Yesterday we went to 3youn 2erghoch, this village is located on the other side of the Cedars Mountains overlooking the Bekaa Valley, the village is very small, you can only see a couple of houses in it and some restaurants surrounding small lakes.
Here are some pictures of the trip:
Driving in the clouds
I wanted to check and compare the ADSL prices between different ISPs in Lebanon but apparently they all have the same prices:
The only difference between ISPs is the size of the mailboxes you get with your account, and a few dollars between modems available, Terranet offers to double your speed from 8pm to 8am but adds “Free Double Speed Feature is subject to feasibility study.” so I don’t know if you can get a doubled speed at night.
I also doubt that the monthly limit is enough now that people watch a lot of videos and download a lot of media from the internet.
The LBCI reporter said a few days ago that Hawker Hunters might help bombing Nahr L Bared, I wrote a post about that but nothing was confirmed yet.
Today I found this Aviation Forum, it contains a post confirming that the Hunters will fly again, here’s what a user said:
Was on the phone with a former retired Hunter pilot and he was a little doubtful but confirmed the news that they are getting ready to fly again. They already have contacted him in case they needed the help of more experienced people for the Hunters.
He said they will try to make the first flight this week. If the Hunters fly, it would be absolutely amazing for all the fans!
I hope they fly again and send those animals to hell!
Bruno Bozzetto is an Italian producer and animator who is recently producing great flash animations, I first watched one of his animation in class, the teacher wanted to explain the difference between civilizations so he showed us a Bozzetto Animation about the difference between the Italian customs and the European ones, I really liked the animation and found that Italians are very similar to Lebanese (watch it and you will wee why) so I downloaded the animation when I got home, today I found Bruno’s site and on the site you can watch all his animations so check them out.
This is a Gadget showing a countdown of the remaining days of Lahoud as a president of Lebanon.
To use the gadget you must have Windows Vista, download the gadget and install it, if the image is broken on the borders after the install, close the gadget and re-start it.
Click here to Download the Gadget
If you want a gadget showing the duration of the opposition sit-in click here.
This is a sidebar Gadget counting the days the Lebanese opposition spent demanding the formation of a national unity government representing all the Lebanese.
To use the gadget you must have Windows Vista, download the gadget and install it, if the image is broken on the borders after the install, close the gadget and re-start it.
Click here to Download the Gadget
If you want a gadget counting Lahoud’s remaining days in office click here.
Every year bloggers from around the world will tackle one important issue on the same day, this year on October 15th blogs from around the world will write about environment, and the ways we can preserve it, I am going to participate in the initiative and you can to, just register and promote the day on your blog to get more people to participate.
Yesterday I received two PC fliers at home, one of them was from the multimedia megastore and the other one from acer. I noticed that all acer PCs and Notebooks are preloaded with Linux (except the Ferrari-Acer ones that come preloaded with Vista Ultimate) but they didn’t mention which Linux Distro they are using so I decided to send them an e-mail asking.
I also had a few other questions:
Most people I know do not even know what an OS is, they think all PCs come with windows so I also asked in the mail if acer explains to people what they are really getting? Do they offer windows for those people? And if someone chooses to keep Linux, do they provide support for it?
The General Manager of Techno-mania (Acer’s dealers in Lebanon) replied to my E-mail quickly answering every question in it, so here’s the list of questions I asked and the answers I got:
Q1: What is the Linux Distribution you are using? and why?
A1: ACER PC’s ship preloaded with Linpus Linux (the version may vary according to the ship date of the products)
Q2. Do you provide support for Linux?
A2: As an Authorized ACER Service Center we support all ACER products long with their original preloaded O/S (Linux / Windows)
Q3. Most of the people in Lebanon do not know what an OS is and think that when they get a PC they get it with windows and that’s the only option out there, so do you (and the resellers) explain to those people what are they exactly getting?
A3. We state very clearly in our marketing campaigns and our price lists the O/S for each PC, and all our resellers are aware of that. In addition, we do our best to relay this message to the end-user. However, since we do not sell directly, most of the interaction is between the end-user and the reseller which bares the responsibility of clarifying any questions related to the O/S.
Q4: Do you install Windows if the customer asks for it?
A4: Only If they have a licensed Windows Operation System, we can install it at our service center.
In addition, it worth mentioning, that you will find ACER PC’s with preloaded Windows O/S specially with the new Aspire Gemstone notebooks introduced in the market at the beginning of August.
In the reply, Mr Joseph Haddad said that my questions were also forwarded to the sale team, so if I get another reply from them I’ll update you.
Personally I like the fact that you are getting Linux with the PCs, I compared the prices of acer laptops with similar laptop from other manufacturers and the acers are cheaper by about 150$, Windows Vista Home premium costs 132$ in Lebanon, so you can switch to Windows if you want without paying more then you would pay by getting a PC from another manufacturer.
Now the only question remaining is can people move to Linux this fast! I’ve been trying Linux Boot CDs for 2 years and I recently installed Ubuntu on a Virtual PC, I won’t move completely to Linux anytime soon because of some softwares I use that will only work on Windows (Microsoft Visual Studio), now imagine a guy that bought his PC for the Bluetooth and the Integrated webcam in it (some people actually do that!), how will this guy adapt to Linux? Will he even know what kind of step he is taking? Will he understand that he has to get windows to get his “normal” PC? I hope resellers explain to people what Linux is, and get people to move to Linux, not force Linux on them. A lot of resellers are honest people but I am sure some only want to sell not caring about the customer needs so to avoid all that, in my opinion Acer should sell the PCs with Linux and offer an optional ?downgrade? to windows for a little more money, this way the customer will get what he needs and people wanting a PC with windows will not choose another PC manufacturer because they don’t want to have to get a separate copy of windows and get it installed.
Apparently in Orlando they have a day to let people turn in weapons they have in exchange for money or sneakers with no question asked, so yesterday a guy turned in a surface to air missile!
They should do that in Lebanon! we all know a lot of people have illegal weapons so a day like this one could help us get rid of the weapons people have at home, but the problem is that with the current political instability more people are looking for guns! So the first thing they should do is lower the tension in the street, and I am sure people will be glad to turn in illegal weapons and live in peace afterward.
Here’s an article from this week’s Nahar L Chabeb written by Martyr Gebran Tueni on the 15-04-04, It’s a message to the Lebanese youth asking them to leave those old rotten political parties behind and form new ones to build a new clean Lebanon.
After seeing the stupidities some people are doing these days, you would think this article was written recently, sadly Lebanese don’t learn and articles written by great people like Gebran are always relevant, I just wish people would listen to the words of Gebran instead of following those killers and thieves, so we could finally build the Lebanon Gebran dreamed of!
Here’s the article in Arabic:
