Monday, May 26, 2008

Wow, what an error message

I saw this wonderful message on my Linux system today when I tried to launch Nautilus. Just imagine the impact of this message on someone who is very new to Linux.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

About the new airport in Bangalore

The HAL airport in Bangalore was shut down at the dawn of today, in lieu of the new Airport at Devanahalli. There won't be any commercial flights landing at this airport. All these days, I used to see flights in the sky from my home, as they circle around to land at the HAL airport. My office is so close to the HAL airport that the people in planes could probably recognize us on the ground as the flights landed. All this will change. My home is more than 40Kms from the new airport, so I will only be seeing planes only at a great distance.

The biggest impact of this will be on people living far away from the new airport, because it will be order of times more difficult to reach the new airport. There is a lot of discussion happening about keeping the HAL airport open, because the new one is too far away from the city. However, is 35Kms really too much? Don't many great cities of the airport have their airports tens of miles away from the city center? With the exception of the old airport of Hong Kong, I don't think any great city of the world has it's airport in the heart of the city. I think the people in Bangalore are fighting the wrong battle. The problem is of connectivity to the new airport, not the distance to it. However, that is a much more difficult problem to solve, considering the political system of the state. Hence they just choose to fight the easy battle - demanding keeping the HAL airport open.