A new set of resolutions people seldom keep. A new beginning which ends gracelessly fading into obscurity. A so-called new life which makes you go DeJaVu never really doing anything new. I bet this is how most of you would have started off your new year today.
But PLEASE, can we make this year different ? I mean, for a change, why can’t we atleast be more realistic ? This year is hardly any different from the one gone by. The global economy is still recovering from its near meltdown the year before last. Some old giants have had huge falls and some old dwarfs are seeing raise in a short span of time. Many things which we took for granted are no more.
So many things have been lost: companies during the recession like Lehman Brothers & Sentinel, people who include legends like Michael Jackson & Les Paul as well as the numerous victims of the latest epidemic, Swine Flu, and other not-so-easy-to-mention things, like the hair on the head of the guy whom I talk to often.
So many things have been gained too: the world is wiser thanks to the recession. Science has been progressing faster than ever and newer technologies keep rising trying to solve the problems we have. The economy had a meltdown but it also had a new energy inforced into it to make it more robust than before, so that when it recovers finally, it will have a harder time failing like it did before. On a personal note, I turned legal last year. Yeah I’m an adult now by definition.
But it never really STOPPED at 2009. NO SIR, it continues into 2010 and the change in year is of no significance to the entity which we call time. And in spite of all this it’s still a “new” year. A time when the calendar asks you to make a fresh start just to make the date seem special.
But regardless of what has been happening in the past, lets march into this year’s end with a new outlook. Let the ghosts of the years gone by guide us to make this one of our best so far. Our good times shall inspire us to work for more while our bad times shall make us sadder but wiser, steering us away from paths which lead to ill. Lets welcome 2010 with a warm applause: It’s not always that you get an excuse to make a change as big and yet so simple. Lets finally think for a change. Before any action, let us not be guided by animal-like instincts and hunger for power and short-term gains but by long-term planning, an all-inclusive outlook, humanitarian values and a smart mind.
In a nutshell: I wish all my readers a Happy New Year 2010 !!!
So here is the news of the event I have waited 1 year for – I finally got my upgrade and replaced my old junk of 256MB RAM with a brand new Hynix DDR 400MHz 1GB RAM stick.
Performance has gone up a lot, and I am able to benchmark several apps and several desktop environments more comfortably now. Most notably, I am using KDE 4.2 on archlinux (I ditched KDEmod, which is hardly different from KDE vanilla at the moment, for good till it becomes as strong as KDEmod 3.5.9).
Here is a pic for you:

Not the neatest, but I guess the comic strip explains that part more than anything else
Many of you may use Distros which ship a custom build of firefox. For example, ArchLinux has an i686 optimised version of firefox which is named Gran Paradiso to avoid copyright issues with Mozilla Corp. who hold trademark rights to the name. Now, the problem is that these browsers don’t properly identify them when a site checks for Mozilla Firefox. Google is an example, and due to this I am not able to install Google Toolbar. I finally found a solution. Here it is for you
Continue reading ‘Google Toolbar says Non Compatible Browser ? No Problem.’
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Are you one of those guys who is pissed off because many applications log things you don’t want them to log ? Then continue reading. I am going to tell you how you can disable history of most apps except firefox, because, luckily, they store their information in the SAME place. I am using the easier way, using GUI, so that some of you newer users won’t have difficulties. Continue reading ‘Tutorial: Remove Recently Used Items List in Linux Apps’
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The post I am writing, is a small mini-review of KDE4.2, released a couple of days back, nicknamed “The Answer”. If you want a single line review and a picture (worth a thousand words) before reading the rest, let me put things in a nutshell:http:
KDE 4.2 is simply AWESOME!

The KDE 4.2 Desktop - Simply Superb
Continue reading ‘KDE 4.2 – "The Answer" Reviewed’
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Windows XP has several flaws. Its 7 years old. Any modern computer would be able to run Windows Vista or Linux anyway. There are cheaper options out there in the market. There are better options too. Its just completely outclassed by today’s standards. Yet its still being used by corporates. And yeah, microsoft recently had to extend its lifetime even more.
The following tries to analyse reasons why corporates still need to use Windows XP while there are several better options available, and it also tries to present reasons why migration and hardware upgrading would be quite difficult.
Continue reading ‘Why Corporates are forced to Continue using Windows XP’
The most popular ISP in India has to be BSNL. Its cheap and affordable for many, thanks to a few very good plans it has for broadband. But here is my review of BSNL after using it for a few years – ITS HORRIBLE.
BSNL promised to deliver cheap 2.0Mbps broadband to every house in India. But that is hardly broadband anymore. Its more like online torture for its customers. Personally speaking, I use BSNL H500, a Rs. 500 plan which, if not for BSNL’s shitty nature, would have been actually GOOD by Indian pricing standards. It has a monthly data cap of 2.5GB, with happy hours from 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM when there is no data cap. During non happy hours, it bills Re. 0.90 for every MB which exceeds the 2.5GB cap. But yeah, its still horrible, and yet I am forced to use it. Why ? Read on…
Continue reading ‘BSNL – The worst ISP in India’
After a few months of using it, I finally feel I am confident enough to write a piece about one of the best, and I MEAN best, linux distros ever, archlinux. This distro is rather unique, and several things in it make it the ideal distro for the intermediate level linux user. The following is in no way a review or tutorial about arch, THAT part would need another post. Currently, I am focusing on its importance as a distro for the intermediate linux user.
Continue reading ‘Life on the cutting edge – ArchLinux’
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By now, looking at my posts under the linux tag, most of you must have guessed that I am a 1337 linux user. And yes I am. I use linux almost exclusively, whatever be the purpose. From playing games to work, from viewing multimedia to browsing the internet, from office work to multimedia studio applications, from desktop publishing to web designing, from programing to customising, I am always satisfied and I can never have enough of this wonderful system, GNU/Linux.
Despite all this, I still need to keep windows. There are a variety of reasons, none of them my fault, due to which I still need to keep an inferior, insecure, featureless platform with me all the time, and though its rarely booted into, windows is still an important software I need to install…
Continue reading ‘Why I still use Windows’
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AMD has breaking performance charts and five star rating barriers with its new 780G budget chipset and 790FX Spider platform gaming chipset, exclusively made for AMD processors. With godly onboard graphics and its famed Hybrid Graphics mode, the 780G was set to rule. With the possibility that Nehalem may not have nVidia GPU SLi support, 790FX is possibly the only solution for performance seeking gamers, and it too has lived upto the performance seeker’s expectations. But… It has had the sad fate of not having a single AMD processor to match its & series Chipsets’ potential. Its all (hopefully) set to change now with these new AMD Phenom processors…
Continue reading ‘Extreme Computing with AMD Phenom’
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