The VMWare team has just released the second beta for VMWare Fusion 2.0, the company’s popular virtualization program for the Mac.

The new beta adds a TON of new features, as the video above demonstrates. I got a chance to talk to VMWare today about the new beta and it is HOT. I’ll be posting a more in-depth overview tomorrow, but until then, here are some of the highlights:

• Unity 2.0 - The newest version of Fusion is really focused on better Windows-Mac integration. You can now launch Windows programs from the dock or access Mac programs from within your virtual machine. You can also link folders like Documents, Pictures and Music on your virtual machine with those folders on your Mac.
• Multiple Snapshots VMWare has worked really hard to bring a Time Machine-like ease to backing up and protecting your virtual machine. You can now designate how often you want to take full system snapshots of your VM, whether once an hour, once a day or once a week, and how many copies you want to keep.
• Better Video and Graphics Graphics and shading support has been improved for Macs that have higher-end graphics cards, and even integrated Macs can now play 1080p HD video in virtual machines with considerably less CPU overhead.
• Support for more client OSs, including Leopard Server You can now run Leopard Server as a VM in OS X 10.4 and 10.5, even on client machines (virtualizing Mac OS X client is blocked by Apple’s license terms). Support for the latest version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) is also available right out of the box with Unity integration. Power users can now designate up to four virtual CPUs per virtual machine, which is great for anyone wanting to take an XServe or Mac Pro to the next level.

VMWare Fusion 2.0 beta 2 is available for Intel Macs running OS X 10.4 or OS X 10.5. New users can try the beta for free and the upgrade path (including future betas and the full version of Fusion 2.0) is free for all existing Fusion 1.0 customers.

via TUAW

Gears of War 2 will feature ‘linked Achievements,’ meaning that Achievements earned in the original Gears will help unlock bonuses in the sequel.

Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski took the stage at Comic-Con to demonstrate to a live audience the E3 Sinkhole level and describe a new “linked achievements” feature for Gears 2 where achievements unlocked in the first Gears game would open features in the upcoming sequel.

He offered three examples of how the system would work:

• Complete Act One in Gears Of War and receive a playable Anthony Carmine in Gears of War 2
• Find 10 COG tags in Gears Of War and get Minh Young Kim in Gears of War 2
• Kill Raam in Gears Of War and earn a playable Raam in Gears of War 2

Questions such as whether all Gears of Wars achievements will be linked to the sequel and what other goodies can be grabbed besides characters won’t be answered until closer to the game’s November 7 release.

via The Escapist

Just a month after Sir David Attenborough said it was “very, very sad” that Tomorrow’s World had been axed - five years ago - the BBC has today revealed it is making a “new popular science format for the early evening” on BBC1.

A new science show is one of the BBC’s top priorities for BBC1 over the next year, according to its annual statements of programme policy for all its TV, radio and online services, published today. The SOPPs lay out the corporation’s programming plans for the year to the end of March 2009.

via The Guardian

osx-trash manipulates the Mac OS X trash from the command line, just like the Finder does. It uses AppleScript via Scripting Bridge on top of to communicate with the Finder. You can move files to the trash, empty the trash, and list items currently in the trash.

project page via

I needed this same effect at work today so a quick Google came up with this great blog post - a lovely example of the exact effect I was looking for in both raw javascript and a version using the jQuery library.

The script searches the page that it’s inserted on for all form input fields that have a class of ‘default-value’ applied. Each form input field must also have a unique ID.

When the page loads the script changes the color of the text in the text fields it has found to the value of ‘inactive_color’. If the user clicks on the input field, the default text is blanked, and the colour changed to ‘active_color’. If the user clicks away from the input field, i.e. the input field loses focus, the value of the text field will revert back to the original text, and the colour will change back to ‘inactive_color’, unless the user has entered some other text.

Here’s a copy of the jQuery version for my own personal notes, never know when that could be useful:

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/*
 * Written by Rob Schmitt, The Web Developer's Blog
 * http://webdeveloper.beforeseven.com/
 */
 
var active_color = '#000'; // Colour of user provided text
var inactive_color = '#999'; // Colour of default text
 
$(document).ready(function() {
  $("input.default-value").css("color", inactive_color);
  var default_values = new Array();
  $("input.default-value").focus(function() {
    if (!default_values[this.id]) {
      default_values[this.id] = this.value;
    }
    if (this.value == default_values[this.id]) {
      this.value = '';
      this.style.color = active_color;
    }
    $(this).blur(function() {
      if (this.value == '') {
        this.style.color = inactive_color;
        this.value = default_values[this.id];
      }
    });
  });
});

However, we don’t use jQuery at work, our entire site is based around Prototype and script.aculo.us, so I did a bit of butchering and here’s the code adapted to use Prototype:

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/*
 * Written by Darren Oakley
 * http://hocuspokus.net
 */
 
var active_color = '#000'; // Colour of user provided text
var inactive_color = '#999'; // Colour of default text
 
Event.observe( window, 'load', function () {
    var default_values = new Array();
    $$("input.default-value").each( function (s) {
        $(s).setStyle({ color: inactive_color });
        $(s).observe( 'focus', function () {
            if (!default_values[s.id]) {
                default_values[s.id] = s.value;
            }
            if (s.value == default_values[s.id]) {
                s.value = '';
                $(s).setStyle({ color: active_color });
            }
            $(s).observe( 'blur', function () {
                if (s.value == '') {
                    $(s).setStyle({ color: inactive_color });
                    s.value = default_values[s.id];
                }
            });
        });
    });
});

Now all you need to do is give your input text fields a unique id, and the class of ‘default-value’, then the script will take care of the rest.

Following up from my old guide to installing PostgreSQL (for Ubuntu 7.10), I thought i’d better do an update for the latest releases…

This quick walk-through are my notes for installing the PostgreSQL database server and the PgAdmin administration application on Ubuntu Linux, and also set up the server so it allows access to other PC’s on your network.

Before we move on, this guide was tested on the current release of Ubuntu Linux, (8.04 - Hardy Heron) and PostgreSQL 8.3, but it should also be applicable to older versions (of Ubuntu and PostgreSQL) and other Debian based distros.

Right for the basic installation, at the command-line, enter the following commands (or search for the listed packages in synaptic if you prefer that way of working):

$ sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-client postgresql-contrib
$ sudo apt-get install pgadmin3

This installs the database server/client, some extra utility scripts and the pgAdmin GUI application for working with the database.

Now we need to reset the password for the ‘postgres’ admin account for the server, so we can use this for all of the system administration tasks. Type the following at the command-line (substitute in the password you want to use for your administrator account):

$ sudo su postgres -c psql template1
template1=# ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'password';
template1=# \q

That alters the password for within the database, now we need to do the same for the unix user ‘postgres’:

$ sudo passwd -d postgres
$ sudo su postgres -c passwd

Now enter the same password that you used previously.

Then, from here on in we can use both pgAdmin and command-line access (as the postgres user) to run the database server. But before you jump into pgAdmin we should set-up the PostgreSQL admin pack that enables better logging and monitoring within pgAdmin. Run the following at the command-line:

$ sudo su postgres -c psql < /usr/share/postgresql/8.3/contrib/adminpack.sql

Finally, we need to open up the server so that we can access and use it remotely - unless you only want to access the database on the local machine. To do this, first, we need to edit the postgresql.conf file:

$ sudo gedit /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/postgresql.conf

Now, to edit a couple of lines in the ‘Connections and Authentication’ section…

Change the line:

#listen_addresses = 'localhost'

to

listen_addresses = '*'

and also change the line:

#password_encryption = on

to

password_encryption = on

Then save the file and close gedit.

Now for the final step, we must define who can access the server. This is all done using the pg_hba.conf file.¹

$ sudo gedit /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/pg_hba.conf

Comment out, or delete the current contents of the file, then add this text to the bottom of the file:

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# DO NOT DISABLE!
# If you change this first entry you will need to make sure that the
# database
# super user can access the database using some other method.
# Noninteractive
# access to all databases is required during automatic maintenance
# (autovacuum, daily cronjob, replication, and similar tasks).
#
# Database administrative login by UNIX sockets
local   all         postgres                          ident sameuser
# TYPE  DATABASE    USER        CIDR-ADDRESS          METHOD
 
# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all         all                               md5
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all         all         127.0.0.1/32          md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all         all         ::1/128               md5
 
# Connections for all PCs on the subnet
#
# TYPE DATABASE USER IP-ADDRESS IP-MASK METHOD
host    all         all         [ip address]          [subnet mask]  md5

and in the last line, add in your subnet mask (i.e. 255.255.255.0) and the IP address of the machine that you would like to access your server (i.e. 138.250.192.115). However, if you would like to enable access to a range of IP addresses, just substitute the last number for a zero and all machines within that range will be allowed access (i.e. 138.250.192.0 would allow all machines with an IP address 138.250.192.x to use the database server).

That’s it, now all you have to do is restart the server:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 restart

And all should be working.

You don’t need Steve Jobs’ permission to watch TV on your iPhone any more. And you don’t need to pay the cable company twice. A native Orb client for the iPhone and iPod Touch popped up on the installer networks overnight, and Orb confirms that it’s official.

The client software allows you to watch live TV on an iPhone or Touch wherever you are, in addition to your music. You’ll need a TV card or adaptor for your PC, of course, to get the live TV. So provided you have an internet connection, there’s no need to perform DIY transcoding using software such as Visual Hub. The client will even transcode the video stream nicely for 2.75G Edge networks. Orb does in software what Sling Media does in hardware.

via

One of the tools that I currently need (for the thesis work) is R and the BioConductor libraries. So here’s a quick run down on getting them up and installed on Hardy…

First up, run these commands in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install build-essential g77 gfortran
sudo apt-get install refblas3 refblas3-dev zlib1g-dev
sudo apt-get install r-base

This will then install the R base packages and some of the BioConductor packages, along with the gcc and fortran compilers and some other libraries that will be required for the next step.

sudo -s
R

Now at the R prompt, type the following…

source("http://www.bioconductor.org/biocLite.R")
biocLite()

Now sit back for a few minutes while your system configures BioConductor for you.

Very good…