Guys on FOSS

Throughout history there have been people who identify a problem, and instead of idly accepting the situation, they produce a solution. These are people like Henry Ford who noticed the inefficiency of automobile production and invented the assembly line, a standard in modern manufacturing. Or perhaps we consider Bette Nesmith Graham, painter and more importantly white out inventor. She saw a common problem and instead of just chucking out entire sheets of typing she set out to fix the problem. Often these innovators do not realize the full potential of their solution to one problem. Who doesn't have a can or two of WD-40 in their house? This was originally a product to solve a specific space related problem, but it is now used on everything from zippers to distributer caps.

There is another case in which a project was designed due to solve a daily irritation which took off quite dramatically. Of course I am talking about the subject of this article: TeX and more specifically LaTeX.

To understand where LaTeX came from we must first examine it's foundation, TeX (pronounced tɛk). TeX was invented by a man by the name of Donald E. Knuth. Donald was growing frustrated with the current typesetting practices in the 70's. In fact his own book, The Art of Computer Programming, was re-published in the 70's he found the typesetting to be hideous. A few months later Knuth decided that he would not accept the situation idly and set out to produce TeX. The project was started in 1977 and Knuth predicted that he'd be able to finish it in one year. His estimate was off by about 10 years.

However, Knuth's system did not really take off until the invention of a macro package called LaTeX. LaTeX was invented by a man named Lamport as a way for the user to concentrate on the writing instead of the formatting. Think C instead of Assembly. Today if you were to start writing a book in TeX, you'd most likely use LaTeX. It does a bunch of automatic formatting by section, chapter, etc. in order to make the document as readable as possible. This system really lets the author focus on the content, and then make stylistic changes later.

Next article: Plain TeX vs LaTeX

Very Useful Links:Big Online LaTeX Beginner's guide Nice PDF for LaTeX BeginnersNice PDF for Plain TeX BeginnersWikiBook on LaTeXHistoryWiki pages: LaTeX TeX

-The Thoth-

Hello Readers!
This is a special holiday episode of the podcast. It is a discussion about software distribution and the pros/cons of having an app-store type method of distribution. I have also written a short poem for the holidays, which can be found below.




Twas the night before Christmas, some people say,When old Steve Jobs took the holidays away.
You opened your gift; A laptop, alright!But as you read the manual you shuddered in fright.
Although you had payed for the best laptop there is,You found that your new macbook was actually his.
No freedom here, as in beer or in speech,Step out of line, and a contract you'll breach.
But then out of nowhere you see a large sleigh,With a penguin at the reins, here to save Christmas Day.
You say to the penguin, "This macbook, it sucks",The penguin looks up and replies, "Hi, I'm Tux".

He hopped from his sled, with a "HeHeHe"
and whipped out a Linux live CD.

Your eyes light up, could it be true?
So many choices, like Arch or Gentoo

There's Red hat, and Suse, and quite a few more
Such as CentOS, Mandriva and Tiny Core

With a tip of his Fedora and a quick wave goodbye,
Tux jumped into his sledge and flew into the sky

So try a new distro, there is nothing to fear
And from GuysOnFOSS have a fantastic New Year!



Music credit: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Inerg and The Thoth fly solo... For about 8 minutes. The show is shorter this week due to audio problems, hopefully these will be fixed by next week. Enjoy the 8th episode of The GuysOnFOSS Podcast!
News:Gene Simmons gets ddos'dPirate Bay Going to Space?Google Chrome 7Radon 6800 seriesOfficer BubblesOfficer Bubbles Original VideoLaptop Thief Returns DataWD 3 Terabyte hardrive Restraining Order Served Over FacebookNASA 100 Year Spaceship Program
Topics:Learn how to use manMenuetOSProgram For The TI-8x Series CalculatorsNovell For SaleTroll Physics - Just for fun
Try it For A Week: PeppermintDue to audio problems, Inerg will be publishing his 'Try it for a week' on a separate occasion.
Music credit: 'Killing Time' and 'Enter The Party' by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Join The Thoth, Inerg and Mekapaedia on a roller coaster ride of a show. This week learn about what Mekapaedia knows about China, what The Thoth knows about AROS, what Inerg knows about geography and what the pope knows about technology. All this and more on the seventh episode of The GuysOnFOSS Podcast.

NewsGoogle tests driver-less carPope warns about illusions vs realityPolynomial - Space of The MusicSkydive from space canceledPeople are not choosing effective passwordsLondon stock exchange runs LinuxUSA is most bot infected country... In The World
TopicsMake your own dropbox-like backup serviceFree Public Wifi?Try it for a week: AROS -Part 1 -Part 2 -Part 3
Music credit: 'Killing Time' and 'Enter The Party' by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

On this week's show Inerg and Mekapaedia join me, The Thoth, for our sixth excursion into the land of podcasting. Remember, you have one more week to enter our contest to win a free beta key for Starcraft 2 or Plain Sight. We introduce our new segment - 'Try it for a week' - listen for more details. Join us for this and so much more on The GuysOnFOSS Podcast.

Errors: I don't know who was pronouncing Maemo correctly, but there seems to be a bit of confusion about it on the Maemo forums. If you know how it is pronounced, let us know. Also, The Thoth said that Moblin turned into Maemo. This is false, Moblin and Maemo merged, making MeeGo (Try saying that 5 times fast!)

IE Browser Share Drops Below 50%

Toshiba 3D TV

US Army Testing PIPBoys

Firefox 4 Beta Released for Maemo and Android

Nixie Pixel Wins Logitech 'Host with the most'

AROS

Toybox

Microsoft Expression Encoder

Music credit: Killing Time by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

On this episode of the podcast... The Thoth, Inerg, Mekapaedia and Crazy2be discuss their favorite distros and why they like them. Also, a new segment is introduced called 'Try it for a week'. Remember to enter our contest to win a Starcraft 2 Beta key, or Plain Sight. All you have to do is send an email to [email protected] telling us you want to be entered. Keep in mind, if you want your voice to heard on the show, send us an audio clip of you saying what you want to say and we'll probably play it on the show. Another note, we are now on itunes so if you have one of those newfangled ipods, you can download our lovely voices directly onto your device. Show Errors: Meakapaedia accidentally said Fujita instead of Fujitsu; XGA instead of XFX and Pacman -Syu instead of Pacman -Sy.

Netflix comes to Canada

Sidux is Sidux no more 

Google Turns 12

They're rooting everybody out here

Mandriva forks

LibreOffice

Go-OO 

Peppermint

Moblin

Chromium-OS

Mint

OpenBSD

Arch Linux

Gentoo

Plan 9

Mandriva

Windicators

Music credit: Killing Time by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

This week on the podcast: Waffle Monster makes his return and we talk about stuff! Remember to enter our contest by emailing us at [email protected]! Also, if you don't already have Dropbox and you have been considering it, help us out by signing up with our link by clicking here!

Sidux

Uberstudent

Schools Spy on Students Through Webcam

Engineer Terrorists 

Dell's New 7" Tablet

FCC Opening TV Airwaves

Facebook Down

IBM Single Atom DRAM

GOG down then up again

Garry's Mod For Mac

Microsoft Security Book

OpenBSD

Installing Gnome on OpenBSD

Music credit: Killing Time by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

This week... On The GuysOnFOSS Podcast.

Data Deduplication Comparative Review on Slashdot

Baremetal OS

The ACTA

Google Bounty

Torvalds becomes an American

Firefox Beta/Nightly builds

Portable apps

Acid3 test

Sunspider test

Peacekeeper Test

Google Phone

Google Spies on Teens

Commodore Phoenix 

Apophysis Fractal Flame Editor

Helpful Youtube Video for Apophysis

Another Apophysis Video

GuysOnFOSS Twitter - GuysOnFOSS Email  - Facebook Page

The Thoth's Twitter - The Thoth's Email

Inerg's Email

Music credit: Killing Time by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)