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A few hours ago received my cheap USB Wifi adapter purchased from shopping.rediff.com, never knew what type of hardware I have paid for, except for that it is a USB WiFi adapter. But thanks to the community efforts I was very much sure I would be able to use it in GNU/Linux (Fedora Core 10) one way or other.

The hardware was as per USB Vendor ID (0CDE:0008) a Z-Com Sitecom Wireless Network Adapter 100G+ WL-125 USB WiFi 802.11B/G Adapter. GNU/Linux /var/log/messages identified it to be a GlobespanVirata. Marketed under the brand name EDUP. A ISL3887 2nd Generation Prism54 chipset based device.

So this is how they keep the uptime of Flight Information Display Systems (FIDS) at Indira Gandhi International Airport at 99.9%, a quick restore from a Notron Ghost image of a Windows XP install. Takes around 10-15 minutes if the technician is around. For 99.9% uptime you can afford approximately 8.8 Hours of downtime an year, i.e 35 reinstalls per year for a reinstall process of 15 minutes or one reinstall of Windows XP every 10 days, good enough, Windows XP can survive for atleast 10 days :-).

Finally another server for my old website, thanks to someone dear to me in UK. This time the hosting company is godaddy.com. And as I am using drupal as the CMS for my website, had a little nasty surprise on godaddy hosting. Clean URLs stopped working and server displayed a friendly 500 Internal Server Error with the following in the error log

mod_rewrite: maximum number of internal redirects reached. Assuming configuration error. Use 'RewriteOptions MaxRedirects' to increase the limit if neccessary.

This is what Arundhati Roy has to say about terrorism and Mumbai Attacks: The monster in the mirror.

I am a casual and lazy blogger and could never have written anything more beautiful than what she has said. So just a link back.

Update: 15/12/08
If we can somehow can get out of the Deviancy amplification spiral, that is as of now in full swing in India, maybe we can heed some advice from Mr. Tony Benn, "If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people".

The subject cited quote is easier said than done for various reasons. Maybe we believe others may not want to hear it, maybe we want to play it safe, maybe we fear rejection, maybe it is fear of being persecuted. We are afraid. We may not even fully understand the reason for our fear but we may think that it is easier to play it safe.

There is another way around "half-truth", we can dilute our words and not risk as much. But would that be truth? As Gandhi Ji once said, "What is Truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the voice within tells you. How then, you ask, [do] different people think of different and contrary truths? Well, seeing that the human mind works through innumerable media and that the evolution of the human mind is not the same for all, it follows that what may be truth for one may be untruth for another…"

Ahh so the Windows user did it finally, even after my warnings to the contrary.

Say, "Did what?"

Well the story goes like this. After getting impressed by all gloss and glitter of Gnome and KDE Desktop GNU/ Linux and the beautiful looking windows, themes, 3D effects thanks to compiz, fancy gadgets & better than Apple Mac like looks via cairo-dock and the best thing localisation in Punjabi. And seeing what he (the nube) never though was possible on a PC/ Laptop with Windogs. Finally I was asked to install GNU/ Linux on his laptop. Got most of issues of an unsupported H/W worked out and finally GNU/Linux with X started (but no 3D, no compiz).

In a recent local election in Punjab I was deputed as a presiding officer along with four polling officers for conducting elections in a village. The experience has been sort of interesting and mixed.

Being a Govt Servant I cannot say much, but shall let these low resolution pictures speak for me.

Get Set...

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Truck Load of Ballot Boxes and whatever (sometimes called polling party)

1st April 2008, Our Correspondent
Finally we have the inside story on why the dilbert.com has been given an all new Flashy look. We have learnt from reliable sources that Richard Stallman of Free Software Foundation fame and Linus Torwalds of GNU/ Linux fame have sent kickbacks to Scott Adamas and have also sponsored some heavy weight flash widgets for the new dilbert.com site to make the main website unpopular.

This is amazing, atleast for me, my three and a half years old (now almost four in about four months), can use GNU/ Linux fairly well (for a kid of his age and fairly well than many older windoz guyz I have seen around). This is what he can do after about ten minutes of coaching.

1. Powers on the monitor, powers on the Desktop.
2. Waits for GNU/ Linux to load.
3. On GDM Login screen enters his username, sometimes selects his username from the user list displayed by GDM (I have set his password to blank for his convenience).

Finally I have a new laptop an HP Compaq Presario C700 (Model C738TU). A good machine with very good performance, for a fairly reasonable price.

The default factory installation on it was Free/DOS. I have installed GNU/ Linux Fedora Core 8 on it. Most of the things have worked out of the box. Here is some basic informations which can help other owners of this notebook using GNU/ Linux.