Thursday, June 29, 2006

google checkout

Its funny, I read Dave Winers blog first and then the arstechnica article.

Google checkout: no paypal killer
When you can entrust your credit card information to Google—and who doesn't trust Google?


Identity and Trust
Now we turn to Google. I remember when my idea of Google soured, it was an instant flip, one day I thought these are good people who love the web, when they grow it's good for me. Really, we used to think of Google that way. But then they started acting like Microsoft, stupidly doing things that undermine the rare priviledge they had won. It was hard to argue that losing the trust hurt them or their shareholders, until today, when their intention to be the identity czar of the Internet became apparent. It won't work for the same reason it didn't work for Microsoft, they screwed with our trust too many times.


Looks like their is at least one person who doesn't trust google. But on the other hand their are two things that were released recently by google. The first was google authorization, and the second was google checkout. Authorization looks more like Hailstorm to me, then checkout.

ubuntu

I got ubuntu installed on the D620 yesterday night quite painlessly. The following searches on google helped me.

1. ubuntu howto Dell 1390
2. ubuntu howto nvidia
3. ubuntu howto vlc

Those are the ones from memory.

The wifi card is running of a ndiswrapper, and it works fine, unless you want wpa-psk. I haven't figured out how that would work. Oh and one X11 restart the screen goes bad. Thats probably because the driver isn't the latest nvidia driver. Plus the chip in the laptop is the Nvidia Quadro NVS 110M. I might try installing the latest drivers tonight.

By default the kernel does not have smp support. Adding the linux-image-686 fixes that, so that you make use of your core duo CPU.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

10.4.7 is out. Oh wait! No powerbook!

I got my D620 yesterday. The first thing I did was install SuSE 10.0 on it. Everything worked. Except wireless (there is always an except). Its a Dell 1390. It works with the ndiswrapper. ndiswrapper was installed, but it wouldn't run, and all I could find was that if their is a problem its probably with the version of ndiswrapper and the kernel you have installed. Strange, since both packages where installed by SuSE. In any case, I went to the ndiswrapper site so that I could download the module, and compile/install it on my machine. Didn't work. The ndiswrapper site was down, and I could'nt download the source. Its hosted on sourceforge. It is still down this morning.

I pulled out my CD for dapper drake (ubuntu 6.06). I started the install. The damn CD was bad! Scratched or something. So the laptop is home, with a broken grub.

Meanwhile life keeps me away from my shiny new laptop. :(

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Email is a mess

Do I use smtp, smtp-auth, smtp-auth-tls? Which port is it running on (25, 587...)? Can I use my own smtp server? Do I "have" to use my ISP's smtp server? Is my ISP blocking the receiving smtp server? Is the receiving smtp server blocking my ISP? Is their too much load on the smtp server due to spam, delaying my email? Is my IP on an rbl list? Is the ISP's smtp server on an rbl list? Did the recipients server wide spam filters catch my email? Did the recipients own client spam filter filter out the email? Did the reply get filtered out by my spam filters? If it has an attachment, did the email get falsely identified as virus/trojan infected?

Perhaps I should call them and see if they got my email!

Monday, June 26, 2006

I read the first three entries in this post, and had to blog it!
Mozilla Firefox + Adblock Plus + Adblock Filterset.G.Updater + All-In-One Sidebar + Book Burro + CustomizeGoogle + del.icio.us + FireBug + ForecastFox + Gmail Notifier + Greasemonkey + keyconfig + Menu Editor + NextPlease + NoScript + PDF Download + Tab Mix Plus + Web Developer. Damn it, why is Firefox taking 600 MB?


(Emphasis is mine!) :)
If you think you can play with XGL on your new system,
There are three very negative possibilities by following the directions below: anything that uses the SDL library for 3D rendering will look transparent and will generally be unusable. Secondly, your 3D frame rate can drop significantly (on one test system, I saw glxgears go from 16000 to 12000 after enabling XGL), and lastly, you can totally hose your X.org environment.

think again!
Python script to import modules over the net.
How Soduku wiped out crosswords from the newspaper..

Saturday, June 24, 2006

What with not having a proper up to date computer these days (See my previous post), I've been using a lot of old machines, that either have CPU or memory problems, or both. In any case, Firefox would either be slow, or would grow to be slow. So I thought I would give Opera 9 a try. It was supposed to be a lean mean browser, and a lot of people seem to like it. Plus I used to use it a long time ago. It just so happened that the Opera people released their version 9 of the browser, and I've been using it for the past couple of days. And it might just carry over when my new system arrives!

Here is a review of some of the new features that they have added.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

No Computer...

My Powerbook is making its way to Karachi, Pakistan. Without me. :(
Hopefully it will be in the hands of my sister in a couple of weeks. I await the delivery of this in the meanwhile. Expect light blogging... if any...

Friday, June 16, 2006

xhtml and <script>


XML.com: Creating Web Utilities Using XML::XPath:
HTML Tidy was created specifically to help HTML authors clean their markup. Now it offers the ability to translate HTML to XHTML. Use caution, however. Some of the errors that Tidy will fix may have been introduced by HTML authors in order to achieve a certain visual effect. Also keep in mind that the contents of most <script> elements will cause an XML parser to reject the parent document as not well-formed since some of the client-side script operators (>,
<, and &.) are special characters in the XML world.


I was really surprised to read that most xml parsers will reject code that has the script tag in it! This could be a problem. Almost all the code I have seen has a ton of this stuff, so using HTML->xHTML->xPath would be a problem. RegEx might be a better solution in that case.

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About DNS

DNS: The Bind Leading the Bind | Linux Journal

A good high level intro to DNS for would be sysadmins!

Though he complains a lot that the system is archaic, non-intuitive and command line based.

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Data-Theft Malware Targets Google's Orkut


Data-Theft Malware Targets Google's Orkut:
A new type of Malware is targetting users inside the Orkut.com community, stealing their login details to online banking sites, dumping them into a Botnet and trying to spread automatically via their "scrapbooks". Screenshots and a movie file of the infection mailing home the data, which is pretty interesting.

(Via digg.)


I guess all these frequently visited social sites are now being targeted by Virus writers, starting with the Myspace event, then yahoo mail, and now this. I guess identity plays a part. If you see something from a friend/relative/whathaveyou you're more inclined to click it. First it was email, then IM, and now social sites! If you look at the screencast included, you'll see that the person had to do nothing other than login to Orkut to get infected. This should be spreading like wildfire for the people who use Orkut (which includes a significant number of my friends).

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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

warcraft and insurance!


wow inspired insurance commercial:
Amazingly, this Undead Mage has just hucked a fireball at that guy's house! What's amazing about it is not the fireball itself, but that he's done it in a commercial for Farmer's Insurance.


!

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What's New in Python 2.5

What's New in Python 2.5

Their is quite a bit of new stuff thats going to be included in Python 2.5. First I read somewhere that sqlite3 is going to be built in. Then I read elementree is going to be added. I just wish that they would add more support for databases such as postgresql. PHP does, and it makes things easier. You don't have to download a separate package and compile/install it.

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Sad...

Now that Dvorak is on...:

I take this stuff seriously. People who lie and call it journalism are scum. That they win awards for this crap something for the award-givers to deal with.



(Via Scripting News.)


This is sad, and it takes me back to the old days. When I was a teenager in school in Karachi, Pakistan. On weekends my dad would go to work and he'd take me along to go to the library. Their wasn't any internet, so the only place I could read about computers was through PCmag and Byte magazine. My favorite column was from Jerry Pournelle whose motto was "I try things so you don't have to". I loved reading the things he'd try with computers and software. Dvorak's column would be ok, I don't remember much other than that I read them. Later I moved to reading them online.


Byte became commercial and Jerry Pournelle moved behind a for pay wall. I tried reading Dvorak, but I had no interest in cameras! Thats when I found Dave Winers blog. Funny that he is the one outing Dvorak. Reading Dave Winers blog got me started with blogging, trying to run blogs on my home computer, and I even wrote a small program for blogs. Good writing motivates. Another motivator has been Jon Udell. And scoble. I blog, hoping one day I might have content that motivates others. Plus its fun!


Dvorak on the other hand makes me sad. Whats the point if the only way you get noticed is by trolling?

Jerry has an atom feed! Subscribed!

I just realized, I've done a pretty good job of simulating Chaos Manor at my apartment! :)

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Warcraft III and Google Earth on a Table - Google Video

Warcraft III and Google Earth on a Table - Google Video

This brings a whole new dimension to warcrafting! How much do one of those things cost?

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System Administrators Toolkit: Monitoring a slow system

System Administrators Toolkit: Monitoring a slow system:
The console is more likely to allow you to log in, because there will already be a login process (which will be replaced with your shell) running. If, once you log in, you are unable to run any processes through your shell, it indicates that your system has run out of process space; a reboot will probably be the only way of returning your system to normal.


Connecting to the console via the serial port is very important when dealing with servers. Their have been occasions when a system wasn't responding remotely and I had to log in via the serial port to kill a process. Usually its a run away process taking up too much memory, not allowing other processes to spawn (Hence, you can't ssh into the server). Its quite easy to redirect console output in Linux. However, you can't control things like powering down a server, or rebooting a server that doesn't respond.

Some sun servers come with the Light Owl Management (lom) which allows you to poweron or restart a server via the console which works over a serial port. Very helpful for administration purposes.

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TXT domains needed

IBM developerWorks : Blogs : Technology Observations:
Yes, not as fast as my broadband connection speed but reasonable. However, what if I could go to www.weather.txt instead? (don't click on that link, it doesn't work) Imagine the potential. A text only equivalent website that speeds the delivery of information and avoids all the graphics, flash, etc. that slows the page loading down over a wireless access point.


Thats one of the reasons that I liked RSS so much. Earlier in its life, RSS would have the text I wanted to read without all the advertisements and other multimedia stuff. Not true anymore though. I like the idea of .txt domains, even though their are other solutions too. Such as Text only browsers. However you have to be proactive about these solutions. A .txt domain would give one the ability to not have to do anything. You could easily switch from a .com/.org/.net to a .txt domain without having to go in to your software and turning things like images or scripts of.

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MacDevCenter talks with TextMate developer

MacDevCenter talks with TextMate developer - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):
TextMate is the up and coming text editor that many people are switching to.
MacDevCenter recently spoke with Allan Odgaard, the man behind the application.


I'm a TextWrangler/Vi person myself. Before that I was an Emacs person. The move to VI was spurred by the need to use it at work. TextWrangler made it easier with its capability to open remote files via ssh. I'm not sure TextMate has that ability yet. I tried it a while back, but it didn't have that feature which is a must for me. Very few editors have that capability. Emacs, and vi both have that capability as well, but it doesn't work as well as it does with TextWrangler. However, TextWrangler doesn't have many of the features that are a boon to coding, such as foldable code-blocks or Triggers, that TextMate have.

One other feature that I really liked in TextMate was the ability to open up a directory in the side cabinet of the app which makes working within a source directory, and switching and opening files really easy. In TextWrangler, the side cabinet only lists open files, and it is one feature that I have been yearning for.

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Amazing!

A collection of TRACE images (archive overview)

Some amazing pictures of the sun!

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Firefox: Make Phone Calls From Your Browser

Phone Em' VoIP Information - Firefox: Make Phone Calls From Your Browser

I wonder how popular this will get? Its not ready for OS X yet, so I haven't installed it yet.

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Sunday, June 11, 2006

Algorithm

The Silver Bullet:
The Persian mathematician al Khowarizmi is credited for having invented the algorithm in 825 AD, as a problem solving method. The word algorithm derives from 'al Khowarizmi.'


Algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The word algorithm comes from the name of the 9th century Persian mathematician Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. The word algorism originally referred only to the rules of performing arithmetic using Hindu-Arabic numerals but evolved via European Latin translation of al-Khwarizmi's name into algorithm by the 18th century. The word evolved to include all definite procedures for solving problems or performing tasks.



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Saturday, June 10, 2006

scoble leaving?!?


Techmeme: Microsoft's top blogger Robert Scoble is leaving.... (Silicon Valley Watcher)

Is this true? Can Microsoft really have not realized what they have through Robert Scoble?!? It can't be true!


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Vista Beta2

I installed Vista Beta2 today. The installation went fine and without any problems. However, when the system came up, it didn't have drivers for the network card, or the audio drivers. This is on a 1.2 Ghz system that I have been running for the past two years. I got from a friend second hand. I have no idea when he got it. And I'm pretty sure it worked fine in an earlier build of Vista, but I might be wrong.

In any case, I'll have to open up the box, check what network card it has and see if I can scrounge up drivers for this card. Its surprising to me though. I thought Microsoft was all about backwards compatibility? This install is taking 11.7 GB of space. What in the heck is in that 11.7 GB? Hey I understand if that cool new interface won't work with the old crappy video card, but the NETWORK CARD!

Its a good way to protect your machine from viruses, trojans and spyware though. Just don't connect to the network! :)

UPDATE: its a 3com 3c905B. Can't find drivers for it online, and no point in trying XP drivers. If they would've worked, I'm sure they would've been included.
It also doesn't install in Virtual PC for me on my Powerbook G4. Sigh.

bandwidth

MercuryNews.com | 06/08/2006 | Start-ups find new ways to move huge data files over Internet:
The overload problem is growing as more people use broadband to download movies, stream TV broadcasts or share amateur videos on sites like YouTube. San Mateo-based YouTube is moving 200 terabytes a day alone -- more than eBay, the world's largest online auction company, eBay.


I guess the bottleneck has moved from the consumer to the content providers. Is it really that big an issue? The Adult market has been around for years, I never heard them complain. If the Adult Content companies survived, I doubt others are going to have problems. They've just got to be smart about it. Perhaps their aren't that many people that consume Adult Content? (yeah right!)

Wouldn't it be cool if we could remove the content provider bottleneck. Ofcourse the bottleneck is only their for streaming not downloading (bittorrent).

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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Adnan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adnan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Adnan is the traditional ancestor of the Adnani of northern Arabia, as opposed to the Qahtani of Southern Arabia who descend from Qahtan. Adnan is said to be a descendant of Ishmael through his son Kedar. His descendants are said to have included Muhammad.
Adnan is still a common male name for Arabs and Muslims.


I couldn't remember what my name meant so I looked it up. This was not the meaning I had been told. Oh well, at least it follows the right tribe!

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blogspot offering rss2.0 feeds

As Lou Josephs points out , at...:
As Lou Josephs points out, at some point, very quietly, Google started providing RSS 2.0 feeds for Blogger sites. They use Atom elements to provide capabilities not provided by core RSS elements. Very rational. ";->"

(Via Scripting News.)


Hmmm... I hadn't noticed yet. So now we have atom.xml and rss.xml. I'll have to look into this later to see how things like auto-discover in safari work with the feeds on blogspot blogs.

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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

wikicalc

Starting April 5, 2006 :
I finished the coding of the Beta 0.9 version of wikiCalc and should have it ready for release in a few days after some testing and documentation, probably by the weekend.


wikiCalc is the opensource application created by Dan Bricklin, the creator of Visicalc which was the first most successful spreadsheet application. This on the day that Google has released Google Spreadsheet.

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Saturday, June 03, 2006

testing

posting from my treo? can you read this?

See the sidenote in blue!

Friday, June 02, 2006

Apple Punishes Samsung for Next-Gen iPod nano Leak

Apple Punishes Samsung for Next-Gen iPod nano Leak:
A Samsung exec last month ran off at the mouth, revealing that Samsung's PortalPlayer would drive the next-gen iPod Nano...“It is not surprising that Apple would ‘punish’ Samsung for commenting publicly about the iPod Nano follow-on, and we believe that SigmaTel is likely to be the resulting beneficiary of the Samsung executive’s gaffe"

(Via digg.)



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Most sublime goal ever - how did he do this?

Most sublime goal ever - how did he do this?:
[link][more]

(Via reddit: what's new online.)



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Thursday, June 01, 2006

Professional Graphics Accelerators of Today: ATI vs. Nvidia


X-bit labs - Articles - Professional Graphics Accelerators of Today: ATI vs. Nvidia

I had been looking at the Dell D620 which has 256MB Nvidia Quadro NVS 110M, and wondering what kind of graphics chip it is and so forth. The above article should help. Ofcourse the article doesn't mention the exact card that I mentioned above, but it might give an idea of what these professional graphics cards are all about.


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Mozilla and hypocrisy

Right, but what about the experiences that Mozilla chooses to default for users like switching to  Yahoo and making that the default upon ...