Javascript 1.8 progress

John Resig looks at Javascript 1.8 progress in firefox.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs joint interview.

Amazing day

Wednesday was an amazing news day. Just take a look at techmeme from yesterday. There are two acquisitions in their, and they aren't even the big news!

Some items I noted that didn't get that much press perhaps are:

KWin Composite Brings Bling to KDE

KWin, KDE's window manager, has been around since KDE 2.0 (replacing KWM in KDE 1.x) and has grown to be a mature and stable window manager over the years. For KDE 4, however, there were a few people rumbling about visual effects, and perhaps KWin was feeling a little envious of its younger cousins Compiz and Beryl. While these new effects have created a lot of buzz around Linux and UNIX, long-term KDE users have wished they can enjoy the effects of Compiz/Beryl while still having the tried and tested window manager that is KWin. As a result, for KDE 4, KWin has received a huge graphical upgrade, with composite and GL support. Read on for more details.

I think this is great news. I've worked with Beryl and as great as it is, its not stable. If we can get some of that KWin stability together with Beryl like effects thats good.

And from Robert Scobles link blog:

Search coming to Google Reader soon?

Google let’s you to search your emails in Gmail, search photos in Picasa Web Albums, and searc documents in Docs & Spreadsheets, but almost two years has passed after its initial launch, Google Reader still lack of a search feature that many users long for, including myself.

Now, Martin Porcheron spot a few rules in Google Reader’s CSS file hinting the search feature probably on its way. (around line 88) The CSS code reveals that the search box will be placed at the right side of the logo.

And from lifehacker, How to build a Firefox extension.

And does anyone have a link to video of when The Bill and his Steveiness were on stage together?

Oh and apparently,

Google isn’t the only one going offline…

Come back tomorrow for another company that’s going offline. I can’t say more until noon tomorrow, sorry.

Any guesses?

Online Identity

My bank instituted a new security system which Jon Udell talks about here. The first time the option to enable the new system showed up, I deferred it for later. I was busy, needed to check the account quickly and get on with what I was doing.

The second time I logged in it was the same thing. The same the third time, but this time I couldn't delay. I was in a hurry, and I quickly signed on, filled the questions cause I had no other option, and signed out. Now reading Jons article I read this:

The primary anti-phishing feature is the named image. The idea is that now I’ll be suspicious if one of these sites doesn’t show me the image and label that I chose.

Ummm... yes. I remember having to choose a picture. Don't remember what it was though. Damn. There is just too much hassle with this system. What are the odds that the same won't happen to more people.

future of computing?

I found this cool device on Robert Scoble's link blog.

he revolutionary Zonbox - the $99, ultra low-power, zero-emission Linux computer from Zonbu, is sure to be all the rage when it's launched next month. The computer is a fanless 1.2MHz platform that uses Amazon’s S3 storage servers to save your files.

Gizmodo says

"It's as simple to use as a Mac...pre-loaded with best-of-breed open source software for almost anything you'd need...all managed via the other cool thing the Zonbu has: A 4GB CF card that acts as a cache for the 25-100GB of personal storage on Amazon's S3 servers. In other words, this machine syncs, swaps, and backs up your data automatically, over the wire. I love it."

Everytime I see one of these devices I wonder why such devices haven't caught on. These devices seem to make a lot of sense for the kind of people who want to browse the web, chat and email. Maybe this device will catch on? The S3 integration seems like a cool solution.

Regenerative build tools

clipped from www.artima.com A while back, I visited a C++ team that had found a wonderful use for a spare computer.   They set it up to build continuously.  Then they  did something  fascinating. They created a script that went into their code and commented out  a single #include.  Then it built their project.  If the build and the tests passed, the script deleted the include.  If it didn't, the script uncommented the include and went on to the next one.  Yes, it took quite a while to march through the code, but with that build running continuously in the background, they were able to eliminate a large number of superfluous dependencies.  Their build got better.

solid state

Lionel Menchaca has a cool post on the Direct 2 Dell blog, about a presentation recently made by Dell. They demo a lot of cool technology and one cool demonstration is of a laptop with solid state disk vs. a normal drive. The laptops are both the same except for the hard drives. One has a 30GB solid state drive, and the other has a normal 80 GB drive. You can clearly see the faster boot times on the solid state drive.

Its a very rough comparision, not specific benchmarks but its fun to watch none the less.

Project Hybrid and Technology Preview in San Francisco

Powertop

Powertop

PowerTOP is a Linux tool that finds the software component(s) that make your laptop use more power than necessary while it is idle.

How I feel today!

How I feel today
Originally uploaded by awasim.

via http://i14.tinypic.com/2ur1h6t.gif

Dash instead of bash

I hadn't realized that the default shell on Ubuntu (since edgy) is dash. Thats right, its with a 'd'.

Dash as Bin sh

I had noticed this before but never really thought about it, until it came up with regards to broken scripts.

Here is Mark Pilgrim on this.

Douglas Crockford on how "Quality" happens in software

On YUI Theater

feed reading...

Robert Scoble is interviewed by Tim Ferris, about how he reads his blogs on digg. Unfortunately, the digg effect has come into play, but their is a mirror.

Robert mentions that he doesn't have many of the high traffic sites in his feed reader. I realized a few weeks ago that high traffic sites might not be good in an RSS reader, and removed sites such as digg and reddit, and focused on blogs. And the amount of feeds I have is now just growing. I have around 178 feeds, which is real small compared to Scoble, but they are increasing every day. I can always go and read digg and such later.

I'm surprised how many people still don't read feeds in an RSS reader or don't know about feeds. This video should be useful for people who might want to know how to read RSS feeds.

zeroconfig issues

I upgraded an XP machine to Vista Business a while back. Everything was fine, but I noticed that lately the system has been running a little hot. The laptops fan was on most of the time. Checking task manager I noticed that zcfgsvc.exe was taking up quite a bit of CPU time. I downloaded the Intel drivers for the 3945abg wifi card, and started the setup. It informed me that the current driver was meant for a previous version of windows, and asked if it should remove it. I said yes. The installation hung. I tried rebooting, the system hung on shutdown. I hit the powerbutton.

Once rebooted, this time I just went to device manager, network adaptors, 3945 card, drivers, and update drivers. This time it upgraded to the new driver, and the systems been running a lot cooler since.

Tintin coming to the big screen

I used to love Tintin comics as kid. So much so that I have a collection of all the Tintin stories even now.

From filmwad:

Variety reports that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have teamed to produce a trilogy of Tintin feature films, with each director helming at least one of the features.

The films will be motion-captured 3D (like The Polar Express), because, according to Spielberg, "We want Tintin's adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Herge created."

Dasher: Information - Efficient Text Entry

 

Dasher is an amazing piece of software. Its almost addictive, fun and easy to use.

I haven't written in my native language in quite a while. I was able to setup the software, choose the urdu language and write my name in a few minutes!

عدنان وسئم

dasher
Originally uploaded by awasim.

Now I haven't written in Urdu since high school but its so easy with Dasher. I can't wait for them to actually come out with a version for my treo cell phone!

Even better its cross platform. The presenter is running the software on Ubuntu. Its amazing.
The software can be downloaded from http://www.dasher.org.uk.

Via Geeking with Greg

yakuake

yakuake
Originally uploaded by awasim.

I've been using Yakuake for a day, and its amazing. Thanks to Chris for pointing me to it in his excellent post on five Linux killer apps.

The app basically is a terminal that appears when you press F12, and disappears when you move the focus to another app. It clears the clutter that can grow when coding, and makes it really easy to access the terminal quickly.

katapult

Katapult is a quicksilver like application for KDE. Thanks to Chris Rohde for introducing me to it.

Its very easy to get going. Once you have it running, alt-space brings it up. Type the name of the application/document to run/open, and press enter. The first time I started katapult it wouldn't show up in the systray. I wanted to configure it. If this happens, type alt-space, and then Ctrl-C. This should open up the configuration menu, and from their you can configure it to show up in the systray.

I have great hopes for katapult. Hopefully a lot more people will start writing plugins for it.

Ubuntu Studio

Ubuntu Studio has apparently been released. I'm downloading the iso. Its labeled ubuntustudio-7.04-alternate-i386.iso. Thats weird. I wonder why alternate. Its also 867.5MB in size. Weird. The screenshots look good though.

clipped from blog.joejaxx.org Ubuntu Studio 7.04 is Here! Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia editing/creation flavour of Ubuntu. It’s built for the GNU/Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional.

Rethinking the Linux Distribution

Who out their thinks this is a good idea?

Why? Are we doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again?
Won't we ever learn?

sysadmin

I think this just depends on person to person. In fact even be taken on a case by case basis. You can't generalize.

clipped from ask.slashdot.org tgbrittai asks: "According to Paul Boutin they are merely an obstacle to be manipulated or outmaneuvered. According to Steve Wozniak they are pimps. I've known my share of good and bad sysadmins, programmers and every other professional role out there, and I have to wonder: are sysadmins really THAT bad?" Most times sys-admins are overworked and underpaid and have to deal with users who take advantage of their local IT person, tasking them to fix systems that they callously break. Others are truly worth the name "Bastard Operators from Hell". How would you rate your sys-admin and what things did you have to do to make things run smoothly (or not)?

Five killer apps for kubuntu

Its rare that I come across applications that I haven't used, andeven more rare is that I find them interesting. I found two today. Katapult is something I must try out. I've been looking for something like this for a while. Even more surprising is they are KDE apps. How did I not know about these!

clipped from veritastic.net 4) Yakuake This is a front-end for the KDE terminal client Konsole. While it doesn’t seem like too much, the convenience involved with hitting just one key and having your terminal slide out of the top of the screen (and retract when not in focus) is awesome. Nixternal turned me on to this one and I must say it is exactly what keeps me in Kubuntu. (for the record, Ubuntu has something like it, but not nearly as nice, in Tilda) 1) Katapult Unlike Yakuake, the other time saving application in my list, this app comes pre-installed with Kubuntu. There really isn’t much to it, aside from not ever having to use menus to find your applications… just alt-shift and start typing the name, it will fill it in for you (think Quicksilver, for you Mac users). You can open programs, files, use a calculator, etc. By far my favorite part of kubuntu, and one not easily replicated by any program under the GNOME desktop.

feisty in virtual pc

I've had kUbuntu edgy running in virtual pc before, using the alternate CD for an install. This time I thought I'd use feisty. And thats a day I'd like back. No matter what I tried, the install would freeze at some point.

No problem, I switched to VirtualBox. But I had similar problems.

In the end, I downloaded vmwares free player, and the official vmware images for feisty which finally worked.

hak5

new hak5 2x10 episode is out.

links

Sam Ruby plays with silverlight.

Virtual Hosting With PureFTPd And MySQL (Incl. Quota And Bandwidth Management) On Debian Etch

Anatomy of a debian package...

at google video.

breaking the web...

I tried writing a post about a topic, but I couldn't put it in a more eloquent way than Mark Pilgrim, so I'll let him talk:

Reactions? “The web just got richer.” Well, somebody’s getting richer, but I doubt it’s gonna be the web. And did you hear the news? You’ll write it one time, and test it one time (for real this time, we promise). And Microsoft “rebooted the web.” I guess that’s all you can do after freezing up for five years. Hey, look over there, shiny objects! That poster may as well be titled “Fucked 6 Ways From Sunday,” because that’s what you’ll be if you buy into any of this.

Sigh. I used to have the strength to argue against such foolishness. Nowadays I’m reduced to nothing more than Grey’s-Anatomy-esque catchphrases. Seriously? Seriously? Do I really have to explain why this is a bad idea? Again? To a bunch of technological virgins who haven’t been fucked yet? Seriously?

He's angry isn't he! Me too.

Ubuntu on Dell

Finally, something official from Dell that I can point to!

As part of an overall effort to update our Linux program, today we are announcing a partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu on select consumer desktop and notebook products.

:)

I installed kUbuntu Feisty on my personal Dell e1405, and the experience was amazing. First of all, everything worked from the live CD (except the screen resolution, which was fixed after install by apt-get install 915resolution). While the distro installed, I was connected via wifi to my home network which has WPA enabled! The install was the fastest, and I was up and running with a fully functional system locally installed, in minutes! That is what I call a great experience.

Here is a link to all the discussion in blogs shown by techmeme.

From Laughing Squid,

This is a major victory in the long battle to make Linux a viable option as a desktop operating system for the average consumer and business user.

From Open Source Weblog:

Expanding on the implications of the announcements for Linux, Shuttleworth doubted that it would have an immediate impact on desktop Linux adoption, but did point to longer term growth. “I don't think there's going to be a big bang event when the world suddently shifts from one platform to another but I think that Linux is coming into its own as a viable, reliable platform,” he said.

From ZDNet UK:

When buying the Dell systems, customers will have the option to purchase support from Ubuntu backer Canonical, said Jane Silber, the start-up's director of operations.

From PC World:

Although Canonical already works with a number of OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), Silber believes the deal with Dell represents the first time Ubuntu will be preinstalled on a major computer vendor's machines. Previous OEM deals involved a post-purchase Linux installation or a CD of the distribution bundled with the computer.

From Technically Speaking:

Dell is choosing Ubuntu - I’d like one! Inspirion or whatever your laptop is now called, top end one please.