Syam's Techy Notes

2011-02-13T11:56:00.003+05:30

This blog is no longer active.

Please visit WebMaster View

BlogCamp Kerala 2008

2008-08-14T11:49:00.005+05:30

First unconference to happen on a houseboat.

Location: Alappuzha. Punnamada Jetty is the boarding point.
Time: 9 am, August 16th, 2008

Visit blogcampkerala.com for more info

India says 'No' to OOXML

2007-08-25T17:25:00.000+05:30

We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO, National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours.

OpenDNS with Ubuntu

2007-07-14T23:54:00.000+05:30

OpenDNS is a safer and faster free DNS service. It protects you from phishing sites and gives you a feature to block adult sites. You can use it whether you use a single computer or a network. No software install needed.

Instructions for Ubuntu

Because my ISP (Asianet) uses Dynamic IPs, I need a dynamic dns client to be logged in to the OpenDNS account. You don't need to even create an account to use OpenDNS, but without it, you can't use many of its features or set your preferences. If you have dynamic IP and no dynamic dns client, you need to manually login and update the IP to keep your preferences.

To use inadyn with Ubuntu, download the inadyn source code from OpenDNS site, extract it, cd into it and run make. You need to install libcurl3-openssl-dev before it. After the make is over, copy the binary from bin/linux/ directory to /bin. Edit inadyn.conf with your OpenDNS username and password. Move it to /etc/. Run inadyn.

That's all

Google Desktop Search in Linux!

2007-07-01T01:40:00.000+05:30

Go to http://desktop.google.com/linux/ and download the version you need. .deb for Debian based (Debian, Ubuntu etc.) systems and .rpm for RPM based (Redhat, Mandriva etc.) systems. Doubleclick the downloaded file and install. After installation, run the command gdlinux. A dialogue box will pop up. Choose whether to enable advanced features. After this, google desktop icon will appear in the notification area. Right click it and select preferences to open it in your browser. After making changes, check index status.

Press Ctrl key two times to bring up Search window on desktop. Or rightclick google desktop icon and select 'Show Homepage'.

Gnome Easter Eggs!

2007-07-01T00:05:00.000+05:30

Hit the Alt-F2 keys together, 'Run Applications' dialogue will appear. Type gegls from outer space and press ENTER. You will get a game.
Type free the fish. Wanda, the fish will appear on your desktop. If you click her, she will swim off the screen, but will come back later. To remove Wanda from desktop, type killall gnome-panel to a terminal. Your gnome-panels will refresh and Wanda will disappear.

Via ArsGeek

2007-06-24T00:21:00.000+05:30

The World of Hello World: A map of programming languages and rough locations in the world where they were created.

Why Upgrade to GPL Version 3

2007-06-11T00:46:00.000+05:30

by Richard Stallman

Version 3 of the GNU General Public License will soon be finished, enabling free software packages to upgrade from GPL version 2. This article explains why upgrading the license is important.

First of all, it is important to note that upgrading is a choice. GPL version 2 will remain a valid license, and no disaster will happen if some programs remain under GPLv2 while others advance to GPLv3. These two licenses are incompatible, but that isn't a serious problem.

When we say that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible, it means there is no legal way to combine code under GPLv2 with code under GPLv3 in a single program. This is because both GPLv2 and GPLv3 are copyleft licenses: each of them says, “If you include code under this license in a larger program, the larger program must be under this license too.” There is no way to make them compatible. We could add a GPLv2-compatibility clause to GPLv3, but it wouldn't do the job, because GPLv2 would need a similar clause.

Fortunately, license incompatibility only matters when you want to link, merge or combine code from two different programs into a single program. There is no problem in having GPLv3-covered and GPLv2-covered programs side by side in an operating system. For instance, the TeX license and the Apache license are incompatible with GPLv2, but that doesn't stop us from running TeX and Apache in the same system with Linux, Bash and GCC. This is because they are all separate programs. Likewise, if Bash and GCC move to GPLv3, while Linux remains under GPLv2, there is no conflict.

Keeping a program under GPLv2 won't create problems. The reason to migrate is because of the existing problems which GPLv3 will address.

One major danger that GPLv3 will block is tivoization. Tivoization means computers (called “appliances”) contain GPL-covered software that you can't change, because the appliance shuts down if it detects modified software. The usual motive for tivoization is that the software has features the manufacturer thinks lots of people won't like. The manufacturers of these computers take advantage of the freedom that free software provides, but they don't let you do likewise.

Some argue that competition between appliances in a free market should suffice to keep nasty features to a low level. Perhaps competition alone would avoid arbitrary, pointless misfeatures like “Must shut down between 1pm and 5pm every Tuesday”, but even so, a choice of masters isn't freedom. Freedom means you control what your software does, not merely that you can beg or threaten someone else who decides for you.

In the crucial area of Digital Restrictions Management—nasty features designed to restrict your use of the data in your computer—competition is no help, because relevant competition is forbidden. Under the Digital Millenuium Copyright Act and similar laws, it is illegal, in the US and many other countries, to distribute DVD players unless they restrict the user according to the official rules of the DVD conspiracy (its web site is http://www.dvdcca.org/, but the rules do not seem to be published there). The public can't reject DRM by buying non-DRM players, because none are available. No matter how many products you can choose from, they all have equivalent digital handcuffs.

GPLv3 ensures you are free to remove the handcuffs. It doesn't forbid DRM, or any kind of feature. It places no limits on the substantive functionality you can add to a program, or remove from it. Rather, it makes sure that you are just as free to remove nasty features as the distributor of your copy was to add them. Tivoization is the way they deny you that freedom; to protect your freedom, GPLv3 forbids tivoization.

The ban on tivoization applies to any product whose use by consumers, even occasionally, is to be expected. GPLv3 tolerates tivoization only for products that are almost exclusively meant for businesses and organizations. (The latest draft of GPLv3 states this criterion explicitly.)

Another threat that GPLv3 resists is that of patent deals like the Novell-Microsoft deal. Microsoft wants to use its thousands of patents to make GNU/Linux users pay Microsoft for the privilege, and made this deal to try to get that. The deal offers Novell's customers rather limited protection from Microsoft patents.

Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community. In order to take advantage of this, programs need to use GPLv3.

Microsoft's lawyers are not stupid, and next time they may manage to avoid those mistakes. GPLv3 therefore says they don't get a “next time”. Releasing a program under GPL version 3 protects it from Microsoft's future attempts to make redistributors collect Microsoft royalties from the program's users.

GPLv3 also provides for explicit patent protection of the users from the program's contributors and redistributors. With GPLv2, users rely on an implicit patent license to make sure that the company which provided them a copy won't sue them, or the people they redistribute copies to, for patent infringement.

The explicit patent license in GPLv3 does not go as far as we might have liked. Ideally, we would make everyone who redistributes GPL-covered code surrender all software patents, along with everyone who does not redistribute GPL-covered code. Software patents are a vicious and absurd system that puts all software developers in danger of being sued by companies they have never heard of, as well as by all the megacorporations in the field. Large programs typically combine thousands of ideas, so it is no surprise if they implement ideas covered by hundreds of patents. Megacorporations collect thousands of patents, and use those patents to bully smaller developers. Patents already obstruct free software development.

The only way to make software development safe is to abolish software patents, and we aim to achieve this some day. But we cannot do this through a software license. Any program, free or not, can be killed by a software patent in the hands of an unrelated party, and the program's license cannot prevent that. Only court decisions or changes in patent law can make software development safe from patents. If we tried to do this with GPLv3, it would fail.

Therefore, GPLv3 seeks to limit and channel the danger. In particular, we have tried to save free software from a fate worse than death: to be made effectively proprietary, through patents. The explicit patent license of GPLv3 makes sure companies that use the GPL to give users the four freedoms cannot turn around and use their patents to tell some users “That doesn't include you.” It also stops them from colluding with other patent holders to do this.

Further advantages of GPLv3 include better internationalization, gentler termination, support for BitTorrent, and compatibility with the Apache license. (For full information, see gplv3.fsf.org.) All in all, plenty of reason to upgrade.

Change is unlikely to cease once GPLv3 is released. If new threats to users' freedom develop, we will have to develop GPL version 4. It is important to make sure that programs will have no trouble upgrading to GPLv4 when the time comes.

One way to do this is to release a program under “GPL version 3 or any later version”. Another way is for all the contributors to a program to state a proxy who can decide on upgrading to future GPL versions. The third way is for all the contributors to assign copyright to one designated copyright holder, who will be in a position to upgrade the license version. One way or another, programs should provide this flexibility for the future.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

2007-06-11T00:40:00.000+05:30

Installed LAMP server.

Ubuntu Feisty Plugins for firefox

2007-05-27T18:00:00.000+05:30

Install sun-java6-jre and sun-java6-plugin (for firefox): sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts
Install Flash player plugin for firefox
Install RealPlayer10. Download and chmod +x RealPlayer10GOLD.bin; sudo ./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin

sudo without entering a password!

2007-05-27T16:18:00.000+05:30

Hate entering password every time you have to do some administration work? Do this. Not a secure thing. I do this because nobody else uses my computer.

sudo vsudo

Move cursor to the following line:

%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

Change it to %admin ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

Press Ctrl+X

Type Y to save

Press ENTER to confirm the file name.

That's all! Now you will not be asked for your password when you sudo.

2007-05-27T16:08:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu does not ask for a root password on installation. Add a root password with sudo passwd root

Configuring Firewall in Feisty

2007-05-27T15:53:00.001+05:30

Check for any open ports at Gibson Research Corporation's Shields Up tool

Before configuring firewall:

After sudo aptitude install firestarter and configuring firewall with it:

2007-05-27T15:20:00.000+05:30

It is now very easy to search and install codecs for different media types in Ubuntu feisty. When you try to play a music file or video file, a confirmation box will appear asking whether to search for a codec.

Everything works fine now. Previously, in dapper, I used VLC player because of the codec problems in the default players. VLC is a very good media player which plays almost all formats. It is also available for windows platform.

2007-05-20T23:15:00.000+05:30

Time to go and sleep. Installing everything from Apache to xracer is postponed until next week...

2007-05-20T23:06:00.000+05:30

Feisty Fawn Humour!

2007-05-20T19:50:00.000+05:30

I installed Feisty Fawn. I got this message during the first boot up: " / has gone 49710 days without being checked, check forced". After checking, grub started again, but this time, it booted ok.

Installing Ubuntu 7.04, Feisty Fawn!

2007-05-20T19:20:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu CDs came thursday. I made a decision to sacrifice my ubuntu 6.06 Long Term Support version for the new features in Feisty. I am going to make a clean install instead of upgrading.

First, I made a note of installed applications and the tweaks I made, then backed up important files to a FAT partition, put the CD into drive and rebooted.

It did boot up faster than the previous versions, but that's probably because I added more RAM two months ago. First thing I checked was firefox. It is the newest version (2.0.0.3). I clicked the install icon in the desktop and started the install process. When the partitioning part came, I selected manual partitioning and checked the partition where current ubuntu version is installed. Then I resized the partition to make more swap space. My partitions were like this:

hda1 fat32 104878 MB
hda5 ntfs 104878 MB (windows xp)
hda6 ext3 18885 MB (current ubuntu installation)
hda 7 swap 197 MB

I resized partition and made a 1GB swap space, then selected ext3 partition as /. Now installation is going on.

Firefox: tweaks

2007-05-03T15:50:00.000+05:30

Disable prefetching: set network.prefetch-next key to false.
Turn on spell-checking in input fields as well as textareas: set layout.spellcheckDefault to 2
(Windows OS only ? ) To Allow Windows to swap out memory when the program is minimized:create a new boolean config.trim_on_minimize and set it true
Set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to true
Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 30

2007-05-02T12:30:00.000+05:30

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

:-)

2007-04-18T19:57:00.000+05:30

2007-04-06T00:15:00.000+05:30

Install Firefox New version on your Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)
Install Firefox Ubuntu themes: sudo aptitude install firefox-themes-ubuntu
Prettify the Firefox widgets
Tweak Firefox (All platforms)

2007-02-16T14:23:00.000+05:30

OpenDNS: OpenDNS is a better DNS, free to all. OpenDNS uses its distributed network of DNS servers to speed up your Internet experience, increase reliability, improve security and make DNS smarter for users all over the world.

I am going to try this.

2007-02-12T19:25:00.000+05:30

PHP5 Issues: "Sometimes, it’s better to be stable, than on the cutting edge."

Who links to your site?

2007-02-06T16:48:00.000+05:30

New backlink tracking tool is available in Google's webmaster tools.

Via Official Google Blog