Hi5 - Who's in?

Have you ever heard of Hi5? Well, I had no idea until today. A friend of mine invited me, so I joined in. It looks very much like Orkut but just does not seem to break every so often. I'll post a review once I have more time to check it out...

Fedora Sound Problem (Resolved)

Yehaaa! I finally have sound on my Fedora FC3 linux box. It was always working in Mandriva 2005 LE but after upgrading the kernel to 2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp, I had no sound.

Anyway, muting Headphone Jack Sense & Line Jack Sense via 'alsamixer' resolved the issue. Below is my e-mail to fedora-list@redhat.com:

I checked my settings again for these two you mentioned and as I wrote
above they were already off but I did not hear anything. Still, I kept
on trying to mute/unmute others and got noise at some point. Then, I
muted all and started to unmute them one by one. After a little bit
more trial-and-error, suddenly it worked! Interestingly, it turned out
that I really just needed to have that two Muted! Why it did not work
before is beyond me.

Browsers compared

Here is a nice Comparison of several Browsers. I heard several good reviews about Maxthon. It's worth trying!

No sound on Fedora FC3

For the last two days, I'm trying to find out why my sound card would not work on Fedora FC3. I know that sound card itself is fine because the other linux distribution on the same box - Mandriva 2005 LE - has no problems and when I was installing the Fedoram it correctly found my card:
ICH4 845G/GL Chipset AC'97 Audio Controller & I heard the sound.

I think problem started after I used "yum update" to install all updates which included a kernel upgrade to
2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp

I found out via "alsamixer" that all volume controls are muted by default and pumped them up to no avail.
Card is detected and drivers are installed properly:

[root@ahlnx ~] lsmod |grep snd
snd_intel8x0 35329 2
snd_ac97_codec 73145 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss 55153 0
snd_mixer_oss 22465 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 92741 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 28741 1 snd_pcm
snd 57765 8 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 13217 2 snd
snd_page_alloc 13765 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

So? This sucks!

Does Orkut rock or suck?

I started using orkut about 2 months ago. My experience is that it is PAIN to use orkut. Honestly, 8/10 times you get an error when you click on something. I was just trying to post something and after 10 trials, I got tired and stopped. It's too much frusturation...

Having used other Social Networking sites like Yahoo's 360 and Microsoft's Wallop, I think I clearly see the pluses and minuses now. I actually posted a lengthy suggestions list on MS Wallop Team's page. Somebody thanked me for suggestions but I don't know if they will implement them.

Basically the big advantage orkut has over the others is that it has 'communities' (or forums). That is where people meet others and I believe that's why orkut is so populer. I mean it really rocks when it works. Unfortunately that is not the case most of the time.

One may ask what does it have that yahoogroups do not? Interestingly, not really that much. I believe yahoo can do some magic to make 360 work like orkut.

Online File Storage

I was talking to a friend the other day who had just purchased a digital camera. He asked me what I was doing to back up my photos / files. I told him that I has written a script to copy important files to my wife's pc over the LAN and time to time I burn them onto DVDs.

He said he was afraid to keep them on his pc because he was afraid to lose them so he was looking for an online file storage solution. It made perfect sense! The challenge is to find a 'saf' location. You do not want to put your files on to a server and find out that company went out of business the other day.

I know a few guys who are using fotki for storing their fotos (I never liked the name). They charge a flat fee of $50/year for unlimited access, not that bad actually.

If you just would like to carry around a few files, Yahoo hass its Yahoo briefcase which can hold about 30MB only. Some people are using their gmail accounts to store files but that is not really convenient.

There is a company called streamload, offering 10 GB storage area. The catch is that you can only download 100MB/month, yet it is free.

I checked some other site like flipdrive, xdrive etc. For the convenience they are offering, they are not that pricey either. The question remains: are they secure enough and are they going to be around.

In fact, I keep on asking myself, why would not Google (or Yahoo) go into online storage business. They have a good reputation and are trusted. As they are already offering GB e-mails they seem to have no issue with space.

Yahoo! Mindset

I have been seen more articled about Yahoo! Mindset which is basically a beta product (aka. in research phase) that gives you a new way of relating searches to your needs.



It has a slider. On one end is "shopping", on the other is "researching". when you move the slider to a side, results of the search changes accordingly. I just started playing with it and thingking that it is in beta phase one should not have high hopes but I think it is a cool idea!



Oh BTW, while you are the, take a look at Yahoo Research page.

Dual booting Fedora and Mandriva

Last weekend I've downloaded both Mandriva 2005 LE DVD and Fedora Core 3 DVD and installed them on my spare pc. Problem was that I only had 1 SCSI HD and when I installed the second Linux distibution, its loader did not recognize the other one. So, below is how I tinkered with grub and finally made it work in anyway I wanted.

I posted an e-mail to Mandriva expert group and asked for help. Someone extended his handed and suggested that I copy Mandriva boot files into Fedora boot partition and add an entry for it in the grub. I did it and it worked.

Below is from my e-mail to the grup but note that boot loader application 'grub' does not care if you have an ide or scsi. First harddrive will be shown as hd0 (not as sd0 as one might expect).

-----------------------------------------
[root@ahlnx ~] fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 36.4 GB, 36420075520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4427 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Cap. Id System Holds
----------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1 300MB 83 Linux (Mandriva /boot)
/dev/sda2 12.5GB 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 100MB 83 Linux (Fedora /boot)
/dev/sda4 22.5GB 8e Linux LVM (Fedora /)
/dev/sda5 2.0GB 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda6 10.0GB 83 Linux (Mandriva /)

First I mounted /dev/sda1 - where my current Mandriva boot images are
hold - to Fedora & copied everything under it to /boot/Mandriva:

mkdir /mnt/bootMandriva
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/bootMandriva
cd /mnt/bootMandriva
rsync -va . /boot/Mandriva

Then, I added these lines in /etc/grub.conf
title Mandrive 2005
root (hd0,2)
kernel /Mandriva/vmlinuz-2.6.11-6mdksmp ro root=/dev/sda6
initrd /Mandriva/initrd-2.6.11-6mdksmp.img

Happy ending, eh? Well, not so quick...Once I got on to Mandriva, I
could not go back to Fedora as it did not know anything about Fedora!

So, I tried the same approach by mounting fedora boot partion /dev/sda3
to Mandriva and adding an entry to /etc/lilo.conf after copying 3 files
that I thought would do the trick:
config-2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp
initrd-2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp.img
vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp
System.map-2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp

Unfortunately I got errors during boot...

I'll keep on troubleshooting this as it serves as a good learning
practice for me. For the time being, I loaded grub back (to MBR):

[root@ahlnx ~] grub
[root@ahlnx ~] grub> root (hd0,2)
[root@ahlnx ~] grub> setup (hd0)
[root@ahlnx ~] grub> quit

root (hd0,2) tells grub that my boot partition is /dev/sda3
setup (hd0) loads grub into MBR (Master Boot Record) so that it will run next time I boot.

After rebooting, I am back to Fedora.
-----------------------------------------
Well, actually after a little bit more digging, I realized that I did not need to copy boot files from the linux boot partition at all. So, I added the following entry into /etc/grub.conf on Fedora's boot sector (/dev/sda3)

title Mandriva 2005 (From /dev/sda1)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/sda6
initrd /initrd.img
And just to prove it to myself that I could it do the same from Mandriva side, I added the following entry into /boot/grub/menu.lst on Mandriva's boot sector (/dev/sda1)

title Fedora (Boot from Fedora /boot)
kernel (hd0,2)/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
initrd (hd0,2)/initrd-2.6.11-1.27_FC3smp.img

The interesting thing is the part which reads root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
This notation seems to be specific to my installation and Grub. Lilo does not recognize it as a valid root (/) partition.

Plumber - Movie

Plumber - MovieThis is a fun movie!

Google Labs

Google Labs is Google's technology playground. Currently they are testing personalized home pages. Check it out...

Yahoo! Messenger Beta - Fixed

I fixed my connection problem by choosing "No Proxies" instead of "Firewall with no proxies" which used to be my default in the previous version. The new build number is: 7,0,0,242!

Yahoo! Messenger Beta

Yahoo! Messenger Beta is available for download from Yahoo. I tried it but seems to have some connection issues.



I checked Yahoo's page. Apparently there is a page for those people who are having connection issues with Beta but guess what. It is not accessible: "The requested URL /pager/download/beta/more.html was not found on this server."

Arrrgh!

Traffic & Weather info on Google Map

Traffic/Weather info on Google Map


I found out about this cool web site called Google-Traffic.com . Apparently, someone found yet another useful way to hack Google Map to display Traffic & Weather info on it. In fact, you can also display such info on Yahoo Maps too. Pretty neat trick!

Scot's Newsletter - Customizing Firefox

Scot's Newsletter | The Best Of | Customizing Firefox I'm posting this for my own reference. Scot has a nice list of customization on this web site. I am also a subscriber of his monthly newsletter. Check out this month's issue here and if you like it you can subscribe to it here.

Google puts the brake on Web Accelerator

Google puts the brake on Web Accelerator The Register
Wow. My site took the greatest page hit when I posted the issue I discovered with Google Web Accelerator. I stopped using Google Web Accelerator since then.

Apparently Google has disabled downloads of its Web Accelerator software less than a week after introducing the service. The suspension follows reports that the software was caching sensitive content, such as user control panels to online forums. Continue at source

Have some fun: Rocketboom

I learnt about a vlog site called Rocketboom. They have 3mins long funny vlogs everyday. Oh, do not forget to check out yet another histerical 'numa numa' video.

Google Web Accelerator - 2

Citrix Error

OK, it's been a few days since I installed Google Web Accelerator . I have not had a chance to use my pc much but it claims that it saved me 1.9 mins.

Anyway, last night I started seeing the error above when I was trying to connect to my office via Citrix. As soon as I shutdown the Google Web Accelerator, it started working. Hmm, I tried it again today and the same story. I guess I will report it to Google...

Google Web Accelerator

Google Web Accelerator

Here is yet another Beta tool from Google: Web Accelerator . Hmm, maybe I should really go ahead and buy their stock...

You may ask, 'hey I already have Broadband! Why would I need a web accelerator?'. My answer would be 'If you are asking that, you probably do not need it'.

Honestly, as a broadband user, I do not really need it but as a curious technologist, indeed I went ahead and intalled it. I read the help & faq, it looks like a giant proxy server implementation to me. I'll post my findings later on...

War Nerd - Glory to the Turks!

eXile - Issue #212 - War Nerd - Glory to the Turks! - By Gary Brecher

A friend of mine forwarded this link to me. There are a few small mistakes (it was Ottomans that captured Istanbul not Seljuks) but it is a fun article about Turkish History...

Circumventing Group Policy Settings

Mark's Blog: Circumventing Group Policy Settings



Group policy settings are an integral part of any Windows-based IT environment. If you’re a network administrator you use them to enforce corporate security and desktop management policy, and if you’re a user you’ve almost certainly been frustrated by the limitations imposed by those policies. Regardless of which you are, you should be aware that if the users in your network belong to the local administrator’s group they can get around policies any time they want. Continue at source...