Crazy little planet called Earth

Sometime back, the only Operating System that could be used by “commoners” was Windows and MacOS if you had a Mac – now that Apple has open its architecture, Windows (and Linux) can be installed as well. Unix was absolutely impossible to use and Linux despite the best effort of the open-source community still required you to be a geek.

However, things are changing: if you have a look at the latest Kubuntu, you will notice that user-friendliness has moved a long way (and eye candy, especially with KDE 4 seems to have little to envy from Vista) but it’s still not there yet! What users would like is:

• automatic detection and configuration of all hardware
  • starndard hardware is recognized but if you just step aside this circle, well well drivers tend to get scarce
• automatic detection and recognition of all external devices plugged in
  • nearly there
• music (mp3), video, DVDs, … play seamlessly
  • is possible but publishers will have to stop their aversion of non open-source software
• lots of software
  • this is a viscious circle: more software will be available if the demand increases and for the demand to increase people must move to linux and people do not want to move to linux coz there’s too few software
    • games is still a big issue though!!!
  • honestly this is a myth(apart from games): most people need only a browser, office software and music players and all that is available!

Once these 4 objectives are met, Microsoft and Apple will have to start worrying coz people will no longer be keen to pay $120 for an OS. The only question is when will all that happen? Soon I hope

(Note: Linux in the above comes mainly from my using Kubuntu and Suse – I have an aversion for Red Hat )

I’ll be echoing something I saw on the Linux and Open Souce Blog here: Linux Reader – Get access to Linux files from Windows

Usually it’s the reverse that we attempt to do; i.e., we try to see our NTFS and FAT32 drives from Linux but being able to do the reverse is quite nice as well.
The magical software that’ll allow you to do that is DiskInternals Linux Reader. It’s a small software – 0.7 MB – that can be can be downloaded from http://www.diskinternals.com/about.shtml and once installed, you can, from Windows, see everything. Unfortunately, I couldn’t copy files from my linux partitions to my Windows partitions – that option on would have made this software a little wonder.

Christmas, my preferred time of the year – that’s what I miss the most from England: huge christmas trees, christmas carols, skating rink, Santas everywhere, … (even if it’s just commercial, I love all that stuff)

There has been a lot of controversy regarding genetic engineering and ethics during the past years, so much so that it is sometimes thought to be hampering scientific progress in the field!

The controversy arises mainly from using human stem cells which up to now can only be found in human embryos but there’s also a lot of fear that through genetic engineering, we will have a “Godly” control over humans – we will be able to create custom-made people. We are going against nature!

Oh really!!!
Well I cannot deny that choosing the right genes and turning them on and turning the bad ones off is not how nature works but if you know a bit of evolution, what we are doing is speeding up evolution. Through evolution (survival of the fittest), only the fittest organism survive and in some way, it is the organism that has the right combination of good genes on. Of course if we are not careful we could end up taking the wrong exit on the genetic engineering superhighway and end up with “monstrous” creatures.

Will that happen? Do you want a sincere answer from me? Yes i do believe it will happen, simply because if it can happen, it will happen but is that a reason to stop all research in genetic engineering? Hell NO! We badly need it – I’ll tell you why but first a small diversion: did we stop making cars coz accidents killed people – we need cars? (Also, did we stop making guns whose sole purpose is to kill people? ) We have to be careful with genetic engineering but we cannot afford to stop it!

Our society is against nature
Consider me: my dad has diabetes and my grandad had parkinson – 2 genetically inherited diseases – which means that I’m most likely going to get them someday. Why am I getting them? Simply because society has allowed people, which nature would have got rid of, to live – nature very savagely gets rid of people it does not see fit to live but we humans get in the way of nature and allow people with diseases to live. I’m not saying: let all sick people die – we’re humans, living in a society and we care for members of our society but we got in the way of nature and we have to accept that.

A catastrophic forecast of this is humans contine spreading their bad genes (genes causing diabetes, heart disease,… ) to thier kids and eventually the human race becomes one that is over dependent on pills and all sort of medication and that from an early age. (Eventually our society crumbles and even Bruce Willis won’t be able to save the world this time!)

How to correct that?
Genetic engineering might be a way. If we manage to switch off the genes that carry some inherited diseases, we might stop getting them and as we know more and more of our human genome, we might, why not, switch on some interesting genes. In a certain way, at some point, I fear that genetic engineering might be the only way out for the human race.

Anyway, we want it or not, science will progress – Eppur si muove (but still it turns)

Again, this post shows only my point of view and it might be inaccurate. Feel free to comment

Today I went for a catamaran trip on the west coast of Mauritius – the main interest of which being dolphins. Indeed for some time now, a group of dolphin has been known to inhabit the bay of Tamarin and since then it has been a major tourist attraction. Incidentally the year 2007 has been declared as International Year of the Dolphin by the UN.

We started our trip at 9:30 near the Centre de Peche and the first destination the dolphins. 3 catamarans and a mutitude of small boats were on the look-out for the aquatic mammals at the “usual rendez-vous spot” and eventually the dolphins showed themselves and the “chase” began!

Yes it’s a chase! As soon as the dolphins appear, all the boats rush to them but these smart mammals quickly disappear to re-emerge at another location. Personally I don’t know who was having most fun: us or them? After some 30 mins of going here and there, we left and went to a spot for some diving and now, it was time for the dolphins to chase us. They were playfully swimming in front of the catamaran jumping here and there.

The rest of the trip was composed of diving near the reefs, BBQ on the catamaran and a boat trip to Ile aux Benitiers.

Ile of Benitiers

Some 15 years back, I went to Ile aux Benitiers and I like it a lot but this time what I saw was appaling! I stayed a very short time there and was only on the west coast of the island and my account below is going to tell only that (hope that what I did not see is better).

The island is polluted: plastic bottles and coconuts thrown here and there, trees are burnt and even the beach shows traces of a badly lit BBQ and the sea is even worse: there’s a lot of sea weed – most likely the result of fertilizers washed in the lagoon – and there’s only a small spot where you can swim.

The whole situation is really appaling and I unfortunately do not have any photos to show that!

I came across an interesting video on youtube that is attracting a lot of attention:

The modern day beauty needs to have the following stereotypes: slim, smooth skin, juicy lips, long silky hair, small nose, small chin, (as mentionned by Jane Ein her post Irvin Penn and Female Beauty), and busty round boobs, round booty (in Mauritius: be white). If a girl doesn’t have that, makeup, photoshop and plastic surgery will help.

Yet, going back to the paintings to the renaissance, paintings depicted women otherwise as shown below in the famous painting by Botticelli – The Birth of Venus

So when did this change in stereortypes occur? That should lead to an interesting discussion…

The Geminids (in December)  and the Perseids (in August) are the two best meteo shower display every year. Since we are in December, it’s the Geminids that i’m going to talk about.

Meteor shower???
In simple terms, on the 13th and 14th of December, we are supposed to see lots of shooting stars – up to 100 per hour   according to New Scientist – that’s many wishes to make! More exactly, during that time of the year, the path of the earth intersects that of the debris (small rocks) following 3200 Phaethon (an asteroid) and these debris crash and burn in our atmosphere producing shooting stars.

The Geminids have puzzled astronomers for years since most meteor shower emerge from comets but for the Gemenids, it emerges from an asteroid!

How do I see them?
The Geminids meteor shower seem to emerge from the Gemini constellation  (thus their name) but most of the time they are more visible in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere but unfortunately I’m not knowledgable enough in astronomy to recommend a best time to see them in Mauritius.

I recently saw a short (but sweet) interview of Sir Timothy Berners-Lee by Robert Scoble. Sir Tim was talking about his view of Web 3.0 and the new things that are coming out (SPARKLE, a way to export your friends’ details to different social networking, The Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), …) and I’m dying to see his lectures now.

So let’s talk a bit of the web and it’s evolution.

Initially God (Sir Tim in our case) invented the Web and it was good. It began slowly then boum exploded and exponentially progressed to what we commonly refer to now as Web 1.0. But Web 1.0 was quite static and we (Internauts) were mere observers!

Then came Web 2.0 with Ajax, Wikis, Blogs, RSS, Social Networking,… and suddenly power shifted hands and we Internauts were given the power! The web has exploded and we now have millions of sites, and also, we now need to remember several different passwords (mails, many sites require us to register,…) and also we need to fill in the same information over and over again each time we register to a site.

Web 3.0 (from what I’ve gathered) is supposedly going to be about meaning, meaning of information, semantics: the web is full data but they are all disjoint and as such do not make much sense. The World Wide Web Consortiums is already working in that direction and SPARQL (a sort of SQL for the Web) is going to help us in that endeavour. Also Web 3.0 should also help us with solving our Virtual Multiple Personality Disorder (20 or more different logins and passwords) and cure the insatiable thirst of website for knowing about us!

But the web is now so massive that we must be very careful, else it will devour us. So the WSRI has been setup to “to examine the World Wide Web and offer the practical solutions needed to help guide its future use and design”. Of course, the web is now about people and will be about people but some guidance won’t cause any harm.

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As a final note, I’d just like to comment on the title of this post Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0,… According to many “pundits” it’s a marketting term that doesn’t mean anything!

Once again we’ve hit the dry season in Mauritius and as usual when we open our taps, nothing happens or if you are incredibly lucky, you get a thin silvery trickle.

If water is not running from your tap it doesn’t mean that it’s the same everywhere – though I’m now forced to shower with cold water (not enough water pressure) in the morning and recently in the evening as well (thank you God, the dry season isn’t in winter) I know of regions in Mauritus where the pressure has only decreased – nothing more than that ( I won’t tell you where – that’s Mauritius – instead of giving those who have no water they’ll cut where water is flowing from taps). Anway as George Orwell taught us in Animal Farm, everyone is equal but some are more equal than others!

But do we really lack water? The water level in our reservoir is “decreasing at an alarming rate” and we need to save water (except the 40% that lost because there are holes in the pipes of the water system). So when there is a hole in a pipe, be sure to repair it and inform the CWA about it (but who is to inform them about the 40% water leakage in their own pipes).

Anyway that’s Mauritius!