Firefox Tweak

One reason I love Mozilla Firefox so much as a 56kbps internet user is because of its ability to view pages faster than you would belive. This is awesome and without a doubt will increase your speed. This works for nix systems and Windows too. I am unsure about Mac.

1) Ok fire up the fox

Just a heads up these settings make you download sites considerably faster, BUT they put a great deal of overload on the sites you visit

2) type in "about:config" the address bar and then hit enter

You'll see a whole load of options here you will need to change some of the values.
These ones:

network.http.max-connections = 64
network.http.max-connections-per-server= 20
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server= 10
network.http.pipelining = true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = 100 or 200 (choose one)
nglayout.initialpaint.delay = 0
network.http.request.max-start-delay = 0

if you can't find "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" your going have to make it. Just right click and hit new integer.

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy = 10
network.http.proxy.pipelining = true
network.http.proxy.version = 1.0

now close down firefox and start it up again.
Firefox now burns servers like crazy!

Windows Media Player Vs. iTunes

A hard decision faced my many; is WMP or iTunes the better music player. As an iPod user i am forced to use iTunes but I do not necessarily think it is better. Here is the way it is.

iTunes is great software for music playing. Everything about it is good, except some may not like the way your library is viewed. It is one big list and you change how it is categorized by clicking the tabs at the top. Playlists are easy to make and are viewed by a bar on the right side. WMP uses a system of menus similar to right clicking the start button. The visualizer for iTunes is stunning. In preferences you can change it to go over 30fps. I saw it go as high as 93 fps without causing a problem. Also there are so many scenarios you will never see the same one twice. Also they are more fluent and visually pleasing than the ones in WMP. One thing I dislike about iTunes is that the installer comes with Quick Time. It automatically installs itself and puts itself in the quick launch bar. Then it installs a process called qttask, ituneshelper, ipodhelper. Although these do not at all slow your computer I am not happy when they are there. You kill them with process explorer and they re generate. I even did a regedit and they appeared to be running in the background. This shouldn't bother you or stop you from getting iTunes, although I do not like it because I am deep in thread/handle .dll hell.

Over all I find iTunes as my personal favorite but if you prefer a menu system(which I do) WMP is for you. For you broadband users, it may be worth to download iTunes to see if you like it. It installs clean so there should be no problems.

Tutorial: Ubuntu for servers

Ubuntu is primarily known as one of the most popular desktop distributions.
But you can also use it for servers!
This guide shows how to set up a web, mail, and ftp server with Ubuntu 5.04 "The Hoary Hedgehog" and demonstrates the details with the help of 21 screenshots.

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Get an iPod Nano in the color you want

Colorwarepc.com sells products manufactured by other companies but in color combinations not available from the originaly manufacturer. You can now order an iPod nano in virtually any color you want. There is also a wide range of other products available. These products include Mac Minis, XBoxes, and iPod Photos. Colorware will also take an existing item you own, and change its color to your specifications. This is a really cool site and you should definitely check it out!

DIRTRIDER32191

I have added DIRTRIDER32191 to the blog members. DIRTRIDER32191 is a friend of mind, and will be contributing to the blog, in addition to myself.

Windows in todays computer world

As a full time Windows user, and part time Linux user, I feel obligated to discuss what Windows is in today's world. The user friendly operating system Windows by Microsoft is losing its appeal fast. Why? People don't realise how vulnerable and insufficient it is. The common user wouldn't think twice when his computer crashes or thier copy of Norton picks up a threat. One of Windows biggest threats and reasons for its problems is simply the Interent. It is nearly imposible in today's world to use the internet or communicate via email without a form of protection. Norton or MacAfee? Not to be trusted. They are too popular and most viruses are designed to work around them. The best things to do too keep Windows safe is to use software outside thats 3rd party or warez. AVG is a step in the right direction and is available for free. My favorite and free utility is Spybot Search and Destroy. For viruses running in the background, Process Explorer at sysinternals.org is great but for my bandwidth (56kbps) doing a regedit is the best for my time and money.

DIRTRIDER32191

New Palm Treo Runs Windows Mobile

Palm, Microsoft, and Verizon Wireless are all set to hold a join conference tomorrow to announce the unveiling of the Palm Treo 700. The big news:it runs Windows Mobile 5.0.

The Palm Treo has had 2 models, the 600 and the 650, both running Palm's operating system, Palm OS. It is Palm's flagship smarthphone. All Palm models have run the OS and it has been a rival from birth to Microsoft Mobile. It is still unclear whether or not Palm OS is still going to be used.

SCO to use Open Source Software

Even though there is not much of any reason to use SCO Unix, SCO has become a well-known company in the open-source world. SCO has been trying to bring down Linux, by claiming that it has a copyright on some of the code in Linux.

But now, SCO has apparently signed a deal with mySQL, an open-source company that sells database software. The deal says that SCO will bundle mySQL with their products. This comes as a surprise, for two reasons. First that SCO has appeared to be against Linux and open-source software, and second, that it has stated concerns about the GNU General Public License, which is used by mySQL to license its products.

Creative Commons License

I have added a Creative Commons License to this blog. Under the license, you can use the text of this blog for non-commercial use, as long as you attribute it back to the Killer Tech Blog. Any works that include material from this blog must be shared under the same license as this blog.

Also, please note that many of the images I use on this blog come from other web sites. Therefore, the images included on these pages may not be covered by the same Creative Commons license that the text of the blog is covered under. Therefore, the images are subject to the conditions provided by the author or page they originated from.

License information is available below, as well as at the bottom of each page of the blog.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Mozilla Firefox 1.07 on Ubuntu

I use Ubuntu Linux as my primary operating system, and I encountered a problem many other users have been facing since the new Firefox version was released to the Hoary repositories. If you have the backports repositories enabled (not the default) you may have both the main and backport firefox release packages installed. If this is the case, when you upgrade Firefox, it will have an error. I went on the IRC chat, and user Cyphase was able to help me get this problem fixed.

You need to uninstall all the Firefox packages in the command line. Then reinstall the non-backports version. Your configuration should not be changed, and Firefox will start normal after the reinstallation. The commands to use in the command line are listed below. You will need to use sudo to complete these actions.

First, paste the line below into the terminal and hit enter:
sudo apt-get remove firefox firefox-gnome-support mozilla-firefox mozilla-firefox-gnome-support
This command will first ask for your password, then uninstall the packages listed along with some other dependencies.
Once that command has completed successfully, paste and run the command below:
sudo apt-get install mozilla-firefox mozilla-firefox-gnome-support
This command will install the new main packages for Firefox. Once that is finished, you can run Firefox and it should run. Check in the Help Menu under About Firefox, and it should show version 1.0.7.

You can also see the instructions on Cyphase's blog. (http://cyhpase.homelinux.com/blog)

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 has been released. The main fix in this release is a patch to prevent urls passed to Firefox from external programs to be parsed by the shell, which could allow a potential hacker to compromise the system. This only affects *nix based systems running Firefox. There are also various other security flaws and bugs that have been fixed as well.

Order your new Ubuntu Breezy (5.10) free CDs now!

Since today Ubuntu is taking orders to ship free CDs of its new OS version, Breezy Badger, to be launched in October.

Get your orders out, and order plenty to go around!

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Apple To Start War With Microsoft And Dell

Steve Jobs on Microsoft and Dell: "Microsoft is copying us with its operating system... Dell's trying to copy us with its hardware. That's fine but we'd like to not give them a map and show them where we're going to go. At least they can follow our taillights."

Isn't Apple #2?

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Google begins limited test of Wi-Fi service

Google has finally confirmed the rumors started in Silicon Valley in July! Google is beginning testing on free Wi-Fi hotspots at different points of interest in Mountain View, California, where their headquaters are. The rumors were started that Google was going to roll out a Wi-Fi service after Freeva, a Google-sponsored company started a hotspot at Union Square in San Francisco. The rumors went so far as to suggest that Google was buying up excess fiber-optic cable to create their own network across the country and allow the whole country to connect wirelessly for free. The rumors were also free by the recent discovery that wifi.google.com redirected to google.com, instead of a 404 error, and that wifi.google.com/faq.php led to a strange FAQ on the Google Wi-Fi security tool.

No one knows yet how far Google plans to take this project, but Google says the idea was started by an employee during Google's corporate program that every employee should spend 20% of their work time working on an unrelated project. Many of Google's new services have spawned from this kind of development.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Linux Firefox Vulnerability

A bug report has been filed to the Mozilla Firefox Bugzilla that a new vulnerability has been discovered in Firefox, only on *nix based systems. The vulnerability is created through the commands passed to Firefox through the shell when Firefox is called upon to open a URL from an external program (ex. Mozilla Thunderbird). A potential hacker can send an email to a user and when the user click on a url in the mail, and Firefox is sent a shell command to open the URL, the hacker has the ability to run various commands which could lead to a compromise in the user's system. It has been confirmed on Fedora Core 4. There is currently no patch or workaround available yet.

Creative Zen Micro Photo

One of the main goals of the Killer Tech blog is to give you the latest technology news. But more importantly, what I wanted this blog to be, was a portal for awesome new gadgets. Up to now, in this blogs short existence, we haven't really featured any gadgets. However, we have found our first match, and it is definitely a piece of killer technology.

It's the new Creative Labs Zen Micro Photo. This is the iPod Photo killer. I have a Zen Micro, and this takes the Zen Micro to the next level. Let's get the specs:

Screen: 1.5in OLED Color Screen
Battery: 15 Hour Lithium-Ion
Storage: 8GB Hard Drive
Other Capabilities:
Photo Storage
Integrated FM Tuner (with the ability to record)
Integrated Microphone

Overall, this looks like it is going to be a solid player and a nice addition to the Zen family of players. I have had absolutely no problems with my Zen Micro and this one is better in every dimension.

Steve Jobs talks tech

In an article on Macworld, Steve Jobs discusses Apple's role in the Motorola ROKR, the possibility of a video-capable iPod, the future of the Macintosh line of computers and much more on where Apple is heading.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/09/20/jobsparis/index.php

New G4 CEO named

Neal Tiles is now the official GEO of G4, the video gaming TV network that was TechTV. The former CEO was the main person behind killing all the good TechTV programming. There is a chance that the new CEO will try to restore G4 to TechTV, which was a much more popular network.

Opera browser goes free

In the latest version of the popular Opera Web Browser, the banner ads embedded in the browser application window have been removed. The browser is now officially completely free. Previously, you had to pay for the ad-free version. I test drove the new version, and while it seems to feature-filled and loads super fast, I miss some of my favorite featurs from the Firefox browser. Unfortunately, the Opera browser has no room for user modifications and plug-ins the way Firefox does.

5.1 Dolby Surround Sound With Any Pair of Headphones

Dolby Headphone technology allows users to wear any set of headphones and listen to music, watch movies, or play video games with the dramatic surround effects of a 5.1-channel soundtrack.

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Killer Tech Google Group

The Killer Tech Google Group is finally here! With this Google Group, all the readers of this blog, and me, can interact more easily than just with this blog. So check out the Google Group and post your thoughts on anything we did or did not cover on the blog. All the posts to this blog should automatically get sent over to the group so anyone can comment and start a discussion right in the topic. Enjoy!

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Dell Enters Linux Arena

A new player has entered the Linux arena! Dell has introduced a new laptop, an addition to their Latitude line of systems, that runs Mandriva Linux. Although it isn't my preferred flavor of Ubuntu, it is a start from Microsoft Windows XP. HP has also recently announced that they will be selling Ubuntu laptops soon, with desktops to follow.

As for the new Dell's specifications, the Latitude 110L comes with:
Mandriva Linux installed
1.4 or 1.7 GHz Intel Celeron/Pentium M Processor
RAM ranging from 256MB to 1280MB
DVD Drive
starting price of $930