Gears of War 2 in Brazil - Confusion over Flashback Maps DLC outside USA

November 16, 2008

The brazilian Gears of War 2 Standard Edition doesn’t have the Flashback Maps pack like the US version and it didn’t even have the Xbox Live Seal. The Xbox Live seal still appears at the Limited Edition of Gears of War 2.

South Africa and some other countries (Brazil included) also don’t so this is an widespread issue.

Brazilian Gears of War and Gears of War 2 box art
Brazilian Gears of War Box
Brazilian Gears of War 2 Box


TechCrunch lays the Google’s strategy in Japan

August 31, 2008

Here is why I think Google’s Strategy In Japan: Avoid Yahoo And Take Over The Mobile Web First will fail.

Softbank mobile phones have a Yahoo! key.

You can see from the Engadget pages about Softbank pages where they show a close up from the mobile phones where the key is located. Softbank being an investor in Yahoo! Japan has a huge leverage and I don’t think that being inside the operator/carrier menu will bring market share to Google.

Being a physical key in your phone is an advantage that can’t be dismissed because not everyone knows how to access every function of their mobile phone.


Samsung E215

August 30, 2008

Samsung released a new mobile phone here in Brazil officially called Samsung E215L. It is currently advertised as an exclusive item by Submarino (a brazilian online retailer) and I didn’t find anywhere mentioning about this mobile phone so I decided to post some information.

Samsung released a press release saying that it could be found July 2008 but it was released August 2008.

This is what the sales package has:

  • Samsung E215 phone
  • Battery
  • Charger
  • Stereo earphone
  • 512MB MicroSD card
  • User guide
  • Warranty certificate

It features 19MB of internal memory, a VGA (640×480 pixels) camera, bluetooth and a memory slot to use up to 2GB MicroSD card.

Measuring 91 x 45 x 18mm and weighting 85g can be considered a small phone

The Samsung E215 is a quadriband phone and has an estimated 180 minutes of talk time and 250 standby time and retails for R$349,00.

Samsung E215 Box cover - Top
Samsung E215 Box cover - top front
Samsung E215 - Front closed
Samsung E215 - Front open
Samsung E215 - Battery Cover
Samsung E215 compared with a credit card
Samsung E215 - Left side
Samsung E215 - Right side


EDS shareholders approved the merger with HP

July 31, 2008

The shareholders of my employer, EDS, voted for the merger with HP. It’s getting closer to the merger since no US agency has anything against it.


OpenSolaris 2008.05 failed to update

June 30, 2008

This is the error message that appeared when I tried to update my installation.

root@setalaptop:~ # pkg image-update
Creating Plan \Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/pkg”, line 1440, in ?
ret = main_func()
File “/usr/bin/pkg”, line 1404, in main_func
return image_update(img, pargs)
File “/usr/bin/pkg”, line 366, in image_update
noexecute = noexecute)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/vendor-packages/pkg/client/image.py”, line 1282, in make_install_plan
ip.evaluate()
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/vendor-packages/pkg/client/imageplan.py”, line 344, in evaluate
self.evaluate_fmri(f)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/vendor-packages/pkg/client/imageplan.py”, line 187, in evaluate_fmri
m = self.image.get_manifest(pfmri)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/vendor-packages/pkg/client/image.py”, line 516, in get_manifest
m = self._fetch_manifest(fmri)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/vendor-packages/pkg/client/image.py”, line 468, in _fetch_manifest
mcontent = retrieve.get_manifest(self, fmri)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/vendor-packages/pkg/client/retrieve.py”, line 87, in get_manifest
return m.read()
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/socket.py”, line 277, in read
data = self._sock.recv(recv_size)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/httplib.py”, line 480, in read
s = self.fp.read(amt)
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/socket.py”, line 295, in read
data = self._sock.recv(recv_size)
timeout: timed out

I’ll research another day why I can’t update it.


OpenSolaris 2008.05

May 5, 2008

Ian Murdock and the volunters from OpenSolaris.org released the new distro-like distribution of Solaris. It’s called OpenSolaris.

I’m downloading the OpenSolaris Live CD right now to replace the Fedora Linux partition that I have.


Failed to delete VM - VMware Server

April 22, 2008

Right clicked the VM to delete and it removed from the Inventory but showed the following message:

Failed to delete VM
Reason: Failed to unregister the VM after it was deleted.

Another VMware error where Google showed nothing. :(


Unable to find the answer LIBDIR - VMware Server

April 17, 2008

Does anybody know how to solve this problem?

[root@memcached ~]# rpm -ivh –force VMwareTools-1.0.5-80187.i386.rpm
Preparing… ########################################### [100%]
Unable to find the answer LIBDIR in the installer database
(/etc/vmware-tools/locations). You may want to re-install VMware
Tools.\n\nExecution aborted.

error: %pre(VMwareTools-6533-80187.i386) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
error: install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping VMwareTools-6533-80187

I cancelled (CTRL+C) in the middle of the installation of the rpm and now I can’t run the installer or reinstall the rpm.


“Song” was not copied to the iPod “iPod’s name” because it could not be found

April 6, 2008

I ran into this problem and found many solutions involving opening the iTunes Music Library.xml file and deleting the song that caused the error message. I simply looked the music library and didn’t find it. So I searched where it was still referencing and found it in one of the playlists. I unchecked the song and synced again without the error message.


Which file does HP-UX keep the number of past passwords

April 3, 2008

The parameter PASSWORD_HISTORY_DEPTH in the /etc/default/security file controls how many past passwords HP-UX will remember the password to prevent the user from using the same old passwords he uses. Set the number as you like.