Now you can read xps files in ubuntu!

About
  OpenXPS or XPS stands for XML Paper Specification. It is based on XML and it's a new electronic paper format originally developed by Microsoft and it serves as a PDF alternative. XPS files are usually created using "Microsoft XPS Document Writer" in Windows environments. It is now standardized as an open standard document format.

Quoting Wikipedia:
 An XPS file is in fact a Unicoded ZIP archive using the Open Packaging Conventions, containing the files which make up the document. These include an XML markup file for each page, text, embedded fonts, raster images, 2D vector graphics, as well as the digital rights management information. The contents of an XPS file can be examined simply by opening it in an application which supports ZIP files.

 The OpenXPS document format specification supports features such as color gradients, transparencies, CMYK color spaces, printer calibration, multiple-ink systems and print schemas.

 Evince already supports xps, but it has to be compiled with that option enabled. In order for evince (the program that allows you to read pdf document files) to read xps files, libgxps is required first.

Status update
..for libgxps in Debian (we'll see about Ubuntu afterwards):

• We are very close to a release in Debian.
• We have a willing debian developer to sponsor it.
• It's now maintained by debian-gnome team: http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/pkg-gnome/packages/unstable/libgxps/
• Package release was blocked by a libarchive bug: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=662603 (now fixed)

There's a PPA!
After much frustration, I have created a PPA for evince with xps: https://launchpad.net/~medigeek/+archive/evince-xps/

Note: The evince version in Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric ocelot doesn't work with xps (segmentation fault when opening the file) and there are several packages to be backported. I've decided not to backport it. It works in Ubuntu 12.04 precise pangolin.
If you need to read an xps file, package libgxps-utils provides enough conversion tools, e.g. command:

xpstopdf myfile.xps

Independent Kosovo - the "thank you" of several world countries to Serbia

Regard this as a "my opinion" post before spraying ethnicism over it.
The day of independence of Kosovo and Metohija (17th February) is a day that every Serbian will remember, definitely more if they have lived the terrifying moments when the sirens go wild, when everyone tries to save - or better yet grab - whatever possible while the NATO began dreadful bombing over cities, military and general infrastructure buildings as well as civilians.

I will not argue the fact that both sides suffered, but in the end, no-one respected to see both sides, just what the CNN and all other western propaganda showed.

I would like to list several good links to show you my point of view:
1) What Serbia did for the world? I'll take you back several decades - Heroic actions of the Serbian people during World War II:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2006/11/heroic-serbia-wwii.html

2) What happened after WWII, how it reached to demographic changes which favoured Albanian ethnics and imperialistic ideas of a "Great Albania"?
A Czech TV documentary answers most of these questions (mostly one-sided stories, but do see the video):
- http://www.apatin-city.com/4um/index.php?topic=4964.0
- http://serbblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/brave-czechs-brave-film-stolen-kosovo.html
Note: They're not my uploads. Look for "Stolen Kosovo video english" in Google if this isn't available.

Amongst others, you will see:
- French Foreign minister Bernard Kushner, Hashim Tachi, NATO officers and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
- Madeleine Albright exchanging how-do-you-do's.
- Havier Solana disturbingly nodding to a woman that was forced away from her home.
- Atrocities.

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2007/03/nato-aggression-anniversary.html

3) The thank you for Serbia's heroism during WWII? NATO bombing and proclaiming Serbians as vicious murderers.

Kofi Annan endorsed NATO bombing in former Yugoslavia:
http://link.history.com/services/link/bcpid1681730307/bclid1729287264/bctid1601261895
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/un/timeline/timeline5b.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1999/03/99/kosovo_strikes/318104.stm

It is indeed tragic that diplomacy has failed, but there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace," Annan notes, but emphasizes the Security Council should have been consulted.

(For the "diplomacy has failed" argument, see "More links" below)

4) NATO's "oops" bombings, accidentally targetting not only foreign embassies, but civilians as well: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/340966.stm
See (2) if you think you can handle watching the holocausts (the bus over the bridge, the village).

An article quoting an eye-witness at the bazaar market in Niš NATO bombed:
http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/florence.html

5) The final outcome?
- Billions of dollars in damages.
- Cultural damages, including churches:
http://www.international.icomos.org/risk/world_report/2000/yugos_2000.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7249034.stm
- Blood-lust and monuments of historic importance destroyed:
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.nato-tribunal.de/varvarin/photo_documentation.htm

More links:
Albright's "Take it or leave it" plan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo1jJkIfWbc
Albright & Kosovo - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1999/03/99/kosovo_strikes/315053.stm

NATO bombings operation:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Allied_Force
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Bombardment_in_the_Kosovo_War
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/nato_targets/default.stm

"Humanitarian" military intervention:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_intervention
- http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n01hmi.html
- http://www.usip.org/pubs/peaceworks/pwks45.pdf

Other:
- http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/www.cpa.org.au/garchive/960yug.htm
- http://www.unmikonline.org/DPI/PressRelease.nsf/0/BA2CB1DFE04FAFD5C12571790054E673/$FILE/pr1555.pdf
- http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/yugoslavia/military_situation.html
- http://www.againstbombing.org/WPworldreaction.htm

As a final note, I'd like to quote this site:

Certainly the atrocious crimes of the Serbs against Kosovars should not be tolerated, but any child knows two wrongs do not make a right. The rule of law also needs to be made universal by democratic processes. Individuals must be held accountable for actions that violate the rights of others. But to use the blunt instruments of war to punish whole nations and peoples for the crimes of their leaders and supporters tends to escalate the violence and the crimes.

Last, but not least, I would like to personally condemn the single-sided independence of Kosovo, the illegal approval and the ignorance of several international laws. The other thing I would like, is simply that Ms Madeleine Albright and Havier Solana apprehend the Serbian language and try to live in the Kosovo they've so desired to create by force - without their bodyguards and escorts that is, to see just how things actually are, behind the cameras, and during the terrifying nights of raids and attacks towards the few remaining serbians in Kosovo & Metohija.

non-ASCII characters in usernames

Ever wanted a user name that is localised to the language you want, with your original name or surname and not only using Latin characters? Well, today I made a beautiful discovery!

Although a lot of people claim it is not possible yet for GNU/Linux to understand characters other than ASCII, I've found that it can concerning user names - using the useradd command (not adduser).

The actual problem seems to be a standard the unix commands have to follow:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap03.html

But it looks like the useradd accepts arbitrary usernames, which is cool! So I've tried my name in Greek:

sudo useradd -m Σάββας

Then adding a password:

sudo passwd Σάββας

And that is all that is required!! Maybe some programs aren't ready yet, but so far I've tried: terminal, console, firefox, rhythmbox, totem player. None of them returned any errors nor did they crash.

Openoffice 3.0 final.. finally!

Today I noticed that the new version 3.0 of OpenOffice.org will be out, the open source/free desktop office bundle (that I adore). As osalt.com describes it:

 OpenOffice provides a great alternative to existing commercial office suites. It comes with word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress), drawing and graphing tool (Draw), tool for creating equations and formulae (Math) and finally a database tool which also build reports and forms (Base). All components are multi-platform and multilingual. Development is sponsored by Sun Microsystems.

So I have two events to celebrate today, this and my birthday! :)

Click on the following links to see:
- the release announcement:
www.openoffice.org/news/index.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A//www.openoffice.org/news/index.html

- the new features:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0/
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A//www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0/

I've enclosed google cache links as an alternative, for some reason the openoffice.org site replies with '403 Forbidden' error.

Update:

You can obtain the openoffice suite from torrents or mirrors such as:
torrents: http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~adrian/bt.php
mirrorservice: http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/down ... ble/3.0.0/
Filehippo (windows executable): http://www.filehippo.com/download_openoffice/

Xubuntu peerwatch or university rootkit?

After I've read Ubuntu's weekly newsletter and the blog post from washingtonpost, your not-so-friendly neighbour, a notorious group of people who are deluged in money, the same group who have successfully tried to ashame themselves in the past, have done it again, by infridging the GPL license!
They kept Xubuntu trademarks and artwork and made / published their own tools that break privacy policies of almost every university.

I'll keep this post short: Democracy or hypocracy? Hypocrites or advanced rootkit bullies? The legend stays to be told...
The so-called Xubuntu "derivative" website can be found here: http://www.universitytoolkit.com/

As a footnote, if you agree to their *ahem* novel of terms and conditions about how it can break your computer, you can check out their work (or temper with their bandwidth) by downloading the newest iso here:
http://universitytoolkit.com/peerwatch-0.9.2.1.iso
(0.9.2a is not available or someone is hiding the good stuff!)

P.S. Unfortunately, the picture is not associated with the text, but it pretty much explains my thoughts :-)

Update: 19:50 CET - the 0.9.2.1.iso is down

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 plans

As of today (29th November 2007), Ubuntu's next big release, Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, which will be a Long Term Support release, just like Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, I've noticed a milestone announcement about it. It contains 9 blueprints and about 32 targetted bugs for now.
Ubuntu developers have expressed their desire to focus more on fixing the bugs of the applications that are already contained in Ubuntu, rather than reviewing new applications and their updated versions - thumbs up for that decision!

The tracker search tool will be reviewed, OpenOffice.org suite will also get its bugs fixed by April 2008 (the expected month of release), same stands for several other important applications. Let's hope there will be more in that list :-)

Re: Y!News

Always trying to stay informed, I just read at Yahoo! News that Kosovo's leaders are ready for opposition "in case -beep-". It seems as though more and more people are promoting the Albanian flag when arguing about Kosovo. Take a look at the pictures they took, talking about the people protesting for the independency of Kosmet (Kosovo and Metohija) - all showing up the Albanian flag and calling them "people" as if all of the residents of Kosovo want the independence. I have nothing against Albania or its residents, but do you think it's wise to pour oil over fire?

If you're looking for the real reasons of how all this mess started, you've come to the wrong blog - I'm stating my thoughts here. The reason I'm ranting about the whole thing is because they're passively promoting their side of the story, and the reporters aren't much of a help here. Where are the photographs of the protests we're making? Sure, they're covering a fact in Austria, but what happened to the "both sides of the story" part?

The United States [...] that the Ahtisaari plan was the best option if the two sides could not reach agreement.

Remarkable, as was the Annan plan for Cyprus back in 2002; No wonder Cyprus is still opposed to EU-supervised independence of Kosovo!

You could say I'm promoting ethnicism, in fact, you could say pretty much whatever you like. Would India let go of Taj Mahal? Would Muslims ever give up on Mecca or Medina? You know the answer to those questions, hence in turn, would Serbia just dismiss its Christian Orthodox heart at Kosovo?
It's true that the people in Serbia are alarmed of the utterly heated up situation. I'm not Nostradamus, but I can foretell that everything points out to the inevitable... we just have to wait and see. My personal opinion is that we don't need any more countries in the Eastern Europe and a note to America would be: How about stop picking someone else's nose and face your own internal problems?

New Ubuntu flavour on the horizon

I've seen the announcements about Ubuntu going mobile, the Ubuntu security testing platform (nUbuntu), the Ubuntu that consists of free software (Gobuntu), the Ubuntu with enlightenment (Elbuntu), but we haven't seen any virtualisation plans - until now that is.

Ubuntu has announced a new derivative of Ubuntu, Ubuntu JeOS 7.10. It is pronounced "juice" for a reason that I do not know, probably for readability and direct connection to the "core" idea: all the ubuntu juice for virtual appliances!

I'm detecting a cooperation with VMware somewhere here, I run a google search about JeOS and got a very nice review of the new operating system... in JUNE! The new OS (I'm talking about the 7.10 version) was announced just yesterday. As they say at the console blog, JeOS is a thinner version of an operating system that matches exactly the needs of the virtualisation applications and its hardware. Smaller, more secure, easier to manage. I think these reasons are enough and that my cooperation theory might stand on reality.

Get juiced! Why? Srinivas Krishnamurti explains:

An OS finely tuned to the application it supports is smaller, more secure, easier to manage, and higher performing than a general purpose OS. A smaller footprint means IT organizations can run more instances per server. Tailoring the OS specifically to the app enables the removal of vulnerable components such as the browser from Windows and therefore significantly reduces the number of vulnerabilities and patches required to address those vulnerabilities.

The 7.10 version is ready for download, click here. You might find a screenshot tutorial about it at ςςς.ελληνικούρες.ψομ.

Meanwhile, a couple of my friends and I have established the Cyprus Ubuntui LoCo team, you can visit the wiki page by clicking here. The page is still under construction and we haven't managed to get the ubuntu-cy.org domain yet, but it is just a matter of time. The logo on the right was my initial recommendation, but it seems that the founder prefers the logo you see at the wiki page (I've colourised both logos, you can view the "series" here).

News: Google sued over patent infridgement

Credit should be given where it is due... maybe Google forgot that or maybe they did come up with the lovely idea of indexing websites and presenting results through a single website, but it looks like someone other than Lawrence Page patented a similar invention some 3 years before the Google creators filed their own patent. This was released in Boston Globe, Computerworld, and probably some thousand blogs by now
You can view the patent by Kenneth P. Baclawski here
I'm not 100% sure if this the corresponding Google patent, but try here or here.

Patents are actually a way of telling someone "You can't step on my grass without paying!", if you browse through at Google Patents search, you'll find out quite a load of inventions brought down and described on paper, i.e. "patented". I bet it's impossible to patent a new invention nowadays and not to cite older ones. Either way, I believe patents are evil - They actually restrict you because someone else had a bright moment and was quick enough to write it down on a piece of paper, and that someone now requests to receive from Google a "noble" (try "adequately enormous") royalty.

IRC: irssi 0.8.11 released

In case you're wondering whether there is an advanced IRC for console (KDE konsole or GNOME terminal), irssi is the application for that. Unfortunately, Ubuntu Linux does not provide the new version, only in backports, where most applications are 'shaky'.

Well I've downloaded the application from the packages.ubuntu.com website (here's a direct link to the irssi package, i386 and amd64 compiled). The dependencies can be satisfied with the feisty packages, so it's good to go! I've been using it several days now and I haven't detected any bugs, in fact they fixed most bugs I reported (The joys of open source programming).

When you download the .deb, just double click and hit "install package", it will ask for the administrator password (and you type it of course). Then just open your terminal/konsole (preferrably maximize the windows) and type: irssi

IRC: mIRC 6.3 released

There you have it, from 6.21 a major jump to 6.3, one of the most popular irc client programs. You can grab it from mirc.com. I'm not a Windows fan, so this is beyond my 'reviewer cap', but I'll present the changelog in short:

1. U3 support.
2. Full Vista compatibility, all your saved data will be in Application Data\mIRC by default.
   
3. mIRC is installed according to your administrator/standard user account.
4. Traytips are integrated and the balloon messages will be available only if mIRC is not the active application.
5. Minor bugfixes and updates

Read the rest here.

Software: Hiren's Boot CD 9.2

Hiren's Boot CD 9.2 is out! It's packed with lovely new utilities and updated with the latest software. I must add that this cd contains some unlicensed commercial software. The use of unlicensed software is illegal without a serial. In that case, you can make beautiful Boot CDs using Ultimate Boot CD or UBCD4Win, which contain software free of charge (that also works).

Now since the legal case is covered, here's the changelog from 9.1 to 9.2:

+Recuva 1.02.095
+JkDefrag 3.16
+S&M Stress Test 1.9.0
+Process Explorer 10.06
+Express Burn 2.02
Active Kill Disk 4.1
Samsung Hutil 2.04
SPecial Fdisk 2000.03t
TestDisk 6.8b
PhotoRec 6.8b
HDAT2 4.5.3
System Analyser 5.3r
Astra 5.33
NTFS4DOS 1.9
MpxPlay 1.55 final
Universal TCP/IP Network 6.01
Gcdrom 2.4
CuteMouse 1.9.1
Unstoppable Copier 3.12
Silent Runners Revision 51
Autoruns 8.71
CurrPort 1.20
CPU-Z 1.40.5
CCleaner 1.41.544
ShellExView 1.16
PCI 32 Sniffer 1.4 (2907)
McAfee Antivirus 4.4.50 (2907)
Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4 (2907)
SpywareBlaster 3.5.1 (2907)
Ad-Aware SE Personal 1.06 (2907)
F-Prot Antivirus 3.16f (2907)
PCI and AGP info Tool (2907)
Unknown Devices 1.2 (2907)

ISO MD5: fa1095bc413129c943e4ab3e3244e810

I don't favour any download links referring to this product, if any user posts a download link as a comment they are posting at their own risk, the files are not mine nor uploaded by myself, I don't host any files, I just bring the news and I have the right to say what I want. Links will be removed per request by email.

Computers: Donated OLPC laptops used for porn browsing

It might be old news but it's a damn good "event" (I think the pic on the right is Reuters'). It looks like we finally brought the joys of the internet to those less fortunate as said by a user at Slashdot. Children from Abuja were found (no evidence whatsoever) to be using the donated OLPC's laptop (One laptop per child) for browsing adult websites. As soon as the developers heard about this (expected from the public) event, they held back the laptops and are preparing for heavy censorship using filters.
Maybe they haven't succeeded so much in providing the less fortunate ones with the "great stuff" of the Wild West by presenting their OLPC project. I frankly believe it's a waste of time and money to bring laptops to those who in a great percentage will not appreciate it and will use it for such events. I mean hey, they it free of charge and you go breaking its good reputation and the hard work people put on this mega-sized project! Check out a lovely "internet is for porn" at youtube :)

News: A language no-one knows freed a child molester

This one comes from Digg.com - A child molester, Mahamu Kanneh, has been freed because they couldn't find an interpreter in an appropriate timely manner - or one that would stay for that matter. So, all you sex-abusing freaks out there start learning Vai, maybe you'll be freed too.
Injustice or mistrial is something we see every day now. But you can't hold a trial against a guy who doesn't understand English (although the detectives spoke to him in English, and Kanneh attended high school in Montgomery).
The judge seems to have missed the big part of the trial: it was a sex-abuse and the girl will have to live with it for the rest of her life.

I don't believe the outcome would be the same if that child was her own.