Foxytunes for IE!

The coolest firefox plugin is now available for IE7! Foxytunes is a browser plugin which allows you to control your media player (iTunes, WMP or WinAmp) from the browser. You can also find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and more. Go ahead and try it out:

sharing data between windows and linux

One of the problems most "linwin" users(users with linux-windows dual boot config..and who are new to linux) face is transfering data to and from the different filesystems. Thankfully, most of the distros now automatically mount the windows partitions. In Ubuntu 5.10 (the distro I use), you still can't write any data to your partitions. This can be solved by logging in root (you can do so temporarily by typing "su" in the console). Even after doing this, you won't be able to write to NTFS partitions. To do this, you must download and install a package called ntfs-3g. After that, you have to modify your /etc/fstab file. Just change the file system type under the file section from ntfs to ntfs-3g. Reboot your system to see the change.
Accessing your files in linux (in ext2 or ext3 partitions) is much easier. All you have to do is to download an application called Explore2fs. The current version allows you to browse your linux filesystem and export files to your windows filesystem. The latest beta does give an error message sometimes when you try to exit, but it should cause too much problem. This is particularly helpful if you are browsing a support forum using windows and you need to post a config file from linux.

What's wrong with Talk?

Have you noticed something? If you are logged in Orkut, you will have problems logging in Talk.. Its gets all confused and changes your display name a couple of times and even disconnects. I don't know about other connections, but it takes ages to sign in with my Airtel Mobile office connection... well much longer than Windows Live or Yahoo! Messenger.
Gmail has also become a slow recently. I know a couple of guys who have left GMail for some other provider.
Not something you would expect from Google. What's going on?

oops.. sorry

Now that's a shocker.. Check out what i read in Slashdot today..
VOIP to be Made Illegal in India.
That's surprising.. I can swear I read the news of Yahoo and BSNL starting VOIP(read the previous post).
what is going on??

VOIP in India

Well.. it seems Google's idea to integrate Google talk in Orkut is finally working. I never used to use Talk regularly before as most of my friends use MSN. But now, there are usually 4-5 people online on my Talk account at any given time. So Talk is finally gaining ground as an IM and VOIP platform.. but lets look what else is going on..
Yahoo! may have allowed users to add friends from MSN to their list but there was something more interesting in the news yesterday. Yahoo! has got permission to start providing VOIP services in India. BSNL, the PSU telecom provider is planning to VOIP calls to USA for as low as Rs 1.5 a minute.. which is the same roughly rate for calling a landline number from a mobile phone! AOL was also in the news recently as they are also planning to start IM and VOIP services in India in a big way.
So.. death of the landline phone? lets wait and see.

Ubuntu!

I finally got tired of trying to get linux to work with my graphics card. I even tried Mandriva after SuSe.. still didn't work. So the only option left was Ubuntu.. and my cd was spoiled! Fortunately one friend of mine also had a cd so I made a copy.
After removing SuSe and installing Ubuntu, I suddenly realised. Why do I need my graphics card for linux? Instead, I can run it on my onboard card and even the soundcard will work then. So then I had a lot of other options in the hostel like Mandriva, Suse, Fedora Core, Red Hat but I decided to stick to Ubuntu.. and I am glad I did!(explanation comes later)
Everything was running fine.. but there were 2 things remaining which prevented me from using Ubuntu regularly:
1. Internet: I still hadn't figured out how to get my CA-42 datacable and nokia 6020 phone working.
2. Music and Movies: The codecs don't come by default!
To start out, I just connected my data cable and went to device manager. It was detected as a Serial Communications Device.. and the surprising thing is the publisher was mentioned as Nokia! It was listed as /dev/ttyACM0. I created the wvdial.conf file as follows using "man wvdial.conf" for help:
[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Baud = 117965
Phone = *99#
Username = ""
Password = ""
And then I tried the wvdial command. Lo and Behold! I was connected to the internet. I didn't imagine in my wildest dreams that this could be so easy. After all, even windows xp (and even Vista!) required seperate drivers for the CA-42 modem!
With internet, there was nothing stopping me from downloading whatever I wanted for linux. Using Synaptics Package Manager, I downloaded VLC media player for linux and amaroK. I really don't need to say much about VLC: it's one of the best media players around even in windows. The only thing is the File listing in the Open Dialog is a bit cramped.. but thats okay.
I was delighted to see amaroK. This is SO much than the other linux player I tried.. xmms! It was originally made for the KDE environemt and I just had Gnome but it was possible to install and run it(the package manager installed the kde library files so I can run kde applications.. hmm not bad!) But the files were not playing! Gstreamer was the only engine available so I went ahead and downloaded xine and then it started working.
This was far better than what my friends using FC5 experienced. I was able to connect to the internet my the friend's computer by Firefox was acting as if there was no connection. And where is the Device manager? I found several things in Ubuntu which were missing in FC5. Ofcourse FC5 has tons of applications on its DVD which I don't get from Ubuntu(after all, Ubuntu is distributed in a cd) but I can EASILY download and install all that in synaptics package manager. There are tons of interesting applications just waiting to be downloaded and installed.. making me wish I had a faster internet connection! Perhaps this is why Ubuntu is still one of the most popular and best distros available. Ofcourse I hadn't tried SuSe and Mandriva but the ratings say that Ubuntu and FC are the best so I won't bother with those. Maybe I will try them later after using it in my friends' computers.
Now, I have using Ubuntu for 2 days straight without shifting to windows (except when my friend came to play a game).
So maybe its time to take back my words... Linux isn't so bad after all. Infact I really like Ubuntu! It rocks! It inspired my to go to the IRC channel (#ubuntu on freenode) and help out newbies to install linux... something I wouldn't think of doing before as I always used to criticize linux!
Perhaps you will see a lot more posts related to linux from now on :-)

Welcome to GeekMeat!

First Post!


Hey guys.. I welcome you all to GeekMeat, my new blog on technology. I have been blogging for the past 2 years on Munim's Blog, and now I have decided to create a seperate blog for posts related to technology. As you may have noticed, I have posted some of my old posts here.
I hope you enjoy reading my posts and have a nice time here! You can contact me at munim2020@gmail.com.

(mis)use of technolgy (old post)

As you may have noticed, all my websites (except this blog) are offline… thanks to the fact that both the free hosting providers I was using have stopped providing free hosting. Really.. it isn’t a big problem for me any more. I am thinking of integrating the pages of my website munim.be in this blog and forget about the other sites. But I am not going to talk about that.. I am going to talk about why StoneRocket and Xeeblo have stopped free hosting.

You see.. this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Infact, it has happened THREE times. I make a nice website and upload it… and then after a few months, the host decides to stop free hosting. They say that they couldn’t financially support the servers. Unfortunately for them, the idea of their members visiting their forums regularly and clicking the PPC ads(read google adsense) didn’t quite work out as expected. That was their only source of income. They didn’t force any ads on their members websites. Its kinda sad really… the members who really used the hosting services provided were the ones who hardly participated in the forums(in most cases, if not all) and they were the ones who the first to complain if anything wrong happened.

But in the case of Xeeblo, something else happened. They weren’t short of money.. It seems many users had violated the Terms of Usage and had used their server space illegally. Infact, Xeeblo’s had recieved complaints from their server hosting provider about this. Xeeblo sent mails to their users and posted messages in the forum which of course didn’t help.. and finally they had to back down and stop free hosting. Someone is kind enough to give quality free hosting and people misuse it.. sad.

Something else happened in the case of Stonerocket. First of all, it started out with server overload which slowed down things a bit. A couple of members who never visit the forums start complaining loudly. The admins solved the problems in most of the cases.. and even decided to get a new server. Then their server was attacked which halted hosting for a few days. After hosting for restored, the admins quickly shifted paid accounts and moderator accounts to a different server. Things improved a lot.. but that didn’t stop the complaints and abuses. Some idiots actually wrote emails to the admin ranting about the hosting.. when nothing was wrong. I was one of the staff members in the forum and admin had posted a very touching message.. He was spending cash and time to provide free hosting to the members and all they could do was just complain. Finally he decided to put an end to it by stopping free hosting. Stonerocket still provides paid hosting and has a couple of projects at hand.

My point is why do people misuse something which is otherwise a great service or product? Even email: it started out as a great idea… but thanks to SPAMMERS, about half of the mail most people get is just unwanted junk.
Internet: Great powerful tool… but now you have problems like phishing, sites with fake information, pornography, scams.. not to mention the fact that most viruses spread through the internet. Now, an internet connection is actually considered as a threat or a liability in a network or an organisation, when it should be considered as a resource. Now internet is maybe the biggest problem to movie studios, musicians, software firms, etc.. thanks to rampant piracy.
Even search engines: Started out as a tool to search and find websites.. but it got somehow confused with advertising and SEO scams.
The list is endless.. networks, SMS, bluetooth, wifi, and even blogs.
It seems the next release of Windows (vista) will mainly concentrate on security of the computer agaisnt viruses, hackers, worms, etc. I mean.. just compare the speed of a computer with antivirus, antispyware, firewall.. the lot, with a computer with no such tools. If there were no such threats, all this computing power could be put to more productive use like better user interface, faster applications, more applications running together and so on.
Just imagine what it would have been like if no one would have thought of misusing anything. A world without spam, system clogging antivirus software.. Think about it.

GMail labels

Some of my friends still use email services other than GMail. I offered to send them invitations but they said they don't want to use GMail as it doesn't support "folders".
While it is true that GMail doesn't allow you to organize your mail in folders, it has a much more flexible and powerful feature, namely "labels".
The basic difference between filters and folders is: while a message can only reside in one folder, it can have more than one labels. Also a labelled message can exist in the inbox or the "All Mail" section, which contains all the emails, new and archived.
This in itself is pretty good.. but if you couple this with email filters, you get a powerful email sorting and organising system.
For example, I have created a filter which labels all emails with "slashdot" in the from field to the "slashdot" label, and I have also specified that these mails should be automatically archived(they must not appear in the inbox). So now, I can read all my slashdot newsletters by clicking on the "slashdot" label in the labels section. I can even use "label:" as a search attribute, as in google's advanced search options.
Another example: Sometimes I get very irritated when my friends email me "forwards"(hint hint ). So I have created a filter which automatically archives and applies the "forwards" label to all mails with "fw" or "fwd" in the subject line! This is very convienient for me as I can check my inbox for any useful emails, and I can always check the "forwards" filter when I am bored and to check if there is something interesting.
Another prominent feature that GMail has is free POP access. Other web based email providers usually charge a fee for POP access.I have also noted that the GMail spam filter is much more effective than Yahoo Mail (well.. in my observations!)
"GMail for your domain" is a new service launched by Google, where you can use GMail as the mail handler for your domain names. For example, if you have a website with a domain name as "mycompany.com", you can setup a GMail account to send and recieve emails from "me@mycompany.com". This is very useful as GMail's 2.7 gb(and increasing!) storage and features make it a good option for professional users who don't get similar facilities from their web host.

Whats your password?? (old post)

okay guys.. lets get serious here. What does your passwords look like and when was the last time you changed it?The reason why I asked this question is because recently one friend of mine lost some important stuff uploaded on his email account.. After much questioning, one nut finally gave up and said that he just wanted to play a prank.. and he uploaded those files back.. and of course, my friend immediately changed his password. I gave him some tips to create a strong password and I am going to share those with you.First of all, there are tons of guys around you who know a lot about you and your life, so it would be stupid to put something like your pet name, friend's/relative's/dog's name, or something related with what you do.. That would be the easiest way for someone else to find out your password. That guy who had played the prank on my friend said he used to see my friend's hands when he was entering the password.. and was able to guess out rather easily what it is... Turned out to be his girl's name followed by her occupation!Forget about names, don't try to put in any english words or abbreviations or anything that makes sense as your password.. Not only does this make your password resistant to dictionary attacks.. but if someone sees you entering your password, he will have a hard time figuring it out! I read somewhere recently that most people just put simple english words as their password... making them very vunerable to dictionary attacks. And no.. a combination of two or more words doesn't help, and neither does a change in case.. make sure your password doesn't mean anything!To make it more stronger, add numbers (no.. no phone numbers please!) and symbols to your password. You can also change the case of some of the letters from small to caps.. that too helps.Some sites have a small script which automatically tells you if the password you just typed was strong or not.. This is really helpful. If you follow all the tips I gave, you will surely get a strong password. You also get password generators which generate random passwords.. Tweak XP has a really nice one. These are also helpful.Also make sure you change your password once in two or three weeks. I know.. it can be hard to remember a strong password.. but don't write it down anywhere.. just spend some time memorising it and you won't forget it. Needless to say, don't tell your password to anyone else ;-). And no.. don't rely on that secret question some email providers ask! It is another weakness in your account security.If you forget your password, you can have it reset or mailed to you on your email address. You can delete that email for additional security.. or some guys prefer to keep it for reference.And finally, if you are not using your own computer to check your email, you need to be extra careful. Don't use your friend's computer if he is a jerk as he might have a keylogger on. Use "secure" sign ins wherever available. Most websites have an option in the sign-in page to remember your username and/or password. Remember to check if these options are not selected. For extra security, you can delete the cookies and autocomplete records from the browser settings before you leave the computer in an internet parlour.okay.. i may sound like a serious freak saying all this.. but you never know what can happen if your email account his hacked. That jerk can get access to all your personal stuff and emails.. and can blackmail you(it happened to me once!!). You guys must have already heard of cases of cybercrime (even kidnap and murder) because some fools were not careful enough on the internet.well.. thats all I had to say.. until my next blog post..

I just tried to install SuSe 10.1 on my system. As expected, this distro too gives the same damn problem like every other distro I have tried: kernel panic if graphics card is enabled on asrock i865gv. Earlier I used to use Ubuntu and I knew a workaround for this.. you boot with your onboard card, chmod /etc/init.d/hotplug to -x, edit the xorg.conf file and your done! (though i must mention that this disables not only your onboard graphics card, but your onboard sound card too! this means whenever I want to use Ubuntu, I have 2 options: either use my external graphics card without sound or the onboard card with sound!)

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do this in SuSe simply because /etc/init.d/hotplug doesn't exist! So far, I haven't found a single solution on the internet, even after posting the question in the forums.

This is so irritating... but guess what, I actually removed Vista to make space for linux in my system. Why? Because I don't need Vista now. Its just another version of windows which looks really cool and smooth but won't allow me to play games. I might as well use XP till I get a better system. Linux is different. I want to experiment and do stuff in linux cuz its a completely different operating system.. I want to check out all those IDEs like KDevelop and Eclipse.

I would have been happy with Ubuntu, but the cd is scratched so I can't install from it. Its the only distro I have been able to install and use in my system properly. I guess I have to wait for the new cds to be shipped to me or find a way to make SuSe work!

why i like IE7 (old post)

I just downloaded the new version of internet explorer for windows xp. While there were some guys who started complaining that one security hole was already discovered it it, I was trying to concentrate on other things…
The first thing I noticed was that it is faster than IE6.. I don’t know if I am just imagining things but try using Orkut on IE7 and tell me if its not faster!
The other thing I noticed (and I specifically wanted to talk about this) is the clean uncluttered interface and user-friendliness. This is exactly what sets Microsoft products apart from their competitors… especially other open-source or freeware products. IE7 hardly has anything in the window which you won’t use for browsing. Even the Menu bar is hidden by default! Instead, there is are just 2 buttons replacing the earlier Tools and Edit menu(and that star button for favourites). Honestly.. When was the last time you used any other menu other than these 3? All this has given more space for the webpage display… and that really counts. Tabbed browsing is fast and easy.. unlike the Windows Live(MSN) toolbar and the earlier beta versions of IE7. I really like this feature: If you have multiple tabs open, you can preview all the tabs at once. And there is the inbuilt search box.
When I downloaded this new browser, I was trying to think of a website to surf just so that I can use this browser: THAT is called user-friendliness. I don’t want hifi tools and plugins or lots of buttons which can do lot of things. I wan’t a simple and fast browser, and that’s exactly what IE is. This is esssentially the reason why windows is still the preferred OS over linux for the desktop: USER-FRIENDLINESS!! My message to all the programmers out there: User friendliness is what sets a program apart from the others, not added functionality, not hifi tools, not open-source code.. Most of these stuff just COMPLICATES your program to the end-user. In the end, what the user wants is EASE OF USE of your application and that’s all that matters!

(mis)use of technology

As you may have noticed, all my websites (except this blog) are offline… thanks to the fact that both the free hosting providers I was using have stopped providing free hosting. Really.. it isn’t a big problem for me any more. I am thinking of integrating the pages of my website munim.be in this blog and forget about the other sites. But I am not going to talk about that.. I am going to talk about why StoneRocket and Xeeblo have stopped free hosting.

You see.. this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Infact, it has happened THREE times. I make a nice website and upload it… and then after a few months, the host decides to stop free hosting. They say that they couldn’t financially support the servers. Unfortunately for them, the idea of their members visiting their forums regularly and clicking the PPC ads(read google adsense) didn’t quite work out as expected. That was their only source of income. They didn’t force any ads on their members websites. Its kinda sad really… the members who really used the hosting services provided were the ones who hardly participated in the forums(in most cases, if not all) and they were the ones who the first to complain if anything wrong happened.

But in the case of Xeeblo, something else happened. They weren’t short of money.. It seems many users had violated the Terms of Usage and had used their server space illegally. Infact, Xeeblo’s had recieved complaints from their server hosting provider about this. Xeeblo sent mails to their users and posted messages in the forum which of course didn’t help.. and finally they had to back down and stop free hosting. Someone is kind enough to give quality free hosting and people misuse it.. sad.

Something else happened in the case of Stonerocket. First of all, it started out with server overload which slowed down things a bit. A couple of members who never visit the forums start complaining loudly. The admins solved the problems in most of the cases.. and even decided to get a new server. Then their server was attacked which halted hosting for a few days. After hosting for restored, the admins quickly shifted paid accounts and moderator accounts to a different server. Things improved a lot.. but that didn’t stop the complaints and abuses. Some idiots actually wrote emails to the admin ranting about the hosting.. when nothing was wrong. I was one of the staff members in the forum and admin had posted a very touching message.. He was spending cash and time to provide free hosting to the members and all they could do was just complain. Finally he decided to put an end to it by stopping free hosting. Stonerocket still provides paid hosting and has a couple of projects at hand.

My point is why do people misuse something which is otherwise a great service or product? Even email: it started out as a great idea… but thanks to SPAMMERS, about half of the mail most people get is just unwanted junk.
Internet: Great powerful tool… but now you have problems like phishing, sites with fake information, pornography, scams.. not to mention the fact that most viruses spread through the internet. Now, an internet connection is actually considered as a threat or a liability in a network or an organisation, when it should be considered as a resource. Now internet is maybe the biggest problem to movie studios, musicians, software firms, etc.. thanks to rampant piracy.
Even search engines: Started out as a tool to search and find websites.. but it got somehow confused with advertising and SEO scams.
The list is endless.. networks, SMS, bluetooth, wifi, and even blogs.
It seems the next release of Windows (vista) will mainly concentrate on security of the computer agaisnt viruses, hackers, worms, etc. I mean.. just compare the speed of a computer with antivirus, antispyware, firewall.. the lot, with a computer with no such tools. If there were no such threats, all this computing power could be put to more productive use like better user interface, faster applications, more applications running together and so on.
Just imagine what it would have been like if no one would have thought of misusing anything. A world without spam, system clogging antivirus software.. Think about it.