Sunday, December 27, 2009

Microsoft bitten by it's own Sins

Recently, Microsoft have an increasing frequency of being hounded down by other companies in law suits pertaining to patents. Microsoft once did such things... going on a 'Witch Hunt' to hunt down competitors using law suits, patents and technologies. Now, it's having a taste of it's own medicine being hounded down by others.

Read: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/12/microsoft-barred-from-selling-word-has-plan-for-workaround.ars

Self proclaimed righteousness

There have always been self righteous people who try to be hypocritical and refuse the Rights of Freedom to others. We have seen these sort of scenarios in the Past and in the Present and it would continue into the Future.

Governments, agencies, ISPs, organizations, have introduced means and ways to remove Freedom from the people. Some organizations like Comcast supports 'Deep Packet Inspection',throttling user's network traffic and forging fake data packets. Many countries require anyone to reveal their passwords when asked by authorities and setup 'Great Walls' to ban Free access to contents on the Web. They use the name of Justice, proclaiming to fight supposed crime and bring supposed 'Justice'.

The Web was once a Free place but now it's Freedom have been removed. People resort to use tools like proxies, encryption, password protection, anonymous identity... to protect themselves and gain access to contents on the Web.

There are people who wish that the Freedom be removed so that they can commercialize from the removal of Freedom.

We do we need to promote such restrictions of Freedom ? Was it really for Justice ?

Think about it....

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Lately, what's going on ?

So here's what's going on lately:
  • My main laptop running linux mint 7 may have died ?
  • PasswordStore 0.1S-1 released
My main laptop running linux mint 7 may have died ?

Yes, my main laptop either is dead or the screen burnt out. When I power it on, the LEDs are OK, the CD tray is able to open... but the screen is totally blank. No boot messages ... nothing on the screen. i suspect it's either the screen down or it's dead.

How did it happened, it happened when i tried to use the upgrade tool for Linux Mint to upgrade from version 7 to 8. Some problems during the upgrade did occur but it managed to supposedly upgrade. Then I have some problems and did a couple of power cycles and there you go... a burnt screen or a dead laptop. Morale of story, Linux Mint is great but it's upgrade tool isn't really so good this time. I used the upgrade tool to upgrade from 6 to 7 with no problems but somehow 7 to 8.... it gave problems. Those folks at Linux Mint, you need to create a better upgrade tool (yes, those folks did warn of the usage of the upgrade tool).

Even with a supposedly dead laptop, I still enjoyed Linux Mint. no doubts, it's one of the best OS out there. I like Linux Mint and even now, I am using Ubuntu on my another backup machine which came in handy. Ubuntu 9.10 is great but I really want to go back to Linux Mint. When I have the time, I might either get a new machine as my main machine or if the old laptop is still reparable, I would repair it and load in whatever latest version of Linux Mint is out there.

Folks at Linux Mint, please do well and carry on the good work... I am looking forward to use Linux Mint again.

PasswordStore 0.1S-1 released
Yes, I released 0.1S with a mod so it becomes 0.1S-1. I noticed that it's pretty irritating not to be able to do a search in your database for some password profiles and you have to keep scrolling to find whatever required place your password is needed. It's irritating me and so I thought it needs a mod to have some search capabilities to stop the irritation and there you are... a simple search capable PasswordStore that searches your username and required place for clues on what you are trying to look for. Do note that you can only search one parameter where putting spaces or ',' symbols wouldn't have any effect.

For techies the search is powered by an SQL statement using the LIKE and OR functions and the '%' wild card.

The next release would be a password change function and maybe an improved search to accept multiple parameters specified by using spaces or ','.

That's all for now...

Friday, December 18, 2009

Microsoft's Browser Ballot Approved by EU

Read: http://www.osnews.com/story/22636/EU_Approves_Browser_Ballot

Good job Microsoft, for this time. One right thing done.... the browser ballot (finally approved by EU).

Hopefully Microsoft would do more right things next time and not disappoint consumers , authorities and developers.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Failed to install Chrome Beta (Linux)

Google have recently announced a beta official Chrome browser for Linux (and Mac too). I thought I should take a look at how well done it is. I downloaded the beta's 32 bit deb file (Ubuntu/Debian installer) for my Linux Mint 7 (base on Ubuntu Intrepid) and it quickly threw an error saying that the installer is either corrupted or my permissions couldn't open it. I set the permissions to allow execution but it still couldn't run the insaller with the same error. Good job Google.... releasing something that makes me become more disappointed with Chrome. Chrome is going to be the next worse browser after IE in my mind since I have so much bad experiences using Chrome (crashes ... badly made installers ... etc). Firefox is still better than Chrome and Arora (a webkit based browser) I found is better than Chrome (in my opinion) for now.

Here's my browser ranking according to browsers I have used:
  1. Firefox (Best)
  2. Arora
  3. Opera
  4. Chrome
  5. IE (Worst)