Do you need a brain to be a driver? I’m starting to think that no you don’t. Proof:
- Fog lights – After 6 p.m. drivers turn their fog lights on but do we have fog in Mauritius? Apart from our occasional flooding, I don’t see anything!!! So I guess they either want to blind you or they are bloody stupid or these poor guys are visually impaired. Pity!
- Horning – Last Tuesday I was driving to go lunch and I was stuck behind a car which was itself stuck in traffic. However, behind me, another car was horning. So what were we supposed to do? My car is neither Knight Rider nor the car of Inspector Gadget and unfortunately I can’t fly over traffic. To teach the guy a lesson, I drove a 5 Km/h after the traffic had cleared but then he didn’t horn! Pity!
- A guy was in his car in the middle of the road and couldn’t bother to get into a car park! Parking in the middle of the road is so much nicer. I horned him and he stepped out to see me. “Move man!” I said. He stepped back in and followed by advice (most likely his brain couldn’t come to that conclusion alone) too get in the car park and out of the way. A brain please!
- Flasher. What the hell is this device? I guess it’s a useless accessory found in car these days. You want to turn: just turn. Signalling your intention is a waste of energy. Imagine the amount of calories required to trigger that flaser switch!
Father in heaven, oh hear my prayer and give drivers a brain.
The original OLPC laptop is great; it’s a small device that’s very robust but the XO-2 laptop is another story: it’s awesome!!! I saw that today and my immediate reaction was “I want one”. It’s supposed to cost $75 but I don’t mind participating in the programme buy two and donate one to a child in a developping country.
As you can see, there’s no keyboard, just a screen and it’s going to be a touch screen! It’s small I agree but imagine the possibilities; you want to read a book, it becomes a book. You want to use it as a computer, a keyboard appears and it becomes a laptop!
Mauritius is currently not part of the project and I think we really need to push forward the idea. We might not have the critical mass required here but we could certainly participate with India or Madagascar or some other African country.
As I’ve said before, one of the reasons I’m using Linux is because of it’s increadible stability and laziness on my part (can’t be bothered to fight spyware, virusses, updates from Microsoft that break your system,…) and unfortunately Kunbuntu 8.04 with KDE 4 is not giving me that stability!
The “worrying part” about that is I’m not getting any information about when is the next Kubuntu LTS coming out – LTS versions gaurantees stability and Long Term Support. KDE 4.0 is certainly not stable but will KDE 4.1 provide enough stability to be an LTS? I’m starting to wonder … Moreover, I don’t see Canonical using KDE 3.* as the next LTS since it will have to be supported for years and KDE 3.* might not be receiving much support then!
- – -
On my laptop, I’m still using Dapper Drake and God it’s stable! However, after using that for so long, I wouldn’t mind a change. In the next few days I’ll be investigating Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE 3 on my desktop – I’m getting rid of KDE 4 – oufffff!!! If it’s good I’m moving over on my laptop as well.
Today (or rather tonight) we celebrate the International AIDS Candlelight Memorial. It’s not just about lighting with a candle; it’s a about raising awareness about AIDS in the World and Mauritius.
For too long in Mauritius we have adopted an ostrich policy and despite all the talk sexual education is still not yet in our schools (the syringe exchange programme is however an excellent initiative); it’s still taboo – but the exchange of pornographic clips is not!!! We’ve broken many barriers and there are still a lot more in the way.
Special hats’ off to PILS and their continuing effort to inform people about AIDS in Mauritius.
This must be one of the rare times that I’ll have a review which features negative comments on Linux! Like many KDE fans around, I was pretty much excited by announcement of KDE 4 and the promise of a better looking interface that’s lighter than KDE 3. So when Hardy Heron was released, of course I couldn’t help but try but my experience with it has been a bit disappointing – maybe coz I’ve been used to much higher standards from Linux.
The test platform:
- Pentium IV – 2.4 GHz
- 512 MB DDR 2 RAM
- NVidia Geforce 4000 MX (not great at all)
- Hard Disk – 180 GB
- Wired Ethernet, DVD,…
Installation
The Installation is very smooth (I’m using the alternate edition), in less than one hour you are done. Note that I’m now used to the partitioning system.
First Look
Not bad; the login screen is so so – could have been improved and once you get started you are welcome with the new default desktop and the taskbar is black. The starting menu has also changed; the applications are grouped into categories.
Beyond appearances: the good, the bad and the ugly
The good
- No need to add repositories
- Previously in Kubuntu, you had to add all sort of repositories; enabling multiverse, … and that would allow additional programs to be included – even onts. Now this is no longer required – the only programs not available that I had to download seperately are realplayer, adobe acrobat and skype.
- Amarok & MP3
- Previously you had to get libxine extracodes or similar to play mp3. Now, just start amarok and try to play an mp3 file. It will say that it cannot play mp3 by default but it will prompt you to install the required library which will automatically be installed through adept.
- Nice Interface
- KDE 4 is definitely nice and plasma-extragear will give you additional widgets.
- – -
The bad
- Random quirks
- On installing firefox in adept, it’s firefox 3 beta that got installed. Why the hell is it not the stable Firefox 2 in there
- Firefox would not appear in the starting menu (same with Amarok) after they were installed in adept. They could howver be launched with Run
- The initial OpenGL drivers do not support blur, fade, … or any other eyecandy. However, the Nvidia drivers are easy to install.
- FAT32 partitions
- My FAT32 partitions (where my music is stored) did not appear by default in Amarok. It’s only when I played with dolphin that they appeared.
- – -
The Ugly
- Instability
- Since blur, fade and … did not work with the official; I chose to use XRender as renderer and it failed. If failed miserably and the system became incredibly slow.
- The taskbar disappeared
- For I don’t know what reason, the taskbar disappeared and I couldn’t get it back. I tried to install Kicker but it turned out to be the taskbar of KDE 3 and not of KDE 4. Finally I preferred to reinstall everything
- Show Desktop icon and taskbar widgets
- Very strangely, there is no “Show Desktop” icon and widgets cannot be added to taskbar! What the heck? The “Show Desktop” icon is particularly useful and it seems that is is replaced by CTRL + F12. Sorry that’s lame since the taskbar is not visible in this mode and even worse when you launch new applications, they do not appear!
KDE 4 is a step in the right direction but it is a technology that will need time to mature and I now understand why Cannonical has decided that Kubuntu 8.04 won’t be LTS. For now, I’ll be sticking to Dapper on my laptop coz one of the prime reasons I’m using ubuntu is it’s incredible stability which is currently not available in Kubuntu 8.04.
Incandescent bulbs use a lot of money and so we should (in order to try to reduce our energy bill) to try to use the low-energy bulbs but guess what, the latter are four times more expensive – Rs 20 v/s Rs 80!
If we want to convert Mauritius to an eco-park, we should surely try to fix that. Luckily I heard sometime back that the Central Electricity Board is going to come up with a scheme to exchange Incandescent bulbs for low-energy ones; let’s hope I’ve heard correctly!
The championships are over and our “bilan” is two silver medals – not bad for a small country with 1.2 million people.
Congratulations to Stephan Buckland (silver medal – 200m race) and Jonathan Chimier (silver medal – long jump) and to the whole Mauritian team. We’ll do better next time in Osaka 
.
Sportsmen in Mauritius
I don’t think that our athletes get the respect they deserve here. They are representing Mauritius on the International scene and yet they get a meagre financial allowance each month. Even worse, when they are injured and can’t participate in tournaments, their already meagre allowance is reduced – the logic is: you are not running, so u won’t get paid! What the crap? If tomorrow the Minister of Youth and sports is ill, is his salary cut?
Also, our sportsmen are among the few people who have a page on Wikipedia and yet, it’s nearly empty. It’s time someone (I unfortunately can’t do it since I don’t know enough about these guys), for example at the Ministry of Sports and Youth, fills up their page!
Every first of May in Mauritius, it’s the same old story. All political parties gather their troops (the troops are happy to come since there’s a free picnic and briani that follows) and try to show that they are the greatest.
In the afternoon, MBC will lavishly show (from all possible angles) the crowd gathered by the government (and sometimes even quote “estimates”) saying that the government has definitely gathered more people for the picnic after the show; it doesn’t matter if you’ve not been to the government’s gathering, you’ll get to see it at least 3 times! The next day, the newspapers will say otherwise, of course the opposition got more people, quoting their own “estimates”.
The afternoon of the 2nd or 3rd of May is then marked by representatives of the governing party saying how biased the journalists from the press are while the opposition will be full of praise for the same guys.
For us, it’s another long wait – a whole year – for the next free picnic; oops I’ve never been to such a gathering yet; so no briani for me 
.
