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 to spew out famous quotations on pretty much any subject, do encylopedia lookups, access the online Thesaurus, translate between different languages and, of course, the use the online dictionary. This time we’re going to take a crack at getting online weather updates, using zip codes. If you check out the GET variables, you’ll notice that the scope is the WORLD, but it doesn’t seem to work well with foreign identifiers. Of course, I haven’t tried all that hard to get it to work – setting me up for a post on the upgrade

Read the rest of the article here.

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 also am not a fan of the default scheme but it is really nice to see as a step forward in the graphics area. Take a look and check out this fine review, Baldy

 

MEPIS Linux 8.0 nears release

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 and other affected vendors, the talk was nixed until a comprehensive fix is ready.

The two researchers behind the discovery — Robert Hansen (left) and Jeremiah Grossman — have released droplets of information to highlight the severity of this issue.

Read the Entire Article

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, here’s my list of five great distributions that you might want to try.

Jeeesh I hate to rub it in but take a look at this list. Yes Simply Mepis is once again on the top of a distro list written by a user, Baldy

Read the Rest of the Article

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 how to create service menus, and some specific commands that you might want to use in them.

Handy little how-to for you folks, Baldy

Do-it-yourself Konqueror commands

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 reset attacks.

Here is a good article to read folks, and yes that means you webmail providers! It can answer a lot of questions and a fix if you take a few minutes and set it up correctly, Baldy

Read the Rest of the Article

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 effect instantly saves serious amount of time. To help bridge this divide, the GIMP is reviving the User Filter from its 1.x releases. This filter is a kind of meta-plugin that allows users to import and manage Photoship filters or, if they have the knowledge, to write their own. The GIMP User Filter is available from the project’s SourceForge.net site as source code or as a Debian package that may or may not work on Ubuntu, to judge from mailing list chatter. Once you install it, you will find it under Filter – > Generic -> User Filter.

I know of a lot of Gimp users who are jumping with joy today, get the hint Helena this is one for you kiddo. LOL Baldy

GIMP User Filter allows use of Photoshop filters

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 another option that overcomes the shortcomings of both other alternatives and gives KDE 4 a thoroughly modern menu.

Yes! A major step forward in KDE 4 for goodness sake, I installed it on my test machine and darn it is really nice and a breeze to work with. Baldy

 

Lancelot reaches Holy Grail of KDE menu

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 goodness to your Python scripts without going through coding rigmarole. Using EasyGui, you can add visual elements with just a few lines of code.

Handy little tool I just tried it and darn it is easy! Baldy

 

Dress up your Python scripts with EasyGui

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 undefined-handlers in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27. A crash can result without user interaction. When a user is made to visit a malicious link, which has an undefined handler followed by a ’special’ character, the chrome crashes with a Google Chrome message window “Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?”. It crashes on “int 3″ at 0×01002FF3 as an exception/trap, followed by “POP EBP” instruction when pointed out by the EIP register at 0×01002FF4.”

Yikes not a good thing but you can read the rest of the review Here if you are interested in this folks. Baldy