Category: Metal (Technical)

Having just bought a shiny new laptop (a slightly better Toshiba, still running Mandriva/Mandrake – Mandriva LE2005, but also dual-booting into Windows if needs be, as I found it frustrating not to be able to see all the Windows-only things that crossed my path), I’ve been reloading my favourite Firefox extensions. I’m amazed at how… Continue reading Firefox extensions

I’ve been using the company laptop until now, and have been investigating buying my own for when I leave. As always I’ve left it a bit late, as I only have 2 working days left. Finally, after much prevaricating, I decided on the Toshiba Tecra A2-A, which dropped R2000 in price last month. However, I… Continue reading Toshiba Tectra A2 A laptops going cheap

I’m feeling absolutely exhausted today, after a night of looking after Dorje. It’s not that he stays up all night screaming, rather that I sleep very lightly when I’m looking after him, and don’t go to sleep easily once I am awake. Normally I sleep very deeply, but when I’m awake I’m awake. With Dorje… Continue reading Password protected PDF’s on Linux

After the excitement of my first comment spam back in December, today has been even more exciting! My blog was exploited, the skin wiped out, and posts redirected to a gay porn site. Looks like it’s a new exploit, as the b2evolution site itself has lost its skin, though I didn’t see anything redirecting to… Continue reading b2evolution exploited

I’ve said for a while that Linux cannot possibly claim to have made it (whatever that means) as a desktop OS until more people are using it than Windows 95. Looking at IOL’s technical user statistics as broadly representative of the South African market, December saw 0.7% of our readers using Windows 95 against 0.54%… Continue reading Linux now more popular than Windows 95!

Apparently, Standard Bank has recently closed down 8 phishing sites in the last 4 weeks (according to an ITWeb article). Not surprising that South African banks are being targeted. With clients of Citibank and other popular US banks now either aware of the practice, or penniless after having been cleaned out, the phishers need to… Continue reading 20Twenty ripe for phishing attack?

A Reuters article on some research done by IDC appearing on ITWeb) had a comment on the market share of various database vendors. Measuring revenue, the leaders were, in order, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. The article was unsatisfactory for a number of reasons: there’s no indication of whether OSS vendors had their revenue included (whether… Continue reading Linux, a database to be feared?

I’m continually being offered work that I don’t have the time (or sometimes the interest) to do. I have a small number of people I usually recommend, but they’re also quite often busy. I do so hate letting people down, and would like to be able to recommend someone everytime I get a plea for… Continue reading Wanted: Good Open Source developers

My copy of Tectonic magazine arrived in the post today. Neil described it as a thing of beauty, and I was pleasantly surprised too (perhaps that shows our predisposition for Ubuntu, from which the cover art is taken?) Many of the articles are taken from the website, and so are old news, but there’s something… Continue reading Tectonic magazine

I’ve just heard (from a friend attempting to apply) that 20Twenty still aren’t accepting applications on anything but Internet Explorer. If they can spend gazillions on shiny new Microsoft licences surely they can afford the 10 minutes it would take a developer to fix their form. Looks like their backend tech is almost as bad… Continue reading 20Twenty still not supporting Open Standards