Mac OS X help

Being a relatively recent Mac user, I had heard of the community of Mac users but had not ever experienced what it was like.

Stumbled upon this – think it best personifies what a “community” means. Posted for anyone who needs Mac OSX help, like I do from time to time.

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Strange factoid of a strange world

Just learnt this – the biggest arms suppliers to the world – and this includes those arms that are used by Islamic terrorists, the Somalians, the perpetrators of Darfur, the civil war in Sierra Leone and a hundred other places in the world that kill literally millions of people every year are:

The United States
The United Kingdom
The Russian Federation
France
China

And these are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

Offered without comments.

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Installing Applications on Mac OS X

Sounds stupid does it not – if I write a full 2 days after fiddling around with the MacBook for long periods of time – that I finally figured out the process of installing applications on Mac OS. Its very simple really – its just that my brain was conditioned to double clicking .exe files.

Anyways, I figured finally did figure it out. Quite cool really – very similar to mounting apps on a Unix volume. I am getting old, stupid and too damn conditioned with the usual.

4 Step process:

1. Download (or pop in CD)

2. Double click on the .dmg file

3. Copy to apps or where ever you want to store it ( drag and drop – always drag and drop)

4. Trash .dmg

And it took me 2 days!

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Macbook Impressions – 4

Finally, I think I am getting a hang of it. And I love it.Surprisingly, I appreciate the joy it is to use the mac when I use the IBM T42 for work. I was on call all this week – so every now and then, I’d have to check my corporate email. What difference. You never know it till you try the mac. Its so much more elegant.

I installed a couple of desktop widgets on my dashboard yesterday – utterly cool the way they appear for the first time. Imagine installing something and it shows up similar to an object rising to the surface of a blue shimmering lake – same effect!

And a million other chota things. I am so glad I got it.

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The Immigration Debate in America

America is the middle of a huge immigration debate now a days. There is a new immigration agreement between the Democrats and the Republicans – and it has not made anyone happy – either on the left or the right. While the debate (and the bill) is centered around the 12 million or so illegal immigrants in the United States, it also has implications to folks with employment sponsored visas – primarily educated workers (of which, to be fair, yours truly is a part of).

In terms of the illegal immigrants (a euphemism used for primarily Mexicans and a smattering of other South American nationals), the bill proposes a path to permanent residency and ultimately citizenship based on a point system. The problem (and therefore the controversy) is around the way the point system is structured – it lays more emphasis on educational and other specialized credentials of the illegal immigrants and less on existing family ties in the United States. The problem with that premise is two fold – one, since the bill awards points based on educational and professional credentials – it also implicitly assumes that a significant proportion of the illegal immigrants have those credentials. Its an presumptuous assumption at best – egregious at worst. For most of the illegal immigrants – who pretty much walk across a desert to get to America – its grinding poverty back in Mexico that gets them here – not the hope of getting a job in the Silicon Valley.

The second issue is compliance. Since the bill is focused on illegal immigrants already in the United States and because existing family ties does not award commensurate points – the problem will become compliance. If I am an illegal immigrant and I have a family, children attending schools and barely trying to make ends meet – I dont know if it would seem very attractive for me to go and pay 5 grand in fines without getting a whole lot in return.

The bill would need to be tweaked – and it probably will – but as I see it – atleast from the standpoint of addressing the illegal immigration issue – there are just major holes. And this not even begin to address the fundamental reality that brings illegal immigrants to America and however it sounds – it is true. There are not enough Americans who would do the jobs that these immigrants do. Not in kind. Not with those wages. And the rest of us are addicted to cheap meat, cheap fruits and vegetables – which would never reach the supermarket aisles if there were not enough illegal immigrants working in the meatpacking factories, the fruit orchards or in fields – under very trying working circumstances. If those immigrants are taken out – would there be enough Americans to do the jobs? Resounding answer – No. So America needs them.

Coming back to the other aspect of the immigration bills – for skilled workers.

Put this in perspective – America allows 68000 H1B visas every year. This year (fiscal year 2008) – all the visas were taken on the first day that they could be applied for. American universities now do not produce enough American born candidates with advanced degrees in Maths, Science and Technology to provide employees for the technological and scientific industries. A full 55% of masters and PhD candidates last year from American universities were foreign born – and now a majority of the class of 2006 will not be able to work in America -even if they had a job – there are no visas. And with the economies of the two major countries that produce those masters and PhD candidates – India and China growing leaps and bounds – a bunch would move back to work at home – not a bad thing at all for these countries – but competitively disadvantageous to the American economy.

And what this bill does is put all the illegal immigrants in front of all these professionals working on temporary visas who want permanent residency (for which there is a huge backlog).

This is a hugely complicated issue with very deep passions both on the conservative and liberal sides.The bill needs to be re-worked – pragmatically and compassionately – to address the very real needs of both legal and illegal immigrants in the country.

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Macbook Impressions – 3

Am getting more progressively familiar with Mac OS X. And the more I understand it, the more I like it. Its not the big things that one expects to bowl one over with the Mac. Its the small things – the small features.

Its the ease of use – not necessarily entirely new features. Its the feeling of more being more integrated. Its the general aesthetics of the OS – and yes, even third party apps. Small applications like Yahoo Messenger look so much better on the mac than they do on the PC.

I am not that big on multimedia. I dont take a lot of pictures. I do listen to music – but most of my music is on a FAT32 formatted hard drive. So I haven’t really tried a lot of the multimedia options.

Maybe I will make a website using iWeb and see how it goes.

But why I like it is because of the overall experience. Cant put a finger on the difference. Its just better.

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The problem with China

I stumbled across this report today on Times of India on Chinese refusal to give visas to IAS officers from Arunachal Pradesh because of their claim to the state.

Now I have been reading on the historical premise of the Chinese claiming Arunachal Pradesh as their own territory – and it seems to me that China’s claim is again premised on their “claim” on Tibet. Essentially, the British drew up the McMohan line as a border between British India and Tibet. In  1913 the Tibetians and the Brits agreed upon it – the  Chinese did not and hence the claim ever since.

Anyways, the point is that in the War of 1962 between India and China – the chinese pretty much overrun the whole area and then withdrew to the McMohan Line.

So today in 2007, the Chinese are refusing to give a visa to the a Arunachal Pradesh born IAS officer (the highest ranking civilian officer) in the Indian administrative services and consequently the Prime Minister level government to government contact had to be cancelled.

And the tone in the TOI article is read to be believed. Without commenting either way on the validity of the chinese claim ( though, given their historical adherence to claiming all kinds of lands as their own, I tend to form my own opinions on the intent of the Chinese state), I think the incident sheds light on two fundamental problems – one Chinese attitude to India isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy – they seem to be inordinately intransigent on issues -and that is only a glimpse of larger strategic imperatives.

And secondly, it displays the pusillanimously of Indian media and political attitudes to China.

I am the last person to be hawkish on relatively un-important incidents like these – but I think it illustrates fundamental problems in the Indo-Chinese relationship.

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Macbook Impressions – 2

Having fiddled around with the mac for about 5-6 hours, I thought it would be an opportune time as any to post my updated thoughts.

First the machine – even though the macbook is a “consumer” laptop and not a “pro” machine – the Intel Dual Core processor fairly rips through most applications. As I mentioned yesterday, my first impressions are just reinforced. The machine itself is very well built and is a joy to use. Small things amaze me. For e.g – the thought that went into designing the power supply, the quality of the screen, the boot time. All amazing.

Then the OS. Obviously, I am very new to it – and have not really used most of the pre-installed applications. What was disappointing was to learn that I cant integrate Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger into iChat. Secondly, the more banal – having used Windows for so long – couldn’t really figure out how to install an application. I mean downloading from the web is fairly straightforward – but then there are issues I cant circumvent – I thought the .dmg files are akin to the .exe files in the windows world – but learnt that if I am to delete them – the apps stops working – maybe I am getting it entirely wrong – but need to figure it out.

There is a host of very interesting apps pre-installed in the macbook and there is no junk “trial period” software that Windows machines come with. Which is good.

All in all – its very shiny – but I still need to learn how to harness the OS properly. Will update as I go along.

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Posting from my new Macbook

My first post from the machine I have been drooling for an inordinate amount of time – a platform I have wanted to learn for sometime – and now its finally on my lap. That’s right – a spanking new Macbook

Its an entirely new experience – not without the excitement I had expected – its beautifully built with a close attention to details one expects from Apple. Its got an absolutely wonderful display – bright and crisp with a glossy display, an unusual keyboard that I am still getting used to and an operating system that will take me a long time for me to get used to.

I have my ideas on how to use this machine in ways different than I use my IBM T43 – but I need to familiarize myself with the OS – and have my Windows impacted neural nerves process OS X specific messages.

Will keep the forum posted. Right now, I am just dabbling. But boy, is it sweet. And the Intel Duo is fast.

More later.

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Performancing is now ScribeFire

So here’s an update. To follow up on my intent to post more often, I decided to re-install Performancing – the tool I used to use to post on both my blogs. Having the advantage of hitting F8 to pull up an editor directly from the browser definitely beats having to log onto one’s blog to write. And I think, that was one of the reason why I posted a lot more.

Anyways, Performancing is now called ScribeFire. Its a nifty little utility to have – installs easy, is as effective as it was and is great for folks who update their blogs regularly.

You can get it here (for the Firefox browser)

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