Firefox 2007 ?

I wonder where I can get this:

Does this promote Firefox or Microsoft? I guess it’s more of the former.

The Prestige

While the ACM Asia Programming Contest-Manila 2006 (ACM ICPC) was on-going at the Holiday Inn Galleria yesterday, I tried to watch The Prestige on the Robinsons MovieWorld. The cinema was great for the aircon’s cold enough, or maybe it’s just that I stayed too much because of viewing the next attractions’ trailers.

When things were already filling with suspense, a phone rang at the center aisle. There’s this moviegoer who needs to read this FAQ, specifically its first item. Why? Not only did he left the gadget in ‘noisy mode’ but he really was in the same mode as well! How’s it like? Try to imagine an irritating sound echoing from the center of the cinema seats – so loud that all moviegoers can possibly hear their conversation. “…madam, blablabla..” Yes, his mobile was like running in speakerphone mode too! He was like talking with megaphones inside the cinema.

Oh c’mon, you can always leave the seats and go somewhere else if you want to understand more what the person’s saying on the other line. Besides, there were lots of seats available and there was no reservation policy in that cinema. For starters, avoid raising your voice on a phone call inside a cinema if you don’t want to see ‘pissed off eyes’ staring at you. Actually, the feeling was somewhat like all the moviegoers except that guy were already looking at each other and seemed like having a plan to shut off the irritating noise, but of course, nothing happened and everyone just continued on watching the film. Afterwards, I returned to the ACM ICPC event to look at the contest standings closely.

How about you? Are you watching closely?

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First Impressions

And this is how I start spending the semestral break – feel the first impressions of the latest software releases in the wild – Firefox 2.0 and Fedora Core 6!

If Ubuntu is “Linux for human beings”, check out Fedora Core’s announcement:

Zod permits you to call him “Fedora Core 6″. Tremble, Earthlings, for Zod is released from the confines of testing. Zod intends to hammer the servers of the world… starting TODAY!

Zod’s pretty cool (or weird) for a release name but I still don’t know where or how it was formulated. It has been a very long time already since I last installed this flavor of Linux. If I can remember it correctly, it was the time of Fedora Core 4 when I migrated to Ubuntu Breezy Badger. Now, I have Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on my machine and Ubuntu 6.10 was officially released already. I guess it’s better to wait before deploying it or maybe test it in some other way such as Parallels. Since I was so curious on the developments of Fedora, I tried the DVD install via Parallels Workstation with a memory of 256MB and disk allocation of 8GB. Here are some screenshots:

The look and feel was still the same (obviously because it’s Gnome!) but too bad I wasn’t able to load the package manager because my virtual machine’s network configuration was conflicting. As for the hardware usage, you might have noticed that I have a System Monitor applet indicating the processor, memory, network, and hard disk status. I guess I need a faster processor, to be specific, a dual core.Since Firefox 2.0 will only be available as a .deb file on the Ubuntu Edgy Eft, I tried to install the tar.gz after backing up my Firefox configuration files. True enough, it was fast but I guess I also need to wait until all of the extensions I was using on the older Firefox become supported.But wait, what about Internet Explorer 7? I suggest that you try Digging the 11 Top Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Upgrade to IE7. Reason #9’s actually true – a lot of people were complaining because obviously a lot were using pirated versions. They don’t make it for Linux as stated on reason #5 so I tested the installer via Wine and CrossOver and this is what I got on both applications:

As usual, the returned error was not explicit just like the BSOD. Reason #1 stated that you shouldn’t upgrade because there were plenty of known bugs in IE6 and I don’t think you would want to have the new ones too. But actually, I have a better solution – don’t upgrade or even use IE, get Firefox instead.

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Linux ToT Shirt

On the last day of our training, everyone got a Linux ToT shirt and a certificate:

Yey! Another geek shirt for me! As for the LPI exam, I hope I would be able to take it as soon as possible…

For more photos check out the IOSN website and my Zooomr account.

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Dispose/Upgrade old hardware for the latest technology?

From PinoyBlog:

“After a year or two of computing heaven, you’ll notice that your machine would slowdown, take a few more minutes to boot up…or just crash in the middle of a frag fest or a last-minute dash to complete a paper.”

I guess, this happens a lot on machines running Microsoft Windows OS.

Comparing old hardware to its latest versions, obviously the former will be slower in terms of processing power but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will slowdown. There was a time that I was running Red Hat 9 Linux for about 2 years (or until Fedora 3 was released) and there was no hardware upgrade – it’s still running on the same speed of “preboot and postboot” no matter how many software packages I add to it.

Obviously, if the hardware’s failing already (or slowing down), it’s highly recommended to replace or upgrade it. In my opinion, this only means that the article’s 1st reason shows the traditional perspective whereas the 2nd reason shows the modern perspective of getting new hardware. Not only operating systems nowadays tend to have more features especially in terms of GUIs but there are some who develop OS for lesser powerful machines. A good example for the former is Microsoft Vista which needs to run on a machine with massive hardware requirements (Is the recommend memory size of 1GB enough for Vista?) and for the latter – a Linux distribution such as SLAX or KateOS which only needs 32MB of RAM to run.

I guess it’s still a matter of choice. I’m not rich so I’ll just stick to Ubuntu Linux instead. It can be more powerful than Microsoft Windows without sacrificing hardware requirements.

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CSR

Ever heard of the PLDT CSR incident? Good thing I had not encountered such a thing when I was still in my helpdesk job. Others think that it’s just a training recording but it’s just weird – why spread it? Will this serve as an example to call center agents out there?

Obviously, there’ll always be the question of authenticity. It’s even more surprising that it has a record of the PL number and the agent’s name too (if it’s authentic). On the first place, the service of the company should be consistent at all times – a lot more if they’re getting more subscribers. So is it still true nowadays that “the customer is always right” ?

Who is to be blamed here?

Kule: no funds?

From INQ7.net’s article, Standoff over funds shuts UP publication:

FOR TWO months now, there has been little activity on the fourth floor of Vinzons Hall, the student center at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, where the editorial office of the Philippine Collegian is located…

I might not be shocked at all, but for some reason I can feel the heat rising from different parts of the university. As for their website, maybe it’s good to have some RSS feeds of the articles as an alternative to downloading the PDF file. What do you think?

Araw ng Paghuhukom

This one made me remember one of the subjects I had in the past semester. Try looking at the red curve by zooming the image. In fairness, the experience was great because it was finished in an instant!

Free or not free?

I got this message from 2277 some X hours ago:

Gentxtr, get a FREE Sundae Cone worth P10 when you buy any McRice Burger value meal at McDonald’s. Txt McDo to 2277 for FREE coupon! No free advisory?Reply STOP

Okay, so do you think the sundae cone’s free? How about the text-coupon? Is this really the concept of “free” nowadays?

Linux Training of Trainers

If you’re still wondering why I was online most of the time lately, it’s because I was shortlisted in the Linux Training of Trainers! The fee for the training that started last Oct 9 (while having a final exam in Span 13 that day) and will end on Oct 21(LPI Examination Day), was waived by the IOSN Asean+3. Yehey! Well, the training was deployed at the UP Diliman Interactive Learning Center (DILC). Although the training fee was sponsored, the examination fee of P3.5k will be shouldered by the participants – thus, I should definitely pass it!

If I can remember it right, I was the one who took this shot on another trainee’s camera. And these were the stuffs I got last week: