April 2007 - Posts

Spiderman 3 Live from Red Carpet

Word on everyone's mouth is SpiderMan III, if you havent already check out the trailers, its probably the most exciting release thus far (Venom looks so awesome!) not to mention the most expensive movie ever made (previously held by Superman Returns!)

Just heard from our Creative Director that Vividas is about to stream the official launch of SpiderMan III - from the Red Carpet - *live* from the New York Premier at 6:30 EST Monday April 30th (thats today!). It'll be streaming in - *gasp* - Vividas format (using our Live TV Streaming technology) so head over to the Spiderman Faces of the Fan Blog and check it out. I cant post the direct link to the webcast, so keep your eyes on the Fan blog and i'll update it once it goes live!
posted Monday, April 30, 2007 1:15 PM by Thushan Fernando with 2 Comments

Using PIPE mirrors for Ubuntu Repositories == Free Traffic == Goodness!

A quick tip if your ISP is in the PIPE Network (check on page!) if you want to save up your bandwidth (or if your like me, have none left half way into the month and still need to get updates) try adding the PIPE mirrors from iiNet to your sources list:

First edit your sources.list file: 
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
(use gedit, nano, vim or whatever editor you like!) and then insert these: 
deb http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/ubuntu feisty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/ubuntu feisty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/ubuntu feisty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/ubuntu feisty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
Thats for Feisty, others are available too (see list here) just replace 'fesity' above with whichever distribution you have installed.
posted Monday, April 30, 2007 7:53 AM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

Windows Longhorn Server Download Links

If you've been hanging out to try Longhorn Server now's the time with Beta 3 just being signed off a couple of days ago. For convienence here's the direct download links:

Windows Longhorn Server Beta 3

Standard | Web | Enterprise | DataCenter | Itanic (Itanium)


There are some _very_ exciting new changes in LS, in particular IIS7. If your after other languages see the original post for German and Japanese download links!
posted Friday, April 27, 2007 2:07 AM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

Apple, Security, and those Switch Ads.

This is a rant, you've been warned. Random thoughts while i work, so it may not make full sense either...

Apple plugs 25 Security Holes of which *15* end up allowing you to take full control of a Mac (thats just for April, in March it was 45 updates!). Then just recently, someone won the award for breaking into Apple OS X via Safari simply by sending them a malformed URL. Though it was through Safari (which is based of Konqerer - KHTML) so it may affect KDE users who use the browser. 
The vulnerability won't be published. 3Com's TippingPoint division, which put up the cash prize, will handle disclosing it to Apple.
Booo! Where's the fun in that?

Funnily enough though, I see so many faculty staff at Uni carrying their Mac's so proudly around which always cracks me up.

Take a look at one security flaw for the login window...
Description: Under certain conditions, the software update window may appear beneath the Login Window. This could allow a person with physical 
access to the system to log in without authentication. This update addresses the issue by only running scheduled tasks after the user login. 
This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.4.
Reminds me of the local login "feature" that shipped with Windows 95 where you can hit CTRL+ESC and bring up a task manager when
 you have a login prompt and login to the local system.

Welcome.... to the REAL world all those who've switched. If you think switching operating systems eleivates the need to be weary of security your an idiot. and I've met far too many users who consider that to be fact.

My theory, Apple is where Microsoft was around 95/96 (relax, security wise!), give it time and you'll see spyware, trojans and everything else in OS X, may not happen today, may not happen tomorrow but it will happen. The switch to Intel processors seems like unchartered waters for Apple.

posted Monday, April 23, 2007 3:03 AM by Thushan Fernando with 7 Comments

Ubuntu Feisty and resolution woes stuck at 1024x768 instead of 1920x1200

So I eagerly awaited the release of Feisty Fawn so I can install it on the trusty Inspiron 8600 I bought in 2004. It ran Dapper Drake and Edgy just fine.

After installation though my screen resolution *gasp* was stuck at 1024x768, attempting to change to the default of 1920x1200 brought around some strange screen corruption (I had four screens at one stage!) which didnt look promising. Mind you this was _before_ i went nuts with updates etc, fresh virgin system.

So how to fix it? I hope this is going to work for most of you. Open up the Terminal and edit your Xorg.conf file (first back it up!):
#backup config file
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.back
#Edit Xorg.conf
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Look for the Screen section and add the required resolution in there. Like so:
Section "Screen"
...
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
...
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
...
EndSection
Then hold down CTRL+ALT+Backspace and let GNOME restart. if it fails reboot the system and revert to the previous Xorg.conf file and try again.

Hopefully that should fix it (otherwise once you boot change the resolution manually and reboot!).

Once your satisfied with your resolution why not go install Beryl and sex up your desktop?

So far (apart from the minor Resolution Hiccup) i love the new release, its picked up all the hardware on the lappy - including the wireless! I was disappointed with the installer's partitioning part. I wanted to dual boot with Vista (work requirement!) but I couldnt simply create the partitions manually via the installer (error'd out!) So I had to manually goto the GNOME Partition Editor and create the relevant partitions. I chose ReiserFS for the Root (/ 5Gb) and XFS for the Home (/home 20Gb) leaving a 1Gb Swap partition and the rest taken up by NTFS(~50Gb). Next up is to dist-upgrade the server install thats been chugging along nicely!
posted Saturday, April 21, 2007 5:36 AM by Thushan Fernando with 2 Comments

Thunderbird 2 goes out too!

Wow, Thunderbird 2.0 officially got released yesterday too! I've been using the interim releases at work and love it (though I'm not rushing to get it installed at home and replace Outlook 2007:p)

Either way, checkout the features page and download!
posted Friday, April 20, 2007 3:25 AM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

0Hour: Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn (7.04) Released!

Talk about timing, I just visited the Ubuntu site just around the time they officially made the 7.04 release available. Go on and download a copy!

Its the most exciting release thus far (atleast for me) and I'll talk more about it in the coming weeks but for now, start your downloads! Mirrors should propagate soon!
posted Thursday, April 19, 2007 1:47 PM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

HOW-TO: Increase the size of an existing VMWare Hard Disk (VMDK)

VMWare is a god-send tool and as such I use it far too much. I usually spend a bit of time before creating a new disk to make sure the disk is fully created before running it (a fixed size instead of dynamic - does wonders for performance!) But what happens if you find your running out of space after you slug away at it?

Here's how to increase the size of a disk that has been created already.
  1. First make sure that the VMWare Image doesnt have any snapshots attached to it. To do this goto VM -> SnapShot -> Snapshot Manager (or hit CTRL+M) and remove (or backup) any snapshots that are there.
  2. Head down to the installation folder in VMWare installation folder and open the folder in Command prompt (easier!)
  3. The command for increasing the size is:
    vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x ** "%PATH_TO_VMDK%"
    Where ** = Size of the hard disk to grow to (be careful not to decrease in size) so for 10Gb enter '10Gb' without the quotes, this is the total size of the HD not how much to increase by! Then fill the '%PATH_TO_VMDK%' with the path to the main hard disk file (not a chained hard disk). The output is something like this:
    C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation>vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x 10Gb "G:\Virtual Machines\Windows 2003 Server\Enterprise - Default\Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.vmdk"
Using log file C:\DOCUME~1\THUSHA~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\vmware-Thushan Fernando\vdiskManager.log
  Grow: 100% done.
The old geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 783/255/63
The new geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 1305/255/63
Disk expansion completed successfully.

WARNING: If the virtual disk is partitioned, you must use a third-party
         utility in the virtual machine to expand the size of the
         partitions. For more information, see:
         http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1647

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation>
  4. Once that's completed you can either create a new partition with that (via Computer Management -> Disk Management in Windows) or merge it with a Partition Merging tool like GParted Live CD! If you've installed Windows, it will/may do a chkdsk which is normal.
There nice and easy:-)
posted Monday, April 16, 2007 6:06 AM by Thushan Fernando with 1 Comments

FIX: Outlook 2007's sluggish performance

Outlook 2007 has always been sluggish for me and I know i'm not alone, there was recently a hotfix released to address Outlook's sluggish performance and its well worth the 8Mb download. People will large PST/OST files should seriously consider this update, hard to believe how much of a difference it really makes!

Download Link (Direct Download Link - Non-Validating)

Jessica Arnold has a video on Channel 9 about Outlook 2007 and its new features which might teach you a thing or two about whats new (I know its kind of late now!)
posted Monday, April 16, 2007 3:44 AM by Thushan Fernando with 1 Comments

Aaaaaand we're back:-)

Its been over a month since a post, i've been rained in with work and various uni project work to have time to do anything fun or post about it but fear not this week will have some interesting posts (for your inner-geek that is!)
posted Monday, April 16, 2007 12:41 AM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments