Saturday, November 19, 2011

Wikipedia and freedom

This topic is very close to my heart. Why? One, it is about freedom and two it is sharing. These two are the basic aspects of human existence and will continue to do so. I know, I will be ridiculed and this post will be vandalised over the public network. On what basis am i making this statement? There are posts on google plus where users(I think they are humans and not bots,

Are we continuing to be human?)have expressed their displeasure at the photograph of jimmy wales appearing on the top of the first page visited in the session. There were posts that they would not contribute to the project since they did not like his face.(OMG, height of being inhuman) Now, to request the users of wikipedia to donate, my face is not one of the best and definitely not better than jimmy wales, so I cannot appeal to the users to help this noble venture to be out for future users. Good looking and famous faces may not have the time and the understanding to appreciate the project. One more reason there is no celebrity involved is, the celebrities will are ready to take up project which is going to put them in the limelight and improve their existing mileage. You can get a celebrity for a cool drink or do a semi-nude pic for PETA. This is the same attitude displayed by the present generation w.r.t the available resources. They are not thinking of saving anything to the future gen. Just for eg, we have used fossil fuels in the last 50 yrs as much as been used in the years beyond those fifty years. That is indifference to the sustainability or dissolving of all human ethics.


Coming back to freedom, wikipedia's software is revolutionay in the fact that every user can have a say. It is ultimately a battle between good and bad, right and wrong, true and false and the good thing is people are free to express any of these attributes and there is no moderator to check for and vouch for either attributes. In a world where ethics are being ridiculed, day in day out, The wiki concept has stood the test of time and has killed all the static sources of encyclopedic knowledge. The dynamic nature of wikipedia assures that both the sides are given equal opportunities and ethically the bad, wrong and false shall lose.


Wikipedia is freedom personfied with basis in democracy and sharing as the main pillar. Please do support the project. Not for wales, not for me, not for "any body" but for "everybody". Keep knowledge free and accesible to all classes of people.

Jimmy wales, your project is based on good ethics. All the best with your project. Let us give something good to the community at large and make an example for the future generation.

Please contribute.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Gnome3 extensions on Debian GNU/Linux testing

People running Debian GNU/Linux testing with Gnome 3.0 and want to customize it with the G3 extensions, read on. The locations from where I collected the extensions are

1. http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html

2. http://linuxmaniac.torreviejawireless.org/debian/gnome-shell-extensions/

3. http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=146113
 
4. http://pkgs.org/fedora-15/fedora-updates-i386/gnome-shell-extension-places-menu-3.0.2-3.20110630git939994d0.fc15.noarch.rpm/download/

From all these sources just take the folder with the extension_name@something.com and paste them in /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions and logout. But remember doing so activates the extensions immediately.

If you want to disable any extension, U should install the gnome-tweak tool available in the Debian repos. The tweak tool has other options which you would love to play with. Just remember u have to download the packages for 3.0.* There will be the same packages for 3.2.* And they may break when G3 is update to 3.2. U have been warned. G3 is shiny and beatiful. Thanx to the G3 devs.

Friday, November 11, 2011

GNOME 3 on Debian GNU/Linux testing.

Kudos to the Debian GNU/Linux team. They have proved their "release when ready" philosophy once again with GNOME 3.*.

I loved the way my desktop was seamlessly and gradually updated with components from the latest G3 DE. I like the implementation of G3 on Debian GNU/Linux testing. The basic issues have been sorted out with the inclusion of GNOME tweak tool. Especially taking back the control of the desktop area, with icons allowed and right clicking in the desktop allowed.

In terms of the design philosophy of G3, I have liked whatever I have seen as of today. I have easily carried out all the regular tasks on my laptop without much issues. My tip for new users, that is people migrating from G2, is press the super key(windows key) and start typing the name of the program you want to run or to search the file you want to open. Way to go G3 team.


Ur DE is shiny and radical in terms of the design philosophy. My request to the G3 team is just one ie, See to it that you maintain compatibilty of mostly used addons/extensions with ur future releases. This will keep the addons/extensions/customizers interested.

---Proud to be a Debian GNU/Linux user. Will post any other customizations I do later.