Touted as the new search engine with exceptional computational powers, wolframalpha is now Live!

Like many others, I decided to try out the Windows 7 RC version being given for free by Microsoft for 1 year. I had Vista ultimate installed and instead of doing an upgrade,

I decided to go for a fresh install on a different hard disk, so dual boot. The installation went smooth, but when I first logged in, this is what happened:

1. First few minutes all looked fine. Then while downloading my Nvidia drivers from nvidia site, the screen suddenly turned white. Nothing responded. Just white screen.

2. I had to finally restart the comp and then when I tried to start Windows 7, it froze on the start-up screen.

3. I restarted again and logged on to Vista next. Amazingly Vista gave me an error saying my vista needs to be activated and I have 0 days left. Found the key to Vista and activated it again. Downloaded nvidia driver for Windows 7 and restarted the system.

4. Decided to log onto Windows 7 again. Hannged on start-up screen again. Restarted.

5. This time I got an option saying, repair start-up options. Looked cool as this is for the first time I saw something like that on Windows start-up. So I tried to use it. Took me to a repair services window which kept going on and on and on for more than 15 min. I tried to cancel, but it said that the repair process can not be cancelled. Next - Restarted again!

6. This time used safe mode on Windows  and used system restore. Took a longer time then Vista to restore the system, but I was finally able to log on to Windows 7. Finally! BUt unfortunately, it deleted the nvidia file I downlaoded using Vista during System Restore. Gave no warning and showed no changed programs or folders menu.

7. Since then, system has been running fine. Overall, i find Windows 7 to be just a very slightly upgraded version of Windows VIsta. Although I liked the new taskbar options, moving of the show desktop button to extreme right seems pretty dumb.

8. Going back to Vista now and will wait till final version of Windows 7 comes out.

My Computer specs: 9300 Quad-core processor, 4 GB Corsair 800 MHz RAM, 500 GB + 180 GB + 120 GB hard drive, Nvidia 9800 GT.

UNIX time hits 1234567890 on Valentine’s Day

“At 11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009, Unix time will reach 1,234,567,890.
Where will you be at this momentous second?” - from Bell Labs

This will be Friday, February 13th at 1831 and 30 seconds EST. If you want to find out what time it will be in your local time, try this Perl script courtesy of Matias Palomec:

perl -e ‘print scalar localtime(1234567890),”\n”;’

Now if there was any reason to fear Friday the 13th, I think this is it. That many numbers sequentially in a row representative of time? Who knows what will stop working? Will lex(1) cease to work, will yacc(1)s
everywhere revolt? Will the rapture be upon us?

I remember asking Alan Cox about UNIX (note that I spelled UNIX in all capital letters, as it should be) time with respect to Linux in 1999. I was confident that most Linux systems would not be adversely affected by “Y2K”, but I knew about a hidden time-bomb in the year 2038, when the “UNIX epoch” comes to an end. Alan assured me that Linux was now working on 64-bit time, and its “roll-over” would happen about the time that the sun burnt out. And while this upcoming event is not a “roll-over”, nevertheless because it occurs on Friday the 13th I will be holding my breath….

I intend on being at the place where I have the best chance of surviving this potential catastrophe and where I can personally do the most good:

=>Martha’s Exchange Restaurant in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA<=

While our friends at Bell Labs (er, ah, Lucent….O.K. “Alcatel-Lucent”) strive to understand this phenomenon, I will be doing my civic duty by drinking fine beer, and maybe an Islay scotch. This is hard to do while you are holding your breath, but I will suffer through. Who knows, perhaps the U.S. government will give us a “bailout” to study this issue.

Who will join me as we watch the time of UNIX line up? Please have a picture taken of you and your friends whereever you are at this time and email it to me at Pawprints AT linuxpromagazine DOT com

Notepad as a diary or log file

There is a simple feature in Notepad that can make it work like a
personal diary for you. Here is how to go about it:

1. Firstly open a blank Notepad file.

2. Now write .LOG as the first line in the file, and then press enter.

And save the file and close it.

3. Open the notepad file now and you will find that the current date and
time has been appended (put) at the end and the cursor is in the next
line.

4. Type your notes and then save and close the file.

5. Each time you open the file, Notepad repeats the process and
appends the date and time to the end of the file and places the cursor
below it.

This way you can keep track of all your entries, you can easily maintain
what you wrote when. This can work very much like a personal diary.

Google has finally released the full version of Google Chrome browser and yanked the ‘beta’ label off it. Google Chrome 1.0 is available for download and installation on Windows.

Meanwhile, Google is reportedly working for Chrome support on Mac OSX and Linux platform.

It may be termed as an achievement for Google engineers who managed to release the first finished version in a span of 100 days even as its major product, Gmail, is still in the beta stage.

Google has rolled out 14 updates since its launch. Post-launch we shared Chrome’s first impressions.

In terms of browser market share, Chrome’s market still remains under 1 percent as per Net Application s reports. Now that it is out of beta phase, PC makers might be swarming Google for deals to sell their system with Chrome pre-installed.

( Source: techtree.com)

Q: I got the MSI P7N (750i) SLI motherboard today. I have been trying to set up SLI with my two nvidia 8600 GT (OC 512 MB). I do not get the option to enable SLI either when I start windows or in the nvidia control panel. I have tried with vista 64 bit and with xp 32 bit, nothing works. Also tried different drivers like 169.21, 169.25, 169.38, 178.24 and many more.

1. MSI P7N 3-slot motherboard.
2. 3 GB DDR2 800 Mhz RAM
3. Nvidia 8600 GT * 2
4. 600 Watt Power Supply
5. 1.8 Core 2 Duo Processor

A: One of my cards was from MSI and the other from XFX. MSI Card had a higher firmware. So I took both cards out, deleted drivers, then just added the XFX card, put in the driver and then upgraded the BIOS for XFX card. Then added the MSI card and again updated the MSI BIOS. Checked back, but still the BIOS versions for the two did not match. Anyways, when I restarted the comp again, it started showing the SLI option. So all good now.

Remember, A defective bridge isn’t going to stop the SLI option from being there, or from being enabled, in fact you don’t even need the bridge to take advantage of SLI…without the bridge the 2 cards communicate via the PCIe bus, it is slower than the direct link of the bridge, but it’s still possible to use SLI without it.

Follow these steps:

In Microsoft Outlook 2002-2003:

* Select Tools –> Options from the top menu in Microsoft Outlook.
* Go to the Mail Format tab.
* Click Internet Format.
* Make sure to uncheck “When an HTML message contains pictures located on the Internet, send a copy of the pictures instead of the reference to their location”.
* Click OK.
* Click OK again.
* Make sure the image you wqant to send is accessible over the internet.
o Place it on your web site, for example.
* Note the URL of the image.
o The URL of an image could be http://www.travelindia-guide.com/images/demo.jpg, for example.
* Insert the image inline in an email in Outlook.
o Go to Insert Menu, Choose Picture, then add the image URL.
* Continue editing the message and send it to the mailing list or individual recipient.

In Outlook Express:

Goto Tools–> Options
Under Send–> HTML Settings–> Uncheck the option “Send Pictures with Message”.
All other steps remain the same as above.

Inline images will not work with Outlook 2007 and above.

In order to get the image URL, you’ll have to first upload the images in a folder onto your ftp.

Cascading or Sliding Effect to show / hide comments

Put this into your <HEAD> section

Put this into your <BODY> section

(Source: http://www.dhtmlgoodies.com/)

Internet Explorer Error for google maps

GPolyline onto the google map
error message:
Line: 30
Char: 18
Unexpected call to method or property access

Sol:

add this code in html tag

<HTML xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xmlns:v=”urn:schemas-
microsoft-com:vml”>

then add the following code ein head section of the page

<style type=”text/css”>
v\:* { behavior:url(#default#VML); }
</style>

(Thanks to Kishore from Gmail groups)