Test your internet connection speed

Looking to find out what is your connection speed? Then this is the best of the tool around. It has been recently revamped and offers the easiest way to give you results. Its called SpeedTest.net. Bookmark it as use it as often as you like.

Requires Adobe Flash to be installed. Click here to check if you already have.

Note: I am not affiliated with this site ;)

Moving from Windows to Linux

Here's a IBM DeveloperWorks guide for moving ones work from Windows to Linux. To make it easy for the reader, it has been broken down into 9 steps.

So if you are a developer who has been thinking of doing this for a long time, do give this a try. I would certainly be interested in hearing of your experience so do write.

So get started with Windows-to-Linux Roadmap. But mind you, the tutorial uses Redhat linux for screenshots though it specifically says that you can use any flavour you like. Mine is Ubuntu. So no matter what distro (or flavour/type) of Linux you use, make sure you a link to the forums, user groups, mailing lists handy. I keep the ubuntu forums bookmarked right up front.

7 Habits of effective text editing - Video

Bram Moolenaar, the author of (my favourite editing tool) Vim recently did a presentation titled the above. According to his post, the PDF with presentation can be found here.



For me it was the first time I saw the man. I think its quite useful and a recommended watch/read.

10 very less known Linux commands.

Command lines have always been my thing (See articles under UNIX/Linux). Today i found two more websites that offer interesting material on making the most of them.

• BASH cures Cancer
• Command Line Warriors

The first one has some interesting posts like

• Standard Error Basics - Something every command liner should know!
• Standard Error and Standard Out
• Data Pipelines (Basic)
  
• and 10 Linux commands you've never used.

And as for the second, they are too many to list. So, learn and enjoy!

(Mac vs. PC) vs. (PC vs. Mac)

The MAC vs. PC debate is probably one of the oldest :) The "cool" factor of Apple Macs has always been taking pokes at the "not so cool" factor of the PCs. Since Macs are represented by a single company - Apple, but no one represents PC's as such - so far the poking has been pretty much one way.

The latest poke came with the Mac Vs. PC ads. But this time someone chose to create a response. Its quite fun and something for all us PC-using folks to enjoy!

Skype reads your machine BIOS and Motherboard serial number

I just found this post via slashdot article. It seems that the popular internet telephony software - Skype reads your computers BIOS (whats that?) and Motherboard (huh?) serial number. This would have probably gone unnoticed. But someone tried running Skype on a 64 Bit version of Windows and ended up getting an error. So a curious programmer looked under the hood of the software to see what was happening - only to find it reading your bios and motherboard serial number.

It is not usual for softwares to do this. The last software who i know does this was Windows itself (not very surprising, i know!). Typically this information is used to generate a unique id for your machine when registering it with some sort of server - which is why Windows did it. They would use this data to uniquely relate your machine with your license of windows. However, why Skype chooses to do this is still a mystery.

But since this information can uniquely identify your machine across the world, this piece of news has created wide-spread annoyance with the on-line community.