Sometimes when I’m troubleshooting a PHP error and a function is called in the debugger that gives me a line number of a file to look at, I want to know what that line says without opening up the file.  Using the command line, you can accomplish this in the following way:

No related posts.

• 9h3m0i.gif (GIF Image, 320x240 pixels)
  Just a little something to post to those people who need a hand....
• New MythTV Interface Preview | Gunaxin

• Blog Community
  A plugin for Simple Machines Forum that I would have killed to have about 3 months ago. I guess I can't be everywhere at everytime. :(

• 30+ Creative Hi-Res Wallpapers Only for Designers | Noupe
• OpenGoo: An Open Source Web Office

• Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control

• Wayland | Google Groups
  This is the Wayland Google Group used for development of the new Wayland display server.
• 30+ Exceptional GIMP Tutorials and Resources | Noupe
• 1000+ FREE High Resolution GIMP Brushes | Noupe

• Start · MyPCLinuxOS: PCLinuxOS Projects

• Free Developer Icons | Developer Icon Sets | Web Design Icons | Outlaw Design Blog - A Graphic Design Blog
  Icons!
• Unix Toolbox
• UNIX / Linux Tutorial for Beginners
• LinuxCommand.org: Learning the shell.
• Learn UNIX in 10 minutes
• How To Look Like A UNIX Guru
• Linux-Unix Cheat Sheets - The Ultimate Collection
  The ultimate collection of printable Linux and Unix cheat sheets!
• Linux Command Directory: Index
• Rosetta Stone for Unix
  Rosetta Stone for all Unix. Learn how commands cross compare in each flavor of Unix
• BigAdmin Shell Commands

• Infectious — Adhesive Art

• Powerful guide to master Your WordPress | Noupe
  Looking to take control of your wordpress blog? Excellent articles on how to do this...
• Web Design WordPress function list
  Wordpress quick reference for themes. This references all wordpress tags and how you can use them as a theme developer.
• BMPanel's page
  A lightweight imlib2 bitmap panel I'd like to try for openbox. More to come :)
• JungleJar Useful CSS Classes For The Masses

ul class=”delicious”li
div class=”delicious-link”a href=”http://www.junglejar.com/css/css-classes/”JungleJar Useful CSS Classes For The Masses/a/div

div class=”delicious-tags”(tags: a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/design”design/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/wordpress”wordpress/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/css”css/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/classes”classes/a)/div
/lili
div class=”delicious-link”a href=”http://nsf.110mb.com/bmpanel/”BMPanel#039;s page/a/div
div class=”delicious-extended”A lightweight imlib2 bitmap panel I#039;d like to try for openbox. More to come :)/div
div class=”delicious-tags”(tags: a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/openbox”openbox/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/panel”panel/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/bitmap”bitmap/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/lightweight”lightweight/a)/div
/lili
div class=”delicious-link”a href=”http://www.dbswebsite.com/design/wordpress-reference/”Web Design WordPress function list/a/div
div class=”delicious-extended”Wordpress quick reference for themes. This references all wordpress tags and how you can use them as a theme developer./div
div class=”delicious-tags”(tags: a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/reference”reference/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/wordpress”wordpress/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/theme”theme/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/guide”guide/a)/div
/lili
div class=”delicious-link”a href=”http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/the-powerful-guide-to-master-your-wordpress.html”Powerful guide to master Your WordPress | Noupe/a/div
div class=”delicious-extended”Looking to take control of your wordpress blog? Excellent articles on how to do this…/div
div class=”delicious-tags”(tags: a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/wordpress”wordpress/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/webdesign”webdesign/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/tutorial”tutorial/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/tips”tips/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/howto”howto/a a href=”http://delicious.com/devnet/hacks”hacks/a)/div
/li/ul

Related posts:

1. Mediawiki: Remove External Arrow from Links My main job here at rPath, Inc. is to document...
2. Installing Openbox on Foresight Linux My friend Og Maciel originally introduced me to Openbox a...
3. gmrun and openbox My friend Og Maciel and I had a short package...

• Arch Linux Forums / Can KDE have animated wallpaper?
  Using mplayer for your KDE wallpaper and also using a Screensaver as KDE wallpaper.
• Animated Wallpaper in Kubuntu/ KDE (use Screensaver)?

3 months ago, CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White issued a “Lame Duck” challenge for the President.  If any of those goals were met, he’d offer CrossOver free for one day.  Fast forward 3 months and at least one of his six lame duck goals were met.  Thus, CrossOver is available today only for FREE.

To get in on the action, head over to the CodeWeavers CrossOver Lame Duck Page.

Related posts:

1. Daniweb.com, free help, free community I've been a member of Daniweb.com for about a...
2. Host your own webserver for free A while back, I wrote a tutorial for people who...

• Using WordPress Custom Fields: Introduction

• Gmail, Weather, Beauty on your Ubuntu Desktop | Quick Tweaks

• www.pclinuxos private pastebin - collaborative debugging tool

• Demotivator Blog

• Money Manager Ex - CodeLathe
• HomeBank - Free, easy, personal accounting for everyone.
• Cheatsheet - Meta

Build Your Own PCLOS

So, HowtoForge has a perfect desktop for PCLinuxOS 2007…how about something similar for 2008 MiniMe? I won’t go into near as much detail as they do there but I’ll go over how I get my desktop up and rolling after a fresh install of PCLinuxOS Minime 2008.

MiniMe is the lesser known offspring of PCLinuxOS 2007 that ships with a 2.6.22.15 kernel and is a minimalistic installation of the KDE desktop 3.5.9. Texstar provides this distribution for those wanting to remaster their installations…it’s a base for other remastered projects like PCLinuxOS Gnome. Remastering and the Make LiveCD wizard enable users to customize their distribution and make a bootable backup CD with all their customizations OR release their own customized distribution. You can also use the Make LiveUSB wizard to create your very own thumbdrive PCLinuxOS.

I found it strange that no one had written anything about MimiMe-to on getting PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe up and running as a desktop replacement so I decided to give it a go. The aim of this article isn’t to copy Howtoforge’s great series on perfect installations…but to show how I get PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime up to a perfect installation for me. This means all web video, audio, fonts, and tools I need are installed. So let’s get at it.

What Do We Need?

First and foremost, do a complete upgrade of your fresh installed system. Open Synaptic >> Reload >> Mark all Upgrades >> Apply. It’s going to take a while to get all the updates you’ll need. Do NOT enable the testing repository until after you install your graphics driver at the end of this article…just perform a straight update from main.

Now let’s start installing stuff that is needed on a daily basis. I’m more of a lightweight type of guy so I don’t need robust office applications so my tastes may not line up with yours. Please substitute applications where you see fit…the repositories most likely have them.

To give a brief, high level overview of my daily use applications:

• firefox3
• Opera
• K3B
• konversation
• pidgin
• skype_static
• koffice
• gimp
• Amarok
• claws-mail
• kdeaddons-kate
• kdeaddons-ark
• kdegraphics-ksnapshot (for taking screenshots)

Those are the high level applications I use on a daily basis to get things done. Whenever you are prompted to mark other packages for install, go ahead and and choose “mark”. Click apply and let the your daily use applications install.

Handy Wizards for PCLinuxOS 2008

MiniMe 2008 comes with some handy wizards for you to use to get started. On your desktop after install is a folder called “Utilities”. If you open this folder up, you will find the following options:

1. ATI-Nvidia Driver Install
2. Alsa Sound Configuration
3. Internet Setup
4. Make LiveCD
5. Make LiveUSB
6. Redo-MBR
7. Set Clock

You can use any of these you want to get things rolling. You’ll have to enable your network through the PCLinuxOS Control Center because MiniMe does not setup a network connection by design out of the box. Remember, it’s a base for building, not a full fledged distro. We have to craft it how we want it. I recommend NOT installing a graphics driver until the very end…mainly because there are some problems currently with the 173.xx driver conflicting with some packages in the testing repository. So hold off on graphics install if you can until the very last.

Make LiveCD is exactly what it sounds like. You can make a LiveCD based on your install. So after you get everything setup the way you want it to be, you can double click Make LiveCD and a wizard will guide you through creating your own customized LiveCD backup of your install.

Make LiveUSB is also exactly what it sounds like…you can make a bootable version of a USB stick with PCLinuxOS MiniME. This how-to does not cover this since we’re going for a desktop replacement and not a minimalistic install. You may want to select this option though after you’ve got things configured as you want them.

The rest of the options are fairly straightforward and do exactly what they say. Make sure you take the time to get all things working (except graphics driver) before you move on.

What Else Should We Install?

We’ll need to install a few more things to get seamless operation for PCLinuxOS on the web. There are also some packages that will make your PCLinuxOS experience a bit better that we’ll install at this step as well:

• gtk-qt-engine
• RealPlayer-rpnp
• flash-player-plugin
• java-1.6.0-sun
• flac-1.2.1
• mplayer-skins
• mplayer-gui
• mplayer
• win32-codecs-all
• sound-juicer
• flash-player-plugin-opera
• cabextract (for extracting wireless drivers if you have need to)
• webcore-fonts
• unrar
• rar
• xine-plugins
• AdobeReader_enu

Please remember to allow synaptic to mark anything extra that the packages require. After installing these packages, your browsing experience and overall appearance of PCLinuxOS should be ready for improvement. I’ll go through how I setup a few applications to give them a nice look and feel. Let’s start first with GTK applications look and feel.<!---->

Setup gtk-qt-engine in PCLinuxOS

Open the KDE Control Center and look under “Appearance and Themes” for the section “GTK Styles and Fonts”. Use the drop down menu to pick out your favorite GTK theme…and if your favorite isn’t there, fire up Synaptic again and do a search for it…chances are, it is there. Once you’ve chosen a style (I use clearlooks) click “Ok”.

This package gives your GTK applications a Gnome Feel in KDE. Without it, things look ugly. Face-in-pillow-to-be-kind-to-burglars ugly.

Get Your Fonts Setup

Configure Fonts

I setup my fonts a bit strange. I use the same webcore font (Microsoft Font) for almost everything because I like the way it looks. To do this, I set it up in the KDE Control Center and choose “Appearance & Themes” >> “Fonts”. Then, I setup each area except Fixed Width with Verdana for the font. You may like Ariel or another font…so choose it there. Don’t be afraid to experiment! Find fonts that suit you and make your desktop shine

When you’re through with the KDE Fonts, don’t forget to setup fonts in Firefox and Opera as well (if you desire to…I always do).

Setup KDE default Applications

While still inside the KDE Control Center, choose “KDE Components” and then “Component Chooser”. On this page, make sure your favorite applications are present as the default application for each area. Those to choose from are email client, text editor, instant messenger, terminal emulator, and web browser. For my email, I setup claws mail by clicking “use a different email client” and clicking the small square to browse applications. I did the same for web browser to make sure KDE knew to use Firefox and not Konqueror.

Enable Super Key for Compiz (if you use it)

If you use compiz and wanted to install it the package name is task-compiz-fusion-kde. Install this package but do NOT run it yet if you have an ATI or Nvidia card. We’ll need to install the graphics driver first. If you have another chip manufacturer (Intel, S3) for your graphics card, you should be able to install and use compiz right away.

To enable the super (windows) key, open the KDE Control Center, go to “Regional & Accessibility” and then to “Keyboard Layout”. Toggle check “enable keyboard layout” and make sure your region is in the right hand side box area as active. Click apply.

Setup Konversation in a Sane Manner

Configure Konversation

I think the default configuration of Konversation isn’t very friendly. So I take a few minutes when first firing it up to configure things. Perhaps you’ll agree with me on these. For example, I don’t like tabs on the bottom of my screen. I’d rather have those channels of chat on the left hand side so I can see them. I also like to have shell-like tabl completion. That means when I hit the tab key after typing a few letters of someones nickname, Konversation will complete their name without me typing it…much like the shell (konsole) can do with directory names. Start up Konversation. Click edit and then click the edit button again. Make sure you’ve input the nickname you need to input. If you are a freenode regular and have a registered nickname, enter NICKSERV and your password in the blanks under “Auto Identify”. Click “ok” twice and then connect.

Under “Settings” choose “Configure Konversation”. Go to the section “Behavior” and choose “General”. In “completion mode” use the drop down menu to select “Shell-Like”. I like to minimize Konversation into the tray and also like it to notify me when my name is mentioned. To do this, inside this same window toggle check “Enable System Tray” as well as the two other check boxes underneath it.

Now lets move the tabs to the left: Under “Interface” click “Tabs”. On the “placement” drop down menu choose “Left”. That’s it for Konversation.

<!---->

Setup Kopete in a Sane Manner

Hiding Groups & Users

If you use Kopete instead of Pidgin, I’ll walk you through setting it up so that it has a more pidgin appearance. When you first launch Kopete, it will prompt you to setup your accounts. You should have no problem setting up all but the gtalk ones. Go ahead and setup all the other ones…we’ll set gtalk up in a second. First, let’s get the existing ones to display in a sane manner.

Under “Settings” choose “Hide Offline Users”. Then choose “Hide Empty Groups”. This will make sure not to display your offline buddies (of which I have too many all the time) in Kopete.

Next choose “Settings” and “Configure”. Click on Appearance. Click the “Chat Window” tab and choose “Get New”. A window will pop open with new themes to install. I like the theme called Fresh so I highlight it and click the install button. Close out all the windows except the configure one and then highlight “Fresh.AdiumMessageStyle” to switch to it. Click Apply.

Now click on the “Contact List” tab. Un-check “Arrange metacontacts by group” & “Show tree branch lines”. Under “List Style” choose right aligned status icons” and then check the “Use contact photos when available” checkbox. Click Apply.

I like my messages to open only one window with a new conversation opening a new tab. This prevents me from having 3 windows pop from 3 different chats from friends. Click on the “Behavior” icon on the left side of Kopete. Click on the “Chat” tab. Under “Chat Window Grouping Policy” choose “Group All Messages in Same Chat Window”. Click on the “Events” tab and make sure to uncheck “Show bubble” (unless you like notification bubbles…I hate them…I just want Kopete to flash on notification). Click Apply.

Click on the “General” tab. Make sure that the checkbox for the system tray is checked. Check the “Connect automatically at startup” box or Kopete won’t connect when you start it up. Toggle the radio button for “Open Messages Instantly”. Click Apply. Click Ok.

That should be it…I know it’s a lot but this really makes Kopete feel at home for me…almost pidgin style with better KDE integration.

Setup your gtalk follow the instructions here and make sure that if you are prompted with a pop up window choose never show this again and accept (it’s certificates for SSL and gtalk).

Improve Firefox Performance

There are tons of guides out there. I’ve looked through many of them to try and tweak Firefox performance and the one I’ve found to be the best collection of handy tips and tricks is at hugpages. Pay close attention to #13 which is the speedup I found to really make a difference.

KDE Artwork…Add More!!

I wrote an article on how to beautify the PCLinuxOS 2007 Desktop through installation of icon themes, cursor thems, wallpapers, and other improvements. Make sure that you check that post out and customize PCLinuxOS Minime 2008 and make it your own That beautification article is still valid for Minime 2008, which uses the 2007 repositories. Some of the package names may have changed but you can use the search button in synaptic to search “description and name” and find most if not all the packages.

Graphics Card

video driver installer

Setting up your graphics card is last for good reason. It should be the last thing you do unless your resolution is so horrible you need to set it up at the beginning. There is a problem with Nvidia drivers and minime. If you installed the 173.xx drivers and try to upgrade to testing, it will flag a bunch of problems. To fix things, launch konsole, su to root and apt-get clean, then apt-get autoclean.

After doing that, apt-get update and then close konsole. Use the utilities folder on the desktop to un-install the 173.xx drivers. Then perform the testing upgrade without the drivers conflicting. After the upgrade is complete, install the 177.xx drivers. This is only for the latest and greatest video cards. REMEMBER, the utilities folder has a graphics card installation tool. This is used for ATI and Nvidia cards and will install the official driver for both. A list of chipsets for each driver is inside the utility (screenshot on right) so make sure that you pick the correct driver.

If you use any other chipset besides Nvidia or ATI, your driver should be enabled by default.

Extra TidBits I like to Install

I like to be able to right click any music file in Konqueror and convert it to any format I choose. This can be done with the audiokonverter package. Search for that in Synaptic and install it if you’d like to do the same.

Ever want to search through programs you can install without opening Syanptic and without using the command line? Install kio-apt and you’ll be able to do jus that using apt:/ in the address bar where the url normally goes. Options include:

apt:/search?search expression
apt:/show?package
apt:/policy?package
apt:/list?package
apt:/fsearch?package

Want to resize your screen on the fly? Press Alt-F2 and type krandrtray. Notice the small icon that appears inside your kicker tray by the clock. You’ll now be able to resize your screen resolution on the fly. This is sometimes handy for those users who dock a laptop that has a different resolution on laptop screens than desktop ones.

Miss the Nvidia Icon in your tray like in Windows? Install nvdock and then execute it from the menu (System >> Nvidia Dock) and watch as your nvidia icon magically reappears. Right click and be brought to Nvidia Control Panel Settings.

Want some desktop search action without google desktop or the beast that is Beagle? Not a fan of tracker? Try recoll which can be installed through Synaptic.

Need a personal wiki to keep notes? I know I do. That’s why I install zim which is a personal wiki written in GTK. It allows you to quickly jot down notes and scales quickly to even provide multiple page and project tracking for your own personal notes.

Ever run across stuff on the web you wish you could clip out of a webpage and save? Enter basket. It can handle images, webpage snippets, store URLs and anything you might come across, can be saved for easy centralized access.

Screensavers are not installed by default. If you want to install screensavers, try the following packages:

• xscreensaver
• xscreensaver-base
• xscreensaver-common
• xscreensaver-extrusion
• xscreensaver-gl
• xscreensaver-matrix

Did I Miss Anything?

Did I miss anything with my helpful how-to? If so, please leave me a comment letting me know what you’d like to see added to it. I will consider this a working how-to and update it with as much as I can. These are only the applications I find useful and use on a daily basis. I installed these on a fresh install of Minime 2008 on my main system and wrote this how-to while doing it. I wanted it to be minimalistic…I don’t need much in order to be happy. Hopefully, this helps inspire you t

• Fresh Logic Studios

This is a pretty easy thing to do, but it seems many people come to Yet Another Linux Blog searching for exactly how to do this.  ClarkConnect does not come with GCC installed by default.  If you download software and attempt to compile it (using ./configure, make, make install) it will complain:

So, SSH into your ClarkConnect server and install cc-devel to install all the tools you need.  Please be advised, it’s a rather large package weighing in at 87.5 MB when I installed it today.

After this package is installed, you should be able to compile software from source.  Hopefully, this makes your life easier and is easier to find on the web.

• Creating a blog design from scratch How-to Guide

Some of you may  have noticed a few blips in RSS feeds during the last month or so.  The blips were caused by two things..

1. I switched from Serendipity Blogging Engine to Wordpress
2. YALB gained a sponsor for hosting

Now, I’ve been running the new blogging engine and software for over a month now so that I could form an opinion on both of these items.  I’m happy to say that Wordpress fits the bill quite nicely (more on that in later posts)…but that my host is the BEST part of the changes that have happened.

Evolution Studios offered me some server space on their servers…Linux of course…and not a moment too soon.  My old account was beginning to crawl with latent page loads and the service had grown latent as well.  Evolution Studios stepped in and made me a great offer and asked that I evaluate things and post my honest opinion (whether good or bad) of how the transition went and how well the service is.

Just some background on Evolution Studios:  They power all of the media behind ping.fm and chris.pirillo.com (yes, THAT Chris Pirillo).  Those two sites alone generate a huge amount of traffic and have elected to go with evolutionstudios.org to be their media workhorse.

I can honestly say that both the transition and service went beyond my expectations.  Not only did I have one of their engineers helping me every step of the way, I was able to approach that engineer with all of my questions being answered in REAL TIME…which was fantastic.

So why all the hoopla?  Why would I go out of my way to give these guys a “thumbs up”?  One word…or URL rather.  Ping.fm is one of their clients.  I use ping.fm on a daily basis…it allows me to make one post to ALL my social networks via Instant Message or igoogle page widget.  It’s fast and easy.  And all of their media is powered by Evolution Studios.  So, despite having HUGE customers like Chris Pirillo and ping.fm which both have millions of users on a daily basis…they still found the time to hold my hand through the migration and bent over backwards to make my hosting experience BEYOND EXCELLENT.  I think these guys will continue to grow and will continue to bring on like minded individuals who are courteous and professional…and I think their clients will benefit.

I asked Evolution Studios if they were having any specials this week so that I could tell everyone that reads my blog about them and they wanted to offer readers here a deal.  The first 100 users referred through Yet Another Linux Blog will receive a $20 coupon to go toward any hosting plans purchased.  If this sounds like a good deal or you just want to check the host out, visit Evolution Studios today.  The coupon code is “devnet“.  Remember, that’s the first 100 openings so space is limited!  Let Evolution Studios show you what EXCELLENT products and services are all about

Hosting like it should be...

2007 Repositories

Something that is asked about quite a bit in the PCLinuxOS support IRC channel is “how to change repositories”.  One of the main reasons this is needed is that not all repositories are reachable depending on your geographic location.  Some of the repositories are also down at random intervals.  To equip the standard PCLinuxOS user with how to change repos, we first need to understand how the repository is structured, how the developers use the repositories, and how the community should make use of repositories.

First and foremost, the repositories are setup in a “trickle down” model.  Updates are pushed first to the PASS server.  Only people who have donated 20 USD or more to PCLinuxOS have access to this server.  It’s fast.  It’s furious.  It’s also the first place where packages land.

Within 24-48 hours, the updates to PASS trickle out first to the Ibiblio repository…which is the MAIN repository from which all others are updated.  That means that there is only ONE repository for PCLinuxOS…all repositories are copies of the same one.  So if you have more than one repository enabled in synaptic…make sure you drop it down to a single one.

The developers use different parts of the repository in the following manner.  All stable packages and software are in the repository base.  That means that if anyone updates a stock install, they’ll get the most stable packages and software.

If you are a bit adventurous, you can try out the testing portion of the repository.  The developers of PCLinuxOS push software and packages into testing that they are unsure about.  This might make some people a bit unsure themselves

Developers have a private unstable repository that they push their bleeding edge software to.  Other developers test these packages and provide feedback via the developer mailing list (private mailing list…not to be confused with the public ‘testers’ mailing list).  Once the package/software has passed preliminary testing on all the developers systems, it is pushed out into the public testing repository.

It is important for users to help pclinuxos succeed by reporting bugs in the pclinuxos forum so that developers can track them and keep people informed of fixes.  How can you help report bugs?  The way I do this is by keeping my main installation at stable and I install Virtualbox (use synaptic…it’s in the repositories!) to install PCLinuxOS again.  I then use that virtual machine to run a fully updated testing version of PCLinuxOS.  I use the Virtualbox snapshots feature to take a snapshot before a large update so that if things break, I can rollback to the previous snapshot.  It works out rather nicely and allows me to test the packages coming down the pipe.

If you do find a bug, please make sure you register for the main forums at http://pclinuxos.com and let the developers know what problem you’ve run across.  Make sure to search the forum first :)  Someone might have reported that bug already!

Hopefully, this will clarify a few questions people have about the PCLinuxOS repositories and the workflow in between them.

Reference:  http://docs.pclinuxos.com/wiki/Repositories

It is the intention of this entry to try and ascertain what the correct definition of FUD is.  It is evident that this term is thrown around much as of late and is a ‘catch all’ for many to group people that they do not want to deal with.  So, let’s start by getting the “official” definition of FUD.  No, we are not going to an Encyclopedia or dictionary…we’ll go to the place where the community defines exactly what the definition is…Wikipedia. According the the Wikipedia definition, FUD was first defined as “any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.”  FUD then was applied to IBM and business practices.  Currently, it has become trendy to apply it to individuals. Later in the Wikipedia article, it goes on to state:

“FUD can be used to offhandedly ’smear’ criticism or legitimate debate, even in cases where the allegations are without merit or are merely implied; this tactic is often used in cases where the initial publicity surrounding claims of FUD is likely to vastly overshadow any subsequent retraction. Such an arbitrary usage is a general type of logical fallacy known as Ad hominem circumstantial“

It is my opinion that this application of logical fallacy has replaced the actual definition of FUD in today’s society.  Today, people who see opinions and ideals other than their own gaining a public voice will immediately sling accusations of FUD toward the source…more often than not attacking the person or public voice that publishes them.  The gradual dilution of the actual meaning of FUD is part of the great divide that is prevalent in today’s online world.

Since FUD has changed a bit from being pointed at businesses to individuals…is there an updated definition?  Not really.  The term FUD has become a cop-out…an easy way to just dismiss what a person is saying without having to actually debate it.  FUD may need an updated definition but since it doesn’t have one, we have to fall back on the one provided.

So as stated earlier; FUD is a term used to show the disinformation, or the spreading of false information in order to deceive. Remember that the person has to have intent to deceive others with false info…not just false info…otherwise, they’re just misinformed or less thorough on their facts.  Hopefully, discussing the proper definition of this term will educate those that misuse it.

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”

I’ve migrated to wordpress from serendipity. You may notice a few comments have been lost in the migration. However, not much else should be missing. I’ll continue to work on a custom theme for the site during the next week or so.

I may write up a “reasons why I switched” article as well and post it if anyone is interested…but that’s solely if anyone is interested. Otherwise, I’ll keep this as the only reference to it.

• Ubuntu is the only Linux distro I know of that has its alpha
  releases slashdotted and dugg...which is a real shame; I think there
  are more that deserve this treatment from linux media sites.
• Different Linux distros and desktop camps should recognize their differences as providing choice instead of being something that makes them different. 
  They all have the same goals...to get people using open source software
  and to provide a great experience for the user.  Differences are always
  looked down upon.  Choice is usually a positive thing.  We should be
  positive.
• When designing a new car, automobile manufacturers don't
  build it first and then draft it out on paper.  Likewise, Linux architects should not write the code first before creating a draft or set of goals
  (whether it be a paper draft, documentation, or QA test cases) that visualize where you want to go.  A visual goal is better than written or said one.
• For
  every Penguin Pete, there is a Ken Starks.  There are times when one
  outweighs the other.  The nice part is that in the Linux community, the
  Ken Starks have a longer lasting impact and touch more lives.
• The Linux Desktop will never be "finished" and for that I am VERY glad.
• Programmers should be more like the code they write...without bias, structured, and incapable of "talking down".
• Every distro ships with at least one thing broken.
• Every distro ships with at least two things broken.
• Every distro ships with things broken.
• If Linux were a dog, it would NOT be purebred.
• People
  can get excited about Linux because they can take part in it. People
  can't get excited about Microsoft because they can't take part in it.  It's the difference between playing in the game and being on the sideline wishing you were in the game.
• Categorizing something divides; why are we categorizing Linux and developers?
• Linux fits well into big business, but big business does not fit well into Linux

Apple has decided to block streaming content from http://apple.com/trailers/ for Linux users.  I say this because tonight I went to view a few of the upcoming movie trailers and was told to "Get the Latest Quicktime" in order to watch and I was denied the ability to watch them.

I hit the forums to see if others have the same problems that I have and I've found that many people have begun reporting the problem from around May of this year.  Not being one to give up, I decided to test things a bit to see what apple.com was doing. 

I installed the useragent switcher on Firefox and switched my agent to Windows Vista and IE7.  I then watched headers as apple once again denied me despite my agent being accepted by it.  It seems that it is looking for an actual install of Quicktime on your system (I can't tell you for sure, I just know that useragent isn't what it is sniffing for).

How does one circumvent?  Pretty simple.  When you are given that denied message "Get the Latest Quicktime", go to View >> Page Source.  Look for a URL that ends in .mov.  Copy that URL and paste it into a new tab.  That's it,  you're now watching the trailer.

I want to thank Apple for being exclusionary to Linux users when you benefit so greatly from Open Source software.  It sets a great example and shows what is really important to you as a company...and that is forcing your software onto everyone similar to Microsoft. 

I've been hunting for a post on how to have KDE "extract here" like Foresight Gnome edition does (it's really handy to one click extract archives).  Post after post found via Google did nothing at all to help me out.  Most tried to have you read how to do this manually by creating your own service menu and they would use xterm to extract.  I wanted to use ark...mainly because it's there and it's a gui.

Then I decided to search KDE-Apps.org and viola! I found it.  A handy little tool that allows you to right click on any archive and "extract here" with Ark.  Here's how to install it.

I recently searched through the mozilla thunderbird extensions website and found 4 extensions that I didn't know about that actually prove to be quite useful.  I use Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 on Foresight Linux and have tested all of these extensions and verified that they work on that environment.  Hopefully, they'll help someone craft a more enjoyable email experience

Search for Sender

If you're like me, you like to group like items together in your inbox.  With this extension, you can group emails from the same sender as quickly as a right click.  Really, it's just a shortcut that places the sender email up into the search box and searches for you.  The nice part is, with this extension, you don't have to type it.  Quick, easy, and simple.  This has quickly become an extension that I cannot live without.

 SyncMab

SyncMab is an extension similar to foxmarks for Firefox.  With foxmarks, you keep all your bookmarks on a central server of your choosing so that your bookmarks are the same across all computers you use that have Firefox installed.  This is perfect for me since I have a set of work bookmarks and home bookmarks and like to be able to switch back and forth between them.  But what about thunderbird?  It doesn't have bookmarks right?  Exactly, but it does have contacts in your addressbook!  So, you'll be able to save your contacts to a server of your choosing and then on another computer with thunderbird you can synchronize your contacts by downloading that file using SyncMab.  It's brilliant and allows you to always have the same contacts across operating systems, across computers, and even to maintain multiple addressbooks

Display Quota

This extension will display a small graphic in Thunderbird that tells you how much space you have left in your IMAP mail account and can warn you when you get close to filling up.  This might not be too useful for those of you that use IMAP with huge quotas (gmail) but for others, it may be.  I have heard that some users do not like the popup that displays for warning on this extension.  For those users, Thunderbird has a built in function you can enable:

Open your configuration editor in Thunderbird and find the following keys: 

1. mail.quota.mainwindow_threshold.show - % when quota should show up


2. mail.quota.mainwindow_threshold.warning - % when quota becomes yellow


3. mail.quota.mainwindow_threshold.critical - % when quota becomes red

Thanks to goddess-gate.com for information on how to do this.