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:
Every day hundreds of people are dying in Iraq for religious reasons, usually they die in suicide attacks and bombings but this girl was stoned to death in Mosul for marrying a Muslim man! Isn’t religion based on humans loving each others and living in peace! wtf is wrong with those people!
Note that the videos in the link are very disturbing.
From Digg
I just finished watching the first season of Dead Like Me, a comedy about a girl who dies when she gets hit by a Toilet seat from the re-entering Russian space station Mir.
This lucky girl is Georgia (George) Lass, a Teenager who just dropped out of college and on the first day on a job she hates, but death is a little special for that girl who unlike other person won’t go through the “normal process” of dying, instead she will be recruited to become a Grim Reaper, a job she also hates, and that’s not it, she also has to get a normal job because Grim Reapers do not get an income from that job.
I liked watching the show, it’s different from other TV series, you don’t get a lot of action but you don’t get bored watching it, every character has a different background and a different personality and all of them have to cope with each others to get the jobs done, a job that could last for decade with no breaks and no vacations.
Another thing worth mentioning is the Music, it is very well chosen for every part of the series, a little unusual sometimes but always nice.
My score for this series will be 3.5/5, because even if you don’t get bored by the story, some episodes need a little more action in my opinion.
Note that MGM is currently working on a Direct-to-DVD Movie sequel of Dead Like Me.
In case you haven’t watched it yet here’s the Trailer of the first film of Nadine Labaki called Caramel, Everyone is saying the movie is great so I am planning to watch it next week.
Here’s the plot summary:
A romantic comedy centered on the daily lives of five Lebanese women going in Beirut.
Layal (Nadine Labaki) works in a beauty salon in Beirut along with 3 other women. Each one has a problem: Layal has a relationship with a married man, Nisrine will marry to a muslim, Rima is lesbian and Jamal is worried about getting old.
We all remember the headbutt Zidane did to Materazzi in last year’s world cup final, back then we didn’t know why he did it, but now we do! Materazzi revealed what happened to an Italian Magazine and here’s the story:
During the game Materazzi gripped Zidane’s T-shirt for a moment, so Zidane told him that if he wanted it that much he would give it to him after the Match so Materazzi replied: “I prefer the whore that is your sister,” and you know the rest!
Before buying a new PC with Vista I used Free Download Manager to manage my downloads, it’s easy to use, has many great features, including one that lets you specify a download speed for a file so you can surf on the remaining bandwidth, when I got vista I went to FDM forums and found out that the stable versions is working with Vista on some system and isn’t on others, so I decided to test for myself.
FDM works with Vista, it does what it is supposed to do, but it has some problems, the first one is that when you start it, it shows an error that says: “Error in download groups”, this error is annoying when you set FDM to start with windows and you start to receive errors on your brand new system!
The other error is an “application” to the previous one, that’s where you see the error in the download groups, so when you want to add a download and choose a group for it you get 2 weird characters at the end of the group’s folder, for example if the default group folder is: C:\Downloads, you’ll get C:\Downloads\Ẳ-, so you’d have to correct the folder every time you want to add a download and that’s a little annoying, so currently I am waiting for the release of FDM 2.3, hopping these bugs will be fixed in it, meanwhile, I still use FDM for my downloads but now I just start it when I want to download something and not when Windows starts.