From cnn.com:

 ARAHUAY, Peru (AP) — Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago.

These offspring of peasant families whose monthly earnings rarely exceed the cost of one of the $188 laptops — people who can ill afford pencil and paper much less books — can’t get enough of their “XO” laptops.

At breakfast, they’re already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits.

At night, they’re dozing off in front of them — if they’ve managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.

“It’s really the kind of conditions that we designed for,” Walter Bender, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff, said of this agrarian backwater up a precarious dirt road.

Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed. Uruguay was the No. 2 buyers of the laptops, inking a contract for 100,000.

Negroponte said 150,000 more laptops will get shipped to countries including Rwanda, Mongolia, Haiti, and Afghanistan in early 2008 through “Give One, Get One,” a U.S.-based promotion ending December 31 in which you buy a pair of laptops for $399 and donate one or both.

One Laptop Per Child project is spearheaded by Nicholas Negroponte and aims to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves with a help of XO Laptop.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Y2k38.info writes:

On January 19, 2038, UNIX-based programs and UNIX-like operating systems will run out of time. To be more precise, at 3:14:07 GMT, UNIX will be exactly 1 billion seconds old. Many see this as a milestone, but from a technical point of view, this can mean disaster for computer programs and systems around the world.

UNIX keeps track of time in a 4-byte integer that represents the number of seconds after January 1, 1970 12:00:00. For example, a time of 60 represents the date January 1, 1970 12:01:00. A 4-byte integer has a maximum value of 2,146,483,547. This time (known as maximum time) corresponds exactly to January 19, 2038 3:14:07.

This explains why UNIX programs in large, were pretty much unaffected by the Y2K bug - since it kept track of time in units of seconds. However, its own version of Y2K will occur a second past the maximum time.

At exactly January 19, 2038 3:14:08 (one second past the maximum UNIX time), one of two things can happen to programs that keep track of time with this format. It will either crash and stop functioning altogether, or it will rollback time to the beginning of UNIX time: the first minute of 1970.

Tried this on my workstation, it worked. Didn’t see ant malfunctioning programs whatsoever. Or should I wait for year 2038? Am I even still be alive then?

Popularity: 11% [?]

The battle for the best Linux desktop still continues as Ubuntu’s sponsor Canonical announced that KDE will not be included in its Long Term Support (LTS) for the next release. Since the upcoming version of KDE, KDE 4.0, still has a long way to go, Kubuntu Desktop lead Scott James Remnant explains that KDE is not mature enough to be included in the LTS. Ubuntu is to release version 8.0, Hardy Heron, in April 2008.

news.com writes:

GNOME, the default user interface for Ubuntu, will receive the support, but KDE won’t. The reason, according to Canonical, which sponsors Ubuntu and is trying to make a business of selling the support contracts, is simply that KDE is at an awkward transitional period between two versions, the old-line 3.5 and the imminent and significantly different 4.0.

Though Ubuntu-KDE users are relatively small compard to Ubuntu-GNOME users, KDE still deserves the same attention that GNOME gets. But with its upcoming release of version 4.0 set close to the release of Hardy Heron, it is a case of bad timing.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Merry Christmas everyone!

Popularity: 10% [?]

KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux and Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I found these two super cute Wordpress plugins while browsing around the internet for plugins to use in my super cute blog

• YM Status Wordpress Plugin -This plugin allows you to display your YM status on your blog in real-time and your visitors can click the icon to launch their YM client so they can send you a message. Signing in as invisible? The plugin will show you as offline! Just download this plugin here, uncompress and upload it to your WP plugins folder (/wp-content/plugins) and activate. Display the icon by inserting the code anywhere in your site or insert it in your Sidebar as a widget. Warning: You might get a lot of incoming YM messages by using plugin so you better be chat ready. Coolness factor: 4/5 Ease of Use: 4/5 Overall Impact 4/5.

• WordPress Yahoo/MSN Messenger Style Smileys Plugin - This plugin from Priyadi’s Place replaces your default Wordpress smilies with Yahoo Messenger style smilies. If you are an MSN user, you can also use the MSN smilies instead. This plugin is a cool addition to my WP plugins simply because in the world of blogging, you can show your emotions by using smilies. Like this or this Cute huh? More examples: Download the plugin here and follow the instructions. Coolness factor: 4/5 Ease of Use: 4/5 Overall Impact 4/5.

These plugins are free to use but if you really like them, don’t forget to send the authors donations as a token of appreciation.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Want to remote access your Linux desktop? Or access your workstation similar the way Remote Desktop does it?

While Linux offers a wide array of ways to connect to a remote computer, some people still prefer to connect the traditional way by using ssh. Not only it is secure, it is sure is a fast way of connecting a remote terminal. However, if you want to remotely access your Linux desktop, freeNX can do the job along with NoMachine client.

What is freeNX?

From the official website:

NX is an exciting new technology for remote display. It provides near local speed application responsiveness over high latency, low bandwidth links. The core libraries for NX are provided by NoMachine under the GPL. FreeNX is a GPL implementation of the NX Server.

Linux is to freeNX as Windows is to Remote Desktop. I decided to use freeNX to access my Linux desktop in office if ever I need to.

Setting up freeNx:

freeNX is available for download in source tarballs and distribution packages.I personally use the distribution package for Fedora/Redhat which is available via yum. I am using Fedora 7 so in this case, I will use the steps of setting up freeNX for my distro.

# Make sure you are up-to-date
yum update

# Install FreeNX and all dependencies
yum install freenx

#SERVER SETUP IS DONE! The RPM takes care of the required setup.

That’s it! However, if you are using Fedora versions older than Fedora 5, there is a special how-to for freeNX setup that you might want to check.

Install NoMachine client:

Remote connection also needs a client which is the program you use that connects to your remote server, in this case the freeNX server. In this tutorial, we will be using NoMachine as the client. You can download the NoMachine client here. In my example, I will be using Windows XP for my workstation client so I have to download and install the NoMachine client for Windows. Install the client and run the NX Client for Windows. This will open up a dialog box for your client configuration. Here are the steps you need to setup your client:

•  When the dialog box opens, enter the Session and Host name for your connection. Session name is the name of your connection and your settings will be saved under this name. Host name is the ip address or hostname and port of the remote machine. The default port is 22 (SSH). Click Next.
• In the next dialog box, select Unix and choose which type of window manager you want to use and the resolution. In this case I user KDE and Available Area for my resolution. Check the box for Enable SSL encryption. Click Next.
• If you want to put a shortcut to this connection on your desktop, put a tick on the Create shortcut on desktop checkbox and click Finish.

If you want to open the session, double click the shortcut on your Desktop and type in your username and password for this session. You will be connecting now to your freeNX server and you will see your Available sessions box. Select New to create a new session to begin connecting to your remote desktop. Wait for the desktop to load and voila! You are now connected to your remote desktop.

Popularity: 12% [?]

When using VMware for virtualization, you might encounter an error related to your sound device:

Failed to open sound device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy

If you see this error, this means the sound device in your host machine is currently in use and the VMware client is not able to access the device. Here is also a little bit of information from the vmware knowledge base:

Some other program is using the sound device. You must quit that program first. While every virtual machine on a host can be configured with a sound device, only one virtual machine at a time can actively use the device. If another virtual machine is currently using it, simply terminate the application inside it that is producing sound.

Another possible cause is that the Enlightenment Sound Daemon is running and using the sound device. VMware recommends you turn off the Enlightenment Sound Daemon.

Though I have not found a way to fix this yet, there is a workaround that might help if you want to use sounds in your virtual machine. You might want to kill all esd processes:

# killall esd

You might need to restart your VMware service for the changes to take effect. This method will get the sound device available for your guest OS.

I have tested this on my machine running Fedora 7on my host machine and VMware Server 1.04 with Windows XP as guest OS. Works like a charm.

Popularity: 14% [?]

It’s Christmas again. Time to be cheery even though life sucks. But that’s what is great about Filipinos. Even if life is hard, we always find time to have fun and be merry. Some of us system administrators are probably at work at Christmas (I am ) but it doesn’t break our Christmas spirit, right? Lol.

In line with the holidays, Vertito has come up with a nice blog contest that everyone can enjoy. The prizes at stake are Php 1,500 for the first prize and one 300 load card for the second prize. Check out his blog contest and contest rules here.

On the other news, it really sucks to work on Christmas. Sucks big time. Not that I am complaining but what can I do? This is part of my job as system administrator.  But at least I will be home on New Year’s Eve so it is not so bad.

Are you working on Christmas too?

Popularity: 18% [?]

Firefox 3.0 Beta has been released recently and fosswire.com writes that recent release is a killer browser for Linux Desktops because of its more GTK support. Here are some notables changes made for the upcoming version taken from Mozilla official blog:

• Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
• Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
• Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

For those who like bleeding edge technology, the beta version is available for download here. Do note however that the beta version is for tester and developers only and not intended for normal users.

Popularity: 17% [?]