redux
SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator
An open source tool to generate random computer science papers, from some MIT students.
[2005 Apr 20] [/computers/software] [#]
When my twelve year old came to me looking for ways to make computer games, I applied my Google-fu and found this free (open source, open license) game development tool, based on the free (some sort of attribution license) Genesis3D modeling components. It runs on Windows XP, doesn't require C or C++ programming, and produces "Quake 2 dungeon crawl clone" games. A far cry from my 8-bit (and lower) youth, but initial impressions are good.
[2005 Mar 14] [/computers/software] [#]
Heritrix is an open-source archival web-crawler.
"Heritrix (sometimes spelled heretrix, or misspelled or missaid as heratrix / heritix / heretix / heratix) is an archaic word for inheritess. Since our crawler seeks to collect the digital artifacts of our culture for the benefit of future researchers and generations, this name seemed apt."
[2004 Jan 07] [/computers/software] [#]
Perhaps the best source for old web browser software. Need to see how Netscape 2.x would display a page? Want to give Mosaic a whirl? Find those browsers and many more here.
[2004 Oct 20] [/computers/software/browsers] [#]
Here's a big collection of javascript fragments designed to be run from a bookmark to edit in situ the page you are on. Or you could embed them in pages to make them change when activated, as this site does for demoing them. Try going to the zap page and playing with those to get a feel for what they are good for.
Suddenly bookmarks from a context menu seems much more useful.
[2003 Sep 10] [/computers/software/browsers/add-ons] [#]
A nice little site targeting "old-tech and low-spec games and machines" such as 8-bit game consoles, Game Boys, etc. Has indespensible ROM files for system BIOS, etc. (No game ROMs.)
[2004 Mar 10] [/computers/software/emulators] [#]
An opensource x86 on x86 system emulator. This is a "lightweight" emulator designed only to run Linux under Linux.
[2003 Dec 04] [/computers/software/emulators] [#]
The big name in virtual machines to run Windows, Linux, etc, on i86 hardware. Expensive, but well polished with nice features like revert to snapshot, etc.
[2003 Dec 04] [/computers/software/emulators] [#]
Netraverse is the maker of Win4Lin a commercial application to run Windows apps under linux. Requires Windows to install on the virtual system. Much cheaper than VMware, but fewer features.
[2003 Dec 04] [/computers/software/emulators] [#]
A portable IA-32 (x86) machine emulator capable of running common operating systems like Linux, Windows 95, and Windows NT.
[2003 Oct 21] [/computers/software/emulators] [#]
"SFS is a network file system that provides strong security over untrusted networks. At the same time, SFS goes to great lengths to prevent security from hurting performance or becoming an administrative burden."
[2003 Oct 22] [/computers/software/file-systems] [#]
A page I made extolling the virtues of the Portable Video Research Group JPEG implementations. This is an old and obscure tool that I feel needs more recognition.
[2005 Feb 10] [/computers/software/jpeg] [#]
The comp.graphics.misc frequently asked questions list, with answers, about JPEG compression and JFIF files. Last modified in 1999, some of the questions are quite dated, but many are still relevant.
[2005 Jan 31] [/computers/software/jpeg] [#]
The W3C page on the image/jpeg file format is brief, but it has links to two PDF files documenting the JPEG FIle Format, the standard way to contain images compressed with the JPEG mechanism.
[2005 Jan 31] [/computers/software/jpeg] [#]
An organization (or individual?) that provides improvements to jpeg manipulation tools, such as tweaking the ILJ 'cjpeg' compressor to allow different compression quality settings on different channels.
[2005 Jan 31] [/computers/software/jpeg] [#]
A good non-mathematically introduction to the technical aspects of JPEG compression, with lots of illustrations of what different settings do to images.