Entries from March 2008 ↓

I had an excellent weekend, and I’m very thrilled with everything that happened! It was just another Saturday, with housing duties, but I took some time to go take a look at the FIFA Interactive World Cup 2008 (FIWC 08) that was going to happen in São Paulo. So close to home that makes me think: “why not taking a peek?”

<Flickr gallery>

My intention was just to go there and take a look, but when I came to the place the subscription line was not so big, so I decided to subscribe myself and have some fun. Well, it didn’t look so bad: even though it was based on PlayStation3, the game is FIFA08, which I play regularly on my Xbox 360 at home. The only thing that seemed would be a problem was the controller, so I was completely OK with the fact the I was not going further than the first round knockout.

Overview of the competition:

• 200 participants
• Single-elimination tournament
• FIFA08 on PlayStation3
• Few people from other states, only two foreigners (Mexicans)
• Qualifier to choose the Brazil representative for the world cup in Germany

As I said, it was just fun for me, but at the end, I went all the way through the eighth-finals! That’s awesome! This puts me among the 16 top FIFA players in the country. Who would imagine that?

Well, apart from what happens to me, that was a very interesting and thrilling competition, and also very friendly. No problems with competitors, no disqualifications, everything seemed to work pretty well.

It’s unfortunate that the winner was a Mexican. I think the official FIFA note would explain better than me:

“Ruben Morales Zerecero from Mexico was crowned the champion of the Brazilian FIFA Interactive World Cup Final 2008 today after defeating previous champion Andre Buffo and new challenger Richard Riviere in a sensational event in Sao Paolo. ” (read more)

Never the less, this was a great weekend. I’m still waiting for the official record of my final position, so I will write a little more about it in future posts. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, take a look at my gallery on Flickr!

[Apr/01]
- I found a website with press coverage. That’s me on the second photo. You can see some videos too.
- Another one, with me on the 4th photo.

Fedora 9 Beta is out. That means it’s almost done. Announcement on this link.

Começa a operar no Brasil mais uma das novidades que eu mencionei para 2008: WiMax. De acordo com o portal Teleco:

Rede WiMax da Embratel
Início de operação: Março 2008.
Cobertura inicial: Belém, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Goiânia, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Luiz e São Paulo.

Por enquanto o serviço está disponível apenas para empresas. Claro, assim eles podem cobrar mais caro, e compensar os investimentos.

Bom, com isso concretizam-se todas as minhas previsões.

I suspected that already, but now I’m sure.

This morning I heard on the radio the 8 signs of being workaholic:

1. Works when doesn’t need to (weekends, holidays, extra hours).
2. Leave family and group activities aside (lack of social and family life).
3. Suffers of abstinence syndrome (anxious when not doing anything “useful”).
4. Do many things at the same time (some times not even related to each other).
5. Talks about work most of the time (or things related to work).
6. Difficult to relate to colleagues (critic, demanding, perfectionist).
7. Frequent health problems (flu, stomach, and stress related illness).
8. When finally finds something as interesting as work, gets addicted to it for a while, then get back to work.

I won’t say that the above items describe me perfectly, but I’m pretty sure more than a half of them fit me very good.

A few minutes ago, while trying to work from home, I started browsing around the internet and found out my level of workaholism. According to this test, I’m 73% workaholic (if that’s something you can measure in numbers).

“Your score is 73. You are a workaholic. You could be on your way to burn-out, and family members may be experiencing emotional repercussions as well.”

True or false, that really makes me think if I’m really there, and if what I’m doing is being worthwhile.

What about you? Do you feel workaholic? Do you relate to the signs above? Did you get a score higher than 50% in the test? Please, share your thoughts in the comments area.

Oh, and by the way, I do like my job.

I read an interesting comment by Matt Asay, on C|Net Blogs, with title “What is the world’s defining software company for the 21st century?“. What are the interesting points in it?

a) It’s a very biased observation against Red Hat’s mission statement.

b) It mentions Kiat Huang, my friend and former manager.

So, you go and read the comment for whatever reason you have to.

I know it’s old news, but I decided to write something here after I received a newsletter from Sony with the title “The world has decided”.

In 2006 I said that I would go with PS3 (if I could afford it). Well, by the time the opportunity came, I could not, so XBox360 was the obvious choice. So, what does that all matters? If you read my post about PS3, you’re going to see that back in 2006 I was already prising Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, because by that time I already made my choice of format.

No, I’m not saying “I knew it”, I’m just writing this post to say that Microsoft lost this war.

Nobody knows for sure why M$ was going against the obvious (some have a few ideas why), but the fact is that the battle has come to an end, and the obvious has come to surface. Search around the web, and you’re going to see how many sites talk about companies declaring HD-DVD EOL. Even M$ did it already.

On Wikipedia, the official death of HD-DVD has been marked as February, 19, 2008, after Toshiba decided to EOL it’s production.

That’s it. It’s over. Good luck. Bye bye. Now let’s move on to the next format war.

[Update on Mar/13] Microsoft publically stated their Blu-Ray support.

Li um excelente post no Efetividade.net sobre como ser um bom ouvinte, e ganhar pontos com os colegas de trabalho e clientes. Cuidado: encaminhar o texto para seu chefe pode fazer mal à saúde.

Tive um trabalhinho pra fazer o IRPF 2008 funcionar no Fedora 8 hoje, então acho justo comparilhar o conhecimento, já que a Receita Federal não ajuda.

O IRPF2008 não funciona nativamente no Fedora 8 pois não tem suporte ao IcedTea. Para contornar isso, precisamos instalar o JRE da Sun. Porém, as versões mais recentes do JRE da Sun também não são suportadas pelo programa, por causa de um erro de detecção da versão (explico mais abaixo).

Sendo assim, para resolver, você precisa instalar o JRE 6 Update 3. Para deixar a vida de vocês mais fácil ainda, segue aqui o link (quase) direto para download (tem que aceitar a licença). Instale o JRE, conforme o formato do arquivo escolhido.

Feito isso, execute o programa de instalação do IRPF assim:

chmod +x IRPF2008linuxv1.0.bin
./IRPF2008linuxv1.0.bin -is:javahome /usr/java/jre1.6.0_03/

Next, next, finish… O programa irá criar um atalho na área de trabalho que não é válido (parece que o instalador não cria o script correto). Então, para resolver, vá ao diretório de instalação do IRPF (normalmente ~/ProgramasRFB/IRPF2008) e execute o seguinte:

echo “/usr/java/jre1.6.0_03/bin/java -jar ~/ProgramasRFB/IRPF2008/irpf.jar” > irpf2008
chmod +x irpf2008

[05/Mar] Pequena correção: o path do script acima estava incompleto.

[09/Mar] O processo de instalação do Receitanet é similar, e ele também tem o problema de não criar o script de chamada correto. Então, para isso, vá até o diretório onde ele foi instalado (normalmente ~/ProgramasRFB/Receitanet Java/) e execute o seguinte:

echo “/usr/java/jre1.6.0_03/bin/java -jar ~/ProgramasRFB/Receitanet\ Java/receitanet.jar” > receitanet
chmod +x receitanet

Depois modifique o ícone da área de trabalho para apontar para o script recém criado.

Pronto! Agora vá lá e entenda-se com o leão.

Ah sim, quase esqueci de explicar qual é o problema! Bom, acontece que no JRE 6 Update 4 e superiores, você vai encontrar isso aqui:

$ /usr/java/jre1.6.0_05/bin/java -version
java version “1.6.0_05″
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_05-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 10.0-b19, mixed mode)

É a última linha que deixa o programa do IRPF louco. Ele acha que o Java instalado é versão 10.0-b19, e diz que não é compatível. Olha só o que o Update 3 informa:

$ /usr/java/jre1.6.0_03/bin/java -version
java version “1.6.0_03″
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_03-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.6.0_03-b05, mixed mode)

Agora sim o instalador entendeu tudo.

Hum. Peraê. Ninguém viu isso enquanto o IRPF estava em beta? Vou ficar mais ligado da próxima vez…

Bom, vamos à luta!

/me waves at Red Hat People Blogs !