Drupal 7..

The popular content management system Drupal is now available in version 7. Highlights of this release include an improved administrative user interface, automated tests for modules and patches, A Render API for easier theming, database abstraction, and flexible content and custom fields. There are some 900 user contributed modules that you can use to customize Dupals functionality to meet special requirements. Find more details in the official release announcement.

Joomla 1.6 Released..

Hot on the heels of Drupal 7 comes a major upgrade from the Joomla communitiy with the release of Joomla 1.6. Like Drupal, Joomla is a content management system (CMS) implemented in PHP and MySQL that includes many useful features such as blogs, forums, search, calendars and polling. The group claims that Joomla is used for 2.6% of the content on the Internet.

Main development phase of Linux kernel 2.6.38 completed...

Exactly 14 days after Linux version 2.6.37 was released, Linus Torvalds has published the first beta version of kernel 2.6.38, which is expected to be completed at the end of March or beginning of April. With this release, the merge window for the development cycle has come to an end and Torvalds has now integrated most of the changes for this version into the main development branch's source code management system.
As usual, the nearly 7,600 commits include a number of changes which even users who do not generally deal with the kernel in their Linux distribution will eventually notice and benefit from. One such change is the so called "wonder patch", which in certain situations can redistribute processor load in order to visibly speed up the reaction time of desktop applications.
Torvalds explicitly mentions the SCHED_AUTOGROUP feature in his email on the release along with the patches to improve the scalability of the VFS (Virtual File System); these have been under development for some time now and have finally been added to 2.6.38 after it was left out of 2.6.36 and 2.6.37.
Patches to support AMD's Bobcat processors are included, and the DRM Radeon drivers now also handle some of the graphics chips' 2D and 3D acceleration functions on the Radeon HD 62xx to 68xx models. The Nouveau DRM driver offers experimental, rudimentary 3D support for the Fermi chips in a number of current 400 series GeForce graphics cards, although the driver still relies on proprietary firmware. The driver for Intel graphics chips now has better support for the power saving functions in Core-i processors.
The live media for distributions will probably soon include a few more programs, because SquashFS (as of version 2.6.38), which many of them use, supports the XZ format derived from LZMA and is known for its great compression density. The new Transparent Huge Pages, which were already used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6, are intended to speed up workloads that benefit from the use of such huge pages – one example being virtualisation. In contrast, the back ends for Xen's Dom0 mode are not included, which means that we will probably have to wait for kernel 2.6.39 to be able to work as a Xen host.
As always, a large number of drivers were added or revised; for example, the rtl8192ce driver for Realtek's WLAN chips has been added for the first time

Testers wanted: Python 3.2 RC1 arrives..

Following two betas, the Python developers have issued a first release candidate (RC1) for Python 3.2, the latest generation of the Python language. Python 3.2 RC1 will be followed by a second release candidate on the 29th of January – the final version is scheduled to arrive on the 5th of February, 2011.
As is normal at this stage of development, the developers have been focusing on correcting bugs found in the previous alpha and beta builds. Aimed at testers, the first release candidate is not intended for use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.
Additional information about the release candidate, including a summary of new features, can be found on the What's New In Python 3.2 page and in the change log. Python 3.2 RC1 is available to download from the project's site.
Python 3.2 RC1 is licensed, as are all recent Python releases, under the permissive and GPL-compatible Python license. The latest stable releases of Python are version 2.7.1 and 3.1.3 from the 13th of November – from now on, the 2.7.x branch will only receive bug fixes.

New features in Amarok 2.4

Following a beta last month, the Amarok development team has released version 2.4 of the open source music player for the KDE desktop, code named "Slipstream". According to the developers, the project's first release of 2011 is a major update that brings significant performance, usability and stability improvements.

Amarok 2.4 brings significant performance and stability improvements. Amarok 2.4 features support for the third generation iPod Touch, the option to have Amarok write statistics and album covers back to the files directly, as well as a completely re-written collection scanner that better detects compilations. A mass-tagging user interface using the MusicBrainz open content music database is now included that allows users to update their songs with accurate information, as is transcoding support – the developers note that transcoding will be expanded to media devices in a future release.
Other changes include an option to show and hide the menu bar, a new applet for guitar and bass tab information, map and calendar views for the upcoming events applet, support for UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) collections and a variety of bug fixes over the previous 2.3.2 release.
More details about the major update, including a change log and a full list of new features, can be found in the official release announcement. Amarok 2.4 is available to download for various Linux distributions, BSD and other Unix distributions. Amarok is licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public Licence (GPLv2).

Mozilla releases Firefox 4 Beta 9..

The Mozilla Project has published the ninth beta for version 4.0 of its open source Firefox web browser. Firefox 4 is the non-profit organisation's next-generation web browser based on version 2.0 of the Gecko rendering platform (the Firefox 3.6 branch uses Gecko 1.9.2) and features a new Add-ons Manager and extension management API. Other changes include a new 'tabs on top' layout, the integration of Firefox Sync, formerly known as Weave, and various new features aimed at web developers.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 on Mac OS X. According to a post on the Mozilla Blog, compared to the previous beta, Firefox 4 Beta 9 focuses on performance and features improvements to the browser's start-up time, as well as an overhaul of the bookmarks and history code. The developers have also enabled per-compartment garbage collection, reducing the amount of work that needs to be done during complex animations and making them smoother. Other changes include the addition of a new database standard, IndexedDB, which replaces Web SQL and fixes for more than 650 bugs.
As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter. The ninth beta will be followed by one more beta version, as well as the planned release candidate – specific release dates for these have yet to be confirmed. Following a number of delays, the final release of Firefox 4 is expected "before the end of February".
Further information about the development preview, including a list of known issues, can be found in the release notes and in the change log. Firefox 4 Beta 9 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Alternatively, existing Firefox 4.0 Beta users can upgrade to the new version, either by waiting for the automated update notification or by manually selecting "Check for updates" from the Help Menu.
Firefox binaries are released under the Mozilla Firefox End-User Software License Agreement and the source code is released under disjunctive tri-licensing that includes the Mozilla Public Licence, GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. The latest stable release is version 3.6.13, a security update that addressed a critical vulnerability, from early December.

Reasons why Linux is better than Windows

From so many days i wanted to post advantage of linux over windows. After learning a lot from so many websites , now i am ready to post so here it is

                                         #MYLOVE                                                                                                          
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· Linux doesn’t have the virus problems : Even Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer couldn’t clean Windows Viruses. Still not convinced? Its not that there aren’t any viruses for Linux but Linux is more secure and less virus prone.
· No Spyware: Not just spyware but none of those funny applications that keep doing things in the background.
· Linux doesn’t need defragging: The Linux file systems work very efficiently such that it arranges data in a way that it doesn’t require defragging.
· Linux doesn’t crash without any apparent reasons. In Linux the core operating system (kernel) is separate from the GUl (X-Window) from the applications (OpenOffice.org, etc). So even if the application crashes, the core operating system is not affected. In Windows (Microsoft prefers to call this tight integration) if the Browser crashes, it can take down the entire operating system.
· Linux doesn’t crash if you accidentally pulled out your USB key/pen drive. Try this a 100 times if you don’t believe me. But don’t blame me if your pen drive data gets corrupt.
· Linux doesn’t require frequent re-installation: In Windows if the OS crashes, there is no easy way to recover this. Many IT support staff doesn’t know what to do and all they can do is re-install Windows. Which means that users applications and preferences are lost, and needs to be installed again. I haven’t seen anyone using Linux, requiring re-installing unless there is a hard drive failure. Most things in Linux can be fixed without requiring re-installation.
· Linux doesn’t require frequent rebooting: Linux runs extremely stable, even if an application crashes, there is no need to reboot the whole system, just restart that application or service. Linux also doesn’t require rebooting when a new hardware device is added configured. Linux doesn’t require rebooting when you change any setting or re-configure your Network or when you install a new application.
· No licensing headaches: Yes Linux is free and you don’t know need to bother about the complexion licensing of per user/per PC/per server/etc. Note: Some Linux distributions charge a yearly subscription to get the updates and patches, however this is still simpler than the proprietary world.
· 100 File Systems: Linux can read over a 100 different types of file systems. Windows is limited to its own two file systems. Well most general users may not care about this but its extremely useful is you are working in a mixed environment or you need to extract some data from a hard drive formatted on another computer.
· Source Code: You have access to the source code and the right to modify or fix things if you are a programmer. Many end users think this is not necessary but they will realize how important this is when their application vendor decides to discontinue support on an older version to promote a newer one.
· No Piracy: You can also share the software with your friends and its completely legal to do so. Didn’t your teacher tell you in kindergarten that you should share things with your friends? Linux and Open Source actually encourage that while if you do that in Windows its not only considered illegal but they will call you a pirate!
· Linux costs less , because not only the OS is free but the applications are also free. Plus since Linux doesn’t have a virus problem, you also save on the recurring cost of Anti-Virus software. Note: You may still have to pay for support/training but the overall running cost is low.
· Powerful Shell: Both Linux and Windows has shell environment Windows (know as command prompt). The shell environments in Linux (such as bash) are more powerful and you can write entire programs using the scripting language. This is extremely useful to automate repetitive tasks such as backup.
· Portability: Linux can run from a CD or can be installed on the hard drive. Windows by default doesn’t have any such option. Using live CDs such as Ubuntu/Knoppix, users can try out Linux by booting from the CD, without the need to install the operating system. Linux is extremely portable, it can also run off usb pen drives/portable hardrives/thumb drives and more.
· US government have Window Backdoors: Did you know that in Windows, there is built in back-door entry so US government can see you data as and when they like? Yes the US NSA has the key build into every copy of Windows. In Linux there is no such thing possible as the operating system is open source and can easily be detected and disabled.
· Linux has built in virtualization (XEN/KVM/Virtual Box/etc.) so you can run multiple copies of Linux or Windows simultaneously.
· Complete Driver Packages: The Linux kernel comes shipped with large number of hardware drivers. 3000 Printers, 1000 Digital Cameras and 200 webcams were supported by Ubuntu. On Windows, a lot of hardware doesn’t work until you install the driver, this problem is worse with Vista as Microsoft doesn’t allow drivers to be installed which are not supported/certified by Microsoft. On Linux, a huge percentage of today’s common hardware works perfectly out-of-the-box.
· No registry Keys: Unlike Windows, Linux doesn’t use registry. Most of the configuration is stored in plain text files, which are easy to manage/backup and transfer between systems. Registry is a pain to manage, very complex and your system configuration is stored in a proprietary format which needs special tools to open. The biggest pain with registry is when it gets corrupted, this problem is eliminated in Linux because it doesn’t use registry.
· Linux is the most documented operating systems and most of these documentations are available for free. These documents are well written and explain computing concepts too.
· No more hardware upgrades: Linux runs happily on older hardware and the hardware requirements don’t increase with every new version. If you have really old computers like Pentium I/III, you can still convert them to thin clients using LTSP and still use them. If you compare the hardware requirements between Ubuntu and Windows, you would notice that Ubuntu’s hardware requirements haven’t changed for many versions.
· Completely localized: As there is a strong community and the source code is available, Linux is localized into almost every language in the world. You can further customize it for your needs, you can easily do that.
· Excellent package management: Linux has excellent package management tools which make it easy to install and upgrade applications, Most Linux distributions makes it very easy to upgrade from one version to another.
· Excellent Development platform: If you are a developer, you will like Linux. Linux has all the development tools, libraries and compilers built in. If you are Java developer or a Web developer using PHP/Perl/Rub or doing C,C++ development, you will feel at home.
· No Hidden APIs: Windows many hidden or undocumented APIs which is used for unfair advantage to Microsoft. In Linux all APIs are completely open and documented. For example Microsoft specifies that everyone writing Internet application should use the Winsock API while Microsoft Internet Explorer doesn’t use the Winsock API, it uses an undocumented API allowing Internet Explorer to run faster than other browsers.
· No Execute by default: By default if you download any file, it doesn’t have the execute permission, making your system more secure. The app cannot execute unless you go and change the permissions.
· No write access to applications: By default users cannot install applications unless they change their permission or login as a supervisor. This ensures that any virus or malicious code cannot go and write to your application folder.
· No open ports: By default most Linux distributions have all their incoming ports blocked, thereby making their Operating more secure from network attacks.
· Centralised repository of applications ensures that you are downloading your applications/patches only from a known source only. The repository is digitally signed which ensures that only the right application and code can be downloaded and installed on your computer.
· Faster release cycle: Many Linux distributions have a fixed release cycle of 6 months which makes it easy for them to incorporate all the latest applications, bug fixes, improvement and support for newer hardware. Windows release cycle is not predictable. Takes a few years and is often delayed.
· Multiple Interfaces: While both Linux and Windows have a GUI, Windows has only one default GUI. Linux is all about choice and has a option to use different type of GUIs or Window Managers as they are know as in Linux. Users can choose from something that looks like their favourite Operating System or they can choose something that’s simple and fast. Popular ones are Gnome and KDE.
· Free Applications: Most Linux distributions come bundled with whole lot of applications such as Office Suite, Photo Editing, etc. You not only get the OS for free but you also don’t have to pay for the applications. Yes many of these open source applications such as OpenOffice.org also run on Windows but you need to find, download and install them where as there are available in most Linux distros by default.
· Linux saves bandwidth cost: The volume of Updates that Windows, Antivirus and similar applications do, is much more as compared the updated in Linux. So if you are paying for every MB that you download, its a big consideration.
· No automatic updates: Windows Vista it setup to automatically update your system by default. In Linux it will alert you for an update but you have to choice to click and apply the update. You can setup to automatic update if you like. So you can update when you like and not when your operating system decides to update.
· Chat and Social Networking: Empathy/Kopete popular IM clients on Linux are single clients that can connect to all the protocols – Facbook Chat, Google Talk, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, AOL and more. Twitter/Facebook broadcast from the desktop. With Gwibber client, you can view your social network status right from your desktop or update your status to all your accounts without logging onto each of them separately.
· Superb Graphics: Linux already has a usable 3D Desktop – Compiz. This makes it easy to switch and view multiple desktops simultaneously. It also adds a nice eye candy to Linux. If you still believe Linux is only for geeks, this feature will definitely change your mind. This doesn’t require you to purchase expensive graphic cards, it very comfortably works with on board graphic card.
· No annoying message like Vista keeps telling you that xyz application is trying to access your system. Vista confuses the user, either the user will always click allow or don’t know what to do.
· Easy to dual boot: Linux makes it easy for it to exist with any other operating system. If you install Linux on a system which already has Windows, Linux will not mess your Windows. Windows on the other hand messes up your Linux partition, if it finds one.
· Linux has bundled Databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL which are extremely powerful and used in production environments. Customer doesn’t need to purchase expensive databases.
· Linux is been used for super computing clusters, most of top super computers in the World use Linux. Windows just can’t scale to that level.
· File system scalability: while NTFS file system can scale up to 16TB, XFS on Linux can scale up to 18 million TB! Yes that bigger than what you would ever need.
· Processor scalability: Linux can scale to unlimited processors. It is already running on a single system with 2048 CPUs. Windows can’t even claim to come anywhere near that number.

How to Split Videos: Video Splitter software Free Download

Aone Ultra Video Splitter 6.1.0113 | 9.62 Mb

Ultra Video Splitter is a tool to help you split, cut or trim a large AVI(Divx, XviD, MPEG4), MPEG I/II, DVD(.VOB), RealMedia(.RM, .RMVB), VCD(.DAT), ASF/WMV file into smaller clips.Using the included video player, you can split a movie file to smaller clips in AVI/DivX ,MPEG I/II, VCD, SVCD, DVD, WMV/ASF format. Ultra Video Splitter provides different splitting mode to make splitting easy.You can extract multiple segments of any size by using the visual editing mode, or split the selection into multiple pieces of equal size automatically.Ultra Video Splitter is an application which helps you split video files.You even can use it to convert a single file.You can change the framerate, size etc as you like. The program does not require any technical experience and is very easy to use.

Key Features:
· Split,cut or trim large video file into smaller clips
· Support large video file, even large then 2GB
· Very fast and without any quality loss.
· Very User-friendly interface
· Supports AVI(Divx,XviD, MPEG4), MPEG I/II, DVD(.VOB), RealMedia(.RM, .RMVB), VCD(.DAT), ASF/WMV
· All supported formats to MPEG1
· All supported formats to MPEG2
· All supported formats to VCD,SVCD,DVD(PAL,NTSC)
· All supported formats to AVI(DivX,XviD, MPEG-4.....)
· All supported formats to Windows Media Format (WMV/ASF)
· Very easy to use.

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Puppy Linux 5.2 Released

Puppy Linux is a distro with a number of interesting design requirements. For example it is designed so small that it can be loaded completely into RAM and run from there, including a large number of applications (assuming have at least 256 MB RAM). You can boot it from a live CD, and once booted up, the CD can be removed and the drive can be used for other purposes. Running completely from RAM means that response is very quick.

Parted Magic 5.8 Boots From RAM

There is a new version of the disk partitioning software Parted Magic available. This package allows you to change the partitioning on your hard drive. For example, you can add new partitions, remove partitions, or change the size of partition. Furthermore, Parted Magic can deal with all major file system types for Linux as well as Microsoft Windows operating systems. This includes, ext3, ext4, fat16, fat62, and ntfs. This means you can format a partition for Linux as well as Windows.

How Computer Transfer data without coillsion???

è Take and example of 5 computers.If we connect 4 computers with one another with the ethernet cable,and if few computers are doing data transfer with each other some are of doing http transfer to each other.Some are accessing their emails and so on.All are doing this things simultenously.

è So the question comes to everyone’s mind is that “ why they are not collide with each other ? ”

è I am going to focus in that what exactly the technique or the procedure used by the ethernet,so that collision is not occuring while the data transfer.
       
       Why to have access control ?

  

   è To avoid collision.
   è Take and example of traffic signals.There are green yellow and red lights are there.They have defined some rules of the traffic so that accidents/collision of the vehicles should not be occur.In the case of there are no rules then one or the more car will be fall in accidents.

  è So in the case of avoiding this type of collision there should be some rules or the protocols in the system by the computer accessing the internet or the accession the LAN.

   è Access Control also helps in the case of collision occurs.There should be collision revovery process in there if collision occurs.

Why exactly the collision occurs ?

è                One or mode node are start transferring while others are going on.

è                 Two or mode nodes are start transmission at the same time.

How computer will come to know that the collision has been occurred in the system or not ?

è To understand the answer of this question we have to understand first that “ What is packets ? ”

1.      Packets are nothing but the voltage and the current electric signals.

2.      So if the packets are transferred,some voltage is flowing and current also in the ethernet.

3.      So if the system has been found that the current electric signals and the volatage is high compare to the default level,it will come to know that the collision has been occurred.

What is Access Control Protocol ? -> Mechanism To Avoid the Collision.

è This has some rules which detects and prevent the collisions.

1.      It has an ability to find out the busy medium.So if some new packets came then it wont allow it to transfer through that busy medium.

2.      It will wait until that medium becomes free and then will allow packets to transfer through that medium.

3.      In the case of rule 1 and 2 are not obeyed then there should be some technique/way which can find/detect the collison.

4.      After first collision occures the transmitting nodes should act in such a way that it reduces the chances of the more collisions.

è If this 4 rules are obeyd then no collision can take place into the system and even if it takes place we can recover from it.

Accounting Software GnuCash Version 2.4.0

GnuCash developers have released version 2.4.0 of the popular open source accounting software and personal finance manager, which now also supports the database systems SQLite3, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. See the official announcement for more details about the current release.

Alien Arena 2011

A new version of the free online FPS (first person shooter) game Alien Arena has been released. Version 7.50 is now available for download as Alien Arena 2011. Since 2004 the game has been downloaded more than 1 million times and is considered one of the best free online games.

Now, you can control computer commands by thought......

MUMBAI: A new software platform, developed by French scientists , which was demonstrated at a tech fest at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here allows individuals to control computer commands by just a 'thought'.

Acting as an interface designed to translate what happens in the brain into a computer command, this software --'OpenViBE'-- is the outcome of a project initiated in 2005 and has a multitude of potential applications.

"The OpenViBE software platform facilitates the design, testing and use of 'brain-computer interfaces' - in other words, systems that process the electrical signals linked with brain activity and translate them into a command that can be understood by machines," computer scientists Yann Renard and Laurent Bonnet said while demonstrating the software at the Department of Computer Sciences, IIT , here yesterday.

These allow individuals to communicate with a computer or any automated system without using their hands or other movements to activate a button or remote control, they said.

"OpenViBE provides a tool that is aimed at a varied audience, from researchers and clinicians to video game developers," they said.

To a query on whether writing by thought was now possible, the scientists replied in affirmative.

A person wearing an EEG (electroencephalogram) cap focuses his attention on the letter that he wants to spell out. When this letter flashes, a particular brain wave is generated which is picked up, detected and interpreted by the machine, they said.

Explaining further in technical terms, the scientists said, "OpenViBE is a series of software libraries and modules written in C++ that can be simply and effectively integrated in order to design real-time applications. Programmer users can develop their own code, while non-programmers can use the graphical interface."

The Brain-Computer Interfaces and OpenViBE can also be used to assist those with motor disabilities -- particularly entirely paralysed persons suffering from locked-in syndrome, in multimedia -- video games and virtual reality and in general to facilitate any type of interaction with an automated system like robotics, home automation.

"They also open up possibilities to treat certain neurological problems, attention disorders, motor recovery after a stroke for example, through rehabilitation processes such as neuro feedback," the scientists said.