An Apple is an Apple and Apple loves Apple

A few days ago I wanted to install Mac OS X on my PC to test-drive the operating system and see for myself why there's so much hype about it. Is it because of the user-experience? Or because of the supposedly elegant metal look with some kind of blue? I somehow managed to get my hands on a version of Mac OS X and proceeded with the installation.

I was surprised to see that Mac OS X is in fact an operating system that works as follows:

1. it only understands Mac products
2. it only works with Mac products
3. it does not support third-party products

In other words, Mac OS locks users with Apple's products.

Let's take an example: let's suppose Apple is in the manufacturing sector - it makes screws, screwdrivers and doors. Incidentally, the screws are designed so that only an Apple screwdriver could be used to fix the screws and the screws have such a design that they would only fit in the Apple doors. The Apple screwdrivers can't be used to open other makes of screws. And the doors can only be fixed using Apple screws. The Apple doors themselves can only be mounted on an Apple wall. And the wall can be mounted only in an Apple building. And the building can only be built on Apple land and the latter can only exist in Apple world, which may only exist in Apple universe.

The latest case that's been reported is this one from the BBC. Palm's latest phone Pre was claiming seamless syncing with Apple's iPhone iTunes (update). Apple has updated its firmware claiming the latest version fixes a bug which allowed some non-Apple devices to be detected as Apple's. Therefore, the Palm Pre, and perhaps other devices as well, is no more compatible with the iPhone iTunes.

Can a company build something that's closed, the inverse of being open, as in open-connectivity? As it seems to me, Apple's way of working is more restrictive than its rival Microsoft in some way.

To complete my story, of course I've been unsuccessful at installing Mac OS X on my PC. As expected? Perhaps.

Update: The Pre was synced to iTunes, not iPhone as I mentionned.

I own my work

Think of an artist, a music producer, and a designer. Their artworks are protected by what's called 'copyright'. For the computer industry, copyright is at the center of software. Companies like Microsoft know much about it.

Then comes open source-related software. The codes are available freely to anyone and anyone may modify them to adapt to a new situation or free to use them.

Based on my ethics classes, I've always thought that any new creation is automatically protected by copyright, even if that's not stated. That's because most countries have signed the Berne Convention.

But for open-source software things weren't clear up to now: does the author retain copyright even if everyone's allowed to use and modify the codes?

Not now. This story from the BBC reports that a US federal court has made a ruling where the author retains copyright, and that all works based on the author's code should respect the license.


Such protection for the merit of the original works is a good thing and will encourage more of us to publish our work as open source. The fear of losing recognition will now fade away and authors of derivative works will be forced to properly acknowledge the original works.

Looking back at the past year, or so

Holidays are also meant to look back at what one did during the last year. My first year at university has been a great one, with lot's of experiences that changed my life. One year at Spoon Consulting Ltd and another at Linkbynet Indian Ocean have also been great. I can't forget good times and friends at both places.

So, during the last year, here are the things that I can remember:

• Think, think and think, but think differently - university has changed the way I look at things
• Great friends are enriching - all moments are meant to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest
• Sharing is such a pleasure
• Group work is good
• Hectic life, no time to relax
• Playing Need for Speed from midnight to six in the morning
• Concerts and concerts - house and trance music turn me up

And I also got

• A notebook - Dell Latitude D630 :)
• A Hercules MK2 DJ console

That's it, in simple words...

Holidays... good times

Hurray! Holidays are back for me!!

What this means?

• More free time
• More time for work
• More time to do what I want
• Less headaches :)
• More time to spend with friends
• More time to lose on facebook and hi5
• More time to do to funny and silly things
• More TV
• More downloading of music
• (More) time for blogging :P
  

Back to school!

Photo courtesy: T.H.I.N.K.

After months of wondering about goals in my life, I've finally decided that I'm better back to school!

Yes! In fact, I've joined the University of Mauritius again, doing Computer Science...

I should say that it's an all new exciting adventure with new friends and new things to learn, share and have fun at!

Battle for the Macs

Photo courtesy of http://cuteproxy.wordpress.com/2006/06/18/in-review-hajime-no-ippo/

It's no secret in Mauritius:

IF you want a Mac THEN
 GOTO Leal
ENDIF

So simple as that, isn't it?

But now, it's not just Leal selling Macs. Cash & Carry also has stated to bring the powerful and pretty Mac! The piece of code is now:

IF you want a Mac THEN
 CHOOSE
   CASE1: GOTO Leal
   CASE 2: GOTO Cash & Carry
 END CHOOSE
ENDIF

The prices are a bit lower at Cash & Carry. For instance, the iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, 120 GB HD, 1 GB RAM is at R 49500 at Leal and R 45500 at Cash & Carry.

Leal's after-sale service is superb.

As with all Macs, both are offering 1 year warranty...

There's now some sort of competition between those two. Hopefully, customers like us will benefit from better services at a lower price!

Good or bad product manager?

When I was studying, I came across two great books on software engineering:

• Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach by Roger S Pressman
• Software Engineering by Ian Sommerville

These books provided me with an awful lot of concepts and ideas that helped me a lot for the exams. But also for after-university life, at work.

How To Be A Good Product Manager is a fantastic blog about more insights and tips for to-be or existing product managers. It tells you what you could possibly do bad and what's the right thing. The good part of it is that it's not only from theories but also from past experience of the authors.

Perhaps a new material for students? Hmm, ...

Pain of a thunderstorm

Usually, people who use their desktop computers frequently know that having an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is important - it helps protect the computer from unexpected power disruption. So saying, it should supply some amount of power to allow us to shut down our computer, after having saved all our data, nicely when a power cut occurs. And it should also protect us against voltage spikes which may occur, especially during thunderstorms.

However, my UPS did not achieve the second goal three weeks ago during a thunderstorm. I should admit that it might have achieved it during the last three years since my dad bought it and that we had no problems at all, but not three weeks ago, despite the fact that it is labeled 'surge protection system'.

Consequence: the power supply and mainboard on my P4 burnt! However, my P3, which is also connected to the same UPS, was working fine!!

My dad and brother took the P4 to BBCWYSE Ltd which is found near where I live. The guy there told me later that the UPS does not protect against voltage spike! despite the fact that it is labeled 'surge protection'!!

So far, no huge pain - we only have to buy a new mainboard... But alas! When we bought the P4 three years ago from Leal Informatics Ltd, we had a Gigabyte socket 478 mainboard with 5 PCI slots and extension bracket for 5.1 surround sound. However, we couldn't find one which matches this criterion - socket 478 with 5 PCI slots! Why we're after this: because as the years passed by, we bought PCI modem, firewire (IEEE 1394) PCI card, PCI LAN card, etc...

After three weeks search at nearly all stores in Mauritius, we came to the conclusion that we couldn't replace our mainboard with an identical or near-identical one since the mainboard was no longer being manufactured. Huh, this is expected since in the IT world, everything changes fast.

But we were disappointed since we had to buy a cheap integrated MSI mainboard with no Game and MIDI ports, no 5.1 surround sound extension bracket, no serial port, etc... it provided only the basics!!

After passing three weeks without a good computer at home, I will now have to pass the next months thinking on what to invest money - a PCI 5.1 surround sound card or a MIDI PCI port... since I have only one PCI port left empty! I may get both on the same card at some store but that may be really expensive and rare... so I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

Labels are back

Since Blogger is no more in beta, many issues have been solved. Therefore, I'm resuming labels. So you may read/search articles of your particular interest.

Happy reading!

Apologies for no recent updates

I am really sorry for not being able to write at least once a week for the past month. I was really busy at work and was so tired that I couldn't even post updates from home. However, I should also say that I tasted some games and played for hours and hours and looked at TV too much at other times.

Envoyé Spécial passe à la guillotine sur la MBC-tv

Cela fait quelque temps déjà que la MBC-tv, la station nationale de télé à Maurie, passe l'émission Envoyé Spécial à la guillotine. En effet hier, le 16 aout, les présentatrices Guillaine Chenu et Françoise Joly ont été tout simplement "couper" afin que l'émission puisse entrer dans la grille de programmation de la chaine locale. Cette pratique donne l'imprésssion que l'émission est un condensé de reportages. On n'a pas pu avoir les commentaires, mises-à-jour et éclaircissements des présentatrices.

De plus, dans les émissions diffusées précédemment, la MBC-tv n'a pas diffusé certains reportages. Nul ne sait si la MBC-tv est en train de censurer certains. Tout ceci ajoute à mon exaspération car déjà les émissions diffusées sont très en retard dès celles diffusées par la chaine France 2.

Peut-être qui'il ne me reste plus qu'à regarder l'émission en direct sur TV5 Monde Afrique! Mais dans ce cas-là, je fais quoi de la redevance télé que je paye chaque mois?

CSE programming contest

The Computer Science and Engineering Department (CSE) at the University of Mauritius is organising a programming contest these days. I think that this is a very good initiative that has been taken. This will bring some fresh air to the department. Students and lecturers will enjoy some sort of interaction apart from classes and the lecturer-student relationship. They will be able to talk other things apart that in the syllabus.

Students and lecturers in the department will also be more friendly I think. It will be time to make new friends and share ideas.

The important thing is to participate and enjoy, not winning! Good luck to you guys (and gals) participating and have a nice time and lots of fun together!

Unfortunately, I'm not able to join them since I'm no more a student. But I'd love to participate in one way or the other.

My.T critic

It has been a few months since the local telco Mauritius Telecom released a new subscription-based service My.T. It has three services bundled together:

My.T Watch
Digital television which includes 6 free TV channels
Video on demand (VOD)
Plus some interactive services

My.T Talk
Lower price rates for international calls

My.T Surf
Internet package

So far, the move is a good one by the telco. In fact, we may argue that MT has done this to maintain its leadership in the sector in Mauritius.

However, the digital TV is nothing than analog programmes being recieved in digital mode. So saying, there's no EPG information associated to the programmes and no choice of language, which I regret.

The Surf option guarantees a 2 Mbps download only for sites residing on MT's servers. Access to international sites remain at a low transfer rate. It's a shame that we say 256 Kbps, 512 Kbps and 1 Mbps "broadband", knowing that my friends studying in the UK enjoy a 12 Mbps access!

However, I do appreciate the move made by MT to stop charging for the extra bytes in excess that we transfer. But still, MT has not said how the lower priority packets are different than the higher priority ones and how will they affect our Internet usage.

The Talk service is only the 'Sesam' scratch cards tariff reloaded in a new service. And those who use their phones only for local calls a lot do not benefit from the service.

Companies use Mauritius flag colours

The Mauritian flag is made up of four colours: red, blue, yellow and green. Each of the colours represents one aspect of Mauritius:

Red: symbol of country's independence
Blue: the marvellous blue sky
Yellow: the bright future
Green: the fertile land of the island

Over the past few months, I've noticed that many companies are using the four colours as part of their logo. The first example is a very old one and any Mauritian should have noticed it: Microsoft Windows! Yes, it uses the four colours of the Mauritian flag! Here are a few logos of Windows (old logo and new one as at Windows XP):





After a bit of analysis, you will find out that the red-blue-yellow-green sequence is in anti-clockwise direction in the windows.

Now here's Google logo:



It has all four colours, but not in the red-blue-yellow-green sequence.

And now comes that of eBay:



This one is remarkably similar to the Mauritian flag not only in the colours used but also in sequence. This is the one that really caught my attention!

In the light of the above, I should say that I am proud to be a Mauritian!

Note: All images and logos of trademarks are the property of their own companies. They have been taken from Wikipedia and follow the same copyright notice for fair use.

Problems with labels

After playing a bit with labels for this blog's posts, I found that Google's having problems with them. In fact, labels are sometimes in lowercase and sometimes in uppercase. After a bit of googling I noticed that other users are having such problems too as described here.

Not all posts are found under the appropriate labels. Therefore, when you want to view posts under a specific label, you will always have some posts missing. That's why I removed all labels for my postings. I will add them again when the issue is solved.

24 wins awards at the Emmy's

For all the fans of 24, the US-thriller drama, produced by Fox Television, it's time to celebrate! Yes, this year 24 has been awarded best drama and actor at the annual Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards. (But the celebration is more for the producers than the public since they're getting the money and fame, not us!)

More in-depth information available 24's Web page on Wikipedia and on 24's official Web site.

There's more to just the TV serial! Here are some cool things which you could get along with:

• 24: The Game
  
• 24: Conspiracy, a mobisode spin-off
  
• 24: The Soundtrack
  
• 24 DVD Collection
• 24 Mobile Game
  
• 24 wallpapers
• 24 screen-savers
• 24 photo gallery
  

24: The Game is available on PS2 only. It has been developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. More information about the game is available on Wikipedia.

24: Conspiracy is a mobisode based on 24 one-minute episodes.
24: Conspiracy on Wikipedia
24: Conspiracy IMDB (Internet Movie Database) link

The 24 DVD collection, 24 soundtrack and 24 mobile game may be bought from outlets or at online shops, and also on Fox's 24 Web site. The 24 CD does not only feature the soundtrack. It has more than that as stated here.

24 photo gallery is available on Fox's 24 homepage.

The BBC's 24 Web site also features goodies like screen-savers and wallpapers. It also features some games and e-cards. I've taken the "24: How long would you last?" quiz. I've got

You are Gaines: You aren't ever going to let anyone take advantage of you. You're not going down without a fight. The only trouble is that you have an underlying air of menace and you are bound to come unstuck in the end. There are times when perhaps you should try being a little more open to the good in the world, and maybe you could make it through.

Personal note: The 24 mobile game may appear to be below the your expectations since the graphics are in 2-D and that you may navigate only in "top-view". It's more of a strategy game! Forget the nice graphics of Jack Bauer and others!