So what is new in Fedora 9 (Sulphur) ?

1. GNOME 2.22 – New version of GNOME brings a number of features which includes performance improvements. UI improvements include an enhanced world clock with multiple time zone displays. This version also includes an updated display manager with features such as power management on login screen.

2. Linux Kernel 2.6.25 – Latest Kernel support means a number of core enhancements such as improved virtualization support, CPU "group scheduling", USB authorization and new wireless configuration interface.

3. Persistent Live USB Support – Live USB support is not something new. Knoppix was one of the early distributions which could run from a Live CD. As USB capacity increased, live distributions started appearing on it. But what makes Fedora 9 unique is that now Live USB can store user preferences! This means that Live USB can be used a sort of portable Fedora 9 machine! Wherever you go, you can plugin in the USB, work on the Fedora 9 and then save data on it!

4. Seamless Upgrade – Fedora 9 features automated and seamless upgrade similar to Windows update. The latest preupgrade software can even be used to upgrade from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8!

5. Latest Software (Firefox 3 beta 5, Pidgin, Gimp etc.) – Fedora 9 Sulphur features all the latest software including Firefox 3. It also includes Pidgin, gEDIT, GIMP, Perl 5.10.0 etc.

Other new stuff in Fedora 9 include ext4 support, improved virtual machine support, bluetooth enhancements, PackageIt front-end to yum, Font improvements and built in support for encrypted file system.

Fedora  9 screenshot,

Further Resources

• Download Fedora 9 Sulphur
• Summary of Fedora 9 features

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers is available now in two versions: a stand-alone version for Windows® XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server® 2003; and an enhanced version built to take advantage of the Windows Vista® platform. Support for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is also planned once it reaches final release in early 2008.

Internet Explorer 8 gives more importance to standards compliance and interoperability. Now backward compatibility is taking a back seat. This means that if your site is not standards compliant, it may not render correctly in IE8!! It is possible to switch IE8 to IE7 mode, but it is not on by default.

IE8 aims for full compliance to CSS 2.1 standards and will be working towards HTML 5 standard. IE8 currently passes Acid2 test in default mode.

Major new features in IE8

Activities – These are a set of contextual services provided by browser on any Webpage. Using the context menu, user can send or receive information from external websites.  For example, if you want to add a page to Digg, you can just right click and select "Add to Digg" option. Cool, eh?

Webslices – Portions of a webpage can be marked as Web slices. It is possible for the browser user to subscribe to content inside a slice. Once subscribed it will appear on favorites bar. Whenever content in that slice change, you can preview it without leaving the current page you are viewing! Many popular sites such as Facebook and Ebay has already started using Webslices!

Domain highlighting in address bar – IE8 will highlight the owning domain of the web page you are viewing. This in future should bring down the incidents of phishing by fake sites.

You can download IE 8 beta 1 from here.

Our primary network switch in our main datacenter in downtown Los Angeles failed completely and despite tremendous efforts by our technical emergency response team could not be brought back online. This switch is a major brand name piece of equipment and as such it contains internal redundancy. We were able to switch over to the back up circuitry and begin bringing the system back online at which time, for yet unknown reasons, the entire devise, including backup system, failed completely.

After a short deliberation we decided to rush a new switch from our vendor’s nearest warehouse to our data center. While waiting for the replacement we initiated a work around to at least get email service re-established. After several attempts all email systems finally went live and back to normal at approximately 10:00am Pacific Time.

When the new switch arrived we went through the installation and testing process and as a result were able to bring all our services back online, but not before we had suffered a 5-hour outage for e-mail services and an 8-hour outage for Web related services. In Globat’s entire 6 year history, we have never experienced anything even remotely like this! The outage was so severe
that it affected our own Web sites and all but one of our telephone lines so we were unable to communicate with our customers to update anybody about the status of the incident. We decided to ask some of our staff members to post updates on well known Internet forums, which helped a little in disseminating the information.

To enable privacy option, go to your profile and click on "settings" link. Then click on "privacy" tab on the right top. Then restrict the access of your videos, scraps etc. to "friends" only.

But why do you need to take this precaution? The reason is this – Internet has shortage of stalkers and criminals. So it is very important that your personal information is kept private. Also ensure that you add only those people whom you know personally as friends. Otherwise turning on privacy will be of no use!

Many people tend to post private information such as email or phone numbers in the scrap. Some even go to the extend of publishing their address in scraps. So it is better to keep the scrapbook  private.

1. Folksonomy – Online classification system
2. Blogosphere – Blogging community
3. Blog – Online journals
4. Netiquette – Internet etiquette
5. Blook – A book based on a blog
6. Webinar – An online seminar
7. Vlog – A video blog
8. Social networking – Digg, Reddit etc. are some examples
9. Cookie – A text file used track user behavior in browsers
10. Wiki – Wikipedia is an example. A site which is collaborative in nature.

I think if they run a poll on most hated sentences, the top ones could be “all your base belongs to us” or “in soviet russia” etc. Also I wonder why the words like “WTF”, “n00b” or “LOL” doesn’t appear among top 10! In fact, this is the first time I came across “Folksonomy”. It also shows that a lot people are getting pi**ed off at the influence blogs have on internet.

This poll is not credible with just 2000 votes. To make some sense, a poll like this should have atleast 200,000 participants!

Sicko is a documentary by Michael moore, which looks at american healthcare system. It is an open secret that american healthcare system is very expensive. So if you don’t have health insurance you are screwed. Moore uses the documentary medium to forcefully expose this fact and he has done an excellent job!

I am in India and I do have some experience of british healthcare system (NHS). Both are free and there are lot negative points about these systems. But when you compare them with the american system, they look very good! In India, you have a choice between government/private and charity hospitals and to me that is very important.

So why is this interesting to me if I am in India? Well, the problem is that we tend to copy many things from America. Also healthcare companies are getting powerful by day in India. Coupled with corruption, this may lead to a healthcare mafia worse than the american one.

Healthcare is fundamentally something which belongs to the government similar to police and fire department. Privatising it partially is ok, but full privatisation is a sure recipe for disaster.

Check out the following trailer of Sicko. Sicko is slated for release on 29th June 2007.

SiCKO is a comedy about 45 million people with no health care in the richest country on Earth.

The idea is to promote Web standards. If your site conforms to Web standards, things should look just fine. You can check out more details here. More than 1500 Websites are taking part in this “prank”.

No, I have no plans of getting naked. Frankly I don’t know how it will look (It will not be pretty for sure!). Do you have any plans for getting naked?

Do you know that Google gets over 3000 job applications per day? Check out the following video to know more about the Google workplace and why they are number one!

Since there weren’t many nominations, all the blogs are put up for voting (35 blogs in total). I somehow hate the idea of blog jury. I think it is upto the readers to decide which is best!

The voting is open(a bit complicated) now and will close on March 16th. Please vote if you happen to be a reader of any of these blogs.

Disclosure: I am one of the sponsors for the event.

In this case, the localized portal of Yahoo ( based on Malayalam – an indian language) has stolen recipes from a blogger and posted it as their own. To quote from blogger,

Some of the posts from this blog are lifted word by word, without my consent and posted, in Yahoo, Malayalam (beta) , and shown as their copyrighted material. See a screenshot of both the pages, which clearly shows the content lifting (copyright infringement).

If anybody else, lifted content from this blog, and exhibited somewhere else, without my permission, please remove the same.

The blogger (who is known as Su in Malayalam blogging circles) says that he has already mailed Yahoo about the copyright violation. He is yet to get any response. Obviously he is unhappy that his posts are being copied without permission!

I guess this is done by the Yahoo’s Malayalam team who probably is working on tight schedules to generate content!

So he plans to bring a legislation which will make it a crime to use iPod or any portable device while walking on the streets. The plan is to slap a fine of $100 on violating the ban.

What next? Why don’t they ban all the advertising boards displayed in New York? The sexy models on them can distract drivers and can cause loss of life, right?

Via The Scotsman

Apple shipped 1,606,000 Macintosh® computers and 21,066,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 28 percent growth in Macs and 50 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

Wow! More than 20 million iPods per quarter! Profits may again jump this year if iPhone sales pick up. If the current iPhone buzz is any indication, crossing 2 billion profits is not far!

Upgrade if you haven’t, it is worth it

Download IE 7.0

Check here for some of the prototypes,

Over at the Microsoft press tent at the Consumer Electronics (CES) Show, Microsoft is showing off a few protypes of its just-announced Windows Home Server product.
Although there were rumors circulating over the past month that Windows Home Server would be based on Windows Vista, that’s not the case, said product director Steven VanRoekel.

More Info
Windows Home Server Homepage
What is inside Windows Home Server?

The figure 10,000 looked pretty cooked up to me. It turns out that the news may not true after all.

Liu Ningbo from HiChina Web Solutions Ltd (www.net.cn), China’s largest domain registration service provider, said the losses are only possible in “theory” but not in “reality”.

Internet users are reminded at least a month before their leased domain expires and the domain names are frozen and kept for one or two months after the expiry date, he said.

But anyway I am going to renew my domain well in advance. I don’t want to be the victim of “Act of God”!