An old screenshot of my Linux box at the University.
In the background I embed sunny resorts that I once
visited and they revolve periodically, owing to KDE

am exceedingly impressed by the innovative work of the KDE team. These folks truly invent some productivity methodologies which exist nowhere else. KDE is primarily targetted at operating systems such as Linux and BSD and it puts them both at the forefront of innovation. How they do it, I don’t know, but I suspect that requests and suggestions from the public (KDE userbase) make it a reality, via wishlist items, reported as ‘bugs’ with low severity level. Allow me to exemplify my statement using a timely realisation.

Only yesterday, I needed to restart KDE (no reboots involved). This happened after over one month of this non-stop KDE session. The motive? Possibly a few memory leaks, which had accumulated throughout 5 weeks of 24/7 computing (I run experiments using untested code overnight and whenever I am absent). Either way, once restarted, KDE restores the user’s session perfectly.

All windows re-appear in the correct virtual desktop, in the same position with the same dimensions as prior to logout. A complete system reboot would have had the same impact. Shells are reinstantiated and created, possibly positioned at the same directory/path as before. While it sounds simple and trivial, it is not. File managers likewise. FTP connections are restored with the servers in question, even at the right depth and directory level. The only exception are SSH connections that were opened without calling the command directly, e.g. SSH within a shell. Otherwise, even remote connections as such are restored! Again, this should not be taken for granted.

In this older version of KDE (3.1, as haven’t tested it yet with the newer setup at home), Mozilla applications are the sole exception. They are not being restored. Nonetheless and all in all, well done, KDE team! You thought of everything the user will ever need.

There is a Mozilla Firefox extension called SessionSaver. It achieves something similar to the above by fully restoring tabs, even with textarea input re-instered. This mechanism is robust and even resilient to browser crashes, all at the expense of browsing performance, as well as some system resources.

Related recent item: Why I Love KDE

Wallpaper from Houghi (click image above
to enlarge; non-lossy PNG version)

HECK out some three-dimensional Web browsers. None of the three is said to obviate the need for Opera, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or even rusty Internet Explorer. The pages that are filled with screenshots, however, leave plenty of place for imagination. Technologies like XGL/Compiz, as well as DirectX support in Vista, will make it all possible. The contribution of the third dimension is very mere though, which is where proper yet pseudo 3-D displays come into play.

Screen-shot of Metisse for FVWM

ESTERDAY I read about three-dimensional displays, which are said to require no glasses and make stereo-vision a reality. This seemed like ‘queue hopping’ from a scientific point-of-view, so I had to read it carefully and identify some points of skepticism. I was successful in finding some gaps and deficiencies, which a careful read would quickly reveal (albeit the headline is very eye-catching — an exaggeration within or even beyond reason).

If you have some idiosyncratic interests which pertain to the study of vision and human-computer interaction (HCI), you may find some of my past essays on the topic intersting:

• Spherical Display
• The User Interfaces of Tomorrow
• 3-D Interaction on the Desktop
• Accelerated X Draws Competition
• The Desktop Sphere
• Next Generation of X
• Spherical Desktop

Ever wondered if running a recreational Web site can become a full-time occupation? Ever wondered if bloggers can be paid a wage to blog in favour of a particular company? That it, using the audience as a tool for income? It is a rarity, yet a reality, which more and more people strive to attain.

I pretty much know what ambitious Webmaster are trying to accomplish with advertisements, but if it is income for life, I would warn them in advance. There are very few Webmasters who, at the moment, can actually boast getting a wage out of advertisements (WebMasterWorld is just one example). However, there is a difference between making ends meet and sustaining an income for life. As with all businesses, the terrain changes and one must change and adopt to to this perpetual change. This change is not intervention(time)-free.

The Web, for instance, is changing all the time and all sites need to evolve. Advertising channels and income sources are running dry even for journalists, in part due to online content, bloggers, and Web 2.0 sites, which are far more fascinating (interactive) than ‘old school’ news sites. And by the way, all my sites combined do not generate more than $30 dollars a month. This is not even enough to cover the hosting bills.

To elaborate on the issue of evolving to facilitate trends, 6 years ago I was using nothing but Windows. I thought my skills were well-invested and bound to endure. Nowadays, I never even lay my hands on Windows and, while I consider this change a tremendous improvement, I just know I would never have managed to do the same things as effectively had I stuck with where I was (a monoculture).

ODAY I was reminded why, despite the fact that I never set my hands on Windows machines, they still manage to hinder my work. I was ready to upload experimental data to personal Webspace, in order to have it transferred to a colleague down in London. I was then faced with a hot red warning message saying that the large ZIP archive appeared to be a virus (merely based on file size and file type). Renaming the data file and changing its filetype would not help. I was forced to send to the entire lump of data (4 GB, yet compress) to a different computer and then FTP it, which is a really time-consuming PITA.

Why was I presented with a prompt saying that the file may be a virus in the first place? Allow me to generalise this question. Why is it that there are terms such as “trusted sites” or “dangerous, malicious E-mail”? Yes, Windows is still severely flawed. Windows is insecure by design and this has led society to take system crashes for granted and assume computer security to be a top-priority risk factor (not accidental data loss or physical, hardware dysfunction). Since everyone is assumed to be using Windows, everyone suffers.

Another impact on Windows of my life are the endless heaps of SPAM. A Symantec study has shown that 80% of all spam, which is the majority of the entire world’s E-mail traffic/volume, is being despatched from Windows zombies, i.e. Windows computers that are compromised, hijacked and controlled remotely, passively sending mail, requesting files, and scanning port. To add to this pain, I was on several occasions the victim of DDOS attacks. That broken Windows was virtually, if not practically, attacking my Web sites en masse, which I think is unacceptable.

A shrimpy yet fully-functional USB drive

Here are a couple of fun lists which I have recently come across:

• Top 10 Strangest Custom Gaming Systems
• Ten Products Google Should Develop (hypothetical)

Some even contain videos.

‘Satanic’ day is marked today as “666″ our calendars will indicate. It is not quite so often that a date such as this is reached. It may take another 100 years, as a matter of fact and, even then, a zero will be lost (2006 becomes 2106).

So, enjoy Devil’s Day! Just don’t be mischievous!!