InfoWorld review: Desktop virtualization for Windows and Linux heats up

InfoWorld reviews three desktop virtualization products.

Taken together, these developments represent the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years. There's some genuine innovation going on, especially in the areas of hardware support and application compatibility. VMware Workstation, Parallels Desktop, and VirtualBox all support 32- and 64-bit Windows and Linux hosts and guests, and all have added compelling new VM management capabilities, ranging from automated snapshots to live VM migration. Read on to see which products hit their marks, which overachieve, and which seem to miss the boat entirely.

• Link (via Slashdot)

Lifehacker's list of the five best startup management tools

Use these tools to optimize your Windows startup routine.

You boot up your computer and you wait, and wait... and wait, as all sorts of programs, helper apps, widgets, and remnants of forgotten installations load. Grab one of these five popular startup managers and beat back the startup clutter.

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Command line tricks for smart geeks

This article collects together a number of useful linux command-line tricks from Linux Format.

Everyone knows the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything is "42", but for the first time we can reveal the question. It is this: how many command-line tricks must a man memorise? You see, graphical user interfaces are all well and good, but when you want to get real work done it's time to switch to the terminal.

And so, we squeezed our brain cells, dug through dusty piles of old issues of Linux Format, and sat reflecting quietly over many a pint of ale, all with the goal of bringing you this: 42 awesome new command line tricks we think you ought to commit to memory. We've tried to include a few that are easier for our, er, less-experienced readers to enjoy, but we think even the most hardened Linux veteran will learn something new over the next 12,000 words.

• Link (via Hacker News)

MindCipher

Just found this site full of interesting puzzles and brain teasers.

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The State of Solid State Hard Drives

Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror has put up a post on his experience with his latest SSD.

Intel was the only game in town for about a year, but fortunately for us consumers, the competition finally caught up. The new Indilinx controller models, such as this Crucial 128 GB SSD, are just as fast as the X25-M. And, best of all, they're cheaper, while also offering a not-insubstantial bump to 128 GB of storage!

I picked this model up for $325 plus tax and shipping. And, frankly, I was blown away by the performance difference compared to the 300 GB Velociraptor I had in my system before. That drive is not exactly chopped liver; it's incredibly fast by magnetic platter drive standards. But it's beyond slow next to the latest SSDs.

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The Printliminator

The Printliminator is a bookmarklet that allows you to remove elements from a web page in your browser and format it for printing.

The Printliminator is a bookmarklet with some simple tools you can use to makes websites print better. One click to activate, and then click to remove elements from the page, remove graphics, and apply better print styling.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

DD-WRT DNSMasq query behavior

If you are using a router with DD-WRT and DNSMasq enabled, and your DNS queries are not behaving as you expect, you may need to use the 'strict-order' option.

For example, you may have your first statuc DNS server set to your own local DNS server, with the second and third entries set to your ISP's servers. By default DNSMasq does not always try the DNS servers in order, which may cause local network lookups to be sent to the upstream servers.

The 'strict-order' option should fix that. Just enter the option in the Services tab, in DNSMasq > Additional DNSMasq options.

Evolution's Third Replicator?

This article argues that we are seeing a new form of evolution emerging, after genes and memes.

WE HUMANS have let loose something extraordinary on our planet - a third replicator - the consequences of which are unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

What do I mean by "third replicator"? The first replicator was the gene - the basis of biological evolution. The second was memes - the basis of cultural evolution. I believe that what we are now seeing, in a vast technological explosion, is the birth of a third evolutionary process. We are Earth's Pandoran species, yet we are blissfully oblivious to what we have let out of the box.

• Evolution's third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what?

Use Relative Paths in Your Batch Files

If you haven't come across this already, this could be handy in the future. Simply use the special variable "%~dp0" without the quotes to refer to the current path where the batch file is located. This is different from using "." or "%CD%", which refers to your current path, i.e. the location that you are calling the batch file from.

For example, say you have this batch file in C:\TEMP\cur.bat

@echo off

echo Batch file location: %~dp0
echo Your current path: %CD%

If your prompt is currently sitting at C:\, and run the batch file with the command "TEMP\cur.bat", the output would look like this:

Batch file location: C:\Temp\
Your current path: C:\

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How to Fix Missing Network, Clock, Volume, and Power System Icons on Vista

For some reason, after a reboot of Vista, some of my system icons were missing. I wasn't able to simply re-enable them in the notification area, but a registry edit found here fixed it:

The problematic issue can happen if Windows group policy disables the Clock, Network, Power (or Battery), and Volume icons, or the registry keys related to notification area icons have corrupted. To re-enable and restore the check boxes, and hence user able to restore these system icons on notification area, the policies have to be turned off, and the registry keys reset, cleared or fixed.

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Middle-Click to Open Firefox Links in a New Foreground Tab

A variation of a useful shortcut. Just include the Shift key when you want to open a tab in the foreground rather than in the background. It also works if you Control-click.

It is common knowledge that middle-clicking on a link opens it in a new background tab, but pressing shift while middle-clicking opens it in a new foreground tab. This especially comes in handy when you've got dozens of tabs open and don't want to shuffle through all your tabs to find the one you just opened.

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Forty-Three of The Best Free Windows Enhancements That You Should Know About

This post on Freewaregenius lists a number of useful Windows utilities that will make your Windows desktop even better. Check the rest of their site for other useful freeware programs.

When I first thought of this post, I more or less knew what programs I wanted to list here. The common theme that brought these together was that they were all really cool Windows “enhancements”: i.e. apps that tweak or change the way we work with files, folders, applications, or the system environment itself (or, apps that brings functionality to the Windows environment that could or should have been a built-in option in Windows ;)).

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Robert J. Sawyer's talk at Google's Waterloo office

Robert J. Sawyer, a Canadian science fiction author, gave a fascinating talk at Google's Waterloo office. He discusses how the world wide web might gain consciousness, the subject of his latest trilogy. The talk touches on several topics related to theories of consciousness, and is worth watching.

I would also recommend picking up his latest novel, Wake, the first book in the WWW (Wake, Watch, Wonder) trilogy. The trilogy is off to a great start, and I will definitely be picking up the other books when they come out.

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Three Questions About Each Bug You Find

A useful technique to follow while debugging your software.

The key idea behind these questions is that every bug is a symptom of an underlying process. You have to treat the symptoms, but if all you do is treat symptoms, you'll continue to see more symptoms forever. You need to find out what process produced the bug and change the process. The underlying process that caused your bug is probably non-random and can be controlled, once you identify what happened and what caused it to happen.

• Link (via secretGeek)

How to Write an Equality Method in Java

Essential article on how to avoid common pitfalls and preserve the contract of equals() when writing an equality method in Java.

Class java.lang.Object defines an equals method, which subclasses may override. Unfortunately, it turns out that writing a correct equality method is surprisingly difficult in object-oriented languages. In fact, after studying a large body of Java code, the authors of a 2007 paper concluded that almost all implementations of equals methods are faulty.

• Link (via Hacker News)

The Model MHDD - Manual Hard Drive Destroyer

When you need to make sure your data is truly destroyed, use one of these.

Government specifications require that in an emergency situation a hard drive needs to be destroyed so that a person or persons can not spin the drive. This must be done quickly and reliably. The MHDD meets this requirement. It takes less than 15 seconds to destroy each hard drive. All one needs to do is to insert the proper drive height adaptor (if applicable) into the slot and crank the handle 8 rotations. The internal workings of the unit press down on the drive, bending it approximately 90 degrees. The MHDD then pushes the destroyed hard drive out for easy disposal.

• Link (via UNEASYsilence)

PicPick - all-in-one screen capture utility

Feature-filled screen capture utility with a number of other useful tools.

PicPick is an all-in-one software for software developers, graphic designers and home user.

...

It features a powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and etc. You can use all these tools freely.......

• Link (via freewaregenius)

Google's Servers

Google reveals details about its servers.

Google's big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there's a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers--each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.

It may sound geeky, but a number of attendees--the kind of folks who run data centers packed with thousands of servers for a living--were surprised not only by Google's built-in battery approach, but by the fact that the company has kept it secret for years. Jai said in an interview that Google has been using the design since 2005 and now is in its sixth or seventh generation of design.

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Excercises for Tendonitis and Carpal Tunnel

This video shows a few exercises you can do to stretch the tendons in your wrists and hands.

Link (via Lifehacker)

Book: Producing Open Source Software

Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project is a book from O'Reilly about managing open source projects—but the information could be applied to pretty much any software project. You can download a free copy from the website.

Producing Open Source Software is a book about the human side of open source development. It describes how successful projects operate, the expectations of users and developers, and the culture of free software. The book is released under an open copyright: it is available in bookstores and from the publisher (O'Reilly Media), or you can browse or download it here.

• Link (via Coding Horror)

DiskDigger

DiskDigger is a powerful undelete utility for Windows. It is capable of doing a deep scan and may be able to recover more files than simpler programs.

• Link (found via Lifehacker)

SendKeys under Vista

If you are maintaining a VB6 application or something similar under Vista, and the application makes use of the SendKeys call, you will likely get an exception, particularly if you are running the application within an IDE. This appears to be due to the security model in Vista.

In my case, I was able to rewrite the code to avoid the use of SendKeys. For other possible workarounds, see:

• vbAccelerator - SendKeys using the API
• Visual Studio Magazine Online: VB Statement Against Vista

Ubuntu: invalid GPG signatures during apt-get update

If you get a message like the following while running apt-get update on Ubuntu:

W: GPG error: http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security Release: The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG 40976EAF437D05B5 Ubuntu Archive Automatic Signing Key 

Try deleting the files in /var/lib/apt/lists/ (but leave the 'partial' directory alone) and running apt-get update again.

Source: update gpg error? - Ubuntu Forums

ntpd "Invalid argument" messages in log

I noticed that ntpd was generating a bunch of these messages in my logs.

Jan 14 06:05:14 starbug ntpd[5574]: sendto(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) (fd=22): Invalid argument
Jan 14 06:05:36 starbug ntpd[5574]: sendto(yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy) (fd=22): Invalid argument
Jan 14 06:05:40 starbug ntpd[5574]: sendto(zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz) (fd=22): Invalid argument

A quick Google search will tell you that this happens when your interface changes. In my case, my dynamic IP address from my ISP had changed. Restarting the ntpd service will correct the problem.