Slashdot Mirror

Node and Edge asks: "Many interesting problem domains involve some form of graph-based or graph-like information: network activity visualizations; social software; workflow management; P2P software development; and version control with branching, just to name a few. It is notoriously difficult for people to visualize a graph structure - unless it happens to be a strictly hierarchical tree-like structure, such as what we know from file-system explorers. Now, with all of that said, what graph libraries can you recommend? The following criteria apply, though they're not absolute: Java or Java bindings; simple to use for simple applications; and polished, extensible UI components. I'm familiar with JGraph, JUNG, Prefuse, OpenJGraph, Tigris GEF, Eclipse GEF, Graphviz, but have not had a chance to evaluate them all. Have you used any of these extensively? If so, can you provide any constructive advice? If not, can you recommend something else, ?"

malcomvetter asks: "I need a command line FTP client that supports 'Implicit SSL', sports some kind of scripting interface, and runs on Win32. Any suggestions? So far, I have only found GUI versions such as FileZilla." I remember once needing a scripting FTP client long ago. It took me a long time, but I finally found one that had a workable but unintuitive interface. Have scripting FTP clients become more prevalent or is your best bet using something flexible with network bindings (like Python or Perl) to get the job done?

planetjay writes "Plextor PVRs now support Linux with an open source SDK for their ConvertX PVR external USB TV tuner/encoder This is great news for Linux PVR users who want to use an external device with hardware based MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/DivX encoding in their MythTV or Freevo homebuilt PVR. "Plextor is strongly committed to supporting the Open Source Software movement with free development tools that help speed the creation of next-generation Linux-based video software," said Dirk Peters, director of marketing, Plextor."

flyboy writes "In a similar vein to the remakes of the Origin's Ultima series games reported in 2001 and 2004 a group of Wing Commander fans has remade Wing Commander: Privateer. Unlike the Ultima remakes, the Privateer remake is finished at version 1.0 with 3d graphics and the whole storyline. For the new kids on the block, WC:Privateer was a much loved trading game similar to the more venerable Elite, which appears also to be in the process of a remake. As a linux fan I was most happy with the remake's use of GPL 3d engine software and release of Linux, Macintosh and Windows versions. See Screenshots here."

Kerbo writes "Kerry Garrison has written up a complete guide to building your own PBX with Asterisk@Home to create your own working PBX system. In the article, he shows how you can build a complete, working system for under $20 (assuming you have some old hardware laying around the house)."

kickabear asks: "I'm working on an independent (that means I'm poor) film. I'm looking for a site (or a book, I'm not picky) which reviews various non-linear video editing packages. I've found a few sites but I can't really find anything that does a side-by-side comparison of the features and capabilities of products such as Premiere Pro or Avid Xpress Pro or the 20 projects listed on Sourceforge. The project will be filmed using a brand new Sony HVRZ1U HDV camera, so if any comparison sites lean toward HDV/HDTV, that would be favorable. Any information, war stories, or advice would be appreciated."

pbrinich writes "Have you ever wondered what information is actually stored on all those cards you have in your wallet? Well, it turns out you can find out yourself! An excellent project, Stripe Snoop started by Billy Hoffman, a Georgia Tech computer science student, contains schematics, source code and a wide variety of information about the standards used to store all sorts of information on your magnetic cards."

pbrinich writes "Have you ever wondered what information is actually stored on all those cards you have in your wallet? Well, it turns out you can find out yourself! An excellent project, Stripe Snoop started by Billy Hoffman, a Georgia Tech computer science student, contains schematics, source code and a wide variety of information about the standards used to store all sorts of information on your magnetic cards."

pbrinich writes "Have you ever wondered what information is actually stored on all those cards you have in your wallet? Well, it turns out you can find out yourself! An excellent project, Stripe Snoop started by Billy Hoffman, a Georgia Tech computer science student, contains schematics, source code and a wide variety of information about the standards used to store all sorts of information on your magnetic cards."

pbrinich writes "Have you ever wondered what information is actually stored on all those cards you have in your wallet? Well, it turns out you can find out yourself! An excellent project, Stripe Snoop started by Billy Hoffman, a Georgia Tech computer science student, contains schematics, source code and a wide variety of information about the standards used to store all sorts of information on your magnetic cards."

Eugenia writes "The Gnome Project announced today that the ClearLooks theme engine will be the default theme for the Gnome 2.12 (to be released around September). This was a much needed refresh of the Gnome default desktop (old theme, new theme screenshots)."

DaffyD writes "Refocusing its vision for AOL Instant Messenger, America Online is endeavoring to revitalize the service by opening up its community and presence to third parties. In addition to partners such as CareerBuilder, AOL is seeking to enlist independent developers to build extended AIM services and hopes to offer a plug-in architecture by the end of the year. ICQ recently added such functionality through its open XML-based Xtras feature. Maybe AOL is feeling the heat from alternatives such as Gaim and Adium."

cfelde writes "On Friday, IBM said it is contributing some 30 open-source projects to SourceForge.net. IBM also said it is expanding its own developerWorks Web site with more resources including training in PHP and other popular technologies." This probably dovetails with IBM's new full on support of the PHP language.

An anonymous reader writes "Jobo AG originally fielded its $550 Giga Vu Pro as a tool for digital photography buffs, but this small embedded computer, running a Linux 2.4 kernel, has much broader potential, according to an article at LinuxDevices.com. A free software development kit for the device is now available at sourceforge.net, along with instructions for loading software into flash memory, a tutorial on turning the device into a Doom game console, and a contributions page for those willing to share their new apps."

Shipud writes "The sixth Bioinformatics Open Source Conference will take place this June in Detroit, MI. Open source licensed software has proven to be the most popular and useful for bioinformatics research. This includes the EMBOSS suite for sequence analysis, the Biopython; Bioperl, and Biojava collaborativelty constructed toolboxes; the ubiquitous RasMol and PyMol molecular visualization tools, and more, much more. Here is one opinion as to why open source and collaborative development have been such a raging success even at big pharma, despite the apparent IP hurdles."

Shipud writes "The sixth Bioinformatics Open Source Conference will take place this June in Detroit, MI. Open source licensed software has proven to be the most popular and useful for bioinformatics research. This includes the EMBOSS suite for sequence analysis, the Biopython; Bioperl, and Biojava collaborativelty constructed toolboxes; the ubiquitous RasMol and PyMol molecular visualization tools, and more, much more. Here is one opinion as to why open source and collaborative development have been such a raging success even at big pharma, despite the apparent IP hurdles."

Dave Zatz writes "Tivo, struggling to keep customers and inch towards profitability as execs step down, has continued to shift focus from pure PVR functionality towards digital convergence. Tivo's recently released Home Media Engine SDK extends Tivo's capabilities as developers churn early Java apps out, including the eBay-developed BuyItNow and the independent Airport Express AirTunes remote control. The recently released Tivo To Go allows PC users to transfer shows to their computers for viewing, editing, and burning shows. Mac users aren't entirely forgotten - a hidden feature in the OSX Tivo Desktop 1.9 provides AAC music playback through the television."

mrivorey writes "Discover Magazine has a story about The Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan State University. Scientists there have created virus-like computer programs that replicate, mutate randomly, and compete with each other... in other words, they evolve. Among such feats as learning to add and compare numbers, these digital life forms also once avoided scientists attempts at "killing" them, by playing dead. You can download the project yourself from SourceForge." We first mentioned this in early 2003, but it appears to have developed a good deal since then.

sahirh asks: "I work as a penetration tester and recently started writing a whitepaper on the benefits of free, open-source security tools over commercial tools. Through my own experiences, I've found that many free tools such as Nessus and Kismet are more reliable and have better features than expensive commercial alternatives like ISS Internet Scanner or Airopeek. I've also noticed that tools like Ettercap have no commercial alternative. Further, the flexibility offered by the open-source nature of such tools is a great benefit. I'd like to ask for Slashdot's experiences and opinions on why you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on an expensive tool to perform a professional security assessment." Update: 02/07 11:15pm EDT by C : Thanks to all who wrote in to let us know the proper URL to the Kismet site.

nberardi writes "The PPC team has prototyped the first completely graphical LiveCD for the PowerPC platform featuring a 3D multiplayer OpenGL/SDL game called Cube. Designed for the PegasosPPC, a CD variant to run on Macintosh hardware is already in the works. While the 198 MB GameCD is already available for download from the mirrors (in the experimental/ppc/livecd directory), a whole cluster of ODWs running Cube will be part of the presentations in the Gentoo developer room at FOSDEM in Brussels, 26-27 February 2005." Finding this ISO is a bit of a chore; first, go to one of the download mirrors, then follow the experimental/ppc/livecd chain. However, note that until the Macintosh version is ready, only people with Pegasos hardware will benefit.

barryhawkins writes "When sharing with others that I was reviewing an O'Reilly book through their User Group & Professional Association Program, the first question was always the same: 'What book are you reviewing?' After saying the title was Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing, responses ranged from 'What's that?' to 'Well, you won't have any trouble sleeping!' One might think that this list of people included relatives and coworkers who were not attuned to the open source community and its issues. On the contrary, the responses came from those within my circle of acquaintances, which includes software developers, system administrators, and even an intellectual property lawyer. Licensing is not exactly the sort of topic where people slide forward in their seats and ask to be told more. Such is the appeal of software licensing; however, the importance of understanding licensing, particularly within the context of open source development, cannot be overstated." Read on for Hawkins' review. Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing author Andrew M. St. Laurent pages 208 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 reviewer Barry Hawkins ISBN 0596005814 summary A worthwhile introduction to open source licensing

Those familiar with the O'Reilly product offerings have no doubt seen or purchased one or more their Pocket Reference series. These are not comprehensive references, but rather convenient guides for a specific topic to provide the sort of information one is not likely to have committed to memory, particularly as the trend of having cross-disciplined technologists continues. This book could be considered the analog of such pocket guides for open source and free software licensing. Open source licenses and their legal interpretation, though, easily warrant a "pocket reference" that is a full-sized book of nearly 200 pages.

Frankly, reading through a software license and maintaining a reasonable level of comprehension is a rather tough job. The author manages to make the task far more bearable and fruitful at the same time; a difficult balance to strike. The pace of the annotation works well to break up the various licenses (twelve in total) into bite-sized chunks. Chapters 2 and 3, which address the Apache/BSD/MIT family of licenses and the GPL/LGPL/MPL family of licenses respectively, each end with a section titled "Application and Philosophy" that serves as a sort of reward for making it through the license and establishes a touchstone to summarize and provide meaningful context for what has been covered.

The annotations of the different licenses are a great introduction, but the book should not be considered a complete reference for open source licensing issues. The book seems to affirm this at points where the author indicates that particular topics fall outside the book's scope, even to the point of recommending experienced legal counsel for certain issues. It also has a wonderful collection of footnotes and reference to other resources to allow the reader to flesh out topics of interest beyond the focus of this work.

One subtlety of the book that should not be missed is how the history of the open source movement is woven throughout the book to provide the context in which these licenses came into being and were modified to accommodate the vibrant, emerging world of open development models. The book's last two chapters bring that context to the foreground, fully developing the consequence of the licenses in daily development activity. It is far too easy to view these licenses and as mere legal documents that exist in and of themselves; the author reminds us that these licenses are the manifestations of a spirit of selfless contribution and work toward social good made possible by the considerable sacrifice of quite gifted individuals. For those passionate about the open source and free software movements, the section of chapter 7 titled "Models of Open Source and Free Software Development" is a poignant and stirring encapsulation of the first years of the GNU and Linux projects and the work that brought them into being. The cliché rings true; we do indeed "stand on the shoulders of giants."

The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words seemed relatively high; this is a trend that seems to have developed in technical books in recent years, to a point that the technical community has come to accept it as some sort of side effect of the rapid pace with which books must be produced in order to keep pace with the rate of change. Given that this is an issue present in other works as well as this one, it should not particularly count as a mark against the work, but rather serve to underscore an issue publishers should consider improving.

Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing strikes a balance between completeness of subject matter coverage and manageability of size. Given the amount of attention the average open source user or developer has given to licensing, reading this book would be a considerable improvement. This book is recommended for a couple of audiences. First, it serves as a great foundation for developers either active in or contemplating participation in open source development. Searching most any open source mailing list for the term "license" can usually turn up some of its hottest flame wars. If most developers had this introductory level of understanding about the main open source licenses, hundreds of message threads arguing about licensing could be avoided.

A second audience for this book is the project manager and/or CTO in most corporate IT shops. Most corporate projects are making use of numerous open source libraries and frameworks. This is particularly true with J2EE, but also with .Net as a number of .Net counterparts to popular J2EE resources arise, e.g. NAnt, NUnit, etc. This book can dispel unnecessary apprehension regarding the use of these libraries that often arises from fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) propagated in much of the mainstream technology media. It can also equip managers to make informed decisions about team members' potential contributions to open source projects and the potential legal implications.

You can purchase Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing from bn.com. (You might also be interested in Peter Wayner's review of Lawrence Rosen's book on the same topic, Open Source Licensing .) Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

barryhawkins writes "When sharing with others that I was reviewing an O'Reilly book through their User Group & Professional Association Program, the first question was always the same: 'What book are you reviewing?' After saying the title was Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing, responses ranged from 'What's that?' to 'Well, you won't have any trouble sleeping!' One might think that this list of people included relatives and coworkers who were not attuned to the open source community and its issues. On the contrary, the responses came from those within my circle of acquaintances, which includes software developers, system administrators, and even an intellectual property lawyer. Licensing is not exactly the sort of topic where people slide forward in their seats and ask to be told more. Such is the appeal of software licensing; however, the importance of understanding licensing, particularly within the context of open source development, cannot be overstated." Read on for Hawkins' review. Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing author Andrew M. St. Laurent pages 208 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 reviewer Barry Hawkins ISBN 0596005814 summary A worthwhile introduction to open source licensing

Those familiar with the O'Reilly product offerings have no doubt seen or purchased one or more their Pocket Reference series. These are not comprehensive references, but rather convenient guides for a specific topic to provide the sort of information one is not likely to have committed to memory, particularly as the trend of having cross-disciplined technologists continues. This book could be considered the analog of such pocket guides for open source and free software licensing. Open source licenses and their legal interpretation, though, easily warrant a "pocket reference" that is a full-sized book of nearly 200 pages.

Frankly, reading through a software license and maintaining a reasonable level of comprehension is a rather tough job. The author manages to make the task far more bearable and fruitful at the same time; a difficult balance to strike. The pace of the annotation works well to break up the various licenses (twelve in total) into bite-sized chunks. Chapters 2 and 3, which address the Apache/BSD/MIT family of licenses and the GPL/LGPL/MPL family of licenses respectively, each end with a section titled "Application and Philosophy" that serves as a sort of reward for making it through the license and establishes a touchstone to summarize and provide meaningful context for what has been covered.

The annotations of the different licenses are a great introduction, but the book should not be considered a complete reference for open source licensing issues. The book seems to affirm this at points where the author indicates that particular topics fall outside the book's scope, even to the point of recommending experienced legal counsel for certain issues. It also has a wonderful collection of footnotes and reference to other resources to allow the reader to flesh out topics of interest beyond the focus of this work.

One subtlety of the book that should not be missed is how the history of the open source movement is woven throughout the book to provide the context in which these licenses came into being and were modified to accommodate the vibrant, emerging world of open development models. The book's last two chapters bring that context to the foreground, fully developing the consequence of the licenses in daily development activity. It is far too easy to view these licenses and as mere legal documents that exist in and of themselves; the author reminds us that these licenses are the manifestations of a spirit of selfless contribution and work toward social good made possible by the considerable sacrifice of quite gifted individuals. For those passionate about the open source and free software movements, the section of chapter 7 titled "Models of Open Source and Free Software Development" is a poignant and stirring encapsulation of the first years of the GNU and Linux projects and the work that brought them into being. The cliché rings true; we do indeed "stand on the shoulders of giants."

The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words seemed relatively high; this is a trend that seems to have developed in technical books in recent years, to a point that the technical community has come to accept it as some sort of side effect of the rapid pace with which books must be produced in order to keep pace with the rate of change. Given that this is an issue present in other works as well as this one, it should not particularly count as a mark against the work, but rather serve to underscore an issue publishers should consider improving.

Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing strikes a balance between completeness of subject matter coverage and manageability of size. Given the amount of attention the average open source user or developer has given to licensing, reading this book would be a considerable improvement. This book is recommended for a couple of audiences. First, it serves as a great foundation for developers either active in or contemplating participation in open source development. Searching most any open source mailing list for the term "license" can usually turn up some of its hottest flame wars. If most developers had this introductory level of understanding about the main open source licenses, hundreds of message threads arguing about licensing could be avoided.

A second audience for this book is the project manager and/or CTO in most corporate IT shops. Most corporate projects are making use of numerous open source libraries and frameworks. This is particularly true with J2EE, but also with .Net as a number of .Net counterparts to popular J2EE resources arise, e.g. NAnt, NUnit, etc. This book can dispel unnecessary apprehension regarding the use of these libraries that often arises from fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) propagated in much of the mainstream technology media. It can also equip managers to make informed decisions about team members' potential contributions to open source projects and the potential legal implications.

You can purchase Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing from bn.com. (You might also be interested in Peter Wayner's review of Lawrence Rosen's book on the same topic, Open Source Licensing .) Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Paul Roberts asks: "I just started on my new job and I have to develop, in J2EE, a workflow management system (WMS) for the financial department. I'm both new to J2EE and WMS, so I could really use any help that experienced Slashdot readers have to offer. I have been warned of frequent changes in the process flows, due to changes in the law or management vision, and the system should be able to handle these, including any retroactive changes that may need to be made. As a bonus, the system could produce personalized letters, but if that feature isn't available, we can program that ourselves. I've been searching the web to find existing solutions, Sourceforge gave a list of 2 pages of active projects (and many more inactive projects), OpenSymphony has OSWorkflow, JBoss now includes jBPM. Of all those WM systems around, what are your experiences, what are the things I should look out for - both in features that should be present and in pitfalls to be avoided?"

Dr Twox writes "The Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces has received a $2 million dollar boost from a multi-national corporation to further develop Jef Raskin's RCHI project, a radical new and simple to way interact with computers. Co-creator of the Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface, Raskin hopes to have RCHI finished within 18 months. "When you actually try it," says Jef. "It actually does what we say. We've got the goods." It's built with Python and SDL, so how long before someone ports this to *nix?"

A reader writes: "There's been a lot of bits written recently about the growth of Open Source databases; as well as IBM's patent gift, as their release of the Java database Cloudscape. There's a contest running on SourceForge.net around Cloudscape; download and run with it." SF.net is part of OSTG, like Slashdot.

A reader writes: "There's been a lot of bits written recently about the growth of Open Source databases; as well as IBM's patent gift, as their release of the Java database Cloudscape. There's a contest running on SourceForge.net around Cloudscape; download and run with it." SF.net is part of OSTG, like Slashdot.

Fylfot writes "After a long time in development, version 0.9 of the Gecko-based K-Meleon web browser for Windows has been released. K-Meleon is the geekier, more configurable, lighter-weight (XULless), speedier twin of Firefox. When 1.0 comes out, Microsoft may have another reason to worry about Internet Explorer marketshare. Also reported on Chip Online and MozillaZine."

An anonymous reader writes "In the latest posting on the Xen developer list, IBM pledges to make Xen more secure by porting its secure hypervisor (sHype) architecture to it. In their posting, IBM discusses an SELinux like access control frame work, resource control and monitoring and trusted computing support for Xen. It appears that a lot is happening on the Xen front (for example, the announcement of XenSource Inc. and Intel's code drop in the xeno-unstable.bk tree for their super secret VT CPU)."

Fabio writes "The mission of LLGP (Linux Live Game Project) is show to Wintendo users that also Linux can be used to game. And now a new version is out. Features: KDE 3.3 with Plastik theme and Nuvola icons, kernel 2.6.10, Nvidia drivers, TORCS, Wesnoth, SuperTux, TuxRacer and much more! It's based on Knoppix, but contains deep changes in the startup scripts. Now the hardware probing is completely based on hotplug and udev; kudzu was removed. Challenge your friends on LLGP, and convert them to Linux!"

Fabio writes "The mission of LLGP (Linux Live Game Project) is show to Wintendo users that also Linux can be used to game. And now a new version is out. Features: KDE 3.3 with Plastik theme and Nuvola icons, kernel 2.6.10, Nvidia drivers, TORCS, Wesnoth, SuperTux, TuxRacer and much more! It's based on Knoppix, but contains deep changes in the startup scripts. Now the hardware probing is completely based on hotplug and udev; kudzu was removed. Challenge your friends on LLGP, and convert them to Linux!"

comforteagle writes "With KDE 3.4 beta just announced a few days ago spokesman George Staikos has written about the new RSS/RDF/Atom Aggregator included in the new release, aKregator, in his column KDE: From the Source. 'In contrast to a news ticker style of RSS application, you don't need to constantly look at aKregator to see if there is new news. I have found that with news tickers such as the applet in KDE, I was constantly staring at the news feeds as they scrolled by and re-reading the same headlines over and over. With aKregator, I find I never look at old news as headlines that are read are conveniently grayed out and pushed down the list.' This is a much better way to track news in KDE than the somewhat outdated news ticker."

wyldeone asks: "I'm responsible for creating a site for my high schools newspaper, and I'm at a loss for what technology to use. It is small, and there will be about one issue a month. I have looked into some weblogging software like MovableType, and WordPress and they seems too simple, but larger CMS offerings (Campsite and PROPS, for example) seem too complex and powerful for this project. Are there any suggestions from Slashdot readers who run high school or college newspapers?"

victors writes "Creative Commons and WIRED recently went public beta with CC Mixter which is a Commons pool for music samples and remixes. The site creates a tree of remix/sources inline with every entry and has Flikr/del.ciou.us style tagging. The launch includes two remix contests and features samples and cuts put in the Commons by Chuck D., Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Danger Mouse and tons more. The winners end up on Chuck D.'s next CD and a CC promo disk and there's already been some pretty astounding entries. Of course every upload is under a CC license that allows legal sampling including contest entries and the big name source tracks and samples. I took over the coding for the site from Lucas Gonze (of WebJay) who did a proof of concept. We're currently working on making the site source part of the CC Tools open source project. That version will support remixing of any media including images, videos and Flash mods."

UnderScan writes "Eric Ries, writer/programmer/CTO, authored an article 'Kenosis and the World Free Web' at Freshmeat [Owned by Slashdot's Parent OSTG]. Kenosis is described as a 'fully-distributed peer-to-peer RPC system built on top of XMLRPC.' He has combined his Kenosis with BitTorrent & removed the need for a centralized tracker. He states: 'To demonstrate Kenosis's suitability for these new applications, we have used it to improve upon another peer-to-peer filesharing application that Just Works: BitTorrent. BitTorrent does one thing incredibly well. Using a centralized "tracker," BitTorrent manages efficient distribution of data that is in high demand. We have extended BitTorrent, using Kenosis, to eliminate this dependence on a centralized tracker.' See also the Kenosis README for details on using Kenosis-enabled BitTorrent."

UnderScan writes "Eric Ries, writer/programmer/CTO, authored an article 'Kenosis and the World Free Web' at Freshmeat [Owned by Slashdot's Parent OSTG]. Kenosis is described as a 'fully-distributed peer-to-peer RPC system built on top of XMLRPC.' He has combined his Kenosis with BitTorrent & removed the need for a centralized tracker. He states: 'To demonstrate Kenosis's suitability for these new applications, we have used it to improve upon another peer-to-peer filesharing application that Just Works: BitTorrent. BitTorrent does one thing incredibly well. Using a centralized "tracker," BitTorrent manages efficient distribution of data that is in high demand. We have extended BitTorrent, using Kenosis, to eliminate this dependence on a centralized tracker.' See also the Kenosis README for details on using Kenosis-enabled BitTorrent."

brlcad writes "After 20 years of active development under a proprietary government license agreement, the BRL-CAD solid modeling suite has just been released as Open Source software. BRL-CAD is one of the many legacies of the late Michael Muuss, author of ping. The package began on the PDP-11 and VAX 11/780--before the emergence of ANSI/ISO C language standards--and boasts one of the first parallel Ray tracers in existence. Today BRL-CAD has over 750,000 lines of source code. It incorporates both 3D modeling and rendering capabilities, and supports an API for user-developed geometric analysis applications. It continues to be developed and maintained by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and its partners. Various portions of the package are distributed under the GPL, LGPL, GFDL, and BSD licenses."

brlcad writes "After 20 years of active development under a proprietary government license agreement, the BRL-CAD solid modeling suite has just been released as Open Source software. BRL-CAD is one of the many legacies of the late Michael Muuss, author of ping. The package began on the PDP-11 and VAX 11/780--before the emergence of ANSI/ISO C language standards--and boasts one of the first parallel Ray tracers in existence. Today BRL-CAD has over 750,000 lines of source code. It incorporates both 3D modeling and rendering capabilities, and supports an API for user-developed geometric analysis applications. It continues to be developed and maintained by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and its partners. Various portions of the package are distributed under the GPL, LGPL, GFDL, and BSD licenses."

Retalin writes "It looks like RunUO, the largest Ultima Online Emulator around has decided to opensource their project. It's caused quite a stir in their 40,000+ userbase." From the announcement post: "The RunUO team has collectively decided that we will be open sourcing RunUO's core to the public. At this point for the most part, the core is done and the only things remaining are game layer features. We have totally rewritten the networking piece of RunUO and Factions are pretty stable. We have completed a lot of the Ninja additions to UO and are ready to release the core code to the world."

Unqualified code-monkey Garote submits his annotated version of Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line, updated to discuss UI design theory and fill in some of the gaps from the last five years. (And yes, he has been granted permission from Neal to do this.) There's plenty more to cover of course: Will the command-line last only as long as the keyboard? How will desktop search technology change our workflow? What about the 3D interface? Scroll to any random paragraph in the essay and you'll find something worth expounding on. What's ahead for the next five years?

A few months ago, the GPL IDE Gambas reached 1.0 release candidate phase, and now reader drfreak writes "Gambas has now hit 1.0 and looks promising as GNU/Linux's answer to Visual Basic. Now, if it ran in Windows too, it would truly crush VB for database applications. Check it out at gambas.sourceforge.net." A 1.0.1 release came out on January 3rd to fix a few bugs.

Years ago, kids could be gradually introduced to computers through learning languages like LOGO and educational computer games. Many of us started our computing careers at our parent's workplace, logged in to a word processor to type away, only to become fascinated with the whole computing thing. So Slashdot, let's hear how you were lured into the digital life. What was it that drew you to a life of programming? How old were you when you first used a computer? What pieces of modern software do you think would be a good way to introduce today's kids to the world of computing? Two of our readers had a few related questions: "A family friend has asked me to help teach her 13-year-old the art of computer programming. I initially thought this would be easy to approach but times have changed since I cut my teeth on text-only, ROM-based, BASIC interpreters. Twenty years ago, it seems there were much more clear and concise paths one could take to learn programming. Now I'm at a loss as to what language and resources I should use. Everything is so high-level that I'm having trouble finding convenient, simple tools that promote the fundamental tenets of programming, allowing newbies to jump in and see immediate results, without getting bogged down in corporate-centric APIs. It seems nowadays most programmers end up spending more time learning the development environment (and thus being confined to specific platforms) than core, transferrable programming knowledge. I'd like to ask my fellow Slashdot dwellers what tools, languages and approaches they have used to help introduce new people to programming?", and from sagefire.org: "My daughter is a huge fan of TuxPaint and ChildsPlay. We use Linux and MacOSX (and occasionally Windows) on different computers. We like to have stuff for her installed wherever we go. The two I mentioned go a long way, but we would love to pick the collective Slashdot brain on this one."

Pier Luigi Fiorini writes "The Mockup project is a desktop operating system based on GNU/Linux. It has recently released new source code and published both screenshots and mockups. Read the announcement to know where are the source code tarballs and how to compile them. Mockup uses a new lightweight and modern graphical user interface that supports both pixel and vector based graphics. The GUI is based on bleeding edge technologies like Qt 4.0 beta, Elektra, HAL and DBUS. Elektra is a new backend for text configuration files. Instead of each program to have its own text configuration files, with a variety of formats, Elektra tries to provide a universal, hierarchical, fast and consistent namespace and infrastructure to access configuration parameters through a key-value pair mechanism. This way any software can read/save its configuration/state using a consistent API."

sam_christ writes "An article in today's Investor's Business Daily (Google cache) and an article by TV industry pundit/predictions-huckster Philip Swann say the same thing: that Microsoft's Media Center Edition will be a big flop in 2005. Meanwhile, from what I can tell much more powerful alternatives to Microsoft's MCE bloatware are thriving: commercial products like Snapstream (see their 6-tuner Medusa PVR built for about $1200), Showshifter and open-source freeware like Mediaportal and MythTV. From what I've read about Microsoft MCE and all of its DRM and content restrictions, I have to agree with both of these articles."

Demolition writes "The latest release of the iPod-Linux Installer has been reviewed on Accelerate Your Mac!, a popular Mac performance/modification site. As mentioned in previous Slashdot articles, the iPodLinux Project is an open source venture devoted to porting Linux to Apple's iPod. In a nutshell, the reviewer finds that the iPodLinux Project has progressed a long way from its early proof-of-concept days."

Anonymous Coward writes "The best SNES emulator, and the only GPL one -- ZSNES -- has had the first release in almost two and a half years! Looks like those smart coders reverse engineered quite a few new special co-processors for this release as well."

An anonymous reader writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) just announced that it has become a financial sponsor of Tor, an open-source project to help people 'engage in anonymous communication online.' It sounds like a simpler version of Freenet, e.g. 'a network-within-a-network that protects communication from ... traffic analysis.' Like Freenet, the source-code is freely available and binaries exist for Windows, Linux, etc." Read on for more details.

The submitter continues "It also allows you to install Tor-aware apps, such as an HTTP proxy (for private browsing), or maybe private P2P? Unlike Freenet, it doesn't use massive encryption (as far as I can tell) and relies more on something called onion routing to randomly bounce requests between other Tor proxies, thus obfuscating the IP of the original client. So it allows you to browse regular Internet sites! Maybe it should be considered more of an 'open-source' Anonymizer? But I don't know if it's actually Open Source - you can download the source (and compile it yourself) but I don't know if the developers are letting anyone else touch their code. They are, however, looking for contributors and other forms of help. And, finally, they're hoping people will start running Tor servers!" It's open source, however contributions are handled.

Robert Nagle writes "Over the last year, Zope and Plone have gained mindshare as open source web application servers. In the last few months, two books have come out about how to use, extend and administer Plone. One is Andy McKay's Definitive Guide to Plone (available for free online), and the other is Julie Meloni's Plone Content Management Essentials." Read on for Nagle's review of both books. (See each) author (See each) pages (See each) publisher (See each) rating (See each) reviewer Robert Nagle ISBN (See each) summary McKay's book is indeed definitive; Meloni's book is a good introduction

The Zope/plone combination offers a variety of advantages to the open source developer: robust workflow capabilities, conformity to Web standards, cross-platform support and a sophisticated security model. On the other hand, it has a steep learning curve and deals with objects in an object database (instead of the usual RDBMS/LAMP data model).

First, here's 30 seconds of what Plone is all about (the Slashdot editors can provide the bunnies). Zope is a Python-backed web application server which includes a Zope Management Interface (or ZMI), a web-based interface to modify templates and interact with/administer the Zope Object Database (ZODB). Although Zope can be a standalone webserver, in fact people usually put it behind Apache for reasons of security, performance and caching. Years ago, Zope used a custom scripting language (DTML) to do its business logic, but later switched to an XML-based templating language called ZPT and let users use Python-based scripts to perform actions. Zope is the application server; CMF is the content management framework, and Plone is the standards-compliant front end that lets you manage skins, slots, styles, portlets, forms, actions, content types and installation of products. Then there's archetypes, which make it easier to create new content types and web forms. Oh, have I mentioned that we're dealing with objects here? In other words, we're not just throwing data and text into SQL); we're creating different types of content (documents, events, multimedia objects), storing them as objects (with actions, metadata, etc) and then summoning them (or parts of them) from the object database with ZPT using macros and indices.

From a design perspective, Plone is elegant although so multi-layered that it's often hard to figure out where to make changes. Also, while the Plone front end is snazzy, most users end up having to go to the ZMI to modify the template and edit actions (which, depending on how you look at it, can be an advantage or disadvantage). Finally, although the list of open source products for Plone and Zope is impressive, they don't necessarily play well together, and many products for Zope don't work in Plone and vice versa.

Definitive Guide to Plone author Andy McKay pages 584 publisher Apress rating 5 ISBN 1590593294

That is where Andy McKay's book and Julie Meloni's book come in. Of the two books, Andy's is more comprehensive and geared toward the experienced developer (and typical Slashdot reader); Julie's book does more hand-holding and provides more thorough explanations of introductory concepts.

As a lead plone developer, McKay has intimate knowledge of the good, the bad and the ugly for plone. Although his chapters fly by certain introductory tasks at record speed, he explains things well and offers lots of tips and hints throughout the book. (I can't tell you how many times I've put the book down and exclaimed, 'Aha, so that's how you ...'). The sequence of presentation is generally logical with one exception: in chapter 14 (page 459), the book mentions that you can use Zope Enterprise Objects to debug a live server without having to shut down Plone. That is valuable -- even vital-- information, and belonged in the earlier chapter on installing Zope. Although the chapters don't go into great depth, his code examples and commentary are sufficient to explain what is going on.

It's not the main focus of the book, but the sections on system administration (caching, tuning, scaling) are well done although some things are missing (like Virtual Host Monster). It's assumed that readers will be able to find this information elsewhere.

The best parts about McKay's book are how it relates Python programming to Plone. The deeper you get into Plone, the more important it is to write Python scripts and do basic Python debugging. Even basic sysadmin tasks like product management seems to require an understanding of object-oriented concepts. One initial difficulty comes with the idea of URL paths corresponding not to actual directories but objects being contained within other objects. (So that login_form in http://foobar/login_form doesn't necessarily reside within the foobar directory, but is in any directory or object acquired by the foobar object). This type of URL (called a traversal) is explained well enough in the book, but often makes it difficult to figure out where to find things within the ZMI and the file system. Who would have ever thought that the place to edit the login_form object for http://foobar/login_form is /foobar/portal_skins/plone_forms/login_form within the ZMI (which is actually /zopeinstance/products/CMFPlone/skins/plone_forms/ login_form.pt on the file system)? That's why McKay's skin example (in Chapter 7) accomplishes so many things; it provides a "guided tour" through the layers (i.e., scripts, templates, etc) contained within portal_skins; it also runs through the process of creating custom templates and forms based on existing ones. This, by the way, is one of the niftiest features of Zope/Plone; you push a Customize button in the ZMI, and voila! you've cloned an object for customizing. This is dense stuff, but after reading this chapter, I have a better sense of the beast I'm dealing with.

I particularly liked the book's chapters on archetypes and manipulating content types. If Zope/Plone is about manipulating objects, then it helps to have a variety of objects to manipulate. Archetypes lets you create new content types and new views for content types. By providing Python libraries for fields and widgets, archetypes makes it relatively easy to create web forms for data input. McKay's book covers this topic thoroughly and clearly. I also appreciated the chapter on searches and indexing (and the helpful table of indices and index types); this filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. The sections on security and workflow contained good examples, and the book also contained a section on internationalization. The programming chapters are the best parts about the book.

On the negative side, I wish there were more charts and tables in the book (perhaps as appendices). A lot of this is already found within Zope help or the Plone site, but it would have been handy to have these things as reference. Although McKay's book contains a good (though brief) introduction to Zope Page Templates, the explanation of the syntax is scattered throughout the ZPT chapter; it would have been much better to summarize all the tal tags in a single table.

Also, at many points during the ZPT chapter and other chapters, McKay refers to Plone and archetype API classes that are described nowhere else in the book. It took me a while to figure out where these things were coming from (and I would refer you to here for API descriptions). The book would have benefited from a better description of APIs, even a high level view of it (You can find some quick references here).

Because of its focus on development, McKay's book spends almost no time on third-party products or "sanctioned" products available in the plone collective. This is somewhat understandable (given the mercurial nature of product development), but the casual reader might finish the book without realizing that additional additional products even exist. (Here's a fairly comprehensive list of Plone and Zope products).

Also, I would have liked better explanation about change management. Plone has its own product installer, but I always have difficulties upgrading products. How do you test products before actually deploying them? How do you manage upgrades (and how do you upgrade Zope itself?) For such an extensible project as Plone, managing the installation, testing and upgrade of third-party products can be a disaster waiting to happen.

Plone Content Management Essentials author Julie C. Meloni pages 258 publisher SAMS rating 3 ISBN 0672326876

Julie Meloni's book takes a different approach to the subject, one geared less to Python development and more to deploying third-party products and customizing site appearances. I'm tempted to say that the typical Slashdot reader would find this book "shallow," but really that is not fair. Although Meloni's book contains a short appendix on Python, it focuses more on how Plone works out of the box and how to take advantage of core functionality. In fact, Meloni's slender book contains many useful sections probably deemed too elementary for McKay's book: how structured text works, for example.

Rather than trying to cover everything Plone-related, Meloni identifies a small number of typical tasks and explains them in detail. For example, the book documents the Plone style sheets and how to modify them in the ZMI. Too basic, you say? Well, yes, but it's still useful reference material. Rather than trying to teach you how to write your own Plone product or content type from scratch, she walks us through using that nifty Customize button to clone existing templates for customization (although to tell the truth, you still need would need to know a good bit about Python and ZPT syntax to complete the task). Although the book's section on skins focused mainly on how they relate to style sheets, I found the section on customizing slots to be particularly useful.

In contrast to McKay's book, Meloni spends a separate chapter on deploying and using several popular plone products: a discussion board, a weblog and a photo album. Given that several competing products exist for each category, and that better products are likely to come out later, this chapter will probably be the first to go out of date.

Perhaps the book could have spent less time on the products themselves and more on managing products and testing/troubleshooting them.

Of the two books, McKay's book is the more indispensable, even though I still wound up consulting external sources fairly often for clarification. On the other hand, after reading first McKay's book and then Meloni's, I wish I had read Meloni's book first. Meloni's book provides a great introduction to basic plone concepts; McKay's book is great for the power user/developer. (Still another book, recently released, Cameron Cooper's Building Websites with Plone probably goes into more detail on the Python side; read a sample PDF chapter).

Perhaps I sound like a shill for the publishing industry when I say this, but it sometimes make sense to possess two or more books on a topic. The decision-making process for geeks buying books can sometimes differ radically from the general public. Geeks, for example, don't have qualms about paying full price for a new book if the content is up-to-late and relevant to the task at hand. The ordinary reader might make a purchasing decision on the basis of which book constitutes the highest information density (the $20 book with 200 pages vs. the $30 books with 500 pages). Geeks are also more inclined to view the purchasing decision in terms of time saved (i.e., how much time will reading this book save me in the long run?) From the standpoint of saving time, there's a lot to be said for reading an introductory book first and then moving to a book on more advanced topics.

Of course, Andy McKay's book is available already for free on the web (and kudos to Apress Publishing for allowing this).

** Actually, mysql/postgresql DB adaptors make it possible for Zope to fetch/send sql data; and Archetypes has a function, SQLStorage, to allow data from content objects to persist in a sql database (news to me). Other Web Resources:

• Zopezen, Andy McKay's development weblog
• Plone How-to's
• List of Plone Products and Zope Products, Sorted by Category
• Zope & Plone API's. (More here).
• Great Visual Guide to the Zope/Plone Interface
• Handouts from the Plone Conference for 2003 and 2004
• ZopeMag Weekly, an intermittent series of Zope and Plone tips and tricks.
• For general Python introductions, see the Python Tutorial, How To Think Like A Computer Scientist (Python) and Dive Into Python (also published by Apress and free online)

Robert Nagle (aka idiotprogrammer) writes fiction under various pseudonyms. He lives and works in Houston, Texas. In early 2005 he will be launching a plone-backed literary community ezine. You can purchase the Definitive Guide to Plone from bn.com; bn also carries Plone Content Management Essentials . Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Jacco de Leeuw writes "SecurityFocus published an article by Michael Ossmann that discusses the new generation of WEP cracking tools for 802.11 wireless networks. These are much faster as they perform passive statistical analysis. In many cases, a WEP key can be determined in minutes or even seconds. For those who have switched to PPTP for securing their wireless nets: Joshua Wright released a new version of his Cisco LEAP cracker called Asleap which can now also recover weak PPTP passwords. Both LEAP and PPTP employ MS-CHAPv2 authentication." Update: 12/22 00:14 GMT by T : Michael Ossmann wrote to point out his last name has two Ns, rather than one.

Torrey Clark writes "NitroOnline is a project that is currently being developed that will allow Nintendo DS owners to play Wireless enabled games via the internet. It will require a wireless router, and a wireless card in your PC or laptop to communicate with your Nintendo DS."

carlmenezes asks: "I volunteer when I can to help a poor educational institution in India with their computing needs. As you can imagine, most computers are from donations and very little money (if any) can be spent on software licensing. Therefore, the installed software is all Open Source and I do all of the software installation by myself. I have already installed Linux on 16 PCs, with Firefox. The default desktop is KDE and the kdeedu package (klettres in particular) has several loyal fans. Incidentally, the kids don't find it hard to use at all and the lack of 3D doesn't bother them in the least :) I would like to ask the community about a good source code analysis tool. I have already installed Source Navigator. Is there any other comparable open source tool?" "The analysis tools would be for those students that show more interest than the others in programming. There is a lot of source code in there for them to look at it if they want to. I'm looking more at C/C++ than anything else. There are some very bright students and I would like them to be able to move beyond ordinary school programming if they feel like it. No, there is no Internet connection. I bring in the software on CDs and install it."