I always hoped for better for Ireland; but it seems the thieving hand of “rights” organizations which pretend to represent the artist have struck gold. Being able to cajole and bribe the largest Irish Internet Service Provider (ISP) - Eircom; has worked only too well. Although Eircom has said it will only obey by having a court order - it has agreed never to oppose these - which makes it complicit in the act of censorship.

What are Desktop Environments? Wikipedia defines it as: In graphical computing, a desktop environment (DE) commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface …… A desktop environment typically consists of icons, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. (See WIMP.) I would add a file manager and browser to this list also! Let’s look at the two most popular consumer Operating Systems (in three variants) and their Desktop Environments:

Last year was me celebrating four years of using the best operating system out there: Linux and the best distro Ubuntu. Ubuntu was my first foray in to Linux; and I haven’t left it since; although I have tried all the other major distros. I started with the first version of Ubuntu; Warthy Warthog: Warthy had a text only installer and it took me quite a while to not only get used to the idea of this strange operating system; but the fear of leaving Windows-land where all that power usage knowledge would mean nothing.

Recently I downloaded the Kubuntu packages of the new KDE 4.2 beta 2. For those of you who don’t know; KDE is the K Desktop Environment; which includes a window manager (KWin), common desktop applications, its own menu (Kickoff), browser (Konqueror), file manager (dolphin) etc. Basically it is the most popular desktop environment on Linux next to Gnome. *KDE 4.2 Beta 2 with Kickoff Menu visible **What is so special about KDE?

I downloaded Firefox 3.1 beta 2 (after trialling other development snapshots over the last few months) to see Ogg Theora video support is coming on really well. Opera, as well as Mozilla has committed to including this royalty-free video codec for web use. This is really good news; as one Opera Developer said: Something however is still not quite there about web video. The video solutions mentioned above are proprietary closed solutions that rely on plugins to display in a web page - what we need to make video a first-class web citizen is an easy, open solution to integrate video into web pages, and native support for video in browsers.

My Current Firefox Extensions: A-Z* Adblock Plus; because ads are for people that don’t know how to avoid them! Not only do they stop your banwidth from being wasted; they make a ton of websites more usuable. It takes care of Flash Ads as well as static ones; using a filter that is constantly updated. So even if some of the webs more devious and sneaky advertisers try to circumvent it; AdBlock can have a fix to everyone online within hours.

I am not a big gamer; I primarily love systems and how they work. I do own a PS3 (amazing hardware I might add) and I prefer FPS and generally devious natured video games (like the GTA franchise). Does that make me a bad person who wants to kill people? Of course not; nothing could be further from the truth. But some people stick their fingers in their ears and shout “LA LA LA Columbine LALALA Terrorists LALALA Violent Video Games!

**Note: This Guide was written for use by my Computer Science class on Linux (and Mac OS X where noted). I haven’t used SSH on Windows; but hopefully someone can make sure this guide works also on Windows by noting differences). SSH comes with nearly all Linux distros and all Mac OS X releases. ** OS Specific Colours: Linux - Mac OS X - Windows ** ** **Download SSH For Windows

As part of Computer Science you do a couple of general modules which are general in nature about computing; but I think that just reflects the broad use of IT in every part of society today. As things go digital or are created digitally; understanding of this concept is vital; that is where Web Multimedia comes in. For my first project of this second year; I had to do a movie made of stills with custom sound effects.

I am an avid Gmail user through Google Apps. I use the calender, chat, code, sites, pages, docs the whole lot. One of my friends even jokes “You should just work at Google Marketing”. Yes I like most of Google’s products; but I am a products guy; I use whats good, cheap and fast (pick two). Google has the cheap down due to ad-revenue; for the moment anyways in the current financial turmoil.