A Letter to Steve.

Dear Steve,

You were my friend. In a we-never-met-and-you-probably-woudn't-have-wanted-to-be-friends-if-we-had sort of way.  But I like to think that doesn't matter.

We had an Apple IIe and it was kept in the spare room of the house.  We had to use a transformer to get the right voltage running through it.  Right next to the power switch on the back of the Apple IIe, there was a screw.  That screw would electrocute the living day lights out of you if you touched it. I hated that f*cking screw.

But I loved the Apple IIe.  I loved writing basic, i loved the discs, i loved the monochrome screen. It was magic, pure and simple. I remember the day we upgraded to colour. It was like christmas had come early. And Santa Claus looked a bit like Steve Jobs. 

One day, I switched on my Apple IIe and smoke started coming out from the back.  It had died.  It died from what I assumed was the computer equivalent of heart-failure.  God rest it's soul.  Steve, do computers have souls? You seemed to think so.

Which brings me neatly to the Mac SE. The MacSE that can still run, even in this day of apex predator cat operating systems.  Getting the internet to work on it was a challenge. But I made it happen. So help me, I did.

I had to tell all my Amiga-loving friends that they were idiots. Fools. Barbarians.  So what, if they had 56 colours on screen at any time and I only had two. My two colours were in high resolution.  I laughed at their pathetic 512k of RAM, for I had 4MB. That's right. Four real life EMBEES.  Fools, curse them. They didn't believe, Steve. They didn't believe. But a time would come when they would. Everyone would.

Time passed and I needed colour. So I got the LCII, a very pretty little pizza box of a computer. I had thousands of colours now. Where were the Amiga users? I called to them, but their company was dying. I mocked them. Mocked them hard.  I didn't know, Steve. I didn't know that the PC users were now giving me weird looks.  Their computers started having megahertz in the triple digits.  I was afraid. I didn't know what to do. I told them their operating system sucked. That they were all thieves, begotten from thieves.  I believed it.  It was true. Not even my PowerMac 9500 could hold them back. Nothing could.

Windows got better, and we were alone.  I huddled together with other mac users for warmth, but one by one they died.  Turning into zombies, living in windows made with the glass of false hope.

You were gone! What was I supposed to do. You tell me!?  I started experimenting.  I bought…. a  …. a PC. … but just for programming. Because I needed a Java compiler.. I really needed one. The one for Apple sucked and ran a long deprecated version of Java.  I was sad.  I started running YellowDog on my Mac.  I needed to find a way out.

But then you came back.  You came back and we saw that it was good.  The light shone through the pages of MacFormat, telling me that it was good.  You told us that everything was going to be fine. And just to prove it, you made people by the original iMac just because it looked good. … at least we thought so at the time.

I bought a G4, with OS10.0 … Cheetah as it would have been known. Though it was slower than cold honey.  I turned to other users and said " BEHOLD!!! posix compliant with a great GUI?! What say you Linus? what say you Bill?" . My friends kept asking me who I was talking to.

I dreamt of a phone. We all did. We waited, we waited. The streets were full of white headphones by now. And we wanted, nay, needed a phone.  I dreamt. Then one day I dreamt no more.

They all use Apple now.  They all do.  We were your army. Zealots fighting for an ideology. Fighting for beauty, for art, for creativity, for identity, for magic.  And in my mind, I tell myself "relax, it's just a tool, just a tool"… 

But that's just it, it isn't. It never was. It was always more. That's what made it special.

Goodbye, Steve.  If heaven has electronics, they're gonna start looking a lot better. 

Cafe Lilu Review. Part 2: Still No Closer.

A lot of time has passed since my my first attempt to eat at Lilu. Many things have changed, I've changed.  For one thing, i'm a lot wealthier than I was in those days ( I would like to give a quick shout out to my business associate from Nigeria, Roger Obike Johnson who contacted me out of the blue via email with a great business opportunity).

My new found financial situation has put me in a position where I can afford to drive something a bit more fancy than the Toyota Echo I owned previously.  I don't want to mention exactly what car I drive because it may seem like i'm showing off, so i'll just make up some random name and say i'm driving a Berrari (On a side note, the car is great. It features an amaaaazing parking sensor that helps you park *exactly* in the middle of two parking spaces).


As I didn't want to eat alone, I called up my old friend, Ahmed Smith.

" Hey Ahmed Smith, long time no see!? Feel like grabbing some breakfast at Lilou?"

" WTF!? Seriously? the last time I saw you, you were running away from the front of my house towards your crappy Echo after you keyed the paintwork on my BMW. Piss off and die, you bastard" And with with that he hung up the phone.

"Screw him" I thought to myself. I called up the only other number I had stored on my phone, which happened to be my Ex-Girlfriend..... and Ahmed Smith's current girlfriend.

"Hey Angie-baby! How you doin? Wanna grab some breakfast." I said, using my most charming voice.

"Are you kidding me?! Go to hell, creep" She replied and hung up.

"Bullocks" I said into the phone receiver, feeling slightly deflated.

6 Things That We Need to Get Past

Congratulation's Bahrain. We've cracked. We've finally cracked. We really didn't want to get involved in all the current affairs about the protests but its' just not possible anymore.  There are many things that really bother us about what's going on right now. Not least of which are the blatant mistruths that seem to be all the rage these days. Not since swine flue have we seen everyone so energized about spreading pure BS. Here is some of the nonsense that really needs to stop:


1. The Protestors were rioting, Iran-loving, violent, traitorous bastards.

If one follows certain views on twitter and indeed much of the national media, one would be forgiven for thinking this. But let's face it. We KNOW this isn't true. Sure, SOME of the protests overstepped boundaries and many people felt it was an attack on their way of life, but let's face facts, if the protestors really were rioters, things would have been very different.

Consider the events in London, If the protestors in Bahrain had behaved in any way shape or form like the "yoof"in London did, Bahrain would be a smoking pile of rubble right now.  Any survivors would be wandering around looking for stray dogs to cook because there would nothing else left. They didn't. Let's not pretend they did.

Also, Is there such a thing as pure bahraini? Didn't everyone here at some point or another come to this island from somewhere else? I could be wrong though, it's possible that humans evolved here independently.

2. All pro-government people are paid, blind, salivating, racist, "baltajy" trolls.

Again listening to the twitter (apparently no one can read more than 140 characters - we certainly can't), you'd also be forgiven for thinking this. But we also KNOW this isn't true.  The fact is many sensible people were perfectly happy with the way things were. Let's face it, Bahrain was never ever, ever, ever, ever, as bad as Tunisia, Egypt or Libya.

Is it so wrong for people to appreciate all the things we had/have in Bahrain? Sure things could be better, but sticking up for the Government doesn't make you a blindly loyal miscreant. It just makes you someone with a perfectly valid opinion on the situation.

3. If you're not with us you're against us, moron.

Well both sides have been playing this song to death. And unfortunately this song has all the virtues of Rebeca Black's "Friday".  There's a whole bunch of fence-sitters out there that really don't feel the need to go rushing headfirst into discussions that inevitably seem to involve insulting the other side.

4. The Silent Majority wants (insert your personal belief here).

You know what the problem with the Silent Majority is? They're silent. You see how that might be a problem? Everyone and his twitter account seems to think they represent the silent majority.  Now at Samboosa.net were gonna go out on a limb and guess that the Silent Majority is pretty pissed off at EVERYONE.

5.  There was no torture or violence apart from the torture and violence committed by the other side, bastards.

Yes, and Denial is a river in Egypt. Everyone needs to acknowledge that transgressions were committed by their side.  I know this is hard. It's very hard. How many times have you told your friends that it definitely was a sodding penalty and that referee got it right, only to have your friend tell you that you're too blinded by your love for Manchester bloody United to see that the referee had all the observational skill of 3 hour-old housefly that's already been eaten by a gecko.  It's hard to accept a truth that we don't like. But in this case we really need to try.

Take a step back. Admit your side also made mistakes.

6. Social Media was an enabler of democratic change, blah, blah blah blah..

I challenge anyone to follow the Feb14 hashtag and not be overcome by all the hate on there and to not A) Get an automatic sub-machine gun and shoot everyone on the island. B) Shoot yourself. C) Close your twitter account and crawl into your closet and spend the remaining days of your life rocking back and forth muttering the words "unclean... unclean". D) Start a blog that not many people read and get it all off your chest. Not necessarily in that order.

Social media is great for communicating ideas to like minded individuals in a constructive way that helps to move our society forward. Unfortunately, it's also a great way to show the world your seemingly unending depths of creativity when it comes to insulting people.

Final Note:

I'm currently typing this from my closet. I really hope people stop this nonsense and come to the realization that we live on this rock together (you can take the word "rock" here to mean Bahrain, Earth, or if you live on an actual rock then you can assume it's that).

Love, Samboosa.net .

Not an in-depth Review of OS 10.7 (Lion) .

By Loki

I recently upgraded to Lion, despite advising others to wait till 10.7.1 (or 10.7.0.1 or some such release) I decided to go ahead. As I was running out of disk space on my existing setup, I decided to get a new disk and do a nice fresh install on that.

Installation: Doesn't Suck Yet Sucks So Hard It Bends Light Towards It.

Installation was smooth enough. I downloaded the installer from the App Store. Ran it. Selected the disk I wanted (one of the other disks on my Mac Pro). 1 restart, and 20 minutes or so later, hey presto, I have the brand spanking new release from Apple. So far, absolutely doesn't suck.

But wait, there is something that really keeps bothering me. You have to get this via the App Store. You have no other choice. Not as of the time of writing at any rate. That's just wrong. I can't go to a store and get a physical medium. Call me old fashioned, but when I want to pirate an OS on to half a dozen machines I want to use a DVD.

Seriously though, the download is about 4GB. That's no joke, especially not in Bahrain. With most providers that will take a while, or can be very expensive, or both.

First impressions: Welcome to the future.. 1997.

The Finder has a new look. I can't help but think of OS 8 when I see the "new" dialogue boxes. System 8 was released in 1997. That said, I like it. I think the OS has a more uniform look now.

New Features:

The OS has clearly lifted a lot from iOS (no, not the cisco one…). Launchpad is basically the iOS homepage plastered on to a desktop OS. Can't say I'll be using it much, but maybe my 2 year old daughter will, or my great grandmother. I prefer to hit command-space and type the first three letters of the App I want into spotlight. Still, I can see many people using this. It might even keep self destructive noobs from screwing up the Applications Folder.

Then there's Mission Control, Which is basically a combination of Expose´and Spaces rolled into one. I'm undecided if this is unnecessarily clutter or a simplification. I'm leaning towards the former, I quite liked expose and only used keyboard shortcuts for Spaces. That said, Expose´is still there and can be switched on again.

iTunes, Finder, and Mail have all been revamped. The last vestiges of Carbon have been removed and it's all Cocoa goodness from here on out. wohoo…. big deal. Sure that's great for Apple, but does the average user really care? No. Finder is not sufficiently different to be exciting. iTunes now allows you to view and download all previous purchases. A very welcome improvement - Nice.

As usual the OS is littered with tiny seemingly insignificant little changes that you only really appreciate once you are forced to you use an older version of the OS.

Hacksaw: This OS ditched Rosetta, Carbon, Java, and MySQL. Lovely.

Getting rid of the first two is fine, Java is not an issue as the minute you try to run a Java application, the OS asks you if you want to download a JVM. If you click yes, it promptly does that for you and you can go about your Javaesque business. MySQL has been replaced with PostgreSQL. Still, installing MySQL isn't exactly going to be a challenge for those that need it.

Mail:

Mail now features a nifty thread based view of emails. That in itself is a big improvement. If I was cynical (which I am), I would say that feature should have been introduced a long time ago. That feature should have been introduced a long time ago.

Address Book: Address book has had the iOS treatment and looks awful. Just plain awful. It looks like it was designed by my gardner. My gardner has ZERO experience in software development, BTW.

iCal:

My gardner's been busy. This application is almost as ugly as Address Book.

Swipe swipe swipe:

The entire OS seems to be geared around using touch pad as the primary interface. Seeing as the majority of mac users use laptops, this makes sense. As someone who uses a track pad even on my desktop machines, I find this a nice evolution in HCI. 2,3 and even 5 fingered swipe gestures help you navigate your way around with minimum effort. A bold move from apple. I like it.

The Downright Freaking Annoying: There's quite a lot of these so i've made a list:

1. I can't stress this enough. Address Book and iCal are hideous.

2. I find myself having lots of trouble sending emails despite the fact that all my settings are correct. A quick look around the inter webs and I find I'm not the only one with that issue. That said, no one I personally know is complaining of this. Still, this is REALLY annoying.

3. iPhoto - I don't like the new interface. In fairness this has nothing to do with Lion per se but I needed to get that off my chest. The plus button for the albums is gone (really, apple? really?). Also, when you share photos via email, it no longer opens them in Mail, instead it creates an email in iPhoto which, get this.. … DOES NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR ADRESS BOOK DISTRIBUTION LISTS! Wow. APPLE FIX THIS!… please.

4. System Preferences crashed every time I tried to add my .me account. Really, EVERY time. I had to do it via Mail.app instead.

5. Many of my apps in the Applications folder went missing, including iPhoto. Yes, they just disappeared. I had to redownload them from the app store. Just to make matters worse, launchpad thinks i have two copies of those apps. *facepalm of doom*

6. When I finally managed to enter my .me information. Address Book wiped all my contacts on iCloud despite the fact that I specified for iCloud to replace the content on my Mac.  Not cool. Luckily I had a backup.


That's about it

Bottom line:

This release has some very good new features and dumps a lot of the bloat, BUT I feel it's still not  rock solid. You may want to wait for the next update before taking the plunge. Also, I'm not sure this warrants the name Lion. Perhaps Honey Badger or Aardvark or Pine Martin might have been more apt.

2.5 / 5 samboosas  

Cafe Lilu Review. Part 1: Prologue

Three years ago, a friend of mine (Let's just call him Ahmed Smith for the sake of maintaining his anonymity) suggested we go for a bite to eat in Cafe Lilu next to Aali Mall. I hadn't been there before so i agreed to his suggestion. I met him there and was set to get my food on.

Just as I was about to enter, a waiter blocked my way and said "Sir, is that your Toyota Echo?"

"You betcha!" I replied, with slightly more enthusiasm than the car warranted.

"I'm afraid we don't have a table for you"

" … what?"

" You can't eat here."

"what? because of my car?"

"Precisely, it doesn't meet our standards."

"What are your standards!? I mean this bullshit, do you have a list of pre-approved cars?!"

"Yes." And he handed me a list of pre-approved cars. It consisted predominantly of German and Italian cars.

" You mean to tell me I can only eat here if I have one of these cars? That's the ONLY way in?"

"Of cours not sir, that would be silly. We also let you in if you are a woman with a stroller and a child."

"oh…… I see" I stared at the list in disbelief.

"We have a table for *you*, sir." Said the waiter to Ahmed Smith. Ahmed had arrived in a BMW. He looked at me, shrugged, and walked into the restaurant. 

"Sir, could you please leave"

I left dejected. An hour later, Ahmed texted me to tell me the food was great. I always hated that son of a bitch.

FDN - Latest Edition!

Movie Review: The Hurt Locker

By Rodriguez Van. Hosenhoven

After a short time away on Holiday [ read prison - ED] i'm back at samboosa.net to write a movie review.

I recently acquired The Hurt Locker from Bit Torrent my local DVD store and decided to watch it on my home entertainment system/laptop.

My, what a great film. Truly a great film. I don't know who the leading actor is but he looks a little bit like that guy from that teen drama series about a bad boy who moves into a town full of rich people in California.  Anyway, this film is basically a war movie set in a fictional country called "Iraq" which apparently the Americans have moved to.

 So aside from being a war movie, this film is also an action film. But here comes the clever bit; Instead of the hero blowing stuff in order to save the day, our hero unblows stuff up in order to save the day. Throughout the film, he is continuously unblowing things up.  In order to accommodate this bizarre take on action films, the writers of the Hurt Locker have come up with the novel concept of a "Bomb disposal unit". Truly an original idea.

The tension in the film is extreme and the action scenes of things being unblown up are fantastic. WIth superb dialogue, set-pieces, and great leading actor, this film is a gem.

4/5 samboosas