Grey Matter

We see .rpm packages is very much popular and is available for most of the softwares.But installing a software in Ubuntu requires it to be a .deb package so we have to convert the package using the alien tool.This tool comes along with the debian distro.

the command alien -i <package name>.rpm converts the package from .rpm to .deb and installs it.

ref:howtoforge

Today i saw about a movie called elephant’s dream by Orange team.The movie is fully open source!!.

it was made entirely with open source software. Modeling, animation, compositing, and editing were done with Blender 3D. Postpro and texturing in the Gimp.

This movie was released under a Creative Commons Attribute 2.5 license

The movie was conceived and created by the Orange team over the course of about 6 months. The rendering alone required 125 days on a supercomputer farm comprising over 200 processors.

Wow amazing…..i am yet to see the movie…will write the review after that…

but i still wonder why these people put in so much of hard work and resources to give it freely….how do these people earn…. have any one got an idea??

I saw this video of a XGL linux desktop..wow the user interface is really cool.Similar to mac OSX.

How many of us are fond of playing around with registries.Heres something similar for the FF2 browser.type about:config in the FF address bar to open the Config file of FF.Here is the long list Firefox’s keys and their respective values.By modifying the values of the keys here we can modify the way in which FF behaves.

Here’s an example

set the browser.tabs.CloseButton key to 3 to remove the close button in each tab and revert to the FF1.5 style of close button at the right corner.

you could play around with these keys to personalize your browser by the true sense.

I was reading through the technical overview of both IE7 and FF2.I came across this in the IE7 technical overview:

Parental Controls

Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista provides additional security and privacy mechanisms by utilizing a network layer filter component. Available to all Windows Vista applications, this network layer service allows parents to establish filter controls for objectionable content or define a specific set of allowable Web sites to browse. Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista works directly with the Parental Controls service to provide easy access to logging information and a single interface for managing settings. The Parental Controls service can also be set to block file downloads, offering another way to prevent malware from getting on a system. If Parental Controls are set to block downloads, Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista will automatically block the file unless the user is able to provide the appropriate administrative password. If Parental Controls are set to permit file downloads, all downloads will be logged for review at a later time. If a child attempts to access a page with mixed content — data contained both on and off the allowable list of Web sites — Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista will present the user with an Information Bar to request permission from a parent to approve the download. When the entire page is blocked, an error page is displayed that also provides a link allowing the child to request permission.

A fancy feature, but as you could clearly see this description is used to market vista’s capability.Funny–should i buy a damn costly OS to realize the potential of this feature.

Catching up with the release of IE7 mozilla has released the next version of firefox-firefox 2.0.True that IE7 was more surprising yet dissapointing release when compared to FF2.0.Firefox2 has improved on the UI,now there is close button on each tab,without bringing in a radical change.Resuming the session is also a nice feature which i longed for in FF.You could see all the new features here. I tried out this sample page which uses css extensively in FF2 but still its not displaying it correctly IE7 does this well.But thats no reason why one should use IE7..nobody is going to use css this extensively.FF is still my favourite browser.

download FF2 here

Here’s a way to Detect IE 7 in java Script
if (typeof document.body.style.maxHeight != “undefined”) {

// IE 7, mozilla, safari, opera 9

} else {

// IE6, older browsers
}

see also another way to detect the browser in javascript

After toping the chart among the various linux distributions,Mark plans to release the next version of Ubuntu-its going to be ubuntu 7.04 code named ‘Fiesty Fawn’.I am sure its gonna rock.

via[Mark Shuttleworth]

I saw this t shirt avaliable for sale.

Sure this must have been designed by some one who is a librarian.Here is his reason:

“Remember when humans fumbled around in the dark for knowledge and being a know-it-all meant something? Is it so wrong to want those days back? Google is telling people the facts – but we want them back.” lol
And anyone who feels the same as this guy can buy this from Scary Go Round

via[library20]

I see in my wordpress dashboard everyday that the following as the top blogs today

1. Mishka Zena
2. Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger
3. Mary Kay Sucks
4. Anousheh Ansari Space Blog

wonder whether this is correct.How can the same 4 blogs be the top blogs every day?

Anyone knows why is wordpress putting up these blogs as the top blogs?