Archive for February, 2008
Last night iNdependence appeared to be the first freely available tool that allows one to activate/jailbreak/unlock iPhone firmware 1.1.4. I decided to give it a shot. Other than the fact that i had to force kill the iNdependence app and disconnected/reconnected my 1.1.3 iPhone several times, the 1.1.4 activate/jailbreak/unlock went quite smoothly. Unfortunately, as part of the process to unlock 1.1.4, iNdependence would downgrade the baseband from the initial 04.03.13G to 04.02.13G. That meant i would not be able to use Google Map’s Locate feature without some additional hack.
I then attempted to use a method documented by George Zhu. But i was having problem using iNdependence to activate my iPhone after i had downgraded the firmware to 1.0.2.
Just when i was about to give up, iClarified.com posted a method to unlock a 1.1.4 iPhone. This method uses a modified version of ZiPhone (to activate/jailbreak and install the Installer on the iPhone) and an 1.1.4 unlock app from the iClarified source in the Installer. The unlock process went pretty well and i am happy to say that my unlocked iPhone is now on 1.1.4.
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Evidence of Israeli ‘Cowardly Blending’ Comes to Light
by Jonathan Cook
January 5 2008
antiwar.com
It apparently never occurred to anyone in our leading human rights organizations or the Western media that the same moral and legal standards ought be applied to the behavior of Israel and Hezbollah during the war on Lebanon 18 months ago. Belatedly, an important effort has been made to set that right.
A new report, written by a respected Israeli human rights organization, one representing the country’s Arab minority, not its Jewish majority, has unearthed evidence showing that during the fighting Israel committed war crimes not only against Lebanese civilians – as was already known – but also against its own Arab citizens. This is an aspect of the war that has been almost entirely neglected until now.
The report also sheds a surprising light on the question of what Hezbollah was aiming at when it fired hundreds of rockets on northern Israel. Until the report’s publication last month, I had been all but a lone voice arguing that the picture of what took place during the war was far more complex than generally accepted.
The new report follows a series of inquiries by the most influential human rights groups, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to identify the ways in which international law was broken during Israel’s 34-day assault on Lebanon. However, both organizations failed to examine, except in the most cursory and dismissive way, Israel’s treatment of its own civilians during the war. That failure may also have had serious repercussions for their ability to assess Hezbollah’s actions.
Continue reading ‘Jonathan Cook: Evidence of Israeli ‘Cowardly Blending’ Comes to Light’
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Kosovo and the question of Palestine
by Ali Abunimah
February 25 2008
electronicintifada.net
Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence has produced a range of reactions among Israeli and Palestinian observers that reveal their anxieties about their respective situations.
An editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretz called on the Israeli government to immediately recognize Kosovo, arguing that “the struggle of the persecuted Kosovar people for independence is reminiscent of the struggles by other nations for the right of self-determination.” Of course Haaretz was not talking about the Palestinians, but about the “State of Israel, which was established in the wake of the Jewish people’s struggle for self-determination” (”Recognize Kosovo,” Haaretz, 18 February 2008).
By identifying Israel with the supposed underdog, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Haaretz implicitly recognizes that there are indeed some striking similarities though not ones it would acknowledge. Kosovo, like Israel, was illegally severed by force of arms from another country against the wishes of the majority population of the whole territory. Both entities came into being and can only survive with the sponsorship and support of the Great Powers of the day who sustain them in violation of international law because it suits their imperial interests. Furthermore, both entities are animated by a virulent ethno-nationalism that is fundamentally incompatible with the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy that they claim to have come into being to uphold. In this sense, Kosovo is the latest in a collection of Western-backed pseudo-states that also includes the Kurdish entity in northern Iraq.
Continue reading ‘Ali Abunimah: Kosovo and the question of Palestine’
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This past Presidents’ Day on Monday was the first time in my 10-year working career that it was a holiday for me. Making full use of this holiday, Smelly and i went snowboarding at Whistler, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. On our way to Whistler, we made our usual stop in Vancouver to meet up with Boon and Shaohong. Together, we had dinner at the well-known restaurant Vij’s.
Last year we came up to Vancouver during Labor Day weekend and we wanted to try Vij’s but when we got there and found out that the wait was going to be at least two hours, we ate at the bistro-style restaurant called Rangoli, which is located right next to Vij’s and has the same owner - Vikram Vij. Recently, we watched an episode of No Reservations in Vancouver and in that episode, Anthony Bourdain visited several Vancouver restaurants, including Vij’s. Coincidentally, Vij’s restaurant takes no reservations. That made me thought of going to Vij’s again.
On Saturday, after shopping at the only H&M store (located in Coquitlam, BC) in the Pacific Northwest, we went straight to Granville. By the time we arrived there, it was close to 1730. Already we spotted a long line of people waiting outside Vij’s. Vij’s does not take reservation so there’s no telling how long you have to wait. By the time we got to the restaurant, the line was already 40-people long. We were not the initial batch of people that got seated and we were told the wait was going to be 1.5 hours. Indeed, we waited for at least 1.5 hours before we were finally seated. While we were waiting in front of the bar at the back of the restaurant, Vikram would walk by every so often to ask how we were doing. It was a pleasant surprise to find that he is such a down to earth kind of guy. Not only was he visiting table to table talking to the guests, Vikram was also helping the waiting staff out with things like setting tables, moving extra chairs and taking orders. I have never seen a more personable and hospitable host like Vikram. The food was good and the wine was great. Vikram even took time out of his busy night to take a picture with us. We had a really great time there.
The following morning, we drove up to Whistler. After checking into the Westin at Whistler and unloading our stuff in the room, we went straight for the gondola. For the past few weeks, i had been collecting the Ski Free with Shell vouchers religiously. Every time i fill up my car with at least 10 gallons of gas, i would ask for a voucher. In all, i collected probably 6 or 7 vouchers. The Ski Free voucher was a great deal last year because at Whistler, we would pay regular price for a lift ticket and get the second one for free. Other than a few blackout days, it was valid for the whole season. And that’s what i thought it would be too for this season. Wrong! Found out at the lift ticket window that the blackout dates for this season are “Jan 1 thru 6, Jan 18 thru 21 and February 2 thru April 13, 2008“. Holy shit, that’s pretty much the whole freaking season! That’s so lame.
On Monday morning, Janet and i went to Aubergine Grille for breakfast, a restaurant in the Westin. After we were seated, i suddenly recognized a familiar face sitting diagonally across from me at the table right next to ours. The renowned director of “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” fame, Ang Lee (李安), was sitting less than 5 feet away from me! I got kind of excited and was hoping to get a chance to talk to him and let him know how much i have enjoyed his movies throughout the years. But i did not want to intrude onto his privacy. Besides, i am pretty sure he has heard enough compliments, more than he ever wanted to hear.
So that’s how i spent my Presidents’ Day long weekend, “with” the rich and famous.
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My second attempt in installing Leopard on my 4-year old 17-inch Powerbook G4 1GHz failed. The first attempt was a migration from Tiger to Leopard. Even though the migration was successful, things were running extremely slow. Worse, i was getting kernel panic every so often.
My second attempt, i decided to erase everything on my Powerbook and install a fresh new copy of Leopard. Again, the installation appeared to be successful. However, it was impossible to play sound/music without them sounding like a broken record. Kernel panic was not happening as frequently as after my first attempt but it still happened several times.
The minimum requirement for Leopard, as stated on Apple.com, is any “Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor” and “512MB of memory”. My Powerbook runs at 1GHz and it is equipped with 1GB of memory. So what’s up with that?
On my Powerbook, Tiger definitely roars while Leopard purrs like an animal with a severe cold.
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On the day after i picked up my Mac Pro from the University Village Apple Store, i promptly ordered two 2-GB DIMM modules from OWC (macsales.com) for it. The DIMM modules arrived the following week. After installing the DIMM modules, i swore System Profiler indicated that i had 6 GB of RAM. Several days later, i installed Leopard 10.5.2 update and on reboot, to my horror, i realized that the “6 GB” of RAM has become 4 GB. On closer inspection, the two 2-GB DIMM modules were being recognized as 1-GB DIMM modules!
Initially i thought the culprit was the 10.5.2 update. After getting some advice from AppleCare, i booted Mac Pro into maintenance mode and loaded Apple Hardware Test (AHT). AHT would freeze whenever the OWC DIMM modules were installed, regardless of the locations where they were installed (Mac Pro comes with two 4-slot banks of memory cards). If i took out the OWC DIMM modules, AHT would have no problem. Another user on Apple’s support forum had the same problem.
Good thing OWC has a pretty decent exchange/return policy. After contacting its tech support, i received a pre-paid UPS shipping label and now the “bad” DIMM modules are on their way back to OWC.
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Yesterday morning, i woke up to this sound: clink-clank clink-clank, duh duh duh duh duh, clink-clank clink-clank, duh duh duh duh duh. Yeap, that was the dying moan made by the main hard drive in my 8-year old Dell server. This is the second hard drive that went south on me in less than a month. The first hard drive failure forced my PowerMac G4 Cube into retirement about 3 weeks ago.
My initial thought was to buy two replacement hard drives, to be configured in RAID1. In a RAID1 configuration, even if i completely lose a hard drive, the other hard drive can still keep on chugging along. As i was driving through the horrible morning commute on I-5, another thought came to me. It really did not make much sense to buy two brand new hard drives to be installed in a very old server.
Brandon suggested getting a cheap refurbished computer. There is no chance in hell that i will pay for a non-Apple PC, even a dirt cheap refurbished computer. I had been waiting for an updated MacBook Pro for almost a year to replace my 17″ 1-GHz Powerbook. There’s nothing wrong with my Powerbook. It’s just very slow in performing some of my daily tasks. This is especially so since i upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard about a week ago.
Then a thought appeared in my mind. What if i get a machine that is powerful enough to run multiple virtual environments (or virtual machines) that can host my web server and run some variant of MS Windows, if i am really that desperate. The latest Mac Pro desktop is just what the doctor prescribed. Not only is it fast (it comes with 2 Quad-core processors running at 2.8 GHz), it is aesthetically pleasing to me as well. With Smelly’s help, i was able to get it $200 cheaper than retail from the Apple Store at University Village.
On arriving home, i immediately set it up and installed VMware Fusion. VMware Fusion is a Mac OS X-based product by VMware that allows a great variety of guest operating systems to run in virtual machines that are completely isolated from the host operating system. I created a Ubuntu Linux virtual machine. Ever since i started dabbing in Linux, i had always been using distributions by Redhat. I have heard a lot of good things about Ubuntu Linux lately so i decided to give it a shot. Installing Ubuntu 7.10 on the virtual machine was a breeze. I believe this may be the quickest ever that i got my web server up and running again. Including the time that it took to restore the essential files from the backups of my old server, i managed to get ktula.com partially up in less than 3 hours.
So ktula.com is back up now, proudly hosted on my brand new Mac Pro, courtesy of a broken 40 GB hard drive.
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