Just what you’ve been waiting for: the Firefox for Windows installer available in 5¼” and 3½” floppy disks.

– SpreadFirefox

A very interesting howto written by Dr.Small, which might come handy to a lot of people, or perhaps some time in future.

I run into all kinds of predicaments when operating from behind a router, and one of them is, to be able to record my External (or WAN) IP, while behind it.

I am going to explain to you, how I succeeded in doing it, so you may do the same, if you are in the same ditch, and are like me, and run a ssh server or so. When you leave the computer, and you haven’t checked your WAN IP for days, (if you have a dynamic IP), it tends to change.

So first off, here is a list of things you will need for this project:

1. Expect. A simple little application. I’ll explain how to get it, in a second.
2. A external or secondary website, which you have FTP access to.

So, let’s start off and get the necessary things we need, while we are at it.

Complete HowTo

Trolltech developer showing off the neat effects you can get with KDE4 on a low end system

Related: Trolltech and KDE collaborate on Phonon

A streaming version of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s iPlayer online TV on-demand service has been launched for the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

BBC iPlayer (formerly known as iMP, Integrated Media Player, Interactive Media Player, and MyBBCPlayer) is a website and computer program being developed by the BBC to extend its existing RealPlayer-based “Radio Player” and other streamed video clip content.

But …. it is not available to all internet users. Most of the content in UK only, well at least for now.

Last month AMD introduced the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series as “enthusiast gaming performance for the masses” through the Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870, which are both sub-$250 graphics cards. While rudimentary, the Catalyst 7.11 Linux driver (also released last month), supports these two RV670 GPUs with better support coming through the Catalyst 7.12 Linux driver this month. To see how well these two PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards are able to perform under Linux, ASUS had sent out their EAH3850 TOP and EAH3870 TOP. We have tested both of these graphics cards using Ubuntu 7.10 and have compared the results to other products using the fglrx driver, including the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT 512MB. These are the world’s first Linux benchmarks of these new mainstream ATI graphics processors.

The ATI Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 are designed to be affordable GPUs and direct competition for NVIDIA’s recently released GeForce 8800GT, which we should be showcasing here under Linux shortly. These two ATI graphics cards use the RV670 core and are built using a 55nm TSMC process, which results in a smaller die size and a more energy efficient graphics processor. However, as this is an “RV” GPU, it does have a reduction in memory bandwidth and the internal ring bus compared to the flagship Radeon HD 2900XT.

Asus Radeon HD3870:

• 851MHz Core Clock (RV670 reference: 775MHz)
• 2286MHz Memory Clock (RV670 reference: 2250MHz)
• 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 Memory

Asus Radeon HD 3850:

• 730MHz Core Clock (RV670 reference: 668MHz)
• 1900MHz Memory Clock (RV670 reference: 1650MHz)
• 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 Memory

Common Specs:

• DirectX 10.1
• OpenGL 2.0
• Dual Dual-Link DVI
• HDCP Supported
• PCI Express 2.0

Complete Review

Related: Using HDMI With ATI Radeon HD Linux Drivers

Adobe Systems today announced it will release the remoting and messaging technologies used in Flex, Flash and other Adobe products as open source projects. Because the technologies are fairly mature, Adobe isn’t so much looking for help from the open source community as it is looking to get its technology into more hands.

Adobe intends to release the remoting and HTTP-based messaging technologies in its LiveCycle Data Services ES along with the Action Message Format (AMF) protocol specification under the named BlazeDS. They will be made available as public betas under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) v3 and downloadable from Adobe Labs

The Action Message Format (AMF3) is a binary data protocol specification used in a variety of Adobe products, including Flash, which is used on almost every computer due to its availability on Linux and Mac OS in addition to Windows.

Adobe said BlazeDS will allow developers to add data connectivity to rich Internet applications (RIAs) (define), such as its Flex and AIR client technologies, for real-time collaboration and data-push capabilities. It will also allow RIAs to easily connect back to server applications ranging from Java apps to Adobe ColdFusion components. >>>>>

My new avatar from today onwards …. so if you see this anywhere on the internet, then it is me

… btw, do you know where the word avatar comes from …. no … then head here for a small introduction to this magical word.

You can now test the Linux operating system and desktop environment. It’s as easy as ABC.

The Linux Test is just that, a very clever way for anyone to experience Linux on their Windows PC without having to install anything. Just hit the ‘START Linux’ button  and a Linux OS will start up in a virtual space.  You’ll need an Internet connection. Yes, it runs a much much slower than normal full install will, or even LiveCD/DVD, but then again it’s a great way to get acquainted with minimal of what Linux has to offer and to try out the included applications such as Open Office 1.1 and few others. be much better if they had updated their applications, and provide both KDE, at least 3.5, and Gnome versions of it.

Here is a quick and small video showing the execution of this application on my …. hmm hmm …. system:

Now, ain’t that cool …. I mean that I have seen now GaZiLLiON ways of how you can run, launch and test Linux OS.

True or False: Switching from a Windows-operated computer to a Linux-operated one could slash computer-generated e-waste levels by 50%.

The answer is: TRUE

A UK government study in late 2004 reported that there were substantial green benefits to running a Linux open source operating system (OS) on computers instead of the ubiquitous Windows OS, owned by Microsoft. The main problem with Windows users was that they had to change their computer twice as many times as Linux users, on average, thereby effectively creating twice as much computer-generated e-waste.

The report, titled, “Office of Government Commerce: Open Source Software Trials in Government – Final Report” reported the following:

“There are also potential Green Agenda benefits, through reducing the energy and resources consumed in manufacturing replacement equipment, and reducing landfill requirements and costs arising from disposal of redundant equipment.

“Industry observers quote a typical hardware refresh period for Microsoft Windows systems as 3-4 years; a major UK manufacturing organisation quotes its hardware refresh period for Linux systems as 6-8 years.”

-  EcoGeek (original)

Didn’t notice, but it came out few days ago. If you are not happy with Digikam (which I like) or F-Spot, or have been using the previous Picasa 2.5 version, then check out the preview of the upcoming release of Picasa 2.7.

New Features:

• Upload to Picasa Web Albums
  Use the new “Web Album” button to post your best photos online to share with friends and family.
• Save edits to disk
  Save edits, undo saves, and revert to the original file with ease. We’ve got batch saving too! Picasa will even match the jpeg quality of the original. Right-click on your saved files to try the new “locate original” feature.
• Folder hierarchy views
  Browse through folders Explorer-style. Use the button at the top of your Albums List to try them out.
• Improvements to Import
  Import into an existing folder- we know you’ve wanted this feature for a long time! We’ve made importing photos from your camera faster too.
• Better RAW support
  Now you can work with RAW files from the Canon 30D, the Nikon D200, Adobe DNG files, and more.
• Many other enhancements
  Larger thumbnails, better caption editing, ability to configure the row of buttons, special “Starred Photos” album, search by ISO and focal length.

Please see http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/testrepo.html for information on using Google’s Linux Software Testing Repository to install Picasa for Linux, otherwise download one of the following corresponding to your Linux distribution:

• rpm, for Red Hat/Fedora/Suse/Mandriva i386 or x86_64:
  http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/testing/i386/picasa-2.7.3736-7.i386.rpm
• deb, for Debian/Ubuntu i386 and amd64:
  http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/pool/non-free/p/picasa/picasa_2.7.3736-7_i386.deb
  http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/pool/non-free/p/picasa/picasa_2.7.3736-7_amd64.deb