O | S | D | N NEWSLETTER December 12, 2002 DEVELOPER SERIES
The 'Developer Series' Newsletter is developed to bring Open Source related content to a user with a focus for development with Open Source If you'd like to receive more content relating to Open Source subscribe at http://www.osdn.com/newsletters/ ============================================================== Sponsored by Thinkgeek http://www.ThinkGeek.com/ ============================================================== Thinkgeek Cube Fodder: Tangle Desktop Toy http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/fun-stuff/5a38.shtml Gadgets: Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/5a3c.shtml Gadgets: Key Katcher http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/5a05.shtml Tshirts: Kids: newbie http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/apparel/59cc.shtml Caffeine: Energy Gum http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/caffeine/5a35.shtml Gadgets: Super Bright GREEN Laser Pointer! http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/5a1d.shtml Gadgets: SoundBug - Turns Glossy Surfaces Into Speakers! http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/5a15.shtml Tshirts: It Must Be User Error http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/apparel/59fe.shtml Gadgets: Key Katcher Privacy Device http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/5a05.shtml Gadgets: Mini Wireless Color Video Cam (for RC rovers) http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/fun-stuff/59eb.shtml Cube Goodies: Levitron Desktop Levitation Toy http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/fun-stuff/59a9.shtml Tshirts: Bug Off, I'm On My Break http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/apparel/5a00.shtml Watches: onHand PC Watch http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/5a1a.shtml Caffeine: Hyperglow Caffeinated Beer http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/beer.shtml Gadgets: Desktop Zero Point Infinite Power Generator http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/zero.shtml Cube Fodder: New Desktop Mini Fridge/Warmer http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/fun-stuff/5991.shtml Mods: New Lian-LIi Cases http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/cases-mods.shtml Cube Fodder: LED Binary Clock http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/fun-stuff/59e0.shtml Cube Fodder: Rogers Connection Magnetic Set http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/fun-stuff/59b4.shtml Caffeine: Warp Mints In Cinnamon Flavor http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/caffeine/59de.shtml Sourceforge BZFlag 1.7g0 released http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233929 OpenSource OpenGL Multiplayer Multiplatform battlezone capture the flag. World file caching, team killers die, tank labels on roaming, new GUI options including a smaller display for slow systems (set opacity all the way up), and much more! Sixth release of ReAIM http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233848 ReAIM is an AOL Instant Messenger Proxy for iptables-based firewalls. It allows direct connections to be made to hosts behind an address-translating firewall. MSN and Windows Messenger are also supported. It has been quite a while, but with the fixes to Messenger transfers, and the new support for NetBSD, it seemed like time to cut the next release. IMPORTANT: Please be aware that you have to add a new range of ports to your firewall rules for direct connections to work with this release. Thank you to everyone for your emails with bug reports, thanks and for testing out changes for me. NSIS 2 beta 0 released http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233845 The first beta version of NSIS 2, the new version of the popular win32 installer/uninstaller system is ready. NSIS 2 supports highly customized user interfaces, multiple languages, easy usage of plugins and more. And it's even smaller than before, with an overhead of only 34KB. A lot of time has passed from the release of Alpha 7, but not even a second of it was for slacking around. New features were constantly added, tons of bugs fixed. All was done to make NSIS quicker, smaller, easier and more powerful. This release, unlike earlier alphas is no longer an unofficial modification. As of Beta 0 this is an official beta as we work correspondingly with Justin Frankel, the original author of NSIS. The main changes from Alpha 7 are: * Easier Modern User Interface with lots of new features * New paging system which makes is easier to add custom pages to your installer * New multilingual user strings * Lots of new and improved plug-ins which you can use to download files from the internet, display additional graphics, run console programs and more! * Over 15 new translations * New documentation format seahorse2-0.4.0 released http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233851 Seahorse is a Gnome front end for GnuPG. It is a tool for secure communications and data storage. Data encryption and digital signature creation can easily be performed through a GUI, and Key Management operations also can be performed. This release just contains minor updates to 0.3.7, but more importantly is the beginning of the move to seahorse-0.6.0. Please use and test and send us any bug reports. Planned features for seahorse-0.6.0 are a file manager, basic key editing, and support for key servers. Major ScummVM update - 0.3.0 released http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233861 ScummVM, the premier (eg, only) interpreter/emulator designed specifically for LucasArts (tm) and AdventureSoft (tm) games, has reached a new major version - 0.3.0. This release includes major bugfixes, and new support for several games. New game support includes: The Dig, Simon the Sorcerer 2, and Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade... Downloads, Release Notes and more info can be found on our homepage, at http://www.scummvm.org/ bogofilter-0.9.1.1 http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233454 This is a bug fix release with updated documentation and a minimum of code changes. The bogofilter package implements a fast Bayesian spam filter along the lines suggested by Paul Graham in his article "A Plan For Spam" . It is written in C. Supported platforms: Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and OS X. samba-vscan 0.3.1 released http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233291 This new release provides some smaller bug fixes, a quarantine feature and virus notification via windows message service. samba-vscan is a proof-of-concept module for Samba, which uses the VFS (virtual file system) features of Samba 2.2.x/3.0 alphaX to provide on-access virus scanning. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients. DiddleBug v.2.53 released http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233433 DiddleBug is a sketching/"Notepad"-style application for PalmOS. This release includes a full-screen mode, bugfixes, and compatibility fixes for PalmOS 5. What's new in 2.53? ============= * new fullscreen mode without toolbar * added "priorities" for notes (also transfered to To Do) * fixed mysterious crash when alarms add up without being acknowledged * "Lock" doesn't affect all records any more in detailed thumbnail list * separate setting for hardbuttons and menu/icon for "Create after last" * compatibility fixes for PalmOS 5 Download DiddleBug 2.53 from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/diddlebug/DiddleBug-2.53.zip SCons 0.09 is now available http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233583 SCons alpha release 0.09 is now available for download. SCons is a software construction tool (build tool, substitute for Make) implemented in Python, based on the winning design in the Software Carpentry build tool competition (in turn based on the Cons build tool). IMPORTANT: Release 0.09 contains the following interface changes: - The SetCommandHandler() function has been superceded by new SPAWN, SHELL and ESCAPE construction variables. - SCons now exits with an error message if any source or implicit dependency files for a target do not exist and have no Builder. - The 'lib' tool (the Microsoft library archiver) has had its name changed to 'mslib'. This release adds the following features: - A new Repository() method and -Y command-line option support building from source or target files in common repositories. - A new Prepend() Environment method appends values to the beginning of construction variables. - Support for the Intel Fortran Compiler (ifl.exe) has been added. - New messages tell when SCons is "Reading SConscript files ...," "done reading SConscript files," "Building targets," and "done building targets." A new -Q option supresses these. - Shared-object prefixes and suffixes may be specified independently usng new $SHOBJPREFIX and $SHOBJSUFFIX construction variables. - A new ParseConfig() command supports modifying an environment based on parsing output from a *-config command. - New EnsurePythonVersion() and EnsureSConsVersion() functions. - SCons now checks dynamically for the existence of utilities with which to initialize Environments by default. - SCons now supports Microsoft VC++ precompiled header (.pch) files, debugger (.pdb) files, and resource (.rc) files. - The File() and Dir() methods can now take a path-name string as the starting directory. - A new Options() object makes it easier to extend SCons' command- line arguments. - A new SetContentSignatureType() function allows use of file timestamps instead of MD5 signatures. The following fixes have been added: - Construction variable substition on scanner directories (in CPPPATH, F77PATH, LIBPATH, etc.) is now supported. - $$ in a string is now passed through as $. - File names and command lines with spaces and other odd characters are now fully supported. - The "lib" Tool (Microsoft library archiver) now supports long command lines. - Auto-deduced target file names now end up in the same directory as their source files. - Source files specified on the command line are no longer removed. - Using Default() with the -U option now fails gracefully. - SCons no longer unlinks files in certain situations when the -n option is used. - SCons now issues a warning when -c can't remove a target. - File names like '#/../foo' are now interpreted correctly on Win32 systems. - SCons now supplies an error message if there are no command-line or Default() targets specified. - The $ASPPCOM variable has been fixed for the GNU assembler. - The -U option is now properly case-insensitive on Win32 systems. - Using the -j option with multiple targets is now more robust. - SCons now handles a corrupt .sconsign file robustly. - Access and modification times of files in a BuildDir now match the corresponding source file, even without hard links. - Dependencies now propogate succesfully through Alias targets. - Fix unnecessary rebuilds cased by differently-ordered targets on case-insensitive systems. - Dependency scans when $LIBS is overridden now work properly. - Build errors in a list of build commands no longer cause the display of an overly-verbose stack trace. Performance has been improved as follows: - Unnecessary Scanner calls have been eliminated when a file doesn't exist. - The $_CPPINCFLAGS, $_F77INCFLAGS, $_LIBFLAGS and $_LIBDIRFLAGS variables are now generated on-demand, not with every command invocation. - Command execution overhead has been reduced by using the Python os.sytem() function instead of fork() and exec(). The following changes have been made to the SCons packaging: - New scons-local packages make it easy to ship SCons as a stand-alone build tool in other software packages. The documentation has been improved: - Documented the fact that Builder calls return Node objects. - Documented all new features, of course... Thanks to Chad Austin, Matt Balvin, Steve Leblanc, Jeff Petkau and sam th for their contributions to this release. Special thanks to Charles Crain for heavy work on the Repository feature, and Anthony Roach for a tremendous number of bug fixes and other features. FileZilla 2.1.3 released http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=233608 Another version of FileZilla has been released. New in this version: Speed limits. FileZilla is a fast FTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server. Here's the complete list of changes: New features: - added Speed Limit settings (written by Roman Ruckschloss) - SiteManager can be configures to not expand folder on start and to sort folders before sites (written by Jonathon Merz) - added dropdown menu to Sitemanager button in toolbar (written by Roman Ruckschloss) - added Traditional Chinese language files - added EPLF directory listing parser Fixes and improvements: - updated documentation - fixed parsing of paths containing spaces with quickconnect - fixed crash with very long filenames (>256 chars) - horizontal scrolling in message log did not work correctly - slightly improved directory listing parsing speed - fixed some interface glitches and rare crashes Slashdot Tim O'Reilly Says Piracy is Progressive Taxation http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/12/0712207 [0]Idmat writes "In Tim's latest [1]opus, he reflects on the lessons of his experience as a publisher: (1) Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy, (2) Piracy is progressive taxation; (3) Customers want to do the right thing, if they can; (4)Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy; (5) File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers; (6)"Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service; and finally, courtesy of Larry Wall, (7)There's more than one way to do it. " Links 0. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 1. http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2002/12/11/piracy.html 50 Year Old Computer Still Going http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/12/0714248 [0]The Angry Mick writes "[1]Geek.com is running a [2]blurb on a 50 year old CSIRAC computer that is apparently still functional, if lurking in an Australian museum. Sporting a whopping 2K of RAM and screaming along at a blistering 300 khz(!) it proves the adage that they really don't make 'em like they used to . . ." Yes, because if they did, they'd be really, really slow. Links 0. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 1. http://www.geek.com/ 2. http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Dec/bch20021210017696.htm What MorphOS Is All About http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/2128203 Gentu writes "Genesi released today an extensive [0]feature list of [1]MorphOS, the pre-emptively multi-tasking operating system for PPC. MorphOS/Pegasos is a brand new platform (the last full OS+HW platform released was 7 years ago with Be's BeBox) so it is very modern and it has support for 3D cards, USB, SMP while it also features partial Amiga application binary compatibility! Additionally, OSNews today [2]features an interview with the Eclipsis Project Manager, Nicholas Blachford, about MorphOS, and they include three exclusive screenshots of the OS." Links 0. http://www.blachford.info/morphos/ 1. http://www.morphos.net/ 2. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2345 Keyboarding Love Or Keyboarding Pain http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/2041248 [0]flyingember writes "Over on Ars, they've done the ultimate [1]review for anyone who sits at a computer more than someone on AOL does, the [2]IMAK Smart Gloves. These gloves are supposed to both prevent and help ease pain associated with conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Read it to see if our code monkey enjoys the gloves or if they're just something for him to throw at the gawking crowd." Links 0. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 1. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/smartglove/smartglove-1.html 2. http://www.imakproducts.com/products/smart_glove.htm Uprated "10-ton" Ariane 5 Fails http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/233233 Soft writes "The latest version of the European [0]Ariane 5 booster ("ESC-A") has [1]failed on its first launch. Liftoff was good up to booster separation but the core stage shut down one minute afterwards or so. The rocket was supposed to lift ten metric tons (22,000 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit, versus 6.7 for the previous Ariane 5G (and 5 and 5.3 for the latest Atlas 5 and Delta 4). Arianespace planned to retire its other launchers (Ariane 4, Ariane 5G) in favor of Ariane 5 ESC-A. Next launch, of space probe [2]Rosetta, was due in mid-January." Links 0. http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ariane5.htm 1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2565387.stm 2. http://sci.esa.int/app/jps/export/www/index.cfm Slashback: Grids, Netscape, AMD http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/2150223 Slashback tonight (is this number 200 already?) brings a few updates and amplifications on grid computing and AMD's plans vis a vis Intel. Also, it seems that some of the best features of Mozilla have finally infiltrated the world of Netscape. Read on the for the details. Has the Quality of Consumer Electronics Declined? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/222201 [0]NewtonsLaw asks: "With Christmas coming up I dare say that lots of people are going to spend big bucks on consumer electronics in the next few weeks. [1]This column asks an interesting question -- are consumer electronics manufacturers sacrificing quality and reliability for an endless list of features? If you're like me, you've probably got a TV, VCR or other appliance you bought over 5 years ago which is still going strong -- but much of the stuff you've bought in the past 2-3 years is already giving trouble. What's more, it seems to be the big-name manufacturers such as Sony who are most affected by this decline in standards. I'd love to hear the experiences of other Slashdot readers in an effort to get as many data-points as possible. Are you better off buying a $49 DVD player on the expectation that it will only last a year or so -- or do lay out two or three times that amount something made by a big-name manufacturer in the (possibly vain) hope it will provide superior performance and last longer?" Links 0. http://aardvark.co.nz/contact/ 1. http://aardvark.co.nz/daily/2002/1211.shtml Apple Hawks Madonna iPods http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/197256 [0]danamania writes "Apple's latest promotion is a gimmick with [1]Madonna, [2]Tony Hawk or [3]Beck's signature, or a [4]No Doubt logo, on an iPod. It seems Apple's really pushing the iPod as a too-cool fashion accessory as much as a too-cooler MP3 player... is Maddie's signature worth an extra USD49 over the standard iPod?" Instead of $50 for the engraved signature, you can spend $20 to print "Madonna's Signature" in beautiful Helvetica. Links 0. http://www.danamania.com/ 1. http://www.apple.com/promo/ipod/madonna.html 2. http://www.apple.com/promo/ipod/tonyhawk.html 3. http://www.apple.com/promo/ipod/beck.html 4. http://www.apple.com/promo/ipod/nodoubt.html Russia's Role in the ISS in Trouble http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/1754253 [0]Uhh_Duh writes "cnn.com is reporting that the Russian space program has [1]fallen on hard times and is no longer capable of launching independent missions due to budget problems. The article touches on the fact that their annual funding is about 309 million versus the U.S. budget of 15 billion. They've also announced that they will not be meeting most of their future deliverables for the international space station." (corrected, the title originally said "IIS" instead of "ISS) Links 0. http://www.glug.com 1. http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/12/11/russia.decline.ap/ RPG Codex - Articles On Video Game Design http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/1751252 chadeo writes "Ok all you arm chair game developers, listen up. Over at [0]RPG Codex there are currently 4 articles, written by professionals in the industry, on RPG design. There is [1]A Christmas lesson in CRPG design by [2]Timothy Cain, [3]Thoughts on RPG development by [2]Leon Boyarsky, [4]Hand of Gosh Darn Good Design by [5]Chris Taylor, and [6]Treatise on Combat to Pink Floyd by [7]Gareth Davies. All of them are a great read, and you can join in the discussion with the authors and see how your ideas stack up. What do you think is the key to a great RPG?" Links 0. http://www.rpgcodex.com/ 1. http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=16 2. http://www.troikagames.com/ 3. http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=19 4. http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=20 5. http://www.universalinteractive.com/ 6. http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=21 7. http://www.microforte.com/ Freshmeat BioCoRE 20021209 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106247/ BioCoRE is a collaborative work environment for biomedical research, research management, and training. It offers scientists (working together or alone) a seamless interface to a broad range of local and remote technologies such as discipline-specific and general tools, data, and visualization solutions. It features powerful yet easy-to-use tools, among them co-authoring papers and other documents, running applications on supercomputers, sharing molecular visualization over the Internet, notifying project team members of recent project changes by email, chatting, keeping a lab book, and other practical features. Borges Documents Management System 0.7.7 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106213/ Borges is an open-source project aimed at XML-aware documentation projects which care about internationalisation, reusable contents, teamwork, etc. The system currently support the DocBook DTD. Caiviar 0.3.3 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106250/ Caiviar is a programming interface for creating interactive voice response (IVR) applications using CAPI. It has support for Barge In, Text2Speech, 3 Party Conference, G3 Fax, etc. It supports multithreading. Cell Phone SMS AIM 1.63 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106217/ Cell Phone SMS AIM uses the Net::AIM Perl module, signs on a screen name, and routes messages to your cell phone via SMS. It requires lynx. It also supports pagers. CheckBook Tracker 0.9.5 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106187/ In order to leave Windows behind most people need a fully-functional money management program. CheckBook Tracker seeks to solve that problem. It has the feel and features of packages like Microsoft Money without requiring the user to build their own sources or find an RPM for their distribution. Its features include Import / Export QIF files straight from Money or Quicken, autocomplete, check printing, split transactions, balance forecasts and more. curlpp 0.2.0 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106251/ curlpp is a C++ wrapper for libcurl. Its use is to simplify the use of libcurl, and allow it to be used with less effort. CVS Statistics Generator 5.0 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106205/ Cvstat is a Perl script which reads information from the 'cvs log' command's output and generates some statistics and prints them in HTML, for display on the Web. DataVision 0.5.5 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106192/ DataVision is a reporting tool similar to Crystal Reports, written in Java. It supports multiple data sources (JDBC, text files) and output formats (HTML, XML, PDF, LaTeX, comma- and tab-separated data files, and DocBook). It lets you design reports with a drag-and-drop GUI. Report descriptions are stored as XML. dlman 0.4b (Development) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106113/ dlman is a download manager with a command-line interface, written in Python. It allows you to add to, remove from, and view the list URLs to download. It also sports a logging function. FreeVMS 0.0.35 (Unstable kernel) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106215/ FreeVMS is an OpenVMS-like operating system which can run on several architectures like i386, PPC, Alpha, and many others. It consists of a POSIX kernel and a DCL command line interpreter. The only architecture currently supported is i386. Genuts Breaker 1.1 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106236/ Genuts Breaker is a remake of the popular classic Break-Out game. The object of the game is to avoid losing your ball and to catch it with your racket. Sometime a new ball will appear. Six levels are available. getwmail 0.10 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106244/ getwmail retrieves email from Webmail services such as Hotmail and mail.com. You can use it just to check if the account has mail, or to retrieve it and send it to another email account. It handles HTTP and plain text emails, and also forwards attachments. grafist 1.2.9 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106238/ Grafist is a bandwidth utilization viewer. It gets the bandwidth utilization information for network interfaces from the /proc/net/dev file in 15-second periods, and stores it in four data files (daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly). When a request is sent to index.php, it executes four programs to create graphics (using the GD library) and a summary for each file. Grafist provides internationalization support for 15 languages. gspy 0.1.7 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106198/ Gspy retrieves images from a video4linux device and processes these into a daily MPEG movie on the disk drive. Each image is recorded with a time stamp to ensure accurate real-world correlation. Special motion detection algorithms are used to reduce the size of the daily movies by eliminating pictures with similar content as well as the normal compression obtained by the mpeg process. The result is a time lapse video per day with nonlinear time compression using only the images of interest. Hodohi BBS 0.9.5 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106259/ Hodohi BBS is a free, open source bulletin board system written in Java. It features the ability to post without registration, nickname registration, the ability to edit and remove your own messages (if there are no replies) and email notification on replies. The administrator can easily edit or remove any message, deny to reply on the message, an use any HTML code in messages. It uses the MySQL database (other databases could be used instead). HURL 0.6.2 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106083/ HURL is a Python script for updating a Red Hat Linux system. It attempts to download appropriate system updates from a specified FTP server. It features dependency checking, package exclusion with regular expressions, email notification when updates are ready to install, and Powertools updates. It has been tested on RedHat 5.1 through 8.0, and does not require the Python RPM bindings. iptacct 0.05 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106208/ iptacct is an iptables/netfilter accounting tool written in perl. It uses an XML configuration file and stores the data in a completely user-configurable, modular way. You can use any backend you want to use in order to store the data, instead of being forced by the software to save the accounting data in a SQL database, a text file, or an RRD database. JuliCalc 1.0 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106204/ JuliCalc is a prefix-notation calculator with rudimentary functional programming idioms. kbarcode 1.1.1 (Development) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106261/ kbarcode is a KDE3-based program for creating, handling, managing, and printing barcodes for private or business purpose. kbarcode is able to handle all major types of barcodes, like UPC, EAN, CODE39, and ISBN. It comes with a label designer to create customized labels and a batch print function. It's designed to print several thousands barcodes in one pass, but also allows you to easily print a single label. kbarcode uses SQL to store all information about articles, barcodes, customers, etc. Knoppix 3.1-10-12-2002 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106226/ KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI devices, and other peripherals. It can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, etc. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk due to on-the-fly decompression. LibXMLight 0.1.1 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106242/ LibXMLight is a non-validating, lightweight C++ XML parser library that has an API similar to SAX. MagicDraw UML 6.0 beta http://freshmeat.net/releases/106229/ MagicDraw is a visual UML modeling and CASE tool with teamwork support. it was designed for business analysts, software analysts, programmers, QA engineers, and documentation writers. It facilitates analysis and design of Object Oriented (OO) systems and databases, and it provides the industry's best code engineering mechanism (with full round-trip support for Java, C++, and CORBA IDL programming languages), as well as database schema modeling, DDL generation, and reverse engineering facilities. Metagroup 0.3 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106231/ Metagroup is a small Perl utility which adds hierarchical structure to Linux groups. It aims to ease group administration by providing better group handling. One can use metagroup to define "groups of groups". Metagroup translates a file in hierarchical format to the customary flat file format understood by Linux. Microsoft Fonts Under Linux 1.2 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106183/ Microsoft Fonts Under Linux is a very easy to use, plug-and-play set of RPM packages with standard Microsoft fonts like Verdana, Tahoma, and others. These packages are free only for users that have a Microsoft Windows license. mldonkey 2.01 (Stable) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106207/ MLDonkey is a clone for the eDonkey 2000 network, a network with more than 100000 users, specialized for transferring big files like videos. Current version of MLdonkey is a daemon that can be accessed through telnet (for commands), HTTP (for Web pages), and a nice GTK GUI. It is written in Objective-Caml and released in binaries for many Unix platforms (Linux/i386, Linux/alpha, Linux/ppc, FreeBSD, Digital Unix, Mac OS X). Support for accessing several networks, such as Direct Connect, Open Napster, Gnutella, and Soulseek is under development. monfarm 1.0.1 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106230/ Monfarm is an alarm-enabled monitoring system for server farms. It produces dynamically updated HTML status pages showing the availability of servers. Alarms are generated if servers become unavailable. Moosic 1.3 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106257/ Moosic is a music player that focuses on easy playlist management. It consists of a server process that maintains a queue of music files to play and a client program which sends commands to the server. The server continually runs through its playlist, popping items off the top of the list and playing each with an external program. The client is a simple command-line utility which allows you to perform powerful operations upon the server's queue, including the addition of whole directory trees, automatic shuffling, and item removal according to regular expressions. The server comes configured to play MP3, Ogg, MIDI, MOD, and WAV files. Netscape Communicator 7.0.1 (Mozilla-based) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106262/ Netscape Communicator is the all-in-one web browser and communications suite that makes it easy to send Internet email, read newsgroups, create web pages, and browse the World Wide Web. Object Relational Membrane 0.8 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106245/ The Object Relational Membrane is a Python package that provides the functionality of an object relational layer like EJB or other persistence storage systems. It is a thin compatibility layer between SQL table layouts and Object Oriented Python. While providing a good deal of functionality, it tries to be as small and simple as possible. It works with PostgreSQL and MySQL. OmegaCMS Toolkit 1.1.3 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106235/ OmegaCMS Toolkit generates Java business objects and browser-based administration tools for content management, customized to the needs, and workflow of your site. Open RObot COntrol Software 0.9.0 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106214/ The Open RObot COntrol Software (Orocos) framework applies software patterns in C++ to achieve real-time execution of software components and provides an infrastructure to quickly integrate them in a real-time operating system such as RTAI or RTLinux, although it can be tested on normal Linux systems. It is designed to appeal to roboticists. PhpCommander 2.0 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106203/ PhpCommander is a Web-based file manager that manages Web accounts without FTP access. It can create directories, create files, copy, move, delete, and rename files and folders, upload files, download files, view and edit the contents of the files, and communicate in English and other languages. phpOpenTracker 1.0.4 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106232/ phpOpenTracker is a framework solution for the analysis of Web site traffic and visitor behaviour. It features a logging engine that, either invoked as a Web bug by an HTML image tag or embedded with two lines of code into your PHP application, logs each request to a Web site into a database. One installation can track an arbitrary number of Web sites. Through its API, you can easily access the gathered data and perform complex operations on it (for instance, the analysis of your visitors' click paths). pimentech-dbutils 1.0.18 (Stable) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106243/ pimentech-dbutils provides a set of tools for designing a database in XML, computing the SQL database generation code and the diagram (in dot), and doing other useful tasks. Pliant 79 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106221/ Pliant is a new generation language, which is modular, reflexive, and dynamically-compiled. It looks like a merging of typed Lisp and C. The programming environment includes HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3, DNS servers and clients, a database engine, a multi-forum administration tool, etc. It runs on Linux, POSIX, and Windows platforms or as a standalone OS on top of the Linux kernel. Poseidon for UML 1.5 (Community Edition) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106264/ Poseidon for UML is a fully featured UML CASE Tool which directly extends the open source project ArgoUML, and lifts it to a professionally usable level. It is fully implemented in Java, and it features platform independence, support for all 9 diagrams of the UML, compliance to the UML 1.3 standard, support for XMI as the standard file format, the ability to export diagrams as GIF, PS, EPS, and SVG, undo/redo, copy/cut/paste, drag and drop, internationalization and localization for English, German, French, and Spanish, code generation for Java, reverse engineering from Java sources, auto-layout of reverse engineered diagrams, cognitive support, and a discrete critique mechanism. Poseidon for UML seamlessly integrates into Netbeans (3.3 and 3.4), Forte for Java (4.0), and SunOne Studio, and it is easy to install and update with InstallAnywhere or JavaWebStart. PyQt 3.5 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106256/ PyQt is a comprehensive set of Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit. Python-SIP 3.5 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106254/ SIP is a tool to generate C++ interface code for Python. It is similar to SWIG, but uses a different interface format. It was used to build PyQt and PyKDE, and has support for the Qt signal/slot mechanism. QScintilla 0.3 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106255/ QScintilla is a port of the Scintilla C++ editor class to the Qt GUI toolkit. Really Slick XScreenSavers 0.7-1 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106218/ Really Slick XScreenSavers is a GLX port of the Really Slick Screensavers collection by Terry Welsh. The screensavers can be installed as standalone programs or as XScreenSaver hacks. rubrica 0.9.9.81 (Development) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106266/ rubrica is an address book written using GTK+ and GNOME. It allows you to add personal data (name, surname, address, etc.), Web links, email addresses, telephone numbers, job information (company where contact works, company infos, contact's assigment, etc.) and notes. XML is used to store the data. It can import addressbooks from GnomeCard and export to HTML. RxLinux 1.2.2 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106234/ Rxlinux is a modular system. The base system fits in 25M of RAMdisk. Extra packages (software) can be installed on demand in RAMdisk. The /var partition which contains the application data can reside either on a hard disk or in RAMdisk. Rxlinux can be configure as a Web server, an X11 terminal, a database server, an openmosix cluster node, etc. It is distributed as a 10M bootable ISO file. You can configure it to include more packages in the ISO if you donÂt want to download extra software at boot time. SendIP 2.3 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106239/ SendIP is a command-line tool to send arbitrary IP packets. It has a large number of options to specify the content of every header of a RIP, RIPng, BGP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, or raw IPv4/IPv6 packet. It also allows any data to be added to the packet. Checksums can be calculated automatically, but if you wish to send out wrong checksums, that is supported too. Senken 0.1.2 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106206/ Senken is a city simulation game. Players buy the land, build the infrastructure, balance the books, and convince people to move in. The game has both goal-oriented and just play modes. There is multiplayer support but it is not well tested. Siege 2.56 (Stable) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106233/ Siege is a regression test and benchmark utility. It can stress test a single URL with a user defined number of simulated users, or it can read many URLs into memory and stress them simultaneously. The program reports the total number of hits recorded, bytes transferred, response time, concurrency, and return status. Siege supports HTTP/1.0 and 1.1 protocols, GET and POST directives, cookies, transaction logging, and basic authentication. Its features are configurable on a per user basis. SILC 0.9.10.1 (Client) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106224/ SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides secure conferencing services in the Internet. It can be used to send any kind of messages, in addition to normal text messages. This includes multimedia messages like images, video, and audio stream. All messages in the SILC network are encrypted and authenticated, and messages can also be digitally signed. SILC protocol supports AES, SHA-1, PKCS#1, PKCS#3, X.509, OpenPGP, and is being developed in the IETF. The software is delivered as SILC Client for end users, SILC Server for system administrators, and SILC Toolkit for application developers. Simple Expenses Manager 0.9.0 (Developement) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106241/ Simple Expenses Manager is a Perl CGI for entering simple day-to-day expenses. It is not a full-featured accounting package, but it is useful for no-brainer expense tracking. It supports user-defined categories, sorting, and calculating totals and averages according to a time period and/or category. It also features multi-user login, with CGI-based administration. SMELT 0.2.11c http://freshmeat.net/releases/106212/ SMELT (Simple Monitoring Evaluating and Logging Tool) is a tool created to monitor the disks in a single host or an entire network. It's totally written in BASH script. This way this tool can be installed and used normally in every distribution of Linux or Solaris operating systems. When a single host is monitored, the results can be sent via e-mail to the host's administrator. When an entire network is monitored, SMELT can work in client/server model. The results can be sent to the server via FTP and, using a Web server, be published in a frame-based HTML page, as well via email. SpamX 0.5.1 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106220/ SpamX is a small application which cleans unwanted email from your POP3 mail account. It does so by logging in directly to your server and deleting messages on the spot, without having to download them locally. It also includes bouncing back to spammers. SQL Load Balancer 2.4.7 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106252/ The SQLB (SQL Load Balancer) project is used to improve SQL requests to a database. It provides programs that have permanent connections to a DB, a program that checks the integrity of transactions, and a library to link with programs that need to make SQL queries. SQLB supports Oracle8i, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. SwitchTLD 1.0 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106222/ SwitchTLD is a Perl CGI script that allows you to easily route incoming traffic based on the visitor's country of origin. This makes it possible to set up pages in different languages and display the appropriate one transparently. It does not rely on hostnames and works with IP addresses without reverse DNS records, which means that it is suitable for handling large amounts of traffic without getting bogged down by DNS queries. Terminal.app 0.9.3 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106225/ Terminal.app is a terminal emulator for GNUstep. the chat 1.0 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106150/ The chat is a chat Web application written in PHP using MySQL and JavaScript. It features images in the background and an auto-reply system. vhost 3.00r5 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106249/ vHost is a one-step solution for all virtual hosting needs. It enables a Linux/BSD server with single or multiple IP addresses to handle unlimited Web/FTP/email domains. It comes with both command-line and Web-based graphical user interface, which gives maximum control to a domain's owner, while relieving the system administrator of most routine administration tasks. The latest version also offers a "clustering" capability. vlogger 0.4 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106267/ vlogger is a logger daemon for Apache. It will accept piped logfile input, split it according to its corresponding virtual host (using a file cache to avoid resource limitations), and write it to disk. It automatically rotates all files and tracks them using timestamps. It is intended as a replacement for cronolog. Whitebeam 0.9.22 (Development) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106209/ Whitebeam is a frontend XML-centered rapid design environment which makes use of HTML/XML and JavaScript. It integrates two popular and robust Open Source platforms (Apache and Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine), with its own powerful XML environment and security architecture. Providing an extensible XML-based interface to backend objects on any platform, the client model securely segregates thousands of customer applications within a single server. xine 1-beta0 (xine-lib) http://freshmeat.net/releases/106253/ xine is a free multimedia player. It plays back CDs, DVDs, and VCDs. It also decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3 from local disk drives, and displays multimedia streamed over the Internet. It interprets many of the most common multimedia formats available--and some of the most uncommon formats, too. All those features come in a reusable library (xine-lib) which can easily be embedded in your applications. yudit 2.7.2 http://freshmeat.net/releases/106240/ Yudit is a Unicode text editor for the X Window System. It can do True Type font rendering, printing, transliterated keyboard input, and handwriting recognition with no dependencies on on external engines. Its conversion utilities can convert text between various encodings. Keyboard input maps can also act like text converters. There is no need for a pre-installed multi-lingual environment. The menus are available in many languages. Slashcode Kinosis.com - Health, Fitness, and Weight Loss New http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/10/1758242 Two formerly fat engineers have created a website to help people learn the correct methods and principles of permanent weight loss. We are serious about answering your questions and seeing that you get results, having been there before and knowing how much it sucked. Yes, we know there are a lot of Twinkie-lovin', Coke swilling UNIX gurus reading this right now who need to get buff for the dates they don't have (yet) so head on over and check it out! ;) We chose LRSE Hosting and they've been very responsive and know how to get things done. Three thumbs up! (yes, I'm a mutant) Proven developer & Slashbox needed http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/10/1756244 We are looking to implement a Slashbox to drive several medically related slash sites. We are searching for developers (preferably in the NY/NJ area) with a proven ability to implement, deploy and manage the collection of sites. The ability to manage all aspects of implementation including but not limited to networking, firewalling & security , databasing & querying, archiving, GUI modifications, hosting and general maintenance. We have not evaluated third party hosting due to the sensitivity of our data. Obviously, expertise in Perl, Apache, Linux, and MySQL are prerequisites. We have a creative services team that will design any artwork, banners/headers, buttons, and other artistic aspects of the interface one given requirements from the program lead. We are open to contracters or potential employment on a contract to permanent basis. We are only looking for people with past Slash deployment experience as we will need to deploy in mid Q103. Please contact (send resume and cover letter with links to deployed slash site(s)) to Michael Vinegra. Geekgirl's Chronicle http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/10/0752207 The Geekgirl's Chronicle - with current events, science, technology, media, celebrity info, music & commentary! Participate in the growing trend of geekgrrls exploring the realms of information technologies. --LazyGirl Cyberlodge.org http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/09/0244205 We just launched Cyberlodge.org - it's a new site exploring the possibility of a 19th century-style trade guild for tech workers. As the person entrusted with making this all work, I'm anxious for feedback on the site, the concept, and what you think might make this concept fly. Thanks! --Ian Problem with slashd repeatly crashing: Solved. http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/08/0915230 Here at LRSE we had a problem with slashd crashing. I've seen others mention this, with no real definitive answer as to the cause or the solution. Here's what we know: Using: Slash 2.2.6 Perl 5.6.1 MySQL 3.23 FreeBSD 4.5 we were seeing the following in slashd.log: Thu Nov 28 06:55:23 2002 freshenup.pl updated articles:00/01/25/1236215 (Now What?) perl in malloc(): warning: recursive call Out of memory! perl in free(): warning: recursive call perl in free(): warning: recursive call perl in free(): warning: recursive call perl in free(): warning: recursive call perl in malloc(): warning: recursive call Out of memory! It does this for quite some time, and dies. We discussed this with the slash team, however given that this is not happening with CVS code, and only with the current release, there wasn't much interest there in finding and fixing the problem.It wouldn't have helped in anycase we suspect. Not everyone has this problem, and the slash code itself doesn't seem to really be at fault - rather, this seems to be a problem with perl itself. Upgrading perl to 5.8.0 on our production server seems to have made the problem go away. We haven't had to restart slashd for nearly 24 hours since we rebuilt with 5.8.0, and we were doing it sometimes as quickly as every few minutes before with 5.6.1. As such, I wanted to get this information out there for anyone having the same problem. --Scott Lockwood Problems After Upgrading to CVS release (dec 2002) http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/07/2135235 I'm having problems with an upgrade of an exisiting 2.2.6 slash site up to the current CVS tree. It appears index.shtml is not being generated correctly after the upgrade, and this effectively breaks the site. If I start up apache after the upgrade, and go to the front page of the site, I get an error 404 page, (a slash generated error 404 page). If I go to /index.pl, the site displays fine (my templates are a little messed up with the new code base, but I think I can work all that out myself, if it is unrelated to this problem, like I think it is). If I then start "slashd", it will eventually generate an index.shtml file, but the file only contains stories and slashboxes. The "header(122)" template is not used in the creation of the index.shtml file. This makes the site look horrible, and pretty much unusuable. My work around has been to edit the apache configuration file for my site so that it does not look for the index.shtml when doing directory indexing, and only loads the index.pl script. This works for now, but it is completely sub-optimal, and I want to change it back ASAP. I also don't want to move the information from the header template into the templates that slashd is using to generate the index.shtml. That is a sloppy fix, and would most likely cause more problems in the future. This problem appears with the CVS code regardless of if I start with a fresh "install-slashsite" database, or if I upgrade using my current running database. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong, or have suggestions on what to try? Your help is greatly appriciated. Side Note: There are some SQL and filesystem errors during the "install-slashsite". The SQL stuff I'm not so sure about (I'm still learning, but catching on really quickly). The filesystem stuff appears to be mis-named or or mis-filed plugin support files. (I think a template in the Repository plug-in is misnamed, and during the Stocks plugin install, it's not looking in the template directory for the HTML templates, but in the plugin template's parent directory.) I don't think these are related to my problem above, but I thought I would include the information in case it helps. (and in case I did something wrong during the initial install to get those errors.) --Robert Getting Slash to email properly http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/06/1813256 I managed to get a slash site up and running, but cannot get it to send mail (passwords, etc) to remote email addresses. Everything (slash, mysql, sendmail wrapper for qmail, apache) is on one box. Is there a way to get Slash to support SMTP-AUTH? Or is there a way to get Slash to directly reference the sendmail command on the local box? Or is there another preferred solution? Please spell it out for me--I'm a newbie:-) Thanks in advance --Stefan Geens Mail bombing by our slash site http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/05/207255 We have a problem with our slash site. For the seond time now the site has mail bombed us. I have set it up to send me stories and headlines and I and all others that have signed up get over 3000 of them. The strange thing is that this does not happen every day. Anyone got a clue to how we can resolve this problem? We are using slash-2-2-4 ,Debian Linux version 2.4.17 and exim veriosn 3.35. Gunnar --Gunnar Lunde Collaborative News Networks http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/05/1720236 Anita J. Chan's thesis for MIT's Comparative Media Studies MA on: Distributed Editing, Collective Action, and the Construction of Online News on Slashdot.org Slashdot as a Collaborative News Network, Social Constructivism, Segregating Audiences and News Sourcing, Integrating Audiences and News Analysis, Distributed Editing and the Decentralization of Editorial Control, Community, Contest and Collective Action on the Network. gO | Open Source Intelligence Scylla http://slashcode.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/04/1927219 Scylla is an English language slashsite dedicated to everything that's wrong in the world. What anyone might think is wrong is of course open to debate, be it political, cultural, or just unhappy circumstance. Visitors, comments, and input are welcome. Price Compare 128MB SecureDigital (SD) Card (SanDisk) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=437548 Lowest Price: $49.95 256MB PC2700 DDR DIMM (Generic Memory) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=563023 Lowest Price: $52.43 128MB Sony Memory Stick (Lexar Media) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=615823 Lowest Price: $55.08 256MB Secure Digital Card (SanDisk) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=637899 Lowest Price: $104.00 256MB CompactFlash Card Type I (SimpleTech) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=376475 Lowest Price: $79.00 Power Mac G4 (Apple) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=216734 Lowest Price: $895.00 iMac PowerPC G4 800MHz 256MB 60GB CDRW/DVD-R (Apple) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=546009 Lowest Price: $1794.00 XTREME - EXPLORER X4000 PC Intel Pentium 4 Processor 1.60 GHz, 256MB DDR, 40GB (Xtreme) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=551387 Lowest Price: $558.00 Dimension 8200 (P4 2.2 GHz, 256MB, 40GB, CDRW) (Dell) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=550241 Lowest Price: $1298.00 X3000 (AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHz, 512MB, 20GB 52X CD-ROM) (Xtreme) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=551397 Lowest Price: $445.00 Haley's Hints by Graham Haley (Trade Cloth) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?isbn=0969287313 Lowest Price: $17.47 Angelina Ballerina Book and Doll Set by Katharine Holabird (Trade Cloth) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?isbn=1584851945 Lowest Price: $17.61 Haley's Cleaning Hints by Graham Haley (Trade Cloth) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?isbn=0969287348 Lowest Price: $16.72 Chronicles of Narnia Box Set by C. S. Lewis (Trade Paper) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?isbn=0066238501 Lowest Price: $4.69 Coffee Makers by Edward Bramah (Trade Cloth) http://osdn.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?isbn=1870948335 Lowest Price: $25.16 ================================================== Copyright (c) 2002 OSDN. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of OSDN is prohibited. -------------------------------------------------- url - http://www.osdn.com email - [EMAIL PROTECTED]