Yeah it’s a fact that, Uruguay is very little known and remain underdog between it’s two giant neighbors Brazil and Argentina. But it is also a fact that Uruguayan capital Montevideo rank highest in “Quality of Living” among all of it’s South American high profile cities.   It’s considered as 25th least corrupt country in the world and 2nd least corrupt country (After Chile) according to 2010 Transparency international report. In addition to that Uruguay’s Per Capita GDP is 3rd highest in South America (only to be trailed by Venezuela and Chile) and is the only South American country with robust welfare state program, educated large urban middle class & most secular nation in America. Those figures sounds very impressive isn’t it! Numbers found in Internet suggest that living cost in Uruguay’s Urban proper is lower than most South American cities and dramatically very low outside city area. 

Uruguay is roughly the same size of Costa Rica (Uruguay is little smaller in fact) and population is just 3.6 million, half of it live in the Capital Montevideo. So as you can guess Outside Montevideo it’s all low populated lands. Country is mostly agricultural, and majority speaks Spanish.  And if you are Culture lover, Uruguay’s high culture has produced a proud legacy of art, literature, music, and theater production.

Well enough of Geography and culture get to know stuffs, lets get down to real business.

Money
The currency of Uruguay is the Uruguayan peso (peso uruguayo), which is divided into 100 centésimos. (Currency code: UYU) and commonly symbolize as $ in Uruguayan web sites /Newspapers where US dollar symbolized as US$. While the Uruguayan peso is the official Uruguay currency, the US dollar is widely used. Many restaurants and hotels in the beach resort communities will also take payment in Argentine pesos, Brazilian real, and Euros. Uruguay might not be Paris or New York or Tokyo but most Visa and MasterCard are taken at most of Uruguayan urban restaurants, grocery stores, clothing stores, and car rentals, country side don’t get your hope high up, you have to deal in hard cold Pesos.  ATM machines are out there to which can issue either Uruguay currency or US dollars (100 USD per withdrawal), multiple withdrawal allowed.

Housing
For short term rental it is more like any other country, take your pick dial phone-meet and agree to terms and rent. But when it comes to long term rental as reported by expats, Uruguay can be a bit weird, you got to deposit a security amounting nearly 5 months of agreed rental, and oh everything goes through Real estate agent (and you got to pay commission to them). And if it’s apartments there is something called "gastos comunes" or monthly communal building fee which can cost from US$8 to as high as $600, totally depend on what services are available in your building.

Purchasing price for real estate in Uruguay differ by area, population and proximity to city or major tourist spot, just like any other country in the world. So in Montevideo the prices of real estate is as low as US$500/sq. m. goes up when it comes to gated community, high rise condo etc. Outside Montevideo in Punta Del Este, the major beach front tourist hub you can find averaged at about  US $70 to US$100 per square meter and go flying up when it comes to beach front property or gated exclusive community like Sugar Loaf. And finally when it comes to Uruguay country side, US$15 to US$20 per square meter you can get a good place to build on, off course as specified above price goes up when it comes to proximity to the city and other major establishments.

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This installation/deployment instruction target to Centos users, however will work as well for most Redhat distro as well.

Installing FFmpeg

Using RPM installation is best, but its seems default RPM package installation for FFmpeg don’t work. So to avoid misery installing from source RPM advisable. So lets hit it–

Step One : ‘rpmbuild’ check, install if necessary

check if ‘rpmbuild’ install using following command

# rpm -q rpmbuild

If installation missing, use this command to install ‘rpmbuild’

# yum install rpmbuild

Step Two : prepare for dag packages installation

You will need to add couple of lines in the yum repository for dag packages installation to work. Create a file named dag.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d with the following command

# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo 

Now add following contents in the file:

[dag]
name=Dag RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el$releasever/en/$basearch/dag
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1

Step Three: Install FFmpeg

Once you have done so, do the following as root user to deploy / install  FFmpeg

yum install ffmpeg ffmpeg-devel

Installation could take from a minute to 10 minutes. This should be painless without incident, except in some cases you might face rpmforge GPG key warning.  Here is how you will resolve it (don’t forget to update the rpmforge-release version to the latest, which you will find under http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS)-

rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-VERSION.rpm

Step Four: Troubleshooting

You may Experience missing dependency error like shown below, in the course of FFmpeg installation.

Error: Missing Dependency: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by package xvidcore
Error: Missing Dependency: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by package faac
Error: Missing Dependency: libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by package faad2
Error: Missing Dependency: libgif.so.4 is needed by package imlib2
...

To resolve dependency error open up your /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo and make sure rpmforge packages are same version class to the release of your existing CentOS version. Meaning the URL contain el<CentOS version number>. For example if your CentOS is 5.1 the URL should contain el5 not el4

Install FFmpeg’s PHP extension ffmpeg-php

To install ffmpeg-php from source bundle, first check if ‘php-devel’ is installed.

# rpm -q php-devel

If ‘php-devel’ is missing, install it using:

# yum install php-devel

Now download the current version of ffmpeg-php from here.

wget /path/to/this/file/ffmpeg-php-0.5.2.1.tbz2
tar -xjf ffmpeg-0.5.2.1.tbz2
phpize
./configure
make
make install

If  you are done with above, open ‘/etc/php.ini’ and add a line ‘extension=ffmpeg.so’ under the category ‘Dynamic Extensions’. Now install your apache:

# service httpd restart [Enter] (do as root)

Now your phpinfo() should show the FFmpeg, if the installation was successful.

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Blacklight: Tango Down takes place 25 years in the future in a fictional eastern European city. The city is a former soviet state that has become neglected and ramshackle. Up to 16 players will be able to join a game on 12 maps. The focus is on a customizable weapon system that doles out upgrades one at a time as players level up. Blacklight aims to show off the personal preferences of each player, rather than typical class-based first person shooter. Weapons customization and assembling capacity just breathtaking, you can cup up with millions of weapons combination using scopes, stocks, barrels, magazines and over one hundred weapon tags.

The story line of the game is impressive and dynamic. So the story will take the Blacklight Tango Team to find recently missing another Blacklight team in the city of Balik. The country has recently broken out in war after the assassination of the president. The rebel group that had killed the president “The Order” is thought to have captured or killed the missing Blacklight team. So obviously Blacklight Tango team goes after “The Order”, but twist in story unrevealed when Tango team been informed that civilians have been infected with an unknown virus, causing them to attack everyone they encounter. So basically the story revealed itself part by part in a cool way that makes the game play much interesting.

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Introduction of Hulu plus, is a sign of shift among TV networks, perhaps you can say their admittance of ever growing mobile and web viewers. Hulu plus will feature all episodes in a season for selected TV shows (currently not known which shows). But it is certain that subscribers will get the entire current season of "Glee," "The Office," "House" and other shows from broadcasters ABC, Fox and NBC, as well as all the past seasons of several series. User will be able to stream HD video content from Hulu to their iPhone, iPad, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, TV (certain Samsung Blu-ray players and TVs), etc. using Hulu Plus apps.

But there is always a “but” when it comes to good news isn’t it? For now Hulu plus will be available only to U.S. consumers not even continental U.S. Till its official lunch on July 1^st (tomorrow), this will stay as an invite-only review access. Well for the later part just a day to wait, not much.

Apple’s App Store already offers Hulu Plus app for iPhone, iPod and iPod touch devices. Samsung has announced that it will roll out the Hulu Plus app through its Samsung Apps store for HD TVs and Blu-ray Players. Vizio and Sony will also introduce TVs and Blu-ray players with Hulu Plus support. Not only that, Sony will bring Hulu Plus service for PlayStation 3 consoles next month and it will be a part of the Xbox LIVE Gold experience in early 2011.

At the same time, Hulu plans to continue to stream shows free on its original advertising-supported site. But off course obviously, the free offerings will be more limited than what is available through the subscription service.

Now who’s up for some nonstop “Family Guy” with Hulu Plus? I am in with bells on.

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Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell –

We are delighted to announce Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 and believe the Steamworks support included will make it the best console version of the game

Short and to the point announcement with a taste of in-game footage capping off the presentation- just the way it should be. Well PC fans don’t be so sad that Valve denied you pleasure of meeting GLADOS, the sentient computer running lab Aperture Science again. Portal 2 on the PS3 could well be cross-compatible with the PC version. Valve developers are working on it, according to Valve developer Erik Johnson. But for 360 users, there seems slight hope seeing GLADOS again.

Portal one didn’t end well for GLADOS, as we all the Portal minions know of it. She ends up dead at the hands of her test subject, Chell. On Portal 2 player will get back to completely destroyed Aperture. As you can guess GLADOS will somehow relive and will rebuild the Aperture, her nemesis Chell will also return to give us another showdown. Both the game and lab will enjoy some fresh features and changes, yet Portal 2 expected to retain the personality and clever writing that made Portal 1 so popular. We expected to see some serious extended game play with this one, well not before 2011 when it’s set to be released.

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We, the end users are already seeing the sign of changes in the air. Traditional computing and mobile industry just going through a dramatic evolution, today mobile phone isn’t just a phone to call/text; computer isn’t just a computer to sit in and work in excel/word. Everything is replaced by something newer, more appealing, better, cheaper and many in one. The time for PC is coming to a dramatic end, just like how once PC replaced mini computers. And now PC is slowly (not that slow actually) but surely replaced by Mobile devices. Apple’s iPad won’t be the sole replacer but many other mobile device of such kind will soon be the primary computing device where Microsoft’s PC once ruled.

Apple lost personal computing war with Microsoft back in PC war days. Now in mobile war Apple’s new generation smash hit mobile devices gives a head start over its bitter rival Microsoft, perhaps Steve Jobs will get his revenge after all. But only if Apple manages to defeat its new rival Google, whose mobile operating system, called Android, has emerged as the biggest rival to Apple. It’s not just the device of computing that changing but as well what’s inside the device is changing as well- bottom-line whole computing thingy is changing. Google being Apple’s rival in mobile war prove that point, as Google itself do not produce Mobile device instead its mobile OS, Android (which is open source) are being used by Mobile vendors on their devices; On the contrary Apple itself produce/OEM the device(s) with its own brand of OS. So you can say mobile war being mobile OS war

According to Google’s latest numbers from its I/O conference, the company is activating approximately 100,000 new Android-based phones per day, or 9 million devices per quarter. Apple, by contrast, shipped 8.75 million iPhones last quarter. According to NPD data released in May, 2010 Android has taken second-place spot behind RIM’s OS in terms of Smartphone operating systems used. Apple allegedly trails seven percent behind Android at 21 percent. But it’s also true that Apple receives more than 15,000 new application submissions each week (iPod, iPhone and iPad combine), which are around 4 times more applications than what Android platform get.

So the scenario is in mobile war Blackberry holding the top spot with its RIM OS (for now!), Apple trailing behind RIM with its huge and variant application platform and amazing two devices (iPhone and iPad), Google coming dangerously close to Apple with its moderate platform and open source Android OS in partner with growing mobile device manufacturers.

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This Help and Support center vulnerability is eighth Zero day bug (a threat for which there is no existing patch) Microsoft has faced so far this year. The vulnerability expose by sending the XP Help and Support center a special communications protocol (hcp://) instead of a hypertransport call (http://). This HCP can be used to launch a cross-site scripting attack, with the ultimate result of taking over the user’s system just by visiting a page that’s booby-trapped with a malicious link. Bad news for MSFT this bug also exists in Windows Server 2003.

Now this is not the first or last of any bug we will see in Windows or Mac (usually lesser), there will be always something out there, the controversial point here is why this bug was disclosed publicly when there is no fix available yet. The usual protocol practiced that you tell the company and wait for a fix to be ready before telling the world about the existence of the weakness. Ormandy did notify MSFT earlier, but just after five days post the code needed to exploit the hole to an open security mailing list. Now Microsoft is furious that Ormandy disclosed the exploits without giving MSFT enough time to resolve the issue which put its customers at risk. So was he right?

Now Ormandy may be right in one sense since Microsoft (MSFT) which is not exactly known for the speed of its responses to security issues would never acted to patch the hole if Ormandy didn’t go public. Perhaps the greatest example is that 17 year old security holes Ormandy revealed in January.

There is lots of conspiracy theory already brewing up, that Ormandy may not acted alone- perhaps his employer EVIL Google was the mastermind behind this disclosure incident. Though Ormandy says in his twitter this was his own personal project and his own decision, but you know blogosphere here everything suspicious. If Ormandy would have been employee of some NUT CASE INC no one would have bother with him or his employer instead would have go after MSFT for not knowing/fixing a bug of a products that has been in the market for so many years. But since he is a Google guy, here is a chance for those Google haters (for some inconvenient reason) to take on some punch at Google; just pure corporate politics.

Ormandy might have acted hastily, or might also have acted naively but under no circumstances he acted unethical. He did notify the vendor, and waited 5 days to fix to be available- but no sign of any development. Disclosure of vulnerability (as even a crook can discover it, instead of a security researcher) doesn’t put end user as much as in risk as does unpatched bug. Instead of focusing on real problem like fixing the damn bug and save end user, playing media propaganda won’t do any good.

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I was really excited about Guitar Hero: Van Halen, but all of that excitement puffed away when I actually played it. Granted, the first 20 minutes with the game were a ton of fun, mostly because of the songs from Queen, Judas Priest, Queens of the Stone Age, Killswitch Engage, and Alter Bridge, but once I started actually diving in, I began to notice just how barebones this is. Honestly saying it was not even half as exciting as Guitar Hero: Metallica. It’s fun, but not feature filled. So you are welcome to join the joy ride.

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Me, widely known to my friends as “Kams”. I am a proud father in my late 20’s. I like to think myself as a technologist who spent past decade as web & application developer with wide variety of industry. As the site name suggest I am from a pacific island.

As my first language being not English you may (and will) find lingual mistakes, which I hope you will help me to improve. Other than that I am sure I can give you a cool ride on different exciting voyage of technology.
Welcome to kamrul.co.uk! Hope you enjoy it.

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