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Textbook Revolution is a major source of free textbooks in many subjects.

Wikipedia-based Free AI Textbook is one example of the future of free textbooks -- in this case, for the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence.

The Free AI Textbook is really in three parts: the 2002 print-on-demand AI4U textbook of artificial intelligence; AI mind-module update pages; and AI background links into topical AI areas of Wikipedia, where a vast army of AI experts is constantly updating the free AI textbook.

Mind for MSIE is the free, tutorial AI source code (in JavaScript; also in Forth) described in the free AI textbook.

1. Celestia - 3D Accelerated Planetarium software

2. Kiki the Nanobot - Very good (award winning) 3d robot puzzle game

And finally- Google Earth. Not GPL obviously, but free and a lot of fun for anyone- kids included.

I like ChildsPlay also for my 4-yr old.

Dopewars.

In our school we run these and some othere that are less game like (and for older students).

Tux Math: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxmath/
Tux Typeing: http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/
Tux Paint: http://www.tuxpaint.org/

The newbreed software site has a number of programs there. There are actually quite a few educational titles around, I like gtypist for the older students as it is fast, modifiable, and has a lot of lessons. Its curses based though so it will turn some people off if they have a fear of the terminal, also it only runs on Linux, Unix, and OS X via darwin ports or fink (not counting cygwin). You can run it over an ssh session though and could automate that with a script. :)

Fish Fillets (Next Generation) is a cute and intelligent puzzle game that trains problem solving skills. It's apparently a port of a 1998 game by ALTAR interactive, but the OSS version works just fine. The player interaction is very nicely done - the version I downloaded 18 months ago only had Polish voices, but even so, it was easy to understand and quite addictive. (I just checked, and it seems that the game is now available in 13 languages)

Not too much edu but loads of tainment!

http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/

You might need headphones tho since it's a library! xD

A very educational game to learn all you need to know about drugs, guns, prostitutes, loan sharks and New York geography. Highly recommended! http://dopewars.sourceforge.net/

I used to love playing Battletech the board game when I was middle-high school aged. Check out the java version available for all platforms, its pretty fun and true to the board game, though could use a UI facelift to make it a bit more intuitive for first time users.

megamek link

Ok, I went back today, specifically to the HPLIP site. I guess my problem was going to shopping.hp.com and then looking them up on HPLIP.

Check out http://hplip.sourceforge.net/models/laserjet/hp_laserjet_p1505.html compared to http://hplip.sourceforge.net/models/laserjet/hp_laserjet_p1505n.html, two models where the only difference is networking, and networking is not functional. When shopping for printers on the HP site I had figured that a Networked printer that was supported, would be supported on the network. Yes there's drivers out there, but there are a lot of printers that don't meet up with their intended use.

Ok, I went back today, specifically to the HPLIP site. I guess my problem was going to shopping.hp.com and then looking them up on HPLIP.

Check out http://hplip.sourceforge.net/models/laserjet/hp_laserjet_p1505.html compared to http://hplip.sourceforge.net/models/laserjet/hp_laserjet_p1505n.html, two models where the only difference is networking, and networking is not functional. When shopping for printers on the HP site I had figured that a Networked printer that was supported, would be supported on the network. Yes there's drivers out there, but there are a lot of printers that don't meet up with their intended use.

About time. Profiteering should have no place when it comes to a child's access to education. I'm an ICT teacher and we are trying to teach skills and not packages. But it is more than that, you can;t teach kids everything in school and being able to access the skills and tools that you implement in school at home is essential to complement what they are learning in school. After two years of quite severe debate, our school now uses several OSS packages and the kids are given copies of the OpenEducationDisc. Teachers and students can't believe it is free. I now have kids making music, 2D and 3D graphics and actually able to complete written assignments at home as they have something to write with and open word docs with (OOo). For me propriety formats do not have a foot to stand on when you take the home situation into hand. The latest version of the openeducationdisc is here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=203390

i will assume that he meant using apple's software at all, including syncing the data. i agree, unless, you CAN just transfer files to an ipod from any app(i.e. windows explorer).

You can't, but that doesn't imply that iTunes is the only way to load music onto an iPod. There are 3rd-party apps (for Windows and Linux, at least...probably for Mac OS X as well, but iTunes works well enough for me there) that'll manage what's on your iPod.

(Now that I've thought about it a little more, if you use something like the iPod kioslave, you can get drag-and-drop management (somewhat) of your iPod through Konqueror. Last time I checked, though, it didn't support album covers on the newer iPods that support them.)

Are you using the network manager for wireless? If so, then I highly recommend switching to WICD. At least, that's the case if you're running gutsy or earlier, I don't know if hardy has improved the situation with wireless yet, and as GP said, I'm not willing to upgrade for a while.

I'd _like_ to stop using C++, frankly, but I don't seem to have a choice. A lot of my work depends on real-time capability, the kind of speed that is still only really possible on natively compiled languages that don't do dynamic typing.

I don't even mean hardcore real-time mechanical nano-second control of knife-wielding deathbots, just simple, This Must Run As Fast or Faster Than The Rate At Which It Will Be Converted To Analog. Python and Java still don't replace C in this area. (Mainly audio, video, and high-speed mechanical control.) And when it gets complex and you need to get into object oriented models to simplify the programming, there is unfortunately no real alternative other than C++. Combine this with that fact that there are a bunch of great libraries out there written in C++ that would be very difficult to replace, and you're stuck with it.

(I sort of oscillate between liking C++ and hating it, but I'm preferring straight C more and more these days. But like I said, I don't always have the luxury of choice, depending on what libraries I need to use.)

All these other languages mentioned (Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl, etc) do not compile to native code, and all do dynamic memory management. Hell, that's exactly what makes them *good*. But unfortunately they're not so good for real-time tasks.

For real-time, you need deterministic memory management, and native speed. I've been looking at some other languages that compile to native code these days, like D, or Vala, but I haven't really decided yet whether I can start using them on serious projects.

I'd really like to learn more about functional programming in this area, too, but there seem to be very few functional languages that are designed for real-time. FAUST is one, but it's only for audio.

Anyone know any other good natively-compiled languages that actually have well-implemented modern features?

I wish it were possible to have a compiled version of Python, for example, but there are many dynamic features it depends on. (Some stuff could be done in Pyrex, which is a pretty cool little project, but so far I've only used it to make bindings to C libraries.)

I was in a similar boat to you - console-style multiplayer games on a PC system. In the end, we found quite a few good games:

Little Fighter 2
Simple 2D fighter
Has:
    Gamepad support
    Up to 4 players
    Co-op mode
    Versus Mode
    Modding Community
    Free

GL Tron
Simple 3D arcade game of Tron
Has:
    Gamepad Support
    Up to 4 players
    Open Source

Project 64
N64 Emulator
Some good roms can be found here.
Has:
    Gamepad Support
    Super Smash Brothers!
    Huge catalogue of old games
    Up to 4 players
    Free

Lego Star Wars
Has:
    Gamepad Support
    2 player co-op

To be honest, we only ever played the demo of this, but it seemed a pretty good game, and it's got good reviews.

Frets on Fire
PC Guitar Hero clone
Has:
    Split screen play
    Gamepad/Official Controller Support
    Import Guitar Hero songs
    Open Source
    Community made songs, mods, etc.

A little warning with this one: it takes a while to set up. It should really be considered beta software, and ATM it is going through some developer reorganisation. The official game is still kinda buggy, but there is a good fork available (just hidden away in forums). Will probably become a lot better in a few months time.

If you can get a cheap old PC and get a small LAN together, you'll get a lot more options - there's a lot of good old PC games out there. If you want to game on the cheap, just stick to the older games - Win98 era or so.

Indeed, Guitar Hero has its own open-source clone, Frets on Fire. There are also other clones like Guitar Zero, but I'm not familiar with them. I recommend using one of FoF's better mods like RF-mod (less crashes, better performance, and a more GH-like experience, including two-player mode). Buy a couple of PS2 GH guitars and PS2->USB adapters, or just plain USB guitars, and you'll have a console-like GH experience on PC.

There's an open source copy of Guitar Hero called Frets on Fire. There's tons of songs for it, I have about 1000. You can even program your own songs into it. You can use the keyboard to play it or you can pick up a Guitar Hero controler like me and get a USB converter.

I'm pretty much a strict PC gamer myself, meaning the consols I have are the SNES and NES. The current games I've been playing are Orange Box, Audiosurf and Natural Selection . The last which is my favorite game of all time, it's a cross between FPS and RTS, best of all, it's free. The 3 games listed here are cheep (or free) so it won't cost you much to get some good games.

For more guitar action, be sure to check out Frets on Fire

With a little bit of google-ing you can apply a 2-player mod and import all the music from Guitar Hero 1, 2, Encore and 3...

Several people have mentioned emulation, I'd recommend a Commodore 64 emulator, there are tons of good 2 (or more) player games, here's a short list of games to try:

• MULE
• Dragonriders of Pern
• Robot Rascals (better if you can get the cards)
• Mail Order Monsters
• Realm of Impossibility
• Demon Stalkers
• Jumpman
• The Goonies (excellent 2-player co-op game)
• Summer Games
• Summer Games 2
• Winter Games
• California Games

Oops, forgot to log in for that comment...

You can find everything you need to play the above here!

My favorite C64 emulator is WinVICE

For more guitar action, be sure to check out Frets on Fire

With a little bit of google-ing you can apply a 2-player mod and import all the music from Guitar Hero 1, 2, Encore and 3...

Several people have mentioned emulation, I'd recommend a Commodore 64 emulator, there are tons of good 2 (or more) player games, here's a short list of games to try:

• MULE
• Dragonriders of Pern
• Robot Rascals (better if you can get the cards)
• Mail Order Monsters
• Realm of Impossibility
• Demon Stalkers
• Jumpman
• The Goonies (excellent 2-player co-op game)
• Summer Games
• Summer Games 2
• Winter Games
• California Games

So is Frets on Fire, buy you do really have to get/make a proper controler (the Wii one's work great with a Bluetooth laptop).

Direct links to the metalinks (As Seen on /.) - these list all the mirrors, checksums, and other info and are used by download apps.

To use them, try DownThemAll! (Firefox extension), aria2 (cross platform, command line), KGet (in KDE4), Speed Download (OS X), GetRight (Windows), Retriever (cross platform, Java) or about 15 other download programs.

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-alternate-amd64.metalink
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386.metalink
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.metalink
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.metalink

Excellent themable 3D remake of Scorched Earth:

http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/

Meat Fighter!

http://www.meatfighter.com/

And there's always Tux Racer:

http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/

Name is good, it has plenty of games, you may have trouble finding out whats worth playing/not worth playing because there are so many, overall its a great emulator.

Mupen64+ is also a good nintendo64 emulator for those of us on linux. I hear ps emulators are fairly good to but, i think you cant go wrong with arcade classics (NAME) and N64 (project64/mupen64) as N64 games are more multiplayer orientated. (f-zero X, mario cart, micro machines), hell i even used to play with a non-geek girlfriend.

An important factor would be the controllers, as a fan of Xboxs original large controllers, i choped up 2 of the cables to make xbox - usb cables, (its a fairly trivial task). you can also get usb converters for xbox/ps controllers, or buy a couple of wii controllers and a bluetooth dongle. There may also be good pc controllers, but i never found any.

For arcade games, phones + bluetooth, (i bound anyremote, to 16 random keys but there are probably other ways of doing it), will also do nicely.

Also a DS emulator works quite nicely with a laptop touch pad, but its only 1 player.

it's free, cross-platform arcade game with split screen mode. You could download it from the http://btanks.sourceforge.net/ Have fun! :)

If you have a USB keyboard for your laptop, check out Frets on Fire. PC FreeWare version of Guitar Hero using a keyboard for a guitar. Comes with an app to import Guitar Hero songs.

is a great Guitar hero clone, if you want to spend some money get Guitar Hero III, but be warned it is very buggy. http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/

Java Cell Phone impl.
Python impl.

This doesn't look too tough. Take the original image, the one where you're supposed to find the "center of the image", bring it into Photoshop and apply Gaussian blur with about 4 pixels. That gets rid of the noise. Then, as an experiment, try "find edges". This brings out some, but not all, of the edges, finding some that aren't horizontal or vertical. What's needed is an edge finder that recognizes only long vertical and horizontal edges. That will bring out rectangular areas, and a program can then find and report the center of rectangles. It won't be perfect, but it doesn't have to be.

The second stage test consists of a black grid superimposed on a noisy image. First, remove the black grid and interpolate the missing pixels. Then do a Gaussian blur at about 2-3 pixels to get rid of the noise. Now you have a blurry picture. The site probably has only a small library of original pictures, and relies on making them look different by distortion. After you've identified some number of them by hand, duplicates will start to emerge. Use a simple matcher to match pictures against your library of identified pictures, and expect a reasonable success rate.

Most of the necessary code can be obtained from OpenCV.

So this isn't likely to work for a major site worth attacking.

The comments regarding Picardtagger are good but if you want something automatic use ieatbrainz:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ieatbrainz/

Not me...I voted FLAC .

:-)

Are you sure you can scrape even 10,000 developers from those three million federal employees? I don't think so, and the free software community has continued to grow exponentially. Sourceforge alone has almost two million registered users.

Atari 2600 ROMs and emulators are easy to come by, but if you like Star Raiders, you should look up the Atari 800 version of it. It's very much improved over the 2600 version. There's Atari800 for the(you guessed it) 800, and Stella for the 2600. Games are a little harder to come by, underground-gamer.com is down atm. You could try the Pleasuredome though.

Atari 2600 ROMs and emulators are easy to come by, but if you like Star Raiders, you should look up the Atari 800 version of it. It's very much improved over the 2600 version. There's Atari800 for the(you guessed it) 800, and Stella for the 2600. Games are a little harder to come by, underground-gamer.com is down atm. You could try the Pleasuredome though.

I could imagine this as a mod of Vega Strike (http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/). But considering the handful of regular contributors, compared to the effort that goes into a typical commercial MMO, it might take another 10 years to get anywhere.

Besides, unless NASA sponsors a bit more than their logo, I see no reason for developers to dump the existing Vega Strike backstory in favor of a NASA theme. So even if Vega Strike eventually grows into a MMO on its own, the NASA "branding" might not happen.

MagikFS

There is a steganographic file system in development for linux called magikfs. If you value your privacy, you'll want to check it out.

MagikFS

If nobody is doing that already, color me surprised....

Open projects should have open source governance.

FWIW, the software is being developed right now. (SF says they just kicked off this month.)

This is *not a hypothetical* -- Sourceforge gives out downloads as public information, and so do I.

My OSS competitor has been downloaded 40 times in the last week.

http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=47026&ugn=bingo-cards&type=prdownload

My software has been downloaded 40 times in the last thirty minutes.

(A related statistic, which typically tracks at a ratio of about 1 of these to 1.2 downloads: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/bingo-card-downloads )

There are a variety of reasons for that. One is that my software actually works and the OSS version is broken. The other is that the profit incentive makes it worthwhile for me to spend a sigificant amount of time and money promoting the use of the software, rather than just uploading it to a server somewhere with a description that doesn't even address the needs of the end user and then calling it a day.

I see the convenience and reliability of ThinkPad hardware as superior

I'm typing this on my third Mac and I haven't had any hardware problems that prevented me from using it yet. While it's new, 8 months, my first Mac I bought used and I used it 8 years before it died. The second I also bought used and it lasted 7 years.

and the Mac OS is still a proprietary OS that seems to require a Windows license for some tasks anyway.

And you don't have the same costs to run the same task in Linux? I won't say all but some programs that run in Linux will also run in OS X. For RPM packages, there's RPM for Darwin (Mac OS X) and MacPorts. To install Debian's dpkg and apt-get packages in OS X there's Fink.

Many FOSS projects I am interested in (Open Office, Scribus being two big ones) are really lagging behind in the OSX ports,

However those projects that run in X on Linux also run in X on OS X. For RPM packages, there's RPM for Darwin (Mac OS X) and Macports. Debian packages dpkg and apt-get can be installed with Fink. So any, well some as I don't know if they all will, Linux packages that use either of these can be installed in OS X as well.

It is what makes up our culture. Sometimes we, as a society, have seen fit to let the laborer execercise some limited degree of control over the fruits of the labor. This does not mean any one person can own their labor, any more than they can own a sunset.

There, I fixed that for you. Sounds like a crappy way to structure a society... good thing nobody would ever be stupid enough to go for it. Oh wait...

I write software for a living. If I stop getting paid for it, I'll stop doing it. There won't be any more sunsets, for the ~1,000 people who are dependent on my software. You can claim "society owns the idea" all you want, but "ideas" are hard to compile. Society has not produced workable bytecode, except insofar as "society" has chosen to make a "market" and the market pays enough to make it worthwhile for one engineer to create bytecode. (And to market and whatnot, which are my more important contributions. It wouldn't help society out very much if the solution were buried in the basement water closet behind a sign that said Beware Of The Hairy OSS Programmer, right?)

http://www.bingocardcreator.com/

Here is my broken OSS competitor. Get cracking, it needs a LOT of work. I suggest starting by fixing whatever the bug is that prevents it from working on Windows. Then you might clean up the GUI a bit. Go on, get cracking -- you owe it to society, after all.

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/bingo-cards

Sure, these guys are somewhat clever, but they're not the real geniuses behind the technology.

And yes, the researchers did a great job, too. It's not easy picking unknown protocols apart!

Don't worry aussies! some freindly type folks have been so kind as to share encryption software! And how precisely will the AU Government deal with that? If everyone there starts encrypting all their IM's Emails and VoIP calls, there is simply not enough processing power to make it valuable to tap anything in the first place. I predict significant backlash once Law Enforcement figures out that this isn't going to help them at all, but rather it is going to popularize encryption (which is in my view A Good Thing Anyway).