Infi-Zeal's Blog

Windows Feedback Program - Microsoft With Windows 8 getting ever closer to its release date, Microsoft today  announced  that it is looking for volunteers to join its  invite-only feedback program  for active Windows 7 and Windows 8 Consumer Preview users in the U.S. In return for providing feedback to Microsoft – both by sending the company data or by filling out surveys – participants who stay in the program for more than four months will be eligible for “free software and Xbox games such as Microsoft Office 2012, Kinect Disneyland, and Forza Motorsport 4.” In the announcement today, Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc stresses that this is not meant to be a way to submit bug reports. Instead, the idea here is to help Microsoft “build better software by getting a broader understanding of your perceptions and experiences with our products.” It’s somewhat odd that Microsoft would choose this time to highlight this program. The Windows Feed...

New Kernel Vulnerabilities in Ubuntu 11.04 Canonical announced last evening, April 12th, in a security notice, that a new Linux kernel update for its Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system is now available, fixing four security vulnerabilities discovered in the Linux kernel packages by various developers.    These are the three kernel vulnerabilities found in the kernel packages for Ubuntu 11.04: CVE-2011-4347 , CVE-2012-0045 , CVE-2012-1097 , and CVE-2012-1146 . As usual, you can click on each one to see how it affects your system, or go here for in-depth descriptions. The security flaws can be fixed if you upgrade your system(s) to the  linux-image-2.6.38-14 (2.6.38-14.58)  package(s). To apply the update, run the Update Manager application. Note: Don't forget to reboot your computer after the upgrade! ATTENTION:   Due to an unavoidable ABI change, the kernel packages have a new version number, which will force you to reinstall and recompile a...

Comparison between Gnome 2 & Gnome 3 Desktops and Window Juggling GNOME 2's desktop has such a long tradition that little needs to be said about it. Its desktop was a place where you could add launchers for applications, files, or locations. Its windows could be minimized or maximized, and opened somewhere between these two extremes. The main problem was the non-intelligent placement of new windows, which required a Show Desktop applet on the panel as a panic button. For better or worse, GNOME 3 is a complete rethinking of the desktop. By default, no launchers of any sort are allowed on it. Except for apps like Empathy, whose windows require very little space, everything is open maximized, with no indicator like the windows list to suggest what other else might be buried beneath the active application. If you are a user with the least tendency to multi-task, this arrangement quickly leads to chaos on the desktop. GNOME 3's solution? A depiction of the open appli...

Gnome 2 vs Gnome 3 Users who choose between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 are rarely making that decision on a purely rational basis. In my experience, users of GNOME 2 are often choosing what they know, while users of GNOME 3 are technophiles who enjoy anything that is new. Neither is likely to go over the two generations of GNOME feature by feature. In many cases, the choice seems made before login. But what happens when the two desktop environments are compared in general features? I'm a fan of neither GNOME 2 nor GNOME 3 , but I decided to find out. I spent the day with the two desktop environments open side by side, looked at the desktop components in both, and tried to pick a winner in each basic category based on efficiency, ease of use, and the availability of choices for users. The effort wasn't always easy. Neither being new nor being traditional was enough in many cases. Frankly, the switch from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 often looked like an exchange of one set of short...

Dream Studio 11.10 Dick MacInnis proudly announced on, February 24th, the immediate availability for download of the Dream Studio 11.10 operating system. Being based on the Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system, the brand-new Dream Studio 11.10 distribution has lots of new features and a beautified Unity-based desktop. Dream Studio 11.10 is known for features like multi-user and real-time PulseAudio-integrated audio through JACK, the Cinelerra video editor, photography applications, lots of various video and audio effects, and fonts, as well as many utilities. " DickMacInnis.com is proud to announce the official release of Dream Studio 11.10. This exciting new version of Dream Studio (dream.dickmacinnis.com) has all the features that have made past releases one of the most successful multimedia software packages out there, " " Not only that, but this latest version of Dream Studio also included hundreds of bug fixes and the following new features ...

  Microsoft announced that it filed a formal complaint with the European Commission against Motorola Mobility (and Google, who is in the process of purchasing Motorola), so as to prevent the vendor from blocking sales of Windows PCs, Xbox game console and other products. Apparently, Motorola is unhappy with the fact that these devices provide users with the possibility to view videos on the Web or to wirelessly connect to the Internet using industry standards.   “You probably take for granted that you can view videos on your smartphone, tablet, PC, or DVD/Blu-ray player and connect to the Internet without being tied to a cable,” Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel, corporate standards and antitrust group, Microsoft,   notes . “That works because the industry came together years ago to define common technical standards that every firm can use to build compatible products for video and Wi-Fi.   “Motorola and all the other firms that contribute...

Softpedia is proud to introduce a new Linux distribution, called Comice OS, on  February 7th,  which is actually a redesigned version of the Pear OS Linux.  Remember  Pear OS   ? It's that Mac OS looking (see screenshots below) Ubuntu-based operating system introduced last year on our Linux section. Well, it looks like David Tavares, the developer of Pear OS, prepares these days a revamped version of his Linux operating system, under the name of Comice OS. Comice OS 4 will be built on top of the GNOME 3 interface, powered by Comice Shell, which is a modification of GNOME Shell to look exactly like a Mac OS desktop. It provides two views: Mission Control to view running apss and Launchpad to see installed apps. Wait, that's not all! Comice OS 4 will be powered by Linux kernel 3.2 and GNOME 3.2.1. Will contain drivers for wireless networks and popular graphics cards, like Nvidia, ATI/AMD and Intel. One of the most highlighted apps of Comice OS will be of...

Windows Media Player Bug Security researchers have seen attackers going after the newly patched CVE-2012-0003 vulnerability in the Windows Media Player. The flaw, which was patched earlier this month by Microsoft, is a critical one that can enable remote code execution, and it affects a wide range of Windows systems. When the patch was released, Microsoft officials recommended that customers install it immediately as there was a decent chance of attackers leveraging it in the near future. And that's just what's happened. Researchers at the IBM ISS X-Force have seen malicious attacks against the MIDI vulnerability going on in the wild in recent days, and say that because exploitation of the flaw is not considered difficult, there may well be more on the horizon. "In addition to the appearance of live exploitation, detailed discussion of the vulnerability details and methods of exploitation have been seen. The relatively low complexity of locating the vulnerabilit...

Have a taste of Linux on Windows We believe that everyone who considers themselves a computer enthusiast should have at least some experience with a Linux environment, but it can be daunting to just jump into the deep end of a completely unfamiliar operating system. One way to get your feet wet is with Cygwin, a free program that provides you with a Unix-like command line, without having to leave Windows. Cygwin is not a Unix emulator (it cannot run native Unix programs, although it does contain the tools needed to compile and run a program from source code), but it does have a wide array of optional packages that let you use most of the tools and utilities that you would commonly use in Unix, in Windows. In this guide, we’ll show you how to get Cygwin set up, the basics of how to navigate a Unix file system, and how to find more information as you need it. 1. Install Cygwin To get started with Cygwin, go to   www.cygwin.com   and click the link that says “Install or updat...