Computer Tips -Tech Info

Probably the biggest news so far today, at least in linux circles is the official release of the Dapper Drake…. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Support) (and kubuntu and edubuntu all…). I’ve been playing with an install based on the Release Candidate (and now upgraded to even include KDE 3.5.3….. I’m really impressed that there were kde 3.5.3 packages available for Dapper Drake 1) before the official release which only officially includes 3.5.2 and 2) almost simultaneous to the KDE announcement. Anyway…. (Almost all links are to the US mirrors…) Kubuntu download images are avialable as is the shipit free cds for kubuntu and shipit free cds for ubuntu and the various ubuntu cd image downloads………….

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One of the things I’ve really admired about the Ubuntu project is that they will MAIL you REAL cds of their product for free. That can give a much more professional look for redistribution than a hand burned cd with handwritten green ink saying ubuntu linux 5.10…. Well, Ubuntu has done this for quite a while, NOW the “Shipit” service is available for Kubuntu. You’ll basically need a Launchpad account first. Also, Edubuntu now will ship free cds as well.

According to the FAQ… “All CDs currently contain version 6.06 LTS, development codename “Dapper Drake”. For every CD you order, we will send you one package that contains a single CD (live CD installer) in a cardboard wallet. This is true for all architectures.”

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Well it looks as though the storms of Trackback and Comment spam that I mentioned last week have just about tailed off now. About 6200-6300 posts were reported as junk by akismet and the “other” spam killing plugin probably got another couple hundred, so it’s been pretty deep. Anyway, the first few days, I was seeing spikes of about 200 or so junk comments/trackbacks happen for about an hour every 2-3 hours and today there’s just been a “spike” of a bit under 100 for an hour once in the day. I think there may have been one yesterday. Just not much to “write home about”.

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After I did my “Kiosk” upgrade to KDE 3.5.2 I was really interested to see if Konqueror would finally work with Google Maps, of course, the problem isn’t with Konqueror it’s with the browser detection. Konqueror uses something called khtml to render web pages. It’s really a fairly good/standards compliant ACID test passing engine. So much so that Apple thought they would base Safari on it. The problem is that some websites recognize “Safari” in the User agent and say, “sorry, we don’t support you” if the browser user agent claims Konqueror….

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Some time back I had seen a quick reference to Mandriva Kiosk as some new Mandriva version of the “Click and Run” repository of Linspire. I finally got a chance to give it a try with the upgrade of KDE to 3.5.2 (Mandriva 2006 had shipped with the 3.4.x series of KDE.) Anyway, I found the process to make it work fairly straightforward. I installed the 4 required packages (new versions could only be found on the kiosk webpage – none of the urpmi sources, even updates new about the newest version of mdkonline, or urpmi/gurpmi…) Once those were done and konqueror restarted, I gave a click at installing kde 3.5.2 and off it went.

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This is bad – whose defending the defender? eEye security has a bulletin announced that regards a remotely exploitable vulnerability in Symantec Antivirus 10.x and Symantec Client Security 3.x They say other versions MAY be vulnerable they’re waiting for information from Symantec. Now, Symantec is probably the biggest selling antivirus package out there. It looks as though, from Symantec’s advisory, that the Norton Antivirus product line is not affected, ONLY “Symantec Client Security 3.1” and “Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 10.1”

They have released IDS updates to try to detect attempted exploits of this….

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Google has apparently won a pricey bidding war in the race to have their software bundled with new Dell PC’s over the next 3 years. Essentially, I suspect this means, Google Desktop (perhaps Google Pack?) will be preinstalled, as well as browser settings adjusted to make a Google-ified search page the default and probably Google as the default search provider for the browser. They apparently dug in their heels and were determined to win the bidding after seeing the built in search box in IE7 which is in Beta….

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I think at one point I’ve said that once taxes are put in place they tend NEVER to go away. Well, I must admit I’m wrong. 108 years ago in an effort to help finance the Spanish American War, long distance telephone taxes went into place. The tax will no longer be in effect as of July 31, 2006. Supposedly, we will be able to file for a refund of our last three years worth of long-distance taxes for land/cell phones in the 2006 tax returns. I stand corrected… once taxes are put in place they ALMOST Never go away (and if it’s for a specific purpose, it may hang around long after that purpose is completed.)

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One of the big stories out today… Google has released an “early beta” version of Picasa for linux. I first saw the news from the ZDNet Googling Google blog. There are deb, rpm and bin downloads available. The Official Google blog gives a few more details, for instance… this “magic” is made possible by a “carefully tested version of wine”. Also, they solicit feedback in the Google Labs Picasa for Linux group. I think this is very good news for linux users.

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This has been a slow posting week. Much slower than I had hoped across all the sites. The main reason is a stomach bug of sorts (flu?) Anyway, I managed to get a little work done yesterday and felt clobbered again today. I don’t know how much I’ll be posting before next Tuesday. There is a project I’m getting ready to launch in relation to this site which hopefully will be fleshed out by next week. I’ve already got two essential pieces in place and just need to revise it a bit. Of course, there are lots of news stories going on above and beyond what I had plans of doing this week and there are only a few that I feel like I MUST give an update on here…

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