Walk Alone

Pacenet is clearly one of the more technologically stupid ISPs around in this city. It uses RASPPPOE - it gives you a dial-up experience on a LAN. When it works, its real good. But when it breaks down, there’s no knowing the reason. They don’t provide any software to use their system from a Linux machine. But that’s OK, because there’s rp-pppoe available to use the connection. Supposedly. I called up their customer service today to ask them to enable “Linux support”. Why should that have been necessary, in the first place? And with Linux doing all the adjustments and adapting, what were they supporting? But well, sorry - but NO. No “Linux support” for packages with speed below 64 kbps - mine is 40 kbps. What the …?

Time to change ISPs. Hopefully, I should be able to persuade my sponsors, I mean my parents. Besides, the supposed advantage of Pacenet, its LAN sucks too. With a DHCP not worth its name, even the local IPs keep getting into conflicts. And are there any people out there on the LAN to play those Counter-Strike maps with? Nope. Any file sharing? Nope. And the breakdowns are now irritatingly regular. These are in addition to those caused by “maintenance/upgrade” at their “control room”. Got to switch. Urgently.

My knowledgeable friend is currently digging Opera. Its amusing, to say the least. He’s off reporting on Opera’s superiority. And yes, it may be better than Firefox and IE, but Opera is a lot like European aristocracy. Have money, will be better. Yup, Opera’s a commercial browser, though there’s a free download (with ad banners I believe) on offer. What’s the deal? But I must mention a few points. It shall be Opera v/s Firefox (with other browsers under its protection).

Features. Opera is feature packed. Sure. So are all other browsers worth their name. Name a feature and you can find it in Firefox (FF). If not, there’s an extension available. Which brings us to the architecture - FF’s extension architecture is pooh-poohed. I, for one, feel that modular architecture is here is to stay. You download the base package and than add whatever you want. A monolithic install often gets broken due to improper updates of different components, if the components can be updated individually. Usually you have to get the whole package again, even for minor upgrades - hence there are minor differences between the dot releases. FF extensions can be updated independently of the base browser. So dot releases of the base package are more significant. Extensions also respect the fact that not all FF users want the same set of features.

Now I may not remeber the exact exchage of words, but the emotion (back when my friend was using IE) for different features of FF was something similar to this. I wonder if FF users should respond in kind to him, now that he is using Opera?

Desirability of features - “I don’t want/need a feature. So its not important/necessary.”

Speed and Performance -” I don’t have to board a spacecraft launching in 10 milliseconds on a mission to save the planet. A slower browser is just fine for my needs.”

Rendering of pages (you know how they display stuff as it loads, so you don’t have to wait for the entire page to load) - “I’m patient enough to let the page load. Neither of us is going anywhere and I don’t have to board a …”

My friend has also provided information regarding a test which proves Opera is by far, the superior browser. But alas, I wonder whether he scrolled lower down on the page. The stuff there provides a better perspective of the test results. Infact, the results are downright fishy.

You may wonder why I’m fencing for the “losing” side. Its because FF gives me an oppurtunity to be a member (insignificant, invisible, redundant; but still a member) of a community. Thats what all open source projects do. You can put buttons of commercial, proprietary products on your webpage and you can join their mailing lists, but is it really a community? Its more like a feudal lord holding court.

I think I’ll stay with the Firefox community.

Fixed the TV set today - nothing like an expert repair job, but hey, I got it working. It was refusing to turn on - all the different power buttons were tried umpteen times and the supply was OK. So I did the following.

1. Opened the box and dusted it out - lots of dust.
2. Moved it from its corner piece to the couch with the screen down on the cloth. That must have shaken up all movable components; guess its not been moved around for months.
3. Took out the fuse - looked OK on the multimeter - cleaned the slight rust off its contacts.
4. Put everything back and tried the switch - nothing.
5. Just for certainty, tried it again - AND IT WORKED.

Hell of a repair job, I ‘ud say. Uhh well, except for bluish patches in the lower corners of the screen. Guess the handling was too rough - but wait, they are disappearing… yay! The screen is back to normal - a successful repair job indeed!

The banner above is in response to the email below. Can’t resist the bumper sticker mentality.

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: [ILUG-BOM] stop software patents!
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:37:12 +0600
From: Svaksh <svaksh@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Svaksh <svaksh@gmail.com>, “GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai,
India” <linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in>
To: GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, India <linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in>

hi,

on 6th of July, the European Parliament will vote on “software
patents” and if approved will codify US-style Software Patents in the
EU.

http://noepatents.eu.org/index.php/NO_Software_Patents
and
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

Cant say how much impact it will have on India (i think it will) but
we can definitely protest so if any list members who have websites are
interested they can participate in the “web strike” or put up banners
until the vote.
here is the link :
<http://noepatents.eu.org/index.php/Web_Demo_Against_Software_Patents>

–
svaksh

update - the banner was removed on 2005/07/14. The link reported that the battle was won.

Thank the Gods that be I discovered this before chucking my BIOS battery. My system clock kept dropping back by 5-7 minutes. My first reaction (confirmed by my knowledgeable friend) was that the battery was running low. But then, it should have kept dropping back or shown some random, erratic time. This event stabilized around 5-7 minutes. Then I thought it must be the (k)ubuntu linux which was always trying to access its ntp server. Keyword being ‘trying’. Then during a bout of boredom, I was fiddling around with the system clock widget and guess what - the damn thing was accessing time.windows.com everyday at 3:51 PM. Swift click to disable it and now my system time is constant. Until that moment I had no idea that this synchronisation was taking place. Linux was good enough to let me know. But Windows… its a good thing I’m moving away at full speed.