Just thought that people should know that Adobe is adding DRM to Flash 9. It is not going to be used by default but it is up to each website whether they turn it on or not. The DRM should be transparent to the user. There is no way for the end user to know if they are using a DRM'ed flash vid or not. The idea is that they can keep people from copying the vids to your hard drive. So because of this I have uninstalled flash, and have installed gnash instead. Gnash is a free (as in speech) flash clone. If you are as angry as I am please join my boycott of flash. blow is some more info from the EFF.

With the increasing popularity of laptops, getting the most out of small screen sizes has become a priority for computer users.

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon helps with this by providing a consistent keyboard shortcut for a "Full Screen" mode. Pressing "F11" in many standard Ubuntu applications allows you to to toggle the application in and out of a full screen mode. Today I tested that the following key applications support this:

• Firefox
• Gimp Image Editor
• Eye of Gnome Image Viewer
• Evince Document Viewer
• Totem Movie Player
• Rhythmbox Music Player
• Terminal

Now that I realize the shortcut exists and is widely supported I use it regularly to get the most out of my 14" laptop screen. I did find one key application had a full screen model and used a different shortcut. Open Office mysteriously uses "Ctrl-Shift-J". I have filed a bug to suggest that Ubuntu make this consistent as well.

I've been known to accidentally leave a stream of music running all night when I'm not there to listen to it anymore. That wastes bandwidth and energy.

Here's a quick tip to prevent from happening, by causing any music playing to be turned off at 7:00 pm each night.

On Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, add these lines to "/etc/crontab". You can edit this file with "gksudo gedit /etc/crontab":

Note that "rhythmbox" and "vlc" are the names of the music players I use. Change as needed.


# stop streams from playing all night.
0 19 * * Mon-Fri killall --quiet rhythmbox vlc


Widescreen LCD monitors are laptops are all the rage now. Wikipedia cites lower associated manufacturing costs.

Basic geometry and algebra explain why manufacturers are saving money and consumers may be deceived about what they are getting.

Monitors are measured along the diagonal. A 14" widescreen sounds like a '14" screen...only wider", but it is not. It a screen with a wide width-to-height ratio, such as 16-to-10, with a diagonal that that measures 14". The wider and flatter a rectangle gets for a given diagonal length, the smaller the area. That means a 14" widescreen LCD has less screen area than a standard screen with a 4:3 ratio. By my calculations, it's about 6% smaller, or the equivalent of removing about half an inch from the standard size 14" monitor.

For several years Linux has enabled to run a command by name with a little "Run Command" application, often accessed by pressing Alt-F2.

This is my favorite way to launch applications since it can be done with the keyboard by just remembering the name of the application.

In Ubuntu Gutsy, this little tool has become more useful.

No longer do I need to remember that the program run by OpenOffice is called 'oowriter'.

Now I can just start typing "OpenOffice", and it will show me the icon and name for "OpenOffice Writer" as an option.

If I type "Mail", it shows me the options for the "Thunderbird" and "Evolution" e-mail programs. Great!

Sound was generally working fine on my Mandriva 2007 workstation, but sound in the Flash plugin was not. Here's how I debugged the problem and fixed it.

First, running Firefox from a terminal provided a great clue. To launch Firefox this way it may work to use Alt-F2 to have the run box appear, and then type "mozilla-firefox" and make sure "Run in terminal" is selected".

This should lots of ALSA-related errors, including "device not found".

By launching the Mandriva Control Center (Alt-F2 then 'mcc'), I was able to review the sound drivers in use. I navigated to "Hardware : Look and Configure Hardware" and then selected my soundcard below the "Soundcard" option. My soundcard was listed as "82801EB AC'97 Audio". From there, I could select "Run Config Tool", which provided a list of driver options. Only one of them was listed as "ALSA", so I switched the driver to that.

Restricting freedoms in the name of safety and security can go too far.

Take this recent tech support call from a family member. She hadn't been able to get on the internet for days. She called Comcast, which provides her cable modem. Things looked fine on their side, they said. They suggested something on her computer wasn't working right. Using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer as the web browser might be the problem, they offered.

Having used this Windows XP computer myself, I'm familar with all the popups that the ZoneAlarm security utility generates. "Someone is trying to attack your computer on Port 80. Do you want to allow it? [YES] [NO]".

Look we (the Community) have tried to make Linux easy for everyone, non-text installs, Live CD's and DVD's, LUG's, install-fest's, etc, etc. But now we have done the one think that makes trying Linux as brainless as installing Windows apps.

Now I'd like to show you Wubi.

Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.

Wubi is Safe

It does not require you to modify the partitions of your PC, or to use a different bootloader.