Fortunately, you can set the display brightness using the hardware keys in GRUB, the bootloader that let’s you choose what OS and/or Kernel you want to start.

Settings are lost on reboot, and you still can’t change the brightness at runtime, but it’s better than nothing.

Search is a way to harvest demand, not to create it.

(Drew Houston, co-founder & CEO of Dropbox, about Google AdWords in his “Startup Lessons Learned” presentation).

via Jeff Barr.

Suggested reading

#!/bin/csh
set SVNREV=`svnversion -n`
 
set FILENAME=$my/path/to/include/version.h
echo '/*******************************************************************' > $FILENAME
echo '* '>> $FILENAME
echo '* This include file is automatically generated. All manual ' >> $FILENAME
echo '* changes will be lost.'  >> $FILENAME
echo '* ' >> $FILENAME
echo '*******************************************************************/' >> $FILENAME
echo '' >> $FILENAME
echo '/* latest Subversion revision */'  >> $FILENAME
echo '#define SVNREV ' $SVNREV >> $FILENAME
echo '' >> $FILENAME

If you develop on Windows, you might adopt this script:

@echo off
 
REM store latest revision number as SVNREV
for /f "delims=:" %%a in ('svnversion') do @set SVNREV=%%a
 
set FILENAME=%my%\path\to\include\version.h
echo /*******************************************************************  > %FILENAME%
echo * >> %FILENAME%
echo * This include file is automatically generated. All manual  >> %FILENAME%
echo * changes will be lost.  >> %FILENAME%
echo * >> %FILENAME%
echo *******************************************************************/  >> %FILENAME%
echo.  >> %FILENAME%
echo /* latest Subversion revision */  >> %FILENAME%
echo #define SVNREV  %SVNREV$ >> %FILENAME%
echo.  >> %FILENAME%

Make sure that you add version.h to svn:ignore.

dir | clip – copies the output of the dir command to the clipboard
clip < example.txt – copy the contents of the file example.txt to the clipboard

C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(91) : warning C4005: 'AF_IPX' : macro redefinition
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\winsock.h(460) : see previous definition of 'AF_IPX'
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(124) : warning C4005: 'AF_MAX' : macro redefinition
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\winsock.h(479) : see previous definition of 'AF_MAX'
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(163) : warning C4005: 'SO_DONTLINGER' : macro redefinition
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\winsock.h(402) : see previous definition of 'SO_DONTLINGER'
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(206) : error C2011: 'sockaddr' : 'struct' type redefinition
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\winsock.h(485) : see declaration of 'sockaddr'
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(384) : error C2143: syntax error : missing '}' before 'constant'
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(384) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'constant'
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(384) : error C2059: syntax error : 'constant'
C:\sdk\windows\v6.0a\include\ws2def.h(437) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '}
(...)

After some digging in the code I noticed that windows.h had been included before winsock2.h. And that windows.h includes winsock.h. When digging deeper, I found an article in the MSDN describing what had happened here:
actually, this is a legacy problem. In Windows versions <= Windows 98, WinSock 1.1 had been used. The current win32 socket implementation, Windows Sockets 2 (WinSock 2.0), is backwards compatible to Windows Sockets 1.1. Additionally, the winsock2.h header files prevents the inclusion of the legacy winsock.h header file. But once you include winsock.h, you can not include winsock2.h later on.
Unfortunately, windows.h still includes winsock.h.
Fortunately, you can disable the legacy parts of the Windows SDK easily:

#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN

You will not be able to build Windows 95/Windows 98 applications when using this definition. But if you were targeting those OS versions, you wouldn’t be using Windows Sockets 2 anyway.

Luckily, there is abcTajpu, a Firefox extension that allows you to select foreign characters, umlauts, … quite easily.

Free, no ads – really worth a try

Unfortunately there is no sync option for Akregator and Google Reader yet.

First of all, the desktop Ubuntu and Kubuntu install images don’t support full disk encryption. So get the Alternate ISO from here (Kubuntu users this way, please). Then create a bootable USB drive using UNetbootin.

Ready? Then boot your netbook from the USB drive, and proceed with the installation using this guide. You will be able to select your country, keyboard and configure your network. Then the installation will fail, because the installer won’t find a CD-ROM drive. Yuck.

Okay, if there is no CD-ROM drive we just have to mount the installer ISO. For this we copy the alternate installer ISO to a second USB stick, plug it into the netbook and give the system a few seconds to recognize it. Then we use alt+F2 to switch to a command line and hit so we can enter commands. First, we should make sure that both USB drives are there:

ls -la /dev/sd*

should return something like this:

/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdc

/dev/sda is your hard disk, /dev/sdb is the USB drive you booted from, and /dev/sdc is the second USB drive containing the installer ISO file (unless you have a second hard drive). Now you can mount the second USB drive to /mnt and the ISO image to /cdrom:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt
mount /mnt/ubuntu-10.04-alternate-i386.iso /cdrom/
exit

Next, hit alt+f1 to return to the install menu and select “Detect CD-ROM”. The installation will proceed as described in the blog post above.

Have fun with Ubuntu 10.04!

• tasklist: shows a list of all running processes
• taskkill: kills processes

Among other options, processes can be killed by their process ID (taskkill /PID 4711) and by the name of their executable (taskkill /IM firefox.exe).
So, if you have perl scripts running wild, just execute taskkill perl.exe to kill all of them down with a single command.

More lesser known Windows commands are described in this PDF.