A very nice open source app, available through the Ubuntu/Debian repositories. The author's page even got a windows version.
It supports multi-core CPUs, i.e. if you really want to tax each of your CPU's core to the limit, just use the app to browse through the mandelbrot set. It also supports a 3D extrapolation of the 2D set (OpenGL and software).
Strangely enough it doesn't seem all that popular, as the forum doesn't seem all that populated..
First of all, I really like Opera, I use it all the time for browsing and email alongside Firefox and Iron, and will continue using it as a web browser.
So I was thrilled to read about this new feature in 10 beta version, downloaded it and installed it on a test system. Turns out if you want to use the new feature you'll have to register with their "network". Sorry, but my privacy is worth a little more than the convenience that this new feature provides over the current apps used for the functions it's supposed to cover.
I guess we'll need to wait for Google Wave to come around (brought to you by the creators of google maps) - just saw this video and was very impressed. It lets you upload pics, messages etc. as if you had a webserver, but is far more interactive. If you run your own server node (and encrypt your data) there shouldn't be any security or privacy concerns either, because you can decide what data gets out to third parties (incl. Google). Best of all it's open source using open standards - anyone can write extensions or fork.
So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm...
Not really. It says they made it to the "Paleocene", i.e. the epoch adjacent to the Cretaceous. To have meet any cavemen they'd have had to survive through the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene all the way to the Pleistocene era. That would still be around 60 million years.
I also highly doubt cavemen (or cavewomen for that matter) had the skill or technology to time travel back to the Paleocene. Afaik only genetically enhanced laboratory mice can do that.
I was so enthusiastic when I read about android, being open source, free as is speech etc.. But then, the more I read and saw about the actual products the more I was whipped back into line, the coup de grace obviously being the very non-free-as-in-speech decision to sell it only through T-Mobile (and whatever that entails), just like previously the iPhone, (which Android phones where supposed to show how we do things in the "free" world).
So after all this I decided for Nokia's 5800XM (cheaper now), which seems to do it just right. I am not bound to a specific carrier and added to that there was the recent announcement that they'll make the Symbian OS open source. I've installed Python on it (which has a very alive developer community) and now have easy direct access to the Bluetooth functions, phonebook, camera, music player, GPS etc.
Add to that an easily replaceable 1320 mAh battery (very useful especially when excessively using the internal GPS:p), Wifi and a slot for 16GB microSDs... - open source/Python and kick-ass hardware, what more could one want from a phone?
I've posted it before and I'll post it again (seems most people still don't know about it): there is a fork from the Chromium project that not only does away with all the "phoning home features" including the annoying background-lurking installer, it also allows for an ad-blocker (looking at the forums, several different ones are available apparently, though I'm using the hosts file myself):
Get it here
They also got a "portable" version that requires no installation and stores all settings in the Iron folder (which I'm using).
Ok I wasn't clear. From Wikipedia: "The Bundeswehr has 200,500 professional soldiers, 55,000 18-25 year-old conscripts who serve for at least nine months under current rules [4], and 2,500 active reservists at any given time."
So 20% of the soldiers are still obtained from the "normal" population (and some of them will stay to become professional soldiers).
Jokes aside though, one of the things the Germans learned from WWII was not to have an army only consisting of professional soldiers, who live in their own bubble and are shielded from contact with the 'normal' people (e.g. simply by just living in army bases). That way it is much easier to control them and give them orders normal people would not follow so blindly.
The current Bundeswehr consists of people being drafted from the normal population.
Even if they (and by that I mean any corporation or institution) are not evil, what makes you think they will not turn evil some time in the future (after you have given them all your data)?
Power structures need supervision in order so not turn evil. Power monopolies tend to get rid of any checks that were initially imposed on them and over the long run there is not much there to keep them from putting their goals before the goals of others. As long as these goals don't diverge too much there's no apparent problem, but in time that will change and then have a guess who can exert more power to attain their goals.
That was what, 8 players max? - We need this on a massive scale! 8-16 players per squadron, 5-10 squadrons per wave, dozens of Calamari cruisers, Star Destroyers, each of them with players sitting in there having special functions like ship defense, reconnaissance, mission briefing, fighter deployment etc.
Hell, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter didn't even let two or three players sit together in bigger ships like the Millennium Falcon (one pilot, two gunners as seen in the movies) - a total let down of a multiplayer game!
We are still waiting for a real simulation of the Star Wars space battles. While I really liked all of the Lucas Arts simulations for the PC to date one thing that nagged me was the excruciatingly slow burst rate, nothing like the movies! (The only game that kind of got it right was Rebel Assault, but that was more like an interactive movie than a simulation.)
Some devs might say players nowadays don't play games with joysticks anymore, but bring out a good space simulator and people will go out in droves and buy joysticks just for this game, even more so if it's Star Wars (tm).
We could test different strategies attacking the first and second Death star - of course in both cases in the movies the rebels were just extremely lucky and in a real simulation the coordinators of the imperial forces will not be as "over-confident". Still it would be interesting to have the rebels figure out what kind of weaknesses could be exploited. There are definitely strategic design flaws at least in the first Death star and the imperial battle plan.
The films give us many scenarios to replay, such as the imperial attack on Hoth with the AT-ATs, maybe even mix in a little infantry action... Though I'm not sure if I wanted to play an Ewok in the Battle of Endor.;)
There is such a host of details in the movies that the game could use - this is what so many Star Wars fans are longing for! Not the ability to play Wookie's third removed step-brother's cousin..
The dudes over at the Iron project (aka "tinfoil fork":p) developed an ad blocker for Chromium - their forum announcement translated to English here.
For those who don't know about Iron - apart from disabling all phoning home features, this version is also based on more recent Chromium (the open source project behind the browser) builds than Chrome itself. They also have a "portable" version which requires no installation at all.
Hmm, I see your point. Apparently ACPI industry support is not where it should be.
I guess if it's impossible to go to the shop and test it beforehand there's no way of knowing. That being said, the hardware that I use (Intel/Asus mainboards, nvidia/ati/amd/onboard vga, notebooks by Fujitsu) has had no issues, with one exception which was a buggy nvidia vga driver remedied by using another driver version.
But I agree - an ACPI whitelist showing all supported hardware for the current OSes would be nice. Of course it would be even nicer if people would just adhere to the standard;)
Sorry, my bad. But my point still stands - seeing as basically the rest of the world including US financial markets were working it kind of destroys their whole 'urgency argument'.
This situation is so absurd. The supporters act as if this thing is so urgent and there is no alternative, but then they take their time by taking off due to a Jewish holiday that not even a lot of Jews celebrate..
Then they come back and basically vote on the same bill again, but this time a few house members take the bait and it passes. Some of the amendments being totally weird and not really having anything to do with "bailing out" Wallstreet, such as subsidizing rum, wool research and wooden arrows for children?!? I'm not making this shit up!
Then we have McCain sitting in a interview riling against the pork barreling and at the same time taking credit for convincing his Republican buddies to back this "sweetened" bailout plan.
And the really ironic thing is that we have old-school (i.e. fiscally conservative) Republicans opposing the bill as well as far left dudes like Kucinich. Not to mention Paulson's conflict of interest in this whole mess.
Why not simply use sleep or hibernation (bind i to the power button)? All modern hardware/OSes support it. No need to load all drivers and background apps every single time. Actually hibernation saves time and energy due to shorter boot times.
Just be sure not to use crappy software/hardware that doesn't support it.
According to the German webpage there are several significant improvements:
* unlike the current Chrome beta it uses the newest Webkit version of the current Chromium build
* it does not generate a unique ID of every client for use by Google
* no installation timestamp ill be generated for google
* no "suggest feature" that phones home to google (for help) what you type into the address bar
* will not phone home to google in case you mistyped a URL
* no phoning home for error reporting
* does not send RLZ tracking info to google, e.g. about when and where Chrome was downloaded
* NO frickin updater that installs itself as a startup app to run in the background
* does not load google homepage in background when the browser is loaded
Of course they provide the source code for your own tinkering as well, just don't hammer the poor fellas (more than they already get hammered right now;)) as according to their page their current revenue only comes from the ads on the page and hopefully some donations by people showing their appreciation of their work.
As already mentioned the gclient tool is open source. Since its written in Python its distributed as source code anyway and the code is under the Apache 2.0 licence.
As for 'hope it produced a working binary', I compile Chromium for the first time from SVN yesterday without any hitch whatsoever. And yes, my binaries are online.
Might I ask where? Though you might get flooded by slashdotters who read this.. On the other hand your build should produce the same binaries one of the versions at this link posted by Orbis above, so they could just hop over to there.
Just out of curiosity how long did it take to compile?
Cool, I'd mod you up if i could! - Now we need just somebody to whip up a patch for chrome that blocks all superfluous ads and submit it to that site:D
The Chrome browser binary you can download is *based* on the Chromium source code, which is free (see http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instructions-windows on instructions how to compile). The Chrome browser itself is NOT under the BSD license. I was quite disappointed when I realized that. - Just because they say "open source" somewhere doesn't make the Chrome browser itself open source.
And what's this "installer" program to download the browser for you, why not just give us a download link to the browser itself? Furthermore, the browser will also *update* anytime it feels like it. Afaik there's no way to deactivate this *feature*.
I'd love to see a site dedicated to compiling daily builds of the Chromium source code, maybe through in some forks by private fiddlers, because right now following the instructions from the link requires you to use a non open source tool "gclient" to download about 500MB of source and then compile it using M$ Visual Studio - and then hope it produces a working binary (oh, and have the time for this). So far I couldn't find anyone doing this and putting the binaries online yet - not even using google;)
It's good that you brought Star Wars into this faith discussion. Personally I believe the truly inspired version in fact the Backstroke of the West version of the holy text.
Obviously some nutheads will claim that it has been translated into Chinese and then into English or some such, but that simply to further their agenda to prove that nothing like the event in Star Wars ever happened. They are apostates or trolls and there is no hope for them.
Just as an example that only this version is truly divinely inspired: in EpIII 03:08 nothing sums up more accurately Vader's emotional state than when he states "Do not want". Some may claim that the supposedly "original" version in EpIII 02:08 would have him cry out "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" instead, but anyone with half a brain could immediately tell how ridiculous that would have been.
Does anyone have any benchmark comparisons between HDDs and SSDs on Linux? In fact I'd love to see a showdown of common tasks performed between the current OSes (WinXP, Vista, Server versions, Ubuntu, openSuse, Slackware etc.) on different system configurations to see who can utilize current tech best.
Also what ever happened to "Intel Turbo Memory" (which is basically an SSD "light", i.e. a miny buffer of Flash memory to cache frequently accessed files). It seems right now *only* Vista supports it, even though it is part of many notebooks nowadays and the technology was introduced nearly 3 years ago!
I really wished Linux could lead in this respect and show others how it's done. Warrios of the OS community: Vista has crippled the M$ giant momentarily, but you still have to strike him down through your own innovations!
Yes, it was a joke, but I still want to point out that "social hacking/engineering" and bribing/collusion are two very opposite things. While one employs some level of sophistication and utilizes positive human attributes such as intelligence and wit the other simply goes for the lowest common denominator and exploits negative human attributes such as greed and vanity.
Of course, we slashdotters, over long years of rigorous training, have built an immunity to goatse. - But what if the thief isn't immune himself? Perhaps being a fellow slashdotter, or, god forbid - even a slashdot moderator??!?;)
Slashdot Mirror
A very nice open source app, available through the Ubuntu/Debian repositories. The author's page even got a windows version.
It supports multi-core CPUs, i.e. if you really want to tax each of your CPU's core to the limit, just use the app to browse through the mandelbrot set. It also supports a 3D extrapolation of the 2D set (OpenGL and software).
Strangely enough it doesn't seem all that popular, as the forum doesn't seem all that populated..
First of all, I really like Opera, I use it all the time for browsing and email alongside Firefox and Iron, and will continue using it as a web browser.
So I was thrilled to read about this new feature in 10 beta version, downloaded it and installed it on a test system. Turns out if you want to use the new feature you'll have to register with their "network". Sorry, but my privacy is worth a little more than the convenience that this new feature provides over the current apps used for the functions it's supposed to cover.
I guess we'll need to wait for Google Wave to come around (brought to you by the creators of google maps) - just saw this video and was very impressed. It lets you upload pics, messages etc. as if you had a webserver, but is far more interactive. If you run your own server node (and encrypt your data) there shouldn't be any security or privacy concerns either, because you can decide what data gets out to third parties (incl. Google). Best of all it's open source using open standards - anyone can write extensions or fork.
So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm...
Not really. It says they made it to the "Paleocene", i.e. the epoch adjacent to the Cretaceous. To have meet any cavemen they'd have had to survive through the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene all the way to the Pleistocene era. That would still be around 60 million years.
I also highly doubt cavemen (or cavewomen for that matter) had the skill or technology to time travel back to the Paleocene. Afaik only genetically enhanced laboratory mice can do that.
I was so enthusiastic when I read about android, being open source, free as is speech etc.. But then, the more I read and saw about the actual products the more I was whipped back into line, the coup de grace obviously being the very non-free-as-in-speech decision to sell it only through T-Mobile (and whatever that entails), just like previously the iPhone, (which Android phones where supposed to show how we do things in the "free" world).
:p), Wifi and a slot for 16GB microSDs... - open source/Python and kick-ass hardware, what more could one want from a phone?
So after all this I decided for Nokia's 5800XM (cheaper now), which seems to do it just right. I am not bound to a specific carrier and added to that there was the recent announcement that they'll make the Symbian OS open source. I've installed Python on it (which has a very alive developer community) and now have easy direct access to the Bluetooth functions, phonebook, camera, music player, GPS etc.
Add to that an easily replaceable 1320 mAh battery (very useful especially when excessively using the internal GPS
I've posted it before and I'll post it again (seems most people still don't know about it): there is a fork from the Chromium project that not only does away with all the "phoning home features" including the annoying background-lurking installer, it also allows for an ad-blocker (looking at the forums, several different ones are available apparently, though I'm using the hosts file myself): Get it here
They also got a "portable" version that requires no installation and stores all settings in the Iron folder (which I'm using).
The source code is also available.
Ok I wasn't clear. From Wikipedia: "The Bundeswehr has 200,500 professional soldiers, 55,000 18-25 year-old conscripts who serve for at least nine months under current rules [4], and 2,500 active reservists at any given time." So 20% of the soldiers are still obtained from the "normal" population (and some of them will stay to become professional soldiers).
It's the German Army.
Now I'll yield the floor for Godwin.
Grandparent was as ignorant as a Nazi.. ;)
Jokes aside though, one of the things the Germans learned from WWII was not to have an army only consisting of professional soldiers, who live in their own bubble and are shielded from contact with the 'normal' people (e.g. simply by just living in army bases). That way it is much easier to control them and give them orders normal people would not follow so blindly.
The current Bundeswehr consists of people being drafted from the normal population.
It's not so hard to protect yourself from thermo-nuclear war: Duck and cover!
Even if they (and by that I mean any corporation or institution) are not evil, what makes you think they will not turn evil some time in the future (after you have given them all your data)?
Power structures need supervision in order so not turn evil. Power monopolies tend to get rid of any checks that were initially imposed on them and over the long run there is not much there to keep them from putting their goals before the goals of others. As long as these goals don't diverge too much there's no apparent problem, but in time that will change and then have a guess who can exert more power to attain their goals.
That was what, 8 players max? - We need this on a massive scale! 8-16 players per squadron, 5-10 squadrons per wave, dozens of Calamari cruisers, Star Destroyers, each of them with players sitting in there having special functions like ship defense, reconnaissance, mission briefing, fighter deployment etc.
Hell, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter didn't even let two or three players sit together in bigger ships like the Millennium Falcon (one pilot, two gunners as seen in the movies) - a total let down of a multiplayer game!
We are still waiting for a real simulation of the Star Wars space battles. While I really liked all of the Lucas Arts simulations for the PC to date one thing that nagged me was the excruciatingly slow burst rate, nothing like the movies! (The only game that kind of got it right was Rebel Assault, but that was more like an interactive movie than a simulation.)
Some devs might say players nowadays don't play games with joysticks anymore, but bring out a good space simulator and people will go out in droves and buy joysticks just for this game, even more so if it's Star Wars (tm).
Exactly! I just wanted to post this very message.
;)
We could test different strategies attacking the first and second Death star - of course in both cases in the movies the rebels were just extremely lucky and in a real simulation the coordinators of the imperial forces will not be as "over-confident". Still it would be interesting to have the rebels figure out what kind of weaknesses could be exploited. There are definitely strategic design flaws at least in the first Death star and the imperial battle plan.
The films give us many scenarios to replay, such as the imperial attack on Hoth with the AT-ATs, maybe even mix in a little infantry action... Though I'm not sure if I wanted to play an Ewok in the Battle of Endor.
There is such a host of details in the movies that the game could use - this is what so many Star Wars fans are longing for! Not the ability to play Wookie's third removed step-brother's cousin..
The dudes over at the Iron project (aka "tinfoil fork" :p) developed an ad blocker for Chromium - their forum announcement translated to English here.
For those who don't know about Iron - apart from disabling all phoning home features, this version is also based on more recent Chromium (the open source project behind the browser) builds than Chrome itself. They also have a "portable" version which requires no installation at all.
Download the browser here.
Hmm, I see your point. Apparently ACPI industry support is not where it should be.
;)
I guess if it's impossible to go to the shop and test it beforehand there's no way of knowing. That being said, the hardware that I use (Intel/Asus mainboards, nvidia/ati/amd/onboard vga, notebooks by Fujitsu) has had no issues, with one exception which was a buggy nvidia vga driver remedied by using another driver version.
But I agree - an ACPI whitelist showing all supported hardware for the current OSes would be nice. Of course it would be even nicer if people would just adhere to the standard
Sorry, my bad. But my point still stands - seeing as basically the rest of the world including US financial markets were working it kind of destroys their whole 'urgency argument'.
This situation is so absurd. The supporters act as if this thing is so urgent and there is no alternative, but then they take their time by taking off due to a Jewish holiday that not even a lot of Jews celebrate..
Then they come back and basically vote on the same bill again, but this time a few house members take the bait and it passes. Some of the amendments being totally weird and not really having anything to do with "bailing out" Wallstreet, such as subsidizing rum, wool research and wooden arrows for children?!? I'm not making this shit up!
Then we have McCain sitting in a interview riling against the pork barreling and at the same time taking credit for convincing his Republican buddies to back this "sweetened" bailout plan.
And the really ironic thing is that we have old-school (i.e. fiscally conservative) Republicans opposing the bill as well as far left dudes like Kucinich. Not to mention Paulson's conflict of interest in this whole mess.
Why not simply use sleep or hibernation (bind i to the power button)? All modern hardware/OSes support it. No need to load all drivers and background apps every single time. Actually hibernation saves time and energy due to shorter boot times.
Just be sure not to use crappy software/hardware that doesn't support it.
Just noticed that the source code is hosted on rapidshare - so hammer away and compile ;)
* unlike the current Chrome beta it uses the newest Webkit version of the current Chromium build
* it does not generate a unique ID of every client for use by Google
* no installation timestamp ill be generated for google
* no "suggest feature" that phones home to google (for help) what you type into the address bar
* will not phone home to google in case you mistyped a URL
* no phoning home for error reporting
* does not send RLZ tracking info to google, e.g. about when and where Chrome was downloaded
* NO frickin updater that installs itself as a startup app to run in the background
* does not load google homepage in background when the browser is loaded
Of course they provide the source code for your own tinkering as well, just don't hammer the poor fellas (more than they already get hammered right now ;)) as according to their page their current revenue only comes from the ads on the page and hopefully some donations by people showing their appreciation of their work.
As already mentioned the gclient tool is open source. Since its written in Python its distributed as source code anyway and the code is under the Apache 2.0 licence.
As for 'hope it produced a working binary', I compile Chromium for the first time from SVN yesterday without any hitch whatsoever. And yes, my binaries are online.
Might I ask where? Though you might get flooded by slashdotters who read this.. On the other hand your build should produce the same binaries one of the versions at this link posted by Orbis above, so they could just hop over to there.
Just out of curiosity how long did it take to compile?
Cool, I'd mod you up if i could! - Now we need just somebody to whip up a patch for chrome that blocks all superfluous ads and submit it to that site :D
Thanks for the info.
The Chrome browser binary you can download is *based* on the Chromium source code, which is free (see http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instructions-windows on instructions how to compile). The Chrome browser itself is NOT under the BSD license. I was quite disappointed when I realized that. - Just because they say "open source" somewhere doesn't make the Chrome browser itself open source.
;)
And what's this "installer" program to download the browser for you, why not just give us a download link to the browser itself? Furthermore, the browser will also *update* anytime it feels like it. Afaik there's no way to deactivate this *feature*.
I'd love to see a site dedicated to compiling daily builds of the Chromium source code, maybe through in some forks by private fiddlers, because right now following the instructions from the link requires you to use a non open source tool "gclient" to download about 500MB of source and then compile it using M$ Visual Studio - and then hope it produces a working binary (oh, and have the time for this). So far I couldn't find anyone doing this and putting the binaries online yet - not even using google
It's good that you brought Star Wars into this faith discussion. Personally I believe the truly inspired version in fact the Backstroke of the West version of the holy text.
Obviously some nutheads will claim that it has been translated into Chinese and then into English or some such, but that simply to further their agenda to prove that nothing like the event in Star Wars ever happened. They are apostates or trolls and there is no hope for them.
Just as an example that only this version is truly divinely inspired: in EpIII 03:08 nothing sums up more accurately Vader's emotional state than when he states "Do not want". Some may claim that the supposedly "original" version in EpIII 02:08 would have him cry out "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" instead, but anyone with half a brain could immediately tell how ridiculous that would have been.
Does anyone have any benchmark comparisons between HDDs and SSDs on Linux? In fact I'd love to see a showdown of common tasks performed between the current OSes (WinXP, Vista, Server versions, Ubuntu, openSuse, Slackware etc.) on different system configurations to see who can utilize current tech best.
Also what ever happened to "Intel Turbo Memory" (which is basically an SSD "light", i.e. a miny buffer of Flash memory to cache frequently accessed files). It seems right now *only* Vista supports it, even though it is part of many notebooks nowadays and the technology was introduced nearly 3 years ago!
I really wished Linux could lead in this respect and show others how it's done. Warrios of the OS community: Vista has crippled the M$ giant momentarily, but you still have to strike him down through your own innovations!
Yes, it was a joke, but I still want to point out that "social hacking/engineering" and bribing/collusion are two very opposite things. While one employs some level of sophistication and utilizes positive human attributes such as intelligence and wit the other simply goes for the lowest common denominator and exploits negative human attributes such as greed and vanity.
Of course, we slashdotters, over long years of rigorous training, have built an immunity to goatse. - But what if the thief isn't immune himself? Perhaps being a fellow slashdotter, or, god forbid - even a slashdot moderator??!? ;)