Rod Kovel is a lawyer who doesn’t understand a thing about technology, but that doesn’t stop him from writing about it! I’m not going to link to his uninformed flamebait here, but you can follow the links through Groklaw, whose analysis of the situation had my sides hurting from laughter. Don’t miss his epic rant on Konqueror linked in the comments.
Firefox is a nice browser, but it’s very Gnome-centric. In a KDE environment, it’s totally clueless about what application to use to open any downloaded file. Here’s a little fix I came up with (although probably many others have thought of this) that associates all files with a kfmclient script which is smart enough to do the right thing.
Update (1 Feb 2009): I’ve incorporated suggestions from several commenters (thanks!):
which xdg-open and note the output. On my machine it’s /usr/bin/xdg-open.If for some reason this doesn’t work for you, you might try the instructions from the original version of this post:
- Make the script:
mkdir -p ~/bin
echo -e '#!/bin/bash\nkfmclient exec $1' > ~/bin/kdeff.sh
chmod +x ~/bin/kdeff.sh- Show Firefox who’s boss by double-clicking a file in the Downloads list, choosing to open that file with the script we just created, and checking the box to remember the association for all files.
- You’re done. Notice the “Open Containing Folder” option also works now. You’re welcome. :)
Editorial note: Another solution to this problem is to use Opera, which in my experience, does the right thing on every platform. This has the added benefit of entirely bypassing the extension-hunt-wait-grind-your-teeth-dance that happens with every new version of Firefox. Every extension I have for Firefox duplicates functionality that is built into Opera by default, with the exception of NoScript for which I haven’t found an Opera match, although they’re getting very close.
The EFF’s Switzerland tool is a command-line Python utility designed to detect if your ISP is forging or modifying your packets.
Professor James Duane of Regent Law School explains why you should never talk to the police. Ever. Under any circumstances. Veteran officer George Bruch of the Virginia Beach Police Department confirms. What amazes me the most about Duane’s talk is how anyone can speak so fast and yet still be comprehensible and convincing. Talk about oratorical prowess!
“The DelFly Micro only weighs 3 grams and has a size of 10 cm from wing tip to wing tip. This makes it the smallest flying ornithopter carrying a camera in the world!”
