You know you've reached the upper echelons of nerd-dom when you find yourself excitedly discussing regular expressions, or regex, to a friend. "Dude, you shoulda seen this regex I constructed! It was totally cool!" Hoo boy. Been there, done that, wearing the beanie to prove it. This web site - RegularExpressions.info - is really good at the information part of a web site, since there's a ton of great stuff there about regex, with examples, tutorials, tools, and more. Much of it is from a Windows perspective, but it's still useful to Penguinheads like me. However, the navigation on this site is ... eccentric, shall we say. No, it just sucks. That's too bad. Deal with the crappy nav, and get the good info. And learn how to use regex! (Check out all of our posts on regular expressions.) ...

Note: this is not a call for bloggers. I'm not looking for someone to write for this blog. If you want to do that, apply here. This is a call for developers. If you're reading our tech blogs, you probably know someone — or are someone — who works on web applications. We're expanding our Weblogs, Inc. tech team, looking for web developers and technical web designers for full-time positions. The exact skills are less important than these traits: bright, energetic, blog savvy, great communication skills (email, IM and in person), organization and problem solving. I'm not looking to fill a specific role like "MySQL developer". I want to find two or three people who know how to keep this giant blogging platform flying along and contribute to our always-changing stream of web projects. But just so we don't get people expecting to work on something else we don't use, here are some real skills we need: Apache, PHP and MySQL ASP/VBScript, Microsoft ...

One thing that people tend to forget is that open source isn't just about Linux. Apple uses open source stuff in it's products - like it's kernel & web browser for instance - and even MSFT has released a couple of things as open source (and I'm not talking about their b.s. "shared source" license, which doesn't even deserve consideration). In addition, there's actually a lot of great open source software that runs on Windows. When I use XP, for instance, I don't use IE; I use Firefox. I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express; I use Thunderbird. I don't use Office; I use OpenOffice.org. ...

Well, it's not too hard to guess what RMS thinks about software patents, but he offers up great arguments nonetheless. An email written by RMS was reprinted at Groklaw, titled "Richard Stallman on Software Idea Patents". It's short & definitely worth reading. For a slightly longer piece by RMS on the Free Software Foundation web site, head over to "Fighting Software Patents - Singly and Together". For more on RMS, O'Reilly's LinuxDevCenter has an interview with RMS that covers a lot more than just software patents: "Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience: The RMS Interview". The man is opinionated, that's for sure, and he's always interesting & provocative. Personally, I salute RMS & what he does. I might not always agree with him, but I wouldn't be blogging about this subject if it wasn't for his ideals & vision expressed over 20 years ago. And for that, everyone reading this blog owes him thanks … and respect. ...

Google Desktop Search was released a while ago, but it was pretty MSFT-centric (and hell, it STILL only works on Windows) and only indexed Office, IE, & Outlook Express. A new version has been released that now supports Firefox & Thunderbird, as well as other file formats. Good! Now how about getting it to work on Linux - and Mac OS X? According to what I've been reading, Copernic Desktop Search is even better than Google's. It's been able to index Firefox files for a while; now they added support for Tbird. Excellent! It just really blows that it's also only for Windows. Grrrrr … Of course, maybe we Linux users shouldn't really care, since it appears that we have something called Beagle that does the same thing. In fact, it appears that SUSE 9.3, due "real soon now", will include Beagle along with iPod support and other goodies. Sweet! Take that, Google! ...

It's kind of funny when you find an article written by someone that exactly expresses your own feelings. When I read "Konqueror and Kate make an excellent remote admin team… and a killer casserole", that's what I thought … except that I use Quanta+ instead of Kate for web dev work, but other than that, he's right on. All the things he mentions about Konqueror & Kate are things I love about KDE tools as well. The ability to use Konqueror as an SFTP or FISH tool simply rocks, & the ability to open a remote file & edit it in Quanta (or Kate) via fish://servername/path/to/file.htm makes me grin every time I do it. Read the short lil' piece for some exposure to features you might not have known your software possessed! (Check out all of my posts on Konqueror & Quanta.) ...

RMS is the man behind "free software", a term that a lot of people confuse with "open source". However, at least to RMS, the two terms are not at all the same thing. Here's a quotation from RMS that expresses the differences he sees. It's worth thinking about: The Free Software Movement holds that software users morally deserve the freedom to run, study, change, and redistribute the software they use. The term "open source" was coined, in 1998, to encourage free and not-quite-free software while leading attention away from the ethical foundations of free software. The rhetoric of "open source" presents the issue solely as a matter of practical convenience, not as a matter of freedom and cooperation. It does not say software *should* be open source, it just recommends a certain "development model" saying it usually leads to "better" software. Open source proponents and the BSA disagree about how to produce "better" software, but they agree about what "better" means: powerful, ...

I've used Outlook, but not daily since version 2000, although I've seen friends using newer versions. I used Evolution for a while, but I didn't like the way it looked - it wasn't very pretty or inviting. I've been using Kontact for several years now, & I really like it a lot. Nonetheless, I sure wish Evolution was available for Windows (although it will be, sometime in the future!), so I could use it when I have to use Bill's OS. Right now I use Thunderbird, which isn't bad at all, but I wouldn't mind having the richer features of Evolution, minus the security hazards of Outlook. Open Source Versus has a really cool 2 part series on its site. The first part, " Outlook Express vs Thunderbird: an e-mail client comparison - Part 1", is just that: a visual, side-by-side comparison of two programs that are roughly comparable in scope. Besides the pix, be sure to read the comments below - they're interesting. Part 2, "Outlook vs Evolution vs Kontact: an e-mail client comparison - Part 2", ...

Earlier today I explained how to listen to podcasts with open source tools. Some folks have been wondering what podcasts I like to listen to, so here's my list - the links are to the direct podcast feed that you want to subscribe to, if you want to check 'em out yourself. And by the way - I use a modified bashpodder on my Linux box to grab these puppies. It's great software! And so simple! All In The Mind @ Radio National (Australian science show about the brian & mind) APN Bluegrass Express APN Classic Country (I think this & the previous one are dead, which is a shame) Ebert & Roeper (Gotta know what flix to see!) Future Tense (a 5-minute-long tech & science show from American Public Radio - awesome!) IT Conversations (You MUST get this! MUST! If you like technology, this is an ABSOLUTE MUST! For more info, see the main web site.) KCRW Film Reviews (Short & sweet movie reviews, ...

Man, I remember my first "real" calculator back in 6th grade & how Mrs. Gregory tried to teach me and 25 other dorky 6th graders how to correctly use it, but I can't remember (calculate?) the last time I actually held a calculator in my hands & actually calculated with it. Nowadays, I pretty much just open good ol' KCalc & punch numbers on my keyboard. I once heard it said that one of the first things a new Linux programmer does is write a signature rotation program, & the second is a calculator. Well, there's another calculator out now for Linux that you may just like a lot, so you might wanna check it out: Abakus. It's not your usual GUI calendar; intead, it's more like a command line calculator with a nice GUI. But it's a lot more complicated than that, as this puppy supports, & I'm quoting here, letting you "type an expression (including trig, exponential, or logarithmic) functions and get an answer, including a history pane, support for Radians and Degrees, and a very compact ...

This one ain't necessarily open source, except that I see a lot of these used in open source publications. Basically, CIO.com surveyed 150 executives to come up with the list of the top 15 most over-used, cliched, annoying phrases in IT. I couldn't agree more. Go check it out. It's a hoot. And how many do YOU say on a regular basis? ...

As regular readers know, my fave distro is Debian, or anything Debian-based, primarily because of the awesome software installing & updating power of APT. Now, personally, I use APT on the command line; at least once per day, I run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, & life is good. However, some folks prefer a GUI. For them, Synaptic is their tool of choice. TUX magazine just published a good intro to Synaptic that anyone interested in learning more should read: "Libranet: Installing Software the Easy Way". It's worth reading, & Synaptic is worth using. ...

Hey, I'm always looking for more cool blogs to subscribe to & read, & today I found one: The Ubuntu Blog. As regular readers know, I've switched over from Libranet to Kubuntu recently, & I really couldn't be happier. Now I have a cool, super-informative blog that will help me learn more about the distro I use, which is always a good thing. Anyone else got a good Linux blog they'd recommend? (Check out all of my posts on Ubuntu or Kubuntu.) ...

One of the Debian-based distros with the most buzz right now is Mepis. Good hardware support, reasonable software choices, the easiest install in the world, and regular updates … what's there not to like? And best of all - it's free! Read the press release! Download version 3.3 now! (Warning! 686 MB ISO!) If you're interested in learning more about Mepis, check out "Desktop Face-Off: Xandros vs. Mepis". As you can tell by the title, this short piece compares two of the more popular, easy to use, Debian-based distros out today: Mepis and Xandros (here's a spoiler: he prefers Mepis!). Or, if you're more a dead tree kinda person, read this review of Point and Click Linux, which uses Mepis to teach new users about Linux. ...

HP has announced that it's going to begin bundling Netscape with new PCs, & when users first boot, they'll be given a choice as to their default browser: IE or Netscape. This decision, of course, is evidence that key executives at HP are obviously smoking crack on a regular basis. And why did they choose Netscape - an also-ran if there ever was one - to the much more vibrant, popular, innovative Firefox? Because Netscape allows users to choose which rendering engine they want to use: Gecko (the Mozilla one), or mshtml.dll (the IE one). Hey, HP! There's already a browser on PCs that uses mshtml.dll. It's called INTERNET EXPLORER! Geez … (Check out all of my posts on Firefox and Netscape.) ...