China’s proven world class competency

April 13th, 2008 at 13:20 · Filed Under Ada, China, Computing, Humanity, Linux, Software Development, Web · Comment 

During the snow hazard in China this February, the Chinese government had successfully managed the natural disaster and crisis with much professionalism in such a short period of time. According to an unconfirmed source, the Chinese government managed to develop a Disaster Management System in just 5 days. 75 software engineers from the Chinese military worked around the clock for 5 days to bring up a web based Disaster Management System to collect, manage, disseminate, coordinate, and to provide command and control to the military disaster relieve team during the recent snow hazard.

The system was developed using Ada, AWS (Ada Web Server) with a little of PHP and Perl. The system deploys a MySQL database running on Linux. The system is hooked up to air-borne SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) for real-time acquisition of landscaping information in snow hazard affected area to help assessing the damage of rail ways, roads, housing and forest. The Chinese army engineering company was dispatched by the system to areas in need of assistance.

I have yet to receive further details of how the system works and probably will not. Anyway, that shows the Chinese ability and responsiveness in dealing with natural disaster. Hail China!

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Open Source and School Works

April 12th, 2008 at 22:34 · Filed Under Computing, Humanity, Philosophy, Social, Software Development, Technology · 3 Comments 

The increasing buzz about the omnipotence of Google and Open Source projects has left us wondering, what do students do with their research and course assignments today?

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:

Read more

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Sun successfully acquired MySQL

February 27th, 2008 at 9:42 · Filed Under Blogging · Comment 

Sun broke out the news that it has successfully completed the acquisition of MySQL. The acquisition was smooth. The acquisition accelerates and opens up opportunity for Sun to take a more prominent role in the US$15 billions database market worldwide. This acquisition will bring more synergies to Sun for the millions of global deployment of MySQL. These deployment include Google, Nokia, Facebook, China Mobile and Baidu.

Sun has been active in Open Source and well known for its contribution in OpenOffice. Sun will take MySQL to greater heights with this acquisition. This acquisition will open up more opportunity for my software business as well as provide better and easier access to MySQL/Sun technical. Read here.

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Sun announces agreement to acquire MySQL

January 25th, 2008 at 10:11 · Filed Under Blogging, Business, Computing, Technology · Comment 

On January 16, 2008 Sun entered a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL, developer of the world largest Open Source database. The move reaffirms Sun as a leading provider of hardware and software platforms for the web economy.

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.

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MySQL server down

October 27th, 2007 at 14:15 · Filed Under Blogging, Business, Computing, Web · Comment 

I’ve recently experienced a frequent downtime of MySQL server at my WHP. It was down twice in a day yesterday and thrice in this month. Apparently, I think some processes had overloaded the server and brought it down.

I contacted the tech support of my WHP and they were able to bring the server up in less than 15 minutes. They have done a great job.

Yesterday, I wrote a message to Fathi Said, CEO of IX Web Hosting informing of the downtime I have experienced and my concerns. This morning, I received a call from Chris Bingham, the Customers Relation Manager. He offered me to move my hosting account to another server hopefully that will solve the problem while their technical support will fox out what has been overloading my current server. So, expect my sites will be down for a few hours during the moving exercise.

This is the greatest support I ever had amongst the WHP I had hosted with. I will recommend IX Web Hosting if you are looking for a web host.

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