NEW YORK (AP) – Admit it. You can’t ignore that little electronic ping that alerts you to a new e-mail or an incoming call. It’s even in your dreams.

More than a quarter of us report being so attached to our cell phones and laptops that we leave them alone only when we’re asleep, according to a recent survey by career Web site Yahoo! HotJobs.

The survey also reports that 26 per cent of respondents feel wireless devices keep them on a permanent corporate leash.

While such devices can offer freedom and flexibility, setting guidelines can prevent them from consuming your personal time, said Tom Musbach, managing editor of Yahoo! HotJobs.

“You’ve got to talk to your manager about expectations and about boundaries,” he said. “They don’t come with rules of engagement.”

Screen calls and promise yourself you won’t check your Blackberry or work e-mail while on vacation, Musbach said. Don’t use wireless devices while exercising either, or you’ll just create stress instead of burning it off.

Lastly, don’t forget to take advantage of the benefits, and use them to schedule fun and relaxation along with your next conference call.

Data for the survey was collected through an online questionnaire from more than 900 professionals who use wireless devices.

Source: Yahoo.ca News

~LC

GNOME applications that make CD burning easy

By Robin Monks

The GNOME desktop environment comes with a simple and single-minded CD burner application built into the Nautilus file manager (not dissimilar to what Microsoft bundles with Windows XP’s Windows Explorer and Vista’s Explorer) that can handle a lot of your file burning needs. But what do you do if you need more complex tasks done, like burning or ripping an ISO file, or creating an audio CD?

When Nautilus begins to feel cramped and underpowered, it’s time to begin looking at some excellent free software utilities to fill the gap. Each one has its own unique style, benefits and weaknesses. All of these can be installed by following the directions on the project’s website, or by using your distribution’s package installer. I’ve tested these programs on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) and with a $69 LG CD/DVD super-multi burner I picked up at the local office supply store.

A quick note on some common disk burning terms is in order. Firstly, “burning” a disk is adding files to a CD or DVD using a laser. “BurnProof”, “BurnFree” and similar technologies are designed to allow disk burning applications to recover if at some point the drive is burning data faster than the application can send it. “Ripping” is the process by which data (usually audio tracks) are copied from a disk to the hard drive. Finally an ISO is the standard file used to represent a CD image, it contains all the files and folders to be burned to the disk and usually has a .iso extension.

When Nautilus begins to feel cramped and underpowered, it’s time to begin looking at some excellent free software utilities to fill the gap

Source: Free Software Magazine

~LC

Intro

This aims to be the most comprehensive0 kernel1, 2 comparison3 of the latest most popular Unix style kernel versus the latest most popular kernel. In Q2 2007, this means Linux 2.6.20 kernel versus Windows Vista kernel. In Q3 2007, this means Linux 2.6.21 kernel versus Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 kernel.

It’s interesting to see a side by side comparison like this!

Source: widefox

~LC

By: TechieMoe

Introduction:

Much like most of the distributions that I come to me via recommendation, Lunar was out of left field. I’d never heard of it and didn’t understand why it existed.

After reading the introduction article (which is offered as part of the install process, not unlike Gentoo’s documentation) I found that Lunar was an ancestor of Sorceror Linux, a source-based distro.

Some of you might know that my history with source-based distributions is a bit spotty. You would then understand why this news made me hesitant. The code name of this release, “Moose Drool”, probably didn’t help either.

By the way, I think it worthy of noting up front that this distribution took a lot of work, so strap in. It’s going to be a long rant.

The entire review is too long to post here, so click the link below to read the rest. It’s a good read!

Complete Review

~LC

(Review) – I’m thrilled to report that the latest beta of Audacity is indeed, just what the doctor ordered. If you have been an Audacity fan with your favorite distribution, you likely remember the headache of doing something as simple as assigning the proper sound device settings when working with something like a USB headset. Seriously, with the exception of higher end equipment, who is going to use that lousy mic jack built into their sound card when I can enjoy the noise canceling goodness of my USB headset?

Audacity for Ubuntu: The Install. One piece of information that I discovered was that there was no sign of Audacity in any of my repositories (probably since it is in Beta). So, off to Google I go to find the best bet for compiling success. As a rule, I prefer not to deal with a source like this, as it is a dependency witch hunt 99 percent of the time; however, as luck would have it, I was able to locate a working package all ready to go, or so it seemed…

As I tried the first attempt at installing this package, it seems that I was missing something – libFLAC++. OK, this is not a problem and should be an easy fix with apt-get. But for the sake of the GUI crowd, I opted for Synaptic instead. I did a quick query for the missing ingredient and sure enough, it was just sitting there waiting to be installed. After solving this portion of the problem, I went ahead and tried the package install again. This time I was met with tremendous success.

Complete Review

~LC

Cory Doctorow: I’ve just published the conclusion of my latest podcast series, a reading of Peter Gutmann’s amazing “Vista Suicide Note” paper, formally called “A Cost-Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.” It’s a long paper — it took more than two and a half hours to read aloud — and it covers a lot of ground, and I found it fascinating to read for my podcast, paying attention to every word, finding out more and more about the dangers lurking in Microsoft’s new DRM operating system. Chances are that the next PC you buy will be infected with Vista — Gutmann’s paper makes a good case for erasing that OS and installing something more sensible. Even XP is an improvement (of course, Ubuntu Linux is an even better option).

The reading is in four pieces, hosted on the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license — you can sell it, give it away, change it, make money on it, whatever. The Archive publishes the reading as MP3s and OGG files for your listening pleasure.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Podcast feed

Technorati tags: Windows, News

See also:
Windows Vista: Suicide notes, nerdcore rap MP3
Vista Suicide Note — rebuttal and response

Source: Vista Suicide Note paper reading now available