Aray[].

At the end of this day, I realized that I should have set the permissions for the PCs in our ILS lab and tested it first before letting its users experiment on it. It’s kinda weird that the permissions for the MySQL client got flushed because it’s supposed to work already without any necessary configurations to repair. But at least, I had already rechecked all of the computers in just an hour while installing Fedora Core 4 to two computers that previously run on Mandrake.*toxicity++*

I heard someone say that M$ Access is better or maybe easier to learn than MySQL. But that’s good, if the user owns a licensed/authentic version of the program and is really proud (like Hell) in using it. Forget about the price *wink* and the problems bundled with it as well. It’s just that I would rather share FOSS with my fellow classmates than to advocate proprietary ones.

When I got home, I was surprised or maybe devastated to watch the results of the impeachment proceedings. The oppositions walked out of the debate. Is this a delaying tactic? They were the ones that argued before that the suspension yesterday was a political move by the administration to delay everything. But from my view, it favors the opposition more time to get that stupid 79 votes or signatures. The thing is that the requirement is just 1/3 (and not even 50%!), how come they weren’t able to get such a number? Gheez. The weird part? Yes! Dinky ignited some stuff (out of nowhere – without any basis at all) to the press interviews before the proceedings started. Obviously, everything was planned but it wasn’t flawless. If Dinky really knew that stuff, why only now?

In an interview on the ANC, she said that it’s up to the people to judge.. blablabla.. to see “our truths”. Or maybe she was really referring to the people that didn’t know anything at all with regards to the political controversies everywhere. It’s obviously easier to brainwash such communities if they do not know the real issue in the first place.

Now, I really believe that Philippines is a place where actors make rules and politicians entertain. Why? Read on (the words are somewhat close to the real version..it’s the humor that counts!):

1. (quoted from a recent ANC interview w/ Korina) – “..because that was only the time I make BABAD in Congress..” -> oh.. talaga? Telebabad ba yan? Nag-i-soak?

2. (from the opposition) – “Isang boto lang talaga ang hindi nabibili, at yun ay ang boto ng Panginoon” -> malamang naman siguro alam ng bawat tao yun ano? Ano ka ba, hilo? hello?? Pero teka, sino ba Panginoon mo?

3. It’s very funny to see how “future leaders” like Susan Power violate some simple rules in the impeachment proceedings such as clapping, etc.

Oh well..

Don’t YSpeak

Nah, I don’t wanna receive an award for saying that “..kung hindi strong ang lalaki, weak siya..” just like in the episode of YSpeak last night. Judging the entire series from that single episode, I couldn’t figure out why DECS would be endorsing it.. or maybe as always, it’s up to the viewers to be critical to everything they percept. IMHO, the episode didn’t had any content at all. I would rather read Virginia Woolf’s writings and be refreshed to her ideas that I had once learned in English 12 from last semester.Anyway, classes are suspended today as well as government offices. Nothing new in this society except the chaos and skepticism that ruled the political actors and viewers. (From the second time once more?) Bad representation of the Filipino people is still observed on the hearts of rallyists specifically the Anti-GMA group. All I can say is that everyone cheat, it’s just that some are good in hiding it and some are not.

The ACM Turing Lecture 2005 Live Webcast

Pioneers of the Internet: Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn were the recipients of the ACM Turing Award 2004. At about 6 am early in the morning, they had already started lecturing on “Assessing the Internet: Lessons Learned, Strategies for Evolution, and Future Possibilities” via a live webcast.It was cool because the speakers were like geek duos. Unfortunately, I can’t finish it because I still have a Spanish class to attend to. *sigh*

To see the live webcast, click this link and this one is for archived viewing.

The Filipino is worth dying for..

From an interview of a student in the recent YSpeak episode: “Kung buhay pa si Ninoy, wala siya ngayon sa P500.” (What?!?!) Here’s another one: “Kung buhay pa si Ninoy, ano kaya ang magiging stand niya sa issue ngayon kay PGMA?” Okay, enough of these stuffs.. I’m sick of hearing such weird and not-so-formulated statements.

See the difference?

What OS are these browsers running into?

Where Actors Make Rules and Politicians Entertain…

Yesterday, I came across an article in the Philippine Star that talked about what is the Philippines and its distinction with other countries. Well, I hate to admit but some of the statements listed were indeed true but I will point out the ones that made me laugh. The Philippines is… (35) Where the personal computer is mainly used for games and Friendster. (17) Where UP is where all the weird people go. (Really? I disagree). Ateneo is where all the nerds go. La Salle is where all the Chinese go. College of Saint Benilde is where all the irrelevantly rich people go. (nah, the writer is a La Sallite and obviously biased). (6) Where soap operas tell the realities of life and where the news provides the drama. (5) Where actors make the rules and where politicians provide the entertainmeny. (Kung gusto mo mapikon, watch the news). –> Definitely true! (3) Where people can get away with stealing trillions of pesos, but not for a thousand. (2) Where being an hour late is still considered punctual.Waa..

Kernel Panic!

How surprising to see the “oppositions” in the government still hold their positions under PGMA’s administration. It was very ironic. I was even devastated when the host asked a question somehow in this form: “How come one so powerful become a victim?” Nah.. Obviously, anyone can be a victim even of oneself. Typical panelists on common debates – being off-topic (OT). The interesting stuff on that episode was how the side of the oppositions protect their political dynasties. And lastly, I hate bad comparison and representation, again and again..[root@Morpheus:~] tail /var/log/messages

Kernel Panic? Nah.. Yesterday morning’s situation kinda disturbed me. Why? While I was browsing via Opera, I was surprised to see that my system crashed! Obviously, after rebooting, I still managed to get back and look into the logs to find the thing. But after some time, it crashed again! Nah.. Obviously it’s not a Wind0ze problem because it’s not M$. And for that reason, I will never ever say what Wind0ze users used to declare that if such a situation happens, there might be an antivirus, blablabla, and a never ending chain of issues.

A reboot again, and I had still come up to the point of checking filesystem and it generated a kernel panic error. Weird though because I hadn’t messed or compiled kernel sources yet or something. So I rebooted again, and there I was, staring at a blank screen with my CPU starting to run and even continued without beeping. The red led starts to blink at first but turns off afterwards.

Now what do you think is the problem. No, it’s not a Wind0ze problem (for the second time). After coming back from school/work, I finally managed resolving the hardware thing – a 512 RAM. *sigh* Despite of having the remaining memory, I still wanted to have the speed I used to work with before…or maybe the same as the one used at “Apple Technology and Education” at the UP Diliman – School of Economics, which was yesterday in the afternoon (I had also attended the ICT Roadshow last Wednesday). The Apple Seminar was really fantastic and it showed almost every aspect of Apple in it. It was great that most of us, including my SA friends were convinced to get one. If I will be buying a new machine, I would rather get a MAC than a PC. But if I already have an existing desktop/laptop, it’s better to have Linux running on it.

If I was convinced to get MAC, I was able to convinced (yesterday too) a friend that I hadn’t seen or contacted for months already that Linux is powerful enough for her not-so-strong machine. She was wondering why her PCs busted (running on Wind0ze 98) and for that reason, someone recommended to her a PC repairman (it was really a ‘PC’ repairman). The repairman told or advised her to reformat the system because it was hopeless (as usual). But since she was somehow familiar with the advantages of Linux, she asked the repairman if it’s better to install it. Wanna know what the repairman said? He told her that the system can’t support it since it needs a Mac motherboard/hardware. Whoah! He was definitely a ‘PC’ repairman. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now I hope she will be getting her own copy of Linux by going to our helpdesk.

System Recovery

Finally, the week’s over after a chain of massive resource-hungry tasks. I had achieved a body system recovery by sleeping at 9pm last night and waking up at 7am for a change. Power-naps were indeed helpful too at times. Recovery is indeed very important to regain a system’s power. Last week was the crucial one.. Wanna know why? Here it is:1.) After submitting my blogposts (the 2 previous posts), I deleted the file containing the copy of my text by “rm Untitled\ 1″ since it’s just a temporary container, and I’m more inclined to using consoles. Since my text editor makes a backup file appended with ‘~’, I had mistakenly assumed that by doing “rm Untitled\ *” will also catch that file. I had realized my mistake when the konsole reflected “rm: cannot remove directory `folder_name/’: Is a directory” where folder_name are the names of the folders in that location. For short, i had deleted all of the non-folder stuffs in that location which includes scripts, bloggable texts, backups, configs, pics, etc. Good thing I had already categorized some files. I had STFW, but the usual returns were for ext2 formats, some requiring to unmount the partition, and so on. Those were like recovery by bruteforce. So I tried consulting my fedora community and in less than 4 hours, I had received immediately the support I was looking for although I still didn’t do the concrete ways they had defined due to lack of time and for the month of August is a midsem – projects, term papers, etc. where released consecutively. At least, I know now what to do and NOT to do next time. I will move files first to Trash and modify the aliases defined at my terminal. It’s just that I really hate doing stuffs with guis – it is mostly a waste of time.

2.) I have a problem regarding the receiving of my Ubuntu packages. I had the packages addressed at the building of my institute/college but unfortunately, it was delivered to the wrong floor (basement) of UP Diliman Main Library. Actually, I had indicated the floor (3rd floor) correctly at the address form, but the problem is since the ones who had received the notice/package didn’t knew what to do, they had it returned to sender. They didn’t even consulted the other offices of the building. I had just knew this after making a library request from the media services and the person that attended my request was surprised after seeing my name on the library request slip I made. Somehow I was glad I had a friend with me who insisted that my name should be placed at the slip instead of her name. *wink*

I asked them to know what post office they had it returned to. I had gone to it as well but the personnels at the UP – Post Office said that they weren’t the ones handling it. Argh. Thus, I tried sending an email to the Ubuntu info list and was glad to receive 24 hours later, a message saying that they will resend another package to me. Now this is what you call effective customer service/support! Tell that to M________ !~

3.) I didn’t have Span 10 for the last 2 days since my prof was an instructor for the UPCAT examination – more time for projects and papers and sleep?.

4.) PolSci 14 term paper deadline was re-extended, and I finally had my schedule of my report after the Quezon City day. The week of the KSS P^3 ACM-UnPLUG event which will talk about Python/Perl/PHP or for short – a FREE FOR ALL tutorial.

5.) I had assisted some employees in shifting or making a copy of their files to Fedoras instead of Wind0ze, at the same time advocating and enlightening them to the advantages of Free and Open Source Softwares. One even asked about the bootup time since it was irritating for her to wait for the Wind0ze 9X to bootup completely, so I told her that with Linux, you can do anything, anything at all (the only limit is yourself) – even reducing the bootup process of Fedora to 25 seconds. Obviously I told her that it requires some skills in tinkering with the kernel.

So.. need I say more? I need some fsck!

Mythical Creature

You are the most universal mythical beast ever. Sightings of the unicorn have been reported from all over the world, even in modern times. Unicorns are pure and incorruptible. In China, unicorns symbolized gentleness, good will, and wisdom. Christianity links the unicorn with Christ. It is said that unicorns would only allow virgin girls to see them, let alone touch them. They were easily lured into fatal ambushes by a virgin with some poachers waiting for the unicorn in nearby bushes. A unicorn’s horn was a highly prized possession, which was reputed to have great healing capabilities. With the touch of its horn, a unicorn could bring back a person who had been dead for several hours. But when separated from the unicorn’s body, the magic was significantly reduced. The unicorn had the body of a horse, a unique spiraling horn, and a lion’s tail. They were pure white in color.

What mythical beast best represents you? Take the quiz!