Archive for September, 2009

The Year of the Linux Desktop Mobile Phone

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

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Since its creation, over fifteen years ago, free software and open source advocates have longed for the day when masses of people around the world would adopt GNU/Linux or Linux (depending on who you ask). There is little doubt that the past five years have seen tremendous strides in Linux desktop adoption.

Some hardware vendors, such as Dell, now sell Linux desktop computers, although you have to page through their online catalog to find it, and their promotion of it seems spotty at best. The netbook craze has also seen the rise of several Linux offerings, but even the company that arguably started the netbook craze with its Eee PCs, Asus, still proudly displays “Better with Windows” on their website.
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How to Use Digikam to Export Photos to Flickr, PicasaWeb, and Facebook

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

splash screen
Digikam is a free and open source photo management software package for KDE. Many KDE-based Linux distributions either come with Digikam installed or have it available in their repositories. With Digikam, you can import photos from your digital camera or flash memory, organize and tag them, rate them, edit them, and export them to various services or custom galleries.

Three popular services that Digikam can handle are Flickr, PicasaWeb, and Facebook. The first two are social photo sites, and the last is a social networking site. All three support photo plugins used by Digikam. This makes uploading photos quick, easy, and painless.

I am operating under the assumption that you already have accounts on the services you want to use. If not, you will need to register and activate whichever accounts you want before you proceed.

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On the death of Imam Ali

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

On the night of the 21st of Ramadan, after Imam Ali (peace be upon him) died, Imam al-Hasan (peace be upon him) rose and gave a sermon:

“Tonight you have killed a man on a night in which the Qur’an came down, a night in which Jesus son of Mary (peace be upon him) was taken up, and a night in which Joshua the son of Nun, the champion of Moses (peace be upon him), was killed. By God, none of those who were before him are ahead of him and none of those who will come after him will overtake him. By God, if the Prophet (may Allah bless him and his progeny) sent him on a raid, Gabriel was at his right hand and Michael at his left. By God, he did not leave (at his death) gold or silver except for 800 or 700 dirhams, which he set aside for a servant woman.”

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Birth of Imam Hasan ibn Ali

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

imam-hassanIt is reported that Imam Hasan ibn ‘Ali (peace be upon him) said:

“Be obedient to Allah and have faith in Him. The loftiness of those who know the greatness of Allah is expressed in their modesty. The safety of those who know the power of Allah is expressed in their surrender to Him. Do not be influenced by the ignorant. Seek knowledge from its bearers. They are the light with which one can enlighten oneself.”

Imam Hasan was born on the 15th of Ramadan in Madinah, city of the Prophet (peace be upon him and his progeny). He was the second to take the office of Imam after his father Ali (peace be upon him).

The Prophet once said of Imam Hasan and his younger brother Imam Husayn: “Al-Hasan and Al-Husayn are the leaders of the youths of Paradise and Fatimah (their mother) is the leader of its women.”

He (may Allah bless him and grant him and his family peace) said:

“They (Hasan and Husain) are my two sweet-smelling flowers in this world.”

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Breaking News: Spider-Man hooks up with Tinkerbell

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

marvel-heroes-scaled

OK, I am making a joke to cover my concern about the news that Disney is purchasing Marvel for $4 billion.  Sure, it means that we will probably see an X-Men theme park in the future.  And yes, Disney has an impressive history of not injecting their own products into their subsidiaries (i.e. we haven’t seen Miley Cyrus giving commentary on SportsCenter — as far as I know).

Still, it just seems like Marvel has lost some of its innocence in a weird, twisted kind of way.  Yes, Disney is supposed to be the juvenile innocent one, but Marvel’s purity was its humble beginning and its fanboy attraction.

My one and only fear is that Marvel will become more of a commodity than it already has.  Disney is all about pushing merchandise.  The cash register goes cha-ching for Disney like every millisecond (note: I have no actual proof of this, but you get the point).  My hope is that Marvel does not become too commercialized.  I shutter at the thought of Disney characters dominating Comic-Con, but technically it could happen.

I’m just going to keep hoping that all will turn out for the best.  After all, our favorite superheroes have faced greater odds, more sinister plots, and villains with bigger speech impediments than Donald Duck.  We will live to fight another day.

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