~/`~/`Tech Sunshine...~/`~/`

Android beats iOS

2012-01-18T16:23:00.000+03:00

Just a few months since the demise of Steve Jobs, a hot debate has been ignited by the other Steve. I read on technobuffalo.com that Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, aired his thoughts on Android and iOS, admitting that Android has surpassed the iPhone’s functionality in many ways. In fact, there’s one feature in particular Wozniak likes on Android that would have certainly left Jobs fuming: voice commands. Woz said that Android’s voice command capabilities are handled much better, revealing “I have a lower success rate with Siri than I do with the voice built into the Android.”

Jobs candidly admitted his passionate hatred toward Android and went as far as vowing to destroy the OS “because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this.” Woz has taken a more level-headed approach, saying both OSs have their pros and cons.

Woz said that his primary phone is the iPhone because of its beauty, "but I wish it did all the things my Android does, I really do.” In addition to Woz’s voice functionality complaint, the man believes Android has a huge advantage with its navigation capabilities. He also opined that Android gets a bad rap in the user-friendliness department, “If you’re willing to do the work to understand it a little but, well I hate to say it, but there’s more available in some ways.”

So what Android phone does Wozniak prefer? Even with access to Google’s latest and greatest, Wozniak likes the Droid Razr. Still, Woz believes the iPhone is the best overall smartphone, a device he highly recommends to folks looking to get into the smartphone market. ”The iPhone is the least frightening thing. For that kind of person who is scared of complexity, well, here’s a phone that is simple to use and does what you need it to do.”

These comments are what makes Wozniak such a cool guy.

The man respects both sides of the coin, and in the case of smartphone OSs, doesn’t resort to bashing. Instead, Woz’s comments reveal his inner geekness and love for tech, merely pointing out that both Android and iOS have their good points as well as bad.

Having gone through the above, i remembered that the geek in me had voiced similar sentiments before the geek in Woz did - not that am at his level. No.

Drones, iSaint Jobs, and Libya

2011-12-28T01:22:00.009+03:00

I recently assured an angry reader of this blog that i will squeeze time and do an end-of-the-year-2011 blog post. Needless to say, this is the one. Sorry about the long silence.

2011 like many years before it, had lots of surprises, disappointments, thrills, ups and downs. Thats the way life goes. It has been like that long before homosapiens learnt how to count time. In fact, the only reason people started keeping track of time is to keep track of events - both planned and unplanned events - including acts of God.

Talking of which, i personally believe that for rats and roaches to team up and run after a head of state, a head of state of an oil-rich country; forcing him to run out of his palacial tent into a sewer culvert in the middle of the desert; and making the same head of state cry out for mercy, before he was killed and buried, in an unmarked grave, at an undisclosed location, was indeed an "act of God".

One Libyan man recently said on Al-Jazeera TV that "the Tunisians have always been calling Libyans dead people who fear death, but now that we liberated ourselves, we have proved that we are not dead people and we do not fear death".

And then the earthquake in Japan that wobbled the very foundations of a real nuclear power plant causing lethal leaks, not mentioning the instant deaths and destruction of infrastructure. That act of God sent me wondering: why would human beings explode nuclear bombs in Japan many years ago, and as if that was not bad enough, fate allows an act of God to play with the security of a nuclear plant in the same country? Double trouble and tragedy. We do not yet know the full impact of that nuclear disaster.

By the end of this year, East Africa will have no less than three submarine communications cables connecting the region with the rest of the world. Just a couple of years ago, there was none. Nevertheless, we are still to see the real and desired effect of the high speed cheaper communications cables manifested on price and speed at the end-user level. The Internet "www" still means "world-wide-wait" - web pages still load without any pomp or swag.

Keeping track of some of the thrills, it was in 2011 that i discovered the beautiful minds of the guys at Android. The IDEOS smartphone running on Android thrilled me with its networking capabilities - at such a price - less than US$ 150 in Kampala at Orange.

The passing of the iSaint at Apple was such a down - money would never bail the wealthy geek out of the hand of the angel of death that was calling him for over a year. Jobs, so far, has been immortalised in Budapest, Hungary, courtesy of Graphisoft, the creators of ArchiCAD. To counter-balance that down, an uplifting moment came through the philanthropy of another very wealthy guy who, years ago, declared that he wants to give away his billions of dollars before he dies. Charles Feeney, 80, just recently dished out US$350 million towards construction of a technology-based satellite campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

Surprises? One big surprise: how could a US drone, intact, end up in the hands of Ahmadinejad? I read somewhere that the guys employed GPS spoofing and caused the highly sophisticated aircraft to land normally at a location of their choice. As we know now, they said that drones are going to be mass-produced and made available cheaply and easily.

My biggest disappointment was why Obama, er... the CIA did not go and pick it up a.s.a.p - at whatever cost - human or otherwise. Please do not call me a gibbering twat. That drone should have been hunted and picked up. Now i live in mortal fear of flying objects!

Well, there is so much to review but so little space. Finally, the lesser disappointment of 2011 - for me - was the ever rising pump price of fuel.

Col. Gadhafi - a million guns!

2011-03-21T19:24:00.003+03:00

It is with great sadness that i write this post.

Col. Gadhafi, President of the Arab Republic of Libya, has ordered the distribution of one million guns to the civillian population in order to help fight off the rebellion in his country.

Growing up in Kampala, Uganda, gave me an opportunity to know what a gun can do if it landed in un-supervised and non-disciplined hands. Working in Mogadishu, Somalia, seven years ago gave me yet another big lesson of a lifetime - a gun and a mobile phone in the hands of un-supervised, non-disciplined individuals.

A gun in the hands of the closely supervised, disciplined forces is a mighty blessing for any leader and any country. But now, the Colonel has decided to unleash fury. We all know what a gun can do - it is not just an iron rod. Supposing things went his way and the rebellion dies out, are the people going to return the guns back to government? Will there be accountability for the way they used the guns? Will they be willing to give up the gun and feel "insecure"?

The Colonel recently used words like "cockroaches" in reference to some of his people. I last heard those words used in what is today called the "Rwandan Genocide".

For the fact-oriented reader, Col. Gadhafi has been stocking up on arms since 2004, when the 18-year arms embargo on his country was lifted. In 2009 alone, European Union member states provided defense equipment worth US$474,000,000 to Libya. Germany supplied the electronic jammers that block mobile phones and GPS networks that are now being used to prevent protesters from communicating with each other.

If you were in Col. Gadhafi's shoes, would you do the same?

Or, would you rather distribute a million laptop computers with free Internet access via WiMax and encourage people to surf and Google and Facebook and twit and blog about the soooo many goooood things the government has done and is doing for them and in effect make the rebels villains?

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Enough read! Enough said!

2010-01-02T12:43:00.002+03:00

One of the biggest predictions for the year 2010 is that in the United Kingdom - and eventually in all Commonwealth countries such as Uganda - the English A-Level syllabus will be given a major shake-up soon, real soon.

Going out will be the likes of (everybody knows them) Shakespeare, the Brontes and Chaucer and coming in will be the complete works of N-Dubz, Tinchy Strider and Chipmunk.

A new dictionary based on text message speak will be used in schools, replacing the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary; pupils will be examined on the contents of the new lexicon; research will be replaced by "googling". d nu Xam wl tst 2 c f ppl undRstNd d nu wA of cmunic8n. Xam rzlts wl b sms 2 yo fon. + certifcats uplod on Facebk. k ? nuf z!

Parents, if you do not like that yet, take your kids to school on the moon.

I almost forgot to wish you a: Hapi Nu Yr!

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Lies defeat truth?

2009-10-05T16:04:00.002+03:00

A few hours ago, i received a call that reminded me of Alfred Nobel and his wit. Today, the first of a series of Nobel prizes for 2009 was announced and it is little wonder that i related the call to Nobel.

The caller wanted me to help them fix their office Internet connection. I asked what happened to their tech support guy and the caller says: "He is here. He has failed. He has been trying to contact you but you did not help".

Well, i told my caller that i was on the road driving and i could not talk on my phone for longer than 20 seconds for fear of being seen by traffic police. The tech guy had called me earlier and i told him that much.

Problem? Yes. The techie had changed a Linksys SOHO wireless router's settings, knocked everything and thus everybody off the network and failed to connect them to another network as he had intended. Worse still when the users got desperate, they asked the tech guy to put them back on the older settings and let them continue with their work as he figured out how to fix it.

The guy just could not do it.

And i bet the reason they called me is that the tech guy told them some lie about me and the Linksys. They believed it. They called. Huh!

Now what kind of tech support or tech advice would that fella give to his clients? Linksys devices are made and designed to be used by "dummies". Dummies willing to spend a few minutes tinkering with the device will make it work. Somehow. And techies?

Nobel wrote: "The truthful man is usually defeated by the liar".

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World economy recovering

2009-08-22T12:24:00.005+03:00

The last time i wrote on this blog, it was about China being a fast growing economy and will overtake the other big economies in a few years.

Now, it is actually the first economy to show signs of recovery from the global credit crunch, aka, the baddest global recession in a eighty years.

According to The Economist, China is leading the way to return to growth. Asia's emerging economies are said to have revived fastest from the recession, while in America, the housing market has shown signs of stabilising and job losses slowing down.

For me, it means am just waiting for people to return to their spending habits, buy computers and other tech gadgets, call me for work.

Till that happens, the recession is biting hard.

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Largest economy - China

2009-01-26T15:10:00.003+03:00

On January 14, BBC World Service radio reported that China had become the third largest economy in the world, replacing Germany after USA and UK. For me, it was not surprising. Instead, i asked: "why did it take so long?"

Well, i will not attempt to answer that question but i will look at the hard facts. Apart from being a country with a population so huge that the census department cannot cope with the counting, it is also a country that has so many industries and factories producing export goods going out all over the globe.

A quick look around myself revealed a lot:
my wrist watch was made in China
the GPS device i use, made in China
the battery in my Nokia N72 phone, made in China
VoIP device on my desk, made in China
all the AC-DC power adaptors in my house are made in China
the Bluetooth keyboard for my laptop is made in China
the labels on my choice wrinkle-free shirts read made in China
the list is endless!

When Raul took over leadership of Cuba from the senior Castro, he lifted a ban on purchase of electronics and other gadgets by the common people. Folks poured into shops and bought whatever they craved. Am sure all the DVDs, laptops, cell phones, gizmo-this, gizmo-that, must have had a component, if not the whole thing, reading: "Made in China".

The best quality fabrics on the US market are made in China. Mobile telecom equipment used by network operators in Africa is now brought in from China.

It is just a matter of a half a dozen years or so, and China will become the leading economy in the world.

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Obama - change we need?

2008-12-20T17:41:00.001+03:00

December 2008 - US President-elect Barack Obama is presently arguably the most popular human being on planet earth.

If you have anything to sell, and sell quickly, all you want to do is find a way of relating it to the highly intelligent professorial president-to-be, come January 20, 2009.

We now hear of new words like:
- Obamachindise - for related merchandise
- Obamabilia - for related memorabilia
- Obamania - for related mania
- Obamaphernalia - for related paraphernalia
- etc.

One of my friends told me he is thinking of opening an ISP called Obamanet!

True, the man has changed the way we see politics. Every African, not only Kenyans, who is not a politician needed this for a lesson on freedom in all its forms.

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Holly... Bolly... Nollywood

2008-03-15T20:34:00.000+03:00

Nollywood, Nigeria's booming film industry, is the world's third largest producer of entertainment films, after Hollywood proper, and Bollywood, India's version of the real thing.

I have never liked Bollywood. I have found Nollywood disgusting. Yet, everybody i know keeps talking about this movie or that movie, exclaiming in Nollywood style "kineeke"! which is to say, "oh my God".

So after America, India, and Nigeria, what is going to be the next ?ollywood?

Microsoft's US$44.6 billion fight for search

2008-02-02T08:45:00.001+03:00

After realizing how much money Google is making from search and advertising, software giant Microsoft is bidding for Yahoo! Now the battle for the grip on computer users goes to a new level. These big three are in a class of there own when it comes to business sense.

For Yahoo, the bid represents another painful reminder of how missed opportunities and mismanagement combined to open the door for Google to supplant it as the Internet’s main gateway, thereby getting hold of you and me - and the entire world.

My spiritual guide used to say "...the meek shall inherit the earth". But now i hear that "the geek shall inherit the earth".

Here below is an interesting timeline:

1975
Microsoft founded.

1995
Yahoo founded, begins serving ads online. Microsoft launches MSN Web portal.

2000
Yahoo starts delivering search results generated by Google’s technology. Google introduces AdWords, its system for displaying ads next to search results based on keywords used.

May 2001
Terry Semel becomes Yahoo’s chairman and CEO.

February 2002
Microsoft taps Overture Services Inc., later bought by Yahoo, to power its advertising-driven search engine. Google overhauls AdWords with cost-per-click model that makes online advertising easier and more cost effective for smaller businesses.

May 2002
AOL picks Google as search and advertising provider.

2003
Google AdSense launches, letting outside Web sites make money by plugging in targeted text ads by Google.

October 2003
Yahoo announces plans to buy Overture, giving it a system for selling search ads similar to Google’s AdWords.

February 2004
Yahoo replaces Google search results with its own technology.

April
Google launches free e-mail service Gmail, expanding ad opportunities.

August
Google holds initial public offering.

December 2005
Google makes $1 billion, 5 percent investment in Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and extends ad partnership.

November 2006
Yahoo builds advertising partnership with consortium of daily newspapers.

February 2007
Yahoo launches long-awaited search and advertising technology overhaul, known as Panama.

April
Google agrees to pay $3.1 billion in cash to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc. Yahoo acquires online advertising exchange Right Media Inc. for $680 million.

May
First rumors hit Wall Street that Microsoft is contemplating Yahoo buyout. Yahoo CFO Susan Decker promoted to oversee advertising operations. Microsoft says it will buy online ad company aQuantive Inc. for $6 billion in cash.

June
Semel steps down as Yahoo’s CEO; co-founder Jerry Yang takes over. Decker becomes president.

July
Yahoo launches SmartAds, a behavioral, demographic and geographic ad targeting system.

August
Microsoft buys AdECN Inc., a stock market-like Web ad exchange. It also launches ContentAds, context-relevant ads on some sections of MSN.

September
Yahoo announced plans to buy online behavioral targeting specialist BlueLithium Inc. for $300 million in cash.

October
Yahoo announces plans to buy AdInterax, a rich media ad business, for undisclosed amount. Microsoft spends $240 million on a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, ensures ad partnership will continue.

December
Microsoft steals Viacom ad business from DoubleClick. Other ad deals since the acquisition of aQuantive include financial news site CNBC.com and Digg Inc., a reader-powered news site. Google’s proposed buyout of DoubleClick gets green light from U.S. regulators, still pending in Europe.

January 2008
Semel resigns as Yahoo’s chairman. Microsoft makes unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo.

CHOGM, hotels, police cameras... e.t.c.

2007-12-06T19:55:00.001+03:00

Just under a week ago, one of the single biggest gathering of heads of state, presidents and prime ministers took place in Kampala, Uganda. It was the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Under the leadership of the Queen of The United Kingdom of Northern Ireland and Great Britain, usually mistaken to be the Queen of England, CHOGM happens once every two years and meetings rotate among the capitals of the over fifty former British colonies and protectorates.

It was a major security task for Uganda and it was telling enough even for the not-so-keen observer. The security people did a wonderful job and the CHOGM ended in tranquility.

As a technology person, my main point of interest was how the authorities concerned were prepared to provide this multitude of VIPs with "connectivity". I happened to check out a couple of newly built "CHOGM hotels", and naturally, started talking connectivity to the Internet and TV channels with the guy in charge.

I was impressed to know that a local Telco was providing a pipe of about 2 Meg of Internet bandwidth. I was shocked to learn that TV entertainment was not well planned. These guys were putting an STB in every one of the over 150 rooms! On further inquiry about this, the techie in charge said there is no way to allow each room to freely surf the channels other than that.

That was a lie from a tech guy. I told him so. There are many solutions but as it appeared, the wrong guy had the job! Ever heard of Cisco Systems, techie? Why put a box on each set in each room when you can put one box somewhere and distribute to all rooms?

As the CHOGM meeting ended, we were left under the prying eyes of the cameras installed by police in all corners of the city! People in the media cry big brother. Don't worry. There's an even biiiigger biiiig broooother... Google Maps!

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Connectors, pigtails, etc...

2007-03-26T16:25:00.000+03:00

After a long silence on the blog, my wits came to a halt when i failed to find a store in town where I could buy telecom cables and cable accessories.

Am still wondering why there is no such thing as a local reseller for stuff like that. Needless to say that no wonder the digital divide is till huge.

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Largest website...!

2006-08-15T14:31:00.000+03:00

Now, this is for geeks!

Have you guys heard about a site that is bigger than the universe? This is no gimmick - http://www.deepskyfrontier.com/

Try it out and see for yourself.
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Nokia E70 - b4 u buy!

2006-08-08T11:11:00.000+03:00

Nokia's eagerly-anticipated E70 phone revives one of the company's cleverest designs, stuffs it full of bleeding-edge features, and aims it squarely at the enterprise market for the first time.

It's one of the most versatile designs on offer, and appears at a time when enterprise email has matured.

Unfortunately, the promise of the design remains just that. The Nokia E-70 Smart Phone has been released too early: the flakey software on today's production model makes for an unsatisfactory user experience.

Read more at : The Register

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USTTI Class of May 2006

2006-06-29T12:16:00.000+03:00

To all members of the USTTI Internet Series Class of May 2006 in San Jose, California, i wish to pass on this suggestion, following a request from Emmanuel in respect of opening a forum to keep in touch.

My first experience with forums is that they usually have a lifespan of a few months before they die. People suffer fatigue sooner than you can imagine. The active forums you see running endlessly are those which have a critical mass of members with issues to keep them engaged - constantly.

Secondly, maintaining the forum requires time and resources at a reliable site. There are some free sites but the tools are not as flexible as some users may want them to be. And of course, the requirement to register: passwords, usernames, codes, etc, make us mere mortals, so tired because we already have too many passwords and usernames to deal with in our cyber life.

SOLUTION:
USTTI has the tools already. See the following:-

http://ustti.org/discussions/
http://ustti.org/forum/discuss.php3

If some alumni opens a forum or discussion, i will join it. Cheers!
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USTTI does a great job

2006-05-07T04:51:00.000+03:00

As technology advances exponentially, telecommunications, just like any other discipline, increasingly gains advantages that makes life easier for mortals.

The rapid advance also means a growing need for continuous training to keep up with the pace of technology. Advanced training does not come cheap. Let alone the mere site visits to the premises of the first-fast-adopters of emerging technologies.

Just yesterday, I was among a group of trainees that visited the Innovation Center at AT&T in Washington, DC. This was an amazing experience. The sponsored courses offered by various companies and organisations through the United States Telecommunications Training Institute, USTTI are meant to bring together people from various countries working in the relevant fields.

The delivery of content, consultations, discussions, demonstrations and handouts was great - and of course the food was great too.

On the social side, the folks at USTTI and AT&T were just wonderful.

Tomorrow am flying out to San Jose, California for three more weeks of hands-on expert training at Cisco Systems. I hope to get a chance to benefit more in future too - especially on fibre-optics.

Thumbs up for USTTI and their various partners.
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On the road

2006-04-30T19:21:00.000+03:00

Ahaaa!

I have been to much on the road and failed to settle down and do some blogging. There is much to write home about... soon.

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Jan Egeland is wrong

2006-04-02T14:46:00.000+03:00

While visiting one of the districts in northern Uganda, the United Nations' humanitarian affairs chief, Jan Egeland said, among other things, that it was "terrorism of the worst kind anywhere in the world".

The UN, it is understood, is appalled - which might mean that the UN is shocked, or disgusted, or dismayed, or alarmed, or struck with revulsion, or maybe, all the above.

The region is so insecure. It has been like that for so many years. People cannot stay in their villages. They are, as Mr Egeland puts it, "terrorised into crammed camp conditions".

And how does Mr Egeland react to that? Quote him: "We as aid organisations have to also improve conditions. Still too many are dying..."

Improve conditions in the camps? Huh!

What kind of camps are they? One will rush to call them Internally Displaced People's camps - IDP camps.

Then i ask again, forgive my being naive if i sound so: are they IDP concentration camps, IDP boot camps, IDP summer camps, IDP death camps, or IDP base camps?

The gentleman is wrong to talk about improving conditions in the camps. He should have said that taking the people out of the camps is one of the first steps to a viable solution.

But again, the gentleman is only trying to help where Ugandans themselves have apparently deliberately failed to deliver.

These suffering people are Ugandans on Ugandan territory. In my humble opinion, they should be re-settled somewhere else in the country where there is relative peace and security. It is important to note that most of them practice mixed farming, which can be done in other places in Uganda - so nothing really ties them where they are now. When the problem is resolved, they can always go back to their tribal lands.

In 2005, when disaster struck New Orleans and other states in the USA, American citizens and government alike started moving affected people away as soon as they realised the enormity of the situation.

Why can't we, Ugandans, move our fellow citizens away from disaster?

If we moved them to safer and spacious places, Mr Egeland and other kind people would most likely find it easier to assist them with adequate healthcare, sanitation, and access to education.

The American example noted above suggests that we, Ugandans - like most other African countries - have no sense of "national community". We still see "other" tribes, "other" people, "other" regions. (Do you want to attribute that to internal colonialism?) For that reason, we (private citizens, law-makers, civil servants, cabinet ministers, president, etc ) are not appalled, nor disgusted about the northern tragedy.

As long as Ugandans are not yet "appalled" at what is happening to fellow Ugandans, whatever is said is just paying homage to the lip-service god.

Reference: click here to see original BBC story.
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Inzie! Inzie! Inzikuru!

2006-03-24T21:22:00.000+03:00

When she won the Commonwealth Women's 3,000 metre steeplechase, Inzie was not just doing it for herself. She was doing it for the rest of the 27 million or so Ugandans. Dorcas Inzikuru, 24, put Uganda back onto the major news channels for good reasons. We needed it so much considering the poor publicity we suffered recently in connection with campaigns, elections, and murderous rebel movies.

If the government is keen to capitalise on this singular achievement, they should pay up their earlier pledges to the young woman. Last year, an accident while riding on a small hired motorcycle, locally known as boda-boda, reminded us that she needs that car which the government promised eons ago.

If one takes into consideration the huge amounts of money spent on public relations and image marketing consultants - locally and internationally - this one woman can single-handedly achieve the desired result if the government appoints her roving ambassador.

Just saying: "Warm greetings from Uganda. My name is Dorcus. I am a Ugandan. I am the 2005 Women's 3,000 metre Steeplechase World Championship Athletics Champion, and I am also the 2006 Commonwealth Women's 3,000 metre Steeplechase Champion" would lure soooo many investors in a single blow than the said consultants.

Remember, running around a large field more than 7 times within 9 minutes and 19 seconds, and all the time jumping over barriers and splashing through ponds of stagnant water is no mean task.

Well done, Inzie.
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Look closer, deeper, learn

2006-03-23T20:19:00.000+03:00

The zombie... crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the... burrow. The... creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the... plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the... turns to the... once more and lays an egg on its underside. The... does not resist. The egg hatches, and the... chews a hole in the side of the... In it goes.

Hey! This is not an excerpt from a novel. It is observed reality - science. Follow that link to read the full text and you will be a notch more knowledgeable.

Note:
Sadly, the above link is dead. However, buying the book "Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures" by Carl Zimmer will do you good.

You can also visit his website: http://www.carlzimmer.com
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gShiled wins by far

2006-03-23T17:39:00.000+03:00

Did i say, a couple of days ago, that i put out the gShield Linux-based iptables firewall and replaced it with some other stuff from some other folks?

I regret.

I had so much trouble with access to the web that i had to put gShield back online again.

As it turned out, the m0n0wall software could not handle the traffic consistently. Am talking about an ISP network loaded, to maximum available bandwidth capacity, from morning up to around mid-night every day for 365 days through.

m0n0wall was good on features but bad on persistence. At most, it would run for about 50 minutes before collapsing and needing a reboot.

Determined, i went for smoothwall. Got its iso image onto a CD-W and prepared it to replace the gShield firewall slot at the network backbone. Now, this one has all the features you need in a Linux-based firewall: a cool GUI, ssh remote access, https access, DHCP, DHCP address reservation, integrated web-cache, and a horde of others.

But again, it also could not handle the heat. Worked well for the first 2 hours, then it started crawling to a halt every after 30 or so minutes, consuming all the memory and doing practically nothing. I disabled the resource-guzzling web-cache. Problem persisted.

I was using the same machine so that i compare the firewalls on the same platform. Of course another firewall machine was readily available for stand-by switch-over to keep the network running. By late afternoon, i decided to put back my dear work-horse - gShield.

gShield thoroughly beats them. It has worked for over a year now - glitch-free.

Software, software, software

2006-03-20T08:53:00.001+03:00

In the technology world, it is software, software, software.

If technology keeps going the way it has been for the last 20 years, then we can safely predict that the future of mankind will depend, increasingly on software.

From the planning of your family expenditure to communicating using mobile phones, or even controlling hi-tech gadgets trawling the Martian surface, software is the thing.

A small glitch in the software, say, for example, on Vodafone's mobile phone network controllers can turn half of Europe into a maddening mess.

Sometimes, i wish there is an alternative. But honestly, i do not see the possibility of one. So, for now, like everyone else, i must use software - and it comes with penalties too. For starters, you don't need to worry about software. You do not need to make a choice. You just use what comes with your gadget. Yet for others, that's just not good enough - there must be something better. Look for it.

And in looking for that, i landed on Manuel Kasper's m0n0wall. Read the user testimonials. Wanted to test it. And hoh, it was a challenge. I have not used FreeBSD before but that's no threat to me. Kasper's m0n0wall is just about 5 MB. Tried it using the generic PC IDE package but my machine's CD-ROM and HDD kept playing games on me.

Then help appeared from Chris Buechler in the form of a m0n0wall Live Installer. Went for it. Its a whopping 92 MB to download using my 128 Kbps line! Yet my machine didn't like it either. After some tinkering, i found that FreeBSIE in safe mode does the trick. Configured m0n0wall and it worked right away.

Anyone who has used Linux-based firewalls and bandwidth manipulators, or even Netscreen and Packetshaper, will be surprised and elated after seeing what m0n0wall can do. By the way, m0n0wall boots up in less than a minute, the GUI is cool and the traffic graph is real-time. Open Source? Yeah, a winner!

The only thing, for now, that i wish to get added onto m0n0wall is "DHCP address reservation" - and maybe, yes maybe, transparent web cache awareness or integration.

Otherwise, i have taken my wall, R Gregory's gShield offline, and slotted in m0n0wall into the network today for a "real live" test drive and so far so good. Time will tell.

Harlots and Hedonists

2006-02-24T12:55:00.000+03:00

It is such pathetic reading. ET online reported that Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley, has married for the fourth time.

The frequency, for such a harlot in a hedonistic world, is not a problem, but rather, the men involved. She got married to Michael Lockwood. The best man was Danny Keough. Danny is Lisa Marie's former husband and father of her two children!

And yet, Lisa Marie, Michael, and Danny, all work in the same place.

"Michael is the musical director, so he's like the boss of the band, Danny is the father of my children and we have this other dynamic," Lisa Marie says. "It's very complicated, yet it's very simple because they get along so well that it doesn't interfere with anything."

This "other dynamic"? Huh!

Alito, Judges, Hijack The Law

2006-02-02T09:11:00.000+03:00

Kansas City, Missouri, March 1989 - a pretty 15-year-old girl is waiting for a school bus. Two men approach her, grab her by force, take her somewhere, rape her and then stab her to death. That poor girl was Ann Harrison.

Washington February 2006 - New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito refuses, along with 5 other colleagues on the bench, to let the state of Missouri execute the convicted kidnapper, rapist, and murderer, on the flimsy claim that execution by lethal injection is cruel and unjust punishment.

Justice Alito, (I ask Alito because he made headlines news on this, being his first case vote) did that murderer ask Harrison how she prefered to be killed? Did he ask Harrison's family how best to kill their little helpless girl? Is death by stabbing uncruel?

The murderer has many supporters who are playing the race card - the girl was white, the killer was black. They claim blacks receive harsh punishments. Maybe. But this hapless girl's case should not be used to compound the sensitive race issue.

Honestly, justice is sought in order to bring closure. The Law in Missouri provides for that method of execution. It should be used. If it is cruel let them revise their Law. But before it is revised, it should be used as it is. Why hijack it, Justice Alito?

You can't go to Court with the Law you wish you had but with the Law you have.

Robertson, Sharon, God and Israel

2006-01-06T15:04:00.000+03:00

Once again, an ass-hole by the name of Pat Robertson, PhD, a Republican, founder and chairman of Christian Broadcasting Network, a televangelist, a pastor, born March 22, 1930 (he is not young), has puked shit on the world's video, audio and digital news channels. To mention one, CNN reported today that, according to Robertson, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is now dying as a result of divine retribution for giving away the Gaza strip to the Palestinians.

Robertson is a senior-double-asshole wallowing in the deep shit of Christian fundamentalism. He is a "fundie" full of shit and everytime he speaks, shit flies out of his mouth. Just recently, in August, he called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Thank God the fellow never managed to become president of the USA in 1988. From the way he talks, it is clear Robertson has the same idea of God as does Osama bin Laden - for both of them always portray killing as a very Godly act.

The world is increasingly facing a real danger from both Christian fundies and Islamic fundies. Their agenda seems to be faith-by-force-not-choice-or-reason.

Robertson was defended by his equally fundamentalist spokeswoman by a lame excuse that he is only quoting the Bible. Bible? My black ass! He can quote the Bible just like the Devil does, but most folks, like Robertson, quote the Bible for monetary and social gain and mileage.

Perhaps it is timely to point out that as a basis for faith in a single God who "created" the world and everything therein, it is not a credible book. Yet, everyone says it is an inspired book and therefore it is error-free.

So, taking it to be error-free, I will put it to Robertson and his ilk, that the Bible clearly says in the beginning, there was God and the giants. God did his stuff of creating Adam and Eve when the giants (Genesis 6:4) were already living on earth.

God did not create the giants. Who created the giants?
The giants did not create God. Who created God?

That means Robertson's God was not "totally" in charge. In fact, after Cain was condemned for killing his brother, he was afraid of getting killed, prompting God to put a mark on him (Genesis 4:15). Let me also mention that Cain took to himself a wife (Genesis 4:17) long before his parents copulated (Genesis 4:25) to get their third offspring. From that sequence of verses from the infallible scripture, it is clear that those who claim that he married one of his sisters are spreading incestuous heresy. I will also state that Cain was the first of the sons of God to take a wife from the daughters of men (Genesis 6:2).

Because God, according to the first book of the Bible, was not totally in charge, it means God is just one of the creations (both the visible and invisible) on the earth, which prompts me to advise Robertson and his fellow fundies to exercise restraint and tolerance. His faith, like all other faiths, is just another point of view - it is not an absolute.

Myth debunked!

May God be with all the sick, (like Ariel Sharon and Randy McCloy Jr.) the ill, the needy, the hurting, the hungry, the homeless, the orphaned, and the helpless creatures of the earth today.

George C. Cooper - a tribute

2005-12-25T15:00:00.000+03:00

Today marks 10 years since my father died, succumbing to a combination of cancer and hernia complications - may his soul rest in eternal tranquility. There will never be a single human that will influence my life the way he did. Mark the period to that sentence.

There is a way that December 25 puts people into a strange mindset that is so difficult to comprehend - all of a sudden, you see moderate normal people transformed into extremist abnormal beings; ostentatious self-indulgence rules; bingeing and all sorts of strange behaviour take over the masses.

As I consoled myself with the departing of father and friend, I somehow gathered enough courage to ease my tensed-up mind from planning funeral logistics and arrangements by focusing on the cult-like celebration of the day. I was tensed-up just because, like everybody else, I had earlier spent much in preparation for December 25 and therefore I had barely enough money on me. For a guy who is in his early 20s, struggling to survive, taking full responsibility of siblings (father had walked away from home by then), single-handedly supporting my mother, putting a new roof on her house, and attending to all sorts of situations that should normally have been my father's work to do, it was simply waaay toooo much!

Since that time, I realised that almost everything that people do on December 25 has no touch of godliness whatsoever - evidence to that effect is strewn all around the places of leisure and entertainment. Clearly, it is a cleverly concealed pagan celebration that seems to have survived the test of time.

Ironically, it was that period of bereavement that afforded me the opportunity to reflect on the much celebrated day and found it to be worthless in terms of godliness, but worth everything in terms of economics, collective public health and morale.

More orgasms during sex? Read on...

2005-12-24T21:15:00.000+03:00

Guess what? Symmetry and Sex are bed-fellows. Yes.

Experiments have found that women are more attracted to men who have features that are more symmetrical than other men. One study even found that women have more orgasms during sex with men who were more symmetrical, regardless of their level of romantic attachment or the guys' sexual experience.

Am not kidding, here is the proof! It is there for your reading.

Seeing stars in… daylight!

2005-12-03T09:06:00.000+03:00

Sometimes, you got to get out of your nest and do a bit of running around in order to re-orient yourself with the world around you. So, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to do just that.

Yes. Got my hands rustling through the dusty bookshelf papers, got my certificate of immunization against communicable diseases – required in my part of the world for cross-border travelers – dashed to the bus company and booked a ticket. The road was bumpy for most of the 1,300 kilometers or so, journey down to the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa, Kenya.

Kenya, by the way, is one of the top destinations in Africa for travel-hungry Homo sapiens.

Luckily, I had sufficient good company too in the form of my better half- alluring!

After much walking in the sweltering sunshine, I got a chance to lie down by the enormous walls of an ancient seaside fort built by trigger-happy Portuguese imperialists and took a nap. As I lazily gazed into the endless clear blue sky, lo, I saw a star!

A star in broad daylight – with the tropical sun still hanging high up there majestically as ever – early afternoon.

It was such a sight. My mind wandered away into the esoteric and transcendental… distance, time, and space… questions that can never be accurately answered are still so many.

...the internet born - 2

2005-10-26T17:04:00.000+03:00

(cont'd from "...the internet born")...
"In the spring of 1972," Cerf recalled, "Bob and I got together to discuss our work. I said to Bob: 'I don't know how we're going to put these things together.'"
Nonetheless, having been involved in connecting the first "four nodes" which were computers at UCLA, SRI, UCSB (University of California at Santa Barbara) and the University of Utah, Cerf & Kahn were uniquely qualified to lead the long-term charge into the internet.
By September of 1973, Cerf and Kahn presented the "internet design" to a group of scientists at the University of Sussex and got universally positive feedback. Then the IEEE magazine, "Transactions on Communications" unveiled the TCP/IP development to the world and the rest, as they say, was history. What, I asked Cerf, was the greatest threat to what they were doing? "The greatest threat to the internet," Cerf cleared his throat, "was a new initiative called OSI which was a seven-layer architecture format that I didn't think would work." After which initiative, Cerf said agonizingly, rhetoric flew for ten years - ten long years of defending his baby. The entire technology community was embroiled in exhaustive debate about the OSI vs. TCP/IP issue and choice.
Finally, in order to resolve the impasse once and for all, Cerf stepped in. He sent a letter to the National Institute of Science & Technology (NIST) which motivated them to create a "blue-ribbon committee". Now these kinds of committees rarely resolve anything, but this one did by selecting TCP/IP over the inferior architecture.
Cerf continued, "By 1988, I was convinced it was time for the service to emerge as a public good and I started working on getting permission to open up the NSFNET and ARPANET to the carriage of commercial traffic. That started in limited forms in 1989 with the interconnection of MCI Mail to the internet." Cerf was a one-man lobbying machine pursuing the peaceful global invasion of his pet project.
"Then by 1992," he marched on with his narrative, "legislation was passed that permitted commercial traffic to flow on the NSFNET backbone." The Ethernet had already come out of Xerox PARC which was an important development. "Next came Tim Berners-Lee's creation of the Worldwide Web; Marc Andreessen and the Mosaic version of WWW at the University of Illinois; and finally, the Netscape Communications IPO … the internet became a public phenomenon."
How hard was this for Cerf? "Well, the problem of giving birth to something and getting it out is a real challenge," Cerf stated emphatically supporting the "father" and "birth" metaphors.
Could the early internet have ignited World War III had it satisfied the military as the new indestructible communications system? Would Cerf have felt like the "father of the atomic bomb" if his work had resulted in global war even one won by America?
Cerf said: "Ironically I met Oppenheimer when I was about 13 and visiting Stanford University. The internet was developed during the Cold War period and I saw it as an important contribution to our command and control capability. It was not the US policy then to launch pre-emptive strikes."
As we discussed this omnipresent worldwide communications system, he talked about myriad issues which were fun to hear. In a surprising statement he said, "You're running the 1978 version of the internet today." Maybe that's why my browser window keeps crashing, I wondered to myself.
For Cerf, the future is what it's all about. He was quoted as saying: "Our mission is to make MCI into a company that generates at least half of its income from products or services that don't even exist today," a quote which might be heard from lots of senior executives - none of whom could ever deliver an invention like Vinton G. Cerf. In closing Cerf bubbles enthusiastically: "The internet was conceived in 1973, born in 1983, and emerged to the public in 1993. VOIP got "real" in 2003. I can hardly wait for 2013..."
Bill Robinson has appeared on CNN, PBS, Bloomberg and had his own segment on SKY News commenting on high-tech and marketing issues and has written columns and articles for FORTUNE Small Business, The Financial Times, Marketing Magazine (UK), Forbes.com, The Moscow Times, Cisco Systems iQ Magazine, United Airline's Hemispheres Magazine and Upside Magazine. Bill may be reached at: bill@relentlessmarketing.com

Footnote
*Dr. Kleinrock has a fascinating biography and was a real progenitor of the internet as we know it today. On Kleinrock's homepage here, the following two anecdotes can be found:
About the day they first connected (1969): "On the day after the IMP arrived (the Tuesday after Labor Day), the circus began - everyone who had any imaginable excuse to be there, was there. Kleinrock and his team were there; BBN was there; Honeywell was there (the IMP was built out of a Honeywell minicomputer); Scientific Data Systems was there (the UCLA host machine was an SDS machine); AT&T long lines was there (we were attaching to their network); GTE was there (they were the local telephone company); ARPA was there; the UCLA Computer Science Dept. administration was there; the UCLA campus administration was there; plus an army of Computer Science graduate students was there. Expectations and anxieties were high because, everyone was concerned that their piece might fail. Fortunately, the team had done its job well and bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP that same day. By the next day they had messages moving between the machines. THUS WAS BORN THE ARPANET, AND THE COMMUNITY WHICH HAS NOW BECOME THE INTERNET!"
About Kleinrock's "crashing of the network": "Indeed, under Kleinrock's supervision, UCLA served for many years as the ARPANET Measurement Center (in one interesting experiment in the mid-1970's, UCLA managed to control a geosynchronous satellite hovering over the Atlantic Ocean by sending messages through the ARPANET from California to an East Coast satellite dish). As head of the Center, it was Kleinrock's mission to stress the network to its limits and, if possible, expose its faults by 'crashing' the net; in those early days, Kleinrock could bring the net down at will, each time identifying and repairing a serious network fault. Some of the faults he uncovered were given descriptive names like Christmas Lockup and Piggyback Lockup. By mid-1970, ten nodes were connected, spanning the USA."

EASSy - the cable...

2005-08-02T12:52:00.000+03:00

Yes.

Finally, cable is going to be laid on the east coast of Africa.

...the internet born

2005-07-29T20:57:00.000+03:00

Currently SVP of Technology Strategy for MCI, based in Virginia, Vint Cerf spent some time talking with Bill Robinson (of The Register) from JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories) in Pasadena, California. Of course his day job involves helping MCI figure out how to maximize revenue and obtain new customers, partners and develop new channels. But the reason he was at JPL is because of his revolutionary work on setting up the InterPlaNet communications/data system which he's involved JPL, NASA and numerous other organizations in sending IP infrastructure to Mars on the recent landings there. This will be the subject of our second interview with Cerf.

The man has always been pretty unassuming about claiming the credit and very liberal with the credit to others such as Bob Kahn. This leads me to believe that more of the credit is due than is normally attributed to him.
Here's how Cerf tells the story:
"The simple story is that the US Department of Defense (DOD) started to explore the use of computers in what they called ‘command & control' which was really about multiple computers and how to connect them," Cerf began. The obvious intention was to develop an integrated military communications system which would represent a distinct battlefield or even strategic missile delivery advantage for America.
So the DOD's initial problem was how to connect its far-flung assets? "DOD said we needed to put these computers and connect them on tanks, APV's and ships," Cerf pointed out. Remember this was 1970 and the height of the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union; Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and committed to spreading Communism as far and wide as possible; while America was trying to prevent the "domino effect" spread of this enslaving ideology in Vietnam (a war they lost in the near-term but eventually won with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991).
The USA wanted to find the technologies which would give them the edge, any edge, against the Soviets and went to the universities and research facilities to find that edge.
Who could've predicted that one of the technologies would be a worldwide communications system which would change the business models, offer new uncharted territories for distribution, sales, procurement, research, health, travel, community, law, education and so on? Who would've known that there would be no immediate military application but a larger more important invention with an incredible utilization around the corner?
Not Cerf certainly.
"We had no idea that this would turn into a global and public infrastructure," he observed categorically. "In the earliest days, this was a project I worked on with great passion because I wanted to solve the Defense Department's problem: it did not want proprietary networking and it didn't want to be confined to a single network technology. As the system expanded into academic space, it was increasingly useful and I hoped it could be made available much more widely."
Good thing too, imagine if the DOD had successfully stifled it or insisted on its being classified; the world would still be writing letters and waiting around for "snail mail." (Although with the technology stress of e-mail in-boxes, spam and viruses perhaps would we all be better off?)
In the mid-1960s, the US government created ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) a "skunk works" R&D operation in part as response to Sputnik.
Cerf knew Bob Kahn from some work at UCLA and together they created the TCP/IP protocol which became the backbone platform for the Internet. I make it sound easy; it was anything but.
They had heard about Donald Davies (over here across "the pond") at the National Physical Labs and his work on and references to "packet switching." Then armed with Davies' concept, Cerf and Kahn encountered another set of important research from Leonard Kleinrock and Paul Barron who was working at Rand at the time. Kleinrock & Barron had written a paper called "On Distributed Communication" which set the Cerf/Kahn minds in motion about what Cerf termed "voice-communications in packet mode." (Cerf observes here that "for all purposes, it was VOIP.")
Larry Roberts and Bob Taylor from ARPA contributed the basic idea of ARPANET, according to Cerf who is quick to point out he was "just a grad student at that time responsible for software" and shouldn't be given much credit at all until the time came for the first internet concepts and of course, TCP/IP.
Kleinrock*, Taylor, Roberts and Davies as some of the world's top scientists, computer experts and electrical engineers had all been involved in one way or another at one time with ARPA. Kahn had also been at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), a Cambridge, US-based computer company which won the government contract to build the ARPANET, forerunner to our internet today.
But the internet was not the internet just yet... (see my next post).

...unbeLiverpool!

2005-05-29T08:28:00.000+03:00

Liverpool FC's astounding victory a couple of days ago against AC Milan in the 50th European Champion Clubs' Cup final in Istanbul, Turkey, was for me, just a night of wonder. The Reds trailed by a lofty 3-0 at half time, only to come back, level the goals, play extra time, and win the penalties to take the day!

The match also helped rewrite the history books in many other ways, not least by giving Liverpool their fifth European crown and their first since 1984 - making England the most successful nation in European club competition with 28 trophies, followed by Italy and Spain on 27.

It was sensational, hard to believe... it was unbeLiverpool!

ONLY 4,200 years

2005-05-02T08:41:00.000+03:00

Decades ago, Venansio Senoga, a veteran radio personality on Uganda's airwaves nurtured my astronomical interests through a weekly broadcast sponsored by Sembule Steel Mills Ltd. I wish that program gets airtime again. It could be the beginning of Uganda's space program.

As NASA shifted dates for the resumption of shuttle missions, my attention switched to reading a bit more about my heavenly interests, and while engaged thus, wondered how fast and accurate space travel could get. Even if man has not yet landed on our nearest planetary neighbour, that should not be a reason to stop pondering a journey further afield - to the nearest star.

Proxima Centauri landing? No. Just a fly-by suffices. NASA's space ships travel at a heavenly 7.8 km per second. At that speed, it would take 160,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star. The fastest man-made object, the Helios 2 has a speed of 70.2 km per second, which reduces the journey to 18,000 years. Still bad. For purposes of comparison, the speed of sound in air is about 340 metres per second only and the speed of light in a vacuum is about 300,000 km per second.

However, scientists are working on a gadget that will dash at 300 km per second, trimming the Proxima Centauri journey to a spooky 4,200 years ONLY - firmly beyond the current lifespan of both man and machine. Heavens!

Divine appointment

2005-04-06T06:31:00.000+03:00

The passing away of the Holy Father on Saturday 2nd inst. has had such a profound effect on the whole lot of surviving humans on earth today in a way that no words can accurately describe.

It is such an overwhelming outpouring of grief that I have never seen before. Ecclesiae catholicae and her children are sad, indeed very sad but hopeful until they hear someone announce: "habemus papam". Save for this blog post, I am speechless.

Pope John Paul II (may his soul repose in eternal bliss) was a people's pope. 100 heads of state are expected to attend the funeral Friday 8th April - the most ever to have gathered in Rome. Among many firsts:
GeorgeBush - first US president to attend a papal funeral;
Rowam Williams - first Archbishop of Canterbury to attend a papal funeral.

Contrasting the death of the pontiff with that, recently, of a vegetative, unconscious, poor American woman, wife of a patient, long-suffering, caring husband through many years: to say that "life should not be unduly prolonged by artificial means" would be an understatement. Yet on March 31, Renato Cardinal Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said that removing her feeding tube was "an unjust death sentence of an innocent person". Only God knows, in this case, who is right or wrong.

The Holy Father was terminally ill; had all the wherewithal to afford artificial life support for as long as possible; but that option was not used. For me, it once again affirms the notion that life is sacred and should be left thus. Artificial life support systems and techniques may be used to "revive" life, but not to unduly prolong life - not to postpone the hour of death.

As soon as it is clear that one cannot live without artificial life support, one should be allowed one's right to die. Dying is, afterall, a divine appointment.

Inching closer...

2005-03-13T20:15:00.000+03:00

The coming of March! I love this month.

Whatever they warned some ancient potentate about the ides of March, and whatever folklore says in mystifying the month by phrases like "mad as a March hatter", i still love it.

Ugandan politicos - i mean other people - on the other hand, hate the coming of March in varying degrees. March 2006 is now less than 365 days away. Elections will be held. I will not stand. But those who are going to be candidates are spending sleepless nights already.

I love this March because it brings closer the day i will stand for Prezido!

Spoofed: almost perfect

2005-02-27T21:38:00.000+03:00

Judging by what some folks demonstrated recently, the www can easily become a maze where ardent surfers and newbies would get lost - unknowingly.

Case at hand: imagine you opened your favourite internet browser, navigate the cursor to the address/location bar, grab the keyboard and type www.microsoft.com and hit the enter key. A page opens and you see what you can see on this link - www.cheshirewebmill.co.uk/microsoft/ ! Honestly, it might take you hours before you notice it is not a Microsoft website.

Yahoo! had the details about that spoofing here.

Boot Linux + Windows simultaneo...

2005-02-08T22:45:00.000+03:00

No. Am not talking about dual booting.

Am saying you will be able to start your machine and load two operating systems (OS) at the same time - multiple booting. Then you can switch from one OS platform to another in just the same way you switch from one desktop application to another.

All that courtsey of engineers from IBM, Sony and Toshiba. They have built a microprocessor, code-named Cell, which has 10 times more power than today's PC processors. If Cell does not suffer what befell Transmeta's Crusoe, we are in for real big time computing.

See how technology has advanced? Wonderful! I can't wait to see this.

Blade: Trinity, and CBS FM

2005-02-05T14:06:00.000+03:00

Now, sometimes you enter a movie, watch it, try to figure out what tickled you most, then realise you would miss nothing if you had chosen not to watch it.

Ditto for Blade: Trinity. Having suffered the narrow escapes by my star, i thought the weapon that was going to be used to kill the vampires would be "impressive". No at all. Maybe i went in expecting too much!

And to kill off the aftermath of watching Blade, i went to surf www.cbsfmbuganda.com and guess what? That site is down. Can you imagine?

Chew, Man Utd, chew on!

2005-01-13T11:59:00.000+03:00

Alex Ferguson: the guy chews! A lot.

In East Africa, the brands of chewing gum that have a good following have for a long time been Orbit and Big G. Recently, i was in a bar watching football on cable TV when someone shouted out "Sir Orbit!" on seeing Alex Ferguson's face on the screen.

Honestly, the man chews. The legendary Man-U boss chews like a ruminant, say a goat, on its cud. If a measure of chewing is not yet available, we have one now. How much chewing gum can one chew between 90 and 93 minutes? Two fergusons. The first ferguson in the first 45 minutes and the second in the second 45 minutes, plus injury time of course.

Speculation is rife about what he actually chews on. Kenyans and Somalis think he chews on a euphoric stimulant such as catha edulis (khat); others including Ugandans, say he chews on drugged gum, rubber bands, or a black magic rubber for winning his game.

Whatever Sir Alex Ferguson chews on, he has left a great legacy in European football; he has grubbed an inumerable following around the world; he has developed extremely strong jaws; and has now provided a basis for quantifying chewing.

holding out

2005-01-07T19:55:00.000+03:00

Been too, er, busy to post anything - the combination of Christmas and the New Year holiday season, you know.

But i somehow found time to blog-visit:
http://tedshelton.blogspot.com/
http://ipinferno.blogspot.com/
http://pulverblog.pulver.com/

Cheers!

EA Marine Cable?

2004-12-18T13:03:00.000+03:00

Some time back, i was getting my hands dirty on the web digging for existing data about strategic plans related to East Africa in respect of data communications technology.

Before i started working for an ISP (another TLA for you?), i never bothered much about what technology i was using to get the Internet onto my desktop. Never did i bother about how i can improve things in terms speed - i was just doing e-mail, Google-ing (and playing tricks with the engine to produce a single result for a search phrase), reading and chatting. Those days, it was fun!
But now, i face clients daily who run critical applications on the Internet and the only impediment to efficiency is the satellite. We use, in East Africa, satellite to get to the world wide communications network. Communications satellites are in stationary orbit providing links to places that may otherwise not be covered by terrestial cables. But they are tens of thousands of kilometres (about 37,000km) above ground, making them slower than cable.

Words like bandwidth, latency, flow control, jitter, QoS, etc., constitute a nightmare for me. I pick up a VoIP phone to say hi to a fellow in South Africa but fail to talk. The conversation is breaking up too much - latency.

Data sent over satellite from Kenya to South Africa will have a minimum round trip delay of about 400 milliseconds. If it was done by terrestial or submarine cable, it could be as little as 35 milliseconds!

Data speeds over satellite links and cable are the same, but the distance to be covered is much shorter by cable which makes it faster.

This is A.D. 2004. The first transatlantic marine cables were laid as early as the 1850s. East Africans are "still planning" to lay one. My minor concern is that the scale at which they want to start is harder than necessary. There is no reason you want to plan for routing diversity when you have none at the moment, considering initial costs and management factors. My major concern and ultimate question: what have the folks in high office been doing all these years? Only eight years ago, South Africa was building a coalition of frontline states to collaborate and lay a second, higher capacity, modern marine cable. Can one say that these fellows (East Africans) did not know of that project?

Instead of laying cable from Djibouti through Somalia and down south, it would make much more sense - in respect of the concerns raised above - even belatedly, to talk with South Africa and group, to just extend the SAFE cable system from Mauritius to Tanzania and/or Kenya. Mauritius is nearer to us than the FLAG (nearest landing in Muscat) and SEA-ME-WE 3 (nearest landing in Djibouti) cable systems that run through the Red Sea. Or extend the system from South Africa through Mozambique to Tanzania and Kenya. Funds saved on reduced marine distances would be used to lay high capacity terrestial cable to inland teleports in Rwanda and Uganda. Besides, Somalia is in no hurry to contribute to project funding.

Technically, my major benefit and interest is low latency and low-cost broadband connectivity. But in serious economics, we all stand to gain. Communications running costs will drop, capacity will increase, distance learning and telemedicine will become more of a reality, and more telecommunications investors would be attracted. We can no longer ignore the role of Internet connectivity in all aspects of life today.

Nevertheless, welcome, EA Submarine Cable!

Engage a busybody

2004-12-16T11:40:00.000+03:00

Yesterday evening, i got so tired and bored fighting worms, viruses (no virii in comps, sorry!), trojan horses, malware blah blah blah, using only a free version of AVG anti-virus. Honestly, i do not believe (beleive?) the best things in life are free.

As i toiled to get rid of malware that the said free version cannot sniff, let alone remove, a nut head kept distracting me. So i got myself a trick that students in programming class used to pull on unsuspecting classmates.

Swap the mouse and keyboard cables - both PS/2 of course, then complain loudly: my computer is stuck. The nut head naturally offers to assist. I oblige and meantime he gets stuck trying to fix the problem while i gain freedom doing something else without interuption.

Most folks will never solve that in an hour. Try it on some dude!

Be Mr President

2004-12-16T11:06:00.000+03:00

Listen to this. No, no, no. Read:

"I am president of the Republic of Uganda, Commander in chief of the armed forces. I have powers to drop anyone. So those who do bad, we shall discipline them or fight them". (quoted by The Monitor newspaper, Dec 16, 2004).

My initial interest was the segue from a first person singular to a first person plural in the same breath. Who are the "we"? I always thought a personal pronoun should refer clearly to an antecedent. Not always. So, that is why i would like to be president too!

After a second or so, i got scared by the words "fight them". No offense - just kidding.

Anyway, if i was Mr President, i would avoid escapism and would have said: "...So those who do bad, i shall discipline them or fight them". Or even: "...So those who do bad, me myself, i shall discipline them or fight them". Ahem!

Unfinished biz: On Ugandan websites

2004-12-04T20:39:00.000+03:00

Allow me to make my humble observation on the state of usefulness or the actual lack of it, that most websites owned and maintained by Ugandans are presently in. I do not want to mention so many, but let me single out a couple: first, www.era.co.ug (Electricity Regulatory Authority); second, www.cbsfmbuganda.com (CBS FM radio).

If these websites ever open at all, try to navigate around them and see how far you can stretch your "cyber patience". Cyber patience is a new phrase i coined to describe the general measure of how cool you can stay even when your favourite web portal is failing to load in time enough for you to stay interested in surfing the Net. It is also fitting to mention that in Uganda, www could easily mean "world wide wait".

But wait a minute, why do these website's webmasters ever post a link that they surely know is not working? Why do they never bother to do an online structured walk-through? Can't they afford to go to an Internet cafe, pay for an hour, and try out their handiwork the way the intended audience would? Sheer daft. Uploading a website is not enough, boy.

Riding on time...

2004-11-29T11:15:00.000+03:00

Hey! By the time of posting this, the word "blog" is bigger than The Beetles. Did John Lennon say something about big and Jesus? You don't believe it. I don't believe it either!

Blogging is the happening thingy - and you ain't seen anything yet. Analysts and observers say that more and more people are turning to blogs for "unbiased opinion".

On http://nzefrank.blogspot.com , i will always keep you posted - from a personal point of view, of course.