[I can't think straight yet so I'm writing on one or two-liners. Sinusitis galore.]

It’s a good thing Mel’s cousin got married last Sunday so we had her yesterday over dinner. While it’s been unfortunate that Nap wasn’t able to come, we now know his number and he’ll be on board for our next activities!

We initially met at Razon’s of Guagua Restaurant at the UP-Ayala TechnoHub in the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus and then afterwards moved to the Coffee Bean for coffees and tea.

On her way to UP, Mel had ample time to experience two Filipino standard fares – family and traffic congestion. I believe she enjoyed the former more

Most of our discussion revolved around Open Source Education (POSSE, Bluepoint Foundation, teachingopensource.org, HFOSS, Sahana, Philippine Universities, Geek Camp 3.0), FAD and FreeMedia (Freedom Toaster).

Everyone of us were working on Open Source Education one way or another and that made it a pretty interesting discussion. Engels and Magie happen to be the directors of Bluepoint Foundation – a non-profit Open Source Education and Development Center in the Philippines.

We’re interested in hosting our own POSSE and it’s pretty much obvious with the way Maj’s eye twinkled that we’ll be holding one in the near future. I say, it’s just a question of time

We’ll be working on a Fedora Ambassador Day on GeekCamp 3.0 next February. I think the we’re doing the CD/DVD vending machine Transformer.

We happened upon Regnard Raquedan (a fraternity brod of mine) when we transferred shops and he turned out to be helping organize the local Firefox Team and they’re also meeting that same time. All of the sudden, it’s a small world

We parted ways shortly after 9PM. We didn’t want to keep her from her family too much

Karmic Gnome V KDE. Who will win? One things for sure, theres a few things you need to know about the Koala, see the end of this article for more info!

Ladies and gentlemen! In the blue corner weighing in at 9.10 is KDE and in the red corner also weighing in at 9.10 is Gnome..”For the thousands in attendance and the millions watching around the world..lets get ready to rrrrrrrumble!”

I am going to keep this article short(ish) since there have already been many reviews of both DE’s and this is more for a side by side to either strengthen my case for moving to KDE or infact having me returning back to a DE that has always been there for me…Gnome!!!

I reviewed Kubuntu 9.10 a short while ago and it was due to me commenting on completing a migration away from Gnome that prompted another user to question my reasoning.  Of course I had my own good reasons, KDE felt smoother, looked more polished and the graphical glitches seemed to be ironed out in the version packaged with 9.10.

Having said that I started to question how realistic that impression was since I had never compared Gnome on a like for like basis.

Being a massive supporter of Xfce and a follower of Fluxbox et al, the only rig previously to have had Gnome (for any extended period of time) on it was a heavily mod’ed Ubuntu 8.04 which I had loving called DeepRed (which itself was derived from the somewhat controversial Ubuntu Satanic Edition.

So with Kubuntu 9.10 already having a permanent place on one of my rigs (and a very strong possibility of getting onto a few more), I thought I would give it the head to head treatment with the Gnome version of the same title.   Theres always been some snobbery around Linux distro’s and it seems that some people go out of their way to use a “l337″ distro.   Is that really necessary?  We all know how to install Nvidia drivers regardless of the distro and if you don’t its nothing more complicated than a quick Google and a few copy and paste commands.  I like to compile my software but then theres one hell of a time saving by using Software Center for example.  This is where Ubuntu has always really shone for me, it provides quick setup time and as with any distro, the scope for those who have used Linux for a while to “fiddle”.  Having said that my main rig is Wolvix!

INSTALLATION

Both Gnome and KDE offer a pretty simple installation process, which offered no issues on either rig I used.  Ive already been into the install process for KDE and you can see that review here.

Both installs took roughly the same time, that being about 25mins a piece (thats not scientific) Hardware was recognised by both without difficulty.  The proprietary drivers had to be installed separately (obviously) but there was no flaws and the problem I experienced with Mandriva 2010 (which I documented on Twitter recently) of 1280 x 800 not being allowed (despite it claiming otherwise) was not present with Gnome and Karmic.  Please don’t try to offer me advice on that issue, I did attempt in the end to try and sort it and couldn’t. I commented that Gnome and Mandriva offered me more work than a fresh Gentoo install!  Having said that, this is about Gnome V KDE with 9.10 so I will move on.

In the first round of install/hardware compat, it was a draw between the two.

SPEED/OPERATION

Despite not being up to the speed of my beloved Wolvix, both performed very well and considering at the present time I am also using Windows 7 for a later review, it makes you appreciate how great a Linux platform is when you can get the same performance and eye candy with a 4 year old machine running the latest distro as you can with Windows 7 on the latest top of the range specs.  I digress, the Windows 7 article is for another day.

In terms of FPS both are almost identical and without a scientific means of measuring, I am going to say that they both draw here too.

 

Watch out, the Koala can bite back. So which has more teeth? Gnome or KDE?

CONCLUSIONS

I’ll start with what I don’t like about KDE, I really don’t like the toolbar that pops out when an icon or widget has focus.  It looks a mess.  Having said that KDE is natively more pretty than Gnome and although KDE does put me in mind of a Vista past I’d rather forget, its smooth and you can’t fault it.  Looking at Gnome, Ive always loved the default panel at the top and bottom.  It makes sense for me and feels natural, bottom for the open programs/windows and top for my shortcuts.  KDE’s default panel does not feel as good so Id say Gnome has the upperhand here.

Comparing KPackageKit to Software Center is a no contest, I think Software Center is not only far more user friendly, but I love the layout and preview screens to get a good idea of what you are about to download.

Its not all good news for Gnome 2.28.1 though as Ubuntu did introduce something which Ive never experienced before (and something which was not an issue with the KDE version)  Sound gliches….there was a noticeable pop when sound was initialized in order to play and what a pop too!  Ive read many detractors write about Ubuntu sound issues and this was the first one Ive ever experienced.  The problem was simple to fix:

1. sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

2. options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

Then simply reset your rig.  This solution worked for me and was very simple, however since Ubuntu is aimed towards the new user (and particularly the migrating Windows user) is this really what a Linux “newbie” is going to feel comfortable doing?  Of course this is not a global issue, so I assume its rig dependent.  The other issue I had with Ubuntu 9.10 is that changing the DNS server is not as straightforward as it was in 8.04.  In 8.04 it was literally a 2 second job, 9.10?  Nope!  Trying to change it through the DE was just not playing nicely and it required a quick modification to /etc/resolv.conf in order to get the little blighter using a DNS server other than the godawful (IMO) o2 one.

Ive made no secret Ive been following the Chromium project since the early builds and Im happy to say it plays nicely with both DE’s of Ubuntu 9.10.

After all said and done (and its taken me about 2 hours to get my 9.10 rig to roughly what I want) I am swayed more towards the Gnome version of Karmic. Looking at both screens side by side, I feel far more at home with a Gnome DE and that is reinforced when I remember “theres a K for everything” in KDE (I cite Kscreensaver NOT being installed as default as a good example) Providing I am not misguided into believing the popping issue is relatively on a small scale, I think Gnome DE is the better version.   I am a little disappointed that Karmic installed with a few issues with Gnome and I would hope these are ironed out shortly.

The preview on the taskbar of running programs is a feature heralded by Microsoft supporters as if its the greatest thing since the microchip.  This is available in Gnome and performs in the same way as a Windows counterpart, its not amazing, but it certainly doesn’t take anywhere near the specs that Windows 7 does (IMO) to get it running smoothly. – Just thought Id add that in if you are considering a Linux option rather than a Windows 7 purchase.

WARNING

Whilst they may look cute Koalas can be quite dangerous!

….will drop from the branches onto the shoulders of bushwalkers below, and proceed to claw and bite. There has been the occasional fatality caused by a jugular being punctured but usually the victim suffers nothing more than a nasty shock and a couple of scratches. Source: Convictcreations.com

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Wget, apalagi itu?kalo kaget aku tahu?mungkin itu komentar dari orang-orang saat pertama kali mendengar nama dan istilah ini. Begitu juga saya saat pertama kali membacanya dari manual linux tentang apt-get.  Setelah ditelusuri lebih lanjut barulah saya mengerti bahwa wget adalah alat atau perintah mirip perintah command line di MS Windows yang digunakan untuk mengunduh file-file dari internet. Lalu apa bedanya wget dengan download manager lain yang banyak dipakai semisal freedownloader atau Internet Download Manager (IDM)?

Perbedaan utama adalah tampilan grafisnya yang kalah indah dibandingkan dengan tampilan download manager yang lain.Karena wget hanya berupa perintah command line sehingga sangat sederhana dan mungkin tidak menyenangkan bagi sebagian orang. Tetapi, kesederhanaannya itu, ternyata wget tidak kalah dengan IDM misalnya. Dengan ukuran kurang dari 200 KB, membuat wget mudah dibawa kemana-mana. selain itu, wget juga mudah digunakan, asalkan mau membaca sedikit tutorialnya yang banyak tersedia di internet.

Awalnya, Wget merupakan perintah/tool yang dikembangkan oleh Hrvoje Nikšić bersama beberapa orang lain, termasuk Dan Harkless, Ian Abbott, and Mauro Tortonesi untuk menjembatani celah yang ada dalam aplikasi web downloader  pada pertengahan 1990-an. Saat itu  belum ada perangkat lunak pengunduh yang mampu melakukan tugas mengunduh file dari jaringa internet menggunakan protokol http dan ftp. saat itu, hanya ada pengunduh yang hanya bisa mendownload via ftp maupun hanya dari server bertipe http. Wget dikembangkan dibawah proyek GNU dan dan disertakan dalam hampir semua distribusi GNU/Linux yang ada sekarang.

Dari awalnya yang hanya ditujukan untuk pengguna Unix/Linux, sekarang wget  juga dapat dinikmati oleh pengguna Windows maupun Mac.  Penggunaannya sangat mudah, cukup unduh file wget.exe dari situs resminya http://www.gnu.org/software/wget, atau http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm, dan simpan dalam folder C:/Windows. Jika ingin melakukan pengunduhan, cukup masuk ke perintah cmd, dan ketikkan wget http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/cgi-bin/fetch.pl?dl=wget/wget.exe, misalnya jika ingin mendownload wget dari satu situs yang lain. Lalu, tinggal menunggu hasilnya.

Jika berada di belakan proxy server, set dulu proxy servernya dengan perintah set http_proxy=http://proxy.myprovider.net:8080, dengan mengganti http:/proxy.myprovider.net:8080 dengan proxy anda.

Atau jika ingin melakukan pengunduhan tanpa perlu kita tahu perkembangannya, cukup tambahkan -b, agar prosesnya tidak perlu kita ketahui. lalu, jika ingin mengecek apakah downloadnya sudah selesai atau belum, tinggal dicek di log nya dalam file wget.log yang berada dalam folder home milik masing-masing. Contoh, saya mencobanya menggunakan MS Windows Vista dengan username  Abi, maka biasanya hasil unduhan berada di folder Abi, dan log nya juga berada di folder tesebut.

Masih kurang puas, dengan opsi diatas, tinggal tambahkan opsi-opsi lain yang disediakan oleh wget, misalnya -c, -r , dan lain -lain. Tutorialnya, banyak sekali bertebaran di internet, misalnya di http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/, atau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget, atau www.attaqi.worpress.com, atau bisa juga baca dokumentasi nya.

sumber :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm

http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/

This week’s topics were productivity tools, common applications, and multimedia projects. Productivity tools include word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and database programs. Classmates pointed out productivity applications such as Google Calendar, Ta-Da Lists, which lets you keep track of your to-do lists, and Zoho Projects, which is a project collaboration and management program. Multimedia projects can include audio (using podcasts created by Audacity), video (which will be studied next week), and graphics.

It was a relief to see the Washington State Educational Technology Learning Standards components 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 did not specify that students had to learn Microsoft’s Office software, especially considering Microsoft is headquartered in Washington. There are other word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and database programs besides the ones Microsoft produces. Some of them are free like Open Office, which is what I use.

While these common applications are not used much in high school math classes, I will use free and open source software (FOSS) whenever possible in my high school math classes. I will also encourage my students to explore FOSS like Open Office. Of course, Microsoft’s Office program is likely to be installed on the school’s computers, but Open Office and Microsoft Office are similar to use.

Podcasts are an interesting concept if teachers want to post their lectures online for students that are absent. My mentor teacher tried this last year without success. There are many possibilities why students did not take advantage of this, but I believe the main reasons are students were quickly updated by their peers and the pacing of the class did not necessitate listening to podcasts while absent.

References:

Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction (2008). Washington state K-12 educational technology learning standards. Retrieved from http://www.k12.wa.us/edtech/techstandards.aspx

Last three days (12th – 14th of November 2009) our Centre invited teachers and students from around Mumbai to share our work with the public (Vigyan Vividha). During this program the team members of gnowledge.org lab demonstrated several free software applications that can be used for science and mathematics education.  We did demonstrations of several of them to hundreds of visitors. Though we showed several applications, our focus was on the following selected applications.

• Phoenix (Computer Interfaced Science Experiments)
• Step (An interactive physics simulator, part of KDE-EDU package)
• GeoGebra (A dynamic Geometry and Algebra Platform)
• KTurtle (A simple turtle graphics program using LOGO for children)
• Inkscape (An advanced vector (SVG) graphics editor)
• Stellarium (A planetarium for your computer)

Many of them are well known, except Step.  I want to therefore say few words about it.  This program will have a great role to play for physics education. An excellent platform for learning as well as teaching.  If you are a physics teacher or an educator, consider using Step.  Though the program needs several finishing touches (sometimes eats up resources while simulating complex systems), the author (Vladimir Kuznetsov) is ambitious and did a fantastic job.  Once this program is improved, it will be a classic tool for education in the high school and college level physics.

Geogebra also gives the same experience for mathematics.

These are all free software for education.  I encourage teachers to use them in the classroom, and students who own a PC must install GNU/Linux on their PCs and enjoy these applications among several others.

MICROSOFT’S FRIDAY 13th?  GOOGLE’S OS OUT IN A WEEK (ALLEGEDLY)

Friday 13th might only be an unlucky day through superstition, however it may be more real for Microsoft.  It is being rumoured that the eagerly awaited Google OS is going to be released in the coming week.

A more comprehensive article (and the source of the reports) can be found at:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/13/google-chrome-os-to-launch-within-a-week/

I bet this is one Friday the 13th Steve Ballmer will remember (if the rumour comes to fruition) and whilst on the subject of Steve Ballmer, lets remember an alleged remark he made in the past (in reference to Eric Schmidt leaving Microsoft for Google:

F##king Eric Schmidt is a f##king p#ssy. I’m going to f##king bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f##king kill Google.

You can see an article on that particular tirade here: http://battellemedia.com/archives/001835.php

ONLINE BANKRUPTCY ORDERS

Whilst the rest of the world is reporting leaving the recession, it appears the UK still has its issues.   That adds to the depressing figures of 2.46 million unemployed.  2000 CCJ’s in the first few months of the year and it seems that whilst the rest of the world are celebrating, the UK is lagging behind.

It is being reported that the government is proposing to give people wishing to file for bankruptcy the ability to do it online.  This proposal would remove the cost, which is intimidating, time consuming and costly.  Its hoped that decisions will be made within days rather than months with the new system.

Should it be made more simple to file for bankruptcy?  In my opinion, no and there are  many reasons why bankruptcy is not simply “wiping the slate clean”.

IS ANYONE WANTING WINDOWS 7?

It is being reported that Windows 7 has not been received as well as the Microsoft PR machine (or any of its faithful) would like you to believe.  Peter Whatnell of Sunco is reported to have said:

Windows 7 runs like a champ on my personal netbook, but we don’t really need it,

and does that remind anyone of the series of articles I wrote asking about a killer feature or selling point that make the move from XP worth the money.  Does anyone remember I asked what on earth Windows 7 could do that I on a Linux platform couldn’t?  Of course the question was never answered properly here in my opinion and we even had a Microsoft employee comment.  You can re-read that here: http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/a-question-to-microsoft-whats-unique-about-windows-7/

You can read the CW article here: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140660/Enterprises_like_don_t_love_Windows_7

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Google is working on its own programming language called GO which has been (so far) two years in the making and aims to cater for simple app development without detrimental effects on performance.  Currently being internally tested, proof (for me anyway) that whilst IMO Microsoft scrambles to hold on to its many schemes, Google is making further inroads in multiple areas of IT.

CW talks about the missing features in Windows 7 starter might be a point of annoyance with purchasers (according to a survey).  You can read that here.

The Ministry of Education have plans for developing an Ubuntu-based educational distribution aimed at public and private elementary and secondary schools in Nicaragua.

There’s a work group in front of this project, constituted by high-level officials from the Ministry of Education, representatives from the National Technological Institute (responsible for vocational training nationwide), delegates from the main private and public universities, and members from the Ubuntu Nicaragua LoCo Team.

This work group is going to meet next week in order to draft a plan for the first twelve months.

One of the first tasks is to identify and classify all the free educational software included in the Ubuntu repositories, and see which software packages needs to be adapted to fit the national curriculum for schools and how much new software has to be developed from scratch.

This is a great opportunity for our LoCo, both in terms of further advocating the use of FOSS in the country, as much as in gaining technical expertise in packaging, developing and maintaining Ubuntu packages.

Hopefully, in the long term, we’ll be able to contribute back to the Ubuntu project with patches for software that’s already available in Ubuntu and some new and exciting educational software in areas where it’s lacking.

The official Nicaraguan GNU/Linux distribution for schools is definitely a step forward in the right direction.

Among Linux forums, Linux users are constantly being accused of elitism. They’re up on their high horses, secure in their comfort with Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, looking down their pointy noses on the hapless noobs who just want their computers to “just work.” Poor Joe Sixpack, trying to free himself from proprietary tyranny, is constantly being chased away from Linux by such superior elitists, who make him feel like an idiot just for asking an innocent question.

What yields such charges of elitism? More often than not, it’s the simple suggestion that the asker of a given question should resort to the documents which were written precisely for the purpose of answering such questions: the manuals. In other words, people who really cared about Joe Sixpack would spoon-feed him like a newborn baby; hateful people who point him to the answers to not only his specific question, but also to most other questions in the computerized universe, are elitists. To this, I can only respond with one short, trite phrase:

Read the f@#$ing manual.[1]

Seriously. Read it. That’ll probably answer your question. If it doesn’t, Google it. Google is your friend.[2] If you don’t know how to get to the manual, go to a command line and type “man command“. That’s it; your manual will come up. Read it. If it doesn’t work, as it very occasionally doesn’t, then once again, Google it. You’ll get a manual shortly. Once you’ve read it, and you actually understand the program you’re trying to use, you probably won’t have a question anymore. You’ll have educated yourself to know something, rather than simply doing something without knowing what or why. And isn’t that better? Isn’t it better to learn than simply to ape what some ubergeek tells you on a help forum?

If you’ve done all this, and you still can’t figure it out, please feel free to ask the question. Geeks and hackers throughout the world will be happy to help you find the solution. Remember that we hang around in help forums answering questions on our own time. Nobody’s paying us for it (most of the time); we’re doing it because we like the program and we like helping people. What we don’t like is people who demand we solve their every problem without them ever making any effort to solve it themselves, or even to understand what it is. That tends to make us a bit ornery. And with good reason.

You see, those of us who are called “geeks” or “hackers” didn’t become such by opening our heads up and letting people pour stuff into them. We got that way by study and effort. Some of us learned in college; some of us never went to college; some of us went to college, but learned little about computers there, gaining this knowledge on our own. But all of us value self-teaching and self-study, with deference to the masters when one cannot find the answers on one’s own. The deeper one gets into computers, the more one will require such consultation. As a corollary, however, the shallower one is in computers, the more rarely one will require it. If you’re just a hapless noob looking for help, then I can more or less guarantee that the answer to your question is easy, and that you’ll find it in the manual. But even if it winds up not being there, at least do us the courtesy of looking first, please.

We’re the ones who wrote those manuals, see. We don’t just write software; we write documentation for it. We work hard at it, and try to include all the normal situations as well as any unusual ones that have been reported to us. As such, your problem is probably in there; in the unlikely event that you’ve found an edge case that nobody else has noticed yet, then we want to know about it. But we don’t want to answer the same question thousands of times when we’ve already answered it in a thorough and complete way by putting it in the manual.

Nobody expects to drive a car without taking a driving class. Nobody expects to wire a house without studying up on electronics. Nobody expects to fix their dishwasher without learning a little plumbing. Yet for some reason everybody expects their computer to sit up and beg whenever they point at it and tell it what they want it to do. The computer is an immensely powerful machine that will do many wonderful things, but one must first learn how to tell it what to do. Sometimes that’s pretty easy; sometimes it takes significant study; sometimes it’s deep magic that only the very greatest masters can manage. In no case, however, can it be done without learning something, and the place to learn that something is, more often than not, the manual.

People who call us elitists for saying things like this are completely missing the point. We’re not elitists. Elitists would want to maintain their superior knowledge and keep everyone else dependent upon them. We’re doing precisely the opposite; we’re helping other people obtain the same knowledge we have, from the same sources that we have it. A truer egalitarianism is difficult to imagine.

It’s the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him to fish. Is it elitist to teach a man how to provide for himself, or to perpetually infantilize him by giving him everything he needs and pretending that it takes no effort for somebody else to get it?

The computer is a tool, and like all tools it takes knowledge, study, and experience to use it effectively. When we refer you to a manual or to a search engine for an answer, we’re not doing it because we think you’re stupid, or because we think we’re better than you. We’re doing it to teach you how to find the answers yourself. That’s not elitism; it’s humanitarianism, pure and simple.

Praise be to Christ the King!

1. This saying is frequently abbreviated to “RTFM,” which is variably rendered as “read the f@#$ing manual,” “read the fun manual,” “read the fine manual,” or something similar, depending on the speaker.
2. This saying is frequently abbreviated “GIYF.” Truer words in the computer world could hardly be imagined.
3. Please, also, learn how to ask a question correctly should the manual or the Internet fail to yield a helpful solution. This will go a long way to showing that you’ve filled your end of the computer help bargain; people will respect you, and thus be more interested in helping you.

I personally think that for many people who have not had an interest in the continuing evolution of computing will find the task of learning quite daunting.   I bet if you list all the terms you can off the top of your head, there will be quite a list.  Of course for those people who have had a long term interest in computing we tend to forget that people who are just starting out will be daunted by the amount of abreviations/terminology we use in basic conversation.

So here is SimplicITy.  A computer system/software solution based on a modified Linux Mint distro with the aim of bringing computing to all, in particular those with little or no previous computing experience.  Looking at the site it appears that they are aiming for the mature market but having said that I’m sure there are plenty of people of all ages taking their first tentative steps into the world of computing that would appreciate a little simplicity.

The whole system is controlled by a very friendly GUI, which offers “a quick return to, if things go wrong” and users can email, work with documents, surf the net and all the other tasks we all take for granted.

One of the statements SimplicITy makes is:

The computer itself looks like an ordinary desktop computer …

But, far from it … when you start it up, you’ll see a simple screen called Square One. From here you can easily send e-mails, browse the web, chat to friends and family using our e-mail adddresses, store photos and write short documents.

I recently covered Webconverger 5.5 which I suggested was a good distro for those who wanted to keep it simple.  Thats the great thing about Linux and it being able to be tailored to the needs of the end user (whatever the skill level and without fear of infringing copyright or a EULA etc)

Maybe this is why we see so many attacks at Ubuntu?  Linux Mint is a distro derived from Ubuntu and has many supporters who clearly love using it.  Maybe the attackers of Ubuntu see the benefits and advantages Canonicals offering in the computing world and the many different environments it can sit very happily in?

SimplicITy is offered in two different suites (£435.99 & £525.99 respectively),  but what you have to consider is this is for a complete solution (no pondering over which version is most suitable).   A new user buying a Windows PC for example is probably going to be presented with choices to make that they are relying on the salesperson to know whats best.  Should they buy anti-virus software?  Should they have support extended?  Which version of Windows? As we all know with a proprietary platform theres always something else you can buy and always someone more than happy to sell it to you.  SimplicITy aims to take all that away and present the user with a solution which is all in one, but more importantly, simple.

Well known face Valerie Singleton is the host for “training” video’s which aim to teach those who are new.

The makers of SimplicITy say:

We build custom machines, designed to work perfectly with Linux; we manually tweak the install; we put on them a custom, bespoke, heavily-customised version of Eldy; we add in a gigabyte of professionally filmed, recorded and edited tutorial videos, featuring Ms Singleton; we test them thoroughly and we ship them along with a handbook that adds more detailed instructions to those given in the on-screen tutorials. We then back this with telephone and online support, a warranty and so on.

According to the website, Suite 1  consists of:

• simplicITy : model 100 – energy efficient, cool and quiet running
  • Onboard graphics, sound and network connection
  • Sempron LE-1250 socket AM2 energy efficient 45w processor
• 19″ TFT screen
• Wireless keyboard and mouse
• Stereo speakers

Computer only (no screen, keyboard, mouse, and speakers): £299.99

Complete suite: £435.99

Printer: additional £54.95

whilst Suite 2 consists of the following:

• simplicITy : model 200 – smaller and quieter than model 100
  • Mini-ITX Intel desktop D945 motherboard
  • Intel dual core Atom processor
  • Onboard graphics, sound and network connection
• 19″ TFT screen
• Wireless keyboard and mouse
• Stereo speakers

Computer only (no screen, keyboard, mouse, and speakers): £389.99

Complete suite: £525.99

Printer: additional £54.95

The SimplicITy solution has been welcomed by Help The Aged and I would hope it will encourage more people to get involved with computing and Linux based systems.

You can visit the homepage of SimplicITy here: http://www.discount-age.co.uk/simplicity_computers/

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Un experimento en Nicaragua demuestra lo poderoso software de código abierto puede ser en la nivelación del campo de juego. El segundo país más pobre de las Américas, ahora tiene una de las mejores soluciones de software para la visualización de datos agrícolas en el hemisferio occidental.

Todo comenzó hace aproximadamente un año. Yo estaba en Nicaragua haciendo la investigación antropológica, cuando se me pidió que diera una charla en el Día de Debian anual en la ciudad capital de Managua. Hablé de LaTeX, que realmente no tenía nada que ver con la agricultura, pero después Denis Cáceres de Debian Nicaragua se me acercó. Había comenzado trabajando con una ONG nicaragüense llamado SIMAS (Servicio de Información Mesoamericano sobre Agricultura Sostenible, www.simas.org.ni), donde él y otros estaban en proceso de iniciar un proyecto para desarrollar un sistema de información para las oficinas regionales de la Ministerio de Agricultura, con el apoyo de los organismos de cooperación español y sueco.

Johannes Wilm | Linux Journal

Apa asyiknya sih berkelana di rimba maya hanya dengan peramban (web browser) berbasis teks?Kok  jadul banget?Itulah pertanyaan -pertanyaan yang muncul ketika pertama kali mengetahui bahwa masih ada juga yang memakai jenis web browser ini.

Pemakainya tentunya bukanlah orang-orang yang sehari-hari memakai MS Windows ataupun Apple Mac, tetapi yang sudah mengenal dunia Unix/Linux. Karena memang baik MS Windows maupun Apple Mac sangat memanjakan penggunanya dengan tampilan grafis yang indah dan menawan. Akan tetapi, meskipun zaman sekarang sudah click and drag, tapi aplikasi berbasis teks tetap tidak ditinggalkan oleh pencintanya. Salah satu peramban berbasis teks itu adalah Lynx. Lynx yang hanya berukuran kurang dari 2 MB ini memang tidak menampilkan gambar dan multimedia yang menjadi daya tarik halaman web sekarang. Tetapi, hal ini menjadi kelebihan dari peramban yang satu ini. Kita tidak direpotkan lagi dengan segala macam tampilan-tampilan web dan segala macam iklan, yang ada hanyalah kenikmatan berselancar dan membaca halaman web tanpa terganggu oleh hal lain diluar tujuan awal kita. Memang, untuk pemula, harus membiasakan diri menggunakan papan ketik alih-alih tetikus dikarenakan semua kontrol Lynx di dapat dari masukan papan ketik.

Lynx dapat dengan mudah didapat dan sekarang telah tersedia versi Windowsnya. Jadi, ayo berjadul ria ala para pendahulu kita dalam berselancar di rimba maya internet dengan menggunakan peramban berbasis teks.

Lynx dapat diunduh di http://lynx.isc.org/mirrors.html, atau http://www.jim.spath.com/lynx_win32/ly283rel.zip atau  http://www.4shared.com/file/150606812/814a0723/lynx_v283.html

Below is my metacode for iterating through a grid of images to render the vegetation surface model from povray.  The real code will be implemented in BASH and AWK, although this would be a perfect use of Python, if I knew how to use it… .

PostGIS Tables:

cuy_veg_points:        Load veg points into database and make 2D geometry
cuy_terrain_points:        Load terrain points into database and make 2D geometry
cuy_veg_height:        Use nearest neighbor to calculate tree height into veg point database
e.g. http://www.bostongis.com/?content_name=postgis_nearest_neighbor_generic

cuy_tile_centroids:        Generate tile centroids and load into table– contains coordinates and record area name

Process:

Read cuy_tile_centroids
For each centroid record,
     query view extent for cuy_veg_height
     output temporary tree_coords.inc
     write worldfile for image output from povray
     write povray file with camera position at centroid
     render povray file

Today I’ve more or less been a complete introverted hermit. I’ve been busy working on my CV; and I’m still not finished with it. It has kind of reminded me of why I only enjoy design as a hobby. All the bloody staring and constant redoing things is just making me cross-eyed and blind to my own mistakes.

Thankfully I’ve been given some great feedback on my layout and what my cross-eyedness have missed during the last two days staring at my CV.
I won’t work more on my CV tonight as I’m too tired. I’m actually so tired I’m very careless with my writing at the moment and that I’m actually considering going to bed soon.

Even if I’ve been busy working on my CV barricaded in my cave (also known as our study), I feel completely drained for energy. I might find the constant staring, rearranging, tweaking and what other call designing extremely tiring and tedious; but in a funny way I find it exciting and rewarding.

I think I still rather want to be a writer than a designer. Even if I can be visually creative, I find it more exciting being creative with words.

That’s all I got for you tonight; I think I’ll pump myself full of melatonin and take a trip to space land.

Note: If you get the reference you’re awesome!

The new browser from google , the chromium browser in short known as the chrome sure is creating  a lot of waves in the browser UI , its sleek and designed to be sexy and appealing , but with the versatility and the openness of FF it is possible to replicate it on Firefox. Here are a few addons i found using which i was able to convert my firefox into a chromifox.

The basic theme [the light blue color scheme]

Chromifox basic by Falconer

A coat of Chrome for Firefox. Chromifox is a bright and soft blue theme for Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, inspired by the appearance of the Google Chrome browser and its open source roots, Chromium.

Chromifox

Chromifox extreme by Triton

An Extreme coat of Chrome for Firefox.

chromifox extreme

And to achieve the ‘Tabs on Status bar’ a la chrome

Chromin frame by Zero Fire

Chromin Frame (Total NoChrome) places the tab bar at the top and changes the appearance of the title bar bringing it closer to the Chrome look.

chromin_frame

To remove the menu bar which we rarely use : | , personally i prefer the Compact menu or the Hide Menubar

Personal Menu by Merci Chao

“Menus Toolbar” item is now available in Toolbar Context Menu and you may hide it forever!

Compact Menu by Milly C

Replacing the original menubar into a single menu or icon.

Disable Menu by Insecure

This extension allows you to show/hide the main menu. It can be accessed through a toolbarbutton, keyboard shortcut and popup-menu-item. It also supports autohide. the statusbar can optionally be hidden.

Hide Menubar by yuoo2k

Supports to hide your Mainmenu Toolbar automatically, you can press the ALT key to show it temporarily.

Tiny Menu by  Anthony Lieuallen

Replace the standard menu bar with a tiny menu popup.

Now to add some gloss to the Page Loading Indicator like in safari

Fission by Zeniko

Fission combines address bar and progress bar (Safari style). This makes the progress bar more visible and allows for a nice visual effect.

And to have the downloads to stay in the same window, instead of opening  a new one

Download Statusbar by Devon Jensen

View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.

download_statusbar

To highlight the prominent part of the url , i.e the host address.

Locationbar[squared] by Dao Gottwald

* Puts emphasis on the domain to reduce spoofing risk
* Linkifies URL segments (press Ctrl, Meta, Shift or Alt)
* More URL formatting options configurable

locationbar

Early on, I was working on the problem of rendering a virtual forest based on real LiDAR data in order to do things like a detailed, vegetation included, viewshed.  There are other things we can do with this data, including discovering the boundary of the canopy (and thus find canopy gaps) and rendering a vegetation surface model.

Let’s start with a single tree.  If we have a tree, height x, and we have a tree model, height 1, then we can place a tree in our scene height 1x.  If we want to use Povray to render a surface model, we can use a linear pattern applied to our tree to render what parts of the tree are closer and which are further.

#include "transforms.inc"

#declare Camera_Location = <0,80,0>;
#declare Camera_Lookat   = <0,0,0>;
#include "tree1.inc"

camera {orthographic
 location  Camera_Location
 look_at Camera_Lookat
 right 100
 up 100}

// Unioned box is used to normalize the scaling of the pigment
union {
 object { TREE
 scale 80
 }
 box {-1000,1000}
 pigment {
 gradient x color_map {
 [0 color rgb 1]
 [1 color rgb 0]
 }
 scale <vlength(Camera_Location-Camera_Lookat),1,1>
 Reorient_Trans(x, Camera_Lookat-Camera_Location)
 translate Camera_Location
 }
 finish {ambient 1}
}

My tree is the default tree from POV-Tree:  http://web.archive.org/web/20071101052625/propro.ru/go/Wshop/povtree/download.html.

Here’s my ini file:

All_Console=Off
All_File="false"
Antialias=Off
Bits_Per_Color=16
Bounding=On
Bounding_Threshold=10
Continue_Trace=Off
Create_Histogram=Off
Debug_Console=On
Debug_File="false"
Display=On
Draw_Vistas=On
End_Column=600
End_Row=600
Fatal_Console=On
Fatal_File="false"
Height=600
Jitter=Off
Light_Buffer=On
Output_Alpha=Off
Output_File_Type=n
Output_To_File=On
Quality=0
Remove_Bounds=On
Render_Console=On
Render_File="false"
Split_Unions=On
Start_Column=1
Start_Row=1
Statistic_Console=On
Statistic_File="false"
Verbose=On
Vista_Buffer=On
Warning_Console=On
Warning_File="false"
Width=600

You’ll notice I’m outputing as a 16-bit per channel PNG, so I can capture the full dynamic range of values without loosing too much of the precision in the distance values.  Now, just a little algebra, and we have distance from camera calculated, but I’ll leave that to a future post.

Here’s where I’m going– imagine a PostGIS database full of LiDAR vegetation points and ground points.  A nearest neighbor search and a little arithmetic tells us the local height of the vegetation point.  Now we iterate through a grid extracting sections of this dataset, using a simple query and a little AWK scripting to output the include file, the povray file, and render the image of tree height.  The tree height interpolator is then a simple 3D tree shaped stamp that we scale, rotate, and stamp all across our landscape, thus creating a PovRay generated digital surface model of vegetation.

Edit:

Oh, and I must credit the source for my height mapping:

http://news.povray.org/povray.advanced-users/thread/%3Cweb.49c79d64a563150ecb94416e0@news.povray.org%3E/

Me gusta Inkscape, le he aprendido mucho. Pero sucede que muchas veces no tengo como abrir un archivo proveniente de aplicaciones privativas como Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, etc.

Hace como un año descubrí este proyecto OpenSource llamado Sk1, pero en aquel entonces le faltaba muchísimo, así que me seguí remendando con Inkscape y fue cuando empecé a aprender a usarlo.

Entre sus características tenemos:

• Soporte CMYK
• Soporte CMYK en Postscript
• Motor basado en Cairo
• Gestión de Colores
• Importador CDR universal (versiones 7-X3)
• Interface basada en Ttk

Para instalarnos Sk1 en Fedora tenemos que resolver las siguientes dependencias primero:

• tcl-8.5
• tk-8.5
• python-imaging
• python-imaging-tk
• python-liblcms
• python-reportlab

Una vez resuelto eso, nos vamos a la Terminal y descargamos el rpm:

wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home://TI_Eugene/Fedora_10/i386/sk1-0.9.1pre-7.1.i386.rpm

con privilegios de root, lo instalamos:

rpm -i sk1-0.9.1pre-7.1.i386.rpm

Voila!

Let me explain you from few points.

COST

most Linux distros can be downloaded free on line or can be get to your doorstep delivered free.

We all know the fact that Windows Operating Systems should be purchased, which is high cost and not affordable specially for the people in developing countries. Even though still we can use pirated versions, thats illegal.

And why should we do illegal things since we can do same works legally?

Microsoft Windows has released several products.

the whole new one is Windows 7.

let me list some of free Linux destros you can download online

Ubuntu

Linux Mint

Kubuntu

Debian

Mandriva Linux

Linux Puppy -

http://www.puppylinux.com/ or

http://www.puppylinux.org

etc…

besides you can get Ubuntu to your door step FREE…

EFFICIENCY

I am using Linux for more than 2 years now. Before that I used Windows. Why should I lie you? Yes I was a Windows User and And still using since our Uni using Windows softwares for assignments.(i am using a dual boot system) But I feel that Linux is great and smooth than Windows, since I can do everything I used to do in Windows in Linux so fast using FREE softwares. I admit for a new user it takes some time to get used to FOSS(Free And Open Source Software). But this is the era of communication and Technology. The world has become a one ICT village through globalization. There are thousands of sources you can learn to use free software.

SPEED

As I experienced my Linux kernel boot much faster than the Windows does.

Really am I kidding??

check this-

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/vista-windows-7-ubuntu-904-and-910-boot-speed-comparison

if u still cant believe me try install Linux to your machine.

Even it didn’t take much time to me to install Linux like the Windows did.

Linux Kernel

STABILITY

yes I really gotta say this, than the early Ubuntu distros the new releases works really good.

MS Windows release many bug patches to their OS continuously and try to get it more stable, instead it slows down the system because of heavy load.

check this,

http://davestechsupport.com/faq/is_ubuntu_more_stable.html

USER FRIENDLYNESS

yes even small child can start using Linux.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/desktop/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=171201349

may be you can argue that it’s hard and complex to use Linux OS and FOSS.

Actually we cant learn swimming without jumping to the pool.

So I did jump.

And now I can swim in the world of FOSS like a free fish…..

VIRUS FREE

Actually we can’t guarantee that Linux is Completely Virus free.

But if compared to Windows HELL YES….

since I don’t use virus guards to my Linux OS as I do in Windows, I still run Linux without any crash or hacking..

It’s obvious that the viruses run in windows don’t run in Linux platform.

Check this out..this may help you to clarify….

http://kerneltrap.org/node/14599

APPEARANCE

You might say that windows is the most beautiful, eye candy OS in the world,

well I don’t agree. Since you can modify your Linux OS as you wish without no cost.

And I prefer my Linux OS appearance more than windows(i use Linux Mint- one of most enchanting Linux distros ).

since you cant modify your Windows, you cant customize your appearance as you wish.

But in Linux you can modify the kernel and redistribute even in any name you wish under GNU GPL.

and yes there are so many reasons why YOU should choose LINUX over Windows…

simple.. It Rocks…..

use GNU Linux

use Firefox

use FOSS

The workshop began on saturday Nov-7 morning.

We were a bit sceptical whether we would be allowed to attend the workshop. Why? Because we hadn’t got our registration confirmed.But thanks to Madhu sir,  we were welcome.

We were proud to learn that the Calicut university has already introduced Python as a part of curriculum, may be the first Indian university to do so. Unfortunately, our BTech engineering syllabus included only Matlab and VHDL.

The workshop had teachers as majority of participants. FSUG-Calicut had a presence. We’d expected a registration fee. But none was asked. To our surprise we were given free food besides the python hands on workshop.

The FOSSEE team from IIT-B were wonderful in the way the presented and conducted the workshop, opening up a smorgasbord of applications on python programming.The hands on programming with python and the quiz sessions in between had made it very easy not to forget what was taught.

At the end of the second day,Nov-8, we all got a wonderful certificate. I could not but keep admiring the certificate for some 15-20 minutes when back in hostel.

The upcoming event on python is the SciPy.in at technopark Thiruvanvananthapuram from Dec 12-17. An international conference is being held there.

References:

fossee.in

scipy.in

Setelah berhasil membuat USB installernya, saya melanjutkan petualangan saya dengan berusaha melakukan instalasi Slackware GNU/Linux ke PC saya. Tetapi yang saya install  adalah versi 13.0 karena memang sudah keluar versi baru dari Slackware. Memang dibandingkan proses instalasi distro GNU/Linux Ubuntu maupun Debian yang pernah saya lakukan, prosesnya sedikit berbeda.Perbedaan utamanya adalah penggunaan LILO oleh Slackware sehingga mengharuskan setting tambahan setelah selesai instalasi. Setting tambahan ini dilakukan agar LILO yang telah diinstal dapat berjalan dengan baik dan jika ada sistem operasi lain, maka dapat ditambahkan dalam konfigurasi LILO.

Dalam instalasi Slackware, disarankan untuk memasang semua package yang disertakan agar tidak mengalami masalah saat ingin menambahkan program-program baru. Akan tetapi ada beberapa paket yang dapat tidak di install dengan pertimbangan telah ada paket serupa yang menurut saya lebih baik.

1. paket yang ada dalam folder KDEI (paket tambahan untuk KDE yang menyediakan bahasa-bahasa di dunia)
2. paket yang ada di dalam folder Y (permainan-permainan BSD)
3. paket akonadi.
4. paket fvwm
5. paket twm
6. paket blackbox
7. paket xfce
8. beberapa paket dari folder ap misalnya audaciuos,
9. paket networking jika tidak membutuhkan internet
10. beberapa paket pengelola text semisal jove, jed atau, nano.

Selain itu, ada beberapa paket yang sebaiknya ditambahkan setelah selesai instalasi, yaitu:

1. unrar, agar dapat membuka file berakhiran .rar
2. VGA driver terutama jika menggunakan chip NVIDIA.
3. openoffice, jika baru mencoba GNU/Linux atau yang telah terbiasa menggunakan GNOME

Semua paket tambahan tersebut dapat di unduh dari masing-masing web pengembang, tetapi jangan lupa untuk mengunduh file building Slackware dari www.slackbuild.com.

Selamat mencoba…..