Firefox 1.5 is out!

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A heartly welcome to the most beautiful browser on this planet!

!!!!!!!!!Spread Firefox!!!!!!!!!

The Ubuntu’s Guide to the Galaxy

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This is an amazing screenshot of ubuntu!

DON’T PANIC

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Review: Firefox 1.5

The most awaiting release of mozilla firefox is out yesterday. I couldn’t hold myself in testing the software. I downloded the linux version and tried on ubuntu . I made a bit technical comparision between 1.0.7 and 1.5. There are some very intresting features in the latest release. What I consider the major difference is the memory utilization by the X server is reduced to considerable amount. They enhanced the browsercapabilities to support Web 2.0 technologies like AJAX , upgraded to higher SSL versions and most important feature is they enhanced the cache during browsing and while using backward and forward links. The preference window is modified to form view rather than tree view. It also enhanced the tabbed browsing and new feature is drag and drop tabs and image preview on the top of the tab window. Another significant feature is they provided an option for links open on new windows in tabs on the same window and also the external links to open up a new tab rather than the last tab that was present. They provied a better interface for error message in the main window rather than using popups. Enhanced popup bloker is incorporated.

Form based Preferences window

Enhanced Tab browsing capabilities

Error messages on main window

Drag and drop tabs

Will the prophecy be true?

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What I always dreamed of may turn out to reality in near future. I’m a strong beliver of EPIC 2014. The fortunes have predicted the downfall of all the major IT companies including The Giant Micro$oft in front of Google. The present market share values are clearly reflecting the rise of another super power. Google floated its share as $85 at Aug. 19, 2004. Many investors and IT analysts under estimated its power now the present share value multiplied five folds to $423.48 per share, giving it a $125 billion market capitalization. It already surpassed many top branded ventures. Its becoming the nightmare of Wall mart and Micro$oft. Cisco Systems, which has a $107.4 billion cap, Intel around $161.9 billion cap and is it so far-fetched to imagine Google’s cap one day surpassing even Microsoft and its $295.4 billion market cap. Analysts predicted that the firm’s price target on Google from $430 to $500 billion within 12 months.

Analysts who are raising the price target for Google’s shares over the next six to 12 months are basing their forecasts mostly on what’s called the forward price-to-earnings ratio, or forward P/E. That’s the price of a stock divided by the analyst’s forecast for next year’s earnings. The P/E indicates how much investors are paying for a company’s earnings power. The higher the P/E, the more investors are paying and, it’s assumed, the bigger the risk. Google is now trading at 45 to 46 times 2006 earnings expectations, compared with eBay at about 45 times 2006 earnings expectations and Amazon at about 40 times, analysts said. I hope one day the prophecy might be true!

Ubuntu Rocks!

Finally the most awaiting shipment of UBUNTU Linux arrived. I was damn exited receiving the package. The shipment was absolutely free. I ordered for 10+5 for 32bit and 64bit architecture and each set have a live Cd and a installation Cd. I made a full installation and configured all the network stuff. It has the latest Kernel and all the latest packages. But Its a Debian variant. Though the most o
f the functions are similar but when it comes to packages Its pretty hard to find Debian specific packages and one more thing is as the installation was only of one Cd not much auxiliary packages are installed so when we try to install any new packages there is too many dependency problems. The best thing is its on latest GNOME 2.12.1 of November build. The interface is lot much improved It has firefox 1.0.7 and OpenOffice 2.0 stable version. Presently I configured Apache server for my local site and ftp for my software repository. I almost explored all the menu options. There is a unique packet manager called Synaptic packet manager which I think is the coolest one. I downloaded many guides for UBUNTU newbies…. I distributed almost half of this Cd’s to all my geek mates. Very soon we ar
e planning to start a Open Source Software Repository on our college server of terabyte capacity…So guys any one interested in trying such a beautiful Linux plz don’t download the ISO order for free shipment of pressed Cd’s from http://shipit.ubuntu.com/ don’t feel shy to order in large quantity later you can spread it to every one.
Check out some cool links of Ubuntu resources

• http://ubuntuguide.org/
• http://ubuntu.com/
• http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/hack/ubuntu.txt

Beyond Web 2.0

The term “Web 2.0″ refers to development of the World Wide Web, including its architecture and its applications. Traditional mailing and dynamic pages are no longer considered to be hot technologies. Internet is advancing into the new dimension. Many recently developed concepts and technologies are seen as contributing to Web 2.0, including weblogs, wikis, podcasts, web feeds and other forms of many to many publishing; social software, web APIs, web standards, online web services, AJAX, and others.The concept is different from Web 1.0, as it is a move away from websites, email, using search engines and surfing from one website to the next. Others are more skeptical that such basic concepts can be superceded in any real way by those listed above. The term was coined by Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Media during a brainstorming session with MediaLive International to develop ideas for a conference that they could jointly host. Dougherty suggested that the Web was in a renaissance, with changing rules and evolving business models. The participants assembled examples — “DoubleClick was Web 1.0; Google AdSense is Web 2.0. Ofoto is Web 1.0; Flickr is Web 2.0.” — rather than definitions. Dougherty recruited John Battelle for a business perspective, and O’Reilly Media, Battelle, and MediaLive launched the first Web 2.0 Conference in October 2004. The second annual conference was held in October 2005.

There is even speculation about ‘web 3.0′. Some speculate it will be a web based operating system, perhaps a metaverse based on a system like the Croquet project. Web 3.0 will probably be much more distributed than web 2.0 and many of the current web 2.0 services will be gone. Social networking sites such as friendster may be replaced by semantic connections. A large part of Web 3.0 is decentralization of web services.

Instead of loading your pictures to the Flickr server you host the pictures on your computer just like a mini web server, or you may choose to use one of many hosting sites using a common standard instead of standalone sites like Flickr today.

This again seems to herald a return to the earliest web developers’ view that most computer users would have something of value to publish onto a worldwide web of knowledge and information. Perhaps, even in the face of present-day security concerns, and the widespread lack of education about fundamental web concepts like HTML, CSS and HTTP, Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 will encourage everyday people, rather than expensive specialists, to publish their own work.

A website could be said to be built using Web 2.0 technologies if it featured a number of the following techniques:

Technical:

• CSS, semantically valid XHTML markup, and Microformats
• Unobtrusive Rich Application techniques (such as Ajax)
• Java Web Start
• Flex/Laszlo/Flash
• XUL
• Syndication of data in RSS/Atom
• Aggregation of RSS/Atom data
• Clean and meaningful URLs
• Support posting to a weblog
• REST or XML Webservice APIs
• Some social networking aspects

General:

• The site should not act as a “walled garden” – it should be easy to get data in and out of the system.
• Users should own their own data on the site
• Purely Web based – most successful Web 2.0 sites can be used almost entirely through the browser
• Applicable to an emerging generation of game development, proposed as Thin games

In near future the whole web is going for a phase shift the process has already began and already we are part of it.

Microsoft tries to recruit Eric !!!

I think you all know Eric S. Raymond the founder of OSS and well know for his Halloween Documents. There is lot to be told about him. But first do check out a funny conversation mail between Eric and Microsoft.

The following is, verbatim, a letter Eric received  from a Microsoft recruiter.

---

From: “Mike Walters (Search Wizards)” <v-mikewa@microsoft.com>
To: <esr@thyrsus.com>

Eric,

I am a member of the Microsoft Central Sourcing Team. Microsoft is
seeking world class engineers to help create products that help people
and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

Your name and contact info was brought to my attention as someone who
could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft. I would love an
opportunity to speak with you in detail about your interest in a career
at Microsoft, along with your experience, background and qualifications.
I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have and can
also provide you with any information I have available in regard to the
position s and work life at Microsoft.

Please take a moment to visit My Calendar
<http://www.appointmentquest.com/provider/2010224927> online to
schedule a convenient time for me to contact you. You can learn more
about our vision for the New World of Work at
<http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail>
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail.

Additionally, if you are aware of any current or previous colleagues
who might also be interested in opportunities at Microsoft, I would be
happy to speak with them as well. Referrals are always welcome, and
are greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance and I look forward to an opportunity to speak to
you in the near future

Best regards,

Mike

<http://members.microsoft.com/careers/default.mspx>

How far will you go?

Mike Walters
CST Senior Recruiter

Microsoft
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
<http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap&addr=One+Microsoft+Way&csz=Re
dmond%2C+WA+98052&country=us>

---

I called Mike Walters, who told me my name had been passed to him by his research team. I indicated to him that I thought somebody was probably having a little joke at his expense, and promised him an email reply. Here is my reply in its entirety:

---

To: “Mike Walters (Search Wizards)” <v-mikewa@microsoft.com>
From: <esr@thyrsus.com>

I’d thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except
that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both)
couldn’t get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats.
What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs
to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to
something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a
Satanist orgy?

If you had bothered to do five seconds of background checking, you
might have discovered that I am the guy who responded to Craig
Mundie’s “Who are you?” with “I’m your worst nightmare”, and that I’ve
in fact been something pretty close to your company’s worst nightmare
since about 1997. You’ve maybe heard about this “open source” thing?
You get one guess who wrote most of the theory and propaganda for it
and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in.
But don’t think I’m trying to destroy your company. Oh, no; I’d be
just as determined to do in any other proprietary-software monopoly,
and the community I helped found is well on its way to accomplishing
that goal.

On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be
heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but
develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone
will go superconductive.

But I must thank you for dropping a good joke on my afternoon. On
that hopefully not too far distant day that I piss on Microsoft’s
grave, I sincerely hope none of it will splash on you.

Cordially yours,
Eric S. Raymond

Top 20 geek novels

So far, 132 people have voted for the best geek novels written in English since 1932, in spite of Survey Monkey’s rubric saying free polls were limited to 100 responses. The top 20 is therefore as follows, with the numbers in brackets showing the number of votes.

1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer — William Gibson 59% (66)
6. Dune — Frank Herbert 53% (54)
7. I, Robot — Isaac Asimov 52% (54)
8. Foundation — Isaac Asimov 47% (47)
9. The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett 46% (46)
10. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland 43% (44)
11. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson 37% (37)
12. Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 38% (37)
13. Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson 36% (36)
14. Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks 34% (35)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein 33% (33)
16. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick 34% (32)
17. American Gods — Neil Gaiman 31% (29)
18. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson 27% (27)
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23% (21)
20. Trouble with Lichen – John Wyndham 21% (19)

You can find most of them at project gutenberg site. Till now I read only I robot by Ashimov. I think I have to go through all of these to be a complete geek.

Forget the OS, it’s x86 that’s important

Linux geeks love Linux and Windows mavens won’t quit Microsoft — but will we really care that much whether a machine is running Linux or Windows in future? As Sun announces Solaris support for Red Hat Linux applications, the need to specify the OS for a particular application will fade away, and the application and the x86 platform become the critical things — at least that’s what this Techworld feature argues…

Recently I went through an article about how future software products should be its pretty impressive I’m adding it on to the blog just go through that.

Virtualisation technology is about to take one more step forward, if Sun’s announcement that it plans to integrate Solaris containers for Linux applications bears fruit. The feature is, said Sun, designed to allow organisations to run Red Hat binaries unmodified in containers on the Sun OS by year end. Additionally, Sun has demonstrated virtual Solaris in a Xen wrapper.

So far, the most advanced type of virtualisation — in terms of offering the best performance — has been provided by products such as VMware ESX Server, whose hypervisor technology does away with the need for an underlying or host OS. But among the most common virtualisation scenarios is running multiple copies of an OS — often Linux for licence cost containment reasons — which on servers is usually motivated by the need to provide isolation between applications.

Sun has taken that a step further with the announcement of containers. This means that, instead of having to run a virtualised OS in order to support a particular application, instead Solaris users will be able to run the applications directly inside Solaris. It’s akin to FreeBSD jails, also containers, whose development was driven by need of service providers to isolate users and their applications from each other for security and billing purposes.

This technique eliminates the need for a separate OS for the application and is enabled by the use of x86 as a common platform: without that widespread architectural commonality, Sun’s containers wouldn’t have been developed. And as we’ve seen from companies such as Transitive Corporation, whose Quick Transit technology is to be the enabler for Apple’s migration from IBM Power to Intel x86 next year, it’s a technology with a wide range of applications. When Intel’s VT chips, which offer support for virtualisation in hardware, appear next year, the lines between application and OS will blur even further, as the hardware hit from virtualisation will become even smaller.

The OS as platform is about to become irrelevant — it’s x86 that’s important.