Opera 9.5??? Was it ever in for the browser wars?

Infinity shared this post on google reader, right after I posted the firefox post. So this post says Opera 9.5, the fastest and most powerful browser available, but I beg to differ. I downloaded Opera 9.5 and installed it. The address bar was below the tab toolbar, crap. So this was supposed to be the fastest browser. I used one of my posts as the test page, I loaded the page 5 times in my firefox 2.0.0.14 and Opera alternately. Opera took a consistent 35 seconds to load the page fully without any cache, while firefox loaded the page between 29 and 35 seconds each time. I know what some of you ppl might say, cmon man, this ain't how you measure browser speeds, there are a lot of parameters you check. In case you want to point me to this, let me point out that it is an outdated test on configurations which aren't meant for the new softwares. And this link here, it clearly states that Opera is faster in loading time, but what am I gonna do saving a 100 miliseconds loading a javascript if the browser can't retrieve the script fast enough? Let's just forget the whole speed thing. I used the browser a bit and the magic wand (a button for remembering login details, that fills n automatically logs you in) feature was one of the cool features in it. I opened up gmail n the first thing I noticed was that it loads up the old version of gmail, or atleast that's what I assume, since the new loading page that gmail has put up did not appear and there was no option for reverting to the older version of gmail. I checked it out in my IE6 and the same thing happened there too. I wonder why. And another thing I noticed was that the drop down thing that blogger has in its archive, it acts kinda funny. When you click on it, the page reloads sometimes and sometimes the page strangely scrolls up or down. Next I tried installing a widget on it, and it did not work. I donno, I am not impressed with the browser. For me, firefox rocks, and apparently even for my blog visitors. My stats shows me that the from the last 500 visitors (excluding me) 2% used opera, which us the same number as those who used konquerer, 3% used safari , 24% used Internet explorer n the rest 69% used firefox. Though this doesn't reflect the browser of choice accurately. Before I started blogging about my OS n all, the stats were pretty closely matched for IE n Firefox, with a close fight always going on between the two of them, and there was no Opera anywhere.

Firefox world record

Okay, It is final now. Mozilla has finally announced the release date of it's stable version of firefox 3. The other day I was looking for a certain add-on for my firefox 2 (no I am not a big fan of beta versions) and the add-on site, it already has certain add-on meant only for firefox 3, I had to install an older version for my firefox 2 (Older versions don't bother me as long as they are functional). My point being people are already making my browser the older version even before the next version is released. Any way for those of you thinking Duh! What's the deal about firefox... I'd like to say duh! dude, have you ever tried using add-ons with your browser? Okay, so what's new about this new about this new version? The only feature I liked was that you don't have to remember the names of the sites you have visited before. Check out this video to learn all that firefox 3 would have to offer. Oh n I almost forgot, don't forget to download firefox on the D-day (17th June '08) and help them set a record.

Blogger wouldn't post comments

Yesterday I was trying to reply to a comment on my blog when the reply just wouldn't get submitted. I copied the comment to post it later and in the mean time typed down the reply to another comment, but this time, when I clicked submit, it worked. I went back to the first comment and tried to post it again, but to no avail. Then I thought maybe the comments have a limit, like those orkut scraps, I hacked off a major part n tried again. Success. Pasted the next part n posted it, and it wouldn't post. So I chopped off the last line this time, n again had no problems posting it. Now came the last last line, I pasted the last line, clicked post, and the page would reload, with no indication of any change, with my comments still in the text box. Damn it! Why can't I post comments on blogger? Carefully analyzing the comment, I realized I had made an error with the HTML element required for using italics. I had used two </i>'s instead of a <i> and a </i>. Such a silly mistake, and it wouldn't post the comment. It wouldn't even give a preview. Couldn't they raise an exception if they noticed a mistake in my HTML elements? What's more, is that in the year 2008, people are still expected to know HTML tags to use basic formating in their comments. Isn't it high time that they replaced the text box with a rich text box? Or at least raise an exception on the users typo, in the meanwhile. IMO Blogger sure could do with some improvement.

PS: It does post an exception in the post for when I tried to post it. It says:

Your HTML cannot be accepted: Closing tag has no matching opening tag: </i>

Looking for an escape from the escape characters. Google people could you please have a look at this bug?

Fedora Core 9 Live Preview

Okay, so yesterday Fedora Core 9 was released, in two flavours, one a Gnome 2.22 and the other a KDE 4.0.3. I googled the two desktop environments and after finding inconclusive results as to which of the two is better, I decided to try out the K Desktop environment since my current Ubuntu (Gutsy) uses an older version of Gnome and I do intend to upgrade it the hardy release, which too is equipped with a Gnome 2.22 DE. So anyway, I downloaded the FC 9 installable live CD for x86_64 and burned it onto a CD. Rebooted and waited patiently for the Live OS to boot. Unlike Ubuntu's live it didn't ask me a million questions about my hardware and the settings I wanted to keep, so far so good. While the OS was loading its various components, I instinctively clicked on the detailed view, only to realize that it required my approval for loading most of the components. I chose to hide the details just to check if it prompted me for my response in that mode, but it didn't. So I went back to the detailed view and strangely most of the times I had to enter 'Y' twice. Baah! it finally loaded after what seemed like a million 'Y's. Okay, it looks cool, except for the giant sized KDE panel which I am sure quite a few not-so-young linux users would appreciate. Here is the screenshot of the default screen with the main menu open and set on applications.

Notice that cool search option like that in Vista, Nice. So I typed firefox in the search window but nothing turned up. Browsing through the options showed Konqueror as the default browser. Of course, how silly of me, KDE remember. We'll come back to Konqueror later. Next I checked if my drives mounted on it's own. Yup, all the drives, NTFS, FAT32, and ext3 showed up. I create a textfile in the NTFS drive, just to see if it is write enabled, click it once to select it n then double click it. 3 Kwrite instances open up. Damn it! I hate single click for opening. Now for the important stuff, the default music player. Click click, okay a music player and a media player. But none of which would play a MP3 file. This must be because of the lack of open codecs, which I had read about somewhere. FC 9 KDE live is slightly below the Ubuntu Gutsy (the predecessor to the latest Ubuntu version (hardy heron)) live at the moment. Then I click on the install to hard drive button and my system went catatonic for a while 5 minutes. When it finally came back from the dead, it asked me for a few of those settings which I gave but I aborted the install when it asked me about the drive to install it on. I opened Konqueror and went to google, for which the browser took my permission to accept the cookies. I opened about 4 tabs and my desktop environment crashed and then recovered in a couple of minutes. Now I'm up to 10 tabs but it is running fine. But there is something wrong about this browser. Firstly the JavaScript doesn't work. I checked and it is enabled. So gmail is running in the HTML mode right now, and I have to refresh it to check my mail. Even the blogger create post is working in the HTML mode. Also, the alignment on the page is not perfect. If and when I install this OS the first thing I do after I install the codec library for MP3s is installing firefox. I think It wouldn't be fair to judge this OS on the basis of how its live version ran and it would only be fair to compare it with the latest version of Ubuntu, and not an older one. So I am going to end this post without giving my comments on whether I liked the distro or not. You can get your own copy of Fedora Core 9 from here. I will surely post more details when I install and compare the two distributions.


For a detailed review check out Fedora Core 9.


For more linux reviews check out my linux blog.

Installing GRUB on a USB drive

About a month ago, I finally bought a flash drive (a 4GB one) for myself, to replace the antique 256MB MP3 player. As this was intended to be a pen drive and not an MP3 player, it supported USB booting. Unfortunately, each time I plugged it in, the flash drive became the default hard disk, since it apparently had priority over SATA disks for booting. Now you might say I could simply set the SATA drive as the preferred hard disk for booting, but once you remove the drive, and the BIOS detects that it is missing, it no longer keeps a track of the flash drive, plug it in another time and it tries to boot from the flash drive. I did try looking for a way to disable USB booting, but to no avail. I couldn't locate it neither in the motherboard manual, nor in the BIOS itself. I could have probed the matter a bit more, but then I decided to install a GRUB in my pen drive. After all, it takes a mere 170KB, I could install a regular OS in this thing (4GB pen drive). Okay so here's how I did it.
Plug in the drive and make sure it has a file system, format it if it doesn't.
Make a folder called boot in the root directory of the pen drive. Or simply execute the following command in your terminal.
sudo mkdir -p /media/drive_name/boot
Of course, needless to say, you'd have to replace drive_name with the name your drive is mounted with.
Now you have to copy your grub to the boot directory you created. Use the following command to do so.
sudo cp -r /boot/grub /media/drive_name/boot
Now, there is a need to activate the GRUB prompt, to do so simply type
sudo grub
You will notice that the GRUB prompt (GRUB>) appears. Now we need to find where all the GRUB exists. In order to do so, type in the following in the GRUB prompt.
find /boot/grub/stage1
What this command did was that it looked for a file called stage1 (which I know exists in the grub directory) and reports where all it found it. This is what the output should look like,
(hd0,0)
(hd1,9)
Now to check out which of the hard-disks is the pen drive. Type in
geometry (hd0)
and it displays something like
drive 0x80: C/H/S = 3841/33/63, The number of sectors = 7987200, /dev/sdb
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xb
Okay, since I have set my pendrive as number hdd1, this is it. If you see more than one partitions, chances are this is not your flash drive, check out the next one that showed up, until you have found the one that you are sure is your pendrive. Now you don't want to rewrite your MBR when there is not the need to do so, do you?
Now that I know the hdd and partition name (hd0,0) in my case which would be different in your case, we need to specify the grub we need to install in the MBR by:
root (hd0,0)
Now to write the stage1 of the GRUB onto the boot sector of the USB, which would be different in your case
setup (hd0)
which would give a message like
setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/fat_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/fat_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 17 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+17 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.
Do I need to tell you that you are done once it says done? Well actually, I wasn't quite done here, but if you weren't facing the problem I was, this is your exit. Type
quit
If you were, then I'm afraid you'd have to read on, since this is the main reason for writing this post. You see, each time you plug in your pendrive, the hd0 and the hd1 get messed up, because the boot order changes. So now, if your pendrive was hd1 like it was initially in my case, it becomes hd0 when it becomes the primary hdd. So now you need to change the grub in your pendrive to modify make this grub run. In order to allow you to make changes to all its files, type in this command in the terminal
sudo chmod -R 777 /media/usbdisk/boot/grub
Disclaimer : What ever I did from here were my own instincts, you could follow the steps since it worked for me, even if the steps don't work, they worst case scenario would be that you mess up the GRUB you copied, that didn't ever work (But make sure it doesn't work before you mess with it)
Now in the grub folder, in the boot folder you made in your pendrive, you will find a file called device.map I simply interchanged the assignment of sda (the hard drive) with the sdb (the pen drive). Then in the menu.lst file, replace the drive numbers with their appropriate ones, like in my case, hd(0,9) was replaced with hd(1,9) in the case of linux booting, and hd(0,0) was replaced by hd(1,0) for the Windows Vista bootloader. But don't let this confuse you, my boot procedure is really messed up. I have a windows vista bootloader which manages XP by default and I added Linux to it using easy BCD. Let me finish my exams n I will sort things out. Instead of replacing the drive number in each place, you could add something like
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
which simply changes the mapping dynamically. It works, but you have to put it before each root instruction in the menu.lst Any way I guess that is it. In case anybody reading this needs any help, I am pretty sure I'd be proficient with stuff like this by then (going by the number of people who visit this blog). Though it would be a nice idea to join a good community, and ask your doubts there, because there are a lotta knowledgeable people out there, willing to help you with your problems.

Do visit my Linux blog

Objects of desire

What is life without materialistic desires? It is only human to want and acquire more, and I am no saint. Though this list does contain what I desire at this frame of time, I am certain, that some items on this list would be struck off before I acquire em, and am pretty sure that a lot more would replace them in due time, for it is desire that fuels a man. So here's a list of objects I desire :

1. Numero Uno on my list of desirable objects wouldn't come as a surprise to those of you who know me. Yes, it is a bike, and yes it is a bullet. It is strikingly similar to my current ride, though it is a lot better. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the 500cc lean burn Bullet Machismo. Although I am going to try to convince my Dad to buy me one, please don't be surprised if I show up on a 350 Bullet electra (new, not my current one) instead.

CTD (Cost to Dad) : Rs 1,15,000/-

2. Numero Dos is something I have already mentioned on my blog. It is a 250GB internal hard drive. I would love to go in for a SATA after I have seen the significant difference in data transfer speeds, but since it would be my secondary hdd, I wouldn't mind going in for a PATA if there is a significant price difference.

CTD : Rs 3000/-

3. Numero Tres comes something which is fueled by my passion for bikes. I believe in safety while riding, that is why I always wear a helmet. But there is a lot more safety equipment that one should use. I am talking about an armoured jacket, the kind with shoulder, back and elbow protectors. At the moment I have identified two companies that make the cheapest protective jacket, DSG and Cramster.

CTD : Rs 4500/-

4. Number four (Uno, dos, tres was all the Espanol I knew, thanks to Ricky Martin) wasn't that easy to decide, but I settled for something similar to number three in a sense. It is a jacket all right, which could be used for protection while riding too, but I want it otherwise too. I am talking about a leather Jacket.

CTD : Rs 5000/-

5. For number five, I come back to computer peripherals. This is something I have been borrowing from a friend each time I needed to use it, but when I heard of its cost, I just had to add it to my list. This, as you see in the picture is a DVD writer. Of course, if and when I buy my 250 GB hdd, this device would not be required for a while after that.

CTD : Rs 1100/-

6. Coming back to bikes, I have always wanted one of those snazzy helmets. My helmet of choice would be a full-face one with a visor and a peak. Most people think that a peak is useless, but it is really effective in cutting down the sun's glare. On the other hand, an improperly designed peak, at high speeds puts a lot of pressure on the neck.

CTD : Rs 5000/-

7. Next up comes RAM. My PC runs on a mere 512mb of RAM and a little more memory would do it good. I have just two slots on my motherboard and the manual that came with stated that I could fit in only 1GB DDR RAM. So i guess the maximum I could go up to would be 2 GB, though 1.5GB wouldn't be too bad either.

CTD : Rs 2000/-

8. Last but not the least, I have always wanted to own a bicycle. I did have one as a kid, and like my motorcycle, I rode it hard. The only thing was that it wasn't mine. It was my sister's, who hadn't ridden it. It was one of those cycles with a sissy handle bar. But luckily, most guys had such bikes and the bike wasn't pink or something ;) it was white n blue. Then when we shifted to the capital, my bike was taken away, since it wasn't safe for kids to ride cycles there. I did set out to check out the bicycles available in the market, a couple of years ago, but unfortunately none were available in my size. They were all too small. This is probably the last thing I would go n buy if i had the money (lest I be thought eccentric), but it is one thing that I would always desire.

CTD : Rs 3000/-

And then came Linux

Following my recently found obsession for operating systems, I have now installed Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) for AMD64 on my system. I now have a triple boot system with XP, Vista and Ubuntu. I have also acquired a copy of Ubuntu 8.04 Beta (Hardy Heron) which I plan to Install after my exams, by when i think the final version would also be out too. So anyway, my plan after my exams is to check out all the other distributions of Linux (I can lay my hands on) as well, comparing each one of then in terms of user friendliness as well as performance. Though in order to implement this plan of mine, I think i will have to buy a new hard-disk... probably a 250/400 GB PATA (cause i believe PATA is cheaper) one would suffice and I could back up my the data from my 160GB hdd onto the new one n use the SATA one that I own as the one on which I install all the OS. One more thing i require is RAM... My system is getting old n it has got a mere 512 MB of RAM... Another 512 MB in the only remaining slot would surely make things faster. But the RAM can wait right now. If my current configuration can run vista with ease, I am sure i don't need more RAM for the time being. I still have little knowledge as to how Linux is working but i hear it is much simpler to understand than in case of windows. My final aim is to tweak a distribution of Linux to a point where it performs better than my XP which i haven't logged on since the Ubuntu install (until today). The last time I installed Linux on my system (about 2 yrs ago), it was too complicated for me to understand, I really couldn't do much with it n it took me a week just to understand how to mount my drives automatically at startup. But Ubuntu 7.10 is simply awesome... for starters you could install it from your windows installation, just like you install your programs. I took a more traditional approach and booted up with the CD which booted up in Ubuntu Live version with access to my hard-drive n all (all drives mounted on their own). On the desktop there was an install icon clicking which i experienced one of the most pleasant OS installation (after the XP auto-setup, which i worked on one summer vacation, one in which u don't have to even be around to install your OS) I was playing Freecell, one of my many vices, and browsing the internet while Ubuntu was installing itself. Even the graphics are really pleasant. I really loved the wobbly window effect n also I am big fan of transparency as u will notice in my screenshots... Another interesting feature of Ubuntu was frequency scaling... What it does is that it lowers the frequency at which your processor is working at and makes your system more power efficient as well as keeping it cooler (not supported by all hardware)... a must for laptops. For eg, my processor is a 1.8 GHz one... but most of the time my system is running on 1.0 GHz (55%)... where the frequency would increase to 1.8 GHz only when the OS needs the processing power. This feature comes switched on by default and there is a meter you could add to your panel to know at what frequency your processor is operating at. The down side of frequency scaling that I have noticed is that sometimes my system is slow to respond and more importantly when i reboot, it gives a CPU over-voltage error quite often. Although you could disable this option from the BIOS, there is also this command you could type in your terminal window, ie,

sudo /etc/init.d/powernowd stop

And of course you replace that stop in the end with a start in case you want to start the service. In case someone is reading this (remote possibility) who has knowledge of advanced stuff (that's almost impossible... I say almost because they say impossible is nothing... yes, i guess i am branded too) could you please guide me how to do toggle the feature on and off using the GUI??? Installing softwares in Ubuntu is pretty simple too (if u have a decent unlimited net connection) there is this cool Synaptic Package Manager which allows you to install packages from the net. You could also add a software repository manually and install really cool stuff... for free... Oh! and the stuff that they say is non-free, doesn't mean that you have to pay for it... It means that its source code is not available for viewing and modification :D I leave you with the sceenshots of the three operating systems which i took using the same wallpaper :

The XP screen:The Vista screen:
The Ubuntu 7.10 screen:

Vista Up n Running

After listening to all the controversy surrounding Microsoft Windows Vista, I decided to only way to judge the system would be to finally install it onto my system. So after my main XP installation got hacked n was rendered beyond repair, it gave me the opportunity to install Vista (Business edition). The one good thing about Vista was the it did not require me to install RAID drivers for my SATA hard drive (even if i didn't need to implement RAID). In the case of XP, I had to press F6 in the beginning of the installation n then add the drivers in the middle of the initial installation using a floppy disk (remember those unreliable little magnetic disks housed n flimsy plastic casings; the storage media which doesn't even need a reason to go bad). So any way I did perform something known as Vista upgrade advisor, which told me i'd be able to run all my hardware except for my LAN card, the drivers of which I found online. The first installation went catastrophic as after burning 5 CDs (Yes vista is available in CDs too n that was the version I could lay my hands on) Vista installation (which has a cool 32 bit display even in the beginning unlike the 16 bit blue screen in XP's installation) gave me some hex code as an error, but the second time, after I cleaned the CD, it worked fine. Vista started up n I installed the LAN drivers n now I was connected to the net. But i soon realized that I didn't any sound. Searched online for sound drivers but to no avail. My motherboard had stopped its support a couple of years ago n the drives weren't available anywhere alse either. Then I tried this crazy thing n gave the path of the XP drivers n amazingly it worked. So finally I had Vista up n running, but that was not all. Vista isn't complete without the aero effect. But the big question was could my hardware support it (My PC is has an AMD64 Athlon 2800+ processor which sits on an Asus K8S-MX motherboard, with 512 MB of memory, aided by an NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 having 256 MB of its own memory fitted onto the AGP slot, n is fitted with a 160 GB Segate SATA hard disk)??? Only way to find out is to switch it on. So after looking for it for about 5-8 minutes, I finally found the Aero effect n switched it on. Voila... It worked. Vista has a way of grading systems to let the users know how good their systems are n my system didn't score that well on it. My system rated a 2.6. The scores were as shown in the picture.
I have now successfully tweaked it up a bit n now it works better than ever, with the startup bar taking 4 complete scrolls on the start up screen (compared to 1/4th of a scroll in my XP installation). I tried out the questionable ReadyBoost feature with my brand new 4GB Transcend drive, which showed no noticeable improvement in the system, so I have stopped using that feature now. As for SuperFetch, it too, like ReadyBoost, sounds like a cool concept in theory, but would it work well on a system already struggling for memory??? I have my doubts. I think I will shutdown the service n test it out when i have the time.

So, was installing Vista worth it??? In my opinion, Vista is nothing but a more visually appealing XP, with better security. If you have the hardware for it (which means u aren't utilizing it well with XP) and if you have the money to throw away (Microsoft provided me with my copy), then why not???

Locked out of blogger...

Yesterday, all evening long I was trying to log into blogger, but i was greeted by a message which looked like :-

But I am absolutely positive that there is no virus on my computer. Then what caused google to think that my "query looked similar to automated requests generated by a computer virus or a spyware application"???
I was downloading a couple of things while browsing at the same time n the blogger page was taking ages to load. All I did was click on the refresh button one too many times. I would like to thank google for their concern, but would also like to request google to upgrade their malware detection system.

Damn you!!! BSoD

Off lately my system (PC) has been haunted by the Blue-Screen-of-Death. BSoD, which was a common site in earlier versions of the windows operating system, is usually unheard of by most XP users. Back in the time of Windows 98, you made one mistake any you were greeted by the BSoD, eject a CD while accessing its contents and you got a BSoD, press ctr+alt+del and there it was again. Even accessing certain system files caused the system to crash. BSoD basically symbolizes the untimely demise of your operating system. Perhaps the most famous instance of a BSoD covered by the media was that of Bill Gates unveiling the then-new Windows 98. The demo PC cashed with a BSoD when his assistant (who according to Wikipedia still works for MS) connected a scanner to the PC. There was a huge commotion from the crowd, and all the sheepish looking Bill Gates could say was “That must be why we are not shipping Windows 98 yet”. For those of you having difficulties picturing the situation, the video is available on u-tube. Well if the BSoD didn’t spare Bill Gates, what can I, a mere mortal do about it? Even as I type this post, I am plagued by the thought that a BSoD might appear at any instance, and if there wasn’t the auto-save feature of MS Office, I’d be alternating ctrl+s with each word I typed. Wikipedia states that a BSoD is encountered when the OS encounters a critical system error, which can cause the system to shutdown to prevent damage. It also says that they are caused by poorly written device drivers, faulty memory, corrupt registries or incompatible DLLs. What it fails to mention, is that sometimes even hardware errors like a lose hdd or graphics card, or even an incompatible RAM (I think that’s what they mean by a faulty memory). While most people might freak out at the sight of a BSoD, I have been getting these errors, from the day I bought my PC. First night, that I bought my PC, I was really excited, and when I sat down to install the OS, it just wouldn’t install. Right after the installation, I’d get a BSoD. As it turned out that the dealer had put in an incompatible RAM. A couple of months later, there it was again. This time, it was a faulty Alcohol 120% (a virtual DVD drive emulator). Then I’d keep getting it again, on n off, until recently right before I lost my HDD (as in my HDD crashed), it became a common site again. This time I suspect that it is probably an improper installation of codecs, and I think the BSoD appears probably when the thumbnails are loaded. I have reinstalled the codecs n hope the problems disappear... Nope restarted again... lemme see... Ok... uninstalled everything. Now if that doesn't solve the problem, I guess I'll have to reinstall the OS... Wooops... restarted yet again... I guess I will have to reinstall my OS.

Ciao.

OMG!!! The death of the internet.

It was there in the business section of the newspaper a couple of days ago. But I didn't take it that seriously. It is there again in today's newspaper, and now I am worried about it. Come year 2010, and the internet connection is gonna go KAPUT!!! And guess who will be responsible for it. It'll be me, and you, and quite a few other people who are never gonna come across this blog. Apparently studies show that at the rate at which the internet is growing, and because of the pressure we are putting on the existing infrastructure, your broadband connection is gonna end up becoming highly unstable. And unless nearly 137 Billion Dollars (US) (if my memory serves me right) is invested, i.e. about 60% more than what investors are ready to invest, the internet is not gonna look like the way we have gotten used to seeing it. Unless something is done to bridge the gap, "rich media" sites (like youtube and other sites requiring large amounts of data transfer) are gonna be a thing of the past. Emphasis is gonna be laid on sites being more efficient in the amount of data transfered. I still can't grasp the idea of life without internet, although it is gonna make little difference to my blog. I shall continue to type my posts offline, and since hardly anybody visits my blog, its not gonna make much of a difference. Which reminds me, I finally got my first visitor since I installed a page hit counter (Yeah! the rest of the page hits were by me. Over two weeks and just one page hit. Man! I felt dejected.). The good ol' navigational bar finally remembered my blog. Oh! n it was one of those Internet explorer Users. I thought those things were extinct. Apparently not so in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 'cause that's were the visitor was from. BTW I don't criticize each n every visitor, and would like to thank Ms. Red Queen, whose comment was analogous to CPR for my blog.
Good Day