Dropbox is fantastic! It's definitely not a subversion respository, though it does support versions of files if you're willing to pay for that feature.
I finally ponied up the money for a paying account yesterday after having used it daily for about a year now....
Bunny is the guy who did the incredible XBox reverse engineering way back when. Since then, he's gone on to work for the Chumby guys. He loves open source, is brilliant, has huge experience getting hardware built, and is a pretty cool guy.
Take a look at his blog and read about his experience in China, lining up manufacturers for the Chumby. Also, his discussion of the Shenzhen hardware/software wizards is mind-bending....
Fantastic? Meh. It was a rehash of a lot of ideas we've seen done in films and books over the past 20-30 years, with nothing particularly new added. Go re-watch 2001, Bladerunner and re-read some early John Varley instead.
If, on the other hand, this is the first time you've seen these ideas explored in film or fiction, I could see this being a very interesting movie.
The "poet engineer" over at The Ergosphere does his usual amazing job of responding to this.
For those not familiar with it, The Ergosphere is an excellent blog that tackles energy related issues from an analytical/scientific/empirical point of view, neatly cutting through any associated hype. Definitely recommended for anyone with an enviro-geek mindset.:-)
As a teaser, here's the conclusion to the article, after a lengthy analysis, complete with verifiable stats:
In my less than humble opinion, the powers-that-be are promoting ethanol because it serves up subsidies to various interests while not threatening the status quo (oil companies). If you can make an end-run around those interests, you could improve the environment, the economy and the prospects of the average American while making a huge pile of money. Isn't that better than just being a shill for GM, the corn farmers and ADM?
I've been at JavaOne this week, and on the first day, Jonathan Scwartz and Rich Green publicly stated that it was "not question of if, but how" in regard to open sourcing Java. Go check Google if you don't believe me.
This seems a pretty strong statement from Sun-- particularly compared to the waffling they've done in the past with respect to open source and Linux, yadda yadda. Given the conversations I had with various Sun-folk at the conference, it's pretty clear that there is a very strong pro-OSS camp within Sun, and we should be patient just a little bit longer.
And speaking of open source and Java, that was one of the big themes at JavaOne. Pretty much all the big name orgs here (Sun, Oracle, IBM, BEA, etc.) made a number of announcements about their open-source contributions. I know the debate on open source involves subtle and unresolved arguments, but apparently the powers-that-be at these corporations are convinced enough to buy in (quite literally, since they are ponying up serious money to fund the work). Of course, as profit-driven machines, they are doing it because of the anticipated return on such an investment, but that's still cool by me, since I love free speech/beer as much as any SlashDot AC, and will take any vindication of the same from just about anywhere I can get it....
Panda3D is a 3D engine: a library of subroutines for 3D rendering and game development. The library is C++ with a set of Python bindings. Game development with Panda3D usually consists of writing a Python program that controls the the Panda3D library.
Panda3D is unusual in that its design emphasis is on supporting a short learning curve and rapid development. It is ideal whenever deadlines are tight and turnaround time is of the essence.
For example, in a class called Building Virtual Worlds at the Entertainment Technology Center, interdisciplinary groups of four students are asked to create virtual worlds in two weeks each. Screenshots of their projects are visible throughout this site. Panda3D is what makes this rapid turnaround possible.
Panda3D was developed by Disney for their massively multiplayer online game, Toontown. It was released as free software in 2002. Panda3D is now developed jointly by Disney and Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center.
Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but Moho from Lost Marble is a great 2D animation tool. And it comes in all your favourite OS flavours (as long as that means Windows, OS X, and Linux).
All smartass commentary aside, I think it's great that the Lost Marble guys have ported to Linux. I'm sure it's been a total loss as far as monetary return-on-investment goes, but I like to think that the PR value has made it worthwhile (heck, it made me post this to SlashDot).
I've been toying with the idea of building a VR-style flight simulator simulator like this, with a "realistic" cockpit, multiple displays, etc. The big difference would be being able to orient the pilot in 3D in-synch with the simulated aircraft's orientation. Sticking the whole thing inside a giant hamster ball like this would be a pretty decent solution (not a big deal to keep it battery-powered with wireless network connectivity).
Any suggestions on constructing a big-ass sphere like the VirtuSphere guys have done? I have no problems with the programming side of things, and enough electronics experience to get the job done, but I'm a bit short in the mechanical engineering department.
The other thought I had was to aim for something a little more conservative/simpler, and just have an enclosed cockpit mounted on some sort of physical actuator. That would restrict me to, say, 45 degrees of inclination, rather than a full 360 degrees of rotation with the sphere approach.
Anyway, if anyone has suggestions or URLs that would help, post 'em. And yes, I've googled a fair bit on this already!
The most convincing argument I've heard against releasing specs are that it leaves the manufacturer all the more liable to a legal suit from a competitor, or a patent shakedown artist.
This being SlashDot and all, I'm sure you know the party line when it comes to (bogus) patents, intellectual property, and lawyers.....
And while we're on the topic:
Q: What's black and brown and looks good on a lawyer? A: A doberman.
I posted the original question about cross-platform GUI toolkits, for whatever that's worth.
After much investigation, I've concluded that they all suck a little bit in different ways, and that there is no absolutely "right" answer. Since each has strengths and weaknesses, you have to look at the platforms you are trying to hit, and choose accordingly.
That said, I have to say that Qt is very nice in terms of its polish, documentation, user community, and support of Mac OS X, Windows, and X. The only downside I see there is that they emulate the look/feel on the target platforms, rather than using native widgets, and they don't support Mac OS 9.x and earlier.
For my project, my choice is wxWindows, which uses native widgets and supports Mac OS 9.x as of the latest wxWindows stable release. wxWindows has a great user community, has reasonably okay docs, and is pretty simple to get up to speed with.
Oh-- one other option that I have not investigated for a long time is CPLAT. It also looks quite nice for all the same reasons as wxWindows, though CPLAT is far less well known.
A couple people have pointed out that the GameCube media is highly proprietary (size, data format, rotational direction), and that the likelihood of creating one of these disks without Nintendo's support is pretty slim.
Another possibility I've wondered about is just removing the drive and hooking up a drive simulator. Building the hardware to simulate the electrical/data behaviour of the drive would be non-trivial, but probably still possible, no?
Xoscope is Open Source, so hack away if you don't like something about it. The SourceForge page has links to a schematic you can build to use your soundcard as the ADC, though you are of course limited to about 20kHz signals (stereo input = dual trace though). Definitely a cheap way to go.
The BitScope is a really cool design that is open or free (as in beer and speech). You can download all the specs and build it yourself, or buy preassembled kits or BitScopes (cheaper than buying the individual parts yourself). It is a black box that you control via software on a PC, which is pretty cool.
And then, you can always snag a scope on EBay for a couple of hundred bucks. Loads of Tektronix scopes, etc. Wish I could afford a Fluke ScopeMeter myself.
XFce is a lightweight desktop environment for various UNIX systems.
The XFce project was first started because I needed a simple, light and efficient environment for my Linux System.
There are now a lot of good environments and interfaces for UNIX based systems, but most are too heavy, or too expensive, or even both !
I wanted something easy to use and configure, stable, fast, and, at last but not least, visually appealing...
I believe that the desktop environment should be made to increase user productivity. Therefore, the goal is keep most system resources for the applications, and not to consume all memory and CPU usage with the desktop environment.
From version to version, XFce became more and more user friendly and easily configurable. As XFce is made for the user, it has to be very simple to configure. That's why everything is driven by the mouse, using buttons, drag and drop, etc., and the configuration files are hidden from the user, although it is plain text.
XFce 3 is based on GTK+, a free and powerful tool kit widely adopted by many applications.
XFce 3.x features :
* XFce, the main panel
* XFwm, the window manager
* XFTree, the file manager
* XFClock, a clock and calendar
* XFbd, the backdrop manager
* XFMouse, the mouse configuration
* XFSound, the sound manager
* XFGnome, the GNOME compliance module
* XFPager, the pager
* XFRun, a small utility to run programs by pressing Alt+F12
* XFGlob, a powerfull file search tool
* XFDiff, a great graphical diff frontend
* XFSamba, the new SMB browser
* XFbdmgr, a small utility to manage list of backdrops for Xfbd
* Plus as set of shell scripts for use as Drag and Drop actions for the XFce panel (xfterm, xftrash, xfprint, xfhelp, xfmountdev, CDE2Xfcepal, etc.)
I think that there are CD drives that allow you to read the read data from the CD, including error correction information, though I could be wrong.
Connectix markets a "Virtual Game Station" PlayStation emulator, and the Mac version uses an undocumented call to the MacOS to read raw data sectors from the CD (I forget the exact Trap parameters, but I could go dig them out). This is important for VGS because PlayStation CDs have a couple of sectors with intentionally bad checksums to make them "impossible" to duplicate with a CDR (that's where the modchip comes in).
So, I think that Apple is installing CD drives that may technically be a circumvention device in the eyes of the RIAA and DMCA.:-)
Now, if I had my hands on a CD tht I knew was "copy-protected," I'd happily build a ripper to see if all of the above is true or not.
The last comment to unplug the TV is the best one.
Seriously-- I don't have cable any more and haven't had it for years now. The occasional time I do happen to see some television only serves to reinforce my opinion that it's all crap. Other people I know have commented that the longer you go without it, the less you want anything to do with it.
So, ditch commercial TV and go play some games (until product placement occurs there too), go biking, do something with your children, or do any one of millions of other cool things waiting out there.
Dunno if this has been suggested yet or is all that helpful, but another elegant way to beat CSS is to just do a bitwise copy of the encrypted DVD data and "mount" the resulting disk image via a hacked driver that simulates a DVD drive. This is kind of the reverse of capturing a video or audio stream by writing a hacked driver. The most important aspect of it is that DeCSS is absolutely unneccesary for pirating the bits, and that CSS is not a copy protection tool.
I hacked someting like this for MacOS to simulate content on a CD. Doing this for Linux would be a breeze in comparison. Heck, now that I think of it, couldn't you just mount a file as a loopback device? Yikes-- better not tell the MPAA that "dd" is now a DVD piracy tool....
The G4 Cube from Apple has an external power supply, for what that data point is worth. It looks okay, and the Cube is actually much cooler than I thought it would be. ("Cooler" not in the thermodynamic sense, though it is that too.) Coupled with one of those gorgeous flat panel displays, a Cube is pretty sweet.
The difference wrt BetaMax in the court's eye seems to be the fact that Napster has full access to the details of what's being exchanged (well, the filenames, anyway), and can thus be viewed as being aware of the infringement.
So, the bottom line is, if your product or service is used primarily for copyright infringement, and YOU know about it, you're screwed (or you have to take action, as Napster is doing).
Is this silly? Yup, in my opinion. Wish my opinion mattered more though...
As many users of VMWare and other similar backwards-compatibility-environment tools will attest, it's nice to be able to run applications written for a different OS within a Linux environment. Fortunately for LinuxPPC fans who want to run MacOS apps, you can do the same sort of thing right now using Mac-on-Linux, and if they ever make it out of Beta, you'll eventually be able to use
SheepShaver.
My question is to what degree do you think the existence of tools like Mac-on-Linux actually further the Worldwide Domination by Linux. Along the same line of thought, who then do you see as your target audience/customers?
Given the overwhelming majority of x86 boxen out there, I don't think it's unreasonable to state that PPC systems are viewed as second-class citizens by most developers. (Major kudos to Loki for supporting PPC in their Linux ports of interactive realtime multimedia applications.)
Given that Open Source programmers tend to have limited time and even more limited access to machines that are not sitting in their bedroom/office/whatever, how hard has it been to convince developers to support PPC systems? And for that matter, how much of a pain-in-the-ass is it to support PPC? (endian issues is about all that comes to mind)
And while we're discussing the nightmarish complexity of assembling and maintaining all the bits and pieces that comprise a Linux system, what's it like putting together a complete distribution anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
I snagged an illicit copy and was so impressed that I bought the real thing and wrote Beazley a letter telling how much I liked the book....
I was under the impression that Canadians liked paying taxes.
Well played, my American friend. :-)
Signed, A Canadian, eh
Dropbox is fantastic! It's definitely not a subversion respository, though it does support versions of files if you're willing to pay for that feature.
I finally ponied up the money for a paying account yesterday after having used it daily for about a year now....
Talk to Bunny:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/
Bunny is the guy who did the incredible XBox reverse engineering way back when. Since then, he's gone on to work for the Chumby guys. He loves open source, is brilliant, has huge experience getting hardware built, and is a pretty cool guy.
Take a look at his blog and read about his experience in China, lining up manufacturers for the Chumby. Also, his discussion of the Shenzhen hardware/software wizards is mind-bending....
Hey-- why hasn't there been a Lego movie? Given the brand appeal and the richness of the settings possible, a Lego movie would kick brick-ass....
Fantastic? Meh. It was a rehash of a lot of ideas we've seen done in films and books over the past 20-30 years, with nothing particularly new added. Go re-watch 2001, Bladerunner and re-read some early John Varley instead.
If, on the other hand, this is the first time you've seen these ideas explored in film or fiction, I could see this being a very interesting movie.
For those not familiar with it, The Ergosphere is an excellent blog that tackles energy related issues from an analytical/scientific/empirical point of view, neatly cutting through any associated hype. Definitely recommended for anyone with an enviro-geek mindset. :-)
As a teaser, here's the conclusion to the article, after a lengthy analysis, complete with verifiable stats:
In my less than humble opinion, the powers-that-be are promoting ethanol because it serves up subsidies to various interests while not threatening the status quo (oil companies). If you can make an end-run around those interests, you could improve the environment, the economy and the prospects of the average American while making a huge pile of money. Isn't that better than just being a shill for GM, the corn farmers and ADM?
This seems a pretty strong statement from Sun-- particularly compared to the waffling they've done in the past with respect to open source and Linux, yadda yadda. Given the conversations I had with various Sun-folk at the conference, it's pretty clear that there is a very strong pro-OSS camp within Sun, and we should be patient just a little bit longer.
And speaking of open source and Java, that was one of the big themes at JavaOne. Pretty much all the big name orgs here (Sun, Oracle, IBM, BEA, etc.) made a number of announcements about their open-source contributions. I know the debate on open source involves subtle and unresolved arguments, but apparently the powers-that-be at these corporations are convinced enough to buy in (quite literally, since they are ponying up serious money to fund the work). Of course, as profit-driven machines, they are doing it because of the anticipated return on such an investment, but that's still cool by me, since I love free speech/beer as much as any SlashDot AC, and will take any vindication of the same from just about anywhere I can get it....
http://panda3d.org/what.php
What is Panda3D?
Panda3D is a 3D engine: a library of subroutines for 3D rendering and game development. The library is C++ with a set of Python bindings. Game development with Panda3D usually consists of writing a Python program that controls the the Panda3D library.
Panda3D is unusual in that its design emphasis is on supporting a short learning curve and rapid development. It is ideal whenever deadlines are tight and turnaround time is of the essence.
For example, in a class called Building Virtual Worlds at the Entertainment Technology Center, interdisciplinary groups of four students are asked to create virtual worlds in two weeks each. Screenshots of their projects are visible throughout this site. Panda3D is what makes this rapid turnaround possible.
Panda3D was developed by Disney for their massively multiplayer online game, Toontown. It was released as free software in 2002. Panda3D is now developed jointly by Disney and Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center.
All smartass commentary aside, I think it's great that the Lost Marble guys have ported to Linux. I'm sure it's been a total loss as far as monetary return-on-investment goes, but I like to think that the PR value has made it worthwhile (heck, it made me post this to SlashDot).
I've been toying with the idea of building a VR-style flight simulator simulator like this, with a "realistic" cockpit, multiple displays, etc. The big difference would be being able to orient the pilot in 3D in-synch with the simulated aircraft's orientation. Sticking the whole thing inside a giant hamster ball like this would be a pretty decent solution (not a big deal to keep it battery-powered with wireless network connectivity).
Any suggestions on constructing a big-ass sphere like the VirtuSphere guys have done? I have no problems with the programming side of things, and enough electronics experience to get the job done, but I'm a bit short in the mechanical engineering department.
The other thought I had was to aim for something a little more conservative/simpler, and just have an enclosed cockpit mounted on some sort of physical actuator. That would restrict me to, say, 45 degrees of inclination, rather than a full 360 degrees of rotation with the sphere approach.
Anyway, if anyone has suggestions or URLs that would help, post 'em. And yes, I've googled a fair bit on this already!
The most convincing argument I've heard against releasing specs are that it leaves the manufacturer all the more liable to a legal suit from a competitor, or a patent shakedown artist.
This being SlashDot and all, I'm sure you know the party line when it comes to (bogus) patents, intellectual property, and lawyers.....
And while we're on the topic:
Q: What's black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?
A: A doberman.
Anyone have any idea what's happening with the source and other so-called intellectual "property" of their old games?
I *love* Re-Volt, and would love to see the source and graphics freed up to a community of modders and hackers....
-Roy
Marooned in Realtime, Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky - Vernor Vinge
Welcome to the Monkey House, Slapstick, Sirens of Titan, Galapagos, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
American Gods, Coraline - Neil Gaiman
Ringworld - Larry Niven
Just about anything by Theodore Sturgeon (YMMV on that one)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff
The Fionavar Tapestry - Guy Kay
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
There are lots more, but this is what popped into mind....
I posted the original question about cross-platform GUI toolkits, for whatever that's worth.
After much investigation, I've concluded that they all suck a little bit in different ways, and that there is no absolutely "right" answer. Since each has strengths and weaknesses, you have to look at the platforms you are trying to hit, and choose accordingly.
That said, I have to say that Qt is very nice in terms of its polish, documentation, user community, and support of Mac OS X, Windows, and X. The only downside I see there is that they emulate the look/feel on the target platforms, rather than using native widgets, and they don't support Mac OS 9.x and earlier.
For my project, my choice is wxWindows, which uses native widgets and supports Mac OS 9.x as of the latest wxWindows stable release. wxWindows has a great user community, has reasonably okay docs, and is pretty simple to get up to speed with.
Oh-- one other option that I have not investigated for a long time is CPLAT. It also looks quite nice for all the same reasons as wxWindows, though CPLAT is far less well known.
Another possibility I've wondered about is just removing the drive and hooking up a drive simulator. Building the hardware to simulate the electrical/data behaviour of the drive would be non-trivial, but probably still possible, no?
Anyone care to comment on that idea?
-Roy
Some specific links:
xoscope - a software oscilloscope
BitScope - hardware black-box oscilloscope that you control via a PC
Xoscope is Open Source, so hack away if you don't like something about it. The SourceForge page has links to a schematic you can build to use your soundcard as the ADC, though you are of course limited to about 20kHz signals (stereo input = dual trace though). Definitely a cheap way to go.
The BitScope is a really cool design that is open or free (as in beer and speech). You can download all the specs and build it yourself, or buy preassembled kits or BitScopes (cheaper than buying the individual parts yourself). It is a black box that you control via software on a PC, which is pretty cool.
And then, you can always snag a scope on EBay for a couple of hundred bucks. Loads of Tektronix scopes, etc. Wish I could afford a Fluke ScopeMeter myself.
-Roy
I can not say enough good things about XFCE, a very polished environment (for lack of a better word) by Oliver Fourdan. Go here for more info:
XFCE Homepage
Here's the blurb from the homepage:
XFce is a lightweight desktop environment for various UNIX systems.
The XFce project was first started because I needed a simple, light and efficient environment for my Linux System.
There are now a lot of good environments and interfaces for UNIX based systems, but most are too heavy, or too expensive, or even both !
I wanted something easy to use and configure, stable, fast, and, at last but not least, visually appealing...
I believe that the desktop environment should be made to increase user productivity. Therefore, the goal is keep most system resources for the applications, and not to consume all memory and CPU usage with the desktop environment.
From version to version, XFce became more and more user friendly and easily configurable. As XFce is made for the user, it has to be very simple to configure. That's why everything is driven by the mouse, using buttons, drag and drop, etc., and the configuration files are hidden from the user, although it is plain text.
XFce 3 is based on GTK+, a free and powerful tool kit widely adopted by many applications.
XFce 3.x features :
* XFce, the main panel
* XFwm, the window manager
* XFTree, the file manager
* XFClock, a clock and calendar
* XFbd, the backdrop manager
* XFMouse, the mouse configuration
* XFSound, the sound manager
* XFGnome, the GNOME compliance module
* XFPager, the pager
* XFRun, a small utility to run programs by pressing Alt+F12
* XFGlob, a powerfull file search tool
* XFDiff, a great graphical diff frontend
* XFSamba, the new SMB browser
* XFbdmgr, a small utility to manage list of backdrops for Xfbd
* Plus as set of shell scripts for use as Drag and Drop actions for the XFce panel (xfterm, xftrash, xfprint, xfhelp, xfmountdev, CDE2Xfcepal, etc.)
I think that there are CD drives that allow you to read the read data from the CD, including error correction information, though I could be wrong.
:-)
Connectix markets a "Virtual Game Station" PlayStation emulator, and the Mac version uses an undocumented call to the MacOS to read raw data sectors from the CD (I forget the exact Trap parameters, but I could go dig them out). This is important for VGS because PlayStation CDs have a couple of sectors with intentionally bad checksums to make them "impossible" to duplicate with a CDR (that's where the modchip comes in).
So, I think that Apple is installing CD drives that may technically be a circumvention device in the eyes of the RIAA and DMCA.
Now, if I had my hands on a CD tht I knew was "copy-protected," I'd happily build a ripper to see if all of the above is true or not.
-Roy
The last comment to unplug the TV is the best one.
Seriously-- I don't have cable any more and haven't had it for years now. The occasional time I do happen to see some television only serves to reinforce my opinion that it's all crap. Other people I know have commented that the longer you go without it, the less you want anything to do with it.
So, ditch commercial TV and go play some games (until product placement occurs there too), go biking, do something with your children, or do any one of millions of other cool things waiting out there.
-Roy
Dunno if this has been suggested yet or is all that helpful, but another elegant way to beat CSS is to just do a bitwise copy of the encrypted DVD data and "mount" the resulting disk image via a hacked driver that simulates a DVD drive. This is kind of the reverse of capturing a video or audio stream by writing a hacked driver. The most important aspect of it is that DeCSS is absolutely unneccesary for pirating the bits, and that CSS is not a copy protection tool.
I hacked someting like this for MacOS to simulate content on a CD. Doing this for Linux would be a breeze in comparison. Heck, now that I think of it, couldn't you just mount a file as a loopback device? Yikes-- better not tell the MPAA that "dd" is now a DVD piracy tool....
-Roy
The G4 Cube from Apple has an external power supply, for what that data point is worth. It looks okay, and the Cube is actually much cooler than I thought it would be. ("Cooler" not in the thermodynamic sense, though it is that too.) Coupled with one of those gorgeous flat panel displays, a Cube is pretty sweet.
-Roy
The difference wrt BetaMax in the court's eye seems to be the fact that Napster has full access to the details of what's being exchanged (well, the filenames, anyway), and can thus be viewed as being aware of the infringement.
So, the bottom line is, if your product or service is used primarily for copyright infringement, and YOU know about it, you're screwed (or you have to take action, as Napster is doing).
Is this silly? Yup, in my opinion. Wish my opinion mattered more though...
-Roy
As many users of VMWare and other similar backwards-compatibility-environment tools will attest, it's nice to be able to run applications written for a different OS within a Linux environment. Fortunately for LinuxPPC fans who want to run MacOS apps, you can do the same sort of thing right now using Mac-on-Linux, and if they ever make it out of Beta, you'll eventually be able to use SheepShaver.
My question is to what degree do you think the existence of tools like Mac-on-Linux actually further the Worldwide Domination by Linux. Along the same line of thought, who then do you see as your target audience/customers?
-Roy
Given the overwhelming majority of x86 boxen out there, I don't think it's unreasonable to state that PPC systems are viewed as second-class citizens by most developers. (Major kudos to Loki for supporting PPC in their Linux ports of interactive realtime multimedia applications.)
Given that Open Source programmers tend to have limited time and even more limited access to machines that are not sitting in their bedroom/office/whatever, how hard has it been to convince developers to support PPC systems? And for that matter, how much of a pain-in-the-ass is it to support PPC? (endian issues is about all that comes to mind)
And while we're discussing the nightmarish complexity of assembling and maintaining all the bits and pieces that comprise a Linux system, what's it like putting together a complete distribution anyway?
-Roy