@Peaz

Well, here's how you disable the extremely annoying PC Speaker, specifically on Linux Mint 7. I believe this should be somewhat similar with other flavours of Linux as well.

All you have to do is to edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file. Remember that you need root access to edit that file, so sudo your way there. And all you need to add at the bottom of the file is the following.

blacklist pcspkr

Restart your machine and that's it! You'll never hear the annoying PC speaker beeping anymore. And I seriously do wonder why it's not disabled right by default.

I've a Play-Asia coupon here which I don't think I'll be using. Unfortunately, I've procrastinated too long to post it here for someone to make use of it. Anyways, there is still 5 more days (from the time I'm posting this). So... first come first serve!

If you are new to OpenSuse and is wondering why the heck YaST just won't connect to any of the repositories, well, fret not. Yours truly have just installed OpenSuse 11.1 and was also trying to install the Nvidia drivers to enable Compiz and I was left wondering the whole night why YaST just won't connect to the repositories! I could browse the web via FireFox so the Internet connection is surely working. And so I stumbled... until I found the solution.

To resolve this, I just had to disable IPv6 support from YaST Control Centre -> Network Settings and just uncheck the box for IPv6 support. You'll need to restart your machine and once that's done, you'll be able to connect to any repository you want.

And I thought Yum was worse enough... LOL!

Yup, I'm back to browsing on Firefox now. Google Chrome was fun, but I missed all those add-ons that Firefox has support for which makes it much more than just a simple browser. Don't get me wrong, Chrome was good. In fact, I liked it a lot. But apart from it's fast loading, very functional URL toolbar and wonderful interface, it's still quite unstable. It crashes on me recently and wouldn't run anymore. I just have no idea why. Reinstalling won't help and finally, I just gave up. I'm sure I'll be able to get it running again if I clean up the registry and all the residual files of the installation. But heck, since I missed all those Firefox add-ons, I figured I'd just go back to it then. And so, here I am back on Firefox.

And I must say, Firefox is great. And there are even addons and themes to make it look like Chrome too. LOL! The only thing I'll miss from Chrome now is the URL toolbar.

If you somehow happens to be having the Linksys WMP300N and Ubuntu 8.10, well, you'd probably be wondering how to get the wireless adapter working as I did! Well, fret not, I did find a guide that pretty much describes what you need to do to get it working.

But firstly, you'd need to get the latest drivers in order to get it working on the latest built of Ubuntu, 8.1 or Intrepid Ibex that is. I've basically downloaded the latest Linksys Windows XP drivers, extracted the two files that you'd need and uploaded it here.

Next, you'd need to get the Ndiswrapper utility installed on your machine. If you are still able to access the internet via ethernet LAN or perhaps a 3G-enabled phone, things would be a lot easier. All you'd need to do is to fire up a terminal and type

sudo apt-get install ndisgtk

Once ndiswrapper is installed, the next steps is to install the driver!

If you are an AVG anti-virus users, well, read on. Sometimes for some unknown reason, you might get this "Invalid Update Control CTF File" error when you try and update AVG. Well, fret not, the fix is so simple, you'd just wonder why don't they just get AVG to automatically do that when this error occurs.

The fix?

Well, simply browse to the C:\Users\All Users\avg8\update\download folder if you're a Vista user and delete the two *.ctf files you find there. And retry to update it again. It will work now. And if you're a Windows XP user, just go to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\avg8\update\download and do the same.

That's it!

Pretty much everyone harping about Google's Chrome these days. I know. I'm one of them too. Which is also why it's so frustrating when I couldn't get Chrome to work on my work notebook which is running Windows XP SP3. Countless searches showed quite a number too suffered the same problem as I did. Google Chrome would install. But it would mysteriously close the import settings dialog box nor would it uninstall itself. The portable version which can be found if you searched for it in Google won't run too. Chrome would simply load and closes itself. Interesting isn't it.

It seems like something in Windows is clashing with the Chrome process and is forcing it to close.

And indeed it was.

Well, if you're tech savvy, I'm sure you've already downloaded and tried out Chrome, the new browser on the block. It's just beta now but it's already an impressive offering. In fact, I'm using it right now!

There's already tonnes of reviews of Chrome all around, so I'm not going to write yet another Chrome review (YACR). Instead I'll just link you to my friend's review which I think is pretty concise, complete and straight to the point. Read it here!

There truly is potential with this browser and I hope to see it to be as extensible as FireFox is. If the community support is as strong as FireFox in terms of the plugins and extensions (I'm sure it will be) and especially if (when it do materialise) the extension framework is very flexible, we will truly see Google's Chrome taking over the browser war. In fact, they might already won the fight even before entering the game with a final version! LOL.

But is it the best browser today? No. Not by a mile. FireFox still leads by miles today as it's a much more widely used and widely adopted platform. Lots of plugin support and extensions has been built along the years. But with the new FireFox 3 platform still fresh and new with not as many extensions supporting the new FireFox platform as they would had hoped for, Chrome might just attract these developers over to their platform, ONLY if they do include an extensions framework for Chrome. Otherwise, it will just be another Safari browser, sexy, but... well, limited to a world on it's own.

Here's an nifty little tool that's pretty useful and is missing in most Windows system. Yup, a disk triage software that visualizes the disk space usage of a drive in Windows. Ever wanted to know where all those disk space has gone to? Well, I did and here's a nice little utility helped me find where a good 10GB of non-critical data has been taking up so much space in my work notebook, of which I'm now transferring into a USB hard disk.

The software is even aptly named Disk Space Finder.

If there's anything to complain about this software, it's the color scheme used. It might look cool, but it's kinda dark and has very little contrast. I'd like it better if it had a light background with pastel colors for the pie chart. And yes, that's my only complain. It's a simple utility to use and it should be! Head on over to http://www.diskspacefinder.com to download a copy too now!

Sponsored reviews. LOL. just saying those two words gets me a little tickled. Haha. What an oxymoron. Before that, let's see how this works

As a reviewer for TechARP, we live by the rule that in no way can we be influenced by manufacturers on how we review a product. If it's crappy, we write it as it is. If it's good, then we look deep into it on why it's so and even then, how it can further improve. Hey, there's no such thing as a perfect product. How we can do this with such objectivity is that we don't get paid by them to write those reviews. So with no strings attached, we can give them exactly what the product deserves from our point of view. That's what we call ethical reviewing.

Of course, there's very little ethics actually in this media industry. In most magazines, those product manufacturers are also usually the sponsors or advertisers in the magazines. No good review, bye bye advertisement customer. That's just simple how it is in a lot of medias today and the online media is not spared. Only those with huge readerships can dictate how things are run since they have the readership volume. However, greed sometimes brings down the ethics at such big-names as well.

So, the very idea of getting paid to say a word or two on a product. Haha. I can only see one outcome out of it. Extremely good reviews no matter how the real result is. "Earn cash by writing honest reviews about our advertiser's products and services."? LOL. Yeah right! Especially since you only get paid AFTER the review is written. What a scam to eventual consumers who would read these reviews which the manufacturer would use to quote from. And those who would only gain from this would be the 'bloggers' who thinks they are doing the consumers a favour and the manufacturers who would get cheap advertisements. Yup, remember that these reviews would be posted as blogs and you know how well blogs get indexed in google.

Sponsered reviews? LOL. Yeah right.