I’m used to Google Search. For a change, I tried Live Search and Yahoo Search, and the results I got were simply pathetic! I wanted to find a circuit diagram to interface custom hardware to the USB port of my computer.

Google gave me loads of relevent stuff and I managed to find what I needed, but look at the results Live Search and Yahoo Search! They’re totally useless! I wonder why they’re still around.

• Here are the Google Results: 11400 results (with a lot of relevent results ofcourse)

• The Live Results: 0 results (Has only the usual good for nothing Eye-Candy stuff)

• The Yahoo Results: 1 results (Thank God they managed to find one result! Live Search would have been number 2 otherwise. :D)

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Tags: Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, Image Search, Search Engines

Check this out! This picture shows a 27 year old IBM 3380 hard drive that has a storage of 2.52 GB and a 1GB SD card. The IBM hard drive that looks more like a car radiator weighs around 32kg and used to cost around and its purchase price at time of introduction ranged from $81,000 to $142,200. Man this is unbelievable!!!

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Tags: IBM3380, SD Card, Semiconductor Memory

Wine Finally supports Winamp with Enhancer. The latest version of Wine, the Windows Emulator was launched a couple of days back and now u can run Winamp with Enhancer without any problems with installation or configuring. Ofcourse there are a few problems. The Media Library doesnt work, Modern skins dont work and a few other minor problems as can be seen from the screenshot below.

If you’re running Ubuntu or any other Debian based OS like Debian itself, here’s how you can install Wine 0.9.45:

• Goto System -> Administration -> Software Sources and choose the Third-Party Software tab.

• Now click the Add… button near the bottom left corner.

• Enter the following in the Apt-Line text box and click Add Source

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt feisty main

• Click Add… once again, type the following and click Add Source

deb-src http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt feisty main

• Click Close to close the Software Sources dialog box and a dialog asking you to reload the software list appears. Click Reload.

• Goto System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager, search for Wine from the software list, and Mark it for installation by right-clicking the item. This installation will remove any previous versions of Wine that you might have.

• Now click Apply at the top of the SPM window to complete the installation.

• Once Wine is installed, you can install Winamp by double clicking on the Winamp installer .exe file.

• Make sure you deselect Modern skin support and Winamp Agent before starting the installation.

• When done, you can start winamp with the launcher on the desktop or by choosing Applications -> Wine -> Programs -> Winamp -> Winamp

• If, for some reason the launchers dont appear, you can create a launcher from the installed executable.
  • Goto your Home folder and press Ctrl+H to display hidden folders.
  • Open the .wine directory and follow this path: ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Winamp
  • In here, open winamp.exe to start. You can create a shortcut by right-clicking winamp.exe and choosing Make Link. You can copy the link to the desktop or to a panel.

Phew. That’s a long procedure. If only XMMS, Audacious, Beep or any of the Linux music players have a DSP plugin as good as Enhancer0.17, life would have been much easier!

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Tags: Wine0.9.45, Winamp, Linux, Ubuntu, Enhancer 0.17

Do Americans really print stuff on toilet paper? Well, if they ever want to, GIMP has a template even for that! But what would they print on them? The name of their girlfriends?

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Tags: GIMP, Toilet Paper

Way to go, China! A very noble thing to do on my birthday!

September 22nd marks the first annual “No Car Day” in China, a national campaign hoping to reduce exhaust emissions and ease traffic congestion by limiting the number of private vehicles on the roads. Over 100 cities in China will participate, leaving residents to travel by foot, bike or public transportation.

But are they trying to tell us that one day without any cars on the road is going to put the environment back on balance?

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Tags:Environment, China, No Car Day

I don’t know why, but I’ve been concentrating a lot on eye-candy stuff these days. I was getting extremely annoyed when I found that my nVidia display card won’t support compiz(the desktop effects thing on System -> Preferences in feisty), which is the ultimate eye candy for any Linux computer. I was googling for more eye candy and I found gDesklets to be interesting.

And here it is! My desktop with a cool looking analog clock, an analog calender, and analog sticky note, a countdown and ofcourse, Chad Smith’s picture.

It was available on the Debian repository, so installing it was extremely easy. Alright. Now I gotta go and download more desklets!

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Tags: gDesklets

The Office Open XML(OOXML) document format of Microsoft has been rejected by ISO as an international document standard. MS had been trying very hard to obtain ISO certification for its format. MS had even published an advertisement to promote the OOXML in Linux for You!!

And as always, MS has failed again to please the experts. Phew.. There is some space to breathe now on the internet. But MS has never relied on the experts for its revenue. It has always targeted the Layman. If MS had targeted the experts, it would have been nowhere by now!

Anyways, OOXML is not an international standard, and the Open Document Format(ODF) of the Free Software community is an international standard. MS should better add support for the ODF in their Office Suite.

Microsoft is desperate, but it appears it isn’t going to make it. Its hopes to get the new OOXML document format certified by the ISO are fading away slowly. Here’s why:

1. Several countries have expressed their disapproval for OOXML.
2. India and more countries have officially given the middle finger to OOXML.
3. As many as 200 design flaws have been detected in OOXML.
4. Unlike what MS claims, editing OOXML documents manually makes them unreadable in Office 2007.
5. Communities opposing the OOXML appear to be way too active!
6. There are rumors that MS has already resorted to bribery and corruption inside the ISO to get their format certified.
7. The WashingtonPost has reported that MS has been forcing partners to vote in favor of OOXML.
8. Rea Maor had predicted that MS will be doomed.

Meanwhile, the OpenDocument Format(ODF) has already become an ISO standard. Infact, it is even supported by MS.The only thing that bothers me now is that poor Microsoft’s first Open initiative is a failure in the making.

By the way, why isn’t anyone thinking that this issue is getting too much attention world-wide? It might be encouraging to see MS fall, but does it really matter to us? Don’t we have bigger things to think about?

Downloading applications from the internet and installing them every time can be a tedious job. This article, for Ubuntu newbies, contains a small introduction to the Debian package manager and using the Debian DVDs as software sources and installing applications in Ubuntu. You’ll have to download the three Debian DVD images, and burn them on DVDs. Downloading with BitTorrent is the easiest way to get Debian.
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