₦airaland Forum

How much did it cost!? Is it cheaper than sending the kid to India or Pakistan? Reddington hospital is crazily expensive.

It warms my heart that Nigerians, and secondary school children at that, have built the world's first working perpetual motion machine. They have finally disproved that useless "1st law of thermodynamics" that oyimbo ignoramuses like Einstein and Stephen Hawkin have been bandying about for decades. The world of Physics will never be the same. Its good to see more Philip Emeagwalis and Gabriel Oyibos coming out of our schools. /sarcasm

Seriously though, you have to hand it to these kids for managing to assemble a working dynamo/electric motor. Their machine has no practical use of course but it's still a decent achievement. For all we know, it was the retarded journalist and maybe their teachers that have hyped this thing to this level.

Even if the "inventors" actually believed that they had made something useful, it's still their teachers' fault for not explaining physics to them properly. At least these guys are trying to practicalize what they have read. To me they are a thousand times better than the countless zombies that pass WAEC every year by cramming and vomiting. (Probably what the silly journalist did)

Science is all about experimentation, trial and error. You make mistakes, even ones as stu.pid as this and you learn from them.

Beaf:
Your analysis is overly alarmist. A president can be impeached if he/she strays beyond their powers or displays dictatorial tendencies.
We arent talking about everyday legislation here, it is a whole set of constitutional changes. How do you change the constitution without the consent of the country's leader? The Presidency and legislature are set up to check and balance the power of the other (with the Presidency holding the advantage); you wouldn't expect the President to be able to unilaterally change the constitution, so why should the legislature have that power? Both sides must agree any changes.

There are already plenty of checks on the NASS's power. The NASS can't unilaterally change the constitution, they need two-thirds of the state assemblies to do that.

The person who's power needs to the checked is the president who is already far too powerful in my opinion. He already has a huge amount of influence in any ammendment process simply by controlling the flow of government money. Its now much easier for the president to tilt the balance of power in his direction. Gradually over time, the president will thus become stronger and the other arms of government, weaker. A Chavez type dictator is almost inevitable when the president can have the constitution changed to remove checks on his power.

Given the type of leaders we've had in the past, it would be extremely naive to asume that the president won't abuse any power you give him. We should all be very worried about this ruling.

This is insane. So the court is saying that one little man in Abuja can veto an ammendment passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses and 26 state assemblies?
This ruling has serious and far reaching consequences. It means it is now nearly impossible to pass any ammendment that in any way limits presidential power as the president can unilaterally block it. The president can also blackmail the national assembly by refusing to sign an ammendment unless it include clauses that favour him (think of GEJ trying to change the electoral act to allow public officers to vote as delegates in primaries)
The court just made it easy for a corrupt president to transform himself into a Hugo Chavez/Mugabe type tyrant. If this ruling survives on appeal it will be a major flaw in our constitution and the National assembly will have to pass another ammendment to fix it fast.
And then we'll have to hope that GEJ signs it (and being a PDP man, he probably won't). God help us.

It's amazing that so many people can support GEJ. Have you people forgotten which party he belongs to? Or have you all been sleeping for the past 12 years? Exactly what type of change do you expect the guy to bring? Did you ever hear him speak out when his fellow party members were busy robbing the country blind? Did he complain when they were rigging elections on he and his former oga's behalf?
The fact is that if you swim with sharks, you're are a shark and GEJ is the shark king. He's only hiding his teeth until after the election.
Anybody who willingly votes for the PDP needs to get his head examined.

Mai Suya:
BTW Abacha and not IBB was behind the 1983 coup.

IBB was definitely involved in the 1983 coup. He wasn't the leader as there were plenty of more senior officers among the plotters but IBB was most certainly one of them.

So was Abacha, by the way, but he was junior even to IBB.

I think IBB's main talent is picking the right side in any conflict. Like I said before, he was involved in all the successful coups and none of the failed ones. He even played a major role in foiling the 1976 coup (the one that killed Murtala) when he confronted one of the plotters (I think it was Dinka but I'm not sure) who had gone to make the coup announcement at FRSC.

And even though he must have had issues with Abacha, he laid low and skillfully avoided pissing off his former subordinate off during Abacha's reign of terror. I'm sure Obasanjo must have wished he could have done the same when Abacha roped him into his "phantom coup".

And now, despite dozens politicians practically begging him to run for president for the past 8 years under their various mushroom parties, IBB patiently held out until he had a real shot at the PDP ticket. He recognized early that the PDP was the only realistic way back to Aso rock and now he has brilliantly engineered himself a more than fair chance of beating GEJ.

If GEJ doesn't stop fumbling and the PDP manages to outrig the ACN (their only viable opponents for now), it is very possible that we will all be saluting president Babangida next year.

May God help us all.

I'm not happy with Mo though. she wasted too much time asking dumb questions like "how strict are you with your children?", "how did you meet your wife?" and that kind of nonsense.

If it were me interviewing him apart form the June 12 and coup questions, these are some of the things I would have asked him:

1. Sir, since you say you didn't steal it, what really happened to the $12 billion gulf war oil windfall?

2. Sir, given your terrible civil rights record, why do you think you are fit to rule Nigeria as a democratic president? Why should the Nigerian people trust you again?

3. Considering the massive expansion of government bureaucracy and wasteful spending that occurred during your regime, do you feel personally responsible for present governments being forced to spend so much on recurrent expenditure and so little on capital?

4. SAP. Do you really still think it was a good idea? And more importantly, do you think it would have worked if you and your friends hadn't been so corrupt?

5. Sir, since you say it wasn't you, who do you think really killed Dele Giwa?

6. How can I move large amounts of money out of the country without attracting attention? I'm planning to run for councillor soon and I need some advice.

When they asked him whether staging a coup was legal, he laughed and said something like:

"It doesn't matter because when you overthrow the democratically elected government, the first thing you do is throw away the constitution and declare martial law. After that who will come and challenge you?"

He also didn't show any sign of remorse for anything. He really seems to believe that he did well for the country and that he has nothing to apologise for.

Is he right? Or is he just a very convincing liar? Is he a sociopath? Is he too stu.pid to see the many terrible consequences of his actions?

Also funny was when he was listing all the coups he's been involved in and how with practice, he and his partners had been gradually improving their technique.

Jan 1966: Very bloody
Jun 1966: Very bloody
1975: Bloodless
1976: Moderately Bloody
1984: Bloodless
1985: Bloodless

As you can see except for the 1976 failed coup (IBB sided against the coup plotters on that one) there is a definite trend towards bloodlessness.

You will also note that all the coups IBB helped to execute were successful and all the coups he didn't help to plan (except Nzeogwu's in 1966 and Abacha's soft coup against Shonekan) failed.

The man is a coup-plotting legend!

Wilfem:
I watched it too and I was a little bit shocked when it got to the part he was asked about the annulment of June 12, he said it was unfortunate and they just took off the show to a 'commercial break' I was so sure he won't say the exact reason why he actually annulled it.

He said that he annulled June 12 because he was concerned about "the security of the country" i.e. that MKO's government would have been overthrown by the military and that the coup would have been "very bloody"

Not a good excuse of course, but better than nothing.

wesley80:
You watched it didnt you? What are your own thoughts? Why not share yours also.

What struck me the most was the cavalier way he spoke about the art and science of coup plotting. I mean this guy is Nigeria's leading authority on the subject and he gave some nice insights. For example, he said he could have overthrown Shagari in 1982, before the election. But because he new that the people wouldn't support him then and he knew the '83 elections were going to be heavily rigged, he and his confederates waited to take advantage of the national outrage that followed the votes before they struck.

I wonder if there are any young colonels now thinking the same thing about 2011?

I just finished watching IBB being interviewed on Moments with Mo on Africa Magic where he talked about his numerous coups, and why he annulled June 12 among other things.

Did anybody else watch? Your thoughts please.

You guys shouldn't be so hard on Mobitel. The 4g they're claiming is just normal marketing bullshiat and has more to do with the potential top speed of LTE than the actual download rate on their network.
We should be happy that another company is offering consumers more choice. With both MainOne and Glo-1 now active, there's far more bandwidth available but prices are still high. This shows that only more competition can bring the price down to sensible levels. You can bet that MTN and co won't pass any savings on to customers if they can help it. They'll happily charge 10k/month forever if they can.
The more companies there are competing for customers, the sooner one will have to lower prices and the better for us.

@4ller
If you're cool with 'brover then so am I. One love. And speaking of KDE vs Gnome, Ars Technica just posted an interesting article about Qt in Ubuntu. It looks like some people are thinking about dropping gtk.
arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/10/canonical-cto-contemplates-qt-we-think-it-has-a-lot-to-offer-ubuntu.ars
I can't help with the wine issue. I've never had any luck in that department and dual booting is so much simpler. If you want to play games and have a decent video card, you should try Dolphin. Its an emulator for Nintendo gamecube and wii games. I hear it works really well.
And you first have to map the buttons in the emulator's settings to get a pad to work properly. Look in options or preferences or whatever. Its very easy once you've done it once.

D-sense:
I'm with you but, I don't trust these people sometimes.

Obviously Google is just trying to get a foothold in the virgin African market before their rivals get here. They are using this as bait to get more of our people to use their services (search, email, etc) so that they can mine data and sell adverts to Nigerian companies (Google is actually an advertising company). Now given that their products are extremely useful and completely free, I don't see why anybody should be complaining.
Trust Nairalanders to start forming conspiracy theories though. I wonder how long it will take for someone to accuse IBB of being behind this.

I just want to point out (to those who don't know) that he didn't pull out his natural teeth to do this. He actually lost most of his lower front teeth in a car accident a few years back. So this is merely him changing one set of fake teeth to another (much flashier) set. Whenever he gets tired of small children running away from him, it will be extremely easy to change them back to something more conservative. Long story short: this is really not a big deal.

bigrovar:
@4llerbuntu your "assessment" of kde can not be so wrong. first of it is never advisable to install kde and gnome side by side the latter install always suffers. This is due to the fact that both kde and gnome use very different underlying technologies which might lead to conflict. from network manager (different UIs) to sound architecture (pulseaudio + gstreamer vs xine pulseaudio-phonon) etc even in term of libraries the difference is even wider. If gnome works for you stick to it. Kde is not for everyone neither is gnome. stop spreading fud about things you know very little about when u do that you just go around spreading untruth which others would take as fact. I don't want to be drawn into the kde vs gnome argument. I used gnome for close to 2 years before finally settling down to kde. that speaks for its self. It is very wrong and almost insulting to conclude that people using kde are after the blings and just that cus again you have no clue on what makes kde thick and u are not ready to learn. Just use your gnome which as always worked for u and be happy.

Guy, this is seriously uncool. You shouldn't be attacking your brother over something as trivial as kde vs gnome. You're both open source evangelists after all, let's try and keep things in perspective. This type of clannish douchebaggery is really holding OSS back. We need to stop bashing each other and focus on the main task: fixing bug no. 1.

This reminds me of a funny story I read somewhere:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. I ran over and yelled "Stop! Don't do it!"
"Why shouldn't I?" he said.
I said "There's so much to live for!"
He replied "No, there isn't. Life is pointless."
Quickly trying to find some common ground, I asked "Are you religious or atheist?"
He said "Religious."
I said "So am I! Are you Christian or Buddhist or something?"
He said "Christian."
I said "So am I! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"
He said "Protestant."
I said "So am I! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"
He said "Baptist."
I said "So am I! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"
He said "Baptist Church of God."
I said "So am I! Are you original Baptist Church of God or Reformed Baptist Church of God?"
He said "Reformed Baptist Church of God."
I said "So am I! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?"
He said "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915."
I said "Die heathen scum!" and pushed him off the bridge.

adewaleafolabi:
The problem lies in your language setting, change it from English Nigeria to English united states and that would fix the problem

Solved. It was the language settings. I had fiddled with it before but I forgot I had to log out and log back in for the new setting to take effect. It's funny that nobody else had this problem.

Anyway, thanks a lot guys.

Chxta:
Try starting the software centre from the command line

$ /usr/bin/software-center

If it crashes it would give output information. Paste the output information here let me see it.

This is what I get:

gbemi@gbemi-Laptop:~$ /usr/bin/software-center
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/software-center", line 90, in <module>
app = SoftwareCenterApp(datadir, xapian_base_path, options, args)
File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/app.py", line 149, in __init__
self.history = get_apt_history()
File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/apt/apthistory.py", line 178, in get_apt_history
apt_history = AptHistory()
File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/apt/apthistory.py", line 83, in __init__
self.rescan()
File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/apt/apthistory.py", line 99, in rescan
self._scan(self.history_file)
File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/apt/apthistory.py", line 116, in _scan
trans = Transaction(stanza)
File "/usr/share/software-center/softwarecenter/apt/apthistory.py", line 59, in __init__
"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/_strptime.py", line 270, in <module>
_TimeRE_cache = TimeRE()
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/_strptime.py", line 188, in __init__
self.locale_time = LocaleTime()
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/_strptime.py", line 70, in __init__
self.lang = _getlang()
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/_strptime.py", line 29, in _getlang
return locale.getlocale(locale.LC_TIME)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/locale.py", line 497, in getlocale
return _parse_localename(localename)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/locale.py", line 410, in _parse_localename
raise ValueError, 'unknown locale: %s' % localename
ValueError: unknown locale: en_NG
gbemi@gbemi-Laptop:~$

4llerbuntu:
but seriously, is software center that important to you? anyway why not adopt the usb install method? its much much faster!

Evil Brain:
I found a fix where you go to System -> Preferences -> Main Menu and change the command for software centre but guess what? Main Menu isn't starting either. Neither is gdebi.

It turns out that there's no gdebi in Maverick. Software centre now installs .deb files by default meaning I can't install all my programs without using the terminal. Downloading gdebi now.

Abeg if anybody finds a fix please help me out.

Chxta:
Was it a fresh install you did or an upgrade?

Fresh install.
I formatted the root partition but kept /Home with all my data. I don't think that can be the cause though.

4llerbuntu:
update the system first na!! they did a new kernel for 1 bug like dat. but quite clearly it did not affect you. if it did the entire system will be unuseable.

if that fails, remove software center completely, reinstall and try it.

if that still fails, throw away your laptop


but seriously, is software center that important to you? anyway why not adopt the usb install method? its much much faster!

I had already updated before I even noticed the problem.
I found a fix where you go to System -> Preferences -> Main Menu and change the command for software centre but guess what? Main Menu isn't starting either. Neither is gdebi.

I think I'll try reinstalling with the usb method like you said.

Right, finally installed Maverick this AM and I'm having problems. The software centre is completely refusing to start. Very annoying

Does anyone have any ideas what I should do? I really don't feel like reinstalling again.

Evil Brain:
Unless you want to format you windows partition (and lose all your data) you'll need to partition the drive first. You can boot the live cd and use the disk utility (System -> Administration -> Disk Utility). Make sure you have backups of everything valuable in case there's a f.uckup. You should make 2 new partitions: a big one, and a smaller one (about twice the size of your computer's ram)

You can then install ubuntu in the new partition. At the allocate drive space screen, select your new partition, click edit, change the filesystem to ext4, mount point to / and select the format checkbox. For the smaller partition, change the filesystem to swap.
After that, just continue installing the usual way and you should be ok.

Cheers

Alternatively, you could create three new partitions: A root partition (size: 8-10gb, mount point: /, file system:ext4), a swap partition (size: 1-2x your ram) and a home partition (size: whatever's left, mount point: /home, file system:ext4).

This way, you won't lose data even after the worst f.uckup. As long as your /home partition is intact, you can completely reinstall ubuntu and still have all your files and applications.

Koolwilly:
Find out what i am talking about below, please i need help on how to go about it,

Unless you want to format you windows partition (and lose all your data) you'll need to partition the drive first. You can boot the live cd and use the disk utility (System -> Administration -> Disk Utility). Make sure you have backups of everything valuable in case there's a f.uckup. You should make 2 new partitions: a big one, and a smaller one (about twice the size of your computer's ram)

You can then install ubuntu in the new partition. At the allocate drive space screen, select your new partition, click edit, change the filesystem to ext4, mount point to / and select the format checkbox. For the smaller partition, change the filesystem to swap.
After that, just continue installing the usual way and you should be ok.

Cheers

Forget Okah, What about Mutallab?

He has the motive, the ability, everything. I'm sure those al queda guys in Guantanamo would have taught him enough new tricks by now. He must have planted the bombs!

Wait, I think I have his number, let me ask him
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Oh my God! Farouk, how could you do such a thing?
GEJ was right. It was those northerners

bigrovar:
I have been running the RC version of Kubuntu 10.10 which I easily upgraded to 10.10 final release. so far its been one of the best Kubuntu ever. It ships the awesome kde 4.5 and comes with lots of improvements here and there. Overall I am very very happy with this release which packs, power, sexiness, beauty, stability and functionality which we have all come to know of kde.
[img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4086/5064889379_03c195baf5_b.jpg
[/img]

Gaddem!!!

That is too sexy. Is that the default theme or did you have to love-vendor it? It makes gnome look like a 30 yr old molue.

Should have downloaded kubuntu instead. Ooooh