Most terminals these days have the ability to click on a URL and then it opens in your browser. Needless to say some terminals aren’t as simple to setup as others. I commonly use URxvt and initially didn’t think that it was possible to do. However URxvt has a rather nice Perl plug-in which expands its range of abilities. So to setup, edit or create ~/.Xdefaults and add these lines to it:
urxvt*urlLauncher: firefox
urxvt*matcher.button: 1
urxvt*perl-ext-common: default,matcher,searchable-scrollback
urxvt.matcher.pattern.1: \\bwww\\.[\\w-]\\.[\\w./?&@#-]*[\\w/-]
Now you need to make this work:
# xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults
You may need to add this command to ~/.xinitrc or whatever startup script that your desktop uses. Most systems should automatically load it when your X starts.
Whilst I chose to use firefox as the browser you can set it to any other browser, indeed if you are using Gnome a trick to use the default browser is:
urxvt*urlLauncher: gnome-open
This is actually rather handy because you can click on a variety of links not just web ones and it will open the correct tool for those links. Thanks to Nion’s blog I found out that you can colour the URLs too! Finally to those that wish to be mouseless, how about Bart’s blog for an awesome example of the abilities of URxvt!
One of the things that truly gets on my nerves is the way that ISPs are allowed to sell connections. The now ubiquotious up to. Surely someone in government or the ASA can do something about this nonsense. Up to 8M, in reality probably around 6 if you are lucky, more like 4 for the mass. It’s a horrible thing, really I would like to see them reverse the promise, at least 4M. That way you know you will not drop below that.
But now its got worse, not only do they see these unobtainable rates, now the rates you get will be constricted at “peak times” (which basically means whenever you except to use the internet). So not only do they sell rates they will not provide but they go further and restrict the rates when you want to use it. These so called “unlimited” packages all of a sudden have a limit.
The final thing that annoys me is that ISPs will reduce the cost of their packages, offer more and more options to their packages and completely neglect their existing customers. I find myself browsing the website of my ISP every 6 months just to make sure they aren’t overcharging me.
Why is noone outraged like me about this? Why is the government not stepping in and kicking the ISPs in the teeth for this abuse of its customers. Tools like iPlayer from the BBC depend on good solid rates and you’re not going to get them any time soon in the UK.
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