Around The Geek World – Oct 2008

Around The Geek World is a monthly summary of interesting articles and news around the geek world with my brief comment.

I hope you enjoy this collection of interesting geek articles for October 2008.

• 7 online blunders – One of the 7 blunders mentioned in this article is: Using single password for all online accounts, which is a major mistake done by lot of people. The article I wrote a while back about creating a strong passwords talks about 10 common sense about passwords.




• 15 of The Hottest Wearable Gadgets [Pics and Video] – One of the 15 wearable gadgets is a “Wi-Fi detector T-Shirt” – when you’re in the range of a wi-fi- signal, the bars on the shirt light up. Is this geeky or spooky?




• World first for sending data using quantum cryptography – Anything around cryptography is always fascinating for me, because of the complex algorithms involved. For the first time, the transmission of data secured by quantum cryptography is demonstrated within a commercial telecommunications network.




• Wikipedia adopts Ubuntu for its server infrastructure – Ubuntu is the best Linux distro for desktop. But, it can also be an excellent choice for server infrastructure. Don’t beleive me? Ask Wikipedia team, who are migrating 400+ servers from RedHat+Fedora combination to Ubuntu.




• RAID 5 vs RAID 10: Recommended RAID For Safety and Performance – At work, for all I/O intensive database servers, I use RAID 10. If you are debating whether to use RAID 5 of RAID 10, Vivek has clearly explained why you should choose RAID 10 in this article.




• 10 Handy Productivity Tools in Linux – Some applications mentioned in this list are must-have for Linux desktop environment. Freemind is an excellent mind-mapping tool. If you are new to mind-mapping concept, it will take little practice to use this tool effectively. Once you get the hang of it, you will not execute any major project without a mind-map.




• Easy Vertical Centering with CSS – Excellent tutorial with screenshots on how to perform vertical centering in CSS effectively.




• Programmers Salary Policy – Geek Hero Webcomic – Your salary increment is directly proportionate to the total lines of code you write. How many lines of code can you write to do 1 + 1?




• Increase your productivity by using 2 monitors – USAToday is very late in talking about this, as most of us have been using dual monitors for ages now.  Look at the amount of digg comments (close to 300) on such a simple article.




• 1000+ Free High Resolution Photoshop Brush Sets – Some of them are very specific to certain versions of photoshop. But, you’ll definitely find several good brush sets for the version you are using, as there are so many of them.




• 14 Best Linux Distro – Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Mandriva and Ubuntu are in the list as you would expect.  Did your favorite distro made it to this list?




• Effect of the Depression on Technology – October is pretty bad month for WallStreet and US economy in general. As a geek, you may be interested to know how it affects technology. As mentioned in the article, open source will benefit from this economy slow down,  as companies will now turn to open source to save some cash.




• Why did Linus Torvalds start a blog? – Hear it from him directly.




• 10 Useful articles about Database design – Excellent collection of all DB design related articles. If you are DBA, DB architect, or DB programmer, you should definitely bookmark this.




• What is the single most influential book every programmer should read? – You can spend lot of time reading through the user’s answers for this question. My amazon wish-list grew 25%, as I’ve added several books recommended in the article to my wish-list.




• If you steal source code, don’t ask for help fixing it – Is it OK to decompile someone’s code and use it? Just read the comment section of this post to hear various opinions from users.




• Hilarious comments from reddit users about Gmail’s new feature that will stop sending mails that you’ll regret later.  Geek getting drunk and sending emails — can anything be more hilarious than that?