Category: Uncategorized

The headline in WSJ screamed “Euro Hits 10-Month Low” at $1.34. Does not look so good for EU countries. British pound doesn’t fare very well either, it is at $1.49. The woes at Greece and now with Portugal heading that way doesn’t bode well for EU countries. Portugal’s rating downgrade by Fitch weighing heavily down on the Euro over all.

This is a fascinating discussion between Michael Shermer and Sam Harris on one side and Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on the other. Highlight of the discussion: A quantum scientist (Leonard!?) asked Deepak Chopra if he would like to have short course on Quantum mechanics to straighten his “misuse” of quantum notations. The scientist went on to say the term “consciousness non-local” is not correct. Deepak’s definition of “Consciousness”: Super position of possibilities. The scientist replied “all right, I know the meaning each of those words but not with them together”.

Apple pushed the shipping date of iPad from March 17th to April 2nd. No body knows the reason, it is one more example of Apple’s famous secretive culture. The rumor is that, Apple couldn’t source enough components to manufacture for the anticipated demand. Well, is that really true or are there are bugs that apple is trying to resolve? Even if we take the rumor at the face value, is Apple’s supply chain that weak not to anticipate the demand? There are also rumors that say iPad pre-orders are not as strong as expected. So is it the case of “wait till we reach” the predicted, impressive pre-order rate? A sort of ego issue for Apple to reach certain number of pre-orders before start shipping them?

I‘m not going to buy iPad for three, out of many, reasons:

1. eReader: It is not. In my book, eReader (Amazon Kindle or B&N’s Nook) should have e-ink, paper like, display. iPad has traditional LCD display which doesn’t qualify as eBook reader. Prolonged reading on this device will have same effect as any prolonged reading in laptop will have on your eyes.

2. iPhone OS: Did any one tell Apple that this OS is single threaded? Except iPhone OS all other OSs, (Android, Windows 7 Mobile, WebOS) in the mobile space are multi-threaded. Why do I care? It is annoying enough in iPhone for me to detest the single threaded OS. For example, let us say If I’m playing a game in iPhone and in the middle of the game I want to look at some information in Wikipedia. iPhone OS closes the game and launches the browser. Everytime I switch between these two the application closes the one that I’m using and launches the one I’m switching to. This means, the wikipedia page reloads everytime and the game relaunches every time. Quite annoying, how many OSs in the world are single threaded now?

3. Over priced: The price of decently featured iPad stands at $900. I could buy a nice multi-touch Windows 7 tablet laptop from Dell,HP or even Lenovo for little bit more. In fact, I already own the Dell XT2 Tablet which is a charm and zippy with the new Intel SSD disk.

Well… This great pilot has retired today. I was inspired by the humility he showed throughout last year. He was a true hero and inspiration to us all.

Anish has given me a surprise today. He wrote a note in his school that read “Dear Dad, Happy Father’s Day! Thank you for taking care of me. You are the best. I love you!
Love, Anish”

Ha… As a father what else you want than the pure unconditional love your child showers on you.

Father’s Day (6/17/09)

Do you see this lady spinning in anti-clock/clock (right or left) wise?

If you see this lady spinning in clock wise, then you are using your right side of the brain. If you notice anti-clock wise spinning you are using your left side of the brain. Most people should be able to switch between right and left brains pretty easily, some times with the help of heavenly C2H5OH . If you cannot, try concentrating on the hip of the lady and you should be able to spin her in other way.

If you always see the lady spinning only in one direction, then you are using only one side of the brain all the time. My suggestion, try a psychologist! or refer to the following chart to figure out your personality.

Desktop Linux has been around for a while now. Ubuntu was touted as the challenger for windows dominance for a long time. However, Presto might potentially be the David that slays the Goliath (MS-Windows).

Last night I downloaded and installed Presto from Xandros. It is an EeePC or NetBook kind of OS for the systems that already has windows installed. It is meant to be used as an supplement OS on low powered computers and

Requires an existing windows xp installation, not a standalone OS, requires windows already installed in the computer. A simple window shows all the installed applications and a link to appstore that has other applications, commercial and free, that you can install. Installation is snap, without needing to download and running installation. Click on install and Presto downloads it and installs it for you. Uninstallation is as simple as right clicking on the program and select remove.

It addresses the target market very well.
For quick browsing, not so savvy computer users (elderly, kids)
No commmand line interface
Graphics resolutions is very limited
First tries to connect to LAN before trying to connect wireless. Wastes few more seconds to connect to wireless
Window switching is confusing.
Impressively simple user interface for anyone new to computers to use.
No plugins to download in firefox, it comes with flash player so that you can immediatly start using youtube and other video sharing websites. IN summary any website that will work with Firefox will be fine, other websites that require windows may not be accessible.
No minimize button in any windows…

For advanced users…alt-ctl-t will bring up the console.

Is it worth $20? I would think yes, it can make your mom happy and it will make that old laptop in the closet you paid $900 usable again. I was thinking of buying a netbook, spend $300. Instead spend $20 and make that laptop usable again.

Application Store:
For additional applications, we can download from application store. Simple to install and run. Has host of free applications.

Tips 1: Use the “Windows User” directory to store important files.

Sony Vaio : 1min 45 sec

Minimalistic Battery Indicator showed that the battery has 3 min of juice left in it.

Boot into Windows XP
Click on Start->Run
type “msconfig”
this will launch “System Configuration Utility”
Select “BOOT.INI” tab
Select “C:\grldr.mbr=”Xandros Presto”
Notice “Set as Default” button highlighted. Click on it to make the Presto the default boot.
If needed change the “Timeout” from default 30 seconds to 10 seconds. This will speed up the overall booting
Click “OK”.
Restart the system.

Specification for Dell 700m –

Questions:

Does it consume less power than full fledged OS?