Tag Archives: LOT

Do it yourself

Need a suitable substitute motherboard…

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By CMil

After finally having the chance to do some diagnostic work, I’ve come to the conclusion that the motherboard in my old office computer is done. It’s a Hewlett Packard xt973 with the ASUS A7V8X-LA motherboard and an AMD Sempron CPU. Pretty sure it’s a micro-ATX form factor board; measures 9.6″ x 9.6″, has 3 PCI expansion slots and 1 AGP slot. It also suppports a multi-format SIM card/memory card reader in the front panel of the computer and a host of USB ports front and back. Lastly, there are ethernet and 1394(?) ports on the back, as well as PS2 mouse and keyboard ports. Is there a reasonably affordable replacement motherboard that would pretty much be plug-and-play? I’m not married to the AMD processor, as this will not be primarily a gaming computer. But that’s not to say I would prefer an Intel, either. I just want to put in the board, plug all the stuff in, install windows on a new hard drive and get to work. I’m not running any cards inside the box, so expansion slot format is not an issue, although I think I would like PCI and PCI-E. Also, if the board came with or would accomodate a faster CPU, That would be fine, too. I’ve put a lot on the plate with this post – I hope someone with a LOT of patience AND knowledge picks it up! Thanks in advance – Chris:coffee:

…read more

Source: DoItYourself.com

Do it yourself

One coat of paint over spackle?

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By Melissa Weisse

Hi – we just bought a new house and really like the color inside. The problem is the staging of the house included a LOT of wall hangings so when we move in there will be nail holes everywhere. Also- the paint they used is flat paint and we would like to use eggshell for a little more durability. The color is a light tan/gray. Is there a way to spackle over the nail holes and then do one coat of the same color paint but in an eggshell finish rather than flat without it showing every spackled area?

…read more

Source: DoItYourself.com

Do it yourself

Is a tent gazebo a pain in the ass to own?

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By sofasurfer

I bought a Garden Oasis Gazebo… Garden Oasis Hexagonal Gazebo: Dress Up Your Yard with Gazebo at Kmart The say that they are not capable of standing up to any kind of winds. So I am wondering, if anyone knows, Are you expected to completely disassemble this thing every time the weather man says a storm is coming? Thats a LOT of screws and pipes and bars. How does this work? Any thoughts?

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Source: DoItYourself.com

Do it yourself

AC Troubleshooting help needed

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By cesperon

Before this week- I knew nothing about AC other than I liked having it & I needed to change the filters- HA! Now I know enough to be dangerous… Over the past week I have had 4 (yes 4) service calls on my system.

Here’s the info I know about my house/system:

Furnace was replaced 2 years ago– Goodman brand.
Evaporator coil was also replaced 2 years ago (unsure of brand it is a A coil)
Outside Unit Trane XR11 2TTR1030A 2.5 ton 30,000 BTUH
House: 1 story ranch with basement 1000 sq foot built in 1964 and not much done to update it.– not a lot of windows but they aren’t great as far as energy efficiency.
It is a stacked unit in the basement.
4 cold air returns- two in basement at floor level and two in hallway along baseboards
Thermostat- Honeywell honeywell th6110d1005 focuspro programmable thermostat
Have ceiling fans in 3 rooms and each bedroom has an oscillating fan (house has 3 bedrooms 2 baths living room/kitchen great room.
Portable dehumidifier in basement draining into floor drain.

Here’s the story…

AC wasn’t cooling house. Checked filters, it was lying on its side and clean as a whistle so that means it had been running for a couple months with no filter. So my first guess was evaporator coil was filthy. I watched the Youtube videos- went out & bought coil cleaner & gave it a whirl saturated the evap coil & let it sit with the foam & them went outside to clean the pin coil… Outside was pretty nasty with cottonwoods so I completely took off the Hail Guard & sprayed it with coil cleaner & hosed it off and I got it clean as a whistle. Seemed to help for about a day– then it was HOT again.

Called HVAC tech (same company we’ve always used) he came out and did the following:
*checked the Freon said it was 70.1 PSI
*Checked the blower said it was on max
*Checked temp drop said it was 22 degrees…

BUT.. my cold air returns weren’t pulling air so he suggested duct cleaning.

Called Duct Cleaning Service- they came out. Had a LOT of dust and crap in vents. LOL they found mail from the ’80s in the return! (we have only owned the house since 03!) so I would say this was long past due. They said that with the amount of junk in the returns the A coil had to be filthy on the underside so we paid to have that cleaned. We were still not getting good airflow- they said they felt that the blower motor was going out.

Called back to HVAC company- pitched a fit & then sent the tech back. He rechecked everything & called Goodman to verify that …read more

Source: DoItYourself.com

Do it yourself

Need help: our 800 sq.ft. apartment only has 2x15amp circuits, is that legal?

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By skatin

Hi all, my first post here. Thank you for reading.

I have a huge problem. About six months ago, my family and I moved into a two bedroom, 800 square foot apartment. Almost immediately, we discovered the available electrical power is severely limited. Circuits were popping left and right.

Through trial and error, I discovered the entire apartment only has 2 15-amp circuits. One circuit covers the kitchen, dining room and living room. The second circuit covers two bedrooms, the bathroom and hallway.

We need more power. Summer is here, and it is getting hot. I live in Los Angeles, specifically Inglewood. There is no central AC, and window AC units are not allowed. I have to buy and use the portable AC units, and run a hose to the window, which is fine, but there’s not enough power for AC units.

I made a request to the office manager, who had me put it in writing. The response I got was the wiring cannot handle additional load, so there’s nothing they can do about it. They claim the electrical system meets legal specifications, so they don’t have to do anything.

They told me to buy one small unit, and only run one AC unit at a time. I won’t go into btu’s per foot stuff (which I did research), but even the largest 110-volt unit (14,000 btu, 10.5 amps) will not cool the entire apartment, and if it could, there’s not enough power anyways.

I’m no code expert, but a quick “National Electric Code” google search tells me this apartment should have a LOT more than just 2 15-amp circuits. The kitchen alone should have a least 2×20 amp appliance circuits. It has neither.

I should note: we love it here! The neighbors are great, the neighborhood is nice, location is perfect, so we don’t want to move, or even rock the boat. I don’t want to lawyer up, or start calling federal, state and local regulatory authorities and file complaints. I don’t want anyone getting into trouble. I just want more power, so we can have sufficient AC. The maintenance manager told me he’s received no complaints, and insists there is no problem.

Is he right? Does our apartment meet electrical code requirements? Am I up a creek without a paddle?

Thanks for reading, and I appreciate your feedback!

Sincerely,

Sweating Tenant

…read more

Source: DoItYourself.com

Do it yourself

Least AC electric usage options?

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By mikehende

I am being told different things concerning electrical usage when running a window AC. One source says best to cool down the room and then run a fan for an hour and keep repeating this, that this would be better for electrical usage than running the AC continuosly. Another source is saying the opposite, that when you initially turn on an AC it pulls a LOT of current so frequent restarting will use more electricity than leaving it on. Another source is saying if you have 2 adjoining rooms, best to run the AC in one room and leave the door open to the other room so it will cool that room too an use less current.

Can anyone confirm which of the three options above will be best to consume the least amount of electricity please?

…read more

Source: DoItYourself.com

Articles of Interest

An Eagle Scout’s Take On The Current Boy Scout Controversy

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By Daniel Noe

Yesterday, Western Journalism linked to an article about the controversy over allowing openly gay boys into the Boy Scouts of America controversy.

It looks like after relentless pressure, the Boy Scouts are caving into the homosexual agenda (which as I will explain later has nothing to do with homosexuality per se.)

This just might be the last straw for me…

First, some background. From 1998 until 2004, I was a proud member of BSA Troop 199 in Oldwick, New Jersey. I made a lot of friends and even acquired a few mentors during my time in the scouts. One of my proudest accomplishments in my 26 years was attaining the rank of Eagle Scout in October 2004. I remember the ceremony as if it was just yesterday. It was a lot of hard work, but it was more than worth it.

I am still in touch with several of my fellow Eagle Scouts (some of whom just might be reading this right now!) And man do we have a strong opinion on what is happening to the program we were privileged to be a part of during our teenage years.

I do know some “scout dads” who will cease any involvement, current or former, with the Boy Scouts should they yield to the gay lobby.

I should also mention (proudly) that I am a theologically and culturally conservative Christian who after attending a more moderate church for 15 years was saved earlier this year after attending an Independent Baptist church for two weeks. I am proud to call Sun Valley Baptist Church in Anthem, Arizona my new home church.

The reason why I am specific in terms of what kind of Christian I am is because sadly, a LOT of Christianity has been watered down in America. Whole denominations are indifferent to traditional marriage, “social justice,” the increasing usurpation of our God-given liberties under multiple recent administrations, and even abortion.

When it comes to marriage, I subscribe strictly to its biblical definition. (To some people, that makes me a “bigot,” an accusation I will proudly wear with a badge of honor.) Why, you may ask? Because God did not create Adam and Steve, nor Alice and Eve. He created Adam and Eve. End of story.

I believe that Christians are to hate sin while at the same time loving the sinner. It is not gays themselves I am opposed to. It is the gay lifestyle, which is shamelessly promoted on television, Hollywood, the rest of the media, and the Democratic Party (this should not suggest that I am any fan of the Republican Party, FYI.) It is specifically promoted as a “normal” lifestyle, which just simply is not true to the many of us Christians who read the Bible for ourselves.

It is not the job of Christians to call them names (i.e. “perverts”, “queers”, or worse.) Unfortunately, some Christians will distract fellow church-goers from the fact that they are sinners by just demonizing gays (or immigrants or Muslims) all the time. These Christians should know better as

From: http://www.westernjournalism.com/an-eagle-scouts-take-on-the-current-boy-scout-controversy/

News, Politics, Government

Poland's treasury minister fired over gas deal

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Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has fired the treasury minister, saying his oversight of state run companies was insufficient.

Tusk said Friday Mikolaj Budzanowski would be replaced by a lower-ranking Cabinet member, Wlodzimierz Karpinski, at the helm of the Treasury Ministry.

He said there had been an insufficient exchange of information between the treasury minister and the state-owned companies he was supposed to oversee.

Budzanowski was recently criticized for his lack of knowledge about a deal that state gas giant PGNiG had signed with Russia’s Gazprom for a prospective new pipeline bypassing Ukraine.

Earlier, Budzanowski was criticized for ignoring the mounting financial problems of the state airline, LOT, and a breach of standards by the management of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/K5voJUqwATY/

Do it yourself

Need advice/opinions on repair of leaking craked poured foundation please

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By wes8398

Hi everyone. Yes, I’m a noob around here. I figured that since every time I “google” something I wind up on this site getting most of the info I’m looking for; I might as well join up and become part of the community!

Anyway, here’s my issue. I live in a 16 year old bungalow located in south-western Ontario (Canada). Last fall we had some very significant rain and winds from the tail end of hurricane Sandy, which exposed a leak on the wall of our house that faced the driving rain. Unfortunately, ever since then we’ve had water seeping into our finished basement along that wall whenever there is a significant rainfall. So far this spring we’ve had some significant rain on top of the thaw and we’ve been “managing” the water infiltration by soaking it up with beach towels (as I have laminate flooring installed, which I UNinstalled about 4 feet back from the problem area), in an attempt to keep it from reaching and wrecking more of my flooring. This was working fine, but it’s now time to fix this leak.

Unfortunately the “proper” repair which consists of excavating along the outside of the wall and waterproofing, etc is financially just out of the question for us. We have a deck which is built over the original contractor’s concrete pad which is all right over top of where this leak is happening, which adds to the already high cost of this job. So, I’ve been seeking out my other options.

Last week (during a pretty heavy rain storm) I tore down some drywall, insulation, etc around where the water appeared to be coming in. Low and behold, I exposed a hairline crack which extends from top to bottom of my foundation and at that time had a steady (very small) stream of water coming from it.

In my search for an alternative to the exterior repair for this crack, I’ve spoken with many different building contractors, building material suppliers, basement leak “experts”, concrete guys, and so on and I’m left with the following options (which I’ll price out too, just FYI):

1) Exterior waterproofing (A LOT of money, a LOT destructive to existing structures).

2) A “water management system” which a few well-known and long-standing local companies do. A small hole is busted into my floor, then flashing is sealed around the crack and assures that the water entering is directed into my interior drainage tile. Nothing is done to stop the water from entering, it’s simply “managed”. The cost for this is about $800, plus drywall work. Comes with a 25 year “guarantee” (not sure I give guarantees on this kinda stuff much weight).

3) A polyurethane crack injection to “seal” the crack and (hopefully) stop water from entering altogether. I’ve researched other injection products (epoxy, different forms of concrete, etc) and come to the

From: http://www.doityourself.com/forum/basements-attics-crawl-spaces/493466-need-advice-opinions-repair-leaking-craked-poured-foundation-please.html

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Markets Rise on Mixed Economic Data

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By Matt Thalman, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

While the jobless-claims report is normally an important data point for investors to watch on Thursdays, today the jobs market is taking a backseat to the bailout in Cyprus and the revised GDP number.

But let’s start with the jobs report. The Department of Labor said initial jobless claims rose more than expected last week to a seasonally adjusted 357,000, an increase of 16,000 from the previous reading. The four-week average rose 2,250 to 343,000, but many believe the job market is still moving forward any time the average is below 350,000.

The Cypriot banks all opened this morning without incident. One report I read said there may have been more reporters than actual bank customers when the doors opened for business. This will hopefully help stabilize the banking system not only in Cyprus but throughout Europe, and clearly this is a good sign for investors.

Lastly, revised U.S. GDP numbers were released this morning, showing that fourth-quarter GDP rose 0.4% during the last three months of 2012. This was slightly lower than the expected 0.5% but still a positive sign.

And with all of that, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 26 points, or 0.18%, as of 1 p.m. EDT. As usual, though, a few losers can be found.

Today’s top Dow downers
Even though the Cypriot banks opened without a hitch today, the Dow’s two banks are down again today. JPMorgan Chase is down 0.8%, while Bank of America has lost 0.7%. Both of the banks are heading lower due to their own problems today, not a macroeconomic event. JPMorgan was denied its request for a lawsuit dismissal by a U.S. district judge today. The bank is being sued by a pension fund that claims the bank mismanaged the funds.

Bank of America is likely heading lower due to the revelation that not only did CEO Brian Moynihan receive more than $12 million in compensation during 2012, but his co-COO actually made more than that: In a filing released this morning, the bank reported that Tom Montag made $14.5 million in 2012. While the majority of both compensation packages came in the form of stock options, some investors are still turned off by the thought that top executives are making that amount of money.

Even though Boeing‘s top brass continues to express confidence that the grounded 787 Dreamliner will soon be cleared to fly by the FAA, shares are down 0.7% this afternoon. The decline may be the result of a Boeing customer reporting that it is now leasing aircraft from Airbus, Boeing’s closest competitor. Polish airline LOT signed a lease agreement with Airbus for planes from April 12 until the end of May, at which time the airline is hoping it can fly its 787s.

Boeing is a major player in a multitrillion-dollar market in which the opportunities are massive. However, emerging competitors and the company’s execution problems have investors wondering whether Boeing will live …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Linux

What’s up with polkit in Qt and KDE?

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Jaroslav Řezník asked on #fedora-kde a few days ago if anyone was interested in taking over polkit-qt and polkit-kde-agentas he doesn’t have enough time to maintain them aside with his other duties and when I met him in the kitchen, we discussed the matter. He was very convincing with the reasons to take the package and made the ugly bugs seem really interesting so here I stand.

What I’m intending to do

Bug reports quite stacked in the tracker in the meantime so the plan how to deal with them in the following weeks is:

There’s a LOT of bug reports in the tracker for both components and it seems most of them were caused by the underlying libraries or misuse of the authentication agents as I wasn’t able to reproduce most of them. I’m requesting information from the reporters though to be sure and possibly work on solutions with them. Hopefully, Drs. Albert Spijkers will respond if Jawid Asefi and others died young or stopped attempting to hack him… (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316514)

Of course most of the reports are coming from software managers like Apper or Muon and looking into the reports, I’m afraid many bugs in polkit related packages were worked around in the invoking applications.

I already closed a few of them though, the ones confirmed to be fixed and the ones apparently caused by something else and fixed by now. However, it’s interesting how for every closed bug I receive a informative mail starting with “[Red Hat – Possible Forgery]” but the comments go through clear.

At the first glance it seems handling signals and cancellations may be done in a bit unlucky way in polkit-qtbut I have to be sure before I’m making any chances to the code.

Usability

When I will have triaged most of the bugs, there will be time for some enhancements to the overall usability of the agent. Currently, there is a problem with the authentication dialog window appearing beneath the “parent” window (quotes because it’s technically not its parent) often causing the user to not notice he needs to enter a password to proceed and failing the authentication process.

Regarding this, Jaroslav spoke about moving the dialog into KRunner which would look very nice (maybe just my impression but I really like KRunner and think it should be used more). I’m leaving this for further discussion. And with that we can start right here, please tell me what you think about it in the comments!

Besides that, I think using the notifier area as KWallet is doing now would make the behavior nicely consistent with it as both components are quite closely related.

I also see there are some parts still unimplemented but planned, for example the “Remember authorization” checkbox or display of which application invoked the dialog. These are still planned and I’m going to implement them over time.

However, I won’t be doing anything about the KCM module for rule editing. I don’t even have rights for the repository and am not planning to obtain them. If you’re …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

News, Politics, Government

Boeing, Poland's LOT airline in talks over 787s

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Poland’s LOT airline is holding talks with Boeing in Warsaw after the grounding of the 787 jets, of which LOT has two, with the government pushing for compensation.

The government says LOT is losing $50,000 a day as a result of the grounding of the two planes, and will pressure Boeing to take financial responsibility.

LOT, which is state-owned and deeply indebted, was Europe‘s first airline to have the 787s and their grounding has added to the carrier’s financial problems.

The world’s entire fleet of 787s, 50 in all, has been grounded since Jan. 16 due to problems with lithium ion batteries.

LOT spokesman Marek Klucinski said Friday that LOT was in one-day talks with Boeing in Warsaw about “cooperation with our partner” but refused any detail.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Dow Pops the Champagne

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By Jeremy Bowman, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

As you’ve probably heard by now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke its all-time record today, and the blue chips did it with a bang, gaining 126 points, or 0.9%, to finish at 14,254. The Dow shattered both the closing record of 14,164 and its all-time intraday high of 14.198, which it eclipsed just after opening. The index reached an intraday high of 14,286 today.

Momentum out of Europe pushed the Dow higher early in the morning as the German DAX gained more than 2.3%, and European stocks set a high-water mark of their own, reaching a level not seen in four and a half years. Retail sales in Europe were stronger than expected, and the continuing optimism in American financial markets helped drive stocks higher across the Atlantic. More good news came in the form of a strong ISM services report, whose index hit 56 in February, a slight gain over January’s 55.2 reading, and better than the market‘s expectations of 55.2.

Nearly every stock on the blue chips gained today. Boeing was one of the biggest movers, climbing 2% to a new 52-week high as the aircraft maker scored a $1 billion order from Cathay Pacific for three 747-8 Freighter airplanes. Still, the company was struggling with problems from its Dreamliner jets as the Polish airline LOT demanded compensation for the grounded jets, and the British company Thomson Airways said it would reimburse customers who had paid to fly the Dreamliner starting in May. Shares were down nearly 1% after hours, however, as the FAA still appears to be several steps from approving the 787s for flight again.

Coca-Cola was the Dow’s biggest loser of the day, falling 0.4%, apparently in response to news that competition from Dr Pepper Snapple may be heating up as that company acquired the rights to distribute Snapple in Asia and other beverages in Australia from Mondelez.

Will the Dow move higher?
Despite concerns about sequestration, the European debt crisis, and China‘s slowing growth, there are plenty of reasons to believe in the bull market. Treasury yields are still incredibly low, meaning there’s a lot of money potentially waiting to get back into equities, and corporate profits continue to improve with housing and employment numbers promising a steady recovery. With the Feburary employment report due out Friday, strong jobs numbers could fuel another rally before week’s end.

If you’re looking for some long-term investing ideas, check out the Fool’s special report: “The 3 Dow Stocks Dividend Investors Need.” It’s absolutely free, so just click here and get your copy today.

The article Dow Pops the Champagne originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Jeremy Bowman has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Coca-Cola. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don’t all hold the same opinions, but we all …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

Poland's LOT airline working on rescue plan

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A spokesman for Poland’s LOT airline says that the company will present its last-chance survival plan of layoffs and restructuring next month after the government indicated that there will be no more money for the lossmaking state-owned company.

The latest blow for the airline has been the grounding since Jan. 16 of its two Boeing 787 Dreamliners, which has cost the company 8 million zlotys ($2.5 million) so far. In 2012 LOT suffered losses of 157 million zlotys, chiefly due to high fuel prices.

LOT spokesman Marek Klucinski said Friday that the rescue plan will be presented March 20 and will include layoffs and restructuring of the company and its routes.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned the government will not try to save LOT “at all cost.”

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Grounded Boeings costs LOT airline $50,000 a day

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Poland’s government says that LOT Polish Airlines is losing $50,000 a day due to the grounding of its two Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes.

LOT, a deeply indebted state-run airline, was the first European airline to get the Dreamliners. Deputy Treasury Minister Rafal Baniak put total losses due to the grounded planes Wednesday at 8 million zlotys ($2.5 million).

The global grounding of Dreamliners due to problems with its lithium batters has been a big blow to the airline. It is still waiting six more 787s to be delivered, several early this year.

Treasury Ministry information given Wednesday to a parliamentary committee said the grounding is causing LOT to lose $50,000 a day, without taking into account the cost of passenger complaints and some other costs, the news agency PAP reported.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Poland's Dreamliners grounded through October

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Poland‘s airline LOT says it is keeping both its Boeing 787 Dreamliners grounded through October while the U.S. aircraft maker seeks to eliminate a potential safety threat that occurred in some other Dreamliners.

The decision Thursday is a blow to Poland‘s national carrier which is cutting costs in an effort to survive.

It means LOT needs to extend lease on three Boeings 767 it currently uses and will seek to lease two more 767s for the summer season, spokesman Marek Klucinski told The Associated Press.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliners have been grounded around the world after some of them developed battery problems.

One of LOT‘s Dreamliners remains in Chicago, one in Warsaw. Both are safe to fly, Klucinski said.

Boeing suspended delivery of three more planned for LOT this year.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Linux

What's new with Nepomuk 4.10

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I’ve blogged about some of the more prominent changes in this new Nepomuk release. I thought it would be a good idea to document all the changes, most of which I haven’t publicly blogged about.

File Indexing

As the release announcement has been saying, the file indexer has undergone the maximum number of changes.

New Double Queue Architecture

We’ve split the working of the indexer into two parts – The first basic indexing and second full file indexing. The basic indexing quickly indexes the basic information about the file such as the filename and mimetype. This allows us to always at least answer simple queries. The other queue, which is only run when the user is idle, extracts the full information about the file.

New File Indexer

We’ve had some problems with Strigi earlier. With 4.10, we have finally decided to release our own solution. Our solution is arguably technologically inferior, but it’s more maintainable and, for now, provides a better user experience.

Mimetype Filtering

One of the advantages of moving to this new file indexing architecture is that mimetypes are a very important part. All of the file indexing plugins use mimetypes to identify which types of files they can index. With this, we decided to allow the user to control the type of files that are indexed.

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By default, source code is now no longer indexed. Common stuff like Documents, Images, Audio and Videos are.

KioSlave changes

Till the 4.9 release, the kioslave code hadn’t changed much. With 4.9.1, we managed to optimize some of the code. The 4.10 release however takes this to an entirely different level.

Massive Optimizations

The ‘nepomuksearch’ tagging slave could initially show both non-file and file data. This means that it would also occasionally show contacts, albums and other details. Selecting any of those would result in another search for resources related to that contact. For this release, we decided to optimize for the most common use case of listing files.

The ‘nepomuksearch’ kioslave, and all other nepomuk kioslaves, now no longer show any result which does not have a URL. This coupled with a LOT of other optimizations, has now yielded a super fast kioslave which can display thousands of results in under a second.

There is also some interesting userbase documentation about custom queries on the nepomuksearch kioslave.

Tagging KioSlave

As previously stated, we are also introding a new tagging kioslave. This slave allows you to easily manage you Nepomuk tags, and browse files based on the different tags it contains.

/images/nepomuk-tags-browsing.png

File MetadataWidget

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One of the largest part of the Dolphin Information Panel was the KFileMetadataWidget which was provided by kdelibs/kio. This widget was one of the last parts of Dolphin that still used Nepomuk1. Since kdelibs was frozen, we couldn’t port it to Nepomuk2. Thus emerged the Nepomuk2::FileMetadataWidget in nepomuk-widgets.

The KFileMetadataWidget historically fetched all the data in another process. This was done because Strigi was a little unreliable. With KDE Workspaces 4.10, we are no longer using Strigi in Nepomuk. This means the widget now uses the nepomukindexer, to extract the data. It also no longer uses this multi-process architecture when loading the Nepomuk data. This result in a massive performance improvement cause we can rely on Nepomuk cache in Dolphin, instead of recreating it each time.

In terms of appearance, the widget has become a little more uniform, and by default only shows the properties that really matter.

Improved Removable Media Handling

Nepomuk has for quite some time supported indexing of removable media handling. However, it didn’t always work that great. From a design point of view, the solution was great and extremely robust. This however, came at a steep cost for the rest of Nepomuk. Every other query was affected by these features, and not in a small way. For some simple tests of basic indexing, it made of difference of around 20%.

With this new release, we have gone to a simpler solution which has a lighter performance cost. We have also removed the “Automatic Invalid File Metadata Cleaner” which removed the metadata for any file it could not access. The client code now always checks if the file can be accessed before displaying it to the user.

Nepomuk Backup Changes

With KDE Workspaces 4.6, my Google Summer of Code Project, Nepomuk Backup, was finally merged. It was a very ambitious project which attempted to synchronize, backup and restore data in a non-destructible manner. In the end, it was just a little bit too complex. Large parts of the synchronization code, eventually migrated into the data feeding code which is now used by anyone pushing data into Nepomuk. So, it wasn’t a complete loss.

With this new release, I finally got around to throwing away most of the complex code, and implementing a very simple and reliable backup solution. This new method does not require a separate service to be running, and therefore consumes less memory. Additionally, we also have some basic unit tests to ensure that the backups are restored properly!

Please keep in mind that this only backups up the non-destructible data. This does not include the file or email index information. If you want that to be backed up, you’re better off just making a copy of the database file.

Nepomuk Cleaner

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The Nepomuk Cleaner originated from a series of scripts I was writing to clear up my own database. It eventually occurred to me that other people might suffer from the same problem. The scripts were eventually combined into a cohesive form, and released. The application is very simple right now, but that will change in future releases. I even contemplated not releasing it for 4.10, but it clearly provides some value, even if it doesn’t look that great.

Other Changes

Surprisingly, I didn’t want to include many new features this releases. I was trying to focus more on stabilization. Over the last 6 months, A total of 246 bugs have been resolved, out of which 188 were reported within the last 6 months. This seems like a good improvement to me.

Apart from these simple changes there have been a number of optimizations all across Nepomuk and Soprano. Nepomuk should be running faster and better than ever before. In some cases we have even seen an over 200% increase in performance.

Anyway, Enjoy the new release! 🙂

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

News, Politics, Government

Polish airline may seek compensation from Boeing

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Poland’s airline LOT says it may seek compensation from Boeing Co. for the grounding of its two 787 Dreamliner planes due to security concerns.

LOT says both its Dreamliners are safe to fly, but kept grounded in Chicago and in Warsaw after United States and European flight safety authorities banned all Dreamliners from flying. The authorities ordered security checks due to a risk of battery fires following recent incidents.

LOT Deputy President Tomasz Balcerzak said Thursday the airline is counting costs incurred by the idling of the planes and in due time will complain to Boeing. He stressed the problems are not the fault of the airline.

LOT is Europe‘s only carrier to have Dreamliners, hoping they would improve business.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Europe grounds Dreamliner after incidents

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Europe‘s air safety authority has followed the United States in ordering the grounding and safety review of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner following a series of incidents with the aircraft in recent days.

The European Aviation Safety Agency says it is endorsing Wednesday’s directive by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounding Boeing’s jetliner until the risk of battery fires is resolved.

The EASA’s order Thursday applies to all European carriers flying the 787 Dreamliner. At the moment, only Polsh airline LOT flies the airplane.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News