This isn't a follow-up in that there's more news on this issue specifically; it's just that another article (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic) regarding prisoners wearing tracking devices as opposed to being stuck in prisons reminded me of what I had written about earlier with regard to Apple monitoring people's voices, faces, distances from devices, and heartbeats. I feel like Apple and its iPhones and iPods (of course, with a lot of the other cool features disabled but with the scary monitoring features enabled) would be the prime candidate for this...
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Monday, 30 August 2010
Main ScreenAfter a couple of news-related blog-posts, I wasn't finding any news particularly post-worthy. As I was looking at DistroWatch, I saw that a new version of Chakra (0.2.0 "Jaz") had been released. I was intrigued, as it's the release immediately after the first official "Phoix" release and the branching off from Arch. As Chakra is supposed to have changed a lot with the release of "Phoix" (and the last version I tested was Alpha 5 v4),...
Saturday, 28 August 2010
This is not a typical review for this blog, as it is a review of a specific application (rather than of a desktop environment or operating system). However, I figured I should publish this anyway, as Blogilo is a desktop blogging application for KDE (though it works in GNOME as well, provided the Qt libraries are present).I was going to write and publish this entire review from Blogilo. It seems nice enough, and it has many rich text features present in Blogger's online client. However, it doesn't yet have support for Blogger labels. Most importantly,...
You're probably thinking, "No it doesn't! That's ridiculous!"It is ridiculous, but it might come true soon.I was going through some news articles when I came across an article in the EFF linking to this gem of a patent filing. Apple, in a move to counter the government's new rules permitting the jailbreaking of phones for non-copyright infringing purposes (among other things), still wants essentially total control over the products they sell to consumers. This patent basically details all of the ways that they plan to catch unauthorized users from...
Friday, 27 August 2010
Monday, 23 August 2010
In anticipation of my new laptop, I decided to test 5 major KDE distributions to see which one could work best on my laptop. As it happens, I ended up testing all of these on my old Sony VAIO desktop and installed Linux Mint 9 GNOME on my laptop. Go figure.Each of these distributions aims to provide a hospitable and workable environment for the new user/Windows migrant. As such, there are a few features I expect to see included out-of-the-box. One of these is Firefox. A lot of implementations of KDE provide Konqueror instead of Firefox; while Konqueror...
Saturday, 21 August 2010
I was reading FSDaily (or something like that) a few days ago when I came across this submitted article.The blog author posits in this article that the reason software shouldn't be patentable is because it is, at its core, a very large binary number. The author elaborates by saying that if one was to create a program that wrote a random series of binary digits to a file in an infinite loop and this program was repeated ad infinitum, eventually every program ever devised in the past, present, and future would be (re)created.Upon reading this article...
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Saturday, 14 August 2010
The default Openbox desktop. Aside from the Debian swirly logo, the desktop looks pretty much the same as in 9.04.01.I am back at home, so I have more time to write reviews (until I need to move to my dorm room). Yay!This is the first time I am previewing a distribution before its final release. As such, I have tested this distribution in VirtualBox rather than making a Live CD/USB of the ISO file.You may remember that I tested #! 9.04.01 a while...
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Please feel free to have your say on this in the comments section. You don't have to read my opinion on it, but if you choose to do so, read on. I got this topic from this (Sam Varghese, IT Wire (note that the article is split into 2 pages)) article.I am of the opinion that Canonical does in fact do a lot for Linux, and that this should be appreciated more. Sure, its contributions are not of the technical sort; I have seen the statistic before that Canonical only contributes to 1% of GNOME's development (despite Ubuntu being very much a GNOME-centric...
Monday, 9 August 2010
Please feel free to make your thoughts on this known in the comments section. I got this question from a TV news program a few days ago in the wake of the media exposing Indian MP Suresh Kalmadi's corruption with regard to his handling of funding for the Commonwealth Games to be held in Delhi.At first, I thought the answer was obvious: in the US, the media's investigative journalism led to the resignation of a sitting president, so of course it should! But now, I have my doubts.I believe that even if the US justice system isn't perfect and can...
(Sorry, this time I don't have a picture of the book, though the owner is the same relative who lent me the books The Undercover Economist and Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya.)And with this, I have read all of Simon Singh's books. Yay! (I think.)I really enjoyed this book as much as his other two books. The passages talking about the cracking of the Enigma encryption system were like déjà vu after reading The Code Book. I also enjoyed reading about all of the tension and drama surrounding the various developments and failures leading up to the proof...
Thursday, 5 August 2010
It has been exactly a year since I started this blog! Yay!To all readers of this blog, thank you so much for reading these posts (and even occasionally commenting on them too). I hugely appreciate the time you have spent reading these posts.So this post is for you, the readers. And I have a question for you: is there anything else you want me to write about? Please let me know in the comments section.Thank y...
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
This is the first time that I've watched a movie in a theater in a while. I had a really nice time watching the movie.The story itself was really imaginative and creative. It may initially seem like a generic sci-fi action thriller, but I really like how it involves ideas which people frequently experience (e.g. dreams within dreams, lucid dreaming). I'm still a little confused as to whether Fischer finally does dissolve the company (I guess it's implied), but that's OK.Yeah, even though I enjoyed the movie, I don't have a whole lot to say about...
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