Pros:

• Three dimensional landscape
• Animated jets, naval vessels, water, and even birds
• Detailed tanks and projectiles
• LAN and internet play
• Music
• Totally free to play (GPLed)
• Available for both Microsoft Windows and Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris etc.)
• Learning how to play is easy

Cons:

• Addictive
• Irresistible
• Too cute

I can not explain you how good is this game. You must try it yourself. As they say:

Scorched 3D is a simple turn-based artillery game and also a real-time strategy game in which players can counter each others’ weapons with other creative accessories, shields and tactics. Learn skill in timing, aiming and judgment, move around on the landscape, or even out-smart your opponent economically.

I am sure you will go back to your childhood. Enjoy and Have fun. BOOM.

Main Features of Sync are:

• Get the same results on the Smart Location Bar on each of your Firefox browsers, so you can get to your favorite sites with just a few keystrokes
• Continue what you were doing: have the ability to open any tab you have open on any of your Firefox browsers
• Keep the same list of bookmarks on all of your Firefox browsers
• Easily sign in to all your favorite sites using your saved passwords (this is especially handy on mobile phones, where it’s hard to type in complex passwords)
• Do it all securely: Weave Sync encrypts user data before uploading it to Mozilla’s servers, so that only you can access your data

As they say:

The Weave Sync add-on lets you securely take your Firefox experience with you to all your Firefox browsers. You can now surf the Web on your PC, get up and go, and have everything waiting for you on your phone: your history, open tabs, bookmarks, the Awesome Bar – just as you had left it.

No matter how much you bid to pay but you could never estimate the price of universal compatibility and top class user experience with the availability of option at every stage and still rock solid consistent performance that what is any GNU/Linux system is about and Ubuntu is a star team.

With their new star performer. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS aka Lucid Lynx is out and I can safely say that no matter how difficult is seem at first but impossible is nothing and Lucid Lynx is Free man’s Mac.

Things I like:

• GPL
• Great maps
• All OS support.
• Realistic guns and limited ammo magazines.
• Primary, secondary and side arm weapon slot.
• Variable damage system.
• Wounds/Bandage, Medikit
• Wounds affects performance
• Stamina system.

Things I do not like:

• Wall jump.
• Power slide.
• Super human speed.
• Water supply blood.
• Players dress colours.
• Stamina system.

I found the solution for my problems in Emacs weblogger-mode. I can
draft, review, edit, improve, update and post all through my lovely
editor.

I love you emacs.

This post is prepared and posted through Emacs 23 on RHEL
5.1 through weblogger-mode.

Forget the days when we have to use the multilevel task bar in windows. The author Sergey Vlasov⁽²⁾ is a nice man to give away such a good utility. This a very useful tool for guys like me how have to work with multiple file managers open and with similar directory structure.

Well i can count SurF as yet another Perl in the magical sea of sourceforge⁽³⁾ . SurF comes with many utilities like quick find, Image View, Tree File Manager, free typing selection, save settings, hot keys, initials/start settings blah blah blah… In short it is quit good and useful.

SurF is currently licensed under Eiffel Forum License V2.0⁽⁴⁾ and available for windows platform⁽⁵⁾ .

1. Shishir Sharma ‘criss’
2. Sergey Vlasov <glider [at] svprogramming.net>
3. SurF is a SourceForge project http://sourceforge.net/projects/surf-fm
4. It is a GPL equivalent and OSI approved license. click here to find more
5. I don’t think Linux user even need it. as Linux already have much more superiorly designed File Manager and Desktop switcher.

Recently I (Shishir Sharma ‘criss’ )came to know about Curl Language. It’s a MIT – DARPA project. It’s a multi-paradigm hybrid functional language. Curl is reflective, homo-iconic, object oriented programming language. It supports closures, macros and declarative layouts.

Its syntax is based on TEX and has a big set of formatting operations. Curl is very scientific language, As they state …

“one uses the same easy-to-learn syntax to create interactive documents as to create regular text documents.”

Curl is highly extendible, components can also be developed for curl using Curl only.I also impressed with road map curl is following. As they state

“Curl is intended to be a gentle slope system, accessible to content creators at all skill levels ranging from authors new to the web to experienced programmers. By using a simple, uniform language syntax and semantics, Curl avoids the discontinuities experienced by current web users who have to juggle HTML, JavaScript, Java, Perl, etc. to create today’s exciting sites. Our hope is that the single environment provided by Curl will be an attractive alternative for web developers”

I am surprised why it is not popular in India. This language deserved a popular place all over the world. It’s targeted to RIA (Rich internet application). Apparently soon it will be a competition for Adobe AIR/FLEX/MS Silver light and believe me it will be beating them.

DropBox is a web based data storage and share tool. Its like your web drive. Dropbox is currently available for OS X, Windows and Linux. It never deletes anything you uploaded. It will only transfer the diff of the newer file so saving considerable bandwidth. Also it can save all the previous versions. It also has a web interface. So it can be accessed from any where. The free account will give you 2GB storage for free.

Dropbox received great writeups in TechCrunch, GigaOm and Venturebeat and to our surprise, our screencast hit the top of both digg and reddit, with the screencast receiving 11,000 diggs and ranking among the top 10 of technology articles in the past year.
From blog.getdropbox.com

They have there blog since December of last year. And a well maintained forum is there for support. What they say about themselves is …

So, what do people use Dropbox for? We have people sharing documents between their colleagues at work, grandparents sharing pictures of their grand kids with the rest of their family, and students utilizing our versioning feature for projects. The possibilities are really only limited by imagination and, well… bandwidth. The team at Dropbox continues to be amazed at how many of our users find new and novel ways of… thinking outside the (Drop)box. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Well I liked it. Hope you will also like it.

I am member of c-prog yahoo group where Thomas is owner. I have been reading on each and every post, here and there, on his blog. I got chance to read it when he made book free for the group users. The book didn’t surprised me at all; You always expect some high quality work from him. Thanks Thomas for the book.

The book can be downloaded from here.
He can be readied on his blog from here.
You can buy his masterpiece software products form here.