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Archive for January, 2008
Creative courses
4 years ago
Some really creative course available at Creative Minds:
If you want to get way ahead of the game, I suggest you sign up for the SAP R/3 Release 6.5 training as soon as possible. Notwithstanding the fact that no one really refers to the product as R/3 any more. By the way, there is no 6.5 release.
Death of a dissident by Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko
Moscow, June 8, 2006: The state Duma adopts legislation giving the FSB authority to send commandos to assassinate “terrorist groups” abroad. “The amendments provide for special operation units of the FSB to be used at the discretion of the President against terrorists and bases that are located outside the Russian Federation for the purposes of interdicting threats to the Russian Federation” says Mikhail Grishankov, deputy chairman of the Duma Security Committee.
That’s the preamble to the final chapter of the book Death of a dissident, written by Alex Goldfarb with input from and Marina Litvinenko. Marina is the wife of the former soviet FSB oper, Alexander Litvinenko, known as Sasha. The story of Litvinenko‘s death by radioactive polonium made the headlines during the latter part of 2006. Though no specific traces or clues could be found, it was widely believed that Sasha’s had been assassinated in London due to his initial defection from Russia and his activism against its leadership. Thankfully, the book contains only a very short piece on the actual death of Litvinenko. The bulk is the story of his operations as an officer in various secret service organizations, his imprisonment for refusing to tow the party line and his defection to England via Turkey. Against a backdrop of recent Russian history, the reader is introduced to numerous key role players, most with names that are difficult to pronounce, let alone remember! Handily, the appendix lists the most important characters and their claim to fame.
The author is an activist, having helped many Russians to defect from their country during the early 1980′s. Having had personal contact with most highly placed players in Russian politics, the story of Vladimir Putin‘s rise to power and his alleged involvement in the Moscow theatre hostage drama, bombing of apartments and death of a prominent Russian journalist is tied to the death of the dissident, Litvinenko.
It’s a modern-day political thriller, with the exception that everything really happened not too long ago. One may want to exercise caution in believing all the allegations, but it’s a fascinating read. Quite coincidentally, the person being accused of wrongdoing in the book was named person of the year by Time Magazine at the end of 2007. Death of a dissident is highly recommended!
Flying Nuvi
Not another Nuvi post, I hear you cry. Last one for a while, I promise. This is how it goes when an often-used gadget is rediscovered…
Last week, I recorded some of the highest speeds yet on my Nuvi:
Those speeds are not entirely possible in a hire car. Instead, the Nuvi managed to grab a reliable and steady GPS signal in the 747 headed east from Windhoek. In contrast to my earlier eTrex, the Nuvi happily keeps on tracking whilst in proximity of a window seat.
At this speed, a parachute jump would be suicidal and not worth the effort, even though home is almost on the direct flight path. Instead, I’ll settle back with another G&T, then head back this way by road. Not quite at the same pace, though…
Thankfully, the pilot has more appropriate hardware in place (this is Air Namibia – what am I saying). I’m assuming his Nuvi says Flying South and provides some indication of altitude. The end result: an accurate placement on the runway at just over 260km/h
Digital subscription
I’ve drastically cut my monthly magazine purchases over the past year. First to go was SACM, primarily due to the fact that I have more information on most of their content before the latest issue hits the shelves. The Internet is to blame, of course. Time and Fortune arrive in the post box. Those subscriptions are really cheap enough not to bother cancelling them. Wired is a must-have. I enjoy Linux Magazine, but I consider the per issue price of ZAR 149 a bit extreme. A digital subscription to that publication is available, however. Considering twelve issues in PDF format costs only ZAR 275, and those issues are available on time and online, there’s no reason not to try.
The issues are available in PDF format. It’s the identical content, including ads.
As with any PDF, it’s easy to read. What more can I say?
Regarding the monthly DVD included with the hardcopy, that’s not that big a deal. Generally, I have the ISO‘s for those installations I want to play with or use. Getting them off a local mirror is generally no big deal. The price is right, downloads are quick and this means not having to waiting on local bookstores getting copies on their shelves, generally a month or so behind schedule.
Garmap Namibia
My recent upgrade to the Garmap African Series 2007 has been worth it. I recognize many enhancements to the maps as I zoom around home territory. This trip to Windhoek was a great opportunity to see foreign maps in action on the Nuvi. With the exception of being in a different place, the routing works. I pimped the Nuvi briefly for this trip to match the sleek hire car Avis was kind enough to upgrade me to.
A dark blue VW Jetta. Automatic, comfortable…
..and fast enough to get me to the airport in time
Thankfully, I’m not travelling BA.
Blackout
4 years ago
by manfred
in Life in South Africa
Tonight, as I sit in a B&B in Windhoek, I am pleased to say that this desert nation doesn’t seem to have the problems citizens of ZA have. I have discovered that my family has endured not one, not two but four power cuts today, each lasting between an hour and two hours each. NamPower, the Namibian electricity supplier seems to have things under control, even though there were concerns voiced at the end of 2005 that Eskom‘s inability to provide electricity to them would potentially cause outages. Eskom is unable to provide electricity to NamPower, not to mention its customers in its home country. That much is clear. NamPower, a much smaller outfit, has coped.
Eskom is in trouble. Unfortunately, so are the inhabitants of ZA. Poor planning and execution of growth and capacity planning has led to a situation where the inevitable load shedding of electricity has become an everyday occurrence. Think it’ll get any better? Don’t count on it. Don’t expect a tax deduction on that generator purchase either.
The amount of money that is lost in a two hour cut during working hours alone must be astronomical. Combine that with lost productivity and overall traffic chaos, and it’s rather obvious that the dark continent has just become that much darker. There’ll be no refunds for lack of service, loss of goods and revenue or accidents and disasters caused by essential services being unavailable. Instead, there’ll be more power cuts, increased charges for a non-existent and unreliable service and the continuous dissemination of propaganda by Eskom blaming their paying customers for utilizing too much of the service they are selling. I hate to mention the World Cup in 2010, but fear that the glamour and excitement of that event will be spoiled, too. Combine the high crime rate with the ongoing spate of corruption charges and you have yourself one thing, and one thing only:
A BANANA REPUBLIC.
And before I forget: Eskom: you suck!
Macworld 2008
Jobs did his usual keynote opening at MacWorld a short while ago. The first item on the agenda is the release of Time Capsule, essentially a hard drive in an Airport Extreme base station. Available from February, various hard drive capacities will be available. The unit interacts with Leopard‘s Time Machine software to provide Network Attached Storage for hard drive backups. A mention of Office 2008 for the Mac is probably less exciting – everyone is keen to know what’s in the air.
Most impressive is the indication that Apple has climbed to the second position on the US mobile phone sale charts, second only to RIM and exceeding the sales figures of both Nokia and Motorola. With 4,000,000 (!) iPhones sold in the 200 days since its launch, Apple has done pretty well, I’d say. New software applications for the iPhone and the release of the following applications for the iPod Touch: mail, maps, stocks, notes, and weather.
iTunes rentals for movies will be available: streaming of content to any compatible Apple device with certain rules to constrain the period for which the movie will be available. I’d just be pleased if his Steveness could make a move and provide us in darkest Africa with iTunes anything. Streaming and on-demand video is simply no solution for countries with bandwidth limitations…
A lower cost for the Apple TV and new software that existing units may be retrofitted with, announced prior to the major announcement: the Apple MacBook Air.
This is not exactly an Asus Eee, but smart-looking nonetheless. It’s an incredible feat of engineering – the MacBook Air is roughly 1cm high and sports an Intel Core 2 Duo processor in a repackaged chip. There’s a 13″ screen, full-size keyboard and 80GB hard drive. USB ports, Bluetooth and WiFi included, of course. Plus a built-in iSight camera for video conferencing. To keep the device as compact as possible, no optical drive is available as an internal unit, but may be connected via USB. The battery life is supposed to be five hours. That will certainly be reduced to around three or so in actual use, though a bigger problem may be the fact that the battery is not user-replaceable. Priced at USD 1800, the MacBook Air will be available in the US within two weeks.
Eee PC
The name may be somewhat odd, but the Asus Eee is a great portable computer for those able to deal with its Linux operating system. Depending on what happens tonight, we may see a similar solution from Apple. Anyhow: the Eee is an ultraportable notebook, weighing less than one kg and measuring less than 20cm along its longest edge.
The pearl-white housing looks good, but the rugged, shook-proof design is probably more important for a device that is designed to be carried everywhere. All storage is flash-based. The downside is the rather lowly amount of storage available: depending on the model, between 2GB and 8GB of storage on the built-in SSD and between 512MB and 1GB of RAM for the Linux operating system and applications to run. Connectivity to the Internet is available by connecting to a wireless network or Ethernet jack. Stereo speakers and a microphone make Internet telephony and media playback possible. A camera is built into the unit to make video conferencing a reality. The standard battery should keep the Eee running for about 3 hours.
The display is a 7″ active matrix TFT LCD and a decent-sized keyboard with trackpad is provided. There’s an external VGA connector for desktop use with a full-sized screen. Along the side, the Eee enables connection of USB devices into one of two USB ports. To bolster storage, the Eee can utilize MMC and SD cards.
The operating system is a cut-down version of Xandros, something that may not sit well with true FOSS addicts. At least, it’s Linux It’s an implementation of BusyBox. The screens seem to be icon-based, making for ease of use.
Being a Linux operating system, it is possible to add additional packages to extend the base software installation. As an aside, those who cannot stand the thought of Linux have the opportunity of getting Windows XP running on the Eee…and then some.
Bigger storage, smaller
SanDisk recently announced the first 12GB microSDHC storage card. That’s big for something so small! Primarily considered for use in mobile phones, 12GB is a lot of storage for music and video. Only devices that conform to the newer SD 2.0 specification will be able to utilize the card. 
Since it can be used with an adapter, the storage card is likely to find its way into GPS devices and digital cameras. SanDisk is concerned that many mobile phone owners have no clue that they are able to add additional storage to their devices. This site is supposed to educate the tech un-savvy… hopefully, people with no clue of storage matters are able to navigate the web to find the site.
On the USB flash drive front, a 16GB unit is available in ZA for under ZAR 900, which is the present price of most 8GB capacity drives at larger retailers in the country. The 16GB is big enough to backup the 12GB microSDHC card, and both fit comfortably in any trouser pocket.
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