The Barrel

30th September Comments

Bash Script To Get Weather Forecasts For Your Zip Code

Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 6:38 am

Today’s Linux/Unix bash shell script is probably not the last follow up to the growing stable of scripts we’ve written to mine the knowledge on tap online. Today’s info is grabbed from WeatherBug.com. If you missed any of the others scripts we’ve jammed out, you can still find them in our older bash script posts [...]

Posted in How-To

30th September Comments

MEPIS Linux 8.0 nears release

Posted on September 30th, 2008 at 6:08 am

A new version of MEPIS Linux, one of my favorite KDE-based distributions, is nearing final release. Roughly a year after the arrival of version 7.0, distribution founder and maintainer Warren Woodford has released MEPIS 8.0 beta 2, based on a Debian Lenny core. All I can say is I agree with this review. I [...]

Posted in Mepis

28th September Comments

Clickjacking: Researchers raise alert for scary new cross-browser exploit

Posted on September 28th, 2008 at 5:07 am

Researchers are beginning to raise an alarm for what looks like a scary new browser exploit/threat affecting all the major desktop platforms — Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Adobe Flash. The threat, called Clickjacking, was to be discussed at the OWASP NYC AppSec 2008 Conference but, at the request of Adobe [...]

Posted in Security

27th September Comments

The five best desktop Linuxes you haven’t tried

Posted on September 27th, 2008 at 5:23 am

One of the pleasures of Linux is that you can try out different distributions to see which one works best for you. You like Ubuntu, but you want to fine tune the desktop engine? OK, try Kubuntu with its KDE desktop then. Some worthwhile distributions, however, don’t get as much attention as they deserve. So, [...]

Posted in Linux, Mepis

26th September Comments

Do-it-yourself Konqueror commands

Posted on September 26th, 2008 at 4:39 am

KDE’s Konqueror is as multifunctional as a Swiss Army knife. It works as both a file manager and a Web browser, and you can enhance it even further by adding new commands to its repertoire by means of service menus. The new commands appear in Konqueror’s context menu when you right-click a file. Here’s [...]

Posted in How-To, Software

24th September Comments

Webmail providers can fix Palin hack-style problems

Posted on September 24th, 2008 at 5:40 am

One of the most important questions we should be asking ourselves in light of the Palin webmail hack discussed at length here, here and here is how it could have been prevented. There are several software techniques that I can think of off the top of my head that would help webmail prevent malicious password [...]

Posted in Security

16th September Comments

GIMP User Filter allows use of Photoshop filters

Posted on September 16th, 2008 at 5:16 am

One brake on the GIMP’s popularity is that, while it boasts dozens of filters, a rival like Photoshop boasts thousands. You may only occasionally need a special effect that imitates a pencil sketch or a famous style of painting such as Impressionism or Cubism, but, when you do, having a filter to create the [...]

Posted in Graphics, Software

13th September Comments

Lancelot reaches Holy Grail of KDE menu

Posted on September 13th, 2008 at 5:03 am

KDE 4 is barely eight months old, and already it has three options for a main menu. Until now, users have either used the default Kickoff, which makes for awkward navigation of the menu tree, or reverted to the familiar but unwieldy classic menu. Now, with the first full release of Lancelot, users have [...]

Posted in General

9th September Comments

Dress up your Python scripts with EasyGui

Posted on September 9th, 2008 at 5:44 am

In many cases, adding a graphical interface to Python scripts means getting your hands dirty with TKinter or other GUI programming kits. This exercise is usually reserved for users who have already acquired decent Python programming skills, as it requires some serious code wizardry. Thankfully, the EasyGui module allows you to add some GUI [...]

Posted in Programming, Software

4th September Comments

DoS vulnerability hits Google’s Chrome, crashes with all tabs

Posted on September 4th, 2008 at 6:50 am

Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now? While Google’s Chrome team is cheering, Rishi Narang from Evil Fingers is typing and releasing a proof of concept for a denial of service vulnerability that is successfully crashing the Chrome browser with all tabs. According to Narang’s advisory : “An issue exists in how chrome behaves with [...]

Posted in News, Software

Archive for September, 2008