Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Dell Inc. (Dell) announced Tuesday that, due to public demand, they will be offering an alternative to Microsoft Windows on a selection of their desktop and laptop computers. Dell will partner with Canonical Ltd. to pre-install the recently released Ubuntu 7.04 distribution of the Linux operating system.

Until recently, Linux distributions have not been adopted by mainstream computer makers due to concerns over ease-of-use. Newer distributions, such as Ubuntu 7.04, have become much more user-friendly, with features such as automatic updates and software installation.

Ubuntu director of business development Chris Kenyon told the BBC that one of the reasons Ubuntu was selected was its support features and hardware compatibility. “Dell are going to work with us to make sure Ubuntu works fully on its hardware,” said Kenyon. A Dell representative suggested that the Ubuntu distribution was chosen due to public demand as expressed on a Dell-run forum website, IdeaStorm. “It was overwhelming, the response we got to the survey,” said Jeremy Bolen, a Dell spokesman.

Tuesday’s announcement was not the first for Dell’s Linux offerings. They have offered servers and workstations with an optional enterprise version of Red Hat Linux for some time now. The chairman and CEO of Dell, Michael Dell, is reported to have Ubuntu installed on his own laptop.

Perry Donham, an analyst with Aberdeen Group of Boston, suggested that the Dell-Ubuntu partnership will benefit Ubuntu more than it will Dell. “It’s going to be a small part of [Dell’s] market,” said Donham. “But it’s a great win for Ubuntu and for Linux in general.”

Dell indicated that the Ubuntu-based computers would be available in the next few weeks, from Dell USA only for the time being. The pricing structure has not been revealed, or when such computers would be available in countries other than the United States.

Monday, November 7, 2005

Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec has been reported as the first casualty of recent rioting in France. The 61-year old man was beaten by a hooded rioter last week and had been in a coma since the attack.

The uprising was set off by the death of two teenagers who were allegedly chased by police and hid in an electric power station where they were electrocuted.

The French riots have further intensified over the past few days and are now said to have spread to nearly every city in the country.

The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, announced on Monday plans to allow the nation’s regions to impose curfews. Mr. de Villepin appeared the day before on television with an appeal to end the violence.

The president, Jacques Chirac, ended his silence on the rioting on Saturday, when he spoke to the press. “Those who want to sow violence or fear will be caught, tried and punished,” he said. “But we also understand very well that we must move towards respect for each individual, justice and equality of opportunity. We are all completely determined to go down this road and pursue the efforts that are already under way in this domain.”

The Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, called for a radical overhaul of the French social model that he said, “in every aspect, needs to be fundamentally rebuilt.” On the same day, various people [1] [2] discovered that UMP, the political party of Nicolas Sarkozy had bought the Google AdWords ‘banlieue’ (suburbs) to advertise their own website on google.fr.

Arrests in the rioting total nearly 1200 following the deaths of two youths on October 27. The unrest, which started in a Paris suburb, has spread to over 270 towns across France. More than 4300 cars have been torched across the country, and 2 schools were burned.

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

An Indian guru who taught some of the 20th century’s most famous celebrities and created a multi-billion dollar spiritual empire has died. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement, died at his home in the Netherlands. He is believed to have been 91 years old.

Known for his long white beard and tendency to giggle, he became a well-known counter-culture figure in the 1960’s. Members of the Beatles rock music band made repeated pilgrimages to the Himalayan foothills to study his meditation technique, known as TM.

Little is certain about the yogi’s early life in central India. His given name and birthday are disputed. It is known he studied physics at Allahabad University.

A professor of psychology at the school, Emmanuel Ghosh, says the guru’s academic training, combined with study under a Vedic swami, helped to make him accessible to those in the West seeking alternative answers to life’s questions during the socially tumultuous 1960’s.

“He had a rational approach,” said Ghosh. “He had a scientific background and he could tell the West that ‘You could test my theories through science.’ He was the first one who started this whole system of reducing stress by breath control, by meditation and you could measure it in objective terms.”

Maharishi also tutored other pop musicians, Hollywood actors and film directors. His TM movement attracted millions of followers worldwide who paid hundreds of dollars to receive a personal mantra to recite for 20 minutes, twice a day.

Professor Ghosh at Allahabad University says, despite his fame and success overseas, Maharishi was just one among many gurus in his native India.

“His influence in India has been negligible. Every guru is independent to propagate his own method of salvation or nirvana,” said Ghosh. “So he took off for a while [in India] as long as he was appreciated in the West.”

Perhaps his biggest legacy in India is the country’s largest chain of privately owned schools. Other institutes and universities based on his teachings also exist in the United States and Europe.

In later years, some of the guru’s projects and beliefs earned him ridicule, such as hoping to raise $10 trillion to achieve world peace and banish poverty and encouraging followers to learn what he called “yogic flying”. While many adherents praise Maharishi for propagating a scientifically verifiable ancient method to help them deal with the stress of modern life, some disenchanted followers considered TM a quasi-religious cult more interested in raising funds than spirits.

Friday, June 13, 2008

British drivers have been urged not to panic buy fuel because of the 4-day walkout by delivery drivers working for companies delivering to Shell petrol stations. The 600 workers have walked out over pay disagreements, wanting an increase to their current pay of £36,500, however their union Unite turned down a last-minute offer of £41,500.

Hoyer UK, which employs tanker drivers for Shell, said, “We extended our offer to the very limits that our business could sustain.” However Unite said in a press release that, “this dispute could have been resolved if Shell had advanced a fraction of the billions of pounds in profit they make every month”, continuing to say, “one of the world’s richest companies is prepared to play Pontius Pilate and see the British public inconvenienced rather than settle this dispute for a sum smaller than the chairman’s pay increase last year”

Shell admitted that the walkout could leave some of its 1,000 forecourts without fuel, but the UK Petrol Industry Association, which represent oil refiners, said that forecourts would have around 4 days of supply, maintaining usual stocking levels. Shell also commented that the strike impact would be “significant”, as the company runs around 1 in 10 of all petrol stations in the UK.

British Business Secretary, John Hutton, said that “the strike, which will have a disproportionate effect on people in Britain, cannot be justified,” and urged both sides to resume negotiations in order to settle the dispute. “We have been working closely with industry to put in place detailed contingency plans to reduce as far as possible the disruption for the driving public,” he added. Unite’s press release also confirms that “provision has been made for fire, police and the emergency services.”

Tanker drivers on strike have set up picket lines at many of Shell’s UK refineries, including those in Stanlow, Avonmouth, Plymouth, Pembroke, Cardiff, Kingsbury, Basildon, Grangemouth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Jarrow and Luton Airport.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Brampton – Suresh Joachim of Mississauga, Ontario continues to amaze, breaking yet another world record, this time at The Bay Court in Shoppers World.

From Thursday, September 22 at 8 am, to Saturday, September 24 at 3:05 pm, Suresh ironed continuously for 55 hours and 5 minutes, in front of the thousands of onlookers shopping at the mall those three days.

The achievement, now submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records, breaks the previous record by Eufemia Stadler of Zurich, Switzerland. Stadler completed 40 hours of continuous ironing from September 16-18, 1999.

Originally from Sri Lanka and Australia, Joachim is no stranger to the folks at Guinness. He currently holds twenty other records, ranging from greatest distance travelled on ‘up’ and ‘down’ escalators (225.44 km between May 25 and May 31 1998), furthest travelled on a treadmill in one week (659.27 km at a gym in Paris, France), and longest dance marathon by an individual (100 hours at the Dixie Outlet Mall).

This September, Suresh watched television in the lobby of WABC in New York City for 69 hours and 7 minutes, breaking the previous record by 19 hours. The event was covered daily on the talk show “Live with Regis and Kelly” as part of their Guinness World Record Breaker Week. He also recently set the record for longest time rocking in a rocking chair, at 75 hours.

A DJ on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire recently tried to break Joachim’s record for longest continuous time as a DJ. He was unsuccessful, and Suresh’s 120-hour World Record set on Geethavaani Tamil Radio in Scarborough stands unharmed.

The event helped raise funds for the Universal Fund for Suffering Children, whose funds are “utilized to save the world’s children from poverty, disease and war.” All of Joachim’s stunts have been dedicated to this charity.

What’s next for Suresh? He plans to start static cycling from October 18th, 2005 to October 22nd, 2005, in Britain. Suresh’s goal is 150 world records, which would beat the long-time record breaker Ashrita Furman, who has accumulated 94 records. While Furman started two decades ago, Suresh only discovered the Guinness Book of World Records in 1991, and started record breaking in 1996.

You can visit Suresh online at www.sureshjoachim.org

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Sunday, September 4, 2005

In Louisiana, southeast of New Orleans, two storage tanks estimated to be filled with up to 160,000 barrels (6.7 million gallons) of oil are reported to be leaking into the Mississippi River. It was first noticed on September 1, 2005 by an aircraft flying overhead. Officials are not certain whether the tanks are the cause of the leak or how full the tanks are. Inspection of the storage tanks from the ground is impossible due to flooding in the area.

In comparison, the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska leaked between 11 and 35 million gallons of oil.

Due to massive efforts directed toward search and rescue in New Orleans, the Coast Guard has not been able to look into the matter.