Trusted Comuting: a film to warn you

Do you know what "Trusted Computing” is it is a new idea developed by some great names of computers, according to them to make our computers safer. The guiding principle is very simple, it consists in assigning a signature for each data-processing object (software, document, music), and delegating to a third party the task to check if the handled object is authorized with being used on the local system… Elegant you will say, at the end we will get rid of all theses viruses… But think just a little: who will be the third party, the confidence one? All the signatures will have to be checked by this third party, and thus each signature recorded in the big database of this new Big Brother what, in a Microsoft logic, for example, will mean paid a lot of money to record your signature (if you do not believe me, ask yourself this simple question: “How much would it cost me to have my certificate in Internet Explorer? ”). To explain hazards this concept, here a small film found on Zudeo:

Once again the great computer makers groups or OS makers intend to play Big Brother with the world… But once again, I think that the free software, will be able to answer this threat… If the laws are not voted by and for the million of $ these large companies!

Tags: big brother, trusted comuting, APRIL, Zudeo, free software

Sony Ericsson w810i and Linux

Despite all problems I had to stop my phone subscription at Orange , my new subscription will be an Orange one , after all, they are not so bad , my choice was a little quickly and I chose a Sony Ericsson w810i , I would have to check the compatibility of this telephone with Linux… Indeed I would like to be able to synchronize it with Kontact , in particular the calendar, To-do and the list of contacts… If like me you have large fingers: the keyboard of the portable telephone can be for you a nightmare

The good point of Sony Ericsson w810i is that it is provided with a USB cable to connect it with your PC, when it is connected, two modes are available:

1. File transfer
2. phone mode

The “File transfer” mode allows you to transfer the data from your mobile phone to Linux. But I have not yet succeed to make the contrary… The phone mode can be used with Kmobiltools to see contacts, the SMS sent and receives, to telephone and send SMS. But I still did not find the ultimate tool allowing me to synchronize my mobile phone with my KDE with the USB link, for that I am testing some software:

1. Kandy: hmmm… that does not work!
   
2. Kmobiletools: works very well but it is not what I am looking for
   
3. Wammu/Gammu: the X interface is very ugly but this software seems to works well when it does not freeze
   
4. Gnokii: command line tool and requires to create yourself a configuration file. Kontact uses this tool by default, but that does not work very well
   
5. GCALSYNC: that deviates a little my wired vision of a local synchronisation, but that will at least enable me to manage correctly my schedule.
   

For the moment I am reduce to synchronize my telephone under Windows… and synchronise Windows with Linux… this is not the universal panacea but I seek and hope well to find a perfect solution

Tags: kandy, telephone, Sony, ericsson, w810i, kmobiletools, wammu, gammu, gnokii, gcalsync, kontact, kde, to synchronize

Flash Player 9 and Linux

YES, now I will be able to play to the games written in Flash and to enjoy the new web sites based on Flex2.0. This time, it is as easy as pie to install : just download the plugin from this adress:
http://www.adobe.com/go/fp9_update_b2_installer_linuxplugin
uncompress it and copy libflashplayer.so in your user's directory of plugins of Mozilla: it must be something as: ~/.mozilla/plugins/ ... Restart it, and now you are ready for web site based on flash (you can test the MacDo's game). And now enjoy the beauty of flash...

Tags: flash player, flash 9, linux, Firefox, Flex2.0

Close and manage file with vim

Let's continue with the best practice of the vim software:

:q
to close vim
:q!
to close vim without recording the modifications
:w
to write the modification
:w [NEW_FILE]
to write the file you are editing in NEW_FILE
:w! [FILE]
it is the same action as before but you force the action
:n,mw [FILE]
save the lines from n to m in the file FILE
:n,mw >>[FILE]
add the lines from n to m at the end of the file FILE
:wq ou :x ou ZZ
Save the file and close vim
:e!
edit the file again but with the version on the disk
:e [FILE]
edit the file FILE rather than the current file (:e! to force the action)
:r [FILE]
insert the file FILE after the current line
:rn [FILE] ou :nr [FILE]
insert the file FILE after the line n
n is either a number, or . for the current line, or $ for the last line.
:version
display information about vim

it should be enough today to play a little and increase your productivity lol ;-)

Tags: vim, productivity, linux

How to launch Vim

We have to begin with the beginning: it is not easy to use Vim at 100%, but as soon as you will you can win a huge amount of time ;-)

To open a file:
vim myfile
To have a list of all the file you can recover:
vim -r
To recover a file after a crash:
vim -r to find recovery files available (they end with .swp)
Then, when you find it, type
vim -r .pass.txt.swp
if you want to open a file at the line N for example: just type:
vim +N myfile
to open it and go directly to the end of the file:
vim + myfile
To open file at the first line containing some regular expression regexp
vim +/regexp myfile
Enough for this post...

Tags: linux, vim, time, recover

Vim

In my office, because we are in a Windows environment for our laptop/destop, but because all our server run Linux/Unix, I have to program in command line and as consequence I use Vim... If you want to know what is vim go to wikipedia, if you don't want to change the page (;-) good girl or good boy or good alien) : here is the Vim's introduction directly from Wikipedia:

Vim, which stands for Vi IMproved, is an open source, multiplatform text editor extended from vi. It was first released by Bram Moolenaar in 1991. Since then, numerous features have been added to Vim, many of which are helpful in editing program source code. Vim is today one of the two most popular editors for programmers and users of Unix-like operating systems, alongside Emacs.

Vim is a very powerful editor... as soon as you know how to use it! Son in the next day I will try to give you the main command and explain to you how to use it at 100%.

Tags: editor, text, vim, wikipedia, Moolenaar, Emacs

LastFMproxy, Streamripper and Amarok

I have recently discovered Lastfm, the community radio. It is a great thing just give it the name of some artists you like and it will gather musics of this artists or similar artists... After that you can be a little more specific and say if you like the music or if you want to ban it! Most of the time the choices are excellent and they are becoming more and more relevant with the time and your selection. If you want to read the lastfm flux in one of your old player on linux, you should try lastfmproxy (you can find it here ), just uncompress the archive with this command:
tar -xvzf lastfmproxy-1.1.tar.gz
then go inside the directory you have just created, modify the config.py file with your username and password for Last.fm. That's it, now you can run the main script:
python main.py
you should see something like:
Starting LastFMProxy 1.1...
Connecting to last.fm server...
To tune in, point your browser to:
http://localhost:1881/
The last line stand to give you the url you can listen in your old player... So start it and open this url. That's working ;-) Great.
In all the previous part I said "old player", it is because with the great player of linux: Amarok, you can directly play Last.fm: you need to go in Settings and that's it! You can now choose open a Last.fm flux! Enjoy.
You probably wonder why I told you about LastFmproxy if you don't need it to play LastFM if you use Amarok... It is because there is a little trick: if you listen LastFM, you only listen it, when you shut down your computer, or when the music is finished, there is no way to listen it again! So let install streamripper to record all this music on your computer. First of all you should only record music with a copy left, otherwise you are out of law! Now start lastfmproxy as explained before. And type this little command:
streamripper http://localhost:1881/lastfm.mp3 -d /home/mynqme/mydirectory -r
you can notice 3 arguments:
the radio you want to listen and record
the directory in which you will save music
the last argument will let you listen the music you are recording.
Launch the command, go to Amarok and open the url http://localhost:8000
That's it you can listen and record music on LastFM

Tags: amarok, streamripper, lastfm, lastfmproxy, streaming, music

How to get rid of output of your scripts?

Just add at the end of your command line: >/dev/null 2>&1 so you redirect fd1 to /dev/null, then dump it onto fd2:

Normally: fd1 -> stdout fd2 -> stderr

>/dev/null: fd1 -> /dev/null fd2 -> stdout

2>&1: fd1 -> /dev/null fd2 -> /dev/null

Now no more output, it is very interessant espscially for cronjob.

Linux:: AmaroK

In the inuits legends, Amarok is the giant wolf which devours the imprudent hunters, who hunt alone the night. In the world of computers, Amarok is the application which could too devour the imprudent users of Windows which use the old old old Itunes... Amarok is an application of the free world which works exclusively under Linux or Unix.

AmaroK allows inter alia:

• to manage advanced playlists
• to develop new functionalities via scripts
• to record statistical data of a song even if this one is renamed or moved
  
• to use K3B (burning software for Kde) for the CD engraving
• to use the data bases to store information of music
• to use your iPod
• to manually configure a generic reader with key format USB
• to benefit from the crossfading
• to use MusicBrainz to recover informations on your music
• to recover the words of the songs
• to recover the covers of albums on the Amazon site
• to recover on Wikipédia the articles on the album, the artist or the song in the course of listening
• to manage the support of radio operator flows of last.fm
  

Unfortunately for the users of Windows, Amarok will never be carried under Windows because of:

• its licence LPG
• KDE-libs (which it uses)
• need somebody to do it...