Oh yeah, the new version of Firefox is upon us.
Firefox 19 for Windows, Mac & Linux was released yesterday with some bug fixes and major change being an in-built PDF viewer. We’ve been using third party (read Adobe) add-ons until now to view PDF files within the browser itself, now no need for those. PDF files will open within the browser itself, a la Chrome.
See the full release notes & changes here and download the latest version by clicking on the banner below.
Apologies for the rather crude title but I feel oh-so-angry! Not at the people behind that confounded thing nor at the preventers…but moreso at the moronic individuals who let it propagate to the extent it did! How old is the saying prevention is better than cure? I bet these morons never heard it or may have conveniently forgotten it 
In case you’re wondering what I’m ranting about, please to do a Google News Search for ‘Conficker’. Its a darned worm that was out in the woods for sometime now but reared up on April 1st to say hello to the millions of fools all over the internet! I’d kept both my notebook and the PC up-to-date with the security patches et al but as they saying goes, one bad apple spoils the whole basket and in this case, led to the basket being kept away in isolation until the bad apples were identified and the bad portion cut off. I know I’m coming across a bit dense here but you see, I haven’t have any decent disclaimer about this place…y’know, the kind of stuff that reads somewhat like “opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and have no relation to any person, place or events elsewhere”. Wait, isn’t that from the movies? I guess I’m still seething with frustration…
Anyways, one irony in this milieu is that while a similar event few years back gave me reason to smile, this time round it started off a cussfest! What goes round, comes round, eh?
Apple released the public beta of its Safari 4 browser (which was made available for Windows users two yrs ago) yesterday. I’ve been using Safari 3 ever since it released but the usage is limited to WordPress (which, after its recent upgrade, looks much better on Safari than on Firefox), Apple Trailers, Flickr and few other infrequently-visited sites.
Safari 4 boasts of ~150 features amongst which there quite a few new ones…that is to say, new to Safari! Firefox, Chrome and Opera users will find these ‘new features’ quite ubiquitous. As is my habit, I’ll list out a few ‘sore points’ that make the Safari 4 experience a bit dampening (IMHO, of course): Continue reading
Long time since I’ve updated few of the s/w’s on moi laptop. I usually update the NIS and run Windows Update once in a while and that’s it! So I went on an updating spree today and downloaded & installed newer versions of some of the stuff. That includes the software from where I’m posting this! I Installed the Windows Live Writer 2009 today and going out on a whim, installed few of the plug-ins also. This post is just to tryout those and see how far usable they’re…
Can one imagine an online life without search? Imagine not having the assistance of searching when you are looking for information! Imagine the phrase seek and ye shall find was never coined! Well, my worklife is gonna be somewhat like that from tomorrow onwards!
Why? you may ask…
Coz I was fed up of that pesky little thing that is called Search Indexer and was forcibly foisted upon me as part of XP SP3 The good old search companion was good enough for my needs but this pesky search indexer is one hell of a memory hog! It eats up valuable RAM and also indexes every goddamn file that is there on the PC! Couldn’t it ask me at first which filetypes/folders/drives to index? Yes, there are the so-called advanced options that I can set so that it behaves exactly how I want it to but those settings aren’t shown to me initially! I ‘discover’ them just a few days back when I started getting low disk-space errors and investigations revealed several .mdb files sitting cosily within the search application data folder…each nearly two gigs in size!
Aghast (and swearing under my breath!), I proceeded to uninstall it from the Add/Remove Programs but voila! it was running as a service and not as an installed program! So I did the first thing that came to my mind – fire up services.msc and stop the search service (and also make the startup as manual)! The full implication of that dawned on me just a while ago and I may yet have to restart it and let it run, just in order to make my computing life easier by allowing me to search…but not before I cut short the list of filetypes & the locations to index. It may not be beaten but at least can be subdued!
P.S: I’m looking for ways to get rid of that pesky thing once and for all and stick to the trusty search companion. Let me know in the comments if you know/come across any helpful information. Tx.
I got the CDs of the latest version of Ubuntu, the open source Linux-based operating system, via international courier today. The version’s 8.10 and is codenamed Intrepid Ibex (sic!).
What bothers me is that I have never requested it in the first place The last time I’d ordered the CD’s were for the 6.10 version – Dapper Drake – and had received about twenty of them. After fiddling with the installation for about twenty or so minutes, I gave up and distributed them amongst friends and colleagues; and didn’t think about going back to Ubuntu ever again. If Canonical had the policy of sending the CDs to registered users, I’d have got them for Eft, Fawn, Gibbon and Heron as well…but I didn’t! I’m wondering if one of those Ubuntu advocates had given my name & address in the CD mailing site
After almost two hours of waiting, the Fox has arrived onto my notebook. The Download Day started for us in India at 22:30 Hrs but the site was down even before the said hour approached! I gave it half-an-hour time (maybe they were uploading the files, beefing up the cache etc etc) and was constantly monitoring the release tracking Wiki. I also was checking up most of the Mozilla mirrors…might be there was a new version all ready for me to grab…but alas! all the 3.0 folders had was a “We’re not quite ready yet” message.
Finally, at about 00:35 HRS IST, this download page was accessible and I promptly clicked upon the Download link for the en-US/Win32 version. The 7.1 MB download took a little over a minute and when it was ready, I was in two minds as to whether should I uninstall the older version or overwrite it! I eventually chose the latter and boy! was the installation quick! The mandatory extension-compatibility check took a while (since I have many of them) and I was a tinge disappointed to see many favourite extensions not making the cut! Hopefully, the makers will scale upto 3.0 soon. Once installed, I quickly tweaked some settings and am good to go….and this is my first post from the latesht and fastesht and coolesht browser – Firefox 3.0…..FTW!
First Impressions:
More as I continue using it further…
As of now, I should get back to the Italy Vs. France EURO 2008 game…Italy leading 1-0 with France down to 10 men 
I somehow stumbled upon my Windows Live! Space today. For the uninitiated, “Windows Live! Spaces” is Microsoft’s attempt at providing a Blogging & social Networking platform [look up info on Wikipedia].
I had created a space over there quite a long time ago and have never really bothered about updating it. When I visited it again today, I was put-off with the old and jaded look of it so decided to spruce things up a little bit! Unfortunately, working with Spaces on Firefox is a major PITA so I quit midway! Anyways, if you’re still interested in checking out how it looks, click on the image after the jump…
