Monday, December 24, 2007

Hands on with Mozilla Weave: Personalize your own cloud


On the eve of Christmas eve, we're playing with Mozilla's new Labs project called Weave, a web service platform for users to sync various elements of Firefox into the cloud and between computers. Initially Weave only syncs bookmarks and browser history with Mozilla's servers (using encryption throughout), but the idea is to eventually allow add-on developers the freedom to include other things like RSS feeds, new Firefox Personas, and just about anything else the web can dream up. Weave is a bold move towards creating truly portable user profiles that can (eventually) go far beyond the basics, so let's see how this first step measures up.

Full Article here

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Top 40+ GIMP plugins

GIMP is the undisputed king of image editing in Linux platforms, and is next only to Photoshop in popularity in Windows and Mac platforms. With a large community of developers and an even larger pool of users, it is no surprise that GIMP is very popular.

Much like Firefox, GIMP’s strength lies in its plugins, which are developed by the open-source toting community. Since the users themselves develop them, they know all the needs and conceive a plugin for everything (well, except making a coffee for you).

And what better way for me to endorse GIMP than a list of good plugins? Most of them are aimed at web-designers and photographers, the main users of GIMP. There are also some to fix common problems of GIMP.

Look at the list here.

Top 25 Linux 3D Games

Great list with 25 3D games for Linux. Feel free to add more games and help another Linux users find those great time wasters you love.

http://freeonlinefun.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-25-linux-3d-games.html

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ubuntu vs Vista Vulnerability Counts in 2007 : Destroying the FUD

There has been a lot of FUD flying around stating that Microsoft Windows Vista is more secure compared to Linux. What has been actually compared are the number of vulnerabilities fixed, for a distribution of Linux and Windows Vista. Both 3 month and 6 month studies have been published, with the intention of showing Linux security in a poor light. Now, this is in no way an apples to apples comparison, because Linux contains plenty of applications. Furthermore, vulnerabilities for server applications had also been included. For an apples to apples comparison, just the OSes have to be compared. Now, I went to Secunia, and found out the vulnerabilities affecting Ubuntu 6.06 and Vista for the entire year 2007 till date. What I found was surprising, since in 2007, in the OS (which I took to be the Kernel + X windows + Desktop environment for Ubuntu with their libraries), Ubuntu had only three highly critical vulnerabilities. Windows Vista, in fact had 10. Check it out for yourself.


Full Article

Gee, Thanks HP...You Suck!

Well, I am sick of not being able to use High Resolution timers, which my hardware supports on my HP dv9205us laptop, but the BIOS has bugs, and will not allow me to, because it won't boot Linux without the "noapic" in grub's boot parameters. This feature would greatly speed my computer up, and use it's full potential...It is really nice of HP to use the "the customer is always right" mentality, especially when I contacted them and asked nicely if they could fix the bios and re-release it...here's what I got back:


Hello Matt,

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.
From your message, I understand that you would like to have a fix for BIOS compatible with the Linux Operating System.

I am very sorry to inform you that, HP supports only the preinstalled Operating System. HP is unable to guarantee how Linux Operating system will function on a PC not originally designed and/or tested for this new operating system.

Matt, HP does not recommend installing of Linux Operating System, it could not guarantee a high level of compatibility for all basic hardware and software components of the PCs. PC device drivers (including graphics, BIOS, chipset, etc) for some PC components may simply not be available. I regret for the inconvinence caused. HP does not support Linux on any models of HP Pavilion PCs at this time. Information about Linux can be located at the following Web site:

http://h10018.www1.hp.com/wwsolutions/linux/index.html

HP pre-installed the latest version of the Microsoft Windows operating System (98, Me, XP or Vista) on your Pavilion PC. The Warranty on your Pavilion system does not apply to software not provided by HP and does not apply to defects or errors in hardware resulting from software not provided by HP with that system. Please review your PC documentation to identify the supported operating system.

I once again apologize for any inconvenience that this information has caused you.
If you need further assistance, please reply to this message and we will be happy to assist you further.

Sincerely,
HP Goon


Well...wasn't that nice of them, to basically tell me to screw off, and that they are a bunch of greedy corporate pigs who have been bought out by Bill Gates...Anyone good at bios hacking? How about somebody mods this bios for me and fixes it, and perhaps unlocks all of the "hidden" features within while you're at it? You'd have to find a way to test it other than using my computer, but emulators are available... parwok -at- gmail




Thanks for the info Matt. I am sure we will all be spreading the word about HP.

Read Matt's Blog

Incredible Wiimote Hack Creates Multitouch Display

Friday, December 07, 2007

QuickTime hack allows Second Life currency theft

QuickTime hack allows Second Life currency theft by ZDNet's Ryan Naraine -- Security researchers Dino Dai Zovi and Charlie Miller have found a way to exploit an unpatched QuickTime vulnerability to steal Linden Dollars from users in the Second Life virtual world. Dai Zovi (the hacker behind the CanSecWest MacBook Pro hijack) and Miller (creator of the first iPhone code execution exploit) cooked up the QuickTime/Second Life [...]