I’m not the one to normally do reviews or ads, but this is one well worth doing. Humble bundle is an initiative hosted by Wolfire studio, in which five other studios (2D Boy, Bit Blot, Cryptic Sea, Frictional Games and the recently joined Amanita Design) joined their award-winning indie games into a bundle with two charities (EFF and Child’s Play) that you can pay whatever you want, to be shared amongst them.
All games work on Linux and Mac (as well as Windows), are of excellent quality (I loved them) and separately would cost around 80 bucks. The average buy price for the bundle is around $8.50, but some people have paid $1000 already. Funny, though, that now they’re separating the average per platform, and Linux users pay, on average, $14 while Windows users pay $7, with Mac in between. A clear message to professional game studios out there, isn’t it?
About the games, they’re the type that are always fun to play and don’t try to be more than they should. There are no state-of-the-art 3D graphics, blood, bullets and zillions of details, but they’re solid, consistent and plain fun. I already had World of Goo (from 2D Boy) and loved it. All the rest I discovered with the bundle and I have to say that I was not expecting them to be that good. The only bad news is that you have only one more day to buy them, so hurry, get your bundle now while it’s still available.
The games
World of Goo: Maybe the most famous of all, it’s even available for Wii. It’s addictive and family friendly, has many tricks and very clever levels to play. It’s a very simple concept, balls stick to other balls and you have to reach the pipe to save them. But what they’ve done with that simple concept was a powerful and very clever combination of physical properties that give the game an extra challenge. What most impressed me was the way physics was embedded in the game. Things have weight and momentum, sticks break if the momentum is too great, some balls weight less than air and float, while others burn in contact with fire. A masterpiece.
Aquaria: I thought this would be the least interesting of all, but I was wrong. Very wrong. The graphics and music are very nice and the physics of the game is well built, but the way the game builds up is the best. It’s a mix of Ecco with Loom, where you’re a sea creature (mermaid?) and have to sing songs to get powers or to interact with the game. The more you play, the more you discover new things and the more powerful you become. Really clever and a bit more addictive than I was waiting for…
Gish: You are a tar ball (not the Unix tar, though) and have to go through tunnels with dangers to find your tar girl (?). The story is stupid, but the game is fun. You can be slippery or sticky to interact with the maze and some elements that have simple physics, which add some fun. There are also some enemies to make it more difficult. Sometimes it’s a bit annoying, when it depends more on luck (if you get the timing of many things right in a row) than actually logic or skill. The save style is also not the best, I was on the fourth level and asked for a reset (to restart the fourth level again), but it reset the whole thing and sent me to the first level, which I’m not playing again. The music is great, though.
Lugaru HD: A 3D Lara Croft bloody kung-fu bunny style. The background story is more for necessity of having one than actually relevant. The idea is to go on skirmishing, cutting jugulars, sneaking and knocking down characters in the game as you go along. The 3D graphics are not particularly impressive and the camera is not innovative, but the game has some charm for those that like a fight for the sake of fights. Funny.
Penumbra: If you like being scared, this is your game. It’s rated 16+ and you can see very little while playing. But you can hear things growling, your own heart beating and the best part is when you see something that scares the hell out of you and you despair and give away your hide out. The graphics are good, simple but well cared for. The effects (blurs, fades, night vision, fear) are very well done and in sync with the game and story. The interface is pretty simple and impressively easy, making the game much more fun than the traditional FPS I’ve played so far. The best part is, you don’t fight, you hide and run. It remembers me Thief, where fighting is the last thing you want to do, but with the difference is that in Thief, you could, in this one, you’re a puss. If you fight, you’ll most likely die.
Samorost 2: It’s a flash game, that’s all I know. Flash is not particularly stable on any platform and Linux is especially unstable, so I couldn’t make it run in the first attempt. For me, and most gamers I know, a game has to work. This is why it’s so hard to play early open source games, because you’re looking for a few minutes of fun and not actually fiddling with your system. I have spent more time writing this paragraph than trying to play Samorost and I will only try it again if I upgrade my Linux (in hoping the Flash problem will go away by itself). Pity.
Well, that’s it. Go and get your humble bundle that it’s well worth, plus you help some other people in the process. Helping indie studios is very important for me. First, it levels the play-field and help them grow. Second, they tend to be much more platform independent, and decent games for Linux are scarce. Last, they tend to have the best ideas. Most game studios license one or two game engines and create dozens of similar games with that, in hope to get more value for their money. Also, they tend to stick with the current ideas that sell, instead of innovating.
By buying the bundle you are, at the very least, helping to have better games in the future.
The Wikimedia Foundation has just launched the first release of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I hope the next version they’ll use sub-etha to update the contents automatically. It could also come with a babel fish or a Federation tricorder…
One of the good characteristics of human beings is to be able to understand other people’s pains. To impersonate them, feel what they feel and know how bad/good to them was something you did. But this post has nothing to do with it, it’s just about the pains I had, and why I abandoned having a wireless connection on my desktop.
Freedom
The first benefit of having wireless is freedom to move around. Not a particular strong one with desktops, though, but still appealing if you like to move furniture (as we do). To the desktop, the best benefit is not laying cables around the house, which for a family with kids is a big deal.
Nevertheless, you still have other cables, like USB, video, sound and especially electric cables all around, probably the same length as a network cable would be. And the benefits stop right there…
Configuration
Wireless configuration is not as easy as it should be. Most boards require driver installation on Linux and Windows (although Linux has been particular strong in wireless drivers, just not to my board). That alone makes your installation of the OS a pain, as you have to install it locally, install the drivers and then update it.
Another problem is that you have to set up passwords and keys, which nowadays is more a user configuration. You can’t just start up all stuff (like sshd or web servers) before you actually log in. It means, before you say it’s a geek thing, that you can’t turn on your computer and log in remotely without logging in locally, if you don’t fiddle with the wireless/network configuration of your “easy-to-use” desktop.
Not to mention that, if you have a home server and want to mount the filesystem over the network, you can’t. Once you fiddle with the configuration and manage to allow it, it still disconnects on log-off and blocks your mount points to unmount themselves cleanly. All in all, the wireless network was designed specifically to laptops on-the-go and not to any other kind of device.
It is true that this issues are being resolved in Linux (drivers, global configuration) but it’s still a good source of problems for the day to day use.
Reliability
Wired networks have a very stable communication channel. If no one is cutting your cables or laying it around NMRs you’re very likely safe from interferences. Once the connection is established, the likelihood of it falling down is very, very low and if something do happen, it’s probably server related (i.e. it crashed) than any cable/card issue.
On the other hand, wireless connections are completely unreliable, prone to errors in transmissions, channel overuse (especially problematic on overcrowded areas like most cities) and walls. Most programs are not ready to accept huge delays on transmission.
I’ve put my router on top of the printer and bought an antenna booster, changed to a channel far away from all others in the area. The speed has increased a bit, but the reliability is still bad. It often lags, slow down and the latency is just not the same with cables.
Conclusion
Obvious as it is, wireless desktops are not rare. Many of my tech savvy friends (and me), have opted for wireless connection on their desktops in favour of a safer bet, mostly because of cabling issues. I’ve been using wireless for all my needs (desktops, laptops, mobile phones) for over three years now and I can say that I’m more dissatisfied than happy about it. This is why I’ve decided to have a long white cable around my sofas and TV set. Luckily, my power cable is also white, and as I can’t get rid of it (yet), it blends nicely.
Even my boot efficiency (boot and login) increased a lot (about 2/3 of the time), I have no more mount issues, using the server’s shared drives is easy and fast, gaming issues are over and browsing has lost a source of problems.
It’s not all roses, though. When I had the drive mounted via USB, things were a bit faster (my router is 100mbps, unfortunately), but still way better than wireless. Besides, I now have a printer and scanner server!
Install Thunderbird and create your email account with the instructions from Google help page: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77662
To set up your Thunderbird client to work with Gmail:
Open Thunderbird, and select Tools > Account Settings.
Click Add Account.
Select the Email account radio button and click Next. The Identity screen appears.
Enter your full name in the Your Name field. Enter your Gmail address (username@gmail.com) in the Email Address field, and click Next. Google Apps users, enter your full address in the format username@your_domain.com
Select IMAP as the type of incoming server you are using. Enter imap.gmail.com in the Incoming Server field.
Set the Outgoing Server to smtp.gmail.com and click Next.
Enter your full email address (including @gmail.com@your_domain.com) in the Incoming User Name and Outgoing User Name fields, and click Next.
Enter a name for your email account in the Account Name field, and click Next.
Verify your account information in the dialog box, and click Finish.
Select Server Settings from the folder list below your new account.
Update the Port value to 993.
In the Security Settings section, select SSL from the Use secure connection options.
Select the ‘Check for messages at startup’ checkbox and the ‘Check for new messages every 10 minutes’ checkbox.
Click Outgoing Server (SMTP) in the folder list.
Select the smtp.gmail.com (Default) entry from the list and click Edit. The SMTP Server page appears.
Enter smtp.gmail.com as the Server Name and set the Port to 587.
Select User name and password and enter your full email address (including @gmail.com or @your_domain.com) in the User Name field.
Select TLS from the Use secure connection radio buttons and click OK.
Click OK to save your changes and exit the Account Settings dialog.
Now in your Thunderbird you can see your Calendar as well.
Open the Calendar tab and under the “home” Calendar, click with the right button of your mouse and select “New Calendar”
Select On the Network and click Next.
Select the CalDAV format option.
In the Location field, enter [ https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/ [ your Google Calendar email address ] /events ] and click Next.For example, if the email address used to access your Google Calendar is calendarfriend@gmail.com, the Location field should contain https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/calendarfriend@gmail.com/events
Be sure to use https in your URL, as an http address will not work.
Enter a name and select a color for your calendar.
In the pop-up screen, enter the following information:Username: This is the complete email address you use with Google Calendar (including the part after the @ sign). If you’re using Google Apps, be sure to enter your Google Apps email address. Password: This is the password you use to sign in to Google Calendar
Click OK.
Your Google Calendar will now appear in the Calendar tab of Mozilla Sunbird, and Sunbird will sync any changes to and from Google Calendar.
Now got to Thunderbird add-on tab and install Google Contacts add-on
Restart Thunderbird
Configure Google Contacts to synchronize with the server and that’s it.
“Most of us wish we could give more, now we can. Everyclick is a really simple way to raise money for free, just by doing something you already do” said Polly Gowers CEO, co- founder and winner of the WEBA Ethical Entrepreneur of the year 2007. “As we see it, every search that is not raising money for charity is a search wasted.”
Everyclick.com works just like any other search engine, but allows the users to choose the charity they would like to benefit from their searching.The revenue generated for charities comes from companies that advertise on the site.There is no sign up fee or hidden charge to the user or the charity, it’s free giving.
Charities of all sizes are benefiting from this new fundraising service; they range from Cancer Research to small village schools. If 10% of the UK online population used Everyclick.com for their searches, an additional £172,000 would be raised for charity every day.
How to raise more money for Camfed using Everyclick:
search the web using personalised Camfed search page: http://www.everyclick.com/camfed
compare and shop using this link(shop online at Tesco, Dell, Amazon, M&S, BBC, and more – half the revenues will go to Camfed)
The Everyclick Charity Challenge enables us to raise more money and have the chance to win a poster campaign on 1500 Clear Channel Outdoor sites that will be viewed an estimated 192 million times.
The challenge runs from 15th October 2008 to 1 March 2009 during which time we will have a range of innovative ways to raise money online.
Just a quick note to say Computer Awards has announced their shortlist for this year… and guess what… they think I deserve to be between the eight finalists…
Who knows… The winners will be announced at a glittering prize-giving ceremony to be held on 5 November.
The fast evolution of computer networks brought fantastic developments for communication and connection capacities.
We can easily see this evolution while observing the Internet, first a restricted network and now a complex and global network, where we can do a simple mail exchange or complex and elaborated financial transactions.
But, we also have the dark side of this fantastic environment: threats like virus, worms and Trojan horses, scanning, spoofing, sniffing or snooping, and so many others became the nightmare of all organizations.
Indeed, the technology can play for and against us.
A good way to make the technology works for us is using Packet Inspection. This is a tool frequently used to sniffing networks, looking for password and breaches, but information security professionals can use it to do exactly the opposite: protect the network.
With a good Packet Analyzer you can generate information about your integrated information systems, supporting the system administrator to find and solve the problems in a quick and efficient manner. It’s possible to identify attacks, non-authorized access to systems and malicious behaviors. In other words, with a good inspection solution your organization will be able to see and analyze everything that hits your network.
You can prevent problems and also reconstruct network sessions, providing the needed information for Network Forensics. It’s when the hunter became the hunted: you will be using the same method malicious threats use to put your business under risks to defend your organization.
Do you want to know what a Packet Inspection is? Watch this video for more information: Deep Packet Inspection explained or read here at Wikipedia.
Data Recovery
Every computer has storage files devices. These devices can be: Hard drives, notebook’s hard drive, CDs, DVDs, diskettes, Zip drive, memory card, pen drives, etc.
In these devices you can find the operational system e all information used and archived in your computer.
But, the truth is, these devices are subjects to failures and accident that can cause the lost of your valuable files: mechanical failures, electric failures, virus action, bad system functioning, information deletion, format, problems with water, fire, smoke, and others.
Data Recovery is the effort to rescue info lost in those or similar situations.
Insecure Data
Our data is not always secure and sometimes is too late to do something to protect them. That’s why Data Recovery business is growing so fast around the world with some many companies offering solutions.
The truth is we never imagine it can happen with us. “I ended up with nothing” – One day, while starting her computer, a friend heard a strange sound. With a burning smell, her computer turned off. She couldn’t turn her computer on again, a Pentium III with 2 years.
Even after installing new mother board, sound card and power supply, her computer didn’t turn on. Hard drive was removed and installed in another commuter, but, as you can imagine, she couldn’t access her data.
In that hard drive, she was keeping her PhD papers, and all her classes. No hard copies, no backups. Since now she can’t access her data, she is now looking for a company that can help her, to at least try to salve some of those files.
But the question is: are these files more valuable than the price for an eventual data recovery? And if yes, which values and services she should look in a data recovery company?
Information on Risk
I’m pretty sure that my friend’s history is totally familiar to you. The good thing is nowadays internet can provide valuable resources to help you with your data recovery. An example is this data recovery blog from DTIData, a great site with a lot of resources, where you can find information about how to recover your hard drive, your exchange server, your NTFS, your iPod, or even raid data recovery.
But how it happens? Why suddenly your hard drive doesn’t work anymore? How can we prevent this situation? Is it possible recovering any data? Is my data impossible to be recovered?
A future article will explain.
With a range of clients that can go from The Pentagon to the home user, they have everything for security surveillance, since External and Internal security cameras, CCTV cameras to PC security systems.
Pangea Day aims to ‘tap into the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future’.
Twenty films will be selected to be shown on 10th May 2008 all around the world. Each film selected will receive $3,000 and the opportunity to pitch to Participant Productions (Jeff Skoll’s company). The winner will receive $20,000 to develop their treatment. This would be great for Camfed! (Yes, where I work ! )
If you haven’t already joined up to www.youtube.com, then please do so and view and vote for our film – ‘Two Friends: The Promise of Africa’s Future’ – which can be found here: ‘Two Friends‘
The more votes and the more hits, the greater possibility our film will be noticed! And please get your friends to vote too!
Data Recovery
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