, depending on what your manufacturer chooses. You need an interface that will work with the standard for your vehicle. You can google your vehicle make and "OBD protocol" and probably find it. Some use (or have used) multiples, though. VW, for example, historically support ISO 9141, but some vehicles supported ISO14230, and most now have completely transitioned to ISO 15765. Depending on your interface it may work with all those protocols, some of them, or none of them.

OK, but you know your protocol and you want an interface. OK, good, there are a number of open source diagnostics suites that work to varying degrees. Your question leads me to believe that you never even bothered googling for an answer, but anyway, take as examples:
http://www.opendiag.org/ (dead in the water??)
http://freediag.sourceforge.net/
http://www.obdtester.com/pyobd

The first 2 of those links include links to hardware info where you can build an interface yourself.

Also, some commercial software will work with those interfaces, and some (such as older versions of VAG-COM) will support some basic OBD functionality without paying anything.

But wait, what do I mean basic OBD functionality? Isn't OBD the end-all be-all of diagnostic tools? No, they're actually largely POS's with anything remotely modern. The reason for this is fairly simple - vehicle manufacturers for a long time have only had to implement basic OBD functionality, like reading/clearing codes, and even which codes are implemented (or what they mean) has been largely left to them to decide. So guess what? Most chose to basically give you no info, or misleading info, so that any real problem required a trip to the dealer for them to see the "real" codes which are much more specific and helpful.

As an example, there's a popular interfaces for VW's called vag-com. It emulates VW official diagnostics tools such as VAG1551/1552, etc., which (now that they've been forced to make available) sell for a small fortune. The protocol has been reverse engineered, and in fact the data for the various functions of the scan tool is constantly being updated as new things are discovered. The difference between an interface like this and a generic OBD scan tool is like the difference between an abacus and your computer. I'll leave it to you to look at ross-tech's site to see some examples of what it can do beyond the "generic OBD" functions it also supports.

It's similar with Toyota. Generic scan tools exist, along with some with "modules" that can emulate some of the special functionality of Toyota's mastertech, but to truly be able to do what Toyota can you need to build/buy a (compatible) J2534 interface and use Toyota's techstream.

And yes, I've built interfaces, and bought interfaces, for all sorts of vehicles, including generic units. After learning from my mistakes I only buy interfaces that will emulate the manufacturer's hardware. Of course this means that if I have 3 makes that I need to work on I need 3 separate scantools. It adds up.

If you want the best bang for your buck you can get some pretty good

http://freediag.sourceforge.net/

You can always get a cheap OBDII interface from somewhere like Multiplex-Engineering and write your own. Or Scantool.net... or any other number of sub-$100 sources. Even Alex's tools at OBD-2.com are good enough. No need to reinvent the wheel though.

Once you start talking about hacking in to your PCM and changing things though, that's a whole other can of worms. People hold the keys to the kingdom on those VERY tightly.

Uuum, the player uses the standart OS facitilies anyway. On Linux e.g. ffmpeg or xine. On Windows DirectShow. On Mac CoreVideo.
I always said that, and I’ll say it again: Just bind to ffmpeg.
Then you don’t only get one codec, but ALL. Plus lots and lost of processing functionality. And if you do it right, you can make it optional, and offer the lib separately. In all distributions of Linux, a simple (optional) dependency on ffmpeg would be enough. Which would make the whole “problem” dissolve into thin air.
Yes, that’s right: The original Firefox team could do that, and be out of “trouble”.

I told ya: If there are two things that seem to be an either/or choice... I choose both. No compromises*! :)

(* WARNING: Requires brain power. ;)

I'm one of a number of people working on software for mutual credit systems (LETS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_Systems ) and alternative money and local currency systems, especially within the context of transition towns: http://www.transitiontowns.org/

There's a list of software, including mine, Cclite: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cclite/, at the end of the wikipedia article.

The end point of this is to take back both banking and control of currency into a more responsible and democratic sphere. This will probably only be partially achieved but will give a healthier mix of monetary control and resilience than at present. Meanwhile, I'm hoping and working towards a stage where some of this can be used for, at the least, running Credit Unions. There is a lot of Credit Union software [at least inthe UK] but all of it is closed-source, expensive and tends to be Microsoft-oriented.

I marked this related because it isn't an answer to the OP, but it's an important related and more radical part of the subject.

Actually they probably could afford it if they had looked at a SATA MAID (massive array of idle disks). Copan will build you a box for around a hundred thousand that holds 896TB in a rack while using minimal power by spinning down most of the disks.

whoop de doo. So far hd-idle has worked on everything I've tried it on. That includes WD external disks.

If only amiga was able to make their OS more wide-spread and accepted... Sigh.

Yeap, the Amiga marketing was shitty. When Gateway bought the Amiga from Escom I was hoping they'd revive the Amiga but it looks like all they did was waste money. There is AROS but I don't know how that's going.

Falcon

If you have anything to contribute (and aren't too lazy to do so), consider joining the openDarkEngine team. They're working on a reimplementation of the Dark Engine, which is used in the Thief games and System Shock 2. Unfortunately, progress is slow.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with OPDE, merely interested and too lazy to contribute.

On a note - whoever classed parent as "Troll" must be the real troll.

Anyway - for some reason we have been living through an era of too many years where accountability for defects in a product never have been applied to software, only on most other products around us.

Today there are tools available for ensuring code quality (functional quality, not cosmetic quality) - like FindBugs, so there is no excuse except the weak excuse of pressed time schedules, which often is caused by improper time management in the administration.

Of course - there are no tools available to understand the business model of a customer to be able to create a workflow in a software solution to suit that customer. That takes time and requires a study of work process. But that doesn't mean that it can't be done in a different way in a new software since it leaves room for improvement.

Of course - there will always be bugs and quirks, the important thing is to make sure that the bugs and quirks aren't fatal for the operation. Flexibility of an application also allows the users to handle the application in an unexpected manner which can cause problems. However a too strict application will cause more trouble.

Testing is important, but it's important to realize that unit testing can be a problem as well as a help. A minor software change can cause a cascade failure of the tests cases written causing a minor change of the core code to be a major overhaul of the test cases. This may of course be caused by bad overall design, or bad test case design. At some time in the lifecycle of a solution it's time to raise the level from the individual modules to the system as a whole. Module testing can in no way save an application from troubles caused by a bad overall design.

System verification is always late in a project, and since time is running short at the end of a project that phase is often pressed through in a hurry leaving design mistakes big as grand canyon open for the future. Performance testing is also something that is left to be resolved later. Of course - you can't fix all performance issues during development and system verification - just give it the best shot. It takes a lot of experience to design a system that scales well - however sometimes it contains some bottlenecks. The skill is to identify and hide the bottlenecks in the best possible way, usually by doing background processing unless a redesign can resolve the performance problem. However some performance problems are hard to resolve and others are expensive in the cost of man-hours and application complexity. An example would be a statistics module executed quarterly in an organization. That usually uses a predefined set of rules and is ideal for background execution.

An example of a bad solution when it comes to user experience is the fact that in Windows when you have mounted drive on a remote server over a slow connection it can slow down some operations incredibly since the computer "needs" to address and get a response from that drive before it permits you to continue a simple operation like a "Save As..." even though you didn't have that drive in mind.

http://retromessenger.sourceforge.net/ - serverless IM (finds IP of friends via DHT; apparently also has "push message to all friends" functionality, close enough to some social services)
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ - in the spirit of the above, but more of a "service" at this point - Chat & Filetransfer, searching friends, messages, Forums...encrypted, DHT
http://tstone.sourceforge.net/ - apparently strives to be a serverless VoIP cooperating with one of the above (generally they seem to be related to a large degree)

All appear roughly usable; I have to check them one time...if some buddies of mine will be willing to play at the same time. Oh, we get to the most important point - are the above actually in much use? Have you even heard about them? Yeah, exactly...

PS. If you have something against publishing some of your personal info on FB...just don't give it to them.

http://retromessenger.sourceforge.net/ - serverless IM (finds IP of friends via DHT; apparently also has "push message to all friends" functionality, close enough to some social services)
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ - in the spirit of the above, but more of a "service" at this point - Chat & Filetransfer, searching friends, messages, Forums...encrypted, DHT
http://tstone.sourceforge.net/ - apparently strives to be a serverless VoIP cooperating with one of the above (generally they seem to be related to a large degree)

All appear roughly usable; I have to check them one time...if some buddies of mine will be willing to play at the same time. Oh, we get to the most important point - are the above actually in much use? Have you even heard about them? Yeah, exactly...

PS. If you have something against publishing some of your personal info on FB...just don't give it to them.

http://retromessenger.sourceforge.net/ - serverless IM (finds IP of friends via DHT; apparently also has "push message to all friends" functionality, close enough to some social services)
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ - in the spirit of the above, but more of a "service" at this point - Chat & Filetransfer, searching friends, messages, Forums...encrypted, DHT
http://tstone.sourceforge.net/ - apparently strives to be a serverless VoIP cooperating with one of the above (generally they seem to be related to a large degree)

All appear roughly usable; I have to check them one time...if some buddies of mine will be willing to play at the same time. Oh, we get to the most important point - are the above actually in much use? Have you even heard about them? Yeah, exactly...

PS. If you have something against publishing some of your personal info on FB...just don't give it to them.