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The second huddle in the way to enjoy Kubuntu and my Laptop, WPA support for my home wireless LAN. Finally, I could get a workaround with it by installing the proper driver. You can find the drivers here. There is a great Install guide which helps to get most out of it.

Enjoy Wi-Fi on Kubuntu.

Yesterday, on first day of vacation, I installed Kubuntu Feisty Fawn release. This time, I wanted to try something else than Ubuntu. I faced lots of usability issues with Ubuntu. It had some problems in auto detecting my network settings. I use my laptop in various network environments, office, home and public places. I had to every time select the proper network adapter to get running. I never figured out whether there is some other way to do things but out-of-box configuration didn't allow that. There were similar problem on other grounds too.

Kubuntu was amazing in these regards, I plugged my WD passport drive and immediately it shown me the dialog (like windows ) to open or view pictures. I liked the way they picked up good features of windows. When I plugged in my network cable, it automatically configured itself to proper device and I had to do nothing except waiting for couple of seconds! So my first impressions of Kubuntu are really good!

I faced only one issue with Kubuntu, getting 1440x990 resolution my Dell Latitude D620. Laptop configuration is as follows:
* Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU (2 64-bit 2.00 GHz processors)
* WXGA+ screen, 1440*900
* NVidia Quadro 110M Turbo Cache
* 1GB RAM
* Integrated bluetooth, usual ports and networking (Wi-Fi etc.)

The problem I faced was, NVidia Quadro 110M has 64 MB onboard memory and it can use shared memory upto 256 MB. Somehow the out-of-box driver with Kubuntu was not able to allocated shared memory which was forcing me to use lower resolution than 1440x900. I hate that resolution as there comes some weird shadow effect around text characters and even the desktop seems to be skewed a little bit.

I was also facing problem in having widescreen display and was forced to use 4:3 display. I tried to google for the problem but no luck there too. I searched for Adept Installer for "nvidia" and I could see two packages in the "System" category.

I selected the second binary driver (as shown in the image) and applied the changes. Later, I restarted the X-Server by (Ctrl+Alt+Bksp) and I could see the NVidia logo which was sign that the driver is in action. After login, I could go to "System Settings" and in administrator mode, I set my monitor to be "16:9". Then I restarted the X server again. Later I could set the proper resolution to 1440x900 and it needed another restart of X server.

There might be some optimal way of doing that in one restart (e.g. editing the xorg.conf file manually) but I prefer to use wizards whenever possible to avoid syntax errors in the configuration files.

Finally I can use my laptop in 1440x900 resolution.

From past few days we are looking that news channels are crazy over marriage of Abhishek Bachhan and Aishwarya Rai. I don't remember that even world cup was covered with this details. Right from animated graphics of marriage invitation card to list of people who were invited were furnished in great detail. I don't see any value of such news and coverage being added to lay man's life. This neither give any moral boost nor gives any direction.

Day by day media is turning to be very irresponsible and spicy. Small and unimportant news are covered for longer duration sometimes even whole day! A normal person doesn’t even care about such news.

Today, Janhavi Kapoor (also known as Haya Razvi), a struggling model and actress claimed that she was married once to Abhishek Bachhan in private. Abhishek promised to marry her and now he denies that and getting married to Aishwarya Rai. This crazy lady went ahead and in front of media she cut down her wrist and collapses on ground. This is all needed for media to go crazy and they covered this looser actress for next whole day! Every hour the lady kept changing her statements like it was child play, news channels kept broadcasting this to the world. This was height of stupidity and irresponsibility!

This is not the first incident when some small event is getting enormous media hype. Intimate scene of Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor, Madhur Bhandarkar and Preeti Jain case and the king of all events "Prince"! Sometimes, really disturbing and violent images are transmitted for whole day without thinking much about its impact on normal person. When I talk about impact of news, first thing comes to mind is Mumbai blast. All channels were showing the half minute long footage which shows people are carrying a really deformed human body from busted railway compartment to some other place. That evening million people were travelling across the city. This incident happened and immediately all cell phone networks were jammed, phone lines were dead and communication media was stopped. Did anybody from these news channel thought of those women, children who were watching this ridicules half minute video footage and expecting their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons coming home? We are kind of forgetting the impact of news on normal person’s life. Showing the same violent footage over and over sometimes makes you numb about the event. The sensible feeling of humanity for such events becomes weaker and weaker. Audience starts anticipating more violence. There is no censor or commissioning body which decides what to be shown and for how much time!

Something stupid happens in corner of Mumbai and thousand of reporters start gathering around and starts asking million questions to people around the spot where incident happened. I wonder if they check any credibility of person with whom they are talking. They keep asking senseless questions about the event and create a spicy version of whole scene. There will be no wonder if they are cooking up some stories to make their headlines! To increase the TRP of the show and keep people entertaining, these people are finding weirdest and most useless events which a normal person even can’t imagine.

I see today’s news channels as commodity sellers. They are viewing news as commodity. Larger they produce better they earn revenue. I remember of a Bond movie which showcases an over ambitious News maker who first write news and then makes it happen. Over a period of time, his news starts shooting the bars of violence and set new horror marks. It will be really sad if we see something like that coming true anytime soon in reality!