Happy New Year 2008!

Have a blessed and prosperous New Year!

TSFB Best of 2K7

Since we are about to end the year and we already have 100+ posts, I guess it’s about right that we will recap and give importance to what we humbly think as our best Tech Source from Bohol (TSFB) posts of 2007. So without delay, here they are:

* Software Review/Post of the Year
23 Most Valuable Free Software

* Geek of the Year
Geek of the Month: Linus Torvalds

* Programming How-To of the Year
How to Rescue Windows Files Using Linux and Python

* Distro Review of the Year
Is CentOS 5.0 Worth Every Penny?

* Silliest Post of the Year
Computer User Profiling

* Distrowar of the Year
Battle of the Elite: openSUSE vs. Mandriva

* Gadget Review of the Year
All I Want for Christmas is World Peace and Asus Eee PC

* Weekly 10 Story of the Year
Weekly Ten (11-13-2007): Calling all developers: $10M Android challenge

* Computer Hardware How-To/Tip of the Year
Choosing the Right Laptop/Notebook Computer Today

* Tech Source from Bohol Post of the Year
A Date with Cassandra
***

Battle of the Elite: openSUSE vs. Mandriva

Mandriva and openSUSE are two well-established Linux distributions worthy to be considered elite. Both of them have successfully conquered the hearts of many Linux enthusiasts long before Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS took the stage. With their latest releases namely Mandriva Linux 2008 and openSUSE 10.3, they remained a force to be reckoned with.

In case you are wondering which is better among the two, then you are in luck because it is time once again for our distrowar. It’s Mandriva Linux 2008 vs. openSUSE 10.3 for today’s main event!

I experienced installing and using these distros not-so-long ago, so that kind of gave me the authority to be the judge at this moment. But, let me again remind you that this is purely for entertainment and should not be taken seriously. So if you are ready, “It’s Showtime!”

Distrowar Arena (Test Machine Specs):
Board: Intel Corporation D102GGC2
Processor: 3.40 GHz Intel Pentium D
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB ATA
Memory: 2GB DDR2 RAM
Graphics Card: ATI RADEON X1050
*Note: For fairness sake, I recently installed and tested the KDE versions of Mandriva Linux 2008 and openSUSE 10.3 ‘once again’ using the the test machine listed above.

Tale of the Tape:

Distro Name: openSUSE/ Weight:695MB (KDE-i386.iso)/ Country Origin:Germany/ Distro Origin:Slackware/ Package Mgt.:RPM/ Default Desktop:KDE-Gnome/ Distrowatch Rank:#3


Distro Name: Mandriva Linux/ Weight:694MB (One KDE-CDROM)/ Country Origin:France/ Distro Origin:Red Hat Linux/ Package Mgt.:RPM (urpmi)/ Default Desktop:KDE /Distrowatch Rank:#8



Speed Test:
Installation Time- Winner, Mandriva!
Boot/Start-up Time - Winner, Mandriva!
Responsiveness- Draw!

Decoding:

Mandriva Linux was completely installed with less time consumed compared to a rather long process in openSUSE. Mandriva also boots faster which took around 48 seconds to reach the main desktop from the Grub menu, while openSUSE took about 57 seconds. They were both responsive and I saw no considerable differences that separated the two.

Aesthetics:
Default Theme- Winner, openSUSE!
Extras- Mandriva!
Artwork- Winner, openSUSE!

Decoding:

For “Default Theme” and “Artwork” I picked openSUSE as the winner because I prefer the color green over Mandriva’s blue as it has a much cleaner and sleeker appeal. Mandriva’s desktop is also well polished but I just love green, that’s all. For “Extras”, the 2D effects of Mettise gave Mandriva the upper hand over openSUSE.

Features:
Pre-installed Applications- Draw!
Available Packages from Repo- Draw!
Ease of Use- Winner, Mandriva!

Decoding:

Both have a good line-up of pre-installed software applications and both also have plenty of available software packages from their respective repositories. I considered Mandriva a lot uncomplicated to use compared with openSUSE, based on the ease of installation and its straightforward approach in software and hardware maintenance. Mandriva is also very easy to tweak and I find its graphical configuration tools ideal for Linux beginners.

Stability:
Hardware Detection- Winner, Mandriva!
Software Maintenance- Draw!
Error Handling- Draw!

Decoding:

They were both running smooth and steady on my test machine so it is kind of hard for me to decide which has the clear advantage. So, I just gave a draw verdict on “software maintenance” and “error handling” just to be safe. However, Mandriva won “hardware detection” because it properly detected my graphics card and then flawlessly installed the necessary device driver to make it fully functional.

Final Score:
Mandriva Linux = 6
openSUSE = 2
*Winner, Mandriva Linux!

Conclusion:

Mandriva Linux 2008 may have convincingly won the battle against openSUSE 10.3 but not unanimously because there’s only one judge and that is me :) So, to those who have experienced using these two distros and can compare which of them is better, feel free to give us some feedback.

Christmas 2007

I just came from a rather long Christmas break. I feel tired, but here I am still posting just to let all of you know that I’m still alive despite all the bad cholesterol that have been consumed during the holidays.

I will just share to you some of the photos taken during the eating spree using our very reliable Sony T9 Cyber-shot digital camera. Enjoy!

We stayed at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City. There were Wi-Fi hotspots almost all throughout the place, but you have to pay in order to get connected.

Maajong Pasko!

I would like to take this opportunity to greet our millions (hehe) of Christian subscribers and site visitors advance Merry Christmas (Maajong Pasko in Boholano dialect).

I send my greetings in advance because I might fail to greet you on that most wonderful time of the year due to irresponsible drinking that will begin immediately after I finish this post :-)

By the way, I also plan to post lightly this coming week leading to New Year. But, we’ll never know.

I will end this post by giving you the lyrics to John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over) song. It was originally created as a protest to the Vietnam War.

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
By John Lennon

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
A new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A merry merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so happyChristmas (War is Over, if you want it)repeat with verse
For weak and for strong
The rich and the poor ones
The road is so long
So happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

A merry merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (War is over, if you want it) repeat with verse
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
We hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A merry merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over, if you want it
War is over now

Merry Christmas
---end---


Peace everyone and happy hacking! :-)
Maajong Pasko!

Free and Open Source 3D Graphics Software

3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery.

There are typically many stages in the "pipeline" that studios use to create 3D objects for film and games, and this article only covers some of the software used. Note that most of the 3D packages have a very plugin-oriented architecture, and high-end plugins costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are often used by studios. Larger studios usually create enormous amounts of proprietary software to run alongside these programs. But thankfully, there are always Free and Open Source software alternatives that can help produce highly commendable 3D animations like it did in the short film entitled “Elephants Dream”.

Here are some of the 3D graphics software applications that will let those with artistic touch create beauty out of freedom:

*Blender is a free software 3D animation program. It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulating, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications. Blender is available for several operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, IRIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD with unofficial ports for SkyOS, MorphOS and Pocket PC. Blender has a robust feature set similar in scope and depth to other high-end 3D software such as Softimage|XSI, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max and Maya. These features include advanced simulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, and softbody dynamics, modifier based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, and a node based material and compositing system and Python for embedded scripting.

Blender rendering

*Aqsis is a high quality, photorealistic, 3D rendering solution. It complies with the RenderMan® interface standard defined by Pixar.

The RenderMan® standard has been used in film and television visual effects since its introduction in 1989. Pixar has used their own implementation for their entire award winning CG features, and provided their implementation for use in the visual effects of most major blockbuster films over the last 2 decades. The Aqsis project offers a way for individuals and organistaions alike to gain experience with the RenderMan® interface without the cost of commercial software licenses.

Aqsis comprises a command line rendering tool, a tool for compiling shaders in the RSL language, a tool for preparing textures for optimal use, and various developer libraries to enable integration with third party tools.

image made using Aqsis

*Art of Illusion is a software package used for 3D modeling, texturing, ray tracing, and otherwise rendering computer generated imagery stills or animations (movies).

The goal of Art of Illusion is to provide powerful 3D modeling tools with a user interface that improves on those found in other 3D software packages. Though its interface is simple, Art of Illusion contains many features found in high-end commercial graphics software. Some of its features, like the use of online repositories and a built-in downloading tool for installing extensions, are not found in similar commercial software.

The primary creator and maintainer of the software is Peter Eastman. Peter can be contacted via the project web site.

Art of Illusion is written in the Java programming language. Distributed under the GNU General Public License, it is free software.

Art of Illusion application window

*GtkRadiant is a level design program developed by id Software and Loki Software. It is used to create maps for a number of computer games. It is maintained by id Software together with a number of volunteers.

GtkRadiant's roots lie in id Software's in-house tools. Some of the early UI design decisions influencing it could be seen in QuakeEd, the original Quake mapping tool for NextStep. Code-wise, GtkRadiant is a descendant of Q3Radiant, the Quake III Arena level design tool, which in turn is a descendant of QERadiant. QERadiant was developed by Robert Duffy using the source code for QE4, the in house Quake II level editor id Software used to build Quake II levels and is available with the Quake 2 SDK. All three are Windows-only applications. Two major things are different in GtkRadiant: it is based on the GTK+ toolkit, so it also works in Linux and Mac OS X, and it's also game engine-independent, with functionality for new games added as game packs.

GtkRadiant application window

*MeshLab, started in late 2005, is an open-source general-purpose mesh processing software program; the system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models that arise in the pipeline of processing of the data coming form 3D scanning. MeshLab is oriented to the management and processing of single large meshes and provides a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes.
The automatic mesh cleaning filters includes removal of duplicated, unreferenced vertices, non manifold edges and null faces. Remeshing tools support high quality simplification based on quadric error measure, various kind of subdivision surfaces and a surface reconstruction algorithm from point clouds based on the ball pivoting technique. For the removal of noise, usually present in acquired surfaces, MeshLab supports various kind of smoothing filters and tools for curvature analysis and visualization.
MeshLab support also an interactive direct paint-on-mesh system that allows to interactively change color of a mesh, to define selections and to directly smooth out noise and small features.
MeshLab is available for most platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The system support input/output in the following formats: PLY, STL, OFF, OBJ, 3DS and COLLADA.

MeshLab application window

*OpenFX is an Open-Source, free modeling and animation studio, distributed under the GNU General Public License, created by Dr. Stuart Ferguson. He made the decision to release the source code to the public in the middle of 1999 and released a stable version a year and a half later. The product, formerly named SoftF/X, was renamed to OpenFX.
The OpenFX featureset includes a full renderer and raytracing engine, NURBS support, kinematics-based animation, morphing, and an extensive plugin API. Plugin capabilities include image post processor effects such as lens flare, fog and depth of field. Animation effects such as explosions, waves and dissolves add to the flexibility of the program. Version 2.0 also features support for modern graphics cards with hardware GPU acceleration.
OpenFX supports the Win32 platform, including Windows 95, NT, 98, ME, 2000 and XP. It can run under UNIX-based platforms by using the Wine compatibility layer.

OpenFX application window

*OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D rendering engine (as opposed to a game engine) written in C++ designed to make it easier and intuitive for developers to produce applications utilising hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. The class library abstracts the details of using the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides an interface based on world objects and other high level classes.
The engine is free software, licensed under the LGPL and has a very active community. It has been used in some commercial games. It was Sourceforge's project of the month in March 2005.

3D image made with OGRE

*Pixie is a free, photorealistic raytracing renderer for generating photorealistic images, developed by Okan Arikan in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas At Austin. It is RenderMan-compliant (meaning it reads conformant RIB, and supports full SL shading language shaders) and is based on the Reyes rendering architecture, but also support raytracing for hidden surface determination.
Like the proprietary BMRT, Pixie is popular with students learning the RenderMan Interface, and is a suitable replacement for it. Contributions to Pixie are facilitated by SourceForge and the internet where it can also be downloaded free of charge as source code or precompiled. It compiles for Windows (using Visual Studio 2005), Linux and on Mac OS X (using Xcode or Unix-style configure script).

image made with Pixie

Let me know if there are other great Free and Open Source 3D Graphics software applications that I failed to include in the list.

For those of you who are into creating two-dimensional models, you can check out our list of 2D animation software for Linux.

Christmas Jokes For Geeks

Christmas is just around the corner so let’s keep the jokes coming. I hope our jokes for IT professionals (corny or not) made you laugh or at least smile.

To those of you who are hard to please, maybe this next set of jokes will do. But still if this will not make you laugh, shame on you! You don’t have a sense of humor and you don’t deserve a gift this Christmas because you are grouchy like “The Grinch”. I’m just kidding :-)

So here goes our Christmas jokes for geeks; have fun reading, or singing…

A Star Trek The Next Generation Night Before Christmas
Based on "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore Adaptation copyright 1991, Eric R. Rountree

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the ship
Not a circuit was buzzing, not one microchip;
The phasers were hung in the armourery securely,
In hope that no alien would get up that early.
The crewmen were nestled all sung in their bunks
(Except for the few who were partying drunks)
And Picard in his nightshirt, and Bev in her lace,
Had just settled down for a neat face to face...

When out in the hall there arose such a racket,
That we leapt from our beds, pulling on pant and jacket.
Away to the lifts we all shot like a gun,
Leapt into the turbos and shouted "Deck One!"
The bridge red-alert lights, which flashed through the din,
Gave a lustre of Hades to objects within.
When, what on the viewscreen, our eyes should behold,
But a weird kind of sleigh, and some guy who looked old.

But the glint in his eyes was so strange and askew,
That we knew in a moment it had to be Q.

His sleigh grew much larger as closer he came.
Then he zapped on the bridge and addressed us by name:
"It's Riker, It's Data, It's Worf and Jean-Luc!
It's Geordi, and Wesley, the genetic fluke!
To the top of the bridge, to the top of the hall!
Now float away! Float away!
Float away all!"

As leaves in the autumn are whisked off the street,
So the floor of the bridge came away from our feet,
And up to the ceiling, our bodies they flew,
As the captain called out,"what the Hell is this, Q?!"
The prankster just laughed and expanded his grin,
And, snapping his fingers, he vanished again.
As we took in our plight, and were looking around,
The spell was removed, and we crashed to the ground.
Then Q, dressed in fur from his head to his toe,
Appeared once again, to continue the show.
"That's enough!" cried the captain, "You'll stop this at once!"
And Riker said, "Worf, take aim at this dunce!"
"I'm deeply offended, Jean-Luc" replied Q,
"I just wanted to celebrate Christmas with you."
As we scoffed at his words, he produced a large sack.
He dumped out the contents and took a step back.

"I've brought gifts," he said, "just to show I'm sincere.
There's something delightful for everyone here."
He sat on the floor, and dug into the pile,
And handed out gifts with his most charming smile:
"For Counsellor Troi, there's no need to explain.
Here's Tylenol-Beta for all of your pain.
For Worf I've some mints, as his breath's not too great
And for Geordi LaForge, an inflatable date."
For Wesley, some hormones, and Clearasil-plus;
For Data, a joke book, for Riker a truss.
For Beverly Crusher, there's sleek lingerie,
And for Jean-Luc, the thrill of just seeing her that way."
And he sprang to his feet with that grin on his face
And, clapping his hands, disappeared into space.

But we heard him exclaim as he dwindled from
sight, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good flight!"
---end---

Computer Wonderland Singalong

Another "ping",
Are you listenin'?
The puter screen,
Is a glistenin'.
With icons so bright,
They light up the night,
Welcome to the e-mail wonderland!

Gone away,
Are the hall talks.
Here to stay,
Is the IN-BOX.
Flagged "urgent, please read!",
And "answer with speed!".
Welcome to the e-mail wonderland!

In the morning e-mails start to add up.
No lunch today cause messages abound.
Just click away and hope the server stays up.
You can't do your job if it goes down.

10 P.M.,
You're not tired.
The caffeine,
Has got you wired.
The day's not complete,
Till the last delete,
Welcome to the e-mail wonderland!

In the morning e-mails start to add up,
No lunch today cause messages abound.
Just click away and hope the server stays up.
You can't do your job if it goes down.

Until you,
Are retired,
The same old grind,
It is required.
You'll face unafraid,
That message parade.
Welcome to the e-mail wonderland
---end---

Christmas Shopping For Geeks

Rule #1
When in doubt - buy him a Star Wars book. It does not matter if he
already has one. I have a friend who owns 17 copies of “The Wookie
Cookies Cookbook” and he has yet to complain. As a geek, you
can never have too many Star Wars books. No one knows why.

Rule #2
If you cannot afford a Star Wars book, buy him anything with an
acronym in it. Geeks love saying those acronyms. "Hey, George!
Can I borrow your PS2 to USB adapter?" "OK. By-the-way, are you
through with my PC2100 DDR RAM tester yet?" Again, no one knows
why.

Rule #3
If you are really, really broke, buy him anything for his game
system. A crappy third-party DDR pad, a whacky looking joystick,
or any game from the bargain bin. Geeks love gifts for their game
systems. No one knows why.

Rule #4
Do not buy geeks cologne. Do not buy geeks ties. And never buy
geeks designer shoes. I was told that if God had wanted geeks to
wear decent clothes, he wouldn't have invented sweatpants.

Rule #5
You can buy geeks new remote controls to for their computer. If
you have a lot of money, buy your geek a big-screen TV that can
hook up to the computer with an ergonomic chair. Watch him go
wild as he flips, and flips, and flips.

Rule #6
Do not buy a geek any of those fancy liqueurs. If you do, you will
have to listen to the many different concoctions they did at the
Microsoft Party.

Rule #7
Buy industrial-sized canisters of after shave or deodorant. I'm
told they will appreciate the efficiency and savings.

Rule #8
Do not buy geeks label makers. Within a couple of weeks, there
will be sighs because they will be lamenting for the newest model
with Ethernet and modem ports so that he can create labels
remotely. No one knows why.

Rule #9
Never buy a geek anything that says "for outside use" on the box.
It will ruin his Special Day and he will always stick it in the
closet.

Rule #10
Good places to shop for geeks include Electronics Boutique, Sun-
coast Video, Circuit City, Fry’s Electronics, Barnes and Noble, and
pricewatch.com. (Online stores for “Lord of the Rings” merchandise
are also excellent geek stores. It doesn't matter if he doesn't
know what it is. "From “Lord of the Rings”, eh? Must be something
I wanted. Hey! Isn't this genuine orc hair? Wow! Thanks.")

Rule #11
Geeks enjoy stupidity. That's why they never make mistakes of their
own (*cough*) - but they will enjoy others’ stupidity. Get him the
complete Monty Python Collection. Or point him to complaint
pages by AOLers. "Oh the thrill! The challenge! Who wants to be
p\/\/33n3d?"

Rule #12
Tickets to a cheesy kung fu movie are a smart gift. However, he
will not appreciate tickets to the WWF. Everyone knows why.

Rule #13
Geeks love personal electronics. But never, ever, buy a geek you
love a laptop. If you don't know why - please refer to Rule #8
and what happens when he gets a label maker.

Rule #14
It's hard to beat a really processor upgrade or an ergonomic
keyboard. Never buy a real geek a regular keyboard. It must be
an ergonomic keyboard. No one knows why.

Rule #15
Photoshop. Geeks love Photoshop. It takes us back to the days when
pasting your face on the body of a model was funny or at least
desperate. Nothing says love like Adobe Photoshop 6.0. No one
knows why.
---end---

Top 10 Technological Christmas Tunes

10. 'Twas the 'Net before Christmas

9. Santa Claus is modem to town

8. Up On The Desktop

7. "Quark," The Herald Angels Sing

6. Gateway In A Manger

5. The First AOL

4. INTEL IT On The Mountain

3. .COM All Ye Faithful

2. JAVA Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

1. Joy To The World Wide Web
---end---

A Taste Of Mandriva Linux

Mandriva Linux is a “populaire” Linux distribution with a French origin. It was created by Mandriva (formerly Mandrakesoft) in 1998. Mandriva’s previous name is Mandrakelinux, and its first release was based on Red Hat Linux (version 5.1) and KDE (version 1.0). It has since diverged from Red Hat and has included a number of original tools mostly to ease system configuration. Mandriva’s popularity can’t be denied as it places consistently high on Distrowatch ranking with a current standing at #8.

I have tried and tested almost all major Linux distros but not yet Mandriva. Fortunately, I had a not-so-busy weekend so I finally had my hands on Mandriva Linux 2008. I installed it on my backup computer with hardware specifications listed below:

Board: Intel D101GGCL
Processor: 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT Technology
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB HDD
Memory: 1GB 400 MHz DDR RAM
Graphics Card: ATI PowerColor Radeon X300

Installation:
I loaded the One installation CD which I got from HERE. If you want a more complete version with language support and all, get the DVD Powerpack version. There’s also a FREE edition to those who have a strict ideology of using only free/open-source software. Anyway, once the CD was loaded, I was immediately impressed with Mandriva’s professional looking artwork. The installer itself is even more impressive. It is very straightforward and quick. I think Linux newbies can successfully install Mandriva without any trouble because almost all they have to do is just point and click. The installation was finished without a hitch, and I was very happy that everything worked with no time wasted. Grub was properly configured and important hardware like Ethernet, audio, video, and USB were functioning well.

Look and Feel:
Though I’m not a big KDE fan, I find Mandriva’s default theme very likable and I pretty much like its sleek appearance. By the way, there’s also a Gnome version but I wanted to see and experience Mandriva on its favored KDE flavour. Mandriva certainly knows how to please those who want some cutting-edge desktop effects because Compiz Fusion and its very own Mettise is installed by default. I easily and successfully enabled Compiz Fusion and it worked with very minor hiccups. Like when the screen saver appeared, my system just froze so I had to hard reboot. I find it just a slight glitch because I usually don’t enable my screensaver. I also played with the 2D effects of Mettise a bit, and it was obviously less resource hungry compared to Compiz Fusion, which makes it ideal for those who have an ultra low-end graphics card.


Package Management:
Mandriva One is packed with highly functional software, plus Java and Flash are already installed by default. Out-of-the-box KDE programs and handy desktop applications like Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1, Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.6, and Mplayer 1.0rc1 are also included. Programming and networking tools are also present, like Python 2.5.1, Perl 5.8.8, and Samba 3.0.25b. Downloading, installing, removing, and updating packages is no sweat, thanks to Mandriva’s graphical all-in-one Control Center. I think the Control Center is one of the biggest assets of Mandriva and other Mandriva-based distro like PCLinuxOS.


Stability:
Another slight problem that I noticed on Mandriva 2008 is its buggy NTFS-3G tool. Writing to my NTFS hard disk failed, but thanks to the Mandriva team for the instructions on enabling write support that can be found HERE. For the typical desktop users I know this won’t be that much of a problem as using Mandriva for daily computing tasks is perfectly safe and secure. I have watched DVD’s, surf the web, program with Python, and wrote this blog post on a Mandriva 2008 OS. In addition, I find the KDE desktop very responsive and the boot/start-up time relatively fast.

Conclusion:
All things considered, I can say that Mandriva 2008 is a very capable desktop operating system ideal for beginners as well as Linux power users. Those minor glitches that I have encountered were overshadowed by its rich features and outstanding performance. But, I do hope that those problems will be fixed on their next release. I intend to keep my Mandriva 2008 partition on my back up computer because I’m beginning to love it. I will be tweaking it and further use it for productive purposes.

Mandriva Linux is truly an elite distribution and this 2008 version further strengthened its excellent status. To those who haven’t tried Mandriva, I encourage you to have a taste.

Bonne journée! :)

Rise of the Ego Surfers

According to pewinternet.org, 47% of internet users have searched for their own name online. Exactly 53% have searched on the web for information about personal and business contacts.

In 2002, 22% of internet users have searched online for their own name so the number of ego surfers have more than doubled in the span of only 5 years.

One of the main reasons for this "self-searching" phenomenon is the explosion of blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and online profiles resulting in the increase in size of people's digital footprints.

I must admit that I have also searched for my own name online but it is mostly for fun. Like for this little auza keyword game/experiment that I am playing right now.

I think it is perfectly normal to ego surf especially with the growing number of people who have done it. So to those who haven’t tried it yet, go ahead and look up for your own name on Google. Because who knows, someone might have left an intriguing footprint about you.

Bayanihan Linux Licensing Concern

A few months ago, I made a review of Bayanihan Linux, and a recent comment made by Maccess caught my attention. He wrote:

I was wondering about the Bayanihan Linux licensing claim that it is free only for educational and Non-profit use, but a license in required for commercial use.

As a Debian based distribution, they are bound by the Debian social contract, and should be free.

As a product of a government institution paid for by taxpayer’s money, it should be free.

Even if we push aside those issues, if it wants to be the "national Linux," then it should be free so it can be adopted by Internet Cafes so they would have the same Linux in Cafes as they would have in schools.

Also, making it free also means that business would be more willing to adopt it, creating a justification for schools to use it because that is what businesses use.

By insisting on a "commercial" license, Bayanihan Linux is just killing itself and preventing the adoption of what could be a "National Linux".

I totally agree with Maccess here. As a government funded project and as Free and Open Source software, Bayanihan Linux should be made available to anyone without a price tag, even for those who want to use it for profit. I can’t seem to find a reason why there’s a need for licensing for it to be used commercially. In my own opinion, the business licensing is completely useless and will only cripple and prevent a quality desktop operating system like Bayanihan Linux from becoming popular among Filipinos. I hope someone from Bayanihan will be able to comment regarding this matter.

Weekly Ten (12-17-2007)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:

1. Analyst: iPhone simply isn't meant for enterprise
Although many executives are snapping up iPhones and expecting corporate support, there are many reasons the Apple device shouldn't be used in large-scale business, says a new report from Forrester Research.
More @ AppleInsider

2. Encouraging people to contribute knowledge
The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable.
More @ Googleblog


3. Test Your Software and Perl 5.10-tobe
Perl 5.10 will be out soon — within a week — and pumpking Rafael Garcia-Suarez will likely release a final release candidate for final testing and polishing. If you have Perl code you care about, it’s worth downloading RC3 to see how well things run with the new version.
More @ OreillyNetwork

4. iPhone GPS module
More @ HackaDay

5. Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft
A CEREBRAL computer-scientist-turned-executive, Eric E. Schmidt has spent much of his career competing uphill against Microsoft, quietly watching it outflank, outmaneuver or simply outgun most of its rivals.
More @ NYTimes

6. 127 Foods That Fight Fat
Weight loss starts with shopping. Taking control of what you eat begins with taking control of what you buy.
More @ YahooHealth

7. The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007
These much-ballyhooed products, sites, and services, it turned out, left much to be desired.
More @ PCWorld

8. Toshiba's Qosmio G40 now with world's first HD DVD-RW drive
More @ Engadget

9. The Big Three of Linux: Looking ahead to 2008
What are Red Hat, Novell and Canonical going to have to do in 2008 to in order to dominate the desktop and server Linux market?
More @ EnterpriseLinuxLog

10. There’s still a lot of life left in desktop office suites
Even though all the Web 2.0 crowd seems to think matters are Web-based office suites/services, there’s still a lot of life left in client-based productivity software from Microsoft and others.
More @ ZDNetBlog

Browse The Web Faster, Use Text Mode Browsers

Did you know that you can surf the internet in text mode using a Linux terminal? This is made possible through Free and Open Source text-based web browsers.

But why surf the web in plain text while there are plenty of easy-to-use graphical browsers available?

To answer that question, I have here a list of some of the advantages in using a text-based internet browser:

* Text-based web browser needs very few system resources, since displaying text needs much less processor time and memory than graphical pages.

* Text-based web browser runs almost everywhere, even in environments without a graphical mode. Especially the possibility to use them through Telnet can be very useful.

* Text-based web browsers have very quick start-up times. Thus they can be used to take a quick glance at a page without having to start a "big" graphical browser, and also without having to start the graphical environment if you do not have one running all the time.

* Information retrieval is much more efficient in a text-based web browser particularly when surfing graphically overloaded pages.


So if you are now convinced or have become curious enough to use an internet browser in text mode, why not try the following:

Links is text WWW browser with tables and frames. It runs on Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Windows. Current version is 0.99. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Lynx is a text browser for the World Wide Web.Lynx 2.8.5 runs on Unix, VMS, Windows 95/98/NT, DOS386+ but not 3.1, 3.11, or OS/2 EMX. The current developmental version is also available for testing. Ports to Mac are in beta test. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Netrik is the ANTRIK Internet Viewer/Browser/Explorer/Navigator/whatever. Netrik is Free Source Software published under the GNU GPL, which essentially states that you can do anything with the programm and its source code, as long as it remains free. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

W3m is a text-based web browser as well as a pager like `more' or `less'. With w3m you can browse web pages through a terminal emulator window (xterm, rxvt or something like that). Moreover, w3m can be used as a text formatting tool which typesets HTML into plain text. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

W3mmee is a variant of w3m with support for multiple character encodings. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Emacs/W3 used to be known as the most popular WEB browser on Emacs, but it worked so slowly that we wanted a simple and speedy alternative. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

W3m is a pager with WWW capability, developed by Akinori ITO. Although it is a pager, it can be used as a text-mode WWW browser. Then we developed a simple Emacs interface to w3m. Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Debris is a free (see GPL) text mode HTML browser package. It provides:
• support for tables
• support for forms
• secure environment, suited for public terminals
• it is small (only 25% of the size of lynx) and fast
Visit its project website HERE for more details and to download.

Doom on iPod in My Pocket

I travel a lot these days. When I get bored, one of the favorite things that I always do is get my 5th Gen. iPod, not to listen to music or watch some videos, but play Doom with it. That’s right. The good old semi-violent first-person shooter game called Doom, in 3D.

Now how did I do it?

First, I installed Rockbox. Rockbox is a free software replacement for the firmware held on various forms of digital audio players (DAPs). Rockbox offers an alternative to the host device's operating system firmware (in many cases without removing the original firmware) which provides a plug-in architecture for adding various enhancements and functionality to DAPs which are not present in the original OS. Enhancements include PDA functionality, applications, utilities, and games.

I just made a tutorial on installing Rockbox and bootloader on the iPod (click on the link): How to install Rockbox and Bootloader.

After familiarizing with the Rockbox firmware, I then installed Doom by following these simple steps:

Note: To play Doom, you need at least the "base wad" called rockdoom.wad plus one or more game wads.

1. Install rockdoom.wad

Create a directory called /.rockbox/doom/ on your player (i.e. F:\.rockbox\doom\ for Windows users - where F: is the drive letter for your DAP) and save the following file in that directory:

* rockdoom.wad: rockdoom.wad.

2. Install the game wads

Copy the Doom wad(s) you wish to play into that directory and start Doom. The wads doom looks for are:

* doom1.wad: Doom (Shareware)
* doom.wad: Doom
* doomu.wad: Doom
* doom2.wad: Doom 2 - Hell on Earth
* doom2f.wad: Doom 2 French
* plutonia.wad: Doom 2 - Plutonia Experiment
* tnt.wad: Doom 2 - TNT - Evilution

A free alternative for Doom 2 is Freedoom. This can be used in place of doom2.wad or it may be used as an addon in doom by placing it in the addons directory.

Some photos of my iPod running Doom:




Now let’s smoke those freaky aliens!

Christmas Jokes For IT Professionals

Let us loosen up a bit because it is time once again for our Christmas season jokes. This is all for the spirit of fun with the hope of making everyone jolly.

To those who don’t have a sense of humor, we warn you to not read any further. But to those who have, sit back, relax, read and enjoy our jokes. So after our Microsoft jokes, here are some Christmas jokes for IT professionals:

A Networkologist's Christmas (v3.1)
-by Timothy Haight

“‘Tis the night before Christmas,”, I thought with a frown.
I was stuck at the office. The network was down.
The routers were hung in the closet, all crashed.
Their tables had holes in their data, all trashed.
Remote distribution, it seems, just for fun,
had erased DLLs Windows needed to run,
on 84 desktops, way down in accounting.
I sat stunned at my desk, my blood pressure mounting.
When all of a sudden there arose such a clatter,
I saw that a server had something the matter.
There was smoke coming out of the main hard disk drive.
"No problem,” I thought, "I'm set up with RAID 5.".
But I found out the system I thought was unstoppable
Hard disk drives that turned out completely unswappable!
"No problem," I thought, "I've tape backup to thank.”
And then I discovered my backups were blank.
The UPS burped, and its lights all went out.
I started to scream! I started to shout!
But nobody heard as I vented my rage,
My gurus were all on vacation those days,
And nobody's tech support answered the phone.
I was nose deep in trouble, completely alone,
When out at reception, I heard a soft knock.
As the hands just touched midnight on my desktop clock...
"What's your problem?", he asked,
"Never mind, friend, I know.
I checked out your network five hours ago.
I did some proactive analysis, so
I knew that this time bomb was going to blow."
Who was this guy? Who did he think that he was?
He was dressed in red coveralls, white beard, and black gloves.
His eyes had the twinkle of technical genius.
His smile cut down personal distance between us.
He spread out his tools, and went straight to his work.
"Whoever configured this network's a jerk.",
He said with a :-)> as he quickly rebooted,
Uploaded some software, and smoothly rerouted
The LAN to a WAN that he quickly supplied
With bandwidth at least 20 gigabits wide
That went via wireless, I think, LEO,
to tech support elves waiting at the North Pole.
"Now bridging, now routing, now Ethernet hubs!”
He chanted as each piece of hardware he rubbed.
"Cheer up, my good friend!
Lose that mindset so tragic!
Technology often looks just like some magic
To people who don't understand what we do.
Now a switch, emulation, now middleware glue!
Look at the protocols, check one or two,
Debug a bit, test a bit, presto! We're through!"
My data was back! Every system checked out!
Tears of joy wet my face as I wandered about.
"How can I thank you? You must be Saint Nick!"
He said, "Really, my friend, it's not such a great trick,
If you don't give up hope, focus on what you're doing,
And read all your issues of NETWORK COMPUTING."
And I heard him exclaim, as his reindeer were coursing,
"Merry Christmas to all! And consider outsourcing!"
---END---

Funny C/C++ declaration
/* All this was done on August 17, 2007 by Pietro Gagliardi
You are free to use this code in a citation or (if you have the guts)
in your own program; just please mention me. */

typedef int number;
class microsoft : public corporation, public enemy<(number) 1> {
public:
microsoft()
{
sanity = 200;
bill_gates = drop_out();
ceo = bill_gates;
while (sanity > 2) {
sleep(2);
sanity--;
}
steve_ballmer = new class doofus;
}

#define our int
#define SUCCESS 1

our year_2007_goals()
{
delete bill_gates;
ceo = steve_ballmer;
sanity -= 200;
return SUCCESS;
}
protected:
int sanity;
class doofus ceo, bill_gates, steve_ballmer;
};

typedef int iq;
const iq of_steve_ballmer = -4, of_steve_jobs = MENSA_MINIMUM - 1,
of_linus_torvalds = MENSA_MINIMUM, of_bill_gates = UNDEFINED;

/* Here are some that make use of the preprocessor and the Unix programming interface */
#include

#define middle
middle class businessMan {
ino_t want_to_go_to_work;
#if speeding_to_work_because_you_are_late
off_t o_jail;
#endif
};

class mate
{
ino_t wannagotoskool;
};

class woman {
#define be
private:
be friend class of_girls;
off_t o_the_mall()
{
for (;;)
mall.go_to(rand()).shop();
}
};

class clown {
!friend class teacher;
friend class mate;
};
---END---

Santa Claus is Coming to Town
#Submitted by Steve Wainstead
#!/bin/santash
# Santa Claus is coming to town

better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa_claus <>town

cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >coal
cat list | grep nice >gift
santa_claus <>town

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'

for goodness_sake; do
be_good;
done
---END---

Extra:
Season's Greetings from the world's richest IT Professional! --Bill Gaytes Gates

Are you gay enough for Christmas?

KDE-Made Educational Software for Kids and Adults

The KDE Education Project is developing high-quality educational software for the K Desktop Environment. Its primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18 and on specialized user interface needs of young users. Several programs were also made to aid teachers in planning lessons, and others that are of interest to university students and anyone else with a desire to learn.

In addition to our list of Free and Open Source educational software applications, here are some of the KDE-made programs that you may also find interesting and useful:

KLettres

KLettres aims to help to learn the alphabet and then to read some syllables in different languages. It is meant to help learning the very first sounds of a new language, for children or for adults.

Currently available are: Czech, British English, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Low Saxon, Luganda, Romanized Hindi, Spanish and Slovak, you can choose using the Languages menu. A toolbar with the special characters per language is now provided if you don't have the correct country keyboard or the keyboard layout to be able to display correctly the accented letters.

More about KLettres HERE

Kanagram

Kanagram is a replacement for KMessedWords, and is new in KDE 3.5. Kanagram mixes up the letters of a word (creating an anagram), and you have to guess what the mixed up word is. Kanagram features several built-in word lists, hints, and a cheat feature which reveals the original word. Kanagram also has a vocabulary editor, so you can make your own vocabularies, and distribute them through Kanagram's KNewStuff download service.

More about Kanagram HERE

KHangman

KHangman is the classical hangman game. The child should guess a word letter by letter. At each miss, the picture of a hangman appears. After 10 tries, if the word is not guessed, the game is over and the answer is displayed.

The words are nouns and available in twenty-four languages at the moment: Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Polish, Portuguese, Spanish , Slovenian, Serbian Latin , Serbian Cyrillic, Slovak, Swedish, Tajik and Turkish. The program will detect which languages are present and enable them. In KDE 3.2 you have all the languages but in KDE 3.3.x and in the next KDE 3.4, you will get only english plus the data in the language you use in kde provided it exists. You will also be able to easily download other languages via the Get New Stuff dialog (3 clicks and your data will be installed).

More about KHangman HERE

Kig

Kig is a program for exploring geometric constructions. It is meant as a better replacement for such free programs as KGeo, KSeg and Dr. Geo and commercial programs like Cabri.

Kig is meant as a useful and powerful utility for high school students and teachers, and as a fun project for me and others.

More about Kig HERE

KMPlot

KmPlot is a mathematical function plotter for the KDE-Desktop. It has built in a powerfull parser. You can plot different functions simultaneously and combine their function terms to build new functions. KmPlot supports functions with parameters and functions in polar coordinates. Several grid modes are possible. Plots may be printed with high precision in correct scale.

More about KMPlot HERE

KWordQuiz

KWordQuiz is a general purpose flash card program. It can be used for vocabulary learning and many other subjects. If you need more advanced language learning features, please try KVocTrain.

KWordQuiz is the KDE version of the Windows program WordQuiz. If you have just switched to KDE/Linux you can use all files created in WordQuiz with KWordQuiz.

More about KWordQuiz HERE

KStars

KStars is a Desktop Planetarium for KDE. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes 130,000 stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids.

More about KStars HERE

Parley

Parley is a program to help you memorize things.

Parley supports many language specific features but can be used for other learning tasks just as well. It uses the spaced repetition learning method, also known as flash cards.

More about Parley HERE

Visit the KDE Education Project website HERE; help and support free/open-source software.

Mac OS X: Virtual Machine vs. Boot Camp

My sister-in-law just handed me her brand new, shiny black Macbook; the one with a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB memory and 160GB hard drive. Like majority of new Mac owners, she wants to run Windows applications on it. I have two options to help her out. One is to install Windows using a desktop virtualization software like Parallels or VMWare Fusion. The other is through Apple’s Boot Camp.

Now which method did I like better?

Before I'll answer that, let me give you a brief overview of Virtual Machine and Boot Camp:

In computer science, a virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (computer) that executes programs like a real machine. It is considered as one of the distinct classes of desktop virtualization. Virtual machine technology is used to host multiple instances of a standard, single-user desktop PC operating system (e.g., Windows XP) on a server machine. With desktop virtualization, a user can directly access the guest desktop operating system while inside the host OS (e.g., Mac OS X).

Boot Camp is a utility included with Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" that assists users in installing Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista on Intel-based Macintosh computers. Boot Camp guides users through non-destructive re-partitioning (including resizing of an existing HFS+ partition, if necessary) of their hard disk drive and using the Mac OS X Leopard disc to install Windows drivers. In addition to device drivers for the hardware, the disc includes a control panel applet for selecting the boot operating system while in Windows. In short, Boot Camp will let you dual boot OS X and XP efficiently.

Now which way did I choose?

If you are not in a hurry, I will compare some of their essential features so that we can easily point out the advantages and the disadvantages:


The Verdict:
After considering the hardware specifications of my sister-in-law’s laptop and the possible applications that she will often be running with it, I immediately decided to go for virtualization using Parallels Desktop for Mac. The other reason for choosing VM over dual boot is its ability to switch OS a lot faster and easier, or even use two or more operating systems at the same time. If my sister-in-law is into gaming or her Mac is a little low-end, it would have been a different story because I will definitely just install Windows using Boot Camp. Low-end hardware cannot handle VM well, and advanced 3D games will possibly run slow in VM environment.

So there you have it. I hope this article will somehow guide those who are torn between desktop virtualization and Boot Camp on installing Windows or just about any other OS for their Mac.

Weekly Ten (12-10-2007)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:



1. Hassle-Free PC
Personal computers were supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, these beasts have turned us all into part-time IT administrators, our lives given over to downloading upgrades, installing patches and updates and drivers and antispyware, decrypting error messages and screaming at stalled applications. Enough!
More @ Forbes

2. Apple Ultra-Portable MacBook Rumor Roundup
As rumors start to build for Macworld San Francisco 2008, the most consistent rumor appears to be one of an ultra-portable Apple notebook computer.
More @ MacRumors

3. Nobel Laureate Says The Internet Makes Us Dumb, We Say: Meh
Newly awarded Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing has used her acceptance speech to tell the world that the internet makes us dumb.
More @ TechCrunch

4. Super8 Automatic film scanner
More @ HackaDay

5. One year later: Where are the killer Vista apps?
At the Consumer Electronics Show last January, Microsoft and Yahoo made a big deal out of a Vista-optimized version of Yahoo Messenger that was supposedly one of many compelling Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps in the pipeline.
More @ ZDNetBlogs

6. Voices without borders
Our lives are a fabric of overlapping stories: stories that are entirely unique, stories that are richly specific, stories that define who we are, where we have come from, what we believe in. And while each story is ultimately personal, we find across them the common themes of love and loss, adversity and triumph.
More @ Googleblog


7. Linux Blog Safari: Alabama Now a Third-World Country?
It's not too often the public schools figure prominently in the Linux blogs, but sure enough, this week they drew a surprising amount of discussion on a few different sites.
More @ LinuxInsider

8. Nokia's Eco Sensor concept gets right with the greens
More @ Engadget

9. Linux is about to take over the low end of PCs
Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users' hands.
More @ DesktopLinux

10. Inside the "Ron Paul" Spam Botnet
On the weekend of October 27, 2007, the Internet was suddenly bombarded with a rash of spam emails promoting U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul. The spam run continued until Tuesday, October 30, when it stopped as suddenly as it began.
More @ SecureWorks

The World’s Longest and Shortest Domain Name

A domain name is a name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site’s URL, e.g. auza.com. This type of domain is also called a hostname.

This is not 'Ripley’s Believe It or Not' but in case you are wondering what are the longest and shortest domain name in the world, then read on.

According to the domain registrars, the longest legal domain name is 63 characters starting with a letter or number. The character count does not include the domain suffix, e.g. '.com.ph' or the URL prefix 'http://www.'.

So what domain name currently holds the record as the longest in the world? Actually, there are plenty of sites that are sharing this title at the moment. The most known among them are the following:

http://www.thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com

http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com

http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.com

http://www.iamtheproudownerofthelongestlongestlongestdomainnameinthisworld.com

http://www.h-i-t-h-i-s-d-o-m-a-i-n-h-a-s-t-h-e-m-o-s-t-d-a-s-h-e-s-e-v-e-r.info

http://www.thepersonwithanewideaisacrank-untiltheideasucceeds-by-marktwain.com

Now let's go to the shortest domain name on earth.

The shortest known domain name right now was recently acquired by Google, with the purpose of making it easier for Chinese users to find Google's main site. The domain name is ‘g.cn’. Most single letter domain names are supposed to be reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). However, there are a few cases of this not being so:

Z.com owned by Nissan
Q.com owned by Qwest
X.com owned by PayPal.

Google was not allowed by IANA to buy g.com, but they got lucky and found a one letter-shorter alternative in 'g.cn'.

Any other long and short domain names?

openSUSE 10.3 for My Friend

A friend asked me to install Linux for him several weeks ago. This is mainly because he got curious after seeing Compiz Fusion in action on YouTube. Since I finally had a lot of free time last weekend, I agreed to install Linux for my friend.

The first thing that I considered before the installation was of course choosing the right distribution for him and his machine. The first distro that came to my mind is openSUSE 10.3. That’s right. I know it messed up my main workstation but I wanted to give it a chance as it might properly work on other hardware configuration. With this, I can also find out if my horrible experience with openSUSE 10.3 was just one of those isolated cases.


My friend’s machine has a Pentium D 3.2 GHz processor, 1GB RAM, and an ATI Radeon X850 graphics card. Windows XP is already installed on his 80GB HDD, but he bought another 80GB to be used for Linux because he wanted to dual-boot. I used the Gnome CD version of openSUSE 10.3 for installation. So, this was the full experience:


Installation:
As always, openSUSE installation is straightforward but indeed very lengthy. If you are used to Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS, then there’s a big chance that you will loose your patience from waiting and might just “abort” the installation. As I believe that patience is a virtue, I was able to make it through the pain of waiting. After the install, I was glad that my friend’s computer was doing fine so far, as Grub was perfectly configured, and important hardware like USB, Ethernet, audio, and video were properly detected. Other improvement I noticed on 10.3 is its more responsive graphical installer compared to previous versions.


Look and Feel:
I had extensively used openSUSE 10.1 and have tested 10.2, so I am already very familiar with the new version’s UI. The one panel (instead of Gnome’s traditional two) uses a “Slab” main menu just like in 10.2. openSUSE’s desktop is very newbie-friendly, hence I expect that my friend won’t have trouble adapting to it. I also noticed that Yast opens a lot faster now compared to before. The look is really glossier compared to the previous versions of openSUSE. The artwork has a green theme. I hope my friend loves green (not just green jokes); anyway, it is very highly customizable, so he can easily change it to fit his needs. Now, because he wanted some “desktop effects”, I installed the necessary driver for his ATI card and luckily, it went well. Because Compiz is already installed by default, the desktop was blinging in no time.


Package Management:
One of the main strengths of openSUSE is its package management system. Yast is just very reliable and so easy to use. But now that I’m getting used to Ubuntu’s Synaptic, I find Yast a bit sluggish. The good point is that OpenSuse has a wide array of latest software packages both out-of-the-box and from its repo. There’s also a 1-Click-Install Wizard to take care of those pesky codecs. Therefore, playing DVD’s, MP3’s, and flash videos will never be a problem in openSUSE 10.3.


Stability:
openSUSE is tried and tested in terms of stability. I was very productive with the version 10.1 before that I heavily relied on it in almost all of my computing tasks . Unfortunately, when I upgraded to 10.3, I found out that it was unfit for my machine so I had to totally forget Suse. My friend is just very fortunate because his computer hardware seems to jell with openSUSE 10.3. But, I still can’t conclude if his machine is really stable enough as he’s been using it for only a few days. Nonetheless, he’s quite happy playing with the cool desktop effects and showing it off to his girl friends (he he). I was surprised that I haven’t heard a single whine from him yet, and he even told me that he’s totally enjoying his experience with Linux.


Conclusion:
openSUSE 10.3 certainly has plenty of enhancements like its more polished theme, faster boot time speed, and improved responsiveness. However, I think it fell a bit short on hardware support. In my friend’s computer, it worked like a charm. But in mine, its performance is very frustrating. The installation should also be improved, as not everyone has patience like mine.

openSUSE still has enough room for improvement. I just hope that they will capitalize on their 10.3 achievements and learn from its blunder for their next major release, because definitely, I will give it another chance.

Microsoft Jokes for Christmas

Since it's Christmas season already, I'm throwing out plenty of technology related jokes all throughout this month to keep everyone merry. To kick things off, I’ll give you the lyrics of some "Microsoft" Christmas parody songs.

So here are some Microsoft jokes for Christmas, and let's sing them!

12 Days of Microsoft Christmas

by Gil Glass
Edited by Me

On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Windows Vista for my PC

On the 2nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 3rd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 4th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 5th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 6th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 6 ints conflictin', 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 7th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 7 files missin', 6 ints conflictin', 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 8th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 8 Megs overflowin', 7 files missin', 6 ints conflictin', 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 9th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 9 apps a crashin', 8 Megs overflowin', 7 files missin', 6 ints conflictin', 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 10th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 10 modes not supported, 9 apps a crashin', 8 Megs overflowin', 7 files missin', 6 ints conflictin', 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows vista for my PC

On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 11 instructions faulty, 10 modes not supported, 9 apps a crashin', 8 Megs overflowin', 7 files missin', 6 ints conflictin', 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 12 sound cards silent, 11 instructions faulty, 10 modes not supported, 9 apps a crashin', 8 Megs overflowin', 7 files missin', 6 ints conflictin', 5 eighty six, 4 sectors bad, 3 ports not responding, 2 GPFs, and Windows Vista for my PC!
-end-

The Bill Gates Song
Original: "Christmas Song" (Mel Torme)

Netscape roasting on an open fire,
Apple begging on its knees,
Photo popping up on Time magazine,
Yes, Bill Gates dreams of days like these!
Everybody knows he's never fully satisfied,
Throws himself behind each task,
World dominion is his company's goal.
Well, hey, is that so much to ask?
He knows the world is in his sway,
We'll buy whatever software he might toss our way,
We'll surf his Internet, watch his TV,
He'll take us anywhere we ask him--for a fee.
And so we're offering this simple prayer,
To Bill and all his MS grunts:
Since we all follow any standard you write,
Make it good, please,
Make it good, please,
Make it good, please, just once!
-end-

Extra:
Season's Greetings from Microsoft...

What would you feel if ever you'll receive a postcard like this for Christmas?
***

The No.1 Auza Project

I am playing a little SEO game right now. I’m not doing this to draw more traffic to this site to gain a little advertising money. I’m doing this just for fun mixed with a little ego-tripping. I want to be No.1 in Google for the keyword: auza.

For those who didn’t know it yet, Auza is my last name. Now who wouldn’t want to see their name at the topmost order of search results?

The Auza on "top" right now is a website of a close relative of mine. So if ever I got lucky and his site will be dethroned by mine, at least the Auza that he will be seeing at the peak is from his closest clan. :)

I’m not really into SEO and I don’t care much about optimizing my site or the “keywords” that I use on my posts in order to be search engine friendly. I just go with the flow. However, the outcome of this No. 1 Auza Project could change my view on the importance of a search engine optimized site.

You can see from the screenshot that my site is still on the No. 5 spot in Google search results when looking for "auza".

I will just make an update later if ever I’ll be successful in my quest to be the No.1 Auza in the world.

7 Best Free and Open Source Educational Software for Kids

I have here a list of some of the best and most valuable Free and Open Source educational software applications for kids. I hope this will in some way serve as a guide to those who want to teach their child at home without the need for spending some extra cash.

I have a 2 year-old son, and I will definitely encourage him to use some of these educational software one of these days. So here’s the list already:

Tux Paint

Tux Paint is a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6 in the US, key stages 1 & 2 in the UK). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program.

Kids are presented with a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help them be creative.

Get TuxPaint!

Canorus

Canorus is a free music score editor. It supports note writing, scripting support, import/export of various file formats, MIDI input and output and more! Note that Canorus is still in early stage of development and not nearly all the features are implemented yet!

Canorus is free (libre) software, licensed under GNU GPL. This means that the program source code is available to public, anyone is welcome to research how the program works, participate in its development, freely distribute the program and spread the word! Canorus runs on Linux, Windows, MacOSX and others!

Get Canorus!

Celestia

The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.

All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.

Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects.

Get Celestia!

Childsplay

Childsplay is a suite of educational games for young children, like gcompris, but without the overkill of c/c++ and the gnome environ. Also the use of the SDL libraries makes smooth animation and the playing of sound very easy. Childsplay uses a plugin system for the games, so you might want to check the Childsplay plugins page. (There are two built-in games: memory and a typing game.)

Childsplay and the games are GNU-GPL licensed and are tested on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and the Windows platforms. (98/ME/2K/XP)

Get Childsplay!

GCompris

GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.
- computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, ...
- algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image, ...
- science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, electric simulation ...
- geography: place the country on the map
- games: chess, memory, connect 4, oware, sudoku ...
- reading: reading practice
- other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing, cartoon making, ...
Currently GCompris offers in excess of 100 activities and more are being developed.

Get GCompris!

Stellarium

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

Get Stellarium!

TuxMath

"Tux, of Math Command" ("TuxMath," for short) is an educational arcade game starring Tux, the Linux mascot!

Based on the classic arcade game "Missile Command," Tux must defend his cities. In this case, though, he must do it by solving math problems.

Get TuxMath!

MEPIS Receives an Early Christmas Gift from Distrowatch

About a week ago, my post was in part regarding some MEPIS community members sending unkind emails to DistroWatch and how it was righteously responded by Ladislav. Just recently, DistroWatch did another honorable thing. They announced that the November 2007 donation is given to MEPIS.

The said amount is worth US$300 in cash courtesy of two online shops (LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com) selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software, and of course DistroWatch. MEPIS founder Warren Woodford was very happy about the said contribution and quickly sent a message of gratitude to Ladislav.

Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has by now donated a total of US$15,590 to various open source software projects.

I am also especially pleased about the recent development. Now I can say that life will go on for MEPIS partly because of that financial assistance and great inspiration that came from DistroWatch. Hopefully, others will also carry out what is righteous, by doing their share in helping their favorite open source projects survive.

I can smell Christmas already. :)

Weekly Ten (12-03-2007)

10 Latest News, Blogs, Tips, and Reviews that I find Interesting and Useful:

1. What If They Gave a Browser War and Microsoft Never Came?
Two weeks ago, Apple announced a new version of WebKit, the underlying rendering technology of their Safari web browser. The feature list is impressive:
More @ CodingHorror

2. Python Upgrades Readied for 2008
Developers of the Python programming language are working concurrently on two upgrades to the core platform, both to arrive in 2008, representatives of Python said Wednesday.
More @ CIO

3. Ultra-Portable MacBook Likely at Macworld San Francisco 2008?
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster believes that the likelihood of an ultra-portable MacBook is about 85% at Macworld San Francisco.
More @ MacRumors

4. NES inside a controller with cartridge compatibility
More @ HackaDay

5. Stealing Books For The Kindle Is Trivially Easy
If you are willing to violate copyright laws, getting free ebooks is almost as easy as getting free music. There are numerous sites that have free, legal, out-of-copyright ebook files available for download.
More @ TechCrunch

6. Wii Sports Weight Loss Program
This is a guide that we have build for people to use to lose weight by playing Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii. We have composed this schedule and tested it multiple times on people with different lifestyles, different weight categories, different ages and different sexes.
More @ WiiHealthy

7. Who's going to win the spectrum auction? Consumers.
Here at Google, we see the upcoming 700 megahertz spectrum auction at the Federal Communications Commission as one of the best opportunities consumers will have to enjoy more choices in the world of wireless devices. That's why we announced today that we are applying to participate in the auction.
More @ Googleblog

8. Samsung announces world's fastest memory: GDDR5
More @ Engadget

9. AT&T chief confirms 3G iPhone on the way
Apple Inc. will introduce a version of the iPhone next year that can download from the Internet at a rate much faster than the existing version, AT&T Inc. chief executive Randall Stephenson confirmed Wednesday.
More @ AppleInsider

10. Zonbu Releases Lean, Mean - and Cheap - Notebook Machine
Zonbu, the computer maker that sells low-cost Linux systems along with paid-per-month service plans, has announced a notebook addition to its line. Zonbu targets consumers by offering no-frills PCs running Gentoo Linux for under $300, then charging $15 per month to take care of tasks like online data backup and security management.
More @ LinuxInsider

Test Riding Pioneer Linux 3.0.2

Pioneer Linux is a Kubuntu-based desktop operating system made by Technalign, Inc. Its main goal is to provide a Windows replacement OS that is both easy-to-use and reliable. It is made available at no cost, but a commercial version is also offered with added CrossOver Office and technical support.

For this review, I tested Pioneer Basic 3.0.2.0 Live CD. According to Technalign, Pioneer Basic comes with 7-year support period which means you can run the operating system and get updates as desired for 7 long years. You can get the free and latest version of Pioneer Basic directly from HERE.

Some Facts:
Pioneer Linux distribution is made in Colorado, USA. It is currently ranked #46 on Distrowatch.

Test Machine Specs:
Board: Intel D101GGCL
Processor: 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with HT Technology
Hard Drive: Samsung 80GB with 8GB allocated to VM disk
Memory: 1GB 400 MHz DDR RAM with 512MB allocated to VM memory
Graphics Card: On-board

Installation:
I loaded the Pioneer Live CD ISO and successfully booted the normal way without the need for passing boot option parameters. The installation in Pioneer was very Ubuntu/Kubuntu-like, except for its 6-step installation process instead of 7. The procedure is very straightforward that even a Linux newbie can handle. The only minor annoyance I encountered was when it prompted for the password before the installation can begin. I thought it was ‘root’ or ‘pioneer’ or some cryptic passwords like that of CentOS Live CD. But actually, there was none. So as a help for those who are also puzzled, just leave it empty and click ‘OK’. Other than that, the installation was smooth sailing. My hardware was properly detected from USB, CD-ROM, audio video, and Ethernet.






Look and Feel:
Pioneer has some good-looking artwork. It has customized boot-screen, graphical boot-splash, log-in menu, and wallpaper. It uses a KDE desktop which is really ideal for those who are just starting to use Linux. I find the desktop quick enough but not as receptive as Gnome in Ubuntu. Nevertheless, KDE is very easy to use and has great features. For those who want some more desktop bling, sad to say that there’s no Compiz in Pioneer.





Package Management:
Pioneer is loaded with essential software applications from office to multimedia programs. To name some, there’s Openoffice.org, Amarok, Firefox, Thunderbird, Python and plenty more. The proprietary Nero Burning software is also installed by default but you have to pay in order to activate it. You can easily download, install, update, and remove software packages using the ever dependable Synaptic Package Manager.



Stability:
I have tried and tested several key applications in Pioneer and luckily, I have not encountered any major bugs and glitches. Thus, I can somewhat presume that it can run steady and secure for long term and productive uses.


Conclusion:
I find Pioneer Basic a “good enough” Linux desktop-oriented operating system as its features are very plain and simple. It lacks the X-factor that I always look for in a distro. Nonetheless, Pioneer is packed with valuable applications that will fit more than the average desktop user’s basic needs.