openSUSE basics: Quickly Releasing and Renewing your IP address

Category: openSUSE If you're already booted up into openSUSE KDE but forgot to plug in your ethernet cable or your ethernet cable got disconnected while you were working, reconnecting the cable will often not get you back online immediately. Users actually don't need to head off to Konsole or a terminal immediately. After checking that the ethernet cable is firmly connected, click the Networking Interface...

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10 Truths about Watching Downloaded or Streaming Videos Part 2

Category: Techtoday 6. Movies and TV shows available through legal video sites and questionable methods (such as torrents and usenet) provide freedom of distribution. Excellent shows such as British TV series The IT Crowd, Mumbai Calling, and Coupling can now be viewed by audiences numbed by terrible daytime and reality TV programming. Even racial prejudices, such as those aimed at Asian women and South...

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10 Truths about Watching Downloaded or Streaming Videos Part 1

Category: Techtoday 1. Horror, slasher, and monster movies aren't scary if they suddenly pixelate, stutter, or fade into video lines midway through the video. In fact, the word "buffering" is scarier (unless you're watching Sadako crawling through the television in 1998's Ringu). Jean Garcia in Shake, Rattle, and Roll X (2008) 2. Tech guys were right. HD downloads or Blu-ray rips won't make a...

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Holiday greetings from the real Spider-Man!

In the spirit of the holiday season, here are a few panels and a pin-up of the real Spider-Man during his real adventures in his first 32 years of publishing (not the garbage that Marvel, Dan Slott, Joe Quesada, Axel Alonso, Joe Quesada, and Steve Wacker, and others have been churning out like so much crap in the last 20 years). "It woulda been a bleak Christmas without ya! Thanks!"...

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Display Comic Book (.CBR/.CBZ) thumbnails in KDE Dolphin

Category: Linux KDE's Dolphin file manager supports .cbz and .cbr thumbnails out of the box. However, if you've recently installed a fresh copy of openSUSE 12.2 you might be wondering why comic book thumbnails aren't displayed automatically as in previous releases of openSUSE even if you press the Preview button. To make Dolphin load faster, comic book...

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HTML5 is here to stay

Category: Techwriter Although the news came out prominently (albeit briefly) in Wired's home page, the finalization of HTML5 standards was largely under the radar. This actually makes sense considering that most professionals are already waist-deep in HTML5 and are publishing books about the markup language despite the persistent prevalence of XHTML and XML on the web. ...

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When should you switch to or install a new Linux distribution?

When should you switch Linux distributions? The easy answer is never, especially when the current Linux distribution you're running at home or on your server is working as smoothly as James Bond's pick-up lines. It can be very easy for new Linux users to be swayed by the announcements of other Linux distributions listed in sites like Distrowatch and Linux.com. Veteran Linux users...

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QuickFix: Dolphin KDE Cannot Change View Modes

Category: openSUSE Users can change the folder views in Dolphin file manager for KDE using either the controls on the toolbar or by pressing CTRL+1, CTRL+2, or CTRL+3 (Icon, Compact, and Details view respectively). However, you may encounter an error where folder views will only be changed (and retained) when the user runs Dolphin as Root. To...

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The Superficiality of Social Networking: The Holiday Edition

Category: TechtodayAn old Filipino overseas worker once told me of his long years in Hong Kong as a driver for a British diplomat. A devout Catholic and a family man despite his penchant for loose women, this driver told me that his first Christmas in Hong Kong was the hardest. The British family had left for London and he was all alone in a city where he knew no one and the language was...

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External Desktop Hard Drives, Backup Software, and Linux Part 3

Category: Linux Everyone has their method of backing up but Linux comes with lots of great ways to back up files. For personal back up tasks, I've settled comfortably with Grsync in Linux and SyncToy in Windows. Although there are plenty of backup utilities available in both Linux and Windows, I tend to lean towards syncing files rather than scheduled compressed backups. Applications that compress backups...

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Two Questions before Upgrading

Category: Techtoday A couple of weeks ago, online shopping for electronics reached new heights and is probably still hitting records globally. PC enthusiasts and gamers were upgrading their video cards, Apple worshipers were donating to their Church, while home users and the working Joe went to replace their 2-year old laptops, portables, All-in-Ones, and desktops with brand-spanking,...

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