Unity redemption?

So, I wasn't at fault when I criticized Unity Launcher: 12.04 introduces the top-left-corner activation that solves the "browser back button" syndrome.

ZSH substr

One handy shortcut for getting all the characters except the first 2:

SHORTSTRING=$LONGSTRING[3,-1]

The negative offset is relative to the end of the string.

Superior User Experience

So, here it is, the fabled Apple user experience...
Choose a language:

I'm italian, so...
Holland???
Would it be difficult to propose Italy as a default location, given that I've just choosen Italian as a language?

WNDR3800 new firmware

This old blog post has gathered some interest lately.
Maybe it was spot on, because Netgear released a new firmware for the WNDR3800 that promise some NTFS improvements, as the readme says.
So, here are the new tests with firmware version V1.0.0.32:

root@pc:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=t/testfile bs=4096 count=102400
102400+0 records in
102400+0 records out
419430400 bytes (419 MB) copied, 27.8515 s, 15.1 MB/s

root@pc:~# dd if=t/testfile of=/dev/null
819200+0 records in
819200+0 records out
419430400 bytes (419 MB) copied, 41.313 s, 10.2 MB/s

and the updated table:

Format	Read MB/s	Write MB/s
local USB	27.7	28.7
NTFS	10.2	15.1
ext2	12.0	19.6
FAT	10.2	14.6

NTFS now has reasonable performance, but ext2 is still the best choice.