Called a part of “spring cleaning”, one of the things Google has decided is to discontinue the Tanslate API, citing “substantial economic burden caused by extensive abuse” as the reason.

As an alternative, Google is pointing to their Translate Element, part of their Web Elements for use on web pages.

Requests to the API will be throttled starting on May 26th, 2011 and finally killed totally in December 2011.

So how does this affect you?

Read on

Continue Reading Google to Kill the Translate API

If there is one thing one should never do is make a statement that your server is the most secure ever and taunt people to try and crack it.

Seems the maker of RedZone did just that and it took very little time for the challenge to be taken.

Continue Reading Update: RedZone and Other Datamining

In light of the recent uproar about data mining by unscrupulous people exploiting a hole in the viewer media system, I thought it might be helpful to include a few ways to protect yourself.

These are not ideal by any means, but until Linden Labs bans these and any other data mining systems and fixes the security hole(s) they exploit, options are limited.

Continue Reading How To Protect Against Second Life Datamining

Imagine this scenario:

You are visiting a local shopping mall or favorite nightclub.

As you walk in the door, a rather shady private detective hired by owner to catch shoplifters, collects your name, address, age, financial information, what car you drive, takes a picture, and then sends all of that information to his (not the owner’s) home office.

All of this without your consent, or even knowledge it has happened.

Since the detective doesn’t have very good eyesight, he thinks that nearly everyone is shoplifting.

As if that wasn’t enough, if someone wants to, they can call on this detective, who gladly provides them with the information and tools to stalk you or even smack you around.

Continue Reading Linden Labs Fails To Stop Exploitation of User Information

[NOTE: This is a repost of an article from way back in 2008. Some things are too funny to let go.]
Our newest “OH Crap” moment comes courtesy of my favorite feline, George.

Continue Reading Dude, Your Cat Is On Fire

Someone recently asked why I prefer Linux systems over “another operating system” and one of the things mentioned during this conversation was software management.

Continue Reading Software in Debian Based Linux

As I was catching up on a backlog of RSS feeds, I ran across Linden Labs plans for rolling out a new “Community Platform” starting in March.

According to the article, it seems nearly all avenues of communicating with Linden Labs are undergoing a major overhaul.

Is this an upgraded way for Linden Labs to ignore it residents?

Continue Reading Second Life Finds New Ways To Ignore Residents?

According to the Second Life wiki:

A Sculpted Prim, or sculptie, is a prim whose shape is determined by an array of x, y, z coordinates stored as RGB values in an image file (Sculpt Maps). Sculpted prims can be used to create more complex, organic shapes that were not previously possible with the Second Life prim system.

For those of us who do not speak geek, what this means is you take something that looks like a psychedelic poster from the Sixties, apply it to a prim and get a new shape.

While you could, in theory, make one of these by hand, you would probably end up drooling and gibbering incoherently in a corner somewhere.

A much easier way, is to use software which can perform most of the work for you.

Continue Reading Sculpted prims are now easy with Blender, Jass and Primstar

I recently installed UbuntuStudio 10.04 in preparation for some audio and graphics operations I would need to be performing soon. Normally, I would have stayed with my beloved Debian, but for sake of convenience¹ , I decided to use UbuntuStudio and chose the 10.04 LTS edition.

I am very sensitve during certain times about when my system is under a load, so I normally shut off all services I do not need, like bluetooth, accessibility options and so forth. And having gotten very spoiled with my Debian OSS4 sounds, I decided PulseAudio had to go².

This post is mainly for myself so I can just copy/paste into a terminal, but if you find it helpful, so much the better

A lot of this information is available directly on the referenced websites, I am just condensing things down a bit.

Remove PulseAudio:

Code

sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio

Clean out Alsa

Code

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils stop
sudo apt-get remove alsa-base alsa-utils

Change the default sound server and select OSS from the list:

Code

sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-sound-base

Install some prerequisite packages:

Code

sudo apt-get install binutils libgtk2.0-0 sed gcc libc6 build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` gawk libtool libgtk2.0-dev libesd0 libsdl1.2debian-oss mercurial

Now it is time to REBOOT! Things tend to go awry if you do not reboot now.

Get the source code and build .deb package.

Code

cd /opt
sudo hg clone http://opensound.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/opensound/opensound oss-devel
cd ~/
mkdir oss42build
cd oss42build/
NO_WARNING_CHECKS=yes /opt/oss-devel/configure --enable-libsalsa=NO
make
sudo make deb
sudo dpkg -i oss*.deb

Get our system sounds working

Code

sudo apt-get install libcanberra-gstreamer

Use the Multimedia Sytems Selector in “Preferences” and set Audio defaults to OSS

Multimedia Selection for OSS Sound System

Lastly, add a custom application launcher in the panel or a desktop launcher for our audio mixer

I prefer the panel

Right click on panel ->Add To Panel -> Custom Application Launcher -> Name : OSS Mixer, Command: ossxmix

Pick any icon you prefer.

I normally reboot again.

To test your sound system, open a terminal and type in

Code

osstest

Be warned that the volume may be very loud, so be careful.

Thats it for now.

References:

Ubuntu Community Help: OpenSound

Open Sound website: Configuring Applications to use OSS4

1. Amongst other reasons. Some being I needed the new software and a stable system. I will probably move to Debian Squeeze onc things settle  down a bit [↩]
2. Call it a personal quirk, but I cannot, personally, stand PulseAudio and avoid it when ever possible. I do not mean this as a “bash PulseAudio” post because PulseAudio does work fine for many people and if you are happy with your current sound, then that is wonderful [↩]

Updates of changes on our site

17 April 2011

Reset requirement for user registration and log-in for comments to cut down on SPAM. User registration and log is once again required.

9 February 2011

• Corrected errors on policy pages

1 February 2011

• Updated Policies
• Changed Registration Form to be easier

14 January 2011

• added gravatar and comment avatar support
• added more secure registration plugin
• added other security measures
• changed theme to support gravatars
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