Number of “Arun Sharma”s on facebook? Felt a bit bored this morning and clicked through the list. Final tally: 290+. No wonder I get so much spam in my inbox (firstname.lastname@gmail.com). Many of them are just cases of mistaken identity or phishing in the name of some bank that does business in India.
Getting X right with various chipsets continues to be a challenge to open source challengers to the desktop crown. Installed Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex this morning. Everything goes fine - except for graphics.
The bug seems to have been reported for both Fedora and Ubuntu
The workaround that worked for me:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Option "DRI" "false"
EndSection
I had to use the following in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get acceptable performance on a old PC with Ubuntu 8.04 installed.
Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" Option "AGPMode" "4" Option "ColorTiling" "1" EndSection
೨೯೯ ಅಮೇರಿಕನ್ ಡಾಲರ್ (೧೨೦೦೦ ರುಪಾಯಿ) ಕೊಡಿ ಮತ್ತು ಕೊಳ್ಳಿರಿ ಚಿಕ್ಕದೊಂದು ಲ್ಯಾಪ್-ಟಾಪ್. ಕೆಲವು ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಮುಂಚೆ ಸಿಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್ ಅಂತ ಹೆಸರಿನ ಒಂದು ಕಂಪನಿಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಹಲವಾರು ಪತ್ರಿಕೆಗಳು ಮೇಲೆ ಮೇಲೆ ಲೇಖನಗಳನ್ನು ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಿದ್ದು ನಿಮಗೆ ನೆನಪಿರಬಹುದು.
ಹೊಸಾ ಪೀಳಿಗೆಯ ಈ ಯಂತ್ರಗಳು ನಮ್ಮ ಜನರಿಗೆ ಹೇಳಿ ಮಾಡಿಸಿದಂಥ ಸಾಧನ. ಆದರೆ ಯಾರೂ ಇದರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಬರೆದಿದ್ದು ಕಾಣಲ್ಲಾ. ಹಲೋ?
Tom Friedman writes in NY Times about how US should sustain high oil prices to force research in alternative and domestic sources of energy.
This was disputed by Henry C.K. Liu of Asia Times in a lengthy four page article, full of interesting data and analysis, but rambling at times and lacking a sharp focus.
Select quotes.
In other words, higher energy prices do not take money out of the economy, they merely shift profit allocation from one business sector to another. More than $365 billion a year goes to foreign oil producers who then must recycle their oil dollars back into US Treasury bonds or other dollar assets, as part of the rules of the game of dollar hegemony. The simple fact is that a rise in monetary value of assets adds to the monetary wealth of the economy.
The fact of the matter is that the US already controls most of the world’s oil without war, by virtue of oil being denominated in dollars that the US can print at will with little penalty. Petro-war is launched to protect dollar hegemony, which requires oil to be denominated in dollars, not physical access to oil. Much anti-war posturing in an election year is merely campaign rhetoric.
For those of you not interested in reading this - his argument about “political economics” can be summarized as complex math, where you’re asked to do “2+2″ for variable values of 2. Another key argument is that the big guys (Wall Street, Arabs) are always going to protect themselves with “hedging” - so it’s the little guy who always loses. And a bunch of other insightful stats about money supply (translation: how you become poorer with constant bank balance and low inflation - which is manipulated by governments).
In the end, it’s clear that Friedman is a journalist and Liu is an economist.
I’m still alive. I survived a nearly 24 hour email blackout. You don’t believe it? Here’s a tip for other people attempting this stunt. Read lots of news. After you’re done, search for more news. Then some gadget blogs, followed by message boards. Don’t forget to drink lots of water.
It didn’t help that xname crashed around the same time. It was excruciatingly painful to click on network tools to see the TTL on my SOA record go down to zero at midnight. The final piece of the puzzle was to disable the DSL firewall (which is on by default to keep the kids safe).
Hopefully the site is faster now. Do let me know if you see problems.
There are several examples like that, that we have to address without worrying about the fundamentalism in some of the open-source community,” he said. “One can be an open-source advocate without being an open-source fundamentalist.
– John Negroponte, Founder, OLPC project
Best buy, Netflix and now Walmart — all claim that they have heard from consumers that they should dump HD-DVD for Blu-ray. However a cursory glance of player sales data at top retailers will tell you that they’re lying through their teeth. On the other hand it’s more likely that they got a big cash infusion or favorable business terms on something else for their actions.
HD-A30 is #2 selling DVD player on Amazon. Blu-ray players are no where in sight. In fact, 85% of them are supposed to be PS3s. Next come the disc sales. Blu-ray here seems to maintain an edge with around 60% or so market share. But I think the size of the market overall for $40 DVDs is very small.
The corporations are going to do whatever gets them the most profit (more DRM, more proprietary stuff). It’s pretty clear to me that HD-DVD is in the interest of consumers.
Netflix and best buy made announcements today, which they had no business of doing. I don’t particularly care about the best buy announcement. If you took their advice, you’ll be paying $$$ for extended warranty anyway.
But the netflix one really bothers me. I sent them a mail making it clear that this one has to be settled by consumers. And that if they don’t offer HD-DVDs, I’ll look elsewhere.
So go ahead - order those cheap HD-DVD players from Amazon. May the format that offers most quality for your dollar win. $400 blu-ray player? Give me a break.
