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I know that this is a Linux blog, and thats what readers have come to expect. But sometimes one encounters stuff that is just too good to pass. So that other day my dad bought a new HP Pavilion desktop, and since I am the geek in residence I ended up setting it up for him. So while I was waiting for Microsoft’s endless configuration and setup screens I decided to dig into the fluffy paraphernalia and promotional material bundled with the Desktop. The first thing that fell into my hand was this Microsoft Vista promotional booklet that had an image of the ideal happy family computing on a laptop. What stood out was that the laptop looked awfully similar to the Macbook Pro! In fact I am 90% sure that its a Mac! Oh and while we are at it, last time I checked Microsoft had a gaming division. So why the hell are they using Playstation joysticks on the last page?

Of all of the so-called "innovations" of high tech, I think YouTube deserves to be in the Top 10. Some folks, like the MAFIAA, see it only as a den of thieves, stealing the bread from their children's mouths. But to me it's a fantastic showcase for anyone with minimal tools-- a computer, a camera, a bit of editing software-- to create and share. Naturally the MAFIAA and their ilk can't stand the idea of not profiting from other people's work, but I think it's great stuff.

This tutorial explains how you can set up MySQL master-master replication on four MySQL nodes (running on Debian Etch). The difference to a two node master-master replication is that if you have more than two nodes, the replication goes in a circle, i.e., with four nodes, the replication goes from node1 to node2, from node2 to node3, from node3 to node4, and from node4 to node1.

The KDE project has announced the release of KOffice version 2.0 Beta 3, the third beta version of the future version 2.0 release. In a statement announcing the new beta, the KDE team said the “intention was to increase integration between the components of KOffice, decreasing duplication of functionality and easing maintenance and development of new features. Furthermore, new approaches to UI design and interacting with the user have been implemented to support the new capabilities.

Everything's going open source nowadays. Why not government? That's precisely the question that some analysts and consultants are asking, along with citizens themselves. President-Elect Barack Obama has begun to implement a bit of open source thinking with his Presidential Transition Project Web site.

It's just 71 years ago this month that a seminal paper from Alan Turing was published, which helped pave the way to today's multi-billion dollar IT industry and confer on Turing the title of father of modern computer science. As is often the case in scientific endeavour, Turing was actually working on an entirely different task when he stumbled on a way to create a general-purpose computer.

[Not directly FOSS related but I couldn't pass up on posting this. - Scott]

Need to create a screencast to demonstrate an application feature or nifty software technique? The easiest way to do this is to install the recordMyDesktop screen recording utility and the gtk-recordMyDesktop graphical front-end to it. Most mainstream Linux distributions include both packages in their repositories, so you can quickly install them using your system's package manager. On Debian-based distros like Sidux, installing both packages is a matter of running the apt-get install recordMyDesktop gtk-recordMyDesktop command.

Marking the two-year anniversary of their partnership, Microsoft and Novell said Wednesday they were releasing tools to help users manage and support SUSE Linux. The news, which comes a week and a half after the official Nov. 2 anniversary date, was preceded by a new Microsoft investment in the partnership that took affect Nov. 1 and calls for the vendor to purchase up to $100 million in additional Novell SUSE Linux support coupons to distribute to users.

An attempt to explain an awk program, with a nested if statement within a for loop, in plain English. Today's post is going to be a follow-up to yesterday's post on convoluted column arithmetic in awk. I have a nasty habit of listing all my stuff as "beginner" material. Mostly this is because I try to write my material for the middle level to newer user of Unix, Linux, Perl, etc. I have absolutely no interest in picking apart the finer points of quantum mathematics or advanced concepts in programming or operating system design and implementation.

Anyone that uses Linux regularly is familiar with the "Google to see if it works under Linux" procedure before buying any hardware. I was thrilled when I saw the ad for a USB Atari 2600 joystick clone that had a label on the box claiming its Linux compatibility.

Mention Jimmy Wales and you automatically think Wikipedia; however, that is not his only love child. The Wikia search engine is his latest offspring — or least it was when it was launched in January 2008. Wikia has been devised as a free software and open source alternative to Google and others search engines. In an article in June I speculated about how the internet might change the way we think.; I mentioned in passing the Wikia search engine. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine

This has been a big week on the open source database front. Yesterday, Ingres launched version 9.2 of its database, which you can download here. And today, Sun Microsystems announced the new version 5.1 of MySQL, with a near-final candidate release downloadable here, and a final version expected on December 6th.

A while ago, I was in an Internet café at a tiny mall here in Bohol for a quick check at my Email. The place has around 40-50 desktop computers with decent tech specs and with LCD monitors. I've been there before and have noticed that most of their machines ran in Windows, while a few ran in Mac OS X. Linux was nowhere to be found. But today is different. I saw a monitor displaying brownish desktop wallpaper that made me smile. Yes, it's definitely Ubuntu. I later found out that they have installed Ubuntu in about 10 of their PC's.

Bandwidth limitation is still a problem for a lot of people who connect to the Internet. You can improve your available bandwidth by installing Squid caching proxy server on your network with configuration parameters that will increase your byte hit rate, giving you about 30-60% more bandwidth.

LinuxPlanet Classics: With a few simple regular expressions you can quickly search your logfiles for problems, nasties, and even good news. These regexps are also useful for all kinds of text searches; Carla Schroder shows you how.

A full-featured distribution, ClarkConnect includes most features that would be needed to facilitate access from a remote site. Provisioning a highly functional yet inexpensive remote network solution for remote sites is a continually evolving challenge. I have started an endeavor that will be considering the ClarkConnect Internet gateway distribution of Linux. The ClarkConnect gateway is based on Red Hat Linux and the 2.6 kernel.

We interviewed Matthew Bloch, one of the founders of British hosting company, Bytemark. He talks about his company, and their commitment to free software. You be the judge! Read the full interview at Freesoftware Magazine.

An overview of an Ubuntu Server installation. "The Ubuntu team deserves a lot of credit here since they certainly have trimmed out a lot of the fat ... just like Sizzlean ... mmmm ... bacon."

Today I came across a nice bit of software called BitRock Installer when I wanted to evaluate Qt Creator. It's a software installer similar in appearance and easiness to the ones available on Windows.

The article discusses E-Stewards, a new certification program for e-waste recyclers that aims to prevent dumping in landfills and developing countries. That old CRT monitor the size of a small fridge. The original Apple Newton that kicked the bucket and never woke up. The early-vintage musty VA Linux box – what happens to all of this e-junk after it, if ever, leaves your basement? Ideally e-junk lands at a reputable e-recycler with the equipment to safely recycle and/or dispose of these items that are very difficult to process. What happens frequently is that a less-than-reputable outfit will pack your e-junk onto a container and ship it off to a developing country with lax environmental and labor laws, where it will wreak havoc on the environment and poor people.