Mega games pack

A cool linux games iso packed with freedom.

http://www.cyvoc.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=36

Open Source Auto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azCRuwtE_n0&feature=player_embedded

Frogatto

One of my favourite games used to be Jazz Jackrabbit. Frogatto has a similar 2D look and feel but could do with an information bar instead of pop-up dialogues which I find slightly irritating. Great game though.

sudo wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/frogatto.list http://www.frogatto.com/apt/frogatto.list
wget -O- http://www.frogatto.com/apt/key.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install frogatto

THANKS: Ubutronics

More great themes

SHI10 GTK by IZO

Neon GTK by marko23

Elegant Pack Gnome 0.3.3 by Arobase

Yes Men sign P2P distribution deal

THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks. This peer-to-peer special edition of the film is unique: it is preceded by an EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of the Yes Men impersonating the United States Chamber of Commerce. p2p  is the only way that this film is being distributed. Please spread the word!

http://vodo.net/yesmen

9 insane bash functions

Over the weekend I got into some bash functions.

Paste these into your .bashrc file
Enjoy

1. Command line wiki query
#wiki
function wiki () {

COLUMNS=`tput cols`

dig +short txt "`echo $@`".wp.dg.cx | sed -e 's/" "//g' -e 's/^"//g' -e 's/"$//g' -e 's/ http:/\n\nhttp:/' | fmt -w $COLUMNS

}

2. Disk Usage with human readable formatting
#disk usage formatted
function duf {
du -sk "$@" | sort -n | while read size fname; do for unit in k M G T P E Z Y; do if [ $size -lt 1024 ]; then echo -e "${size}${unit}\t${fname}"; break; fi; size=$((size/1024)); done; done
}


3. Directory sizes
#dirsize - finds directory sizes and lists them for the current directory
dirsize () {
du -shx * .[a-zA-Z0-9_]* 2> /dev/null | \
egrep '^ *[0-9.]*[MG]' | sort -n > /tmp/list
egrep '^ *[0-9.]*M' /tmp/list
egrep '^ *[0-9.]*G' /tmp/list
rm -rf /tmp/list
}

4. Power extract function
#extract
extract () {
if [ -f $1 ] ; then
case $1 in
*.tar.bz2)   tar xjf $1        ;;
*.tar.gz)    tar xzf $1     ;;
*.bz2)       bunzip2 $1       ;;
*.rar)       rar x $1     ;;
*.gz)        gunzip $1     ;;
*.tar)       tar xf $1        ;;
*.tbz2)      tar xjf $1      ;;
*.tgz)       tar xzf $1       ;;
*.zip)       unzip $1     ;;
*.Z)         uncompress $1  ;;
*.7z)        7z x $1    ;;
*)           echo "'$1' cannot be extracted via extract()" ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a valid file"
fi
}

6. Network Information
#netinfo - shows network information for your system
netinfo ()
{
echo "--------------- Network Information ---------------"
/sbin/ifconfig | awk /'inet addr/ {print $2}'
/sbin/ifconfig | awk /'Bcast/ {print $3}'
/sbin/ifconfig | awk /'inet addr/ {print $4}'
/sbin/ifconfig | awk /'HWaddr/ {print $4,$5}'
myip=`lynx -dump -hiddenlinks=ignore -nolist http://checkip.dyndns.org:8245/ | sed '/^$/d; s/^[ ]*//g; s/[ ]*$//g' `
echo "${myip}"
echo "---------------------------------------------------"
}

7. Translate from commandline
#Translate a Word  - USAGE: translate house spanish  # See dictionary.com for available languages (there are many).
translate ()
{
TRANSLATED=`lynx -dump "http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/${1}" | grep -i -m 1 -w "${2}:" | sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'`
if [[ ${#TRANSLATED} != 0 ]] ;then
echo "\"${1}\" in ${TRANSLATED}"
else
echo "Sorry, I can not translate \"${1}\" to ${2}"
fi
}

8. Define a word
# Define a word - USAGE: define dog
define ()
{
lynx -dump "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+${1}&btnG=Google+Search" | grep -m 3 -w "*"  | sed 's/;/ -/g' | cut -d- -f1 > /tmp/templookup.txt
if [[ -s  /tmp/templookup.txt ]] ;then
until ! read response
do
echo "${response}"
done < /tmp/templookup.txt
else
echo "Sorry $USER, I can't find the term \"${1} \""
fi
\rm -f /tmp/templookup.txt
}


9. Simple Clock
# clock - A bash clock that can run in your terminal window.
clock ()
{
while true;do clear;echo "===========";date +"%r";echo "===========";sleep 1;done
}

MORE functions can be found here

A-Team star shuns Google

Sharlto Copley stopped Googling himself when he won the role of Murdock in 'The A-Team'.

The South African actor - who rose to fame in critically acclaimed sci-fi movie 'District 9' - admits he had to stop looking himself up when he signed up to the film because he didn't want to read criticism of himself.

He said: "It's probably when I stopped Googling myself. I didn't want to know. I pushed the character more the way he was in the original than perhaps the studio would have gone for. But of course Dwight Schultz, the original Murdock, got fired at the end of the pilot because they felt that he was just too much but then when the audience test results came back they rehired him.

"In many ways he was ahead of his time."

The 36-year-old star also revealed he was into the original series of 'The A-Team' in the 1980s and collected merchandise from the show.

He told ShortList: "I had all the merchandise, the dossier with the trading cards, the action figures, everything."

We hope Copley chooses an Open Source alternative to Google, like Duck Duck Go.

FROM Iafrica.Com

Duck Google, here comes an Open Source Search engine

[caption id="attachment_2118" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Clean searches"][/caption]

If you're a little concerned about the Google monolith, especially the way the company has infiltrated every facet of our lives with often meaningless searches, and raw data which grows increasingly less useful as the famous page algorithm becomes ever less relevant in a semantic and heuristically challenged world, then you will pleased to find Duck Duck Go, a  search engine showing some promise. Yes, unlike the closed behemoth of Google, it is based on open source, not simply page popularity.

Among the  strengths touted by the developers of DuckDuckgo are

• No tracking- guaranteed  privacy.


• Relevant results- they claim to eliminate over 60m useless sites for some searches.


• The DuckDuckbot, the name of their crawler, identifies sites automatically without you needing to add your site to their index like Google.


• Encrypted search using "https"


• In addition to their DuckDuckbot, they also get their results from "many sources including crowd-sourced sites,  BOSS & Bing.

Some neat stuff you can do with DuckDuckGo

!amazon bags searches Amazon.com for bags, directly. We call this search syntax "!bang", and it works for 100s of sites:

• Most big sites work, e.g. !youtube


• Most generic keywords work too, e.g. !images


• There are also shorter versions, e.g. !g !i !yt


• Just '! ' will take you to the first result.


• more about this here

THANKS Ghabuntu

rsget downloader

rsget.pl is a powerful perl application designed to retrieve files from download services (like RapidShare, MegaUpload and many more).
It has a long list of features implemented already and even longer TODO list.

If you already know you want it, grab latest tarball from downloads and read where to start.

FFUU theme

lassekongo83 has created a mod of my favourite theme -- ffuu is based on Zuki

Ubuntu 10.04 free cd arrives

Canonical is still shipping free CDs. If you haven't got one yet, place an order via Shipit. An Ubuntu CD is also a great way of getting new users to switch. Now if we could just persuade the forces that be to send us hardware. Think about it, Ubuntu is a collective, a community which produces Free Software, but why not a community which produces open machines?

Install the stable 2.6.34 Lucid kernel

One of the great things about Linux are the new kernels.

Although the stable 2.6.34 is available for Lucid, it is unlikely to make its way into the official repos any time soon.

If you're experiencing issues with your current kernel, or just want a change, then stable 2.6.34 may be for you.

You will need to install 3 packages.

For 32 bit:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...020634_all.deb

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...20634_i386.deb

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...20634_i386.deb

for 64 bit:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...020634_all.deb

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...0634_amd64.deb

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...0634_amd64.deb

please install in order listed.

Then run  from a terminal afterwards:

sudo update-grub reboot.

to confirm you are running the new kernel type in a terminal:

uname -a

THANKS: nhasian

Some advice from Sgosnell

Features seldom get dropped from later kernels. It's perfectly safe to install newer kernels, because you can always boot from any kernel still installed. You can install the .34 kernel, and if you have problems just boot from the default kernel. You can easily remove kernels via Synaptic, as long as you aren't booted to the kernel you intend to remove. I would advise installing the .34 kernel and trying it out. I like it a lot. If it doesn't do what you want you can always remove it, and you can also install the .35 kernel over it when it is released. That will just result in the ability to boot to the .35 kernel in addition to the .34 kernel and whatever you already have installed. I tend to remove older kernels after I insure that the newer kernel works ok, just to save space and remove clutter, but I usually keep the default kernel for the OS version I have installed, although I seldom boot to it. It's just a final safety fallback.

NOTE: If downloading and installing precompiled kernels is not your cup of tea, then try KernelCheck, which will install and build the latest kernel for your distribution from source.

ADDENDUM: I noticed the debs above were compiled with an earlier version of GCC than the one which I am running (gcc (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) 4.4.3), which resulted in a kernel check message from the nVIDIA installer. I therefore highly recommend using KernelCheck if you want to maintain concurrency with your compiler. If you run into a kernel panic check this posting of mine.

Maths of the blogetery takedown

Seeing as how I am one of the people affected, I am republishing this interesting posting from fuseoptimisation, although in theory only those blogs at the site which had failed to change their default bylines would have been found, I like the can-do attitude.

"After searching around the internet for ways of finding all the 70,000 blogs which have gone missing I stumbled on the piece of text which is added to the page title of all Blogetery blogs (Just another Blogetery.com weblog)  Google is showing 2.8 Million results for this phrase.  So I started to break down the results by industry, here are some of the ones I found

Car Insurance - 218 results
Real Estate - 2,550 results
SEO - 8,360 results
Personal Injury - 7,580
Christian - 3,680
iPod - 1,860

With British phrases such as "personal injury" it is clear that many UK SEO companies have been using Blogetery as an easy way to gain links to their sites.

Using Google's "inurl:" command...

inurl:Blogetery.com - 287,000 results (This includes some non Blogetery sites)

...we can see that if 73,000 blogs were taken down then on average only 4 pages were being indexed per blog.  Taking the top result for the inurl:blogetery.com command we can see that Smartech had 771 pages indexed.  This can only mean that thousands of the blogs were either not indexed by Google at all, or perhaps just had one page.

"The startling thing for me is that out of the 2.8 million pages that Google lists only a small percentage seem to be optimised for specific industries.  The SEO result above was the highest I could find, even gambling sites and adult sites don't seem to feature.  I can only assume that the majority of the blogs were personal blogs by real every day people.

NOTE: When I moved content over to the site from this one about a month ago to check the interface, I did notice a slow uptake on google over the first month which might explain the fact individual blogs on the site were probably badly optimised, however the site as a whole, was a real winner when I made my initial search.

Open Source linked to al-Qaeda plot?

THE unbelievable story about the termination of wordpress site blogetery.com right in the middle of the much vaunted U8UNTU eLXER migration has taken a bizarre new twist.

While this latest news story may squash any theory about the Feds impounding two years of U8UNTU material because of a GPL violation, or worse, a general crackdown on free software, it raises all sorts of questions regarding freedom of the press, in particular the law as it applies to online publishing and blogging.

One would have at least expected a court order before such a draconian move as the shutting down of 73 000 blogs, literally under martial law imposed by the USA Patriot Act, and which have now all apparently been deleted. Attempts to explain away the actions of Burst.Net, as a "voluntary" over-reaction fail to take into account the threat to impound servers and seize assets.

Neither burst.net nor blogetery.com are to blame in this affair. One must place the blame on the Federal Government which has acted in a threatening and undemocratic manner.

Even if the cause was an online publication called Inspire which apparently published a hit list and an article "How to make a bomb in your mother's kitchen", there are laws guaranteeing freedom of the press in the US constitution. Bring the alleged perpetrators of hate speech and incitement to war to book in a court of law. Get this out in the open, otherwise we all suffer from a culture of secrecy which is anathema in a democratic country.

Here is how the event unfolded, after TorrentFreak reported the U.S. government may be involved as part of stepped-up antipiracy operations and  conversation  between Blogetery management and the host provider via an online forum appeared to validate  speculation that it was all about copyright infringement, it turns out both copyright and free software have nothing to do with it. According to CNET, "the site was shut down after FBI agents informed executives of Burst.net, Blogetery's Web host, late on July 9 that links to al-Qaeda materials were found on Blogetery's servers, Joe Marr, chief technology officer for Burst.net, told CNET. Sources close to the investigation say that included in those materials were the names of American citizens targeted for assassination by al-Qaeda. Messages from Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the terrorist organization, as well as bomb-making tips, were also allegedly found on the server."

Surely the culprit could have been dealt with in a sane way that avoided alienating so many people and causing loss of confidence in blogs such as this one? We all lose out when Federal agents can no longer distinguish between an al Qaeda recruitment journal and a Free and Open Source Linux blog!!!! I guess as servers become smaller and data gets compressed, we could all end up losing a lot more than the truth.

Al Quaeda Hit List and Bomb Tips Allegedly Linked to Shut Down of Blogetery

Blogetery closure a violation of our blogging rights

CNET:Bomb-making tips, hit list behind Blogetery closure

CNET: Why Web host shut down 73,000 blogs a mystery

SLASHDOT conversation

PCWORLD

BBC

DAVID ICKE

Zenplayer

This is a useful script for playing di.fm stations with mplayer (requires zenity, curl and mplayer)

1. open a terminal

sudo gedit /usr/bin/zenplayer

2. Add a bash shebang

#!/bin/bash

3. paste this:

zenity --list --width 500 --height 500 --column 'radio' --column 'url' --print-column 2$(curl -s http://www.di.fm/ | awk -F '"' '/href="http:.*\.pls.*96k/ {print $2}' | sort | awk -F '/|\.' '{print $(NF-1) " " $0}') | xargs mplayer

4. Save

5. Make executable

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/zenplayer

Then to run, just type zenplayer in a terminal and choose a station

otherwise make a new menu entry in your gnome menu and add zenplayer to properties.

If you want notifications when the track changes, add this:

| grep --line-buffered "StreamTitle='.*S" -o | grep --line-buffered "'.*'" -o > mus & tail -n0 -f mus | while read line; do notify-send "Zen Player" "$line";done

THANKS polaco and spiffwalker at commandlinefu.com

Eucalyptus opencore scandal brewing

Well it had to happen at some point -- the open-core debate has finally entered the Ubuntu community with a bang as a result of Nasa dumping Eucalyptus. If you remember the announcement surrounding "Karmic Koala and its food Eucalyptus " which gave the Ubuntu platform remarkable "cloud- like properties", then you may also remember that absolutely nothing was said back then about the new "open-core paradigm". If you assumed it was all just Open Source, think again. Unbelievably, although not all that surprising considering the high stakes involved, the Ubuntu Enterprise layer is, yes, Open Core.

According to The Reg Nasa engineers attempted to contribute additional Eucalyptus code to improve its ability to scale, but they were unable to do so because some of the platform's code is open and some isn't. Their attempted contributions conflict with code that is only available in a partially closed version of platform maintained by Eucalyptus Systems Inc., the commercial outfit run by the project's founders.

That Canonical has a commercial Redhat edge about it, has always been a rumour, but did we have to find out like this via a licensing violation? Canonical are going to have a lot of explaining to do about their commitment to open source, and while the open-core definitions are only now being resolved by the folks who gave us the Open Source Definition, how does this impact on the GPL? I hesitate to say the Free Software Foundation is going to have something to add, but you have my  two cents, Stallman is going to give Shuttleworth his own particular form of hell.  Check this excellent article summing up the current debate, The Singularity of Free

Ubuntu festival

Ubuntu is not just an operating system, it's an idea. The Ubuntu Festival is an event which happened in Cape Town, Sunday, to celebrate Mandela Day.





IMG_1913.JPG

Firefox memory hacks

One can set configuration settings to limit the amount of memory that Firefox uses to cache pages and store session history.

You can look at what is currently in Firefox's memory cache by putting this into the location bar:

about:cache?device=memory

Change the available settings. (For each you need to type about:config into the address sbar, in order to add the settings.)

browser.cache.memory.capacity

This limits the amount of memory that Firefox will use to store images. Set to the cache size you want in KB. So to set the maximum to 24MB give the number 24576.

browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers

This limits the amount of memory that Firefox will use to store old pages. This speeds up going backward and forward through pages.

Ubuntu Women design

Some great designs from Linux Tips & Tricks

Open source 8 bit computer, solution for Africa?

This could be the start of something big. A  "humane" computer solution for Africa --  an extendable, hackable 8-bit general computing platform, designed for both hobbyists and developing nations, that can be displayed on televisions. The Humane Reader can be used as an ebook reader and comes with a 2GB SD card where you can put about 5000 ebooks or, roughly, the entire contents of Wikipedia. While I don't think lack of monitors is the problem down here, all we need is a cheap output to some form of LCD screen. The picture shows the device plugged into some kind of portable DVD player. But we get the picture. Since its all open source computing the schematics are readily available. Perhaps our local LUG will oblige by building a few?

From an article in Linux Journal

Brazil's innovative interpretation of WIPO

A UN treaty called the WIPO Copyright Treaty requires countries to pass laws protecting "software locks" (also called DRM or TPM). Countries around the world have adopted the treaty in different ways: in the US, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits all circumvention of software locks, even when they don't protect copyright (for example, it would be illegal to for me to break the DRM on a Kindle to access my own novels, were they sold with Kindle DRM).

Brazil has just created the best-ever implementation of WCT. In Brazil's version of the law, you can break DRM without breaking the law, provided you're not also committing a copyright violation. And what's more, any rightsholder who adds a DRM that restricts things that are allowed by Brazilian copyright laws ("fair dealing" or "fair use") faces a fine.

It's a fine and balanced approach to copyright law: your software locks have the power of law where they act to uphold the law. When they take away rights the law gives, they are themselves illegal.

§1º. The same sanction applies, without prejudice to other sanctions set forth by law, to whom, through whatever means:a) hinders or prevents the uses allowed by arts. 46, 47 and 48 of this Act [which addresses limitations to copyright including fair dealing]; or

b) hinders or prevents the free use of works, broadcast transmissions and phonograms which have fallen into the public domain.

Brazil's Approach on Anti-Circumvention: Penalties For Hindering Fair Dealing

FROM: Boing Boing

Sweet links

Finch, a command line alternative to pidgin

How to install Firefox 40-beta-2-pre monthly from a ppa

Netactview, a graphical netstat utility

New Zealand first country to make software unpatentable

URD a Usenet binary downloader

5 things Linux converts should know

Mid-month UbuWishlist

1. Thunderbird mail box folder and profile resolver

Yeah, I know this is dumb, but so is Mozilla for not giving us an easy way to resolve multiple mail folders left over from one version to the next. I keep getting a deja vu sinking feeling about this problem. This week its an upstream thunderbird which installed itself and rolled my email back to 2009. Now I'm lost inside my home folder looking at four different .thunderbird folders each with its own story about the way the universe should work, and guess what, Back in Time has a bug, the result of failing to back up hidden .files in my home folder, so be warned, those snapshots you took of your family configuration holiday last summer,  could turn out to be duds.

2. File Cleaner with Intelligent Heuristics

Keeping an Ubuntu system clean should not have to be guess work. Neither Kleanweep nor FSlint do it for me folks. (FSlint is a lot better than Kleansweep, I used it to remove my temp files)

While the two apps provide some functionality, they do not provide the kind of safety features one would expect from any programme which runs as root and which can seriously disrupt your home or business.

For example: where is  information as to why an app "knows" a menu entry is dead or a thumbnail is obsolete, or such an such a directory is really "empty" based upon user experience? We shouldn't have to dig through manuals or decipher meaning of an entry merely because one file is equal to any other file in the eyes of the developers. Come on boys, give us some flashing lights like scrolling information on what the programme is doing so that users can decide for themselves once we arrive at that "heuristic" situation. A list of files that should or should not be deleted, do we have to deal with such a call? Best case scenario, based upon what we have learnt about your machine, this is what we can do, and here is how we plan on rolling back the changes. (Phew, glad I got that off my chest).

3. Alsa sound configuration wizard


Either we rip out Alsa or dump Pulsesaudio or live with the consequences. If we keep Alsa, then we have to keep the ability to configure the bloody thing, which means asound.conf and asoundrc. We can't simply lose the sound server and hope nobody notices while focusing on an increasingly elaborate gymnastics game that results in a portly Pulseaudo Server still with no Graphic Equaliser in the Official Ubuntu release despite it being released upstream!!!! Development of Maverick's "integrated" sound panel is all good and fine, but are we getting the basics right? I sense yet another widgets on left, not its on the right, yes its on the left debacle.

UPDATE: Solution to my sound issues was to upgrade ALSA. This posting explains  some of the changes made in Lucid http://chrishatton.homeip.net/?p=118

4. PPA checker

This should be relatively easy to build. A simple script or add-on that checks ppa address and distribution is correct. If address is correct but distribution is wrong, for instance, it chooses the last known correct or up-to-date distribution. I found a lot of my ppas didn't make the upgrade to Lucid, yet the official Ubuntu upgrade utility simply swopped out the distribution for Lucid without bothering to check if Lucid versions were available.  Most still run okay if I change the settings individually back to karmic. I even have a couple of jaunty ppas which provide hard to find software.

CLIcompanion and Cheatsheet

Although U8UNTU eLXR's much vaunted migration to Blogetery.Com appears to have run aground, with the site disappearing off the Bermuda Triangle -- word only now reaches us about the server getting impounded by authorities for copyright violations related to free and open source software -- we can still report about two amazing command line / console apps. Both fit the bill for "wish I had this when I started out" with the new fangled Ubuntu craze featuring. Return to the Command Line by the Open Source Kid.

CLIcompanion




You can get CLIcompanion by running the following command in a Terminal:

bzr branch lp:~duanedesign/+junk/clicompanion

Move the .clicompanion file found in the clicompanion directory into your $HOME. You may need to select View –> Show hidden files (Ctrl +H) to see the .clicompanion file.
After moving the file return to the Terminal and run the following to move into the clicompanion directory:

cd clicompanion/

Start the application with the command:

python clicompanion.0.0.7.py

THANKS okiebuntu

2. Cheatsheet

A console app which pretty much does the same thing, but from the command line.


You can get the cheatsheet code with the command:

bzr branch lp:cheatsheet

then move into the directory
cd cheatsheet/
Make the file executable:
chmod +x cheatsheet.py
Then move it to one of your $PATH directories. You can view these with the command: echo $PATH
I chose /usr/local/bin/ for the next command
Move the file with the command:
sudo cp cheatsheet.py /usr/local/bin/cheat
Then from a Terminal you can view the command usage by running:
cheat --help

FOSS server terminated by law enforcement

IT appears the server which hosted blogetery.com got terminated for copyright infringement over the weekend. That's right, law enforcement officials from an as yet unnamed domain have killed the blogetery server while U8UNTU was migrating.The server owned and operated by BurstNet, the service providers for Blogetery.Com which provides free and paid services to over 75000 blogs, had its plug pulled and was "terminated by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server."

"We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server." said a spokesperson for BurstNet

You can view the correspondence here

Blogetery.Com appear to be contesting the decision, which was "made without consultation or notification", and done supposedly "according to terms in the contract between the ISP and the site".

Speculation remains as to whether or not the server may have been impounded by forensics looking for illegal operating system junkies.

They will have no doubt have a good time sifting through my postings on FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

The blogetery domain went quiet early Saturday morning with thousands of blogs, including this one, getting booted off the map, and only by Wednesday today was there the following a redirect message:

"After being BurstNet customer for 7 months our server was terminated without any notification or explanation.

"We're trying to resolve the situation"

"You can find details in this thread on webhostingtalk forum."


If you are one of the many blog owners left stranded by this summary execution of a local law enforcement demand without reference to international law.. Then U8UNTU eXLR would like to hear from you.

Sip-Communicator - latest Ubuntu sip phone

Sip-communicator promises to be easier, better, and more open than the competition. I've only just installed it but it looks like a winner.

Add this PPA:

deb http://download.sip-communicator.org/deb unstable/

Then go to a terminal and type the following commands:-

apt-get update

apt-get install sip-communicator-keyring

apt-get install sip-communicator

Then go into Applications -> Internet -> SIP Communicator

THANKS: John Lewis

(For more instructions and a better tutorial)

Some extraordinary Ubuntu games

1. Install OpenTTD

[caption id="attachment_1991" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Low resolution, but fun"][/caption]

Found this great free gaming site, which nspired me to install the latest OpenTTD. In other words, the FREE version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

OpenTTD is the best of both worlds -- from previous recollections, LinCity was a poor contender next to the more popular & commercial SimCity and my initial reaction was -- you expect me to actually like 4bit colour? OpenTTD seems to have improved on the lot of Unix and Linux freaks who demand better graphics, (retro is only cool if you play Atari) and we can only hope it gets better.

You can either download the new deb from OpenTTD site or use the old one in the Ubuntu repos.

After installing it, you will have to install a few extra files.

You  can also use your original Transport Tycoon Deluxe data files (translation: you need to own a Transport Tycoon Deluxe CD) or use the free alternatives:

download OpenGFX, download OpenSFX and download OpenMSX.

Unstuff and move them into your /usr/share/games/openttd/data folder:

sudo mv <file> /usr/share/games/openttd/data

Now comes the interesting part. Once you start up OpenTTD.

Set the  resolution.

If you have a high end card, you might be a tad disappointed, play around a bit.  (Okay its not exactly  high-res utopia compared to Eternalands and Openlife), but it has its charms.

For starters, the ability to download extra modules ( I downloaded the Netherlands and Swiss Alps) which means you can share landscapes. Being open source, this  feature results in a hackers paradise and great place for kids.

If we can coax the developers to embrace a higher resolution: millions of colours as opposed to thousands, we could be on to something.

Considering its open source, I am sure this will happen soon. Better palettes for instance change the tonality of the resulting image landscape.

I rather like watching the end result of a couple of days of gaming. The  sheer complexity of the finished worlds means there could just be a new fad in sharing virtual real estate. Think about it. Do you really want to waste time building a cybertopia? Get the virtual architects out there to create one for you. Test the results -- which are bound to be more like art and less like a geography lesson, for which OpenTTD excels.

2.Install Osmos demo

This is a killer game and the demo has two introductory levels. Wish I had the $10 needed to burn the full version (translates into R80 which for me is two bags of groceries).

Download the latest osmos demo deb

3. Play Wormux

Amazing how some games evolve, from virtually nothing into virtual worlds on their own? Wormux is really looking stunning. Be warned its a 95mb download.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wormux/ppa

4. World of Goo Demo

When I first heard some geeks raving about World of Goo, I searched around the Net which looked like one giant sales pitch. Trawling through some of my RSS  subscriptions via Google Reader, I found a more sober appraisal,  along with the link to the demo.  A free sample which deploys the physics engine of my NVIDIA 8400GS.

Blogetery down, U8UNTU eLXR migration fail.

First it was Bundublog. Barely three months after migrating from Wordpress.com I was back after the Bundublog server went down, taking all my postings with it. Needless to say, the only backups for the period were in the Google cache and management failed to reinstate the blog after backups of the entire site also turned out to be corrupt.

Now the migration to Blogetery.com appears to be going pear-shaped. Just one posting and I am back here trying to figure out what is going on.

[caption id="attachment_1978" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Blogetery MIA"][/caption]

This says it all

According to a number of www test domain sites, blogetery is down, and not just for me. I even ventured out of my living room this afternoon and took the bold step of using an Internet Cafe. Result: blogetery.com for Internet Cafe users on old blue Microsfot XP along with my new blog, MIA.

I am therefore posting a reward for anybody finding it:  Yes a years supply of Free and Open Source Software, (and your mother dresses you funny.)

[caption id="attachment_1988" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="It's not just me."][/caption]

New links

Debian Screenshots - great site which catalogues  debian-based software

Tunesviewer -- listen and watch itunes university podcasts in Ubuntu

Deb-Thumbnailer places a software icon next to deb package.

U8UNTU eLXR has a new home

After some two years at Wordpress.com its time to move on. The lack of revenue-sharing while ads are automatically posted by Wordpress.com next to our content ways heavily on this decision. Not only is Blogetery a less closed system, it has a lot more theme options and plugins as well as a 75% revenue sharing model which makes the platform sustainable as well as financially rewarding content-producers. The days of producing content for free, at least so far as the media platform is concerned, are over. Nevertheless we will continue to produce content on free software and free culture. Readers win, while Advertisers pay in a win-win situation. I am sure you agree.

Readers please click the link below to our new home.

http://u8untu.blogetery.com

While we are renovating, please feel free to submit proposals for a new header/logo.

Regards
David Robert Lewis

U8UNTU eLXR

Zardino, new physical computing freeware

While its still a long way away from a home-grown semiconductor industry  it is nice to see our local Cape Town Linux User Group (CLUG) getting stuck in with the equivalent of the Arduino. The Arduino is to open source physical computing as Linux is to free software, and a local site called Geek Studio has published the schematics of an "Arduino derivative designed specifically for South African Arduino users but available to anyone. It uses the most common sized components which are the easiest to find here in South Africa."



The day when locally built CPUs and backyard silicon chips pop out of a factory with an Ubuntu open specification may still be a pipe dream, but Geek Studio is providing incentives for geeks to get soldering on their own projects. A recent talk by Peter Ing's sent some CLUG members into a feeding frenzy. According to the CLUG wiki, there are now some 50 or so boards in the process of being populated with doodads and gizmos.  Enough to make even the most hard-core software junkie salivate.

Remember, computing is not only software. It's all about the hardware dammit, and frankly we are at the mercy of badly made Chinese imports and expensive American designed chips, the combination of which invariably creates minor disasters for Linux users as they struggle to get their hardware to do anything non-proprietary. Zardino signals a turning point. The board will hopefully allow customised electronics projects to leap out of the conceptual ionosphere, and I am fairly certain I won't be the first member to sign up for a robot-slave able to knock out my enemies.

Ubuntu = Empathic Civilisation

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g[/youtube]

Jeremy Rifkin narrates some core concepts from his latest book

Compiz in your browser - unlock Firefox 3.6 hidden features

If you're running lucid, you should have the latest version 3.6 of Firefox from Mozilla.

Here are some hidden features  disabled by default, similar to Compiz expo and shift-switcher.



Open a new tab and type "about:config" into the address bar. Then find the following value and set it to true instead of false:

 browser.ctrlTab.previews

Once activated, you can preview tabs using  keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Tab (or Ctrl + Shift + Tab if you want to have the search engine as well).

To activate the display, also change the following option to true:

 browser.allTabs.previews

Flattr your neighbour -a new way to spread the economic love around

Flattr makes sense in so many ways, it won't be long before many "appreciation" systems like Digg follow suite because, the Free Culture movement is really not about being anti-Money. Rather, FOSS is all about removing the primitive element of coercion, aggression and violence from the world economic system.

As we move towards true post-scarcity  money becomes just another way to show gratitude. Remember the time when it was just an abstract means of exchange for the pre-Industrial, pre-Net age -- an abstraction which existed only to drive people away from acts of altruism while  enslaving their fellow human beings with Copyright and Intellectual Property Laws?

Flattr is in beta right now, but you can request to join as a beta tester.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zrMlEEWBgY&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Libre Graphics Magazine #0

The fifth annual  Libre Graphics Meeting 2010, was held in Brussels earlier this year.  Developers and users of Free, Libre and Open Source graphics software gathered to discuss the wonderful topic: --  "Cutting edge graphics software meets free culture"  Libre Graphics Magazine #0 was launched. Finally I have my mouse on a copy.

You can download it right here

Man interviews his sister about Ubuntu

Patrick L Archibald of hacker public radio interviews his sister Wynn Godbold who recently starting using Ubuntu Linux. She is a kindergarten teacher in South Carolina. They talk about her experience as a new Linux user. The also discuss open source adoption in the education field. At times it sounds unintentionally like an Ubuntu promo but there are some good snippets in the interview.

Go to this episode

FROM: Binary Revolution

Briquolo, a cool game

Type this in a console:

sudo apt-get install briquolo