I have been most impressed with extended plain TeX. It offers some niceties that plain TeX does not offer, but is not nearly as controlling and pigeon-holing as LaTeX. I don't know of any good, integrated tools out there for UNIX systems, other than maybe Emacs (what doesn't Emacs do?) but a few scripts go a long way. As far as documentation, The TeX-book is the bible, and a search on Google for tutorials provided me with a fair amount of good material. The learning curve? Well, I was able to produce some decent stuff after a day, much better stuff after a week, and it just got better after that.
However, keep in mind that TeX is limited. It only can only render text horizontally (no rotations) and it can't render graphics itself. Postscript is needed for that. Also, translation to HTML can be iffy with a lot of equations or symbols or things of that sort.
The Casio model looks like it has some good Linux potential. It runs a StrongARM processor and is a USB host, two things already supported by Linux. Also, PDABuzz mentions that they don't know of any USB drivers for PocketPC, though the list for Linux is growing. Though setting it up might not be trivial, I could see it as a good, portable diagnostic system.
At the college I attended, when we had to do individual programming projects, it was pretty much ok to discuss things with classmates as long as you gave proper credit within the code for algorithms or other ideas that weren't yours. Perhaps your school/professors would consider that as an option.
It seems to me that if this copy protection scheme is designed for the 99% of people who don't want to steal, the implication is that the purpose for implementing this technology is to save people from themselves. Which begs the question, are people capable of inadvertently stealing? I would think that with all the recent Napster publicity, folks would know by now whether or not the activities they are engaging in are illegal, and act accordingly. That of course doesn't address the issue of casual theft, though even casual theft is still theft, and still requires a desire (on whatever level) to steal. Anyway, the point is, this effort -- if they are, in fact, being truthful about their motivations for it -- is misguided.
Yeah, yeah, I'm preaching to the choir, but hell, what is Slashdot for?
Is it just me, or does this smack of MS propaganda? I mean, sure, these guys supposedly reverse-engineered the whole scheme, but what if they didn't? What if MS made a deal with them so that they would publish a technical account that was a little hazy on some important details, but made sure to conclude that Microsoft are not, in fact, trying to rid the personal computing world of its last shreds of privacy? I don't know. Maybe if MS sues these d00dz it will establish their credibility.
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I have been most impressed with extended plain TeX. It offers some niceties that plain TeX does not offer, but is not nearly as controlling and pigeon-holing as LaTeX. I don't know of any good, integrated tools out there for UNIX systems, other than maybe Emacs (what doesn't Emacs do?) but a few scripts go a long way. As far as documentation, The TeX-book is the bible, and a search on Google for tutorials provided me with a fair amount of good material. The learning curve? Well, I was able to produce some decent stuff after a day, much better stuff after a week, and it just got better after that.
However, keep in mind that TeX is limited. It only can only render text horizontally (no rotations) and it can't render graphics itself. Postscript is needed for that. Also, translation to HTML can be iffy with a lot of equations or symbols or things of that sort.
The Casio model looks like it has some good Linux potential. It runs a StrongARM processor and is a USB host, two things already supported by Linux. Also, PDABuzz mentions that they don't know of any USB drivers for PocketPC, though the list for Linux is growing. Though setting it up might not be trivial, I could see it as a good, portable diagnostic system.
At the college I attended, when we had to do individual programming projects, it was pretty much ok to discuss things with classmates as long as you gave proper credit within the code for algorithms or other ideas that weren't yours. Perhaps your school/professors would consider that as an option.
Yeah, yeah, I'm preaching to the choir, but hell, what is Slashdot for?
Mr. B.
Man(s), I gotta tell ya, this is a sweet birthday present fo' me. tres kewl.