abhiram

Well, some games in which I was really happy with the sequels are: Grand Theft Auto Seriously, Rockstar really improved the game a lot from GTA III to GTA SA. The gameplay, the features and everything are absolutely stunning in SA... makes playing it worth every minute. Half-Life Ok, when I finally got my hands on the complete version of the first Half-Life (that was more than a year after I played Half-life:Uplink) I played it non-stop for 2 complete days. But Half-Life 2 didn't disappoint me either. It was simply great and this time it took me about 4 days. Doom How many people here haven't played the original Doom ? When that game was released, it was a masterpiece. Doom III is in no way similar to the original Doom, but it was fun. Great effects and amazing detail. Castle Wolfenstein Now, this is another one of the orignal Doom era ... remember Wolfenstein 3D? Return to Castle Wolfenstein was cool. It's kinda based on the same plot of Hitler and World War II but still, it's definitely fun playing. No feeling of 'deja vu' in this game But on the other hand .... Max Payne Now, this is one game which I feel was released in a hurry.... Max Payne 2. Of course, the 3D realism and the surround sound places the game miles ahead of the original Max Payne, but overall, it's just the same thing again.... bullet-time, dodge-time and a creepy love story. The ending in the first part was very dramatic, but in the sequel it was terrible. This is one game I felt could have been better. After all, the first part created history with it's slow-motion effects.

That's pretty cool ... wonder how my computer would handle such graphs in matlab?

You mean you can't upload .mp3 and .wma files to your account? That sounds a bit weird.

That's a pretty nice find. I've read a bit about AJAX ... seems that it makes the 'Refresh' and 'Back' buttons obsolete. I'm not so sure if I really want to have that. Gmail is pretty neat, but I still find myself pressing the 'Back' button from after reading a particular email.... that's because, in Yahoo and Hotmail, pressing 'Back' takes you to inbox faster than clicking on 'Inbox'. Of course, that's only on my uber-slow connection , but it still is a point to consider.

This is crazy!!! I thought sp2 was the final service pack that they were going to release and that they weren't going to release any more 'service packs' other than regular updates. Dam... when will M$ ever give a standard completed OS? Why don't they just forget Vista and sit down and plug all the holes in XP first?

30 GB?!!! What is the maximum attachment size that they allow ?I don't think anybody will use it for their regular email.... it's much more useful to store files . Besides, I for one don't want an email id like 'abhiram@30gigs.com' .

Sorry if I sound ignorant, but what is a 'bboy'?

Nice... pretty neat. Can you make it a bit more dense? Like instead of single dots in a perfect circle, a bit more thick?

Well... frankly, I don't see why it's such a big deal. I use the Net all the time to get some material for projects and assignments. In fact, most of the professors in my univ actually encourage us to do it. Some of them prefer the older method of going to the library and sitting for hours sifting through books and finding material relevant to the assigment. I don't support plagiarism... but I would like credit given wherever due. Whenever I get some material from the net (or from any book for that matter), I make it a point to mention the source. Question: What kind of projects are we talking about? For example, the assignments I usually do are of the type "What is the development of renewable energy sources from the oceans over the last decade?". For such assignments, there is no other go than to search the net for some material, because our library has books that were published only in the last decade relevant to this subject .

Well... it's not like you'll be using only one computer for programming all throughout right? You probably need to program at various places, like a friend's computer, at college, at work.... Wont' it be better if you just stick to the default keyboard layout? Or maybe, the more commonly used layout... qwerty? Dvorak may be better for coding, but if it isn't much in use, I don't think I'll be switching over ?

Yea, some people did install 2.6 directly during installation without any problems. But when I was installing slackware, I wanted the most stable system and so .... I installed only kernel 2.4.

Really amazing wallpapers. The Blob pic is my favorite.I've got Photoshop CS2 but I can't do anything with it .

Well... i've been trying to install Kernel 2.6 for some time now, but keep running into some problems. Slackware gives you 2.4 by default and you have to upgrade to 2.6 on your own. But as far as it goes, 2.4 is working fine, so I really don't have a problem with it. A little slow, but faster than windows .

Now, that's amazing. I thought portage would just download everything from the repository in the source form and then compile it and that would be the completely optimised form. I didn't know it actually knew about what kind of computer you have and what things you've got installed and then implement flags to take care of that. That's simply amazing. Now, I've definitely got to try gentoo.

Sorry for double posting, but is this something specific to an ftp client? What I've posted is for changing the permissions for any file.

No, you have to open a console (or terminal), 'cd' into the directory and then do the 'chmod'.For example, you have the files you need to change in a directory as '/var/www/htdocs/upload'You need to open a console and type:1. 'su' ------------> prompts for your root password (assuming all the files are currently owned by root). After typing the password, the prompt will change from '$' to '#'2. 'cd /var/www/htdocs/upload' ----------> Changes your current directory to the directory containing the files. This is an example3. 'chmod 777 * ' ----------> Change permissions for all the files or instead of '*', just type in the name of the file like: 'chmod 777 index.html'4. 'exit' ------------> To get out of 'root' mode.5. 'exit' ------------> To exit the console.If the files are owned by the user you use to login, you can omit step 1. Alternatively, you can also open 'Konqueror', browse to the directory, and then right-click and select 'properties' under which there is a tab called 'permissions'. I think that should let you change the permissions without a console, but I usually use the console. This should help you out. Let me know if you need anymore clarifications.

Just type 'chmod 777 <filename>'To change all the files in a directory, type 'chmod 777 * '

Yup, they're there always... whether I reboot or not. I'm using Kernel 2.4 by the way. Maybe that has something to do with it. I don't recall having so many in Mandrake (not 'driva' when I used it a year ago ) which was running kernel 2.6. Come to think of it I never noticed it until recently when my screensaver stopped working.

Well... depends on how you use your system. For example, I rarely have any problems with my windows installation whereas my friends have problems all the time. The hardware is more or less the same and all of us have only one version of Windows XP (the benefits of staying in a hostel ). It all depends on how careful you are. I always see to it that I've got a firewall and antivirus with complete updates running seamlessly and IMO, that is enough for the first line of defence. No need to get all paranoid about security, but these are the basic. It's not just windows.... people have problems with Linux as well. I see people all the time running into 'Kernel Panic' and it used to happen to me when I started out with Linux. But now, it rarely ever happens (didn't have one with slackware so far). The system is only as efficient as it's user.

I've looked around for prelink, but from what I've heard, it's more useful for older machines. With new systems, there really isn't much of a speed boost ... atleast, not on Slackware. Anyways, KDE isn't too slow on my system. I just wanted to know if KDEINIT was a bug or not. Thanks for clearing that up .I'm just waiting to get some free time on my hand so I can try out gentoo.

LOL... that's a riot... Why not Astro-Host while we're at it.... or maybe... astray-host, ashtray-host . No offence to Xisto .

Thanks for the tip Yordan, that's pretty useful. I've played around with it for a while and now it no longer starts Nautilus... but the 'ps -fe' is showing some pretty weird things: Are these kdeinits ok? kmix, klauncher, knotify and kdesktop I can understand... but what about the others? Also, any idea why the screensaver won't start?

Restoration is a great program. I've used it many times. It saved me a from a painful situation lots of times.

Hi, recently, a few days ago, I logged into GNOME for a spell and then logged out and didn't go back to it again. I started using KDE but it's been slowing down a bit these days. I gave the command 'ps -e' and it shows GNOME and Nautilus running in the background. Here's a sample output: Why is it constantly starting Nautilus when I reboot? It starts back even if kill it. Also, why are there so many kdeinits? Ever since I logged into GNOME, my screensaver also stopped working... in both KDE and FLUXBOX. Any ideas? Thanks.

I must say, if you have a good internet connection, you can actually update your entire installation with all the packages that have been installed so far with just one command!!! swaret --upgrade -aThis is the first time I've upgraded my Slackware Installation (first time I've upgraded any installation for that matter ) and it was over in approximately 3 hours (with an average speed of 100kbps). I didn't have to do anything... I didn't have to shut down anything nor did I have to sit mum and stare at the screen. I could browse the net, listen to music while it was fetching the updates directly from the net. After the upgrade, it gave me a couple of dependency problems but that was only because the repository site ( ftp.swaret.org ) is down. I had to manually install 2 libraries from the net... but other than that, it installed everything on it's own and now everything is working great. One reboot was required to get amarok to work. Slackware 10.1 to Slackware 10.2 without any hassles .Of course Windows has it's own automatic updates, but these updates require reboots and also, each software updates only itself and not everything in the installation. Microsoft only gives windows updates, adobe gives only photoshop updates and so on....But with this... I got the latest gimp, the latest gaim, the latest libraries ... everything !I guess the only distro which can actually do better is maybe gentoo... but I haven't used it , so can't really say about it. I've also heard that Fedora and SuSE have their own upgrading tools (yum if I'm not mistaken). How do these compare with swaret? What do you guys use for upgrading?