Firefox and Thunderbird do not integrate well under Linux. In order to associate the mailto protocol with Thunderbird, follow the steps below:

• Download this small shell script and put it somewhere sensible in your hard-drive
• Change line 3 to include the path of your thunderbird directory where it was initially installed, e.g.:
  export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME="$HOME/Main/Programs/thunderbird"
• Open Firefox and enter the page about:config
• Add a new string; name it “”network.protocol-handler.app.mailto” and set its value to the full path of your new script, e.g. ~/scripts/tbmail.sh

There are fast and automated ways of backing up *NIX servers. Backups should include databases as well as home directories, of which there can be many.

Compressed Archives

If backups can be downloaded via links (e.g. under cPanel), a browser can have its default action for .gz files set to “save in home directory”. A little script can then timestamp all the archives and put them ‘in storage’:

    # Once back-ups have been put in home directory, move all
    # to a time-stamped directory in the back-up area
cd /home/user/
mkdir `date +%Y-%m-%d`
mv backup* /home/user/backup/Home_Directories
    # move home directories
mv *.gz `date +%Y-%m-%d`
    # move databases to the new directory
cp -rf `date +%Y-%m-%d` /home/user/backup/Databases/Recent
    # merge if required
rm -r `date +%Y-%m-%d`
    # clean up, NOTE: mv cannot merge

FTP

If your webspace host offers FTP access alone, there is no simple solution. Command-line ftp might be of use though.

SCP

Copy files from the server to your local machine. This step must be invoked from the server’s side. The form of the command resembles the following:

scp -r ~/public_html your_user_name@machine.domain.suffix:/home/user/backup

mySQL Dumps

Set up cron jobs on the server, e.g.:

0 23 * * 1,4 mysqldump --user [DB_username] --password=[DB_password] [DB_name]> ~/tmp/mydatabase1.dump
0 23 * * 2,5 mysqldump --user [DB_username] --password=[DB_password] [DB_name]> ~/tmp/mydatabase2.dump
0 23 * * 0,3,6 mysqldump --user [DB_username] --password=[DB_password] [DB_name]> ~/tmp/mydatabase3.dump

The code above keeps a stack of 3 databases, which can be used to rollback data shall something catastrophic happen. Databases can then be snatched along with home directories. The above code can be extended so that dumps are compressed and file destinations are remote.

eer-to-peer (P2P) and the World Wide Web (which we most commonly perceive as hypertext — HTTP) are separate. When one uses an Internet connection to directly communicate with a remote machine, then traffic is uncensored, often not monitored, and there are no restrictions imposed on the exchanged material. This justifies the potential illegality of P2P networking.

There are less controversial ways of obtaining media. When it resides on the World Wide Web and hosted by a trusted source, it is then subjected to copyright laws. For this particular reason, it is safer to download MP3 files from trusted Web sites, many of which distribute music for free in interests of self-promotion. Downloads are also far faster because data is delivered by a Web server. An older item explains how to automatically (READ: recursively) download music from the Web.

I have just discovered an inexhaustible source of music, which is also delivered as an RSS feed. That source is the MP3Blogs Aggregator. You must read this entry on the subject in order for everything to make sense. The gist: infinite amount of freely-distributed music reaching your hard-drive on a daily basis.

Open Source software might slowly conquer the market according to this item from IT Manager’s Journal:

Is the enterprise software business dying? Is anybody out there buying new licenses? Based on news from the past few weeks, it seems that there are very few buyers. The collapse of new licensing revenue isn’t news — it started five years ago — but the latest news makes it look like a permanent and accelerating fact of life for software vendors.

Regarding operating systems and the take on computers in general, Clayton Hallmark from Argentina predicts that low cost computers from Asia will bring Microsoft to its end.

MOBILIS apparently goes for only $220 in India

A bunch of hilarious amateur posters making fun of major Linux distributions. UNIX fanatics will find it amusing.

recent market survey reveals which Linux distributions are most popular, which windows managers are on the rise and likewise with applications. A must to any Linux enthusiast (via Slashdot).

…Mandrake and SuSE are now essentially tied for first place — at 17.6 and 17.5 percent respectively. Red Hat comes next, at sightly over 15 percent, and last year’s winner, Debian, has slipped into fourth place, garnering half a percent fewer votes than Red Hat…

On the left: Screen-shot of Metisse for FVWM

The following screenshot gallery demonstrates the features of one future desktop environment (X11). Windows exploit OpenGL for window ‘swinging’ (see the previous entry on luminocity or even bogus transparency). The effects are quite distracting, but provide that ‘wow factor’. Another long-anticipated eye candy is the spherical desktop.