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Two things annoy me a lot when I'm browsing the Internet. First, I hate unclickable links, where I have to select the text link, open a new tab, paste the link, then press enter. I'd much rather deal with links that I can just click to open. The other issue is being forced to manually edit a URL in the address bar if I want to browse up one level on a site. Linkification and Uppity are two Firefox extensions that make my annoyances go away.

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While most basic hardware support for GNU/Linux is improving constantly, wireless support remains dismal. Few manufacturers make an effort to support the operating system, or to publicize what support they have. Moreover, the components of wireless devices change so fast that one version of a device may offer support while a second version doesn't -- even though both versions share the same model number.

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Just a quick tip I wanted to pass on today. Have you ever had the issue where you want to eject your CD, but it will not eject; no matter how many times you press the eject button? Annoying isn’t it? I remember when I first started using Linux, years ago, (my OS was RedHat then), I actually would reboot the system just to get the CD out! Obviously, that’s not too smart.

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Just because OpenOffice.org Basic is designed to automate mundane tasks doesn't mean that you must use it only for serious work. It's a programming language after all, and nothing stops you from using it to write something fun. Today we'll use it write a simple game where you have to guess a word, a letter at a time, from among words you've stored in a Base database. Although this is not a particularly sophisticated game, it contains a couple of string manipulation techniques and a clever trick for picking a random record from a database, which you might find useful when writing your own macros.

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The Beta's still hot out of the oven, and a lot of reviews have appeared throughout the internet describing the numerous improvements, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about them too. I will talk about what the Hardy Heron release can do for Ubuntu.

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Linux has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom. Successful We-Think projects are based on five key principles that were all present in Linux. Yesterday I talked about Core and Contribute. Today, it's Connect.

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A Video review of one laptop per child

By David Pogue

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Reader Matt grabs songs from YouTube videos the way we used to hit the cassette deck record button while listening to the radio back in the 80's. Well, not really. Matt does it by downloading the YouTube clip .FLV file and converting it to MP3. After the jump, get the steps and tools you need to do it yourself.

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All platforms: Mozilla's just made the latest release of the Firefox 3 beta available for download. Mozilla says Beta 5 "includes more than 750 changes from the previous beta, improving stability and web compatibility." Testers and those willing to live on the edge with Beta 5 will get speedier Javascript handling in webappps like Gmail and Zoho Office, better Windows/Mac/Linux integration, and an improved Places (bookmarks) organizer. After the jump, see the list of Beta 5 improvements pulled from the release notes. Update: The final release of Firefox 3 is slated for June.

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There are a scant few features of the latest release of Safari for Windows and Mac OS X that you can't recreate in Firefox with the help of a few add-ons and tweaks—except for Safari's intuitive inline search.