by on 29 Apr 2005 7 Comments

Mac OS X Tiger released today

Hi guys and gals,

I have some secrets (?) to tell you all : (1) I don’t like Micro$oft and Windoze is crap, (2) Linux and the Opensource movement are just fantastic, but (3) one day, I’ll buy an Apple Mac OS X Powerbook and stop using Linux as my main OS…

Why ?

Because I’m fascinated by Apple hardware and the Mac OS X operating system.

The Powerbook I’m dreaming of every night has the following configuration : 1.5GHz PowerPC G4 processor ; 1GB DDR333 SDRAM; 15″ screen ; 64MB Video RAM ; 8x DVD±RW drive ; 80GB Ultra ATA drive ; Wifi enabled.

Furthermore, the Mac OS X operating system has a fantastic architecture. It’s basically the Aqua user interface running on an Opensource Unix-based foundation. And, as such, most Linux applications just simply run.

Mac OS X Tiger, which is going to be released today, is revolutionary according to Apple. The OS will introduce a new technology, Spotlight.

Spotlight is a lightning-fast search technology which completely decouples the user from the physical filesystem. There is no need now to remember where files or folders are. Spotlight keeps track of everything using metadata and it can also look inside documents (PDF or whatever). Smart folders (a la smart playlists of iTunes) can easily be created by the user. This will change the whole way of interacting with a computer.

The Powerbook comes with iLife ’05 which is a suite of very powerful applications like iPhoto (which I’ll use to manipulate photos from my hypothetical Nikon D70), iMovie HD (which I’ll use to edit DV recordings of Kyan and Anya), iDVD (which I’ll use to burn commercial quality DVD of the kids), iTunes (which I’ll use to listen to my extensive music collection) and, perhaps GarageBand (because as an existing owner of Logic, I will surely upgrade mine to the latest Logic Pro 7 version)

Better yet, Football Manager 2005 (which is the best computer game ever) runs on Mac OS X.

And, as far as software development is concerned, one can easily develop in C or C++ because gcc is pre-installed (and is used to build Mac OS X itself) and Java (as a VM is also pre-installed). So, no problem at all to run Eclipse or even KDevelop…

But, to really leverage the power of this fantastic machine, I’m ready to adopt the freely available Xcode IDE, learn Objective C and start using the Cocoa framework.

Message to Christina and (perhaps) Steve Jobs : I want a Mac !

Filed Under: Apple, Technology
by on 26 Apr 2005 3 Comments

No Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq

… according to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency and/or Club of International Amateurs)

“[I]nvestigation into Saddam Hussein’s purported arsenal, the CIA[...] said his search for weapons of mass destruction “has been exhausted” without finding any.”

“The Bush administration justified its 2003 invasion of Iraq as necessary to eliminate Hussein’s purported stockpile of [Weapons of Mass Destruction]“

So, basically, the invasion of Iraq by British and US-led troops and the subsequent war, is based on a political lie (with the only objective, IMHO, of getting Bush re-elected). From some sources, “[Iraqi] oil infrastructure was secured for financial reasons as well as strategic”.

Being a cynic, I must say that during this illegal war, only few civilians died…

Only 24,000…

And, frankly, who cares?

They were only Iraqis after all…

Filed Under: News
by on 23 Apr 2005 1 Comment

Same as 15 years ago…

Last night, we were at La Cuvette near Grand Baie until midnight. Of course, we had our usual “corne” party, drank a lot of Phoenix, sang segas and mari koz kaka (+ politik).

Here’s the those who were present : Prema & Ashvin ; Nyeshka & Jeneeta & Nirish ; Heishta & Neeta & Sanjeev ; Kyan & Anya & Christina & Avinash.

What was fantastic about this event is the atmosphere… It was exactly the same as what we had 10-15 years ago when we did our feu de camp at Flic en Flac.

(For those interested: the initial plan was to go to Choisy, but they because of lack of lighting (and some other more serious matters), we decided to go to La Cuvette. On the road, we bought some KFC in Grand Baie and drank 2 bottles of beer. Arriving at La Cuvette, the police told us that we couldn’t do a “foyer” so we were prepared to go to Ajeev’s place. But then, after negociations by yours truely :-), we finaly could light our fire at a very specific spot under a fantastic moonlight…)

Photo courtesy ilemaurice.org

Filed Under: News
by on 22 Apr 2005 Leave a Comment

Some thoughts about GNOME 3.0…

As you might know, I am a GNOME user even though I like some great KDE (or Qt) applications like AmaroK, K3B and LyX.

I’ve been reading a lot about GNOME’s future lately. In fact, according to Havoc Pennington, the lead developer of GNOME, as most users are rather satisfied with GNOME 2.x (which is a great environment to work in IMHO), most developers are busy correcting bugs in this version of GNOME instead of working towards a radically different GNOME 3.0.

As put by Havoc, “the GNOME 2 desktop, as shipped by most everyone, is the GNOME environment plus Firefox plus OpenOffice.org plus Evolution or Thunderbird”. Any radical change in the GNOME UI will require that those additional software also change their UI in the name of consistency. And I personally don’t see that happenning yet (especially OpenOffice.org which has a dreadful UI compared to the others).

Havoc concludes by saying that “GNOME 3 should be a fork [of GNOME 2]“ because “the forces of existing userbase, the easiest-to-reach future userbase, cross-platform applications, and funded development efforts are strongly pulling GNOME 2 toward conservatism.”

“And I think this [inclination to maintain the existing or traditional order] makes a temporary (but probably multi-year) fork almost mandatory. Trying to do GNOME 3 “in place” will destabilize GNOME 2 while preventing the structural changes that would have value.”

Personally, I really feel we need a breakthrough in UI design. The whole Desktop metaphor has been used to the full. What will the next metaphor be ?

Filed Under: Linux
by on 18 Apr 2005 Leave a Comment

Renault Megane : an update

We’ve had our Renault Megane for 8 months now and it’s time for me to tell you what I feel about the car.

I am pretty much satisfied… :-)

The car looks very nice, has a pretty powerful engine (1.4 litres but 98 British horsepower), is very secure (with a total of 6 airbags which I don’t intend to test :-)) and is very comfortable. In fact, Christina and I have bought two car seats for Anya and Kyan and, frankly, I feel so happy driving with my wife next to me and my two kids securely fastened in the rear seats. It sure beats our previous car, a Toyota Corolla, which had deficient seats belts which precluded the use of car seats…

The engine is really smooth and the car is easy to drive (if you check the tyre pressure regularly). Fuel consumption is about 10 litres for 100 km (we tend to drive a lot in Quatre-Bornes and Reduit) which is about 31 miles per gallon for our still archaic friends. The car has an onboard computer giving (among other infomation) the instantaneous fuel consumption which helps a lot in choosing a correct driving technique.

The CD player is OK but not spectacular. I guess I should have opted for the optional Cabasse system instead… Well, next time then :-)

We’ve had one problem though that has still not been resolved. The light sensor which is used by the automatic headlights and automatic wipers subsystems is defective. We’ve sent the car at Leal for repairs (and the car is still under warranty) but they didn’t have the missing component in stock. They assured us they’ll order one from France for us and call us when it is available but they haven’t done so… yet… in spite of more than 2 months having passed :-(

I have to put some pressure on them. I’ll do that this week. Promise :-)

Filed Under: Technology
«Older Posts