Yesterday, Opera software didn’t release a UNIX build of Evenes simply because, it wasn’t polished enough to be usable. Opera has long been criticized due to the lack of a native interface for UNIX and Mac. With Opera 10.5 for Mac, the developers have tried to address this issue by switching to the Cocoa framework. Similar treatment is planned for the Linux build too.

With Evenes, Opera Software will be ditching the QT framework. Yes, you would no longer need to have QT libraries installed in order to use Opera. This is expected to make Opera smaller and faster.

Opera 10.5 will be using X Window (X11) drawing primitives. However, it will also support native styling for both Gnome and KDE. The KDE build isn’t yet ready but we do have a few screenshots for GNOME users.

So, when will Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for Linux be released? When it’s ready.

The post Opera 10.5 For Linux: What We Know appeared first on Techie Buzz.

In a post to the ext4 developer’s mailing list, Senior Engineer Michael Rubin explains that Google had been deciding upon a filesystem upgrade to their existing filesystem, and after a lot of performance testing of the available filesystems, including   xfs, ext4 and jfs, they came to a conclusion that ext4 was best suited to their needs. Although xfs performed close to ext4, the deciding factor on ext4 was that it provided an easy upgrade path from their existing ext2 filesystem to ext4.

Ext4 has become the default filesystem for several of the popular Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE and had become an official part of Linux kernel since Linux 2.6.28 kernel. ext4 features several improvements over its predecessor, amongst which include support for files upto 16 tebibytes ( 1 tebibytes equals 1,024 gibibyes , with 1gibibyte equal to 1.074 gigabytes) and a maximum volume size of upto 1 Exbibyte. Other features of the ext4 are backwards compatibility with ext2/ext3 filesystems, and a subdirectory limitation of upto 64,000 subdirectories, and an online defragmentation tool which is still under development stages, however.

Interestingly, one of ext4’s lead developer, Theodore Ts’o is also a Google employee, notes SJVN indicating that Google would most likely use his expertise in further getting even more performance out of an already fast filesystem.

The post Google Implements Ext4 Filesystem on Their Servers appeared first on Techie Buzz.

The Operation Satyagraha took place in 2008 and the investigation has been continuing ever since. Apparently, the Brazil was investigating the drives initially but they were handed over to the FBI only when they could not handle it anymore. However, the FBI has returned the drives saying it failed to decrypt the drives.

The hard drives are using an AES and TrueCrypt. The FBI has been trying a dictionary attack on the files and has failed so far. The failure to decrypt these hard drives has brought immense shame to the FBI and has exposed its weakness at dealing with the technological advancements of modern times. Funnily enough, there exists no law in Brazil to force the banker give up his passwords.

A few months ago, there was news of the FBI director missing the fact that Google earth is not real time and does not show live data. See this hilarious news  here. This proves how the security agencies in various countries are lagging behind in technology.

The post Did the FBI Fail to Decrypt a Hard Drive Encrypted with TrueCrypt? appeared first on Techie Buzz.

OpenOffice.org and The Apache Foundation

While it is a good thing that the OpenOffice.org assets are in the hands of the open source community, questions will be asked as to why Oracle choose the Apache Foundation. Regarding that decision, Luke Kowalski had this to say:

Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development.

Jim Jagielski, president, The Apache Software Foundation, has welcomed Oracle’s move to donate OpenOffice.org to the Apache Foundation:

We welcome highly-focused, emerging projects from individual contributors, as well as those with robust developer communities, global user bases, and strong corporate backing.

Jagielski also added that OpenOffice will be initially an Apache incubator project. Upon maturing into a Top Level Project, a committee will be formed to guide the project on its day-to-day working.

Why Apache Foundation and not The Document Foundation?

If you recall, after Oracle acquired OpenOffice.org, many of the leading OpenOffice.org contributors formed The Document Foundation. The Document Foundation requested Oracle to join them and donate the name “OpenOffice.org” to the community. Oracle snubbed them and asked them to leave OpenOffice.org instead.

They left OpenOffice.org, along with most of the other contributors, and went on to fork OpenOffice.org to form another office suite LibreOffice. LibreOffice has been very successful and most of the major Linux distributions have switched over to LibreOffice as the default office application suite.

So, considering the history between The Document Foundation and Oracle, it is not surprising that Oracle decided to ignore The Document Foundation and gave OpenOffice.org to the Apache Foundation.

Licensing Issues

A problem with OpenOffice.org becoming an Apache project will be the licensing issue. Apache projects uses the Apache Public License while OpenOffice.org uses the GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL) version 3. The LGPL and Apache Public License are not compatible with each other in matters regarding distribution with software under other license and distribution of derivatives.

The GNU Lesser Public License version 3 allows for the distribution of the software under LGPL with software under other license with certain restrictions. The distributor has to provide the source code of the software under LGPL along with the modifications made to it. The Apache Public License allows the distribution of the software without any such restrictions.

Regarding the derivative works, the LGPL allows their distribution only if the derivative is also under LGPL or GPL. Under the Apache Public License, the derivatives are free to choose any license as long as ‘Apache’ is not included in its name.

It will be interesting to see how this gets sorted out.

The post Oracle “Donates” OpenOffice.org To The Apache Foundation appeared first on Techie Buzz.

However WLW does not have options to add additional fields to the post, so I have to manually go in and edit the posts when I want to customize the title or keywords for SEO optimization once I have published the post.

And I am pretty sure many other bloggers who use WLW and SEO Pack may be facing the same problems, this new plugin I created aims to do away with that issue, allowing users to specify the SEO Title, keywords and description from within Windows Live Writer interface.

Yes you heard it right, the All In One SEO Pack Bridge for WLW allows bloggers to specify the SEO title, keywords and description while composing posts from WLW.

This plugin is basically made up of two components, one is a WordPress plugin which you will need to install on the your WordPress blog, and another is a Windows Live Writer plugin which will allow you to add SEO details while creating or editing a post.

How To Use the All in One SEO Pack Bridge for WLW

The most important thing is to first install the WordPress plugin and activate it on your blog, this plugin is responsible for adding the All in One SEO Pack parameters to the database, which will then be used by the All in One SEO Pack plugin to optimize your titles and add keywords and description to the post.

Once you have installed the WordPress plugin, download the WLW plugin available as a DLL file (no installer available for this release, may add it in future releases) and drop it into the Plugins folder in WLW directory.

Adding SEO parameters to the post is fairly simple, however due to a issue I have with entering html comments while in edit mode, adding and deleting those parameters are slightly different (and I hope to improve them in future, any WLW plugin developers help will be appreciated here).

To add the SEO parameters from WLW, first select the source view or use the Shift + F11 shortcut key, once you are in source code view, place your cursor at the end of the post and select Add SEO Information from the Insert menu or from the sidebar. Doing this in source view is of utmost importance, or else the SEO parameters will not be added to the post.

A new window will popup asking you for the SEO parameters, input them and hit enter, it is not necessary to add all the parameters, just add those that you require.

If you want to edit the SEO parameters you will have to first delete them from the HTML source, look for the HTML comments that looks similar to the code snippet below.

   1: <!--aiospwlwbstart

   2: aiosp_title=SEO Title

   3: aiosp_keywords=SEO,KEYWORDS

   4: aiosp_description=SEO Description

   5: aiospwlwbsend—>

It may not exactly look the same, but you may have to delete the data between <!—aiospwlwbstart and aiospwlwbsend—>

I know that this adds a minor caveat to this plugin, but there is really no other way to do it, or if there is I am still to come across it, needless to say, I will certainly improve this plugin in the future and fix the issues.

I am NOT a C# developer but work most in Java and PHP, I learnt C# and the Windows Live Writer API in 2 days and wrote the WLW plugin, so please excuse the problems it has, I will definitely improve on it in the near future.

You can watch the instructional video below to understand why you should use this plugin and how it works.

Important Instructions and Notes About This Plugin

Install the WordPress plugin to your blog The All In One SEO Pack WLW Bridge plugin will only work if you install the WordPress plugin, so make sure you do that.

Install All In One SEO Pack Plugin Well must I say more, without this plugin there is no point in having a bridge for WLW.

Use HTML Source to Add SEO Tags Ideally I wouldn’t want this in the release, but due to some issues I am facing while inserting HTML comments into the post in Edit more, the tags can only be inserted using source view for now, am really sorry but this is how it works, will make sure to fix this in a future release.

Delete The Current Tags when you want to make changes As instructed above, please delete the older tags from the HTML source before adding new ones, once again this will be improved upon in future releases.

This plugin is not a replacement for All in One SEO Pack – This plugin is not a part of All in One SEO Pack plugin and neither does it aim to duplicate its functionality, the only reason for creating this plugin is to allow users to add SEO tags from Windows Live Writer.

The WordPress plugin is required for this feature to be available through WLW, and it only reads the contents and stores the SEO parameters in the database, it does not make changes to how your title is optimized or add keywords or description to your post, those things will be handled by the All In One SEO Pack plugin.

TODO List For This Plugin

• Figure out a way so that users do not have to use the source view to specify the SEO details.
• Allow users the option to make changes to entered SEO tags, without having to delete them from the HTML source.
• Include the SEO parameters that have been added using the WordPress Dashboard, so that they can be changed or edited using Windows Live Writer
• Any other feature requests from users of the plugin.

Plugin Meta Information

• All In One SEO Pack Windows Live Writer Bridge: WordPress Plugin version 1.0, created on 3rd April 2009.
• All In One SEO Pack Windows Live Writer Bridge: WLW Plugin version 0.1, created on 3rd April 2009.

I spent time and put in efforts to learnt something new to address a issue many of you face by using up my time, the plugin is offered free of cost, however if you think this deserves some love, go ahead and donate towards plugin creation and maintenance expenses, of-course its optional.

Support Requests, Bug Reports and Feature Requests

Please do not use the comment form to post your bugs, instead make use of the All In One SEO Pack WLW Bridge Forum, to post your bugs and support requests, you can use the forum to post feature requests.

I hope you understand, but finding bugs in comments is pretty hard and doing it in the forum will help me fix bugs them quickly.

Software Requirements

I have tested this plugin in WordPress 2.7.1 only, however this should work from WordPress 2.1 and above.

Also I am using the Windows Live Writer Technical Refresh, if you are using any other version and can’t get it to work, please post it in the support forum.

.Net Framework 2.0 is required to run this plugin for Windows Live Writer.

The post All In One SEO Pack Bridge for WLW Plugin Release appeared first on Techie Buzz.

The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011; United States Senate Bill S.968) is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to “rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods”, especially those registered outside the U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and 11 initial bipartisan co-sponsors introduced the bill on May 12, 2011.

With SOPA being opposed by every Tom Dick and Harry out there, its backers were left with no choice. Therefore, they decided to jump on the PIPA bandwagon. According to a post on Reddit, PIPA has already gathered a support of 40 senators and needs 20 more to pass to the House. Now, Redditors are up in protest against PIPA. They are working hard to let senators know that PIPA is as undesirable as SOPA. If you think this bill does not do justice to the Internet and to free speech, you can join them in this fight.

The US is keen on censorship. It is introducing one offensive bill after another. Burns from COICA last year had not healed, when PIPA arrived and now SOPA was barely averted. Apparently, the media industry is trying its best to push the Internet into censorship, the people are opposing it to their best capacity, and the Government only stands as an enabler with no wise decision of its own!

The post With Everyone Busy Opposing SOPA, Sister Bill “PROTECT IP” Might Enjoy a Free Pass appeared first on Techie Buzz.

However, while it certainly is an important milestone and turning point for Microsoft, the event lacked plenty of important details pertaining to the product itself. We’re still in the dark about exact pricing and availability information, among other things, leaving many intrigued and mystified about key factors that could make or break the device.

Yesterday, WPCentral spotted that Swedish online store Webhallen listed the Microsoft Surface on their website, which sported some ludicrous pricing; the entry-level ARM-based 32GB Surface is priced at 6990 NOK, or roughly $1150 USD. What fascinates me is that there are posts aggregating this “story” that don’t immediately ridicule, but rather entertain the idea, as though it’s even plausible. On top of the outlandish pricing, we already know that the Surface will only be officially available through Microsoft Stores (and their online outlet.)

I also reached out to Webhallen, and they issued a comment stating that existing prices on the site are not based on any word from Microsoft whatsoever:

Our customers are very interested in pre-ordering these products, so we have set a high preliminary pricing for the lineup so that they may be able to pre-order them.

Just to clarify, we have not received any pricing from Microsoft regarding MRSP or purchasing net cost, and any people who have booked the Surface at this high price will of course have their order adjusted before any product is shipped. So we’re not going to overcharge anyone for being an early adopter.

I understand that Microsoft does some pretty unusual things, but they’re not batshit crazy.

So in conclusion, here’s a recap of yesterday’s highly credible blog posts: Microsoft, the company that needs every advantage it can get to even gain a smidgen of ground in the tablet market will charge a few hundred dollars more than a 32GB WiFi+3G iPad for its entry-level model, and upwards of $2000 for an Intel-based Surface Pro which is essentially an Ultrabook/Macbook Air competitor. Riiighhttt.

The post No, Microsoft’s Entry-Level Surface Will Not Cost $1000 appeared first on Techie Buzz.

In an internal email sent to OpenSolaris development team by Mike Shapiro, Bill Nesheim and Chris Armes, they have informed the OpenSolaris Development Team that the OpenSolaris project has been discontinued. Oracle will now be focusing their resources on Solaris 11 and there will be no other binary distributions including OpenSolaris.

This is what they wrote:

All of Oracle’s efforts on binary distributions of Solaris technology  will be focused on Solaris 11. We will not release any other binary  distributions, such as nightly or bi-weekly builds of Solaris  binaries, or an OpenSolaris 2010.05 or later distribution.

In the same email, they have also announced that they will release an open-source version of Solaris 11 as Solaris 11 Express. However, unlike OpenSolaris which is released way ahead of the commercial product, Solaris 11 Express will not be released ahead of the commercial version. It will be released after the commercial product have already shipped.

We will have a Solaris 11 binary distribution, called Solaris 11  Express, that will have a free developer RTU license, and an optional  support plan. We will  determine a simple, cost-effective means of getting enterprise users  of prior OpenSolaris binary releases to migrate to S11 Express.

The email has since then been leaked and you can see it here. There has been no official words from Oracle so far.

What are your thoughts on Oracle killing off the OpenSolaris Project?

The post Oracle Has Killed OpenSolaris appeared first on Techie Buzz.

It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber. – Mark Kac

If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist’

Richard Feynman (pronounced, appropriately, as ‘fine man’) was born to Melville and Lucille Feynman, on 11th May, 1918 in Far Rockaway, New York. His parents had already predicted the future of their son he was going to be a scientist. By the end of high school and while in MIT for his bachelor degree in Physics, he was already fulfilling this prophecy. What they did not know was that their son would become one of the greatest of all times and lay down the groundwork for the most successful theory known to all of science. He would become to the second half of twentieth century physics what Einstein was to the first half.

The Feynman Algorithm

Later, people would wonder at the simple algorithm that Feynman used to follow for solving different problems in physics. Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann, his rival at Caltech, outlined the Feynman algorithm:

1. Write down the problem
2. Think real hard (scratch your forehead a bit, if needed)
3. Write down the solution

The only downside to this procedure is its limited use to most other people. Feynman himself said of his method: What one fool can do, another can too.

MIT, Marriage, Least Action, and his First Paper

In MIT, Feynman worked under the guidance of John Wheeler, a vibrant fearless man, only about 4 years older. Feynman enjoyed the talks they had and soon learned enough of mathematics to outdo Wheeler himself. They worked on an electromagnetic theory, worrying about the infinite self-energies of charged point particles, removing the entire field framework and replacing them by action-at-a-point mechanisms, an extremely bold step against the tide of modern physics. The Wheeler-Feynman theory was well received when it was presented by Feynman to an audience comprising illustrious personalities like Einstein, Pauli, von Neumann and Wigner. A decade later, the theory would be proved wrong, and Feynman would send a letter to Wheeler saying Guess we were wrong about the absorber theory’ and get no response from him.

In the meantime, he was introduced to a physical concept that would change the course of his life the Principle of Least Action. His mathematics teacher, Mr. Bader, noticing him to be fidgety in class, introduced the concept. Feynman fell in love with it and the marriage would last for the rest of his life. He had already fallen in love with a girl Arline Greenbaum and they would also be married in a few years, but that would end in tragedy.

The principle of least action is simple. Total energy for a system can be defined as the sum of kinetic and potential energies. If the system is isolated, the total energy remains constant

A quantity, known as the Lagrangian, is defined as kinetic energy minus potential energy. This is not a constant quantity. In fact this depends on the path a particle takes. Action is defined as the sum of Lagrangian calculated at different points in the path over the entire path. (This continuous sum is referred to as an integral). Now, here’s the catch. You can calculate the action for many millions of paths. The least value of action will come from the path that the particle actually takes. In other words, a particle always takes the path of least action.

But, Feynman asked, is that the only path quantum particles take, or are contributions from other paths also important? Before he could answer this question, his country needed him. In a fit of patriotic fervor, he joined the Manhattan Project. He was also concerned about his fiancée suddenly deteriorating health. She had Lymphatic Tuberculosis. Feynman took as much care of her as he could. They decided to get married, and, despite opposition from his parents, they did. Arline died just after the war ended. Feynman did not cry for her; he was prepared for this. Later, he would see a dress in London, and, thinking that Arline would have looked good in it, burst out. In his last letter to Arline, which he wrote after her death, he ends with the poignant “PS: Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address”.

The Manhattan Project

Feynman played a major part in the Manhattan Project his first brush with real calculations, throwing out the idealizations often made in theoretical physics. He amazed people with his math skills, entertained people by showing tricks he could do with a pencil and, most famously, by cracking safes! He felt no guilt or remorse about the bomb. Later, however, he would often mentally question the perceived futility of any architectural constructions. Didn’t they know that an atom bomb could instantly destroy all?

The Crowning Glory

After receiving his Ph.D. during the war, Feynman was free to develop the key ideas of his own theory. What if the electron followed all possible paths from a source to a destination? If the electron, or photon, went through both slits in a double-slit experiment or through all three slits in a triple-slit experiment, should it not go through all possible points in space, while propagating through free space? (Think about it: Free space means an infinite number of slits! It should go through all of them!)

This led him onto a new approach to quantum mechanics, which modern physicists think is THE approach the path integral formulation. It’s quite technical, but the basic idea is the principle of least action. Contributions from all paths need to be considered, not just the path the particles take classically. The electron sniffs its way through space-time, as Feynman explained.
In order to do an integral, he invented diagrams, known as Feynman diagrams. Now these diagrams are ubiquitous in quantum field theory.

A Feynman Diagram (for Gluon Radiation)

This revolutionary new idea led to a new more powerful formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) the quantum theory of electrons, light and their interaction. This is a jewel in the crown of physics, accurate to ten parts in a billion. As Feynman pointed out, this was like measuring the distance from New York to Los Angeles to the accuracy of the breadth of a single human hair.
As Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow notes, only Feynman could come up with such a prescription of following all paths, since he was himself like an electron. Freeman Dyson initially described Feynman as “half genius and half buffoon”, later updating it to “full genius and full buffoon”.

Feynman Playing the Bongos

Feynman also dabbled’ in superfluidity, publishing a series of six classic papers.

Cancer, Challenger Disaster and Death

In 1978, Feynman was diagnosed with cancer. In 1986, he was called to be a panelist in the 12 member panel investigating the Challenger tragedy. His (third) wife had convinced him that

If you don’t do it, there will be 12 people, all in a group, going around from place to place together. But if you join the commission, there will be 11 peopleall in a group, going around from place to place together, while the twelfth one runs around all over the place, checking all kinds of unusual things.

Feynman forsook his self-imposed ban on participating in administrative matters and joined in. His exposure of the O-ring fallacy is now legendary (“Reality must take precedence over public relations; for Nature cannot be fooled”). Watch it here.

Cancer was, however, taking its toll. In 1988, 15th February, after fighting with cancer for a decade, he finally lost. He came out of his coma, said I don’t want to die twice. Dying is boring. That was the last of his discoveries.

But he lives on…

Take a step back and think: It wasn’t about the Nobel Prize (1965, Physics); Feynman is a physicist’s physicist.

His contributions stretch from QED, to particle physics, to superfluidity and to even QCD (the physics of quarks). He was the most fun-filled character you’d ever encounter. He was a fabulous teacher; the three volumes of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics’ are classics. His lectures on QED, compiled in a book named QED: The Strange theory of light and matter’ can be enjoyed by anyone, with or without a physics major. Feynman was a larger than life figure, a giant in the physics community and a legend outside it. He was as popular and as beloved as scientists can possibly get. He was Elvis with the wonder of the voice transferred to the brain. Maybe, Feynman was greater.

Reading Recommendation:

The author strongly urges the reader to go through a few books on Feynman in order to get to know him better. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman – Stories of Feynman

2. What do you care what other people think? – Stories of Feynman (sequel to above, has a lot of stuff on the Challenger investigation)

3. QED: The strange theory of Light and Matter -Feynman’s lectures on QED

4. “There’s plenty of room at the bottom” – Feynman’s lecture on nanotechnology (extremely imaginative and surprisingly prophetic)

5. Genius by James Gleick

6. Some Time with Feynman – by Leonard Mlodinow

The post No Ordinary Genius: Wishing Richard Feynman A Very Happy Birthday appeared first on Techie Buzz.

Have you ever wondered how the world’s first laptop looked? or how much did it weigh? If you did, the answer is in this post. Read on.

The first portable computer was invented in the year 1981. It could be called as a portable computer rather than a laptop, for the reason which I will state in this post later. This portable computer was released by the Osborne Computer Corporation, under the name “Osborne – 1”. The Osborne – 1 was priced at around USD 1795 which was just about half the cost more than the normal computers in those times (1981).

Here are some specifications of the Osborne Computer.

An interesting fact worth noticing here is that the Osborne Computer weighed about 24.5 pounds/ 12 Kg approximately! So tell me now, can you call this a “laptop”? Certainly not!

The founder of Osborne Computer Corporation, Adam Osborne was the mastermind behind this innovative idea. Osborne 1 was a huge hit amongst the people and it gave a great profit to the company.

Later, after the success of Osborne 1, the company announced about two new computers (portable) named as Executive and Vixen. This announcement lead to a serious downfall of the company. The customers stopped buying the Osborne 1, instead waited for the new computers.

The downfall of the company resulted in the bankruptcy of the company. Thus, even the production of other to computers could not take place. This became a phenomenon and is often called as the Osborne effect.

The above situation is somewhat similar to the “Apple – Gizmodo” story. After seeing the iPhone 4G specs,   people would mostly wait for it, rather than buying the iPhone 3G. However, in this case the product was leaked, but in the above case it was announced by the company itself!

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