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.

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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.