Linux, Ubuntu, Eeebuntu, Debian & a EeePC 900 Netbook

Lately I've been doing some thinking about this blog and the direction it will take.
After some thought., I came to the conclusion that it will go anywhere I damn well please.
Without further ado, we now move on to the next post.

I broke my netbook the other day. Turns out I haven't outgrown my Ubuntu/Eeebuntu diapers yet.
Tried to install a smaller, adapted version of Debian; but since the version was based on “Lenny” rather than the newer (albeit unstable) “Sid”, all of the packages (programs, applications and such) were out of date. Installing Sid on my netbook sounded like a really bad idea considering the lack of stability, but then again I've only used Linux for about a year, Ubuntu at that.

To be honest, I would love to use Debian. Yet the swift, clean installation of Ubuntu is terribly rewarding, and is what has took up 90% of my computer use to date (as opposed to my pre-linux days where I used XP).

UPDATE: Eee ACPI settings utility has started to go haywire. No specific idea why; possibility that Xorg could be the culprit. Haven't messed with Xorg before. This wouldn't be much of a problem except that it's messing with my touchpad, and I'd like to be able to use that on random occasions. It first started refusing to adjust CPU speed, which was manageable since I don't really need high performance since I mainly use the thing for internet access, but now it's starting to piss me off.
I think I'm going to have to make the unfortunate switch to Ubuntu NBR temporarily until EB4 comes out – but methinks that may not solve my problem if Eee ACPI refuses to work.
Maybe a BIOS update is in order?

UPDATE TWO: Fixed the touchpad problem somehow. Either by way of modifying the settings to enable the touchpad while typing or by erasing the “4” after the string of line in the GRUB boot kernel for the latest version of Eeebuntu – or maybe both. So no Ubuntu NBR as long as things keep working. Here's to upgrading to EB4 in a few months!

Freakonomics!

  

CAN YOU HEAR ME BLING?

Many of us own cell phones. They range in price from inexpensive to iPhone price (about $400.00, last I checked).
Yet some of us just can't have a phone that is just a cell phone (or a smart phone, or a Blackberry, etc.); it must be so much more that it has to be custom-made.

Enter in an Australian businessman, a regular iPhone 3G and designer Stuart Hughes - and you get this:

The World's Most Expensive Phone.

Called the iPhone 3GS (S meaning "Supreme" - woohoo), it contains over 200 diamonds, and the case is made of 22-carat gold. The navigation button is a rare 7-carat diamond that took nearly a year to procure.

How much did it cost? Hughes paid about 3.2 million dollars to put this thing together, which may or may not include the cost of the phone.

One wonders if they were blood diamonds...which leads us to a horribly revealing new list - after the jump.

How To Solve (part) Of The Mideast Crisis

In order to get to the solution, there's some backstory that needs to be presented.

Let's face it, the middle east is a shitstorm of war, poverty, religious oligarchy, dictatorship, tribal feuding, and radical regression that won't be leaving anytime soon. Unfortunately, it seems that nearly every world power wants (and has) their hand in the mix, making this somewhat isolated area now a worldwide issue. The powers can't slow the storm, thus making things either worse or moderately better.
In the meantime, though, there are were bright spots of greed prosperity seen in a few mideast countries - namely, the United Arab Emirates and the city of Dubai.
Dubai used to be a podunk trading town until some time ago, when greedy pigs intuitive foreign investors decided that it was a great place to build tangible insanity wonders of the modern world in the form of "the biggest", "the tallest", "the largest", and "the greatest".
Dubai's economy grew at a blazing pace, making China's economic growth look pre-pubescent in comparison. Sadly, Dubai fell just as quickly as it grew, and the many projects started in Dubai with foreign investors who loaned money from the city were hit hard from the global economic recession that began in the U.S. Due to the fact that Dubai's government legislation is still stuck in the 1600s, citizens (foreign or otherwise) can be thrown in to debtor's prison - something that all civilized countries have gotten rid of. So all of those foreign investors jumped ship, leaving behind not only their residences & cars (unlocked with keys in the ignition, I might add), but anything that didn't fit on a plane or a ship.

Thus leaving Dubai, once a city in frenzied construction, now a ghost town with unpaid debt.

So, what happens now?

No one seems to know. In the meantime...