The future foretold in science fiction.

It is interesting that the developments we enjoy in the present world we live in came to life in science fiction movies and novels from the olden days of fiction. Jules Verne`s 1863 novel Paris in the Twentieth Century depicted a 1960`s world with fax machines, skyscrapers and even a form of the Internet. That is … Read more

The machines that sparked the computer age. From Enigma to Colossus.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/technology/of-codebreakers-and-mechanical-giants-56949.html [theepochtimes.com] The world war was fought not just with bullets and artillery, but also with computers, creating and cracking even more complex codes that were beyond the human mind`s capability to break. The German Enigma machine was the machine that created the most complex code of the war, and had 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible code combinations, but allied researchers undoubtedly … Read more

Taking screenshots of your Linux desktop. Very easy to do.

Very useful tip in Linux for taking a screenshot showing the contents of a a single window. Use scrot to take a nice screenshot. -{homer@homer-H55-USB3 } $ scrot -t 9 -s term.jpg-{homer@homer-H55-USB3 } $ scrot -t 9 -s term.jpg With this command just run the command and then click the window you want to capture … Read more

Windows 1.0 in Virtual PC. A look at Windows 1.0 and the new features it offered.

http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2011/052611-windows-1.html [http://www.networkworld.com] This is an interesting article where someone has gotten Windows 1.0 installed in a Virtual Machine on a modern Windows machine and taken a look at the applications that were shipped with the release of this ancient operating system. Now this is a blast from the past, Windows 1.0 would run fine on … Read more

Manually installing the Adobe flash plugin in Lubuntu 10.10.

I am using Lubuntu 10.10 to browse the Internet right now to test out that very good and useful distribution of Linux and I needed to install the Adobe flash plugin for Chromium. I downloaded the tar.gz file containing the plugin for Linux and unpacked it by typing tar -xvf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz and then I had … Read more

Gentoo kernel installation.

Performing a kernel upgrade on Gentoo GNU/Linux How best to upgrade the Gentoo kernel. Installing a vanilla kernel for the Gentoo GNU/Linux distribution is very easy. This is necessary when a kernel upgrade is required. Just install the vanilla kernel source from kernel.org and then unpack the sources into /usr/src/linux as shown below. I am … Read more

Installing Gentoo once again. The source based distro based on BSD.

My computer is now running Gentoo once again, I installed the x86_64 stage3 tarball and the latest portage tarball and installed the system from within a chroot using my Ubuntu 11.04 distribution. The installation was different from the last time I installed a Gentoo system, I am using newer hardware this time, but now it … Read more

20 years of Linux, interview with Linus Torvalds.

There is a story over on Slashdot about the 20 year anniversary of the Linux operating system.  Linux has come a long way in the 20 year history and now it is a very robust and reliable operating system. Since Linus Torvalds needed a free version of the proprietary UNIX operating system that existed at … Read more

Formaldehyde link to early life on Earth.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/04/29/3203610.htm The poisonous organic compound Formaldehyde has turned out to have been a deciding factor in enabling life on Earth to survive the gigantic impact that created the Earth`s moon. The impact would have melted the entire crust of the Earth and vaporised any water and organic materials that existed on the planet at that … Read more

Cracker sized satellites launching with Space Shuttle.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0429/Cracker-size-satellites-to-launch-with-Space-Shuttle-Endeavour A new mini satellite has need developed to drift down through the atmosphere upon release and gather information about the makeup of the atmosphere of the planet being studied. They could drift slowly down through the atmosphere and sample the various layers on the way down giving humanity a valuable insight into the real … Read more