Year: 2003

The Penguin takes off it’s Red Hat

“Red Hat To Drop Linux !”
That’s the title i just read at LinuxWorld. Truly shocking don’t you think.
I just found myself lost for a moment, thinking: if a linux company drops linux, what the hell is it gonna do then ? Sell potatoes ??
Well, no, they’re gonna sell linux.

Ok ok, here’s the story, Red Hat are going to stop releasing their standard Red Hat Linux and supporting it, and instead will only focus on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
A logical step (for them), as that’s where they’re gonna be making more profit, BUT a bad step in my opinion.
Red Hat is the No.1 Linux distro, and if they discontinue their standard linux line, which is the most popular among users, and stop supporting it so quickly, linux might be losing all those users who believed in it and made the move from windows to linux, plus it’s not gonna sound good at all for people who were considering linux as a stable solution.

Oh well, i guess it’s just another example of a dumb decision taken after a long useless managerial meeting.

I can just imagine the guys at Microsoft toasting to this dumb move, lol…

ICANN, Ok we know you can…

So the last ICANN meeting was held in Tunisia last week, and it was a success.
Tunisie Telecom, Sotetel & ATI were able to flex their muscles and show off after deploying a broadband connection of 100MB/s and a Wireless network throughout the hotel hosting the event, enabling real-time transmission of the debates on the internet.
All this in a record time and in an area of Tunis where there still is no broadband coverage.

Anyway, after reading this article on Tunis Hebdo, it seems that we regular internet users paid the price by suffering a loss in connection speed.

Oh well, honestly, if it’s for the good of Tunisia and it’s image abroad, i truly don’t mind a KB/s less, especially that dial-up connection sucks anyways.
I just hope that Tunisie Telecom and ATI get bumped in the head sometime soon and start thinking about us too and make broadband within the reach of us internet addicts.

My neighbour got a dish, hooray !

Well yesterday was a happy day for our new upstairs neighbours, they got a satellite dish installed 😉

Their TV was on all night long on high volume, and when i left to work in the morning, it was still on, still on high volume.
What a delight !

I can just imagine the guy and his wife still sitting in front of the TV with burning red eyes, switching from channel to channel, with a huge grin on their faces, fighting the urge to go to sleep just to be able to use their new toy for a few more minutes.

Oh well, i hope they’re fed up of it by tonight, so we can at least get some good sleep…

Insufficient Memory

I remember once being told that Goldfish have a short memory span, i’m not even sure it’s true, but well that’s only secondary to what i’m attempting to get to.
Anyway, I’m noticing that we humans are becoming more and more like Goldfish, our attention and memory spans are becoming shorter and shorter, and i think it’s because of the everyday things surrounding us.
When you get used to cruising through satellite channels taking just a short look at each channel at a time, or surfing through a number of websites at a time for bits of information here and there, you just get used to that and it affects the way you think i guess.

I mean, so many times, i’d be talking to someone and i know they’re there for the first few seconds and then God knows where they go. And even when they listen and focus, in a few minutes after it, they’ll have no idea what you were talking about.

A lot of people don’t even read books anymore, just because they can’t go through a whole book and all it’s events.

I think we humans are losing our ability to focus, and that’s really bad.
We’re becoming more and more like the computers we created. I can just imagine us as a PC running Windows 95, crashing every 5 seconds, giving us a blue screen with “Insufficient Memory” written in it 😉

Villain Supply

Just came across a website that calls itself Villain Supply, and brands itself as the online source for everything evil, lol…

I remember being to this website before, and well my destiny and a couple of web links led me to it again today 😉

They claim to sell bases & lairs, superweapons, doomsday devices and a lot more. It’s quite funny.
I liked the offer for the Ex-AlQaeda Caves the most, lol…

Anyway, if you’re interested, check it out here.

Chouchou

So, i rented the Chouchou DVD today and got to see it.
It’s a movie about a North African immigrant to France who is a transvestite, his story, and how he finds romance.

This is based on one of the characters Gad El Maleh plays in his one-man-show “La Vie Normale”.

I honestly had higher expectations for this movie and expected it to be funnier and packed with more laughs. Anyway, all in all, it’s an ok movie, but nothing close to Gad’s hilarious shows.

Halloween

Last night as i was in my old place waiting for the owner to come so i can hand him his keys and get over with the move, i opened the door only to find a bunch of kids wearing masks and make-up, yes for halloween, they were trick-or-treating me…

I was shocked to say the least.
I mean, there never ever was halloween in Tunisia, so where did these kids come up from ?
These were kids ranging in age from maybe 4 to just a few years younger than me, and they were going around from house to house as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
I know i must sound like some old-fashioned guy, i’m not, but i can’t help but wonder how something that never existed in the Tunisian culture has been introduced into it like this.
Are the next generation being brainwashed by foreign television stations ?
I mean after all, i think it’s pretty weird for muslims in a muslim country to be celebrating Christmas and now Halloween, what next ? Hannukah ?.

Maybe i’m over-reacting, but i think this is worth thinking about. Maybe we should start thinking twice about what our children are seeing on TV and how much of an effect it is having on them.

Medina Festival

The Medina Festival began last night in Tunis. This is a festival that takes place every Ramadan here, and i think it’s great. It’s a very culture rich festival with artists from many countries performing.

I just got the program for this year’s festival, and on first look, it seems great, but nothing that’s truly my style and that makes me jump off my chair and go running for a ticket.
Interesting stuff though, there are concerts by: Mayada Bsiliss, Marcel Khalifa, Son Cubano and Jos

Beautiful Introduction to Tunisia @ Lonely Planet

One of my favourite sites and TV shows is Lonely Planet, it just hits the right spot for me, someone who’s in love with travel and discovering different new places.
So every once in a while, i drop by the Lonely Planet website to check out some new places i would love to visit.

Today, out of curiosity, i checked out Tunisia to see what they’ve written about it, here’s the beautiful introduction:

Tunisia’s list of visitor attractions would do justice to a country twice its size. From the stone-age settlements near the oasis at Kebili to the space-age sets of Star Wars (parts of which were filmed at Matmata), its lush-to-lunar landscapes have seen more action than the New World nations combined. Spend a few days here and you’ll agree: daydreaming at the famous Roman ruins of Carthage and El-Jem is almost as good as stepping into Virgil’s Aeneid and knocking one back with Dido, while a day’s dawdling on the north coast’s beaches will leave you wondering why Hannibal ever left.

Tourism remains very low-key throughout most of the country, though if you’re looking for resort life you can find that too. Be it Tunis’ French-Arab culture collage or the Sahara’s unthinkably massive expanse, you’re going to be impressed with what you find in Tunisia. After all, they’ve had 3000 years to prepare for your visit.