Granular Wows!!

I guess the screen shots speaks more than the words

The All New Flock .

Even though i had the most secure web browser ever (Firefox), I was always interested in trying a new web browser and from the buzz happening around me , Flock was the option that came up to me.

I've heard about Flock from Justin and I've been thinking of downloading it. Now ever since my IE has started behaving weird , I decided that its high time i download this one of a kind browser. To my surprise its a Sourceforge project and man i would 'nt mind joining it. But you see Meritocracy is what it takes to become a member of awsome projects like the ones you see in Mozilla and Sourceforge

[excerpts from Wiki]

Flock is a web browser heavily based upon Mozilla Firefox and other Mozilla technologies. Flock is also the name of the company developing the browser. Flock's creators call it a "social browser", due to its ability to interact with popular social networking web services. Such web services include Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Photobucket, and various popular blogging and news aggregation services.

Features

The current beta release has the following feature differences from Firefox:

• Flock's custom homepage, "My World", tells you when your friends have new photos and videos and when you have new feeds. My World gives quick access to your recently visited favorite sites as well.
• Bookmarks, in addition to being saved offline, can be replaced with del.icio.us. When a bookmark (known as a favorite) is added, it is added to the user's del.icio.us account.
• Favorites can be tagged
• A favorites and history section are integrated into the favorites manager
• Built-in full-text search using Clucene. Search as you type for pages in the cache
• Flickr and Photobucket integration
• Technorati tagging
• Blogging tools
• News aggregator
• "Drag-and-drop" capability and a clipboard like feature known as "The Shelf."
• Media Mini Bar, allows you to search, stream, and view content off of sites like YouTube and Truveo.
• Built in uploader, to submit content to flickr and photobucket

Many of these features can be attained through extensions for Firefox. del.icio.us Bookmarks, developed by Yahoo!, Inc., provides integration with del.icio.us online bookmarks. Fotofox, developed as an official extension by the Mozilla Corporation, integrates with Flickr. Sage provides a built in news reader, similar to Thunderbird's.

[excerpts from Wiki]

fig My personal favourite - My World in My Flock

Linux Tips and Tricks.

How to boot Linux from the Windows Bootloader
===================================

Let's create a dual boot system with a non-Linux bootloader.To do this , first install Windows XP and then Linux. During the installation of LInux ,make sure that you choose to install the Linux bootloader to the root partition instead of over writing the MBR, which already holds the Windows bootloader.

Now,download a tiny program called Bootpaer and run it from the DOS prompt in its directory by typing bootpart in its directory.It will display all partitions.

Then type the following:

bootpart <> bootlinx.bin


Guard against SYN attacks and 'ping'
====================================

As the root user ,execute the following code:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies

Want to disable ping?

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all

Disable broadcast/multicast ping??

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts

And to enable again:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all

"Autopatching" my XP

Digit is a popular tech magazine in India and I try to go through the copy of it atleast from the library. I buy it very rarely but i like the contents very much. My important source of Digit is Justin. He buys such magazines and i get to read them as soon as he complete going through it.

One fine day , i came across Autopatcher for Mecashaft(a.k.a Microsoft)'s much talked about OS..yeah its XP only..hehe ... Developed by Antonis Kaladis and Jason Kelley,it provides all the required updates as far as XP is concerned.. There are many sites from where one could download it , Softpedia being one among them. I thought of downloading but i didnt do it as i wasnt that much interested. So it was a few days back , I borrowed a CD-DVD combi from Digit which they bring out with every issue .

Navigating through the sleek Aero interface they implemented in it, I came across Autopatcher bundled in it. Thank god i didnt have to waste my time downloading. It was the May month core update from the developers and boy it took me 1 hr 15 minutes (freaking) minutes to do the update. Well you might wonder why i did this. After all XP is an OS and i want to to keep it neat and tidy. Seriously there was a performance boost after the update. So you dont know what is Autopatcher? Here read from Wiki.

[excerpts from Wiki ]

AutoPatcher was an alternative to Microsoft's Windows Update developed by Antonis Kaladis and Jason Kelley, and a comprehensive collection of up-to-date security patches, addons and registry tweaks collated into a single package designed to update a Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Server 2003 SP1 or Windows Vista system from a local file, without the need to use Windows Update or connect to a network each time.

The AutoPatcher team shut down the project after receiving email from Microsoft requesting them to stop distribution on 29 August 2007. This came after four years of existence, and surprised many. Microsoft mentioned the security risks of third party distribution of their patches, but it is unclear if this is the full reason behind the decision. They denied that the possibility of circumventing their Windows Genuine Advantage protection with the software was behind it, and mentioned that Firefox could now access the Windows Update website for pre-Windows Vista systems to at least partially support their decision. However, the software was commonly used for offline and network installs, and not merely as an alternative update client to avoid Internet Explorer, and this issue was not addressed by Microsoft.

[excerpts from Wiki]