The Truman Show

The library@esplanade has many titles worth watching. For $20 a year (and then some for GST and stuff), you get to borrow 4 audio-video items for a period of 1 week. If you finish earlier you can return and borrow another 4. Through this facility, I have watched a few good shows that I would otherwise have difficulty getting hold of. For example, to buy or download the entire Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles will need quite some cost, or effort, but I was able to borrow the excellent animation from the library. I will write about that another time.

Tonight's screening on my PC was The Truman Show, a 1998 production starring Jim Carrey. Now I had never been a big fan of Carrey, but the reviews of this show had been good. It took me a few years to get around to finally watching this, and I'm not disappointed. The story goes that this Truman Burbank person lives in a seemingly perfect world where people are nice to him and he is always happy. However he puts a few clues together and eventually realises that there is much more to his world than it appears, that there is a conspiracy around him. He sets out to discover the truth, which has been artfully kept from him for 30 years.

This is conspiracy theory and paranoia before The Matrix (1999). Will you brave storms to find out the truth for yourself? Will you risk losing everything you know? And what will you do, when "the creator" speaks to you at last? Or will you turn back and go back to the comfortable lie, as Cypher did in The Matrix?

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

I'm not a Star Wars fan, but this guy (Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming) is good. He's definitely a fan. I like fan fiction. Episode 3 is already out. Looks like that was why he stopped writing.

http://darthside.blogspot.com/

You can find some additional material at the writer's website here. If you are really good, you can put content up for free and just earn from advertisements alone.

Spam and phishing

Got a spam from someone who claimed to be M$. If you are an obedient user, you will save tha attachment and execute it, then click on the hyperlink(which I have removed) and be brought to a fake website where you will declare your credit card number and everything else, and have them used against you. That is, if you have worked out what they want you to do.

Download and lunch? Oh... download and launch!
They have added a rubbish id
--
id# 01667709099942331927
--
but their English is so horrid I cannot believe M$ will want to hire them.

This probably will not fool those who are running pirated versions of windows and who have never registered with M$.



Dear Windows user.

We strongly recommend upgrade your system.
Please, download attached file and lunch.
After installation is complete you must go to http://www.microsoft.com/update for next step.

Microsoft Corporation (c) 2005

--
id# 01667709099942331927
--

Store Wars

Star Wars Episode 3 is out. People are going crazy over it. Here's a spoof of the orginial trilogy.
Store Wars, a fable about the organic food rebellion.

Amazingly well made, much better than Thumb Wars.

Distributed Hash Table in Azureus

I had been using Azureus 2.3.0.0 since it came out, and the DHT feature has been promising. Only that more people need to switch over to Azureus for it to be really useful. The network effect, you know. The more people join in, the greater the benefit.

Slashdot posted a link on the Azureus Distributed Tracker and Database and as usual, the comments by slashdot readers can be educational. But sometimes, they are just hilarious.

The new Bittorrent protocol was designed by the same developers who designed the original TCP/IP protocol in the 70s. But this new protocol has a decidedly "edgy" feel to it. Below is the "handshaking" procedure. There are a few similarities between it and SMTP:

[...]

It's good way to publish legitimate content. It's not a good way to distribute illegal content. First of all the torrent has a record of your peer IP addresses. So, all the lawyers need to do is have the peers listed in the torrent shut down -- then the torrent is useless. Sure, you could hide for a while using zombie windows boxes as your "master" peers, that's one level of indirection. But as they become unavailable you need to distribute new torrent files with fresh peer lists. Maybe that's not a problem, but it seems like more trouble than it's worth.

[... some dude has to come along and say something like this... ]

All this work for a less than honorable cause. Just think what could be if all this human effort had been channeled through a charity, say Habitat for Humanity, your local food bank, or teaching someone to read.

[... and earn a whole lot of insults ...]

I am SO sick of hearing this. The time you spent posting this to slashdot could have been spent handing out one more dinner at a soup kitchen. How's that?

People have lives OTHER than charity, as your presence here proves. As for this being less than honorable, that's the eye of the beholder. It's like the VCR, guns, or deep fryers. They can all be used for good or for evil. Just because they can be used for evil doesn't obviate they're good potential, nor should we ban them because of their potential for abuse.

[... which gets really overboard very quickly ...]

Hmm. How does one use a deep fryer for evil? Open a KFC?

Oh what? Like YOU'VE never heard of a deep fried a baby. Sure, sure. All of those KFC and and french-fry lovers like to stand up and say that a ban would be against their best interests, but even they know the primary reason people get deep fryers is for cooking babies.

[...]

Is it just a coincidence that this enhancement has come the day before the new Star Wars movie?

I sense a great disturbance in the force... as if George Lucas' bank account cried out in terror... and then... silence.

Either that, or I just have a headache.

[...]

NUS got slashdotted!

Since when is anything that comes out of NUS cool enough to be slashdotted?

My bro-in-law and me were surprised to see this article about feeling poultry remotely via the internet.

"This is the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed," said professor Adrian David Cheok, the leader of the team, who has been developing the technology for nearly two years.

"We understand the perceived eccentricity of developing a system for humans to interact with poultry remotely, but this work has a much wider significance," he added.

Just don't use it for remote surgery yet. Imagine if you lose your network connection after you have just pried open the skull. Gross. At least I know our hospitals won't be outshoring surgery to India or China anytime soon.

Scared kena bomb is it?

Singapore is a very safe place. You cannot easily bomb the MRT stations because they have removed all rubbish bins. Terrorists won't have a chance to hide bombs in the dustbins and blow our stations to smithereens, but it is perfectly ok for them to bomb out the entrances to our stations.

You cannot easily bomb HDB Hub also, for the same reason that you cannot find any rubbish bins. How can they risk letting their HQ be out of action? How will couples buy their apartments from HDB? National crisis, man!

The best thing is that they have moved the mailboxes out of MRT stations and shifted them some distance away, so that terrorists cannot post timebombs! Ah, now I have to walk into the station to buy instant stamps from the SAM dispensing machine, then walk waaaayyy out to the mailbox and post my letter, a marked improvement over the old days when I could post the letter into the mailbox which is right beside the machine that sells stamps!

Maybe removing the rubbish bins give the cleaners some extra work to do as they need to clean up more litter. Don't think they will hire more people as a result, though.

Frappucino

Starbucks Frappucino is useless.

Starbucks is giving away a buy-1-get-1-free deal where you just need to print out and show them the advertisement and you will be entitled to a free drink once you buy a Frappucino from them. My colleague and I ordered one each after lunch. I was still as drowsy as before, the more-sugar-and-milk-than-coffee concoction did nothing to wake me up. I had to brew my own strong coffee to last me through a 4-hour meeting.

I'm a coffee fan, but only the strong kopitiam kopi for me, not the more-sugar-and-milk-than-coffee kind of frappucino, latte, and other "gourmet" coffee for me.

Playing truant

One of the polytechnic attachment students in my company has vanished without explanation for 4 days and counting. His supervisor here at the company has escalated to the supervisor in the poly, who is probably a lecturer.

Other than that, the team members are accepting it as a fact of life that students are generally not very responsible, and that playing truant is something every student does. That is one new thing I have learnt. Another is that taking toothpaste before seeing the doctor is one way to get an MC for fever. Seesh. I wasted my education when I could be learning useful things like this! They are not foreign talent for nothing.

Rashes is not a good excuse to stay at home without an MC. Worse, he did not even inform the supervisors and the company supervisor found out through other students who are also attached here. He should at least have the courtesy to inform someone in charge. Tsk. Kids these days. Of course the matter was escalated to the poly supervisor by his company supervisor. A local.

Blogging in Hokkien

We already have hokkien posts in forums, emails, etc. So now it has come to blogs.
You need to be pretty proficient in Hokkien to understand this. I will give it a try later.

http://hokkienlang.blogsome.com/

Like Mt Kunlun in SG

Went to visit friends from uni this afternoon. We took the same course, they fell in love and got married. Today, made a trip to Pearl Bank to visit the 3 day old product of their love, a restless baby who looks every bit as long and slender as her parents.

We know where the parents live, but had never been up there. There is a staircase behind Pearl Centre (where Yangtze cinema is, that infamous cinema visited only by lonely ah pehs) that leads up to Pearl Bank apartments on top of the hill. The climb was a lot steeper than it looked from the bottom, and we were out of breathe by the time we reached the lifts at the top of the hill. No wonder she's so skinny! Rarely do you find housing at the top of steep staircases in Singapore. I have seen them in Japanese and Korean dramas, but never before in Singapore! What a romantic setting!

It gets better when you see it from the top. The hilltop apartments was in a peaceful and quiet world of its own, away from the bustle of Chinatown just at the bottom of the hill. With a few benches along the corridor that overlooked the greenery below, it looked like a good place for a boy to hang around with a girl just before sending her to her door. With the corridors linking the main apartment block to the nursery building, it was just a little bit like Kun Lun Mountain, in the midst of clouds, where halls are linked by narrow bridges hanging above steep ravines.

Back in the older days, civil servants had a lot of privileges. Some had pensions schemes that paid perhaps half of the salary they drew when they were serving the statutory board, and they continue to draw the monthly pension until they kick the bucket. Some had comprehensive medical schemes that took care of all medical expenses of their family members, even those that are not at all life-threatening, such as flatfoot. And there were lavish 3-storey HDB apartments with security guards that were sold only to civil servants, complete with a pond, rock garden, 1 lift for every 2 units (which we are getting now only after the upgrading). There is even a gate at the multi-storey carpark controlled by a security guard, operated via pushbutton.

The schemes they used to have were really fantastic. It is nothing like what we have these days in the private sectors, and the next generation will have it a lot worse. The previous generation lived during the boom times when property prices and personal networth keep going up. This generation can still make it if they watch their savings and buy the right insurances. The next? Life can be very unfair. It's not about working hard, sometimes. It's about being born into the right place at the right time. The difference can be like that between the subsidised exclusiveness of Pearl Bank and the commonality of Chinatown. Blessed are those born with their needs all taken care of.

Thank You For Being A Mother

A very touching tribute to his mum. Written by a very articulate 14yr old.

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/48980.asp

She persevered and found ways to nurture me. In the process, she has developed in me the ability to deal with whatever life throws my way.

Why Google Scares Bill Gates

A very long, but insightful article from Fortune Magazine on why Microsoft is spooked by the rise of Google. Well worth the time if you are interested in IT super-companies.


Today Google isn't just a hugely successful search engine; it has morphed into a software company and is emerging as a major threat to Microsoft's dominance.

[...]

Simply put, Google has become a new kind of foe, and that's what has Gates so riled. It has combined software innovation with a brand-new Internet business model—and it wounds Gates' pride that he didn't get there first. Since Google doesn't sell its search products (it makes its money from the ads that accompany its search results), Microsoft can't muscle it out of the marketplace the way it did rivals like Netscape. But what really bothers Gates is that Google is gaining the ability to attack the very core of Microsoft's franchise—control over what users do first when they turn on their computers.

[...]

Dozens of current and former Microsofties say that Google's success is causing a corporate identity crisis. Gates basically created the notion that success in software is a function of the IQ of your team, and for years Microsoft has prided itself on having the smartest employees on the planet. Now many of those overachievers feel as though they've gotten their first B. Google, not Microsoft, is the hot place to work for young engineers. Every month it seems as if Google hires away one of Microsoft's top developers.

[...]

Payne told Gates & Co. that he would need more than $100 million and 18 months to build his search engine; that he wanted the authority to pull the cream of Microsoft's brainiacs into the effort. And Gates? He asked almost no questions, interrupting mostly to suggest people in Microsoft who might help. "It was reasonably obvious to me that we were going to have to depend on ourselves, not our partners, for search," says Gates now. So when Payne finished, Gates signed off on one of the largest commitments for a new business in Microsoft history: Project Underdog was born.

[...]

Microsoft has a long, dramatic history of being a fast follower, rarely first in a market but ultimately providing the most accessible and practical solution, then outmarketing competitors. The company hasn't always played by the rules, but when it has gone after a market, it has done so quickly and aggressively. Current and former executives of companies like Apple, WordPerfect, Lotus, Novell, and of course Netscape can attest to that.

[...]

Trying to build a Google killer, however, has turned out to be truly humbling for Microsoft. The effort has taken longer, cost more money, and exposed more big-company problems at Microsoft than anyone imagined. As Payne predicted, targeted online advertising has indeed become a gold mine. Still in its infancy, it's one of the hottest sectors in high tech, a $5-billion-a-year market growing at some 40% annually. Yet no matter what Payne and his crew do, Google and Yahoo seem to do better. "I remember when [Payne's team] showed off their first prototype in early 2004—people laughed because it was so much like Google," says a former Microsoft executive. "We had copied them. That's not how you lead."

[...]

One reason Google has been rolling out so many new or improved products is that Schmidt understands that innovation is the only sure edge Google has. The moment Google allows itself to slow, Microsoft could overwhelm it.

[...]

Man... I wish my bosses are as focused on winning the battle. They have lots to learn from both MS's and Google's management and culture. Then again, these 2 giants hire the best people, managers and engineers included. We are hardly the best. We have lots to learn.

The jar, pebbles, sand, and coffee

I have seen variants of this story before, but it is always good to remind oneself of an important lesson. Especially when there are so many demands on a person's time.

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things --God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favourite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else--the small stuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you. "Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to ge t medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

What will your golf balls be?

God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favourite passions

What have I been neglecting?

Sunrise replaces JPluck

I had been using JPluck for over a year to compress websites to plucker format and sync over to my Palm to read offline. Before that, I was using some other older version of Plucker editor to do the plucking, and I thought it was a nice leap to JPluck, which gives me more control over how I want my daily reads to be.

From sourceforge:
JPluck has been succeeded by Sunrise, which is faster, easier to use and contains tons of improvements over JPluck.

Yes, it does seem to be very much of an improvement over JPluck, which would sometimes hang and refuse to sync until I remove all the feeds and add them back in again one by one. I sure hope Sunrise will not give me the same problem.

I can now sync multiple documents at the same time, which is what I had wanted all along. These days, most people have the bandwidth to do that, and it is good that the software is finally able to make use of the bandwidth and get the job done faster. There are also nice little eye candy such as the pop-up message when a pluck has completed. I haven't figured out the link filter or XSLT filter, but the important is that it is easy to use right?

This is still version 0.41, but it is already pretty cool. I had to create a palmgear account to download this, which I'm skeptical about. Am I opening myself to spam? Sigh, give it a try lah.

Azureus 2.3.0.0

Finally got it to work properly after it upgraded from 2.2 to 2.3. Ok, so it did tell me that it worked best with jdk1.5, but I didn't expect it to be unable to map to port 6881 when I was running it on jdk1.4.2! Figured it out after a while and its speed bounced back from double-digit bytes to the original double-digit kilobytes!

I like the swarm visualisation! It shows how your peers are connected to you. It shows how complete you are, how complete they are, whether you are connected right now, which way the packets are flowing (to you or away from you) and how fast. What I like best about Azureus all along, apart from that it runs on Java, is that its UI is simply the most informative! Not that I do much with the info, it just tempts me to keep staring at it while it downloads, and I do not perceive that I have been able to help it download any faster by my staring, but it's fascinating. Much more fascinating that watching paint dry, and not much more useful, really. But, hey, it's fascinating.

The distributed database and distributed tracking sound promising, though I have to wait for a tracker to die before I will know how well it works. Will it be transparent to me when the distributed tracker takes over? Will we finally be able to search for torrents and share files without referring to a tracker running on a known URL, such as bitcomet.com? Then we will finally be able immune from such attacks as the death of suprnova.

Of course, if you are already using Azureus, you would probably have been prompted to change already. If you are using some other BT client, give Azureus a try. I have tried BitComet, ABC, Shareza, Burst, and all fall short of the control and visualisation that Azureus can give me. It runs a lot more efficiently on JDK1.5 and hopefully resource usage is no and issue for me. It seems more stable on JDK1.5, less freezing while it garbage collects. Should have made the switch moons ago.