Insert this script inside of the root directory containing all of the files and folders that contain illegal characters.

Run this command:  find -d . -print0 | xargs -0 /Users/$HOME/Desktop/rename_for_windows (or whatever you named your file)

The script:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# This script renames all the files supplied as command-line args
# where necessary so that the filename is acceptable to MS Windows
# Cameron Hayne (macdev@hayne.net), June 2004

use strict;

chomp(@ARGV = <STDIN>) unless @ARGV;

# The Microsoft document at
# http://support.microsoft.com/default…b;EN-US;100108
# says that the following characters are not allowed in filenames
# in each of the specified filesystems:
# FAT:   .  “  /  \  [  ]  |  :  ;  ,  =
# NTFS:  ?  “  /  \  <  >  |  :  *

# We don’t do anything with the dot (.) since it clearly is allowable
# in spite of what that document says.
# And we don’t do anything with the slash (/) since that character
# will not occur in OS X filenames and modifying it would cause
# troubles when a file path (with directories) is specified.
# The changing of the filenames is done via the ‘tr’ statements below.
# Each occurence of a character in the first curly brackets
# is replaced by the character in the second curly brackets.

foreach my $filename (@ARGV)
{
my $orig_filename = $filename;

$filename =~ tr{\\}{-};
$filename =~ tr{*?}{X};
$filename =~ tr{“><[]|:;,’=}{_};

unless ($filename eq $orig_filename)
{
print “About to rename $orig_filename to $filename\n”;
if (-e $filename)
{
print “Oops, there already exists a file named $filename\n”;
print “Skipping the rename – you will have to do it manually\n”;
}
else
{
rename($orig_filename, $filename);
}
}
}

Firefox 3 set a Guiness Book World Record for most downloads in a day.  Approximately, 8,002,530 downloads were registered in a 24 hour period.  Like Apple with the new iPhone 3G, Mozilla couldn’t quite meet demand and there was a temporary outage.  Let me tell you, both products are fabulous and worth all the hype!

Sorry it’s taken us so long, but we wanted to wait for at least one update before releasing an updated MSI installer of Firefox with the Flash and Shockwave plugins.

Firefox 3.0.1 with Flash 9 and Shockwave 11 plug-ins

Pidgin 2.4.3 with Guifications and Pidgin Encryption plug-ins

Enjoy!

The best way to introduce great open source software to others is not necessarily getting them to switch their entire computing lifestyle to all open source, but rather to get them trying and using a few applications at a time on Windows or Mac OS X. With that goal in mind, Firefox, Pidgin, and the GIMP are all terrific programs that can really help improve the overall computing experience on non-Linux systems and get people curious about open source software such as a Linux desktop like Ubuntu or Red Hat.

To help make deployment easier for system administrators, we’ve packaged up some leading open source software in Microsoft’s MSI installer format.

Firefox 2.0.14 with Flash 9.0.124 and Shockwave 11 plugins

Pidgin 2.4.1 with Pidgin Encryptin and Guification plugins

Gimp 2.4.5 with Online Help Manuals

ClamWin Anti-Virus .93

Prometheon works with whatever our customers choose to use. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, you name it. Naturally, being a company whose name derives from the Greek Titan that took fire from the Gods and gave it to the common man, we see open source paralleling that great story and prefer Linux and open source to Windows and OS X in nearly every case where it’s appropriate for the customer’s need. However, Microsoft still holds a tenuous mindshare of the enterprise computing space and it’s interesting to see how Microsoft is trying to purposely misrepresent Linux. As Ghandi once said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” We’re somewhere in between ridicule and fighting in the open source vs. proprietary fight with Microsoft.

In needing to keep up with Microsoft’s latest offerings, which serve more to line their pockets by getting their customers to upgrade more frequently, I receive a newsletter from them every so often. Microsoft decided to do a UAC or User Access Control vs the time tested and proven Unix/Linux sudo which means “super user do”. Anyone who is familiar with the sudo command will find this video amusing. Microsoft has purposely added extra steps to make a Linux account have elevated sudo privileges, leaving out how easy it is to simply just switch to the root account when logged in as someone else, and do what needs to be done without having to have someone log out. Better yet, you can manage the a Linux desktop user’s privileges through either NIS, OpenLDAP, or heaven forbid, Linux tied to Microsoft’s own Active Directory!

So watch out for Microsoft’s FUD campaign. As the saying goes, Deny, Deny, Deny, even when someone has pictures that say otherwise, just deny the truth!

libpurple:
* Fixed a number of MSN bugs introduced in 2.3.0, resolving problems
connecting to MSN and random local display name changes
* Going idle on MySpaceIM will no longer clear your status and message.
* Idle MySpaceIM buddies should now appear online at login.
* Fixed crashes in XMPP when discovering a client’s capabilities
* Don’t set the current tune title if it’s NULL (XMPP/Google Talk)
* Don’t allow buddies to be manually added to Bonjour
* Don’t advertise IPv6 on Bonjour because we don’t support it
* Compile fixes for FreeBSD and Solaris
* Update QQ client version so some accounts can connect again
* Do not allow ISON requests to stack in IRC, preventing flooding IRC
servers when temporary network outages are restored
* Plug several leaks in the perl plugin loader
* Prevent autoaccept plugin overwriting existing files