http://acsberks.com/index.php Copyright 2008, Admin Admin en-US SPHPBLOG 0.5.1 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080804-224904 Firefox 3.0 is barely out of the gate, but already Mozilla is moving toward the future with the first alpha release of Firefox 3.1. The final release of 3.1 is scheduled for the end of 2008 with the usual series of alpha and beta releases in the coming months.

MORE]]> Utilities http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080804-224904 Admin Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:49:04 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080804-224904 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080804-223824 In it’s own words Microsoft promotes IE8 for “professionals as well as those trying CSS and scripting for the first time.“, because of it’s built in tools for debugging purpose. ReadWriteWeb has done a great job promoting IE8, this is what they had to say regarding it’s standard compliance:

More



Or download your virtual machine image H E R E]]> Utilities http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080804-223824 Admin Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:38:24 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080804-223824 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080801-093509
Written by Bernard Lunn / August 1, 2008 12:32 AM /

I recently moved to a new office and found that I couldn't send mail via Microsoft Outlook. I've had this same problem in different locations. I've been told that it depends on the ISP settings and it is easy to fix by contacting the ISP. That seemed like a pain, so this week I just started using Gmail as my default. I've not looked back. This is anecdotal and maybe I am a market of one, but it is a big deal for me. I have “lived in Outlook” for years. It was the one part of Office that I thought I would never replace. I suspect I am not alone.

I use multiple email addresses. I need to send and receive mail from company domains. That took me about 10 minutes to set up in Gmail. Once I had done this, I noticed two big benefits:

1. 99% of Spam was gone - poof. I had foolishly once put my email address on a web site in clear form where it could be collected by spammers and one of my accounts, managed on an Exchange server, was overrun with spam. Once I went to Gmail, no problem. I am sure I am missing a few valid mails that got incorrectly seen as spam, but that will eventually correct itself as people contact me some other way. When I am contacting somebody new by email I always now assume that overzealous spam filters stop my mail getting received, so I ask a contact who knows that person to forward my mail. That is a small price to pay for getting rid of spam and using contacts that way is obviously good for business as well.

More]]> Utilities http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080801-093509 Admin Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:35:09 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080801-093509 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080728-133758 The Web became a substantially more dangerous place this week, thanks largely to the publication of instructions that show cyber criminals how to exploit a pervasive, critical flaw in the Internet infrastructure.

While Internet service providers and corporations can mitigate the danger by updating the software that powers vulnerable components of their networks, data released yesterday indicates that only about half of the world's online population is currently protected by these updates.

More]]> News http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080728-133758 Admin Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:37:58 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=07&entry=entry080728-133758 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080510-111131
After finding a few last-minute problems with Vista Service Pack 1 and XP Service Pack 3, Microsoft delayed deployment on both of them. Now they're both back and ready for download, either manually or through Windows Update.

Hold on there, pilgrim! There's no hurry. Urgent updates such as security patches are delivered as soon as they're available. The additional patches in service packs deal with problems that are not security issues. The Vista file copy performance problem, for example, has been fixed by Vista SP1, along with dozens of other issues. The XP SP3 fix list is similarly impressive. Yet there's no need to jump right on to installing these service packs unless they fix a problem you urgently need to solve.

Don't fool yourself, there can be problems caused by service packs. Every new service pack release can be guaranteed to be chased by a news story about users whose systems have been brought low by it. But heck, XP SP3 is a minor update when compared with the incompatibilities of XP SP2; up to 10% of systems had issues with that one. But when all was said and done, XP SP2 was the best thing that ever happened to Windows.

These latest updates were delayed at the last minute when an incompatibility was discovered in Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System. Imagine updating your operating system and finding that your store management system wouldn't work properly -- yeah, bummer. Microsoft was quick to isolate the issue and create a patch.

Just in case you do take the jump soon and have a problem with Vista SP1, my fellow InformationWeek blogger Serdar Yegulalp has put together a detailed guide for getting out of trouble.

If you're anxious to get the jump on XP SP3, even if it's just for testing purposes, Microsoft has both an ISO image and a network installation package.

Really, though, don't bust a gut trying to deploy these immediately. If you don't want to be the pioneer on these service packs, wait for a month and keep an eye on the tech news sites. If the buzz is generally positive, go for it.]]> News http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080510-111131 Admin Sat, 10 May 2008 15:11:31 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=05&entry=entry080510-111131 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-161241
According to Microsoft MVP Sandi Hardmeier's "Spyware Sucks" blog, the ads are displayed across a wide swath of the web portal's sprawling empire, including Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Astrology. Hardmeier first sounded the alarm on Saturday, and yet on Monday, Yahoo continued to run the rogue ads, she reported. El Reg emailed three different Yahoo PR reps but never did get a response.

"I wonder how many hits Yahoo gets per day, and how many people are being exposed to fraudware, while these advertisements are allowed to remain online," Hardmeier wrote.

The ads pitch women's deodorant, but behind the scenes, they contact servers that have been used by previous rogue ads targeting high-traffic websites. Typically, the ads produce a pop up that looks strikingly similar to official Windows dialog pop-ups that urge the end user to download software to fix problems. Expedia, Rhapsody, MySpace, Excite, Blick, and CNN.com have all served up similar malicious ads in the past.

Attackers who shoe horn their banners onto reputable sites usually take advantage of the highly decentralized way that online advertisements are sold. It's not unusual for there to be a succession of affiliates, making it possible for an attacker to pose as an authorized agent of a name-brand product or service. In this case, Yahoo has gotten hoodwinked into running ads that point to adtds2.promoplexer.com, which has been implicated in previous rogue banner attacks.

Remember, folks, that the NoScript extension for Firefox is your friend here. Even if you've whitelisted Yahoo, it will block Adobe Flash being sent from the attacker's website. Nice to know someone's looking out for you. ®]]> News http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-161241 Admin Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:12:41 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=04&entry=entry080429-161241 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-160446 Russian malware developers have been adding copyright rules to the programs they sell illegally on the Internet


April 29, 2008

Some malware developers have taken to copyrighting their work, according to Symantec. The security company highlighted in its blog that Russian malware developers have been adding copyright rules to the programs they sell illegally on the Internet.


In the terms and conditions of Zeus -- a malware program Symantec investigated -- the copyright states purchasers must not freely distribute the software once they've bought it. The licence also gives the malware writer the right to charge for any update to the product in the future as well as demanding the code is not reverse engineered.

The malware developers also highlighted in the terms and conditions that if the copyright is broken the code for the malware will be passed onto antivirus companies.

"Despite the clear licensing agreement and the associated warnings, this package still ended up being traded freely in underground forums shortly after it was released," says Liam Ouch author of the blog.

"It just goes to show you just can't trust anyone in the underground these days," he adds.]]> News http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-160446 Admin Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:04:46 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=04&entry=entry080429-160446 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-155132 What Edubuntu can teach your kids

Edubuntu is a customized version of Ubuntu aimed at children in educational environments. According to the distributions homepage, Edubuntu is "Linux for Young Human Beings." That works out well for me, since I have three of those in my house. I homeschool my children and use Edubuntu on a couple of our computers. My boys love having an operating system that was designed with them in mind, and I appreciate the way its applications encompass the total learning process.

Edubuntu is based on the Ubuntu Linux operating system and geared for a wide age-range of children from youngsters just learning to read all the way through teenagers getting ready to enter college. It comes bundled with the KDE Edutainment Suite and dozens of other applications and tools to enhance learning in virtually every school subject -- math, reading, art, computer science, language arts, and more. Edubuntu's default interface is GNOME, but KDE is also available. While Edubuntu used extensively in classrooms across the globe, it is easy to install on a laptop or desktop computer for home use.



You just can't beat the educational software included with Edubuntu. Some, like the KmPlot function plotter and the Kig geometry tool, are a bit advanced for my 7, 9, and 10-year old kids, but we regularly use KBurch to practice fractions and are beginning to dabble with Kalzium to learn about the periodic table of elements. Far and away, the most-used app is KStars, which we use almost every day to check what the universe overhead looks like and what celestial bodies will be in view at night.

There's little doubt that as my children get older, the ability to work with various kids of media will become increasingly important, so I've already begun getting them acclimated. All three regularly use the GIMP to edit pictures. My middle son -- a budding film director -- produces weekly movies with Kino. My oldest uses Serpentine to create audio CDs to use during music lessons. The native sound recorder helps us make homegrown podcasts where we discuss what they've learned recently. We burn them to a CD and include it in their lesson portfolios and the records we keep for the state.

Edubuntu really shines in the way it lets me teach my family about programming. I was initially intimidated by the educational programming environment KTurtle, since my rusty programming skills date back to the mid-1980s. The application turned out to be very approachable, and now my children are beginning to learn the cause and effect of code editing in visual way that's suited to their abilities.

Of course, Edubuntu comes with many of the standard applications you'd expect. We make heavy use of the OpenOffice.org word processor and will use Impress when it comes time do a major science project before the end of the school year. While the kids don't use Calc very often, I find it invaluable for keeping track of previous and upcoming assignments, as well as grades and test scores. The desktop publishing app Scribus has also come in handy on a number of occasions when my children have made fancy covers for books they've written, or want to decorate folders to hold their schoolwork.

An added bonus of working with this distribution is that discussions we have about open source software aren't theoretical -- they're actually able to compare for themselves how well it stacks up against the other operating systems and applications available in our home.

Learning disguised as fun

My boys love games, and they are especially fond of the ones included in Edubuntu. As I write this, my oldest is sitting next to me with one of the laptops trying to beat his personal best in a game of KHangMan. He thinks he's goofing off, but I know he's strengthening his reading, spelling, and reasoning skills. They also enjoy Tux Math, a cute game where kids help Tux find the answers to math equations as they fall out of the sky. Enter the right answer and the equations are blasted away; guess wrong and they fall onto the city below, causing mayhem and mass destruction.

My family typically gets the most use out of the Gcompris suite of educational games. Though some are a bit below my children's grade levels, we use make use of several others. For example, we've used the puzzles of famous paintings after art class, the canal-lock game after learning about the properties of water, and the geography module for skill strengthening. We also use other modules to learn chess, sudoku, and to help teach my youngest how to tell time.

Besides Gcompris, Edubuntu ships with more than 15 games that vary in fun and educational value. Some, like AisleRiot Solitare and Potato Guy aren't exactly brain-benders, but overall it's a clever collection and my kids really like them.
Teacher tools

In addition to Calc, which I mentioned earlier, Edubuntu has a few other tools I use regularly to keep myself organized and keep the kids on track.

I've set up each computer with a separate workspace for each child. That way, they can switch users without worrying that whatever their brothers are working on will be lost. I've also set up an Evolution account for each of my children. Even though I'm very hands-on with their schoolwork, they like receiving daily email with their assignments and what to expect for the day. Their inboxes serve as a good record of what we've been doing, and since I use a Web-based mail service, I can check what I've assigned even when we're out of the house.

Since a lot of learning at their age is based on repetition -- multiplication tables, names of continents, spelling words -- I use KEduca to make flash cards and quizzes. Unlike store-bought flash cards, I can tailor these to each child's needs and education level. I've been having some issues getting the built-in image scanner to work with my Lexmark device, but I hope to soon be able to use it to scan writing assignments and burn them to disk for their portfolios. I also plan to scan their cursive handwriting assignments so we can email them to Grandma for extra praise and encouragement with a skill they're not enjoying learning very much.

Finally, as a reward when we're done with schoolwork for the day, I let my kids goof off on the Internet for a while via the Firefox browser with the Glubble extension in place to keep them away from sites they shouldn't visit. They usually like to surf while playing some tunes on the Rhythmbox music player.

Since most of my kids' schoolwork is hands-on and interactive, they don't spend a huge amount of time with our computers each day. Technology is a big part of our lives, however, and by the time they get to be my age I imagine it will be a big part of everyone's. Edubuntu strikes the right balance between helping them learn the basics of core subjects they need to know and teaching them ways open source software can help us achieve great things.]]> Utilities http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-155132 Admin Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:51:32 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=04&entry=entry080429-155132 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-153346
Formula One motor racing is no longer about famous car marques, its about precise science and using technology to shave another fraction of a second off a lap time, and Linux is playing a pivotal role in helping the race teams achieve this.

As a technical sport motor racing demands of its participants a close understanding of the technologies that can help them. F1 motor racing is probably second only to the aerospace industry in the application of aerodynamic simulation and wind tunnel technology. It is a testament to the rapid advance of Linux in high performance computing that most teams in Formula 1 have been using Linux systems in their aerodynamic and engine workshops for a number of years.



"Formula One is a product excellence business that's all about innovation and technology," says Jonathan Neale, the managing director of McLaren Racing. "We're competing for first place in an environment where the difference between first and tenth is about 0.6 seconds, so we're constantly seeking fractions of a second in performance improvement. On average we'll make a change to the car every 20 minutes during the course of a season, and to do that, simulation is vital in making efficient changes to the car." Back in the factory, McLaren uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis running on Linux on SGI Altix high performance computers to simulate and predict the car's behaviour.

Motor racing wasn't always like this. Once upon a time those daring young men diced with death and each other in their flying machines, with little more than grease blown overalls, a loose flying-helmet, oil-splattered goggles and a V8 engine between them and the oncoming road. The skill of the driver was everything.

Times have changed. Modern motor racing in the 21st century is a team sport, and the difference in performance between the front of the grid and the also rans is measured in hundredths of a second. Every year the cars get faster, the lap records come down, and the drivers and cars reach new limits of endurance and performance, despite a regular tightening of the rules for the sake of safety and increased competitiveness. Every new rule that is imposed to slow the cars down or level the playing field becomes a challenge for the designers, to readjust the vital balance of weight, material, power, downforce, grip, and traction.

A race is won in the factory

A driver still needs courage, a sure eye, a streak of irrationality and split-second timing. But when it comes to finding those extra few fractions of a second, design is everything. Good drivers are valued not just for their speed and courage, but for their sensitivity to the nuances of the car's performance, which helps the mechanics and engineers to adjust a millimetre here or a centimetre there, which can be the difference between success and failure in this most unforgiving of sports. The technology and science applied to the development of race cars is more akin to the development of jet fighters than the application of science to any other sport, and Linux, running on a variety of high performance configurations, is a key part of the equation for all the leading teams.

The Renault racing team, for instance, first began experimenting with Linux clusters as far back as 1998, and has used IBM Linux systems to run critical database and telemetry applications since 2001. Telemetry systems transmit data from the car to the technicians on the pit wall during the race. "When the car is running it transmits a huge amount of real-time data on the critical parameters of the engine or chassis to the ground staff - this system is run on Linux," said Christophe Verdier, Renault's F1 Team IT director, back in 2005.

Verdier noted at the time that the use of Linux for engine and chassis computational analysis had slashed Renault's analysis time by 90 per cent, and in doing so, had ultimately reduced development costs. "A simulation operation which did take three weeks is now completed in 18 hours," he asserted. "The performance of this system has enabled Renault F1 to fully optimise its V10 engine capability. This has given the team a considerable advantage, since a race is as much won in the factory as it is on the track." There really isn't a proprietary alternative that can provide these kind of performance advantages at a comparable cost.

A gallery of wind

During the 2007 season, the McLaren drivers, the reigning world champion Fernando Alonso and the upstart new boy Lewis Hamilton, ran neck and neck for the leadership of the championship, in close competition, on and off the track, with each other, Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari. Against all the odds, Raikkonen's Ferrari pipped the McLarens in the final race of the season, among a flurry of appeals. Ferrari is another team that has spoken about its use of Linux for the analysis of engine and aerodynamic data at Maranello and the famous "Galleria del Vento", or Wind Tunnel, designed by Renzo Piano. Off the track the sensation of the 2007 season was the cold war-like spying scandal which beset McLaren and Ferrari, and resulted in the withdrawal of all points awarded to McLaren in the 2007 Constructors' Championship and a record fine of $100 million.

Simulation is a vital technique for predicting the behaviour of the cars in all weather conditions, on the wide variety of tracks and surfaces used by Formula One. Adjustment of the aerodynamics of cars are affected not just by speed on the straights, but by the cornering characteristics of the cars on every corner of every race track on the calendar.

The McLaren race car "is fully designed using Linux and SGI kit", says Keith Vickers, Northern Europe presales manager for SGI. McLaren uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software provided by SGI to simulate airflows over the car using SGI Altix supercomputers. The hardware and software is identical to that used by several production car manufacturers, although for obvious reasons, a race car designer has different imperatives to the production car designer, who is primarily focused on the twin goals of economy and safety.

According to Dr Mark Taylor, Head of CFD, McLaren Racing. "The beauty of CFD is that it allows us to model scenarios that enable us to get the performance we need in a range of circumstances. The car has to be quick in fast, medium and slow corners, and in a range of track conditions, and we use CFD to model these and analyse the effects of differing ride height, steer angle etc. Without CFD we'd have to do this in our wind tunnel, but as this is a finite resource, time we spend fine-tuning the car means we have less time to investigate other ways of making it go faster."

Analysis is also performed on the telemetry data that is collected during a race. A team may monitor the parameters of the car while it is running to identify problems or make small set-up changes during the course of the race, or collect the data for analysis back in the factory, to predict and modify the car's performance in future races. Every piece of data about the engine and the car is stored for future reference. Every alteration is recorded and may be retrieved for retrospective analysis of how the car's behaviour has changed over time. The vision for the future is that the telemetry data can be fed back for CFD analysis and the parameters of the racing car can be readjusted in real time while the car is on the track... pushing the driver even further back in the equation.

According to Vickers SGI provides Linux systems not just to McLaren but to a variety of F1 Teams, "some of which we can talk about, some we can't". They all need these kinds of systems, and Linux clustering technologies provide so many price/performance advantages that the only question is the choice of company to provide the requisite hardware and support.

The choice of Linux is driven by "the graduate engineers who come out of university, and are used to working with open source." A lot of post-graduate research is "done in HPC and they carry that mentality over to their working lives", says Vickers. Linux is the dominant operating system in the field of high performance computing, and "is far easier to move around, compile the source code, tweak the code and recompile. This is what attracts people in these kind of arenas," says Vickers. "There is far more scalability and flexibility." The same system that can run on 2000 core processors with terrabytes of memory can be tweaked and tested on the engineer's laptop. In a world where a fraction of a second makes all the difference the ability to tweak the parameters, adjust the algorithms, and push the equations to their limits, can be the difference between winning and losing. As in all high performance industries the motor racing teams have found a distinct advantage in working with open source, for the most practical of reasons, performance, cost and flexibility.

The gee-whizz company

Once known as the "gee-whizz company" for its pioneering work in high-end graphics systems, SGI has been the purveyor of fridge-sized machines that were "never knowingly biege" for HPC and advanced visualisation since the mid '80s. Then famous for its role in providing compositing, animation and rendition tools for the special effects houses, SGI merged with Cray Research in 1996, and now specialises in areas where there is a demand for high performance computing, storage, visualisation and the manipulation of of vast banks of technical data. It's a specialised market in which SGI has very little competition. The applications have moved on and the demands of the market have become more sophisticated. And so have the machines. Typically high-end SGI Altix machines are located in the R&D departments of manufacturing and research institutes, where high-performance computing and data-intensive processing and simulation is a necessity. All SGI systems are powered by Linux. They are a good fit for the high tech world of the Formula One racing car.

"What we do in high performance computing with Linux breaks some boundaries", says Vickers. "What you're able to do with the open source community is far more flexible and allows you far more freedom of choice or inspiration, so that people can create and be creative, and leverage the creativity of a very considerable community worldwide. The engineers, depending in the different teams, have different views of how to use CFD. Some use clusters, and some use large shared memory systems. Linux is flexible enough to deliver similar results." What makes the difference is the particular input and vision of the individual engineers.

Linux is widely used in Formula One. AMD work with Ferrari, the Sauber team and others. BMW/Williams employ a Linux solution provided by HP. Linux is also used by the Ducati motor cycle racing team. Linux is chosen for the usual reasons - reliability, cost and price/performance. Cost is a secondary consideration to performance. More important is the versatility of Linux, and its proven record on high-density clustering solutions and large shared memory systems, which at some of the racing teams, such as Ferrari, entails more than 500 nodes to a cluster. Linux allows the teams to build scalable solutions for a fast moving industry that demands a quick and versatile response to rapidly changing parameters.]]> News http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080429-153346 Admin Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:33:46 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=04&entry=entry080429-153346 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080402-151924 gOS Rocket-beta was based on the Ubuntu 7.10 distribution. It uses the Enlightenment 17 window manager instead of the usual GNOME or KDE desktops, to create a desktop that has similar usability to Mac OS X. This is possible because of the flexibility of Enlightenment. Enlightenment acts both as an X window manager, and as a desktop environment. Therefore Rocket works on systems as low end as a 350 MHz Pentium II with 196 MB of RAM.[3] But a typical gOS system would use as a minimum a 1 GHz Pentium III with 256 MB RAM.

http://www.thinkgos.com/]]> http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080402-151924 Admin Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:19:24 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=04&entry=entry080402-151924 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080402-150616 Damn Small Linux is a business card size (50MB) Live CD Linux distribution. Despite its minuscule size it strives to have a functional and easy to use desktop. Damn Small Linux has a nearly complete desktop, including XMMS (MP3, and MPEG), FTP client, links-hacked web browser, spreadsheet, email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor, three editors (Nedit, nVi, Zile [emacs clone]), Xpdf, Worker (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE, a web server, calculator, Fluxbox window manager, system monitoring apps, USB support, and soon it will have PCMCIA support as well. If you like Damn Small Linux you can install it on your hard drive. Because all the applications are small and light it makes a very good choice for older hardware.

Homepage: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
Download: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html



Damn Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.

Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:

* Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
* Boot from a USB pen drive
* Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
* Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
* Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
* Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
* Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
* Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.

DSL has a nearly complete desktop, and many command line tools. All applications are chosen with the best balance of functionality, size and speed. Damn Small also has the ability to act as an SSH/FTP/HTTPD server right off of a live CD. In our quest to save space and have a fully functional desktop we've made many GUI administration tools which are fast yet still easy to use. What does DSL have?

XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, Netrik web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor (Ted), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox and JWM window managers, games, system monitoring apps, a host of command line tools, USB support, and pcmcia support, some wireless support.]]> Utilities http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080402-150616 Admin Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:06:16 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=04&entry=entry080402-150616 http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080311-164534 Have you ever come across a situation where you don’t have access to the Internet but can send or receive email messages? With email and no Internet, how do you read websites and blogs or check the current stock prices, or find what’s the top story on CNN homepage.

Well, you can do a lot of interesting things over email without a web connection - you can read any webpages over email, maintain your task list, convert documents, upload photo and videos, get dictionary meanings of words and more.

Just make sure that you have added the following address to your email address book:

10. pdf@koolwire.com - You have an Office document or a picture on your computer or mobile phone that you wish to convert into a PDF file. Just email that file an email attachment to the above address and it will soon return to your Inbox as a PDF file. [koolwire review]



9. ..@photos.flickr.com - Flickr provides a unique email upload address here - you can send your photographs to this email address as attachments and they’ll show up in Flick Photo gallery almost instantly. The subject line of email becomes the photo’s title while the body of the email becomes the photo’s description.

8. e@xpenser.com - This is like filling data in a travel spreadsheet through email. You can use this address to gather and record your travel expenses while on the road. [xpenser review]

mobile blogger

7. go@blogger.com - You can use this address to post pictures on any Blogger hosted blog. Any picture that you send to this email address will appear as a new blog post in your mobile blog. You can also use this service to post regular text entries to your Blogspot blog. In that case, the “Send to Blogger” email address is available under Blogger Dashboard.

6. upload@upload.slideshare.net - If you have (one or more) PowerPoint Presentations and PDF documents that you quickly want to share with friends, just email the files to Slideshare and they’ll instantly turn them into a web slideshow. [Slideshare upload options]

5. …@mms.youtube.com - YouTube member can create an MMS profile here - if you have a video clip on your mobile phone or comptuer but no access to YouTube website, you can easily upload that video file to YouTube through that email address. [Details on Youtube Email upload]

4. pdf2txt@adobe.com - Send a PDF document to this email address as an attachment and it will come back as a plain text file. Handy when your don’t have a PDF viewer to open the PDF document. Alternatively, you can send the PDF file to pdf2html@adobe.com for conversion to HTML format. [Extract Text from PDF]

3. ..@prod.writely.com - Google Docs provides a unique email address here - you can upload your documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Google Docs through this address and read them on your mobile phone using the just launched Google Docs mobile at docs.google.com/m. [Google Docs Upload]

remember-the-milk 2. …@rmilk.com - When you signup for Remember The Milk, you are assigned a unique email address. Emails sent to this special address are automatically converted into tasks and appear in your Inbox. Click on Settings -> Info -> Inbox Email Address. Very handy for keeping a track of your unfinished tasks and getting things done while on the move.

1. wsmith@wordsmith.org - Get the dictionary definition and synonyms of any word by sending a blank email to this email address. Make the subject line as: define myword

And now the most useful email address that will help you read webpages through email without requiring a web connection:

0. www@web2mail.com - Send an email with the URL of the web page in the Subject field (e.g. www.cnn.com) and you’ll soon find a copy of that web page in your Inbox. A perfect option when there’s no Internet access in the area or access is restricted (for instance, you want to read the BBC homepage in China).

Another similar service is www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it - it will also fetch websites for you through email though in this case, the site address should go in the body of the email message.

These web-to-email services will come extremely handy for receiving on-demand Stock quotes (for the current Google stock price, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GOOG), weather updates, currency exchange rates (for USD to INR, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDINR=X) and more.]]> http://acsberks.com/index.php?entry=entry080311-164534 Admin Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:45:34 GMT http://acsberks.com/comments.php?y=08&m=03&entry=entry080311-164534