Slashdot Mirror

I have taken the liberty of aggregating the syndication feeds of myself and my friends here. Check it out.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/ploneglenn/friends

This is using http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ which is an interesting syndicated content aggregater.

That reminds me. I would be interested in /.'s opinions on the http://www.opensearch.org/ project. Do you think that it will catch on? I ask because I am considering adding a support for this to the search engine part of my content publishing project.

I can't wait for augmented information processing. This reminds me of projects like Peep that take advantage of our natural ability to parallelize sound processing in our mind by representing status information that way because vision is more restricted in focus.

First: Do NOT store them as playable DVDs. If you transcode them at all (from whatever your camcorder records), put them in h.264, with a decent audio codec -- something like aac, ac3, ogg, anything but mp3.

That alone should drop you from 100 gigs to 20 gigs, without much loss in quality.

More to the point: The way I intend to deal with this is to build a CD-changing robot. You know, something like this -- the cheapest commercial versions are more than I'm willing to pay.

This, combined with scripts to periodically check discs, create parity, and replace/re-burn defective discs, should give me a fair amount of somewhat-reliable storage. Combined with a FUSE filesystem driver, it should also give me relatively easy, sort-of random access (very slow seek time). It would also be upgradeable to Blu-Ray, if that ever gets cheaper per gig than DVD5.

Not that I advocate this to anyone who doesn't have a few dozen (hundred?) hours to kill building a robot, but I think the same basic principles apply -- use parity, check periodically for bad media (and replace it immediately), and DVD5s are about the cheapest storage you can get today.

There is one other possibility worth considering: Just use Amazon S3. 100 gigs = $10 to upload and $10/mo to store.

Yes, I think a version control system that can actually render the differences would be better. Because I find Word's change tracking next to unreadable when there are multiple changes in one place. YMMD of course.

Now I didn't expect this to be feasible with the poorly documented .doc format, but there are some limited diffs available. A colleague has showed me a SVN plugin for word - it worked with ordinary text but failed inside tables.

For ODF, I have higher expectations and there is already a project going on: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooosvn

Make sure you have .NET 3.5, then use this version of MPC with the EVR Custom Presenter and D3D Fullscreen mode. Works like a charm on everything I've tried. I can even play 720p video almost perfectly on my old Pentium-M 1.6 GHz with an i915 video chip.

Oh come on, that old joke. Everyone knows that its Extreme Tux Racer Now! http://www.extremetuxracer.com/ And dont forget SuperTuxKart! http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/

Yep. Why do so few people (even here in tinfoil-hat-land) support Freenet? Because if everybody could actually really communicate anonymously, then they actually would communicate anonymously. And at the end of the day, it's a small minority of people that really believe we have that right (or even that it would be a Good Thing).

As always, it only gets easier.

I remember using that several years ago to as a demonstration. But it wasn't particularly hard to get up and running. I think I spent all of 30 miuntes on it...

> I'm interested to find out how to clean up "incorrect" Geolocation info too.

You can't.

I wrote IP::Country, the library used for country detection of relays within SpamAssassin. There is no manual tweaking of the country codes, I simply take the raw country data from the Regional Internet Registries (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LACNIC, AFRINIC) and encode them into a small, portable database.

That is also how all the other IP geolocation libraries work. If you started out from the premise that you'd accept manual changes to the database, it would produce more inaccuracies in the long run that simply following the WHOIS changes.

There is another way, which no one is using. Contraint-based geolocation pings the IP address from several known locations to estimate the location. There are academic papers saying it's more accurate than the WHOIS data, but it's never going to work on a webserver because it's doesn't produce a fast enough answer.

If you're interested in how the country data changes over time, check out the CVS of my data.

The only way to clear up a mistake in my country code is to correct the country code with the Regional Internet Registry. You won't be able to do that unless you own the block.

I would argue that it authorizes everyone to use it. To draw an analogy, it isn't just leaving your front door unlocked, it's leaving it unlocked and putting up a sign that says "Please come in!". So I don't see how accessing an open access point is a officially a crime.

If something is coded in a true multiplatform framework, it ships on _every_ platform that Framework supports. Mono gang is just being abused by Microsoft to claim their junk is multiplatform.

Want to see a multi platform framework? http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

If Nokia had brain to use a true multiplatform framework, that "Maps downloader" could work inside ANY BROWSER of ANY OS. It is so sad that MS manages to trap people even in age of 2008. Of course, some must be clever and get paid for it. I am worried about the actual naive ones thinking MS would produce or let produce anything equal to their pyramid scheme named Windows.

I looked it up. Stallman/the FSF says yes. It's a derived work, since it uses (links to) a GPL lib.
See http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL

Link to Windows version of Wine: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=6241&package_id=112520 Yes, there is one. Some Windows programs run better under Wine than under Windows, after all; it would be a shame if all those Windows users missed out on them.

try wine

try wine

Afraid so. Care to help me spread the link?

N82 About screen : "This product is based on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 software". I guess that mean that it's not a v3?

Also look here : http://s2putty.sourceforge.net/installs60v3.html - And I have that program installed. And as I said, that option was already turned to All. Note that this is an N series phone, and not an E series phone.

Another cool idea is kind of a "digital fishbowl" -- get an old tablet PC or iMac (or even just a digital photo frame) and have it run Golly cases (or in the case of the photo frame, a sequence of Golly generations).

Here in the real world, "unsupported" means "it can't be done", not "nobody has done it". So, when you said it was unsupported, you were just wrong.

However, just for fun, here is an example of an available 3rd party filesystem using the VFS support: Ext2 for OS X:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

It is of course true that there aren't many, but I've listed two now (again, just because you aren't interested in one of them, doesn't mean it doesn't exist). There's probably a good reason for that - the number of people needing to use a FS other than the included ones on OS X is tiny. Of course, now you are probably going to complain that ext2 doesn't interest you either, and that it doesn't support your favorite filesystem. That may be a reasonable complaint, but it's not what you asked for.

The chances of anyone having bothered to write actual viruses for lunix, a cut-down somewhat-unix-like operating system for a wildly-popular-in-its-day 1980s 8-bit computer called the "Commodore C64", are very small indeed.

Even if it would be made easier by lunix's lack of memory protection and security features compared to modern, high-security, stable operating systems like linux.

Darik's Boot and Nuke (Hard Drive Disk Wipe) implements the DoD and other standards for disk wipe. A 80 GB disk takes about 18h to wipe in my tests. Boot it from PXE or CDROM. Erase in batches, sell in batches on e-bay. Buy new toys :)

Still being pursued as a weird niche. I was absolutely amazed by Voxelstein 3D, http://voxelstein3d.sourceforge.net/

It's "in the spirit" of Wolfenstein, and has totally destructible environments - for example you start in a little cell and using your knife you have to chip your way through the bars to get out. It's neat to see this alternative tech continue getting explored.

Do them all at once, and to DoD spec: boot nuke http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Use a laptop. Even a very very old laptop. And use synergy. you don't even need a laptop with a working display. (As long as you set up with an external monitor). http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Something I have used to control multiple PCs from a single keyboard and mouse is http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergy2/

I have found it very useful and responsive. Besides controlling, it also enables you to copy and paste text between PCs, even running different OSs.

Or you could run synergy http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ Shares your keyboard and mouse over the network, would work great with a laptop.

Laptop keyboard + mouse shared to the desktop over wifi with synergy. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Here ya go. A Sourceforge project for sociopathic opensource developers(*).

One of the many wonderful highlights of this project is all of an owner's sealed data on his harddrive MUST and WILL be irretrievably destroyed if the motherboard Trusted Platform Module ever dies or otherwise glitches its internal control data. Recovering sealed data on a drive is forbidden and impossible, and restoring from a backup copy of sealed data is forbidden and impossible. According to their own FAQ, the project ensures explicitly and deliberately that "You are hosed".

(*)Footnote, I'm not sure if there are any sociopathic opensource developers actually working on that project or not. It is quite possible that all of it is corporate produced code, effectively a hostile false-flag attack from outside the opensource commmunity rather than sociopathic members of the community. One does not consider a soldier "sociopathic" for hostile acts attacking an enemy community.

-

There's a userspace AoE "server" that you can run on linux and export any block device (disk, lvm, md, dm, crypt, ...). It's available on sourceforge" along with some other nifty aoe related tools. My /home lives on vblade exported aoe device for more than a year now :)

You've mentioned ATAoE, but have you thought about throwing LVM over top of a bunch of them and serving them over iscsi using Iscsi Enterprise Target? You could use Microsoft free iscsi initiator or one of the many Linux implementations.

First, if you have to INSTALL SOMETHING (even a small something) other than the filesystem itself, BEFORE other filesystems can be used, then by definition it is not "out of the box"!

Sorry, but you're the one who isn't understanding -- you don't have to do any such thing! Apple's own ZFS is an example of that. The developer samples they provide are examples of that. Inactive open source projects like ext2fsx are examples of that. The various commercial (e.g. Paragon NTFS) and in-house filesystem extensions in use in obscure places (e.g. VirtualPC, Parallels, Symantec's filters, etc) are examples of that.

It's just that not many non-commercial developers are providing filesystem modules for OS X. Filesystem development is some of the most demanding work there is. That's why FUSE is popular: the filesystems are implemented as userland applications, where the demands of the programming environment are much less intensive.

Everything that uses FUSE (Linux, NetBSD's PUFFS, MacFUSE for OS X, etc) takes the form of installing a framework module in the kernel, which in turn uses the FUSE interface for the userland filesystems. This has absolutely nothing to do with out-of-the-box support for anything; it's just an abstraction that's made it easy for people experimenting with filesystems across several OSes, thus more filesystems are available with it. If you don't want to use that abstraction, that's fine, but it has nothing to do with an operating system's support for pluggable filesystems (other than showing it exists in the first place).

Ignoring the first link I gave you, which details the level of support available in OS X according to Apple itself, and instead trying to play semantic games using a single sentence from the MacFUSE homepage in order to justify the incorrect position that OS X does not support pluggable filesystems is the height of arrogance.

Second, according to TFA, ZFS will be provided for the server product, not for plain off-the-shelf, out-of-the-box Mac OS X. And that was part of my point.

ZFS is provided by Apple for OS X Leopard right now; it's just not officially supported for production use because it's a work-in-progress and still contains bugs. It will continue to be available for Leopard, and will therefore also be available for the non-server version of Snow Leopard.

Apple may, of course, choose to not officially support it on the non-server version, much like they did for both the journaled and case-sensitive versions of HFS+ in the beginning. If that's the case, then it will likely be supported at some point after Snow Leopard.

But what exactly is your point over that? And what on earth does it have to do with pluggable filesystem support? It's just a question of what Apple chooses to provide itself, which you already said was not an issue.

Third, MacPorts (like the other examples you gave) is yet another outside-party add-on; it is NOT an "out-of-the-box" feature of OS X!

MacPorts is a package management system and repository for OS X. Of course it's an add-on, just like all the package management systems for every other OS out there. I mentioned it because it's a convenient method of obtaining software and may be familiar to you if you like other package managers. But what does that have to do with pluggable filesystem support?

And fourth, I have an excellent grasp of what "pluggable" means. That has no bearing whatever on whether it is supported out-of-the-box, versus a self-compiled add-on or the like!!!

I remind you of your assertion in your original post:

If Apple really wants to start calling OS X a "modern" operating system, they are going to have to start supporting pluggable filesystems.

You don't get to change the argument now. You're absolutely ri

I am intrigued by the TOEJAM Project, a java-based interactive voice response answering machine. This particular project doesn't look like it's had a lot of activity lately, but it's open source and I suspect the code could be modified to make callers jump through a few (highly configurable) hoops before your phone ever actually rings.

Is it really all that difficult to conceive of disposing of the nation state? Now that we live in an age of a global society, what do nations do for us? Do they not just divide us and make us fear each other? Enter open source governance and the metascore open source project. Instead of having Chinese hackers and Rep. Smith fighting it out on the net, why not have everyone all in the same mix?

What about http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/ ?

[sarcasm]
A programming editor with stupid integrated chat?

You're right! Nobody what's that. A good open source IDE that is killing this product only has useful plugins like:
Messenger plugin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/eimp/
Gmail plugin: http://tabaquismo.freehosting.net/ignacio/eclipse/gmailclipse/gmail-eclipse.htm
Personal finance plugin: http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/Web_Links-index-req-viewlink-cid-589.html
Minesweeper, snake and sobokan games: http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/Web_Links-index-req-viewlink-cid-52.html

...?
[/sarcasm]

That's true mainly in computer science, mathematics, physics, etc. I see little LaTeX being used in the life and social sciences. Unfortunately, the de facto standard for those really is microsoft word documents.

well, excuse me for not using your tool. i wear a tinfoil hat, and while you do provide source, I'd have to painstakingly check every line of code, to make sure it didn't dump the data somewhere, on some remote web server or something, and i don't need to do that much to make sure my data is cleared. if the built-in data clearing tools of firefox aren't effective, there is a nice little tool called darik's boot and nuke. a mil spec hard drive eraser. i don't quite run it monthly, but it takes me about half a day to wipe a system, format and reinstall. http://dban.sourceforge.net/

as far as backup data, i don't restore most of my backup data, and i trust a mil spec drive wiping tool a lot more than i would some tool to 'search' for hidden data on my hdd. yeah i know microsoft internet explorer is terrible at keeping personal data, it probably keeps the credit card number from every time i've purchased something online in one of it's files that it almost never erases...

but that's exactly the kind of data i don't even back up.

You should check out gametable.

Pros:
- It's FOSS
- Written in java, so it runs on almost any computer
- Can be used for almost any table-top game. (Square or hexagonal grids of any size available, and it doesn't enforce any rule set, though it does handle dice rolls)

Cons:
- 2d graphics (Though this might be better for people with finicky/slow graphics cards)
- No built in VOIP (Does have text chat though)
- DnD rules not built in (Though, as mentioned above, this lets it be used for other games)

You should check out gametable.

Pros:
- It's FOSS
- Written in java, so it runs on almost any computer
- Can be used for almost any table-top game. (Square or hexagonal grids of any size available, and it doesn't enforce any rule set, though it does handle dice rolls)

Cons:
- 2d graphics (Though this might be better for people with finicky/slow graphics cards)
- No built in VOIP (Does have text chat though)
- DnD rules not built in (Though, as mentioned above, this lets it be used for other games)

It all changes when Metascore starts running the government(s).

Though Java-centric in nature, the JVM provides a secure sandboxed environment to host numerous languages including Ruby, Python, Lisp and even JavaScript. Throw in Groovy and Scala for home-grown alternatives.

Thanks to the efforts of IcedTea (principally funded by RedHat) and others, Java 6 will be fully GPL by the end of the year.

There is really good stitching software out there, specifically one similar to your username (hugin's panorama stitcher) which is multi-core friendly (literally an option says: "how many cores do you have" to multithread it).

You don't even need a tripod because technically it can stich vertically and not just horizontally in that case. It also stiches fast (5 shots that were 7.2 megapixel were able to be stitched together in about 30 seconds, ending with a 6600x1300 resolution)

Note their example image on that. I imagine with a more powerful PC (maybe a fast phenom) you could probably do it realtime instead....it went damn fast for me with an E6700.

In most if not all cases, you will find applications that are as good as if not better than the PalmOS version.

Ah, but can I get the source? It's not essential, but it's a definite important feature for me.

TomTom - Exists for PalmOS and WM. In my opinion the WM version seems to work MUCH better and is far easier to set up.

I haven't tried this, but I was not aware that the GPS was usable by apps on Treo 650.

TCPMP media player - Exists for both platforms, has somewhat extended codec support compared to PalmOS on a Windows Mobile device

Yeah, I prefer TCPMP over RealPlayer, as TCPMP will play OGGs (which is what I rip to by default).

Web browser - The PalmOS web browser Just Plain Sucks in every way possible. Even Pocket IE is better and it isn't that hot (there are other options for WM)

Yes, which is why I've switched to Opera. I'm not happy that I can't get source to Opera, but I can't get source to any of the others and Opera seems to work better.

Java - The Java environment for PalmOS is utter and total crap and when I tried it on my Treo 650 not a single app I tried would work.

I managed to get ahold of the IMB java kit for PalmOS so I could run Opera. Seems to work pretty well, but then I don't use it for anything besides Opera; I'm not a big fan of Java myself.

GMail's Java app works great on my Tilt.

I run my own mail/web server, which seems to work fine with Opera and the mail client that comes with PalmOS. My only gripe there is that the PalmOS mail client doesn't support aliases.

Google Maps - Don't think there's a PalmOS client that can come anywhere close to Google's Windows Mobile native app

Don't know; haven't use the windows mobile version, but the PalmOS version of Google Maps seems to work fine for me.

Instant Messaging - Half of the PalmOS IM app vendors seem to have gone out of business or stopped supporting the app. I've found FAR more choices for WM.

IM isn't a priority for me (I hardly use it). I'm pretty sure there are open source IM clients for PalmOS however.

You don't exactly provide details of what apps you're using.

Here's a list:

• Little John - Console emulator for playing classic games.
• pFuel - Keeps track of gas mileage.
• FreeCoins - Accounting software.
• Keyring - Keeps track of passwords.
• pssh - SSH client.
• Plucker - EBook reader.
• LispMe - Scheme interpreter.
• Eat Watch - Weight tracking.

The thing is, PalmOS works very well for me, and is entirely compatible with Linux (or any other platform I choose to move to). If I were going to move to a new mobile platform, the last place I would look is to Microsoft (or Apple for that matter). Not only would I need to have the apps I use above (which I have source to, so I could port given a decent development environment that runs on my desktop of choice), but I would prefer to move to something more open, not less. Something more hackable, not something that gets in my way when I try to do something the big corps don't like.

In most if not all cases, you will find applications that are as good as if not better than the PalmOS version.

Ah, but can I get the source? It's not essential, but it's a definite important feature for me.

TomTom - Exists for PalmOS and WM. In my opinion the WM version seems to work MUCH better and is far easier to set up.

I haven't tried this, but I was not aware that the GPS was usable by apps on Treo 650.

TCPMP media player - Exists for both platforms, has somewhat extended codec support compared to PalmOS on a Windows Mobile device

Yeah, I prefer TCPMP over RealPlayer, as TCPMP will play OGGs (which is what I rip to by default).

Web browser - The PalmOS web browser Just Plain Sucks in every way possible. Even Pocket IE is better and it isn't that hot (there are other options for WM)

Yes, which is why I've switched to Opera. I'm not happy that I can't get source to Opera, but I can't get source to any of the others and Opera seems to work better.

Java - The Java environment for PalmOS is utter and total crap and when I tried it on my Treo 650 not a single app I tried would work.

I managed to get ahold of the IMB java kit for PalmOS so I could run Opera. Seems to work pretty well, but then I don't use it for anything besides Opera; I'm not a big fan of Java myself.

GMail's Java app works great on my Tilt.

I run my own mail/web server, which seems to work fine with Opera and the mail client that comes with PalmOS. My only gripe there is that the PalmOS mail client doesn't support aliases.

Google Maps - Don't think there's a PalmOS client that can come anywhere close to Google's Windows Mobile native app

Don't know; haven't use the windows mobile version, but the PalmOS version of Google Maps seems to work fine for me.

Instant Messaging - Half of the PalmOS IM app vendors seem to have gone out of business or stopped supporting the app. I've found FAR more choices for WM.

IM isn't a priority for me (I hardly use it). I'm pretty sure there are open source IM clients for PalmOS however.

You don't exactly provide details of what apps you're using.

Here's a list:

• Little John - Console emulator for playing classic games.
• pFuel - Keeps track of gas mileage.
• FreeCoins - Accounting software.
• Keyring - Keeps track of passwords.
• pssh - SSH client.
• Plucker - EBook reader.
• LispMe - Scheme interpreter.
• Eat Watch - Weight tracking.

The thing is, PalmOS works very well for me, and is entirely compatible with Linux (or any other platform I choose to move to). If I were going to move to a new mobile platform, the last place I would look is to Microsoft (or Apple for that matter). Not only would I need to have the apps I use above (which I have source to, so I could port given a decent development environment that runs on my desktop of choice), but I would prefer to move to something more open, not less. Something more hackable, not something that gets in my way when I try to do something the big corps don't like.