The Raging Tech

Ubuntu Linux “Hardy Heron” Released Today

Some of you may read that headline and say “Well whoop-de-crap.” For those of you who have either never tried linux because you were afraid it was too difficult, or for those of you who had hang-ups from a previous attempt to run linux, Ubuntu is the distribution that just might one day make a significant dent in the desktop market.

As an IT professional, I can say most major vendors and ISPs will not give you any help or tech support when it comes to using their product or service. However, there is a huge community out there that will help you try and figure out anything and everything you’d ever want to do with Linux.

Those of you who are thoroughly confused as to what I’m talking about right now, check out this Wikipedia article on Linux.

I’ve been an off-again on-again Linux user for about 10 years now. My experiences have ranged from “totally awesome, makes me feel like an ubergeek” to “That’s it! I give up. I’m going back to Windows.” But the last experience I had was with Ubuntu, and it completely changed my views on Linux not being for beginners.

You can pretty much do all the same things you do in Windows in Ubuntu Linux. It’s one of the most user-friendly, company-supported free operating systems out there. If you’ve got an extra computer lying around, or you’re comfortable with terms like “dual boot” or “virtual machine,” then give it a shot. Otherwise, make sure all your files are backed up and you’re okay with wiping out your Windows partition.

Ubuntu even has a friendly Windows-based installer that can help you all the way through to the Linux Desktop. Download Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support) “Hardy Heron” at Canonical’s web site.

Free Nine Inch Nails MP3 Download “Discipline”

So, maybe not all of you are Nine Inch Nails fans - but maybe you have an eclectic musical taste like me. If so, take a minute and visit the Nine Inch Nails download site to get your free mp3 of their new single “Discipline” - just put in your name and e-mail address and you should be able to download it straight away.

Post your thoughts in the comments. A Google search for “free NIN download” should get you some other fun results, as Trent Reznor has released an entire instrumental album free of download, with the expectation that people will pay for the higher quality editions and special collector’s editions.

Download High-Quality YouTube Videos

Did you know that most YouTube videos can be downloaded now as high-quality mp4 (MPEG-4) files? There have been browser and URL hacks to download files previously, and several sites and Firefox extensions would allow you to plug-in an URL to a YouTube video and it would snag the file or give you an URL to download.

Now, you can do the same thing to get the higher-quality videos. Just save the following as a bookmarklet by dragging it up to your bookmarks bar in Firefox or Safari, or right-clicking and making it a Favorite in Internet Explorer:

Download YouTube Video

Clicking on this bookmark creates a new link below the video you are watching that should be to the downloadable video. Instead of left-clicking, you’ll want to right-click and choose “Save As” and name it something with a .mp4 extension.

I ripped-off came upon these instructions from a blog called Google Operating System via a Lifehacker post, and there you can find more information, including a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that takes care of this whole business for you every time you visit YouTube.

Use Google to find MP3s and More

Search powerhouse Google has captured millions if not billions of internet users’ attention and replaced the likes of Yahoo, MSN, WebCrawler, and Alta Vista as their search engine of choice. You probably have visited Google at least once today. If you’re like me, you may even use Google as your home page.

Do you cringe when you hear phrases like “search operators”? Well, this nerdy tip may sound intimidating, but you can use search operators with Google to help find web sites with mp3’s of your favorite songs.

Simply search like this:

inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3|aac|m4a|mp4|ogg) “Panic! At the Disco”

Now for an explanation:

• inurl:(htm|html|php) tells the search to look for URLs that end in htm, html, or php. This eliminates a lot of lyrics sites and gets you to the goods.
• intitle:”index of” tells the search to look at the title of the page and look for the phrase “index of” - because on most Apache or *nix-based servers, this is in the title of a directory or folder listing when someone forgets that their music files are accessible to their web server. Some file-sharing clients like Limewire also make this available.
• +(wma|mp3|aac|m4a|mp4|ogg) tells the search to look for these types of files on the pages it searches through. So far, that should mean we are only getting directory or file folders that list music files. If you were looking for software, you might look for ZIP or DMG or ISO or EXE (be careful what you download though, and always do a virus scan!).
• “Panic! At the Disco” - an excellent band, in my opinion. However, you could search for any band, or any song, or any album, for that matter.

There are a lot of ways to modify these search operators to get the results you want. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). And for legal reasons, I need to remind you not to download music you do not own that is copyrighted. Support your favorite artists and buy their albums legitimately. And as always, surf smart - don’t click on anything that looks suspicious and never download any programs or plugins from unknown sources. Run a virus check on all files that you download.

Thanks to Lifehacker, the source of this information.