Two years later, I bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. It ran Zaurus and OPIE GUI environment. The Zaurus SL-5500 was Sharp’s first PDA to run Linux. Linux was the main reason I chose Zaurus. It was fast and colorful (at that time). It came with a couple of useful apps and desktop sync software. Syncing to a desktop running on Linux was good. After using it for a few months, some commercial apps which I bought, began to crash more often after I updated the operating system. I gave it up after a few attempts to restore the original operating system. Here is the photo of Zaurus (I managed to find its charger) with iPhone lying beside it. Well look at its size! The iPhone 3GS is half the thickness of Zaurus.

The other drawback of the Zaurus is its retractable physical keyboard. The keys are too small for my fingers and typing is real pain. So, BlackBerry with physical keyboard is totally out of the game. Here is the picture of Zaurus with its keyboard and iPhone with the virtual-touch keyboard for comparison:

I was tempted by HP and Toshiba but, hey, they ran on Windows. No way! In early 2008. I purchased a 2nd generation, 32GB iPod Touch. I was immediately captured by its charms. In December 2009, I got a 32GB iPhone 3GS. My response was: “Damn! I should have gotten it earlier.”

Both PalmPilot and Zaurus need stylus to tap on their screens. If you lose your stylus, you need to buy a new one. iPhone is more convenient because everything is manipulated with your fingers. Apple’s innovative multi-touch screen gives more user experience and more operability to the device.

All I can say, I have never used other PDAs like I use my iPhone. I mostly use my iPhone in my work (especially) and for fun during leisure (social networking, music, games and etc.) Here are some apps I use to boost my productivity while I am on the move and even at my desk.

Paymo is a free online time tracking and billing service. With a small fee, user can upgrade the service for unlimited users and invoices. I use Paymo to track my time spent on various projects and business/work related activities. The Paymo free iPhone app works in both online and offline mode. When I am out to support my clients, and/or having business or technical meeting and discussion, I can easily track my time with this tiny useful app.

With design based on the concepts and techniques described in David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done”, OmniFocus for iPhone is a powerful to-do app that let you stay focused in whatever you are doing or trying to complete. The app is priced at $19.99 which is a little bit on the high side. I was hesitating for a while because of the price. After using it, I will say, “Save your money for OmniFocus and forget about other to-do apps.” Before this, I was using Things and I am still using it. The only reason I want to keep Things is that it allows assigning teammates to your tasks. OmniFocus is more comprehensive than Things and it let you stay focused in getting your jobs done, which is most important. Besides, you can sync your data via MobileMe, Bonjour, WebDAV server or locally mounted disk on your Mac. Personally, I think it is worth the investment.

Things is an easy-to-use to-do app priced at $9.99. It’s a good alternative to OmniFocus if you are on a tight budget. The price tag of $9.99 is considered quite high especially there are some free to-do apps, but to do a good job, Things will be above average. Unlike OmniFocus, syncing can only be done with a WiFi at your local area network where your Mac is running the desktop version of Things. One feature which I don’t like is its ability to assign more than one tag to your tasks. Too many tags confuse me.

Evernote is a free online service which let you save your ideas in the form of texts, voice memos or photos. You can save a web clip or PDF. Syncing between multiple devices and Macs over the Internet is a breeze. I use it while I am writing computer codes to note down what I have done and new ideas that come along. You can tag your documents for easy retrieval later. If you would like to enjoy a larger storage and monthly usage bandwidth, you can upgrade the service to Evernote Premium for $5 a month or $45 a year. Evernote is a good companion for notetaking while you are working, engaged in meetings and discussion and even at leisure.

Invoice2Go allows me to issue invoices on the go without a notebook or desktop computer. With it, I no longer need to go back to office to issue invoices. It saves me a lot of time from traveling back and forth between office and clients. Just email the invoices to your clients and you can make the delivery right away. For only $9.99, it saves you time and gasoline.

Dropbox is a free online storage service. You can take any file with you on your iPhone to meetings. Your co-workers or clients can drop files to your Dropbox and you can pick them up anytime, anywhere on your iDevice or Mac, provided they are connected to the Internet. It also allows you to share your files on Facebook or Twitter via link. By getting your friend to sign up you can earn 250MB of extra free disk space (up to 8GB) for every new account created. Click here to sign up.

A week or two before Apple published Job’s open letter, I learned about an open source Flash project called Gnash from Twit. You can listen to the podcast here.

I really don’t believe in develop-once-deploy-everywhere development concept. I am more a native application guy because I only believe in native performance without relying on third party software components to run the applications. My experience with Tweedeck served as a wonderful example.

Tweetdeck was developed using Adobe’s AIR and Flash technology and is a develop-once-deploy-everywhere kind of application. Its user interface on the Mac really sucks. It looks more like a Windows application rather than Mac’s native Cocoa application. One thing annoyed me was that I had to upgrade Adobe’s AIR whenever it became available. I feel happier for not running Tweetdeck now.

A Java application has its downsides as well. It too depends on Sun’s JVM (Java Virtual Machine). Java has never become an implementation language in my software development career. Only recently when I began to involve in web application development, I have to work with JavaScript. The experience is awful, in my experience.

It is understood why Adobe is so furious about Apple’s decision not to allow Flash on its mobile platform. The reason is obvious: Adobe loses its grip on Apple’s mobile devices and has been discounted in Apple’s mobile computing gameplay. But Apple is not an easy-to-squeeze apple, it is huge and capable.

Apple has been working on an open web standard HTML5 and Apple’s own version of Flash, Gianduia. With HTML5, Apple’s computing platform becomes even more open, unlike otherwise as Adobe claimed. Both are exciting new technologies which I would like to implement to the web application I am developing.

I will write more about HTML5 and Gianduia when I have found time to research more about these two.

The nuclear energy is the greenest energy currently available on Earth. James Lovelock, a scientist, environmentalist, futurologist and the father of Gaia Hypothesis wrote in his book: “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”, that the nuclear energy is indeed greener than any other form of power generating plants including solar voltaic and wind energy farm. A 1GW wind farm requires 2 millions tons of concrete, enough to build 30,000 homes for 100,000 people. That quantity of concrete would release 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

The under-construction Bakun Dam, located in Sarawak on the Balui River, will be the tallest concrete-faced rockfill dam in the world and the largest dam in Asia outside of China. Its powerhouse with 8 penstocks to powertrains comprising 8 vertical shaft Francis turbines of 300MW each, 8 air-cooled generators of 360MVA each and 8 oil-immersed transformers (360MVA each) will generate about 2.4GW of electricity. The dam has 16.71 million cubic meters of filled volume.  With catchment area of 14,750 km square, its gross storage capacity is 43,800 million cubic meters. How much concrete is required to build this dam? How much carbon dioxide will be released by the concrete? How much biodiversity would have perished under catchment area that large?

I read from various sources about people’s objections (including politicians’) of this nuclear energy project. This should not be a political issue and never be one. This should be an environmental, safety and social-economic issues at top.

TNB, the sole electricity distributor/supplier in Malaysia is not the sole energy producer. TNB buys, under contract, energy from many other producers. Unfair advantages, unscrupulous practice and increasing fuel cost in the produce-supply chain have contributed to rising energy cost, leading Malaysians to cry foul. The substandard service provided by TNB worsens the situation. As a corporation with revenue of MYR25.75 billion and net income of MYR2.6 billion as of fiscal year 2008, TNB is cutting more corners to reduce its operating costs and to maximize its profit with unhealthy practices, e.g. bi-monthly meter reading practice has stirred uproars in recent week. Being greenest, nuclear energy is more profitable than any other energy production. Could this help to reduce electricity cost for Malaysians considering the unhealthy practices and unfair advantages TNB has in its glossary bag?

I am not going to write more about TNB’s malpractice and sluggish substandard service. Ask any Malaysians, they will be able to tell you stories whole day and night. Instead, I am going to write more about safety.

The next question: Is it really safe to have nuclear power plant in Malaysia? This question does not imply that nuclear power plant is not safe. Rather, the human factors in managing and operating the nuclear power plant.

Alongside the nuclear physics in the power plant is the safety critical computer system, which includes both hardware and software, that is used to control and monitor the nuclear power plant. This safety critical system is the most crucial part and the entire operation of a nuclear power plant heavily relies on it.

Safety critical system is a computer (including software), electronic or electromechanical system whose failure may be a catastrophe, causing injury or death to human beings. This safety critical system comprises high integrity software. The safety critical system, both hardware and software, will likely be integrated and maintained by foreign contractors.

Nuclear power plant software are developed using Ada and/or SPARK programming language. SPARK is a subset of Ada. In the mid 1990s, UTM (University Technology Malaysia) KL campus was teaching Ada in CASE (Center for Advanced Software Engineering). At that time, CASE was a collaboration between UTM and Thomson CSF under special arrangement between the government of France and Malaysia. The Ada course was not long lived. Two years later, it was replaced by Java due to ignorance and market driven trends. Java is not a suitable candidate for high integrity, safety critical, real-time and distributed application development. Today, none of the universities in Malaysia is teaching Ada. According to my hitherto knowledge, apparently none of the Malaysia academies have submitted any high integrity and safety critical system related papers in international conferences and scientific journals.

It does not only require software engineers with Ada or SPARK knowledge. In safety critical software engineering, the individual developers, the entire team and organization are required to go through rigorous software development and safety critical validation processes. It takes years to achieve Carnegie-Mellon’s SEI (Software Engineering Institute) CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Level 5. Safety critical system development requires utterly strong discipline and engineering ethics in every requirement, design, development, testing and maintenance process and every process needs to be validated. Other than software process, there are many other non-software related risk assessments to comply.

Malaysia lacks qualified software engineers of such competency to develop and to maintain high integrity software system. It is costly to maintain such system by contract. The maintenance will increase the cost of energy production and hence will be borne by consumers.

The safety critical system of a nuclear power plant must be thoroughly tested with proven track records. With the loosey-goosey attitude of many Malaysians, will they have capability to manage the system and safety critical issues? Will they be effective to respond to emergencies, for example, system shutdown or nuclear melt down?

The disposal of nuclear waste poses another safety issue. If the engine of a RMAF (Royal Malaysia Air Force) fighter jet could go missing and be exported, can you imagine the potential hazard of missing nuclear waste?

Objection should be rational, not emotional. It is imbecilic to politicize the objection without scrutinizing facts. I, in my book, embrace nuclear energy for it is the greenest energy. On the contrary, I do not have any confidence in the management of safety related issues in Malaysia.

Mine is a 32GB Black iPhone. The specifications can be found on Apple website so I am not going to repeat them again here. I used a sleek Nokia 6300 before this so it took me some time to adapt to the bigger/wider iPhone. This is not really a problem to get used to, actually. So, let’s put aside the physical differences.

I had been looking into various smart phones by Nokia and Sony Ericsson before I settled for Nokia 6300 almost two years ago. Well, nothing is comparable to iPhone as I find today.

On the 4th day, I had already got a chance to take my brand new iPhone into action. I completed a task outside and needed to go back to my home/office. I usually made payment to my suppliers at the bank. Then I would go back home/office to scan and email my suppliers before they could send me the goods. This usually would happen a few hours later or in the evening because I have the habit of being cost-effective when running errands outside. With iPhone, I snapped a photo of the bank transaction slip with its built-in 3 megapixels camera and emailed the photo to my supplier immediately. By the time I stepped out the bank, my supplier had called me and confirmed receipt of the fund. Everything was done on the iPhone at the bank.

While the competition in smartphone market is mounting with Google’s Nexus One and Android enabled phones with attempt to take down iPhone, nothing has come closer to the 3 billion downloads of iPhone apps at Apple’s App Store.

I am using quite a number of applications for productivity and I find them all useful. I am able to check my schedule and make appointment, follow my to-do list, review some documents (PDF, graphics etc,) which my co-workers and I shared. More, I can email, facebook and tweet anytime, anywhere with the iPhone (the list goes on.) These tasks are a little over killed on a MacBook I can say.

When my dad was in the hospital a few months ago (I still had not had my iPhone then), I had been in and out of the hospital with my backpack. It was quite annoying trying to find a good spot where I could sit down, open up my 13″ MacBook and connect it with a 3G broadband. Sometimes, the seat had been taken by patients’ relatives. Most of the time, my MacBook and I became the attraction of bored people sitting around me. Some nosy people would peep at my screen. Checking and replying business emails had became a difficult task as my privacy was invaded. It was like houseflies buzzing around while you were eating your chicken pie. Were you able to enjoy anyway?

With iPhone, this scenario has changed a little bit. I am still able to communicate and do some light tasks without the need of my MacBook and houseflies peeping. I can add, modify or delete appointments and contacts on iPhone and sync with my Macs via MobileMe. I am also able to update my to-do list and sync with my Macs via WiFi later when I am home.

As a software developer, I spend most of my time at the keyboard spewing codes other than blogging, emailing, facebooking and tweeting. I would rather save this coding task on my Macs if there is any code editing app available for iPhone. When I am not at my desk, I would want to follow up with tasks like the reviewing of drawings/images (icons, logo etc), design and technical documents on iPhone.

The iPhone is handy during short discussion sessions (less than 15 minutes) with co-workers and clients. A relatively large MacBook would look clumsy in this situation.

I can also use iPhone as a remote controller to navigate Keynote presentation slides using Apple’s Remote. This app makes me look more professional (and well, cooler) when presenting because I need not walk to my MacBook to press a key every each time I want to change the slide. I can do it on my iPhone.

Well, the list goes on and on so long you have not run out of imagination of  how to utilize your iPhone. I would never go back to Nokia or Sony or anything else except iPhone.

I have been using Apple’s iDisk to sync and share files among my computers, iPod Touch (iPhone) and as well as clients and co-workers. Two days ago, I discovered Dropbox and I now find it easier to use than iDisk and it is faster! It is free for a 2GB storage or upgrade with a small monthly fee.

One cool feature of Dropbox is that when someone drops you a file in your folder, Dropbox notifies you using Growl. iDisk lacks this notification feature and usually the file arrives silently unless the sender texts or emails you.

Dropbox can work offline. Dropbox on Mac will sync your files and folders to your local hard disks and allows you to access later even when offline. The sync is done automatically.

I used to copy some files on my USB drive and take them to my clients. Now I no longer need to bring anything. Just use my client’s Internet browser to access my Dropbox and viola! The files will be transfered to my client’s Mac.

Of course, there are many ways to use Dropbox for your productivity. For example, taking your lecture notes to the lecture hall without carrying anything at all, not even USB pen drive. There are some other ways of using Dropbox, read here. But that’s not all. Please tell me if you find any other use of it.

Sign up here for extra 250MB of disk space!

My dad has been admitted to hospital for 8 days. He has been diagnosed hepatoma with huge lesions in both right and left lobe, metabolic syndrome X (full house), and renal impairment. Last Saturday, sonogram confirmed his hepatoma and renal impairment are in the end stage. His doctor started him on hemodialysis last week and he was doing really badly with all the reactions: fever and vomiting. Today he did much better after his 4th hemodialysis.

Yesterday, he told my sister, Mee, and I his last wishes. We broke into tears and this was the first time I saw my dad crying. I did not sleep at all last night thinking a lot of things. There are many problems interwoven and almost impossible to resolve. 4 A.M. in the morning, this idea suddenly flashed through my mind. I wanted to present him the certificate which I earned after passing a professional examination.

Actually, I intended to present to mom and dad after I acquired all three diplomas. But I should do it now to cheer him up a little and to keep his fighting spirit burning. Although the doctors said he has 3 to 6 months to live, we think that dad may do better if he hasn’t given up. You see, our dad is a fighter.

So was my decision. I went to the hospital very early at 5:30 A.M. Came home for a short morning nap at 10:30 A.M. After lunch, I was out to send lunch to Mee and to pick Dmitry from school. Then I went downtown to frame my diploma and to do other chores.

LA got the kids ready and we went to the hospital around 8 P.M. Dad was having satay for his supper. He had been taking satay as supper for the last few days. Satay is his favorite food since young. I have his influence. After he was done with his supper, I showed my diploma to him and mom.

Well, what diploma is this?

To be honest, I am no longer particular at how people see me and when they ask me question like “Where do you graduate from?”

Today, I proudly announced to the world that I am a self-trained software engineer without any tertiary education. And the diploma I am having is the certificate (level 4) accorded by the British Computer Society (BCS) after passing the level 4 professional examination in April this year. After completing the diploma (level 5) and the professional graudate diploma or PGdip (level 6), I will be able to do my Master in some accredited universities in UK.

I have three very good reasons to pursue BCS diplomas:

1. My commitment to my clients for continual acquisition of new knowledge and skills in computer science and information technology.
2. To pursue further in the field of Computer Science.
3. I have proven to be able to achieve to some extent without a formal tertiary education in Computer Science. (I actually showed him my posts and photos giving seminars and judging university students’ final year project at http://adrianhoe.com and explained to him how some students and lecturers feared my questions when judging their projects. He jokingly said I like to scold them.)

When I told dad, he was very happy and gave me a thumb up. He also told me that he dreamed of me receiving my Master degree. And now I have to live his dream and take it further.

I wish he can see me living his dream and going further. I wish, I wish and I wish!

And I also like to thank mom and dad for their support as well as many those who have inspired me and given me the will to start studying again.

Explaining to dad (with his intra jugular catheter or IJC on his neck) that I have two more to go.

Dad told me that he dreamed of me getting a Master. Now I have to fulfill his dream and take it further.

With Rich and Nik on his bed.

With Mee and dad stroking Nik's head.

Nik, the little "Monster", was sharing his cheers.

Nik: What's up? Huh?

Dmitry was admiring the diploma with auntie Mee.

Here’s the screenshots (click to enlarge):

On this page, it says “iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod Touch – Already have an iPhone? Update it with new features, free.

On the other page, it says “Download software update. Only US$9.95.”

On the page found at Singapore site, it says “Buy now for $9.95″

I hate misleading advertisement. I checked various websites and found out that iPhone owners are entitled for free update but the iPod Touch owners are not. What the ….

I am not going to pay for the f&$@*?# update so I searched the web. I found one blogger from Sarawak has written a blog entry about this. I also found some links to download the free iPhone 3.0 here.

It seems like, according to dzimonotion, Apple has mistaken published a free upgrade for download but the link has been taken down later. Someone was quick enough to discover that and downloaded the free upgrade and sharing it now.

You can download the iPhone 3.0 free upgrade here or here is a torrent link.

After downloading, connect your iPod Touch and option click the Update button in iTunes (8.2 or later). Look for a .ipsw file and select. The upgrade will begin immediately. The upgrading process will take a while. Do not disconnect your iPod Touch. When the upgrading process is completed, your iPod Touch will reboot. Enjoy!

Now, I can connect a bluetooth stereo headset (I don’t have one now), I can do copy-cut-paste, etc. Check the Apple website for new features in iPhone 3.0 Update.

Not too long ago, I wrote an article about Apple’s business practice, Is Apple Dirty? Why iPhone owners are entitled for free upgrade? Why iPod Touch owners are not? Now, you judge.

I have several reasons to buy an iPod Touch but I am not going to talk about them here. One most ostensible use of it is that I am no longer required to lug my MacBook (code-named Uranus) everywhere I go. Since it replaces the function of Uranus when it is not with me, I name my iPod Touch, Miranda, one of the five moons of Uranus. Miranda is the inner most and smallest moon of Uranus and is also referred to Uranus V.

With today’s miniaturization technology, a tiny GPS tracking device has opened up new potential. You can now monitor where your kids go after school. At the size of no thicker than a golf ball, these GPS trackers can monitor in real-time, the GPS location and movement of the devices from anywhere in the world using any standard web browser.

But GPS tracking is also a very controversial debate. Although,  you are able to know the whereabout of your kids, their privacy has been violated. Nobody likes to be monitored or tracked. While some overly concerned parents are worrying their children’s safety, privacy is still a debatable issue. Parents can inform their children about the GPS tracking devices and the reasons to have one, privacy will still be an issue to older children when they begin to understand their rights about privacy.

Privacy issue is not so much of a concern in commercial sector especially in fleet tracking. Company needs to know the progress of the drivers and the exact location for planning and in case of emergency. Drivers will be informed of the GPS tracking devices and have to accept the terms when accepting the jobs.

Discover is the best application that allows me to wirelessly transfer my files to iPod touch and view it. It is free and secured. Unlike other free applications of the same class, Discover is only limited to physical storage available on your iPod touch. It supports many file formats such as PDF, Office document formats (which I don’t use), and Unicode support (C/C++, Objective-C and more). Unfortunately, it does not recognize Ada source files. I hope BBase will support Ada in coming release.

Download Discover from iTunes store and install into iPod touch. Just launch Discover and connect (using any WebDAV enabled browser) to iPod touch with the IP address provided on the iPod screen. You can setup secured access with passwords to protect your iPod touch from unauthorized access.

Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the next version of the world most advanced operating system with a smaller footprint compared to its predecessor, Leopard. Snow Leopard will take full advantage of 64-bit and multi-core technology to the height.

Since Apple introduced Mac OS X in 2001, thousands of new features have been implemented and introduced. In Leopard, the ability to take advantage of multi-core and 64-bit addressing have opened up new dimension in desktop computing. Virtualization becomes possible. New features such as Time Machine automatically backup the Mac hard disk without user knowing.

Snow Leopard, to be released a year from now, is going to be smaller than Leopard but more powerful. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the foot print on hard disk, using less disk space, freeing them for more music, photos and videos.

Snow Leopard fully makes use of 64-bit addressing to increase the RAM size to the theoretically 16TB, 500 times more than what is possible today. “Grand Central” a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard brings unrivaled multi-core support and capabilities to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speed, drives performance faster in today’s modern processors. Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. The result: more powerful applications at faster speed.

The Internet has become a huge reservoir of knowledge since the past two decades. The use of this knowledge has widen the gap in students thinking about traditional working environment, processes and ethics as well as their awareness of copyright laws and humanistic behavior and obligation. Unfortunately, many youngsters studying in local colleges and universities are not well aware of the pitfalls of using such information and open source projects.

With many years of software development (in both closed- and open- source) and research experience, I am able to quickly identify a genuine work or an adaptation of works from other people. I have seen many copy-and-paste work by students and even received copy-and-paste (exact copy-and-paste and adaptation) works by students applying for internship.

During a FYP judging 3 days ago, I had encountered a project which a student had adapted someone’s work as his own. With two simple questions, I established a firm “confidence” of plagiarism. The abridged story goes:

Every students are given about 6 months to complete their projects. The project can be individual or team work. This particular project which I encountered was an individual project. It’s a project management system capable of drawing and displaying gantt chart. When the student was giving his presentation, a doubt arose in me. Local undergraduate students do not have such high command of programming languages, not to mention developing a complicated software. Creating gantt chart alone is a tough process involving complex algorithm. To develop a gantt chart generating software requires extensive experience and knowledge in project management. It is impossible for this student to complete the gantt chart drawing in 6 months or less all by himself.

In fact, I already knew the project is not authentic. I could simply tell him that his project was not genuine but I did not want to humiliate him in front of the others. Furthermore, he did put in some efforts elsewhere. So I asked two questions:

1. Do you complete this project alone? His answer, “Yes”
2. Can your software do baseline? His answer, “What is baseline?”

Project baseline and baselining are the most fundamental and important features in project management. I am not going to explain baseline in details. You can find out what baseline is by Googling. This poor samaritan revealed himself. No further question was asked by me or the other two judges. Of course, I did not give any points to his project because I simply could not give any, even the minimum. It would not be fair to the other projects which had received minimum points from me.

This young man was not satisfied and he stayed back to ask me why and possibly to argue why he did not deserve to win the project. When he approached me, I could see in his face his dissatisfaction and disagreement with sorrow interwoven in his mixed feeling. He was obviously upset. I could sense his emotion. “What do you mean by baseline? I used C++ to program the algorithm…”, the young man asked and remarked politely. I explained to him that a project baseline is a reference to measure the progress against. Without the baseline, there is nothing to measure against your progress and hence cannot tell if the project is lagging or leading. “But.. sir, I used C++ to program my algorithm and it can calculate the progress from the parameters I entered..”, said the young man. Well, it was clear that he did not understand what I was trying to relay to him. The baseline and C++ algorithm were two different things. This reassured my conclusion.

After the group photo session, we continued our discussion. I told him it was not possible to develop a gantt chart software from scratch in just 6 months. He told me the actual time spent in development was 4 months. He used 1 month to study his project requirement and another month to learn C++. He was very new in C++ and had not even mastered the language yet. This again concluded my finding was correct. After more debate and explanation, he broke into tears and admitted that he copied some codes from the open source. I could see his tears running down and he took out a piece of tissue paper to wipe off his tears. He kept on accusing me saying he copied his project. I never did. I pitied him and at the same time I was so afraid that he would commit suicide. Hey, he is a guy, you know. A soft hearted young man, so am I a soft hearted old man!

I need to comfort him and tackle his psychology. I began counseling him.

And I said to him, “It does not matter if you win a trophy and voted the best or champion project of the year. The most important thing is how much you learn from a failure and how you manage your failure. You are managing your failure right now because you take your initiative and courage to discuss with me and you have learned a lot from our discussion. You learned what is project baseline and baselining. You learned about open source licensing and so much more about software development and ethics. Your peers who have won trophies and they went home happily. While you are staying here to have this heart breaking but meaningful discussion, while you are having the tears because you are upset, your friends could be celebrating their victory with their friends now in a restaurant or cafe. What is the difference you make between yourself and your victorious friends? Don’t be upset because you have failed. You should embrace failure. What you have done by approaching me is a correct decision. Whether your project has failed or won, you should approach the judges to do networking. I may not have an immediate job to offer you but we may collaborate in future for some software projects or business venture. That’s the social networking that you should seek while in university rather than packing your trophy and your degree and go home happily to celebrate.”

After the counseling, he began to lighten and smile. I gave him my call card. He told me he would go to Singapore after his graduation. Hopefully, he found that day enlightening. And I was happy to put a smile on his face.

A reliable resource on the Internet may not be 100% reliable and correct. For example, Wikipedia, popular among students and professionals, is not 100% free of errors and misleading information. If you find a dispute in the Wikipedia and a book, do a double (or triple) verification with people commanding authority in that field. Wikipedia is a global effort contributed to build a free and open repository of knowledge. Any professors down to any Tom Dick and Hairy on the street can contribute to Wikipedia. The site can not grant itself any credibility but the users can. If you cannot differentiate a mistake in Wikipedia, then it has no credibility at all, just as simple as it is.

In the past decade, software development and software business have undergone tremendous evolution. A group called FSF (Free Software Foundation) and many more individual software professionals around the globe have embraced open source ideas. Open source software are generally free from licensing. Its source codes are freely available. Free does not mean it has no copyright at all. Free does not mean you can do anything you want. Many open source projects and their source codes are subject to many different types of licensing. I am not going to discuss licensing issues here because I am not a legal professional. One thing I want to talk about is the open source spirit. Why do people contribute their efforts for free? Many contributors in the open source community develop software for a number of obvious reasons:

1. To further leverage their knowledge and skill. By opening up their source codes, these people allow freedom to examine and to make improvement to their projects by many other software developers from around the world who may have better ideas and methods in solving problems.
2. To embrace “Software is FREE!” Yes, software should be free but not the support. You can download Linux or MySQL (the most famous and popular SQL database in the world today) for free but if you require support to help you to resolve some problems, you will need to pay for professional advice or solutions. This is the model of software business in the 21st century.
3. To create competition. Some closed source software products are actually built upon their open source cousins. A parallel development between the closed- and open- source cousins allows new ideas or technologies to be applied in the products. This encourages healthy competition in technology development and enhancement.

If you use a piece of source codes or parts from the open source, you cannot claim it as your own work like the young man did. Even if you adapt or modify the codes from the open source, you will still need to credit the original author(s) in your work. You will need to respect people’s efforts and the spirit of open source.

I am kind of thirsty for more GPS data from delivery or trips to alien places. Anymore delivery? It is kinda fun. It is like treasure hunting, or tracking down a location. It is really exciting and fun!

I arrived at Kajang toll at 1130 hours and started to use my GPS device to guide me. Found the place easily by following the GPS guidance. It took some times to navigate through some messy traffics and finding the block and the unit. But I managed to drop off and proceed to Drop #2 at 1215 hours.

Drop #2 and #4 needed some communication with the clients as their address were without street name. They used lot number as they were in industrial park. That complicated the process a little. By 1507 hours, all goods delivered.

On the night before, I researched on the GPS map and found Drop #1 and marked it. Easy job. I had to defer Drop #2 and #4 until morning so that I could call up the clients for some direction. I called them this morning and could roughly know the locations and marked them.

What made this mission interesting was an ironic demarcation which a traditional delivery versus technology-assisted delivery. While heading to Sungai Long after exiting Kajang toll, I saw a cab driver with a full load of hampers in his cab. He was on a hamper delivery mission too. The difference was that he was looking at his hand drawn map on the steering wheel. In great contrast, I was guided by GPS.

The mission had helped me to build a Clientele GIS.

The news is really exciting and as expected. Sun has been involved in open source development and released great products like Solaris 10, OpenOffice and now MySQL is going to be under Sun’s flagship. With the involvement of Sun in MySQL development and the funding, Sun will be able to leverage MySQL further from its current position.

More exciting news and features from MySQL and Sun will be expected to breakout very soon.

The seminar was organized by Panasonic and its distributor. Not so much of interesting talk. Organization was a little messy but overall good. Speakers were not very well trained and lack of exposure. The entire presentation was not too bad at all and it wasn’t boring as there were some people asking interesting questions. Most important of all was that I managed to establish contacts with Panasonic Malaysia.

Panasonic treated its guest very well with a nice buffet lunch. I took the lunch, washed down with dessert and drinks. Talked to my vendor and to establish closer relationship.

Then I had to rush to Hilton PJ to attend another IP camera event. It was a dealers gathering organized by Axis Communication and one of its distributor in Malaysia. The event was organized in Uncle’s Chili, a restaurant pub. Nice setup and cozy environment. The presentation was presented by Axis Singapore. The presentation was absolutely good and informative. Axis is a Swedish company and its IP cameras are world number 1.

Axis presentation had been very entertaining and educating at the same time. The presenter, Nafis Jasmani, had done a great job.

Axis and its distributor treated their guests very well too. Excellent and delicious food. I had a great “meal” with a beer together with some people I met there. Dessert was great too! The only thing I disliked was that people began to puff cigarette after food and beer. The smoke immediately destroyed the cozy environment and the nice cool air.

I spoke to Nafis before I left. We talked about Axis Developer Program and some technical details. As I understood from him, there are 4 developers in Malaysia developing some vertical Axis solutions. Quite an interesting fact.

The software, Evidence Blaster, does not only securely remove any files or folders, it also protect your privacy by clearing all your private information about you in your browsers and email clients leaving no trace of what you did on the Internet. The software helps you to safeguard your job by covering your tracks before your employer can find any from your computer.

Well, there is a website to allow you to copy web site, save it to your local hard disk. Unlike save page in web browsers, the software saves the html code, grabs the graphics, audio and video at lightning speed. Once these have been downloaded and stored on your local hard disk, you can browse off line anytime even though the original page has been removed.

This Web Site Downloader is an useful application to archive websites and/or dynamic contents for future reference. It is easy to use. Just 4 simple steps: 1. Create your project, 2. Enter the URLs, 3. Begin downloading, 4. Start browsing off line!

A 128-bit encryption can be broken into with cluster computer. A cluster computer consists of computers, called nodes, with one or more CPU. These computers are connected to a network. A special program capable of distributing calculation tasks to all the nodes is needed. This architecture is called Beowulf. Breaking a 128-bit encryption is just a matter of time depending on the number of nodes and the number of CPUs on each node.

My ISP forces all direct SMTP connection to be routed to an unsecured proxy server. As an emergency contingency to my Internet use, I quickly setup encryption for my email client. So far, the closing of port 25 has not affected me.

As I have the need to send sensitive work information across the Net, I feel the encryption is not enough on a unsecured proxy server. I would elevate the level of information security by using steganography together with encryption.

Steganography is a technique to embed information to a digital photo or picture without altering the photo or picture at eye level. The technique uses advanced algorithm to manipulate bits of data in the digital image with the bits from the information I am going to send. To extract the information from the encrypted digital image, an original image is the key. Only my intended recipient has an original copy of the digital image.

This portable duplex scanner, ScanShell 3000DN, can scan double-sided document in one pass. Its portability and weighing at 0.59kg make it easy to tuck along on any business trip. Besides scanning documents, it is also useful to scan business cards.

ScanShell 3000DN plugs into any USB2.0 port. The scanner does not require external power supply. It can scan any documents and save to PDF or any of the following graphic formats: BMP, JPG, TIF, PSD, PCX, PNG or TGA.

When I am on business trip or visit project sites at universities, I need to scan some documents during most of the visits. I also like to scan business cards of whom I met so that I can keep organized and I am not afraid to misplace those valuable contacts. Perhaps I should put this in my wish list as this year Christmas present or may be include it in the budget 2008!

Simply select Smile Shutter, the camera will automatically click the shuttle whenever a smile is detected on the subject’s face. Cool!

The Internet has opened up a whole new dimension in our lives. We are able to communicate face to face looking at each other across continents, able to share information with a click of the mouse and etc. Many people has turn home based in this century to conserve earth resources like gas, time and to reduce company expenses. Many businesses also go home based to minimized operating expenditure.

Many people like to have home based business because of minimal capital involvement, flexible working hours, don’t need to meet clients, business across countries’ borders, and you are the boss! Just to name a few. The benefits of having your own Internet home based business have no limits. It is time to discover yourself the benefits of home based business.

What kind of business is good to start you off?

How about phone card affiliate program? USPrepaid.com offers you an attractive package to start you off with a website of your own domain name. Sign up is very simple:

1. Think of a catchy unique .COM domain name.
2. Sign up at USPrepaid.com.
3. Setup your website.
4. USPrepaid will provide you some training.
5. Market your site.

USPrepaid offers over 850 phone card brands with commissions up to 50% but mostly about 22%. Your operating expenses are the $74.95 one-time setup fee and monthly subscription fee of $19.95. There is minimum risk as you don’t have to pay a huge capital upfront. When you have made some sales, your commissions will be paid with cheque. But if you are not residing in the U.S., your commissions will be paid in the form of traveler’s cheque (in U.S. Dollar) via Fedex.

USPrepaid will provide you training for setting up your site, checking inventory, sales and profit; selecting products and setting up prices and all you need to run your Internet home based business. USPrepaid will also design your website and it will be up within 72 hours!

If you are thinking of starting up a low cost home based business with minimum risk, USPrepaid’s phone card affiliate program will be a good start for you.

Technologies such as Internet and mobile phone services such as MMS and 3G have opened up a whole new dimension of marketing channel to businesses and corporation. A new marketing strategy called mobile marketing is increasingly becoming the most popular marketing tools. Businesses can deliver marketing content directly to the palm of targeted consumers.

A survey has found that more brands are ready to spend larger proportion of their marketing budget on mobile campaigns in the very near future. About 71% have projected to spend more than 10% of their marketing budget in mobile marketing campaigns in the next 2 years. The survey have also indicated about 10% of consumers receiving SMS marketing have requested for more information on products and services grew from 32% in 2006 to 58% in 2007. More survey details can be found here.

How do you perform mobile marketing? First, you need to have mobile marketing software. GoLive! Concierge is a industry leader in mobile campaigns management suite. Setting up your campaigns with the software is fairly easy. You can provide services such as: subscription, ring tones and wallpapers download, SMS voting, Text-To-Win, reminders, polling, auction, chat and much more; to your targeted recipients.

GoLive! Mobile is also having an in-house design team to provide your company WAP Site Design or Mobile Website Design. You can host your content with GoLive! Mobile’s WAP Site Hosting or Mobile Website Hosting plan. If you are looking for a complete suite mobile marketing products and services, GoLive! Mobile is the right place to look into.

Having a website involves many processes:

1. Web design – involve many interviews and literature study of the company history, products and services, customer care, business strategies and a lot more. This also includes choosing a suitable theme for the company.
2. Search engine submission – Once the website is up and online, the url has to be submitted to search engine with keywords for indexing. This is a huge job as there are thousands of search engines out there.
3. Online marketing – Having indexed by search engines is not enough. It is still like a sitting duck. You need to have online marketing to spread your web presence.
4. Lead generation – You need to attract visitors interested in your products and services to your website.

You need a complete package of small business web design. At Website Pros, they provide everything you need from making your website from scratch to online marketing and lead generation at a very affordable small fee. Website Pros offers All-In-One-Package for a small starter business. Or you can choose Signature series which offer custom designs that includes Flash graphics.

They have very creative minds in web design. Their designers are also very patient with clients who have absolutely no knowledge of how website works. Their professionalism guides you through every steps of design requirements all the way to the end. It is risk free for All-In-One-Package because there is no contract and no setup fees required. Perfect for a small starter business who knows absolutely nothing about website.

IBackup provides reliable and secured Online Backup service at a low fee. It features scheduled backup from my computers via Internet with SSL encryption. My backup is password protected to prevent unauthorized access. Backup my data on my computers is easy. Just point and click, select some operating parameters and my data will be safe.

One significant feature is the “Collaborate and Sharing”. I can email my associates the link to access my backup at IBackup‘s server. I can set the link to expire after a period of time. With this, I can share my files or folders easily and securely with anyone.

For business and enterprise, IBackup also provides SQL database backup, keeping valuable business data safe.

IBackup provides both browser-based and downloadable application with 128-bit SSL encryption for secured connection.

• Never ever burn a disc faster than it is rated for.
• Never ever use a high speed media. Use lowest speed media possible. 2-4x speed medias are excellent. You may save burning time but you compromise on data longevity.
• Never buy cheap media. There is reason that it is cheap.
• Scan at 10-24x when you’re making C1/C2 scans.
• Scan at 2x if you make PIE/PIF scans.
• Nothing last forever! Reburn after every 2-3 years.
• Never expose burned CD or DVD to any light source, particularly, UV. Keep them in dark place.

A collection of modifications either goes into the repository completely, or not at all. This allows developers to construct and commit changes as logical chunks, and prevents problems that can occur when only a portion of a set of changes is successfully sent to the repository.

The text is very clear. But I could not imagine how it works until today.

I had a network failure a moment ago while I was committing some work back to my Subversion server. The power to the router was cut because something fell and knocked its power adapter out of the socket.

I quickly checked if my local and server copies are synced. Luckily, nothing happened. The copy on the server was not touched. Neither the copy on local. I was able to commit my local copy again to the server. Thanks to Subversion. If I were still using CVS, disaster could have been knocking on my head!

So what is atomic commit? If you have modified the contents of some files in, say 10 folders. When you do CVS commit to CVS server, the network is suddenly disconnected. What will happen if the commit is 50% completed? CVS does not support atomic commit. It upload single individual file after another from folder to folder. You have just committed 5 folders to the CVS server. The other 5 folders will not be committed. This will render the server and local copy out of sync. Huge trouble!

With Subversion, atomic commit will perform diff at local, then transmit all diff data and metadata to the server. The server will not commit the diff and metadata into its repositories if complete change sets is not received by the server. Therefore, when the above scenario happens, there will be no commit at both server and local. Hence, your local copy will not out of sync with server copy.

My karate blog, for instance, has generated many inquiries and interests. It has brought some passionate karate-kas to my training place at Bukit Beruang. It has also sent my messages and ideas across so many readers locally and across continents. My blog has initiated their thoughts and passion. I find these people are of same thinking and share similar ideology who dislike political skirmishes. These people like to seek self-betterment instead of heroic display.

My recent iBook posts, another instance, have brought forth people with the same experience via comments and mostly through my contact form. There is even a guy who has bad experience with a local Apple’s authorized reseller. The post and comment(s) may be bad for their business. On the other hand, this will alert potential buyers to be more careful when selecting vendors, forcing these company to improve their services or let die. That’s business all about.

A blog can be a massive vault of useful information for a business. Marketing, services, opportunity, and list goes on. Blog can be a new powerful business tool able to transform traditional business in many ways.

Blog is a great tool to collect public opinions before making any business decision. The responses of the public or groups are crucial. Proper strategies can be shaped by effective use of the blog and public opinions received.

I can still remember my friend, Robert, told me about young people wasting their time blogging in University. Robert is an associate professor and head of department at UTAR. I always remind myself of his comment. I agree with him to some degrees. It is the ignorance and misuse of blogging in most young people. Blog is their loyal friend. I have read about people blogging about their anger and fuss about their work and about anything that does not favor them. They have even used 4-letter word such as F*** to express their emotional feeling towards some incidents or people. I used Sh!T to express unbalanced worthiness and dislike about things. Anyway, it does not matter simply because it is just an expression to balance stress. Readers should not take these expression seriously but to understand the emotion, feeling, psychology and intention of the poster. With the understanding, one can find enormous useful information which is relating to the event or things in their post.

I was involved in a business meeting yesterday. Together with the information I obtained in the meeting and my experience in blogging, ideas have begun to spark in my mind and I shall develop new business soon.

The contactless payment system marries together the credit cards system along with either an RFID-enabled plastic credit card or some other tagged item. When requested for payment, the cardholder can simply wave the RF credit card at a close range (4cm) from the payment reader. The antenna, a thin copper wire inside the RF credit card, then sends an RF signal, transferring information to a reader connected to the merchant’s point-of-sale terminal. The transaction is then processed through trusted payment network, as with all other conventional transactions.

It sure provides an easy, convenient and hassle free transactions. But the question is how reliable is this technology?

Someone with a tag reader can easily download your card information. It is simple. The person just has to stand near to you. He can put the tag reader in his trouser pocket and come very closely to your trouser pocket where you put your wallet. And perhaps there is even some tag reader that is able to read your card at longer distance, in this case, the person just has to sit and let everyone passes by him and his gadgets will start downloading countless number of credit cards.

It is just a matter of time to have a pocket sized tag reader to be built. Recently, security consultant Lukas Grunwald of German company DN-Systems demonstrated the cloning of a biometric passport.

I, for sure, will not want to carry RF credit cards with me.

The nüvi

The nüvi in the car.

It is very much smaller than the GPSMap 60CS I owned. Features include MP3 player, audio book player from Audible.com, JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter, and calculator. With microphone and speaker integrated, the nüvi lets you make and receive phone calls via optional Bluetooth wireless technology. Its touch screen makes operation, navigation and dialing easier.

GPSMap 60CS

I think I shall add nüvi to my Christmas wish list.

I am using AdaCGI to develop a mission-critical web application. However, I find that AdaCGI is unable to many things. One of the important features missing is that it can’t do redirection as in PHP:

do_redirect ( "index.php" );

I am not sure if there’s a way to do that in Ada/AdaCGI. I hope I will never need to code in PHP.

The Ada code is still far from perfect. I hope I can get it to work better before the end of the year. Nevertheless, the effort has paid off.

One of the interesting new features caught my attention. Ada 2005 now supports new 32-bit character type, Wide_Wide_Character. The source code itself can have extended character set as well. That means a whole Greek and fractur character sets are available for identifiers. For example:

π : constant := Pi;

This feature will help making a lot of my codes more readable.

I found an interesting article while I was reading about Ada 2005. This article is about successful uses of Ada 2005 in deeply embedded systems.

Here is the article in pdf.

In my earlier post, Digital addiction, I mentioned about developed special skills using Internet to do some or any kind of research. I learned to use the Internet to learn about people’s diseases and medication 6 years ago when my second elder sister, Angie, was first diagnosed of stage-4 breast cancer.

I could remember that I had read about children doses for my medication on the product pamphlet. The drug is called Cough-en Linctus by Xepa-Soul Pattison. I gave a dose of 2.5ml to Dmitry early this morning at 0335. He had some good sleep after taking it. Cough-en is the most vile cough medicine ever created by man – it could knock out an elephant cold.

When I woke up this morning, I quickly searched the Internet for Cough-en and Pseudoephedrine. I learned a lot about Pseudoephedrine and I was quite shocked about its side effects.

I used to take a drug called Clarinase whenever I was down with Sinus or nose allergy. Anyone of these could make my day and Clarinase had been effective on me to reduce my symptoms.

Of course, I don’t simply take any medication. I like to learn about any medical condition before or after seeing a doctor.

I hope I will not become psychosomatic.

At the begining of 2006, I have used the Internet to track down a person with some (but very little) Internet existence. The result was remarkable and led me to Seibukan Malaysia.

My recent exposure to feature-rich blogger has opened up a new experience window in my digital life. I have noticed a very significant change in the way I observe people, things and events surrounding me every passing minutes.

Psychologically, I am aware of such addiction but I am not suggesting that I am addicted to blogging. My anima is aware of such changes and I personally think the psychological impact of blogging is worth noting.

We have read a lot about teenagers addicted to gaming. Some has gone way too far by committing suicide or shut themselves off from normal social activities.

Is this the first sign of computers conquering humans?

How do silicon chips make such psychological bonding with carbon life forms?

I have been putting some efforts to not depending so much of computers. I am also trying to expose my children to nature as much they can. Is this effort enough?

After blogging, I started to feel blogging can actually save time. Or, I would rather say it lets me make good use of my free time to write out my thoughts. Of course, one has to be careful of what he/she is blogging about.

Now, I have perfect understanding of why millions of people, of all ages and almost from all walks of life, love to blog.

Blogging also allows me to continue my diary writing which I had put aside some 28 years ago.

There is no project option of making an Ada dynamic library in Xcode. So I chose BSD Dynamic Library with C and added Ada source files into the build source.

Everytime I hit the build button, it gives me “Build succeeded with 2 warnings.” The warning message says “warning: no rule to process ‘$(PROJECT_DIR)/cgi.adb’”

I am exhausted with this problem and I think I shall leave it behind for a moment before I continue with the development.

Any takers?

The new PS3 uses a new Cell processor jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. The Cell processor consists of a general-purpose POWERPC processor core connected to eight special-purpose DSP cores. These DSP cores, which IBM calls “synergistic processing elements” (SPE), are really the heart of the entire Cell concept.

I am not talking about how this new technology works here. I am not surprised how fast new technology emerges. But I am a little concerned how new technology will influence or rather have evil impact to human world.

Remember the movie, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991? The scientist from a company called Cyberdyne was trying to engineer a new CPU based on the halved CPU left over by the Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger from part 1).

Will CPU become so powerful one day that it can take on the world like in the movies?

I watched a movie while I was young. I could not recall its title but I could still remember the bio chip or neural chip in the movie which were made of silicon and life brain cells.

Could the science fiction in movies become a reality one day? I think it is becoming obvious.

Can new technology become a threat to the human one day? I am afraid to see this happens.