Code Warriors – Page 5

Ubuntu ShipIt down 9.04 — Ubuntu ShipIt website notice

Ubuntu’s hugely popular free media program ShipIt has been ‘taken down temporarily due to excessive traffic’, thus buttressing the idiom ‘There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’. (I’ve already ordered my CD long ago. I wanted to check if it had been shipped. No, r-tard, I don’t order multiple CDs and hoard them. I order just one – as a keepsake with its official cover. And to get more Ubuntu stickers.) The ShipIt notice instead encourages visitors to download via BitTorrent. I’m sure the normal ISO file mirrors around the globe are getting pummelled right now.

I plan to upgrade using an alternate install CD I ordered from this place (damn you, Linux Bazar, for not being quick enough). Why am I not downloading myself? My Internet connection has this terrible habit of logging me off randomly at times. I did download OpenSuse 11.1 when it came out but babysitting my download to ensure I didn’t get logged off and it completed was a harrowing experience. So I’ll be a nice guy and instead of DDoSing Ubuntu servers I’ll support the open source ecosystem by buying my CD. I’d have ordered from Canonical’s Amazon shop if the shipping prices weren’t outrageous.

DPS Vasant Kunj is showing interest now in migrating the Internet Lab computers from Windows 98 to Linux. I’d started this on a small scale when I was in school but as soon as I passed out from high school some people (ref: Code Warriors) brought everything back to Windows status-quo. School isn’t likely to upgrade the Internet Lab and users are clamouring for a better experience than Windows 98 (newer browsers, better word processing software which can handle new formats), so I suggested a shift to Linux. I can’t decide between Xubuntu 9.04 and Linux Mint 6 Felicia Xfce Edition. I’ll be installing it on a few systems initially. Based on the feedback it will be expanded to all the systems in the lab.

“Finally, a quiz archive of TCS IT Wiz 2008”, I thought when I came across Aditya’s post about it.Unfortunately, it isn’t a complete archive but it still gives a good idea of how it is. Karmanya had put up an archive (which I had mentioned earlier) but it seems that the archives are longer available for download. (So I’m uploading the same, without any changes, here.) Prashanth has spoken about the event too. A few of my responses to the notes in Aditya’s archive:

It is true that the Toshiba Qosmio series has some laptops which come with the Cell processor. Read a Gizmodo story about it or reviews of it on CNET. It is true, however, that is not the primary processor on the laptop – it plays second fiddle to the Intel Core 2 Duo processor and handles video-related tasks.
Pickbrain screwed up big-time when he says Cell processor is used in PlayStation Portable. It isn’t.
Lenovo is not a subsidiary of IBM. It bought the rights to IBM trademarks (such as ‘Thinkpad’) and took over IBM’s desktop and laptop division.
(One clarification about the first statement in Karmanya’s archive) The ‘Pope’ being referred to is not ‘The Pope’ but ‘a Pope’. Ivan Pope, to be precise.

For all those who stumble across this post when searching up about TCS IT Wiz, do you know any other archives on the Web on this? Post them here in the comments section for all to see.

PS – Yesterday was special…in more than one sense. (‘Yesterday’ in India, according to Epoch standards, Friday the 13th.) It was the day on which Unix time passed the 1234567890 seconds since Epoch Time milestone. There was a cool countup for this. Click the text ‘Relive the moment’ for some fireworks.

PPS – Awesome post by Aditya on Code Wars 2008!