Are forced automatic updates in software a good thing?

Yesterday, I went to my local internet provider to complain about an issue with my internet connection. I went in to see this guy making a cup of coffee. Then he sat down in front of his PC which was running windows XP. As I explained my issue, he opened internet explorer and below his address bar were three toolbars (Yahoo toolbar, MSN toolbar, and some other one). I directly thanked myself I was running Firefox on Linux. I finished explaining my issue and he picked up the phone to make a phone call. While he was on the phone, internet explorer froze so he minimized it and opened Firefox. Then he started mumbling that he has to use this other program most of the time because Internet Explorer keeps hanging. Then I noticed that it was the old Firefox 0.8 (the first Firefox release after it was rebranded). I thought to myself “Firefox 0.8?? This guy must be missing a huge amount of security updates.” Then he finished the phone call and told me that my issue will be resolved in less than 5 minutes. I thanked him and as I stepped out, I asked him: “Do you like Firefox?” He answered: “What’s that?”. Then I said: “Nevermind” and Ieft.

Compiling a Firefox Adblock Plus Filter List

I’m compiling a filterlist for Firefox’s Adblock Plus whick is one of the most popular firefox extensions. It can be downloaded from AdblockPlus.org . I have been using this extension for years and I have compiled a list of the most common annoying ads that I see while surfing the internet.

You can get the current list from here (updated on 20080325)

Save the page as filterlist.txt and place it on your desktop. Open Firefox and on the tools drop down menu, open ‘Adblock Plus’. On the Filters drop down menu,  click on ‘Import filters’ and let it add the filterlist.txt file you just downloaded. If you have any additional items I should add to the list, please post it here.

New Linux FlashPlayer Plugin Update

Adobe has released a new update for the Linux mozilla/firefox flash plugin (version 9.0.115.0). Among many fixes, this release use a native gtk+ menu when a user right clicks on a flash animation in firefox.

The plugin can be downloaded from here

Version 9.0.115.0 of the plugin also has Linux support for standard H.264 and AAC codecs as well as hardware-accelerated full-screen support.

New Website

I just registered a new website at x10hosting.com. It’s free and everyone likes free stuff but you have to add ads to the website which shouldn’t be a problem because most people surfing the internet use some ad blocking software or another. I haven’t yet decided what to do with the website. I did have a previous experience with that host which didn’t end well. But hopefully this time, things will go better. I might move my repository of svn/cvs archlinux packages to that website. In any case, I will update this post with any new changes.

Games on Linux

Since I switched to Linux a few years ago, I haven’t played many games except for planetpenguin racer, supertux, supertuxkart and gnome games. Even back when I used windows, the only games I used to play were some racing games including my all time favorite game Monaco GrandPrix Racing Simulation 2 by UbiSoft which is undoubtedly the best car racing game ever. UbiSoft used to be great back then. Just over a week  ago, I tried Eternal Lands using the ArchLinux aur package. It was pretty fun since I’ve never played a mmorpg game before. The graphics were fast and the game was a bit addicting and easy to play. But the fun ended fast since they released a new version and wouldn’t let anyone using the old client log in to the game. I downloaded the updated client. But it wouldn’t run on my computer (a AMD sempron 2300+ with 1GB ram and a nvidia 7300 gt card). The game would immediately crash once I launch it. I downloaded the client source from cvs and compiled it because I assumed this would solve the problem but I got the same crash. I don’t really care much about games so this didn’t annoy me but if anyone has a solution, I would surely be interested in knowing it