11/25/2006

My badge for Wablet

Just some blogger badge have to validate

11/23/2006

Linux needs more support

In Mark Shuttleworth's blog he has started a new series of posts regarding Linux's lack of support.

Whenever I’m talking to an audience of typical computer users about Linux I’ll hear those words. I also often hear them when I’m meeting with organisations that could well benefit hugely from free software infrastructure or desktops. “I’ve heard about Linux, it sounds great but it’s not supported.”

This holds true for some people, who expect "support" to be this centralized IT help desk, or that computer shop down the street doesn't know his sudo from his judo. But for those willing to dive in to Linux, there is plenty of support to be found, on the distribution's forums, or forums dedicated to that distribution. I myself have even resorted to using Yahoo Answers just for a quick and easy answer to a particularly daunting problem. If you're really the type of person who needs "real support" you could go with Red Hat or CentOS for all your Enterprise computing needs.

Protest against MS/Novell deal

Here is an open letter running a petition to end the madness of this new deal Microsoft is putting out, because we all know they are just doing it to bring down Linux, there's plenty of evidence to show how much Ballmer is against linux.

Considering Microsoft's track record, it's pretty obvious they plan to use this to take out all of Linux, starting with Novell, and their next likely target is Red Hat.

Wii wont stand for this (wii also wont get tired of wii puns)

You gotta love these console wars :

Many retailers waiting until the day after Thanksgiving to sell second shipment of Wiis


Personally, if I had the money to buy a Wii, I would have gotten one, and no amount of store rules or such would stop me, they would merely be losing me and many more as customers. Wii want out Wii's!

11/22/2006

Dangerous hole in Firefox

Had to happen sometime:


p2pnet.net News:- Are you one of those people who lets Firefox save your passwords so you don't have to type them in again?

That might not be such a good idea, Robert Chapin tells p2pnet.

That's because he's found a new security hole in the Mozilla Firefox web browser he's calling a Reverse Cross-Site Request (RCSR).


What I find interesting about all of this is the fact that some people will still save their passwords, regardless of this hole.



The vulnerability exposes saved passwords and could affect anyone visiting a weblog or forum website that allows user-contributed HTML codes to be added, says Chapin, who runs Chapin Information Services.

"RCSR attacks are also actively targeting Microsoft Internet Explorer, however a flaw in Firefox makes the attack much more likely to succeed," says Chapin on his site.

Although this hole is dangerous, people can just avoid this mess altogether and improve themselves by just remembering their passwords. Either that or work out some complicated password scheme so you won't have to rely so much on Firefox

Damn Small Linux

damnsmall

The new version of Damn Small Linux is fast approaching, and I for one am eager to see what changes will make it to the final version. Damn Small Linux is that one distribution everyone should have, it fits on almost any usb/pen drive, and on minidiscs, but still packs quite a lot of features you'd come to expect from the bigger Linux distributionss.


The Damn Small Linux project has released the fourth release candidate of the distribution's upcoming version 3.1. From the changelog: "Damn Small Linux v3.1 RC4 is now ready for testing. Cumulative changelog: improved mount tool for 'after boot' pen drive support; fixed reported issues with mount tool - sort order and missing devices; fixed incomplete Lua conversion of dslMirrorSel.lua and icontool.lua; updated .jwmrc for recent menu changes; updated hard drive install for consistent fstab; updated hard drive install - lilo to partition instead of Master Boot Record; updated frugal lilo - dropped hda requirement and lilo to partition; new theme - envane...." Download: dsl-3.1RC4.iso (49.8MB, MD5).

via Distrowatch.com

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PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS is the perfect halfway house between Windows and Linux. After seeing some of the basic feautures in this distro, I can't help but recommend it to anyone who wants to get their friends into Linux. It isn't horribly Windowsy like Linspire or XandrOS, but rather only mimics some aspects of Windows such as menu's and icons:





But dont let this apparent clone fool you into thinking you wont be able to tinker with it just like you would any other linux distro. You can use apt and Synaptic Package Manager(even you yum lovers have to admit apt is good, better than portage anyway) and invoke the terminal to run all those commands you want. A quick look at the Free Software Magazines beginner's introduction to the command line should give you an idea of what to expect from this. And for those who just can't decide on what distribution to pick, try this neat litte quiz

PortableApps Suite


The New PortableApps Suite is out, featuring portable versions of ClamWin Antivirus, Firefox, Gaim, OpenOffice.org, Sudoku games, Sunbird calendar manager and the Thunderbird email manager in the standard edition. The Lite Edition replaces OpenOffice.org with Abiword. And then theres the Base Edition, which gives you only the menu Backup utility and icon and folders, giving you the choice of which programs to install onto your removable media.

  • Base: 0.7MB (download), 1MB (installed)
  • Lite: 30.4MB (download), ~105MB (installed)
  • Standard: 89.5MB (download), ~260MB (installed)

  • System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista and Wine
    *The base apps and some bundled apps will work under Windows 95
License: Free / Open Source (Mozilla apps: MPL, Others: GPL)