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There is a funny thing (well at least funny in my ear) about the campaign content of one of the participating parties in the upcoming general election 2009 in Indonesia. For one thing, the party claims that decrease in price gasoline is one of the achievement from the current administration. Ummm, wait, what ??

I’m not aiming at a negative campaign here, I’m a golput after all, and I do realize that election is just a few steps away and everyone is trying to get their pieces of this “god knows when will achieve its prosperity that it deserved” country’s politics, but again, what ??

I hate it when people taking credits for something that isn’t really their achievement. When the oil price soared up to the sky and the administration have to raise the gasoline price, they said it’s inevitable. When the oil prices fell in one of its historical downfall ever, the administration said it couldn’t yet decrease the gasoline price  because it’s not “economical”. And when they finally had to decrease it, or let’s say it had reached the point of “economical”, they claim it’s their achievement? I mean, come on !!!

Maybe if they insisted on keeping the price eventhough the oil price was skyrocketing by implementing efficiency in their administration, or when they decreased the gasoline price as soon as the oil price fell, THAT would be achievements. But hey, it’s not “economically feasible”.

Personally, I have no comments on the rise or the fall of the oil prices. All experts had their share of insights on this (and they still debating over it, I guess), and I’m surely no expert. When it rises, or falls, so be it.

I don’t know whether it’s the politicians who are too dumb to give a better marketing strategy on their party, or they just too dumb to realize that people actually get smarter, or maybe it’s the just the way politics are.

But hey, I don’t think I have a say, since I’m a no-participants. This is just a grunt, that’s all.

Cast : Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jackson, Tom Cruise, Matthew Mc Conaughey

If there’s a comedy you should see this year (well, arguably), it’s definitely Tropic Thunder. It’s stupid, hilarious, satiric, smart, and dumb, all at the same time. I’m not a fan of Ben Stiller, really (I mean Meet The Parents series are O.K., but his other movies, I just though he tried too hard to be funny, that it’s not funny at all), but this one is awesome.
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I’m trying to get VMWare Server 1.0.6 working on Intrepid since I need it for my day to day work. Here’s a quick how to :

• Download VMWare server from VMWare website. VMWare server is free, but you need serial number which can be requested by registering to -VMWare. Extract the source, it will create a directory called vmware-server-distrib
• Download VMWare patch from from here.
  
• To install VMWare, you’ll need linux-headers, build-essentials, and xinetd. Download those from repo by executing the following

$sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-2.6.27-7 xinetd

Note that the version of your linux-headers may differ. Up to now, my intrepid uses kernel 2.6.27-7-generic.

• Go to the vmware distrib directory, and execute the ./vmware-install.pl

$cd vmware-server-distrib
$sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Just use the details, but note that when you’re asked if you’d like to run the vmware-config.pl, select [no]

• Extract the vmware-patch

$gunzip < vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

• Go to the update directory and execute the patch script

$cd vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2
$sudo ./runme.pl

The script will patch the source, and ask whether or not you want to run the vmware-config.pl script. This time, select [yes]. While running the script, I accepted all the defaults value.

I assume that you can configure networking on your own.

Environment :
- Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex running kernel 2.6.27-7-generic

From digg :

If you’re looking to improve mental cognition, increase your memory, and enhance your alertness, here are 15 easy ways to give your brain a six pack.

15 Ways to Hack Your Brain For A Better Life

I’ve been playing with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex for 2 days now, and I could say that it’s definitely a significant improvement. Here’s a few thing that I’ve noticed during these short time of period

• Network Manager Improvement

Ubuntu recognizes the mobile broadband boom, and lots of people using 3G network to browse the internet. In the last release (Hardy), configuring 3G could be a hassle, especially for those who are new to linux. Now in Intrepid, it recognizes my E220 modem immediately after I plugged it in, launch a wizard to help me choose which provider I’m using, then create a network configuration for that. All I need to do is to configure it to use my username.

The beauty of it? It doesn’t even need additional software. (Well, 3G doesn’t require additional software in Hardy  for 3G, but those requires configuration on wvdial, ppp, etc). Integrating it to network manager is brilliant. Back in hardy, everytime I launch Firefox after connecting to 3G network, it wasn’t aware that I’m online and I have to manually untick the “Work Offline” mode. Now, that pain is gone

There’s also additional section in network manager for DSL connection, but since I don’t have DSL connection, I can’t give it a try.

• Tabbed File Manager

Intrepid includes Nautilus FM version 2.24.1, now comes with tabs. Just like a browser, now you can browse to different part of filesystem, without have to open several instances of Nautilus. Good feature.

• Encrypted private folder

This is a feature to allow user to create an encrypted folder in their own home directory. Unfortunately, it doesn’t comes by default. You have to install it manually (use apt-get or synaptic to install ecryptfs-utils). Worse, you can only configure it from terminal (which probably the first reason why Ubuntu doesn’t include it by default in the first place). Before they can put a good interface into this, I think I’ll stick with TrueCrypt.

There are some other features available like private filesystem, integrated USB startup disk creation, etc, but I haven’t given them a try yet. Will keep posted on that.

Any of you discover a new feature you’d like to share?