With or Without IT

smub — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:48:52 +0000

According to a recent report by BBC (www.bbc.co.uk) more than half of Britons can’t live without email! And I’m more than certain that I fall into this category. I spend most of my time sitting in front of computer even when I’m not at work; checking emails, reading news, watching videos; downloading music….the list is endless. And there are many others like me who first open their laptop and then have a breakfast every morning. Millions are addicted to texting on their mobile phones, a phenomenon that even I can’t seem to understand. But the thing that suddenly hit me today is WHY? Why are we so hooked on to it? Some might say that we as humans has relied on technology than we really need to, other might argue that as curious beings its in our nature to find more about things that surrounds us and our desire to acquire all kind of information. But then, you can always ask, do we really need all this information?

As for myself, I can just say that it has become part of me and my lifestyle and if I really try I might be able to break my tip tapping habit on the keyboard. For instance, if I’m on a deserted island with no internet and a laptop then I will feel lost for a good week or so but after that I’m sure I’ll find something else to keep me busy. But as soon as I come in contact with a ‘hotspot’ then I’ll definitely be itching to get online again

The Feisty Ubuntu Headache!

smub — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:53:09 +0000

After spending many years entangled in Microsoft Windows I decided last week that it was time to switch to something much better, more secure & reliable. It turned out that my options were either adopting Apple Mac or Linux. After some thought, I decided that switching to Linux would be a good choice; I’ve always been in favour of Open Source and free software available to all. So I decided to install Ubuntu…..and boy was I in for a hard time. On the website it says that its easy to install and perfect for newbies but it failed to mention that the new distribution ‘Feisty Fawn’ is suffering from a boot error (/bin/sh: can’t access tty: control job turned off).

Upon looking at the ubuntu forum, it turned out everyone was facing the same problem. All the hardcore programmers came up with various workarounds and fixes that work for some, but for majority of new users like myself were stuck in no man’s land. Not only I hate windows, but now I have to put up with half bake distributions from the linux community. If Linux ever wants to become mainstream OS then it has to get one thing straight, i.e. “Keep it Simple”. I’m sure that with millions of developers tinkering with its code can make it much simpler to install and use. I’m just baffled as why this has not happened or why is it taking so long??

As for my installation headace, I posted my error on the ubuntu forum and I had tried some of the fixes to no avail. I am yet to try the ‘alternate CD’ as advised by someone on the forum but at the moment I’m not very optimistic about the whole situation. I guess if that fails then I might head to the apple shop…..oh but first save some money…atleast I won’t be getting any headaces during installation.

P.S. If anyone has a fix for the above mentioned Ubuntu bootup error then kindly let me know.

The Smub Blog

With or Without IT

The Feisty Ubuntu Headache!