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Planet MYOSS (145 unread)

Colin Charles: movies, october

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 1:14am GMT

Tags: movies [edit]

Caught:

Little Black Book - good if you like Jerry Springer, otherwise a waste of time.
Riding in Cars with Boys - worth a watch
The Piano Teacher - to keep up with my French knowledge, I occasionally watch a French show. However they always seem to be disturbing. T

Aizat Faiz: SIRIM call for Public Comments on ODF

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 8:32pm GMT

I should have actually I acted earlier, but I don’t know what took me so long. As many or none of you may know SIRIM is requesting for public comments, and they are still accepting them. So if you’d like to send a comment in, please go ahead! We need all the help we can get. Ditesh, Ow, Wong Kok-cheng. Yoon Kit has posted some ideas that you can possibly comment on.

Similar here is mine.

This document refers to SIRIM’s advertisement in The New Straits Times dated 1st September 2006 requesting for public comments on the adoption of the Open Document Format (ODF) (ISO 26300) as a Malaysian Standard.

I am Ezwan Aizat Bin Abdullah Faiz, and I am student at Monash University Malaysia studying Bachelors of Computer Science and one of the local leads for the Free and Open Source Software community in Malaysia. As a student, I dream that upon graduation that I will be able to build my own software company.

I congratulate SIRIM on the proposal to make ODF as a Malaysian Standard, as I believe it not only helps to achieve my dreams, but it is best in the national interests of our country. As ODF is an internationally recognized open standard, the Malaysian adoption of ODF provides many possibilities for a student.

With ODF, I have been given ability to implement the standard in any software I build, without paying license costs which could be detrimental to my initiatives. Similarly with the increasing number of applications adopting the ODF standard, I will be safely assured that we can interact with one another seamlessly. Presently no other document format provides this capability, and by ensuring that ODF becomes a Malaysian Standard, there can be an increased collaboration between people, businesses, and the government.

By deciding to use an unencumbered open standard many governments are seeking to employ ODF as standard to ensure that the documents they produce are accessible to all members of the public thus fulfilling their duties owed to the them. With the increasing support of many individuals, organizations, companies, and governments it provides assurance that ODF not only meets the demands of the house wife, but enterprise level users.

The ODF Alliance, is a group of organizations coming together to promote the benefits of ODF. There may exist a presumption that many of members are technology related companies, but there exists members from other sectors, such as governments, colleges, universities, user groups, libraries, and more, all with the interest in ODF.

I hope that Malaysia will similarly adopt ODF as a Malaysian Standard in the best interests of our country.

Regards,
Ezwan Aizat Bin Abdullah Faiz

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Howto solve Ubuntu Dapper-Edgy Upgrade problem

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 8:29pm GMT

Tags: ubuntu dapper edgyeft edgy Linux [edit]

Ubuntu Edgy Eft is out, and I heard almost everybody seems to upgrade Dapper to get the feel of the new and improved init scripts.

However, some people might encounter few problems while upgrading, including not able to log into X, cant boot the new system, kernel fail to boot, 3D acceleration broken and touchpad stopped working.

Though to most people, the upgrading process will be a breeze, some (including me) are bound to experience a bumpy ride.

To ease the process, DebianAdmin published an article that solve common upgrade problem : Ubuntu Edgy Upgrade Common Problems With Solutions which might help you get out from those sticky situations.

Hope you enjoy reading it.

Tags: ubuntu, dapper, edgy eft, edgy, linux, gnu/linux, opensource, open source

Thanks To Our Sponsor: Get Linux CD/DVD in Malaysia Fast & affordable, delivered right to your doorsteps

Aizat Faiz: MyOSS Meetup November 2006

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 8:21pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

Selamat Hari Raya, and Happy Deepavali everyone!

Due to the close proximity of festive holidays to the monthly meetup, the meetup will be held later this month. Stay tuned for further details.

Regards,
Aizat

Lee Chin Sheng: Back from Cambodia

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 6:58pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

Finally my long holidays ended, I have very good time while in Cambodia as well as Bangkok and amazed with all the ancient buildings and its histories. Anyway I'm back on track now, the first interesting stuff that I read is the interview of OpenBSD developers regarding OpenBSD 4.0. You can check it out at here.

After finish reading it, now I strongly believe that OpenBSD is considered to be one of most robust and best platform offered to build VPN, Routing and Firewalling solution ever.

Kudos to all OpenBSD developers for their decent work!!!!!

Enjoy :]

Open Malaysia: Wasting millions

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 4:00pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

It's not often that you read about something truly inspiring in the Malaysian civil service. Though they are a bunch of hardworking folk who run the engine of government, they sometimes are befuddled by technology and usually fall into the trap of believing what they vendor tells them. This is not always the case, though.

In these times, it is heartening to note the following snippet,

In a recent audit, he said it was found that the government was exposed to losses running into hundreds of millions of ringgit simply because civil servants did not peruse purchase agreements signed with vendors.

One example was the case where officers failed to understand the need for "source code" ownership, a computer program written by the programmer in a formal programming language such as Pascal, Basic, C++ and Java.

Without correctly interpreting this code, the computer system cannot be used to the maximum.

This also means that if the buyer is not thorough when reading the provisions of the purchase agreement, the system would still "belong" to the vendor under the copyright laws.

The buyer would also be unable to expand the program without paying millions of ringgit more for it in the form of proprietary licence fees.

He said it was therefore pertinent that all source codes and the relevant documents drafted in the various stages in the development of the government’s application system are owned by the government.

I did a short double take when I read that news article, published in the New Sunday Times on October 29, 2006. I fully expected the he in the article to be one of the more vocal members of the open source community, and was pleasantly surprised when I found out his identity.

He is none other than Tan Sri Ambrin Buang, Malaysia's Auditor-General.

Tan Sri Ambrin correctly identified why the MAMPU Open Source Masterplan exists. The ability to freely modify software from government procurement efforts leads to a lower cost of doing business and breaking the chains of vendor dependence. He further goes on to say,

If the source code belongs to the government, the development cost would only be one off when the pilot project is launched.

When there is a need to extend it to other government departments or agencies, the extra cost would only be for additional equipment, installation and testing.

As the man who's in charge of making sure our taxpayer funds are well spent, Tan Sri Ambrin's opinions are well taken. And if that's not enough, he goes on to prove that he really does get it right when he elaborates on the benefits of open source and having access to the source code,

an integrated system between all ministries and departments

the creation of an inter-operable system which could be upgraded as and when required

doing away with monopoly — ministries and departments need not rely on the same vendor

civil servants would be more adept at handling such systems.

I don't normally have a habit of cutting-n-pasting content without adding any of my own, but Tan Sri Ambrin Buang just said it all. Syabas, Tan Sri !

Read the full article in the NST.

Ditesh Kumar: Public Comment on ODF as a Malaysian Standard

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 12:11pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

SIRIM requested public feedback on the OpenDocument Format as a Malaysian Standard. I sent the following comment:

I writing in support of the proposed Open Document Format standard to an advertisement SIRIM placed in the New Straits Times on 1st Sept 2006 to request the public comments. For purposes of clarification, it should be noted that the term “Office” or “Office software” used in this letter should be understood in the context of generic computer software that provide word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing capabilities. It does not refer to any software product released by any company.

As a software engineer with several years of experience in the software development field in Malaysia, I am glad to be given the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed standard. From the perspective of a software developer, I see several direct and immediate benefits of ratifying the proposed standard:

1. Truly Open Specifications

The primary problem of existing de facto standards for software developers is that it builds a culture of opaque creativity in addition to hobbling the capacity for innovation. With existing de facto standards, we are unable to integrate and extend existing platforms as the specifications were closed and only available on very stringent licensing requirements. With the lack of alternative parties in the software marketplace, this problem becomes extremely severe as potential innovators are held down to the demands of a single party.

This problem can be clearly illustrated by my negative experience in using closed formats:

I lead a software development team to build an extensive and dynamic Office based reporting system that would subsequently be used by government agencies and local private companies.

As per our government’s mandate for the use of Open Source Software, we attempted to build this on Open Source platforms but as Microsoft refused to license Microsoft Office for Open Source platforms, we were forced to look for alternatives.

After extensive feasibility studies, we adopted the then available specification of the Open Document Format which served us very well as:

its specifications had all the features of the Microsoft Office format

it had truly open specifications and most importantly,

it was implementable by all parties without unreasonable licensing requirements.

This allowed us to deliver and execute the project on time on the platform of our choice without being hobbled by vendor lock in strategies.

2. Reducing Market Barriers and Increasing Competition

Existing licensing requirements of closed Office formats are unreasonable as they impose strict limits on the ability to build and extend software products based on the specification. Furthermore, it is a crutch to developers that only partial specifications are usually available for licensing.

This has the effect of increasing the barrier to entry to market for Malaysian software development companies in the Office software market place and lowering our ability to compete at the international level by putting us at the mercy of foreign companies.

In context of the Office software marketplace, it is strikingly frightening to read the revelations from the courts of European Union and United States where it was admitted that market strategies are used to block and decimate competition, particularly by the incumbent companies. Closed and opaque formats work extremely well in excluding future competitors from the marketplace.

Common sense dictates that it would not be to the advantage of foreign companies to open up their formats to Malaysian competition, yet Malaysia needs to insist on an open format to ensure that our nascent software development industry is not dominated by foreign interests.

In addition, due to the lack of competition and alternatives, it would be impossible for Malaysian technology companies to innovate in the software marketplace with the current restrictive licensing strategies that are currently implemented. Indeed, evidence bears out this observation as the software market place in Malaysia shows a dearth of competing Office based software solutions.

3. Building A Culture of Open Creativity

Malaysian developers are taught in schools and universities today that software can be built in a ‘point-and-click’ process, with little or no understanding of the internal structures and design considerations of the software and document formats used. This is no fault of the universities, as there is no avenue for them to teach their students without having access to the underlying technology themselves.

This has come to be known as the culture of opaque creativity, whereby it becomes impossible for Malaysian developers to learn from the technology advances of their brethren overseas due to licensing restrictions. This puts Malaysian developers and entrepreneurs at a considerable disadvantage as we are always trailing behind foreign incumbent companies.

In that vein, having a standardized document format would help balance the playing field by giving the opportunity innovate based on open technology specifications and and thereby allowing entrepreneurs to build competing technology solutions that are comparable to foreign owned companies.

Given the large scale adoption of ODF (at last count, it was used by more then 50 million users), Malaysian developers will have a large development resource to draw from and Malaysian entrepreneurs will certainly have a worldwide market to sell to.

It is therefore vital that we ratify a common standard for the benefit of Malaysian developers and entrepreneurs, so as to provide a level playing field and help build a transparent culture of creativity.

As an existing ISO approved standard, the Open Document Format fits this bill well and we should not delay its introduction as a standard to the Malaysian software community.

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/31/Meling_Mudin__you_see__it%e2%80%99s_all_in_your_head'

Meling Mudin: you see, it’s all in your head

Posted: October 31st, 2006, 6:28am GMT

Tags: [edit]

off to sillypore, then back, then off to kuching! goodbye cruel world!

p/s: wi-fi exploits coming to metasploit! sweeeet!

listening to:

Adli Abdul Wahid: Moving out :-)

Posted: October 30th, 2006, 3:15am GMT

Tags: [edit]

This should be my last blog on this host (kict.iiu.edu.my) . I am no longer working with IIUM. I shall continue blogging (if I have time that is) at http://www.3boss.org . See you there ! Thanks everyone.

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/30/Ditesh_Kumar__PHP_System_i_Workshop_for_ISV%e2%80%99s'

Ditesh Kumar: PHP System i Workshop for ISV’s

Posted: October 30th, 2006, 2:38pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

IBM is running a PHP on the System i workshop for ISV’s in Kuala Lumpur:

This workshop is designed for ISVs interested in understanding the PHP environment on System i including installation, administration, development, porting and troubleshooting. Presentations, demonstrations and hands on labs will be used. This is not a PHP programming course.

The target audience is ISVs interested in porting existing PHP applications or developing new PHP applications that integrate with System i resources.

This workshop is available to ISVs as part of the IBM System i5 Initiative for Innovation which includes a solution assessment, education, technical assistance, hardware access, technical support, and more at no cost! For more information or to participate, go to ibm.com/servers/enable/application/innovation

Colin Charles: Number portability, only next year? Wake up MCMC

Posted: October 30th, 2006, 2:31pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has decided that by December, next year mobile number portability will be available in Malaysia. This has been available in Australia since September, and more importantly in Singapore since 1997! (read more on mobile number portability).

A proposal has been floating around since 2004, and its going to take them another year to implement it. Three years to conduct research. Datuk Dr Halim Shafie, heading the Commission and all their research has decided that Maxis, Celcom and DiGi are receptive to the idea - so what’s the reason for the deferment?

Healthy competition between three providers is hard to do. Opening that limit up in itself will encourage more competition (even for service reselling, like how B resells Optus). Of course in Malaysia, its all about protecting the connected companies.

“Telcos in those countries have improved their delivery services since MNP was implemented,” he added.

It seems like Halim Shafie knows what MNP will mean for the consumer. Yet, its been dished about for the last couple of years. Let’s hail the day a consumer rights group in Malaysia will actually be taken seriously or perform useful actions.

Technorati Tags: malaysia, mcmc, MNP, mobile, number, portability

Paul Ooi: Error Message La

Posted: October 30th, 2006, 10:44am GMT

Tags: [edit]

Sometime I felt it’s fun working in IT line. I got an email today, they asked me explain why they can’t send email address to the receipient. The error message as below

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

handsome@xxx.xxx.my
Unrouteable address

Well, Unrouteable address, it clearly said that the email address is unrouteable, or other saying is the email address is not exist. System also indicated that it’s a permanent error, why… why… why they don’t understand simple english, even though my english is so so I can roughly know it’s an error.

Furthermore I hate their attitude that sounded like it’s our fault… Sometime, you just wonder should laugh or get mad to this people, but sometime I also felt fun to deal with this people.

Takizo Technology: PHPWomen

Posted: October 30th, 2006, 8:24am GMT

Tags: PHP Programming [edit]

There are respected girls coded PHP too. Want to know them? Pay a visit to phpwomen.

Tags: PHP, Programming

Ow Mun Heng: MySQL Prepared Statement Stored Procedure

Posted: October 29th, 2006, 8:22pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

Just learning about MySQL Stored Procedure programming.

I wanted to do a simple SP where I want the # of rows from specific tables.

I did this initially

DELIMITER $$
DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS `test`.`sp_countrows`$$
CREATE DEFINER=`root`@`%` PROCEDURE `sp_countrows`()
BEGIN
SELECT count(*) AS 'Test1(QTY)' FROM test1;
SELECT count(*) AS 'Test2(QTY)' FROM test2;
END$$
DELIMITER ;
mysql> call sp_countrows();
+------------+
| Test1QTY) |
+------------+
| 4324 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

+-----------+
| Test2(QTY) |
+-----------+
| 3116 |
+-----------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

but when I put in the table_names as a variable I don't get anything.

eg:
DELIMITER $$
DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS `dbxmldmysql`.`sp_countrows2`$$
CREATE PROCEDURE `dbxmldmysql`.`sp_countrows2` (in_table_name
varchar(30))
BEGIN
SELECT count(*) AS 'QTY' FROM in_table_name;
END$$
DELIMITER ;

mysql>call sp_countrows2();
ERROR 1318 (42000): Incorrect number of arguments for PROCEDURE
dbxmldmysql.sp_countrows2; expected 1, got 0
mysql> call sp_countrows2(test1);
ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column 'test1' in 'field list'
mysql> call sp_countrows2('test1');
ERROR 1146 (42S02): Table 'test.in_table_name' doesn't exist

Then I found out about prepared statements and what it does.

After which, the SP became

DELIMITER $$

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS `test`.`sp_countrows`$$
CREATE DEFINER=`root`@`%` PROCEDURE `sp_countrows`(in_table_name varchar(30))
READS SQL DATA
BEGIN
SET @s = CONCAT('SELECT count(*) AS "', in_table_name, '(QTY)" FROM ', in_table_name);
PREPARE stmt FROM @s;
EXECUTE stmt;
END$$

DELIMITER ;

And then some. (I tried to do cursors via this new procedure which will query the information_schema.tables database and return all the table_names in a specific database (test) in this case.

DELIMITER $$

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS `test`.`sp_countrows_testl`$$
CREATE DEFINER=`root`@`%` PROCEDURE `sp_countrows_test`()
READS SQL DATA
BEGIN

DECLARE l_table_name varchar(30);
DECLARE l_done INT DEFAULT 0;

DECLARE table_name_csr cursor for
SELECT table_name
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE table_schema='test';

DECLARE CONTINUE HANDLER FOR NOT FOUND SET l_done=1;

OPEN table_name_csr;

table_name: LOOP
FETCH table_name_csr into l_table_name;

IF l_done=1 THEN
LEAVE table_name;
END IF;

SET @s = CONCAT('SELECT count(*) AS "', l_table_name, '(QTY)" FROM ', l_table_name);
PREPARE stmt FROM @s;
EXECUTE stmt;

END LOOP table_name;
close table_name_csr;

END$$

DELIMITER ;

And thus I have my results all nicely in one place..

:-)

Happy and can sleep now.

Mohd Irwan Jamaluddin: Unbreakable Linux; Red Hat responds

Posted: October 29th, 2006, 4:05pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

As expected, Red Hat reacts :D

Excerpt from [www.redhat.com]

-----8-----
Red Hat responds.

The opportunity for Linux just got bigger. Oracle's support for Linux reaffirms Red Hat's technical industry leadership and the end of proprietary Unix. It's no accident that Red Hat was chosen #1 in value two years running. Want to know what else we think? Read on.

Red Hat & Oracle Partnership

Q: Does Oracle's recent announcement change Red Hat's partnership with Oracle?

A: No. Red Hat has had a productive 7-year relationship with Oracle. Red Hat will continue to work closely with Oracle to optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss middleware subscriptions for Oracle products, and to support joint customers.

Red Hat & JBoss Subscriptions

Q: Does Oracle's announcement include support for the Red Hat Application Stack, JBoss, Hibernate, Red Hat GFS, Red Hat Cluster Suite, and Red Hat Directory Server?

A: No. Oracle does not support any of these leading open source products.

Hardware Compatibility

Q: Oracle says their Linux support includes the same hardware compatibility and certifications as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Is this true?

A: No. Oracle has stated they will make changes to the code independently of Red Hat. As a result these changes will not be tested during Red Hat's hardware testing and certification process, and may cause unexpected behavior. Hence Red Hat hardware certifications are invalidated.

Software Compatibility

Q: Oracle says their Linux support includes the same software compatibility and ISV certifications of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Is this true?

A: No. Oracle has stated they will make changes to the code independently of Red Hat. These changes will not be tested during Red Hat's software testing and certification process, and may cause unexpected behavior. Hence Red Hat software certifications are invalidated.

Binary Compatibility

Q: Will Oracle's Linux support be binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux so that my applications continue to work?

A: There is no way to guarantee that changes made by Oracle will maintain API (Application Programming Interface) or ABI (Application Binary Interface) compatibility; there may be material differences in the code that will result in application failures. Compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux can only be verified by Red Hat's internal test suite.

Source Code Compatibility

Q: Will Oracle's product result in a "fork" of the operating system?

A: Yes. The changes Oracle has stated they will make will result in a different code base than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Simply put, this derivative will not be Red Hat Enterprise Linux and customers will not have the assurance of compatibility with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux hardware and application ecosystem..

Updates

Q: Oracle says they will provide the same updates as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Can they do this?

A: There are multiple requirements to building binary compatible software. One piece is the source code; another is the build and test environment. While Oracle may be able to take the source code at some point after a Red Hat update release, obviously their build and test environment will be inherently different than that of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For similar reasons, there is no guarantee that the source code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux update will work correctly when integrated into Oracle's modified Linux code base.

Support & Maintenance Lifecycle

Q: In order to get support and maintenance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, do you need to upgrade to the most recent version?

A: No. Red Hat subscribers enjoy support and updates for all versions for up to 7 years. Throughout that time, Red Hat provides regular maintenance releases as part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. This is supplemented through our support services by a 'hot-fix' process that provides critical bug fixes on a customer-specific basis. Oracle "reserves the right to desupport certain Enterprise Linux program releases" as part of their Oracle Enterprise Linux support policies.

Support Level Flexibility

Q: Does Red Hat allow you to tailor your support level to your workload?

A: Yes. Many customers match their Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription level to their application SLA requirements. For example, customers may choose a Basic subscription for non-mission critical file and print servers, while selecting Premium subscriptions for database servers. Oracle does not allow this flexibility - their support policy reads: "If acquiring Enterprise Linux Premier Support, all of your Oracle supported systems must be supported with Enterprise Linux Premier Support."

Security

Q: Can Oracle produce timely security updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux as they stated?

A: No. There will be a delay between the time a Red Hat Enterprise Linux update is issued and the time the source code makes its way to Oracle. There is no guarantee that the source code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux update will work correctly when integrated into Oracle's Linux code base; this integration and test will take additional time. In the case where the update corrects critical security flaws, Oracle customers may be exposed to additional risk.

Linux Assurance

Q: Red Hat Enterprise Linux has government security certifications including Common Criteria Evaluated Assurance Level (EAL) 4+/Controlled Access Protection Profile (CAPP). Will Oracle's version of Linux inherit these certifications?

A: No. Common Criteria evaluations are conducted on a specific configuration of software and hardware. Any changes to the software such as those Oracle has announced will invalidate certification.

Customer Collaboration

Q: Will Oracle's Linux customers have the same degree of influence over Oracle's Linux as Red Hat's customers do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

A: The support we provide for Red Hat Enterprise Linux starts when Red Hat and its customers collaborate in the design of new versions. This collaboration extends through the development, testing, and production deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Vendors of a derivative distribution are simply not positioned to provide their customers the same collaboration opportunity.

Support Partners

Q: Hardware vendors such as Dell, HP, and IBM provide support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. How is Oracle's support offering different?

A: Red Hat's hardware partners provide front line support to customers, backed by Red Hat. Red Hat has a close contractual relationship with these partners, which requires training, well defined escalation paths, Red Hat back-line support, and cooperative customer issue management. Our joint customers enjoy the same degree of collaborative participation as any Red Hat customer.

More to follow...
-----8-----

Hot stories again!
------------------
Will Red Hat Survive?
[developers.slashdot.org]

Reactions to Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Move
[osnews.com]

Reactions to Oracle's Unbreakable Linux move
[www.linux-watch.com]

What to make of Oracle vs. Red Hat?
[www.linux-watch.com]

Oracle nie pulak memang keras kepala; seboleh-boleh nak jadi "player" dalam banyak bidang. Kalau boleh berbaik-baik dengan Red Hat, wujudkan win-win situation lagi baik. Kewujudan Unbreakable Linux, bukan setakat mengundang pertarungan dengan Red Hat, malah Novell sekali. Mungkin juga Oracle "hangin" dengan Red Hat kerana membeli JBoss, hehe.

Lawan Oracle buat masa ini:
Database - big time (DB2, MS-SQL), small time (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase, Informix)
Application - SAP (tak nampak ada lagi selain SAP yg berani lawan)
*terkini OS - Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SuSE Enterprise Linux (silap-silap mengundang lawan dengan Solaris)

Ow Mun Heng: Mrxvt - I think I've found a new friend

Posted: October 29th, 2006, 4:04pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

I was looking at terminal emulaters of late,(actually just like 10 min ago) as I was looking to see which terminal is actually better than xterm. (Yes, I still use Xterm and I do prefer it to gnome-terminal)

Anyhow, one thing I was playing with was mrxvt. I found that in the man page at least, mrxt has an option to skip the scrollings to keep up in terms of scrolling speed.

</quote>
-j|+j
Enable / disable jump scrolling. Normally, text is scrolled one
line at a time; this option allows mrxvt to move multiple lines at
a time so that it does not fall as far behind. Its use is strongly
recommended since it makes mrxvt much faster when scanning through large amounts of text. [jumpScroll]
</quote>

While I didn't really find much of a difference, (just doing a ls -laR) I enabled it nonetheless, and then it hit me, looking at the CPU usage while it was transvering the directories, my CPU is like 100% or so for those few seconds. Then I started to wonder if this might have an effect on my emerges (source compilation) as I normally emerge using xterm.

I started digging a little bit more to see which terminal emulaters were "faster" in terms of scrolling speed.

I found this page. which although being a bit OLD (2005), it still had a little pointer on what I can do to benchmark.

time for x in `seq 10000`; do echo {a,b,c,d,e}{A,B,C,D,E}; done

I also read through this page which gave a low-down on some of the speeds. (also an old page from circa 2005 )

And do this on a few terminal emulators I have on my machine.

gnome-terminal : real 0m4.264s, 0m4.327s, 0m7.707s
xterm : real 0m20.555s, 0m3.464s, 0m3.501s
Eterm : real 0m1.115s, 0m1.157s, 0m1.025s
mrxvt : real 0m5.077s, 0m4.843s, 0m4.681s

Note : for Xterm, the 1st run is slow mainly, (I think) is because it has to fill up the scrollback buffer.

So.. it would seem that Eterm would be the fastest and I'll most likely use that to do mt Gentoo Emerges in the near future.

However, having used Xterm for so long, and after finding out _just_ how convenient having terminal tabs can be (I use screen in xterm), and it having a multitude of keyboard shortcuts, you might be seeing a convert. :-)

Meling Mudin: the strange mess we get ourselves into

Posted: October 29th, 2006, 12:18pm GMT

Tags: [edit]

dear internet,

thanks for the endless good time. i am now going to finish up quicksilver, and re-read war and peace just for kicks.

excuse me while i discuss matters with the porcelain queen.

listening to: black sabbath - war pigs - luke’s wall

Meling Mudin: i gotta the right to be wrong

Posted: October 28th, 2006, 6:20pm BST

Tags: [edit]

this beer is teh shit!

the week that was:

spend long days hacking (pen-test) and shit, and long nights involved in acts of libations
working when the city is dead is effing boring
hacking (quite) a secure application is even more boring, especially when all the attack vectors have been covered

clubbing:

quite frankly, the clubs in KL sucks. big time. i would prefer the clubs in jakarta over the ones here anytime. red square, in arcadia at plaza senayan is ten times better than the loft in asian heritage row, kl, which is full of pretentious chicks and their metrosexual boyfriends. and stadium, kicks more ass than ZOUK KL. and these clubs in jakarta are happening not just because of the girls and the friendly waitressess, but the djs are good, damn good and they play none of the crap that the loft’s resident dj plays. for me, good electronic music is a must, and none of the clubs here can provide that.

listening to: the eagles - hotel california

Wahlau: Firefox 2 with some tweaks...

Posted: October 28th, 2006, 3:14pm BST

Tags: [edit]

having firefox 2.0 installed (came together with Ubuntu Edgy Eft), it is nicer experience using the brand new browser from mozilla. One thing i do miss, is unable to have my sessions restored when i restart browser manually. By default Firefox 2.0 can recover from crash the openned tabs/windows, but a normal restart is *no crash*. So i am pretty "handicapped" for 2 days, since i always have friendly google smiling at me when i start my browser.

being able to laze around a little on a nice (cold) Saturday morning, i went on and search a little for solution: and i found this. It is actually that simple: first go to about:config and you will see all types of configuration settings. use the filter to search for browser.startup.page. The default value should be 1. Change that to 3. Upon restart you should get the same effect as session manager! yippie... now i have the same browsing experience, with better features and security (i read about that only :P)

Aizat Faiz: Beryl and Dual Monitors

Posted: October 28th, 2006, 1:08pm BST

Tags: [edit]

I have a spare monitor at home which I use to increase the amount of desktop real estate I have to about 2048000 additional pixels (thats 1600×1280). I do this partly because my laptop has a limited resolution of1024×768, which to say the least is very measly. The trouble I am having

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Wordpress 2.0.5 is out

Posted: October 28th, 2006, 1:04pm BST

Tags: wordpress blogger blogging Blogs blog [edit]

Wordpress 2.0.5 is out, it is a bugfix release that fixes around 50 bugs lying around Wordpress 2.0.4. Among bugs that has been fixed are :

Fixes the redundant “no follow” bug
/feed/ no longer display “404″ page if there is no post
Post title now can have ‘%’ character
Fix the “RSS 2.0 invalid” bug

In addition to various bugfix Wordpress 2.0.5 plugins page now are sorted according to the plugin name out from the box. For those who are reluctant to upgrade to 2.0.5 (Ronan), I guess you can still wait, because Wordpress 2.1 (with some feature enhancements) is going to be launched soon.

Well, that’s for now…. and ah yes, I’ll be installing Ubuntu Edgy Eft on Compaq v2613 tonight, so expect me to be busy

Tags: wordpress, blogger, blogging, blogs, blog

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Seymour Cakes: Top 9 books to read to become a professional Java developer

Posted: October 28th, 2006, 12:15pm BST

Tags: [edit]

You can forget the other shallow Java books on the market. I have put together a short list of great Java books for newbies aspiring to become professional Java programmer. These are the books I wished I had when I was starting out early in my career.

Follow this link here to view the books.

No these books won't turn you into a great Java developer overnight, but invest time and absorb the knowledge and you are surely on the right path.

However if you absolutely need to read a good Java newbie book this year, then get Agile Java(TM): Crafting Code with Test-Driven Development (Robert C. Martin Series)

.

Or you just want to sharpen the skills regardless of the language you use then get The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

.

Ultimately, a good Java book will always make you a better programmer.

Ditesh Kumar: Anti-khalwat men terrify elderly foreign couple

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 3:31am BST

Tags: [edit]

In yet another sign that the 20th century secular Malaysia is going down the path of religious extremism, it was reported that members of the Islamic Affairs Department raided the apartment of an eldery American couple for alleged khalwat.

If the conduct of the Islamic Affairs Department affects the civil rights and liberties of non-Muslims, shouldn’t they be required to acquire authorization from a competent officer of the judicial system (such as a judge)? This conduct would be clearly illegal otherwise in any other context. Why are they allowed to run loose without any regulation? Why are citizens and guests in this country treated as criminals and the onus put on them to prove their innocence? Doesn’t this run contrary to the established course of law?

From the perspective of a law-abiding citizen, I can’t help but think that if the members of the department can treat foreigners who are guests in this country without a modicum of respect, what hope is there for citizens of this country? Their unruly behaviour is surely an infringement on the rights of the citizens and guests in Malaysia and they must be held accountable for it.

The Tourism Minister, Tengku Adnan, has stated that he will ask the Tourism Board to investigate the incident. This measure is surely insufficient by any account. Stricter legislation must be introduced to regulate the future conduct of the Islamic Affairs Department to ensure that the civil rights and liberties of citizens and guests in Malaysia are not infringed. Furthermore, a system of suitable compensation to victims of unjustified conduct by the department must be established to ensure that the actions of the department are kept in check. An extract from the newspaper article:

Barnhart and his wife were asleep at 2am when there was pounding on the door and male voices shouting in Bahasa Malaysia.

Fearing an attack or robbery, Barnhart told the men to go away or he would call the police.

One of the voices, speaking in English, identified the group of men as Islamic Affairs Department officers and ordered him to open the door immediately….
“I told them we were Christians and they were not to come in. They then demanded to inspect the apartment.

“They were threatening and aggressive. Again I said no,” he said.

He said the men then demanded to see his “woman”.

After another heated exchange of words, he allowed the men to see his wife. The men, he said, then demanded to see their marriage licence.

…

A ministry spokesman said the minister is upset and has ordered the tourism board to look into the incident.

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/27/Ditesh_Kumar__Firefox___Expos%c3%a9___foXpose'

Ditesh Kumar: Firefox + Exposé = foXpose

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 1:55am BST

Tags: [edit]

foXpose is a Firefox extension that effectively (but not yet as smoothly) performs an exposé on all your open browser windows. A screenshot to savor:

Firefox + Expose

Ditesh Kumar: Are you living in a computer simulation?

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 1:35am BST

Tags: [edit]

From the simulation argument:

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/27/Gurdip__Pakistan%e2%80%99s_Cricket_Takes_A_Nose_Dive'

Gurdip: Pakistan’s Cricket Takes A Nose Dive

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 11:22pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Just short of half an hour ago, Pakistan earned themselves a “well deserved” exit from the Champions trophy after their defeat against South Africa. Many of us were shocked with India’s defeat at the hands of West Indies yesterday, but I don’t think anyone can express their thoughts on Pakistan’s cricket right now. Pakistan was all out for a mere 89 runs. Now, for a Test playing nation, how low can you go?

Pakistan started off brightly, taking 2 wickets in the first 3 balls of the match, but then, Pakistan’s performance once again declined as the match went on. South Africa’s score of 213, was by all means not an impossible target to chase. After the interval, when the Pakistani batsmen took to the field, they put on the worst batting display I have ever seen in my life. For the first time, I have to say this, Malacca’s Under - 15 would have performed a whole lot better than Pakistan.

The highest scorer for Pakistan was Yasir Arafat, who added 27 to Pakistan’s total. If he wasn’t playing, I don’t think Pakistan could face the media for quite a while. Nobody can deny that Pakistan has played some of the worst Cricket in the last couple of months. They lost their series to England, they were the first team to ever forfeit a test match, with a protest that got them nothing but their Captain, Inzamam Ul-Haq banned for a number of matches, and then they had two players, Mohammad Asif, and Shoaib Akhtar sent back at the start of the Champions Trophy for supposedly testing positive for a banned anabolic called Nandrolone, and now, crashing out of the Champions Trophy with the lowest score in the competition.

Back to Pakistans score, the second highest scorer was Shahid Afridi, who managed only 14 runs. As a matter of fact, the extras given by South Africa amounting to 16 runs was higher than Afridi’s total. Everyone else on the team, played horribly, with the third highest contribution of 7 runs coming from both Younis Khan and Umar Gul.

How much longer can the Pakistani fans stay patient with the current performance of their team? How long will it be before the Pakistani people start to question the credibility of their national squad?

Aizat Faiz: Ubuntu 6.10 on ThinkPad R52

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 10:46pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Warning: You’ll be getting alot of these in the next few days…

So I’ve finally got it running, my IBM ThinkPad R52 is running Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft! Since around 4-5am this morning, don’t ask…

Mostly everything works out of the box, cd, or iso. This includes suspend, hibernate, wireless, and AIGLX (with Beryl)! I started of with a clean install. Backed up all my stuff, and reformatted my hard drive.

Some comments…

Its interesting to note that Ubuntu now uses the official Firefox icon, as the Debian team forked Firefox due to logo/trademark issues. So Ubuntu got into some ‘deal’ with Mozilla to let them use it, I don’t see why Debian could have done that as well? It maybe running the new-hot-off-the-press Firefox 2.0, but half my extensions aren’t working! I hope they get fixed soon .

The new init system is nice, I get to a login screen within 30 seconds! Which is great, considering previously it was 1 minute. Yes, if I was such a speed freak I may as well turn to Gentoo. To be honest, I feel like it…

But there have been some quirks here and there, which I’ve had to fix.

Hardware clock set to UTC

Previously Ubuntu had always adjusted itself, or I believe even asked if the hardware clock was set to UTC. This time round it didn’t. Fix? Edit /etc/default/rcS and change the UTC option to yes.

Xorg

For some reason my keyboards Right Alt wasn’t working, very peculiar. Similarly goes to my mouse scrollwheel, but thats common. So I opened up my Xorg.conf ( /etc/X11/xorg.conf ) and modified the InputDevice section for my mouse by adding the options “EmulateWheel”, and “EmulateWheelButton” as such:

Section “InputDevice” Identifier “Configured Mouse” Driver “mouse” Option “CorePointer” Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice” Option “Protocol” “ExplorerPS/2″ Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″ Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true” Option “EmulateWheel” “on” Option “EmulateWheelButton” “2″ EndSection

Interesting enough while perusing through it I found this:
Section “InputDevice” Identifier “Generic Keyboard” … Option “XkbOptions” “lv3:ralt_switch” EndSection

That last option “XkbOptions“, I’ve never seen, or heard of this option before

Lau Kai Jern: Upgraded to Kubuntu Edgy : Crash - vmware / some java stuff / fcitx

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 9:56pm BST

Tags: [edit]

I guess is not to say vmware crash. Is Just can’t start. Basically i am facing few problems. First vmware workstation (yes, I am still using workstation) 5.5.1 is not able to to reconfig / recompile in Edgy. I downloaded 5.5.2 and it compile fine, but it does not want to start. Secondly, some dummy java apps [...]

Mohd Irwan Jamaluddin: Unbreakable Linux, By Oracle - Is This The Next Big Thing?

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 2:38pm BST

Tags: [edit]

This is Unbreakable Linux:

I love the logo, it looks tough but cool ;) it reminds me of Polis Angkasa Gaban :D

Announcing Oracle Unbreakable Linux
Oracle Unbreakable Linux is a support
program that provides enterprises with industry-leading global support for
Linux. Recognizing the demand for true enterprise-quality Linux support and
seeing an opportunity to significantly reduce IT infrastructure costs, Oracle is
now offering Linux operating system support.

Oracle OpenWorld
Keynote: Larry Ellison unveils Oracle Unbreakable Linux
Oracle Unbreakable
Linux: FAQ, Data Sheet, Press Release, Consulting / Migration, and Customer and
Partner Endorsements
Now Until January 31, 2007: Free Trial for Oracle
Customers; 50% off Purchase for Everyone

For more details, refer to http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html?pageregion=ocom_hp_a_main_1_Linux_102506

Hot story!
----------
Oracle to Compete Wth Red Hat for Linux Support
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/25/2316221

Oracle Linux Uncovered
http://osnews.com/story.php/16305/Oracle-Linux-Uncovered

Oracle's Red Hat Rip-Off
http://osnews.com/story.php/16294/Oracles-Red-Hat-Rip-Off

Now, the question is: What's Red Hat's reaction?

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Howto Upgrade Ubuntu Dapper to Edgy Eft

Posted: October 27th, 2006, 11:38am BST

Tags: [edit]

If you already have Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS installed, and you’re kinda lazy to perfom a fresh installation of Ubuntu Edgy Eft, you can perform distribution upgrade from your Dapper Drake installations to Edgy Eft.

Here’s a quick way to do it :

Goto terminal ( From Desktop, goto Applications->Accessories->Terminal )

user@desktop:~$ sudo sed -e 's/dapper/ edgy/g'

-i /etc/apt/sources.list

user@desktop:~$ sudo apt-get update

user@desktop:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Then lay back while your distro upgrades itself.

Note: My X won’t start after upgrading from Xubuntu Dapper to it’s Edgy Eft counterpart. I fix it by doing “sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop”.

Updates (from Xubuntu website):

Xubuntu 6.10 has not yet officially been released, but you can already download the final stable .iso image here. Be aware though, that there may be some problems upgrading from the Dapper Drake version when using update-manager.
Similarly, if you use the default Ubuntu installation with GNOME, you may want to use “apt-get install ubuntu-desktop” *IF* your X won’t start after upgrading (might not affect you, btw).

Happy upgrading!

(thanks to johnny)

Tags: ubuntu, dapper, edgy eft, linux, debian, opensource, open source, gnu/linux

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Lau Kai Jern: Firewall Training .. Joke One

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 12:40am BST

Tags: [edit]

Finally today is the day. I got to train them what is Firewall. My plan is let them play with the firewall for few hours (pfsense) and see how far can they go. Well, after few hours and I finally discover they did not know what are they doing. I started to ask what is NAT [...]

Yusmar Yahaya: with OSX looks but it's still WinXP

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 12:24am BST

Tags: [edit]

I was working on some codes to create Yahoo! widgets when I ran out of programming ideas and suddenly just felt like changing my WinXP desktop interface to inclu

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft (and Fedora Core 6) Released!

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 11:58pm BST

Tags: ubuntu Linux gnu2Flinux debian fedora [edit]

I’m downloading the Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft iso as I’m typing this post right now. I’m going to install Edgy Eft on the laptop in my house, to see if it can use the broadcom based wireless internet out from the box. So expect some post about it around next week (yes i’m very

Lau Kai Jern: FreeBSD / xorg / nvidia / tv-output

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 11:22pm BST

Tags: [edit]

After a big mess with my xorg.conf. Finally TV-Output is working again. There are two output in my nvidia card. One is normal monitor output and the other one tvoutput (Those yellow color stuff).

(1)# cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Simple Layout”
Screen 0 “screen1″ 0 0
Screen 1 “screen2″ RightOf “screen1″
InputDevice “Mouse1″ “CorePointer”
InputDevice “Keyboard1″ “CoreKeyboard”
EndSection

Section “Files”
RgbPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/”
FontPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/”
EndSection

Section “Module”
# Load “type1″
# Load “speedo”
#This loads the GLX module
# Load “dri”
Load “dbe”
# Double buffer extension
SubSection “extmod”
Option “omit xfree86-dga”
# don’t initialise the DGA extension
EndSubSection

Load “freetype”
# Load “xtt”
Load “glx”
# This loads the DRI module
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Keyboard1″
Driver “kbd”
Option “AutoRepeat” “500 30″
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc101″
Option “XkbLayout” “us”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Mouse1″
Driver “mouse”
Option “Protocol” “auto”
Option “Device” “/dev/psm0″
#Option “Emulate3Buttons” “false”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
# Mouse-speed setting for PS/2 mouse.
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
# HorizSync 30-64 # multisync
# HorizSync 31.5, 35.2 # multiple fixed sync frequencies
# HorizSync 15-25, 30-50 # multiple ranges of sync frequencies
Identifier “monitor1″
HorizSync 30-64
VertRefresh 75.0
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “monitor2″
VendorName “Philips”
#DisplaySize 412 310
#HorizSync 30.0 - 40.0
#VertRefresh 50.0 - 50.0
HorizSync 60
VertRefresh 30-150
#ModeLine “720×576/50p” 27.0 720 744 800 864 576 581 583 625
#ModeLine “800×600/50p” 31.6 800 824 968 1000 600 602 603 632
#ModeLine “1024×768/50p” 31.6 800 824 968 1000 600 602 603 632
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “NvidiaCRT”
Driver “nvidia”
Option “RenderAccel” “true”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
Option “DPMS”
Screen 0
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “NvidiaTV”
Driver “nvidia”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
Option “DPMS”
Screen 1
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “screen1″
Device “NvidiaCRT”
Monitor “monitor1″
DefaultDepth 24
#Option “ConnectedMonitor” “CRT”
#Option “HWCursor” “On”
#Option “NvAGP” “2″
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1280×1024″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “screen2″
Device “NvidiaTV”
Monitor “monitor2″
DefaultDepth 24
Option “NoLogo” “true”
Option “RenderAccel” “true”
Option “ConnectedMonitor” “TV”
Option “TVStandard” “PAL-G”
Option “TVOutFormat” “Composite”
#Option “SecondMonitorHorizSync” “30-50″
Option “IgnoreEDID” “true”
#Option “HWCursor” “On”
Option “NvAGP” “2″
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″
EndSubSection
EndSection

I also discover a nice stuff in mplayer, try out

mplayer -display :0.1 /path/to/move.something

Aizat Faiz: Week of Releases

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 10:42pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Wow, what a week! Talk about alot of releases from famous FOSS projects. The Firefox finally got their 2.0 release, the Fedora Team has brought along another fantastic release with Fedora Core 6. Last not but not least on everyones tongue is the release of Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft.

So here I am eagerly waiting for the download to complete for Ubuntu 6.10. I wonder what the rest of the week will bring us?

Seymour Cakes: Firefox 2.0 is out and this is how you get Newsfox to work

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 9:35pm BST

Tags: [edit]

If you are like me, who reads alot of online mags and blogs, you need a RSS reader. And if you happen to use Newsfox and Firefox 2.0, you would know how pissed I was.

Well, be glad the sufferings is over and this is how you get Newsfox to work now.

Step 1: Go [newsfox.mozdev.org].
Step 2: Install dev version of Newsfox
Step 3: Restart and rejoice.

Actually you can cheat by just clicking here to install.
This links directly to the deve xpi file. Have fun!

Seymour Cakes: If you are playing with pax-wicket (ops4j) ...

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 9:25pm BST

Tags: [edit]

.. and if you bump into maven2 problem with the Java Activation framework, this is what you should do;

1. When you see this error, go download JAF from Sun here.



Downloading: http://repository.ops4j.org/maven2//javax/activation/activation/1.0.2/activation-1.0.2.jar
[WARNING] Unable to get resource from repository ops4j-repository (http://repository.ops4j.org/maven2/)
   Downloading: http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/javax/activation/activation/1.0.2/activation-1.0.2.jar


[WARNING] Unable to get resource from repository central (http://repo1.maven.org/maven2)


[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------


[ERROR] BUILD ERROR


[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------


[INFO] Failed to resolve artifact.




Missing:


----------


1) javax.activation:activation:jar:1.0.2




  Try downloading the file manually from:


      http://java.sun.com/products/javabeans/glasgow/jaf.html




  Then, install it using the command:


      mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=javax.activation -DartifactId=activation 


          -Dversion=1.0.2 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=/path/to/file




  Path to dependency:


        1) org.ops4j.pax.wicket:service:osgi-bundle:0.2.2-SNAPSHOT


        2) javax.activation:activation:jar:1.0.2




----------


1 required artifact is missing.

2. Unjar the jaf file, and extract out the activation.jar.

3. Then only, you import it to your maven repository through this;

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=javax.activation -DartifactId=activation
-Dversion=1.0.2 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=./activation.jar

4. mvn install.

Yes, I should have know better. :-(
BTW, pax-wicket is picking up of steam lately, with new example and all.

Seymour Cakes: A little thought about PetalingStreet.org's AutoPinger

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 9:19pm BST

Tags: [edit]

I was setting up my new Wordpress blog and applying for the PetalingStreet.org autopinger. The instruction to setup AutPinger for self-installed server caught my attention.

To obtain the Ping URLs for Project Petaling Street, please write an email with your blog URL (e.g. http://www.myblogname.com) as the SUBJECT to the following email address: autopinger (a) petalingstreet.org. A reply with the latest ping URL will be sent to you. This ping URL changes on a regular basis to defeat ping spammers so please make sure your membership details are up to date as an email notification will be sent to you whenever the ping URL changes.

Changing the ping URL is a feeble attempt to discourage spammers. In fact it is quite easy to solve that problem (if I'm a spammer that is).

Just apply for an auto pinger URL myself, and have my SPAM scripts to update accordingly when the ping URL changes.

Talk about spamming, I am reading this book, "Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side

" by Spammer X. I don't know who is Spammer X. And I am not sure if he is actually happy that he couldn't get any fame from writing this book. But hell, I'm sure he enjoys the wealth. You see this is a really good book.

If you have the time, I recomend it. I couldn't stop reading after the first chapter.

Wahlau: Edgy is out!

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 7:03pm BST

Tags: [edit]

after days of patience training, the day i've been waiting for since weeks is here. Today Ubuntu released Edgy Eft.

for download of iso, i propose to use the torrent file. Then you can also help to distribute the iso to others who might need it from a computer near (or not near) you . For Upgraders (like me), check out the upgrade instructions.

so i'm off to my alternate and normal iso download. see you soon :)

Colin Charles: Recent MySQL happenings: from digg, to $1,000 for a video contest

Posted: October 26th, 2006, 7:34am BST

Tags: [edit]

There have been some interesting MySQL happenings lately. First we had the Enterprise/Community split. I’ll talk more about that in terms of distributions shipping it, as I’ll be liaising with them.

But today, I’m going to talk about Digg. I listen to Diggnation, a surprisingly funny podcast to keep track of the weekly Web happenings. But I’ve never actually paid the site a visit. Until today.

Its the epitome of Web 2.0. User driven content. Its not like Slashdot. I’ve seen many people compare to it, but it isn’t. Slashdot is for tech-content. Digg is for anything. Slashdot has a bunch of editors. Digg is user-edited.

And for users, if your stories get promoted to the front-page, you get ratings. The more ratings, the merrier, right? It probably also increases the trust model, as higher ratings usually mean that you’ve got good news sense. And we all know that if your page gets “Dugg”, you’re going to be receiving some amazing amounts of traffic. Its like a popularity contest.

So I took the liberty of searching for “mysql”. And I found the Converting scripts fromt he old PHP MySQL extension to MySQLi submitted by another DIgg user, so I dugg it. I couldn’t resist further, and I submitted Do babies dream of being database engineers?

Yes, thats a really funny one. Keeping in mind that MySQL makes databases, not videos, we’re now rewarding people in the recently announced MySQL Video Contest in where the top prize is a spanking USD$1,000. December 15th is the closing date.

The video, Do babies dream of being database engineers? actually inspired this contest. View it, have a laugh, rate it, send it to groups, or digg it.

(More comments in the near future about Digg and YouTube, for certain).

Technorati Tags: contest, digg, mysql, video, web, youtube

Aizat Faiz: Intellectual Property at MIMOS

Posted: October 25th, 2006, 12:16pm BST

Tags: [edit]

I was just going through my numerous RSS feeds when I came upon this article: MIMOS promotes intellectual property via reward scheme.

Intellectual Property, as in what sense, patents, more specifically software patents? The document didn’t really say. Though as far as I know software patents do not exist in Malaysia, but maybe things have changed? Or will…

This may not have been emphasised in the past, so I want to make it clear that IP generation is now part of Mimos’ key performance indicators.

Is IP really a performance indicator? My opinion are perhaps skewed by my hatred towards Software Patents.

“This is in line with the Government’s initiative to reward and recognise the contributions of researchers to the nation,” said Wahab.

Yay! This I am inline with.

The eight areas which the information and communications technology-applied research agency will be focusing on are cyber security, encryption systems, grid computing and multi-service networks, wireless broadband, micro-electro-mechanical/nano-electro-mechanical systems, advanced informatics, knowledge technology and micro systems.

If any of their patents are software based. I worry about that if a government body is able to patent software, this could perhaps pave the way for Software Patents.

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Released!

Posted: October 25th, 2006, 11:53am BST

Tags: [edit]

Finally, the official Mozilla Firefox 2.0 has been released, after a brief commotion about “Early Release” link provided from a digg post. I guess some people has learnt valuable

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/24/Open_Malaysia__Everyone_should_read_this._http___www.huffingtonpost.com_james_love_when_standards_are_politi_b_32192.html'

Open Malaysia: Everyone should read this. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/when-standards-are-politi_b_32192.html

Posted: October 24th, 2006, 10:19pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Everyone should read this. [www.huffingtonpost.com]

One key comment in this article:-

"Next year Microsoft will try to sell the public on it's latest file format -- "Open XML", which they are marketing as a "competitor" to ODF as an "open" data format. Open XML was described by one expert as a standard that only Microsoft could implement - similar to a job description custom made for a single job applicant."

Malaysia does not it seems have a significant creative and innovative developer community like that say in San Francisco and elsewhere so I suppose we are not up in arms over this issue. However most of the governments of the world are beginning to be aware of the major issue of being beholden to a single vendor for critical data. Consider historically, this particular vendor's track record in the legal space and the way it treats its competitors. It is not our intention to resort to the same tactics but in the interest of fair play, priority should be given to truly open standards. And here we need the Malaysian government's help. One must consider not just the technical aspects alone (which with proper motivation and participation can be developed - technically nothing is really impossible - within reason) but to support fundamental principles of good governance, equality and fair play.

This has to be good for aspiring Malaysian Technopreneurs as well. For one the ODF format will be much more portable from the perspective of cross platform availability in terms of applications from the many distros of Linux to even Windows based systems and will work consistently. Any one can create their own application either open or proprietary (not just Office suites but workflow apps as well as numerous others) and write to this format for transmittal to other systems without fearing that some arbitrary changes in the future that will affect the functionality of their applications in a detrimental and non competitive way. This does not happen because there is the OASIS governance process and the specifications for ODF is part of an open process involving many parties.

Adopting ODF is part of a strategy. The definition of a strategy is: having a vision of where you want to be and a step by step implementation plan on how get there. Can you see how ODF fits in Malaysia's ICT agenda? If you can't, well, then we (Malaysians) are in deep trouble.....

Mansur

Wei Chong: console text based applications

Posted: October 24th, 2006, 4:00pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Looking at mypapit's blog on elinks, I decide to add an apps or two to the list.
First of all, for dudes like me who can't live without an IM installed, what choice do with have when in console? Check out centericq.
What about for those who likes to view images? well, if you have framebuffer activated, fbida is a good choice, otherwise zgv is another alternative, as it uses SVGAlib. Furthermore, it seems that these viewer can be configure as external viewer for elinks and lynx. But don't quote me no that, I haven't tried that yet.
As for video, of course we have mplayer compiled with either SVGAlib, framebuffer, libaa (yeap, one thing you don't see often in Windows etc, ability to play video in ascii art ;-) or better yet libcaca (yeap, you can even have color ascii art).

As a side note, I noticed from mypapit's blog there is this ads about kedaicd.com that sells ready made *NIX CD. Nope I have got nothing to do with their business but I thought its something worth mentioning since it may be convienient for some Malaysian user. What's more, it seem that their location is in Alor Setar, where I grew up, bravo!

Lau Kai Jern: Long Rest, Long Holiday and Long Wait

Posted: October 24th, 2006, 2:23pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Tomorrow will be last and final day of the long holiday. Gonna start work day after tomorrow and guess what I ganna give a Firewall Tranning to a buch of super duper ……

em .. well… got no idea how to descripe them.

Ok, these are the things I’ve been waiting

Lau Kai Jern: When Bandwidth Goes Cheaper ….

Posted: October 22nd, 2006, 3:23am BST

Tags: [edit]

Funny and silly things will always happend when a human or humans take things for granted.

First of all, Yahoo and Skype did a very good job. The latest version of Yahoo IM and good old skype got a very strong support on voice chat.

But…

What does Malaysian use broadband for ?

I was with some young chaps in a place with Internet (friend’s house). This is what I saw.

First of all, they create a voice group chat. This can be done with latest Yahoo IM or skype.

Follow by they take turns to play their selected songs and started to “Sing” thru the voice chat. With Mics and ears phone , of couse. I call this as KOB , Karaoke Over Broadband.

Still remember those day when Net2Phone came out ? The day when everyone still fighting over the phones for a dail-up connection ? 14.4 , 28.8 , 33.6 and 56kbps …

I still remember when i first heard my uncle voice from the computer speakers thru my 56k modem. All of us was so happy.

Well … Long lives Broadband.

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/22/Colin_Charles__Flight_attendant_gets_inspired_by_%e2%80%9cVeni._Vedi._Codi.%e2%80%9d'

Colin Charles: Flight attendant gets inspired by “Veni. Vedi. Codi.”

Posted: October 22nd, 2006, 2:53am BST

Tags: [edit]

I spoke to the Apple folk on Friday in Sydney, and wore my “Veni. Vidi. Codi.” t-shirt that was gifted to all WWDC 2006 attendees. After Virgin decided that we shouldn’t leave Sydney, changing our gates three times, because of the bad weather, we finally left. When I did land in Melbourne, one of the flight attendants was talking to me because of the t-shirt I was wearing and he wanted advice on buying his first Mac.

He’s now sold on the idea of a MacBook, and even if he needed the Windows goodness, he’d get it, thanks to BootCamp/Parallels. Merchandising is important…

Incidentally, at the second gate, they told us the plane there was unserviceable. However, they managed to fly that to the (sunny) Gold Coast. Seeing that there were no major dramas in Saturday’s papers, I guess planes can become unserviceable depending on the weather?

Oh, and I tried Keynote (demo-version for 30 days). Man, I was impressed. Its highly polished. And it works well with the remotes that Apple ship nowadays. It seems to take presentations to the next level. And the interface, its just simply amazing. Need to outdent a bullet? Just drag it and the grid shows up. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Elinks : the best text-based web browser

Posted: October 22nd, 2006, 1:07pm BST

Tags: browser internetbrowser elinks Linux ubuntu [edit]

If you like to browse the internet, and suddenly have to work in a text-based only environment, then I suggest that you use the Elinks web browser.

It is the best text-based web browser i ever used besides the infamous lynx. I has features that can be found in other GUI-based popular browser like :

Table and frames rendering
Tabbed Browsing
IPV6 support
CSS support
Javascript support
Colour support
Support http, https, ftp and smb protocol
History browsing

With these kind of features, I dont think you will miss browsing from a GUI based browser much. In Ubuntu, Elinks also available as a lite or normal package, the normal package is part of the Ubuntu main repository while the lite package without extra scripting support is available in the Universe repo.

I recommend Elinks for hardcore internet surfers that have to work under text-based environment, because I’m sure they’ll appreciate every bit that elinks has to offer.

Tags: browser, internet browser, elinks, linux, ubuntu, internet, surf

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Meling Mudin: the minutes between us are really years

Posted: October 21st, 2006, 7:24pm BST

Tags: [edit]

my top artists according to last.fm

1  	672   DJ Krush
2 	356   DJ Shadow
3 	262   B

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/21/Gurdip__Fauzi%e2%80%99s_Racial_Comments'

Gurdip: Fauzi’s Racial Comments

Posted: October 21st, 2006, 5:41pm BST

Tags: [edit]

The email sent by Mohd Fauzi Mustaffa of Takaful Malaysia’s syariah department is nothing short of an extremist’s email. In the email, which was supposedly meant for internal circulation, Muslim employees were prohibited to extend Deepavali / Diwali greetings to Hindus. Now Fauzi, wha

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/21/Colin_Charles__Slashdot___MySQL_CEO__M%c3%a5rten_Mickos_Answers_Your_Questions'

Colin Charles: Slashdot | MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos Answers Your Questions

Posted: October 21st, 2006, 4:44pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Slashdot | MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos Answers Your Questions:

Its an interesting interview. And as Stewart pointed out, it seems that this must be the first Slashdot comment in where I get named fully. Heh. Kudos to Julien :)

Actually if you continue reading on the comments, you’ll notice that Marten responds to a lot of the threads - that in itself is impressive, right? When was the last time you saw a CEO write on Slashdot?

Okay, back to your daily grind… lets hope that doesn’t involve Slashdot.

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft unavailable for Ship It

Posted: October 21st, 2006, 11:29am BST

Tags: [edit]

With the release of Ubuntu Edgy Eft is approaching (October 26, 2006), I’ve a not so great news to those who are used to get free Ubuntu CDs from ShipIt. Canonical has no plan to make Edgy Eft available on Ship It as Dapper Drake is a long supported release.

So for those who wanted to get Ubuntu Edgy Eft, you can always try the old fashion way by downloading the ISO from Ubuntu Download website and/or buy it from your local cd store.

[Source]

Tags: ubuntu, edgy eft, dapper drake, debian, linux, distro, gnu/linux

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Meling Mudin: old habits die hard

Posted: October 21st, 2006, 11:08am BST

Tags: [edit]

first all, happy deepavali and selamat hari raya to all my hindu and muslim friends. second, me. i’ll be stranded in pj/kl for the holidays simply because i have another pen-test project going on for the whole week. so if any of you guys are stranded here (i.e. no kampung to go back to), and looking for beer buddies, i’ll be around in KL for the next five days.

next up: the sensor has been running for six days now, and i’m getting on average 1000+ alerts per day. initially, i was getting around 50 - 100 alerts, but the addition of nepenthes bumps the alerts higher. however, i’m still quite dissappointed at the amount of malware collected so far:
Exploit.DCOM.Gen Trojan.Agent-683 Trojan.IRCBot-722 Trojan.Mybot-5073 Trojan.Mybot-6208 Trojan.Mybot-7508 Trojan.Mybot-7794 Trojan.Mybot-7820 Trojan.Mybot-7922 Trojan.Mybot-7932 Trojan.Mybot-7937 Trojan.Mybot-7950 Trojan.Poebot-32 Trojan.SdBot-2407 Trojan.SdBot-2565 Trojan.SdBot-2631 Trojan.SdBot-2805 Trojan.SdBot-2816 Worm.Korgo.AJ Worm.Korgo.Y Worm.Padobot.M
well, i’m listening on one IP. hopefully with addition of more sensors, we’re going to see more interesting stuff.

listening to: mick jagger and dave stewart - let’s make it up

Lee Chin Sheng: Festival Moments

Posted: October 21st, 2006, 9:01am BST

Tags: [edit]

To all the people out there, I know you are in good mood - happy Deepavali, happy AidilFitry and happy holidays!!!!!

I won't be much online on next week so if any of you have emailed me regarding anything, please be patient on the reply. Cheers.

Enjoy!

Bakhtiar: Selamat menyambut Aidil Fitri

Posted: October 20th, 2006, 10:21pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Happy Eid ul Fitr to all Muslims. Drive home safely. No mood to work, or code, or anything. See ya later.

Bakhtiar: Quickie: converting to vcd and getting the right audio with tovid

Posted: October 20th, 2006, 4:22pm BST

Tags: [edit]

I got a mkv file that have two languages - jp and en. Now, if we use tovid to convert it to vcd-able file: tovid -in thefile.mkv -out outfile -vcd -pal tovid will use the first audio channel. In my case, that's en, which is not good since I like to wweofije...

Lau Kai Jern: Good Old (Really OLD) net-im / Kopete : The KDE

Posted: October 20th, 2006, 11:29am BST

Tags: [edit]

Been runnig KDE for quite some time. Em… Since i started to use Linux , I guess.

Almost a year a ago, I formatted my good old Slackware, (this baby has been following me and server as my Deskop). The OS has not been reinstall since my PIII 350 Mhz. Been moving the OS from HDD to HDD for more then 4 times and finally i feel tired to maintain it and move on to FreeBSD.

I am not a gaim user. I love Kopete. Its been running fine until i discover this. Yes, freebsd ports for kopete is killing me.

According to ports / net-im / kopete . They are using the latest release of KDE 3.5.4, which is pretty new. The funny thing is, the kopete stays inside kdenetwork-3.5.4 is still pretty much old. They are still keeping Kopete 0.11 , you can’t even see on kopete download page .

Its fair to say that kopete ports is being freez. But how long its gonna take ? When can i get my new features like I can get in Kubuntu. Kopote, please do remember a user like me that loves you always.

With Loves, xWinGs

Lau Kai Jern: God please bless me.

Posted: October 20th, 2006, 11:08am BST

Tags: [edit]

I am going to do another traning with the same bunch of guys today.

It used to be …

“I allowed all TCP connections from any to any and all ports. Why i still can’t ping”

“NAT is …… I donno”

Guess what , we are going to have a firewall traning today. God please bless me.

Aizat Faiz: Happy Hari Raya and Deepavali

Posted: October 20th, 2006, 10:12am BST

Tags: [edit]

While on the road to University today (20th October 2006), you can tell that the festive season has begun already. The roads were alot emptier than usual, and the noise pollution alot lower as well. Which I enjoy.

Looks like several people will be making best use of the long holiday, and take the next thursday and friday (26th and 27th respectively) off to have a nice 9 day weekend. Sadly to students like me, there isn’t much of a benefit.

A minor irritance is that my exams are in the upcoming week after raya, so if I do do any travel/or get dragged along, it would not be productive towards my exams. Sadly it is difficult to shcedule the exams any later, as we have to follow the Australian schedule as well.

So as it appears that festive season has begun, I would like to wish everyone a joyous Deepavali, and a happy Hari Raya.

zatto signing off.

PS: If you would like to give any duit raya, I am more than willing to accept .

Lee Chin Sheng: OpenBSD Sguil Port

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 3:49am BST

Tags: [edit]

Nikns has submitted his OpenBSD Sguil ports, if you happen to deploy sguil on OpenBSD platform, give it a try and test, test and test so that Nikns can get it into OpenBSD ports tree and produces better and stable sguil port since it relies on many other applications as well where Nikns has ported. It should be working on OpenBSD 4.0 or Current.

The detail is here.

I'm currently installing OpenBSD using snapshot just to test the port, hopefully I can produce feedback when possible.

Thanks Nikns for his effort to create OpenBSD Sguil Port, Ch33rs!!!!!

Enjoy :]

Lee Chin Sheng: Bro-IDS v1.2

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 2:06am BST

Tags: [edit]

For people who doesn't notice, Bro-IDS v1.2 is released, the major improvement should be the dynamic protocol detection, I can't really comment about it yet since I'm not getting into it yet. Other than that, there are lots of features and bugfixes been done in this latest version and you can find the changelogs here. If you want to know more about dynamic protocol detection, you can check this out.

Since I have Bro-IDS v1.1 running, surprisingly upgrading to version 1.2 can be done in a glance, just untar 1.2 source once you download it, and run the common steps - configure -> gmake && gmake install and you are done. I have no problem at all upgrading it to 1.2 on my FreeBSD box.

We all know Bro-IDS is not as popular as snort, however it is one of obvious alternative if you want to deploy network IDS since not many Open Source NIDS projects survive long enough as lots of efforts needed to produce solid NIDS.

Prelude is long gone for its NIDS feature, it is now more of SIM instead.

To Bro-IDS development team, you guys just rox!

Cheers :]

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/19/Ong_Hean_Kuan__Morning___%e5%a8%98_youtube_link'

Ong Hean Kuan: Morning ~ 娘 youtube link

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 12:47am BST

Tags: [edit]

The Peace Live
The Peace Sailor Suit
The Peace Sailor Suit Parody by SMAP
The Peace Dance Practice

Renai Revolution 21 Oringinal MTV
Renai Revolution Parody by korean student
Korean student vs Morning Musume

Open Malaysia: Watch out for more FUD

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 12:39am BST

Tags: [edit]

Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog, How the anti-open game is being played in Europe, see the Techworld article Leaked letter warns of open source 'threat to eco-system'.
Excerpt:
"A leaked letter to the European Commission has revealed the extent of lobbying by proprietary software groups to prevent the widespread adoption of open-source software."

Watch out - this kind of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) messages may find its way to Malaysia.

[Update 18 October 2006, 03:45 PM:
Related blog posts:
27 Sep -- Open Malaysia blog: Appeal of Neutral Software Approach. A rebuttal.
15 Oct -- Rob Weir - An Antic Disposition: When language goes on holiday]

[Update 20 October 2006, 2:07 AM:
More comments:
19 Oct -- ZDNet: Microsoft-sponsored lobbyist to the EU: It’s a mistake to floss us]

Aizat Faiz: Free Hugs

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 9:14pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Now I know I don’t normally post videos, particularly when it comes from a site I typically attribute to brain rot, but let me do once, or twice perhaps?

Want a Free Hug? Seems like its more popular than Free Software &

Yusmar Yahaya: holding it...

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 9:01pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Announced

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 6:03pm BST

Tags: ubuntu debian Linux edgyeft distro [edit]

With the official release date of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) approching, Mark Shuttleworth announced the name of the next release of Ubuntu due in April. The release will be named Feisty Fawn “in the spirit of a young deer that sets out to explore a world that is new and exciting”.

Unlike Edgy Eft which have a slightly short development cycle, the Feisty Fawn returned to its six-month development cycle with focussed improvement on multimedia application and desktop effects, improved laptop support and and aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for the final release of Ubuntu Edgy Eft due on 26th October 2006, with faster startup process!

[source]

Tags: ubuntu, debian, linux, edgy eft, distro, shuttleworth

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Open Malaysia: Spanking Peter's Monkey

Posted: October 19th, 2006, 12:41pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Fox the fox
Rat the rat
You can ape the ape
I know about that
There is one thing you must be sure of
I cant take any more
Darling, dont you monkey with the monkey
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Dont you know you're going to shock the monkey

Petergabriel_1 So goes Peter Gabriel's seminal 1982 classic, Shock the Monkey. He's now done something even more revolutionary, Gabriel has released the separate musical components of the song and invited the Internet to remix it into anything they'd like. He's even running a contest to pick the best remix, of which 700 entries have already been submitted.

By essentially open sourcing Shock The Monkey, Gabriel and his record label intend to tap on to the collective creativity of the planet, inviting both fans and musical manipulators to innovate on something which was by itself a revolution. This worldview is a far cry from the established music industry which is lobbying hard for the inclusion of barriers in the form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) into software and settop boxes as well as working just as hard to shut down P2P networks.

Inviting collaboration and participation for creative works is something the Internet was designed to do, just as Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave us HTTP because he wanted to share research documents. The spirit of openness inherent within the structure of the Internet is deeply embedded within the culture of the Internet generation. In spite of the efforts of some to close down on openness and sharing, folk like Peter go a long way towards letting us know that embracing the technological and cultural changes are much more fruitful than denying them.

Well done for your Sledgehammer move, Peter !

I want to be your sledgehammer
Why dont you call my name
Oh let me be your sledgehammer
This will be my testimony
Show me round your fruitcage
cos I will be your honey bee
Open up your fruitcage
Where the fruit is as sweet as can be

Ow Mun Heng: NON FOSS : PFB Application

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 1:37am BST

Tags: [edit]

This is a cool read on how to "pad" your resume.

Snipped from [thedailywtf.com]

[snipped]
...
The candidate recently flew to an overseas client site to help debug a serious problem. Just as the client described, their product would work for about 30 minutes and then fail miserably. After a bit debugging, he discovered that there was a modal dialog box on the server that was blocking the component from running.It turned out that modal dialog was originating from a trial version of one of the third-party components. It only allowed for 30 minutes of usage before prompting the user to purchase the software. The candidate explained this to the operations team and asked them to send him the purchase key. Instead, he was met with: "Oh, sh*t! We forgot to deploy the PFB application!" The candidate was a bit confused and asked, "What PFB application? I've never heard of it.""It's the Press the Freaking Button one. That gets us around the licensing of the software and runs on a schedule to look for that dialog and 'click' it."
...
[/snip]

Open Malaysia: Happy Deepavali and Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 1:09am BST

Tags: [edit]

As we approach the weekend and the coming week which many Malaysians will take a one-week holiday, on behalf of the bloggers at Open Malaysia blog, here's wishing all a Happy Deepavali (Saturday, 21 October 2006) and Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri (Tuesday, 24 October 2006)!!!

The wish is especially for all Malaysians who celebrate all festivals of all races in the country by hosting each other at our Open House, and it also goes to all our worldwide readers who celebrate these two festivals.

In the spirit of Hari Raya, here's also humbly asking for forgiveness, maaf zahir dan batin, from us bloggers here.

Lau Kai Jern: Another View of Google Code Search

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 10:53pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Was browsing some forums and discover some dumb comments on google code search. IT IS A PROGRAMMERS forum.

Another Hack on Google Code :

1st Post : Google came out with google code search

2nd Post : I tried to use it .. got no idea how it works

Lau Kai Jern: Some Tips For Chinese Input / Reading for KDE

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 10:38pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Running On Latest Kubuntu , with Good Looking chinese setup.

Settings and ScreenShot :

(00:05:43):xwings@pauillac:~>
(8)$ locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE=zh_CN.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_US.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_US.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

Install a Font :

wget http://from.some.where/VeraSansYuanTi.tar.bz2
# mv VeraSansYuanTi /usr/share/fonts/
# fc-cache -f
Restart X
Set all fonts to VeraSansYuanTi, with Anti Aliasing

Chinse Input ? http://www.fcitx.org

A Screenshot from my desktop :

Kubuntu 6.06.1 / KDE 3.5.4

Colin Charles: Free ride to MySQL Camp

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 8:39pm BST

Tags: barcamp free google mysql mysqlcamp [edit]

I don’t normally blog about events that I’m not going to be attending, but this seemed like too cool an offer to pass up. Proven Scaling will be offering one free ticket to MySQL Camp - thats free airfare and hotel, for the rather cool MySQL Camp un-conference.

From what I can tell, there’ll be a lot of rather cool people attending, its from the 10-12 November, at the Google campus (yes, you get to tour that place, and eat free food). And maybe if you’re super nice to Jeremy, he might be flexible with the flights, and you might also want to go to the Mountain View Ubuntu Summit. Having been to one of these before (Ubuntu Down Under), all I can say is its great. Go if you can.

All at Google. Food’s covered. Find a couch somewhere (I’ll admit, there are no real cheap-ish hotels in that area, but if you’re willing to go the public transport route, its a 30 minute train ride to the city, afaik).

So kudos to Jeremy Cole and Proven Scaling for such a great offer.

Technorati Tags: barcamp, free, google, mysql, mysqlcamp, ubuntu

Ow Mun Heng: You've gotta See this

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 6:41pm BST

Tags: [edit]

This is like.. WowZers man!

You've gotta see it!!

[https:]

Lee Chin Sheng: Good Link Indeed

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 5:18pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Thanks to the anonymous reader who commented on my previous blog post and also posted a good link regarding squid+clamav+adzapper setup -

[www.kernel-panic.it]

The link also contains various kind of tutorials especially on OpenBSD while not many but with good quality write up. Check it out!

Enjoy :]

Yong Yoon Kit: Upgrading the E61 Firmware

Posted: October 18th, 2006, 4:30pm BST

Tags: [edit]

I read with interest the new firmware released by Nokia for the E61. For example:

"I am waiting anxiously to get my hands on the new E61 firmware.
It is currently running 1.0610.04.04 and the new firmware version is 2.618.06.05. As soon as I get a chance to try it, I will post more details here "

This was written in August 18th 2006 on a blog called "All things fony!" which deals with E61 mods and stuff. Quite an interesting site.

To find out what firmware you are running, type in *#0000# in the dialer and immediately the phone should report what versions they are.
1.0610.04.04
19-04-06
RM-89
Nokia E61

So interestingly, mine was still the 1.0* version which is peculiar as I just bought it. Ah well. Fortunately, unlike older Nokia handphones, we dont need 'official' nor 'trained' Nokia 'service personnels' to flash the device to the latest and greatest firmware. For my 7710, I was scammed RM80 to get it flashed at a Dr.Mobiles, and vowed never to do so again. I hoped that the upgrade would make it faster, and have better character recognition. Unfortunately it was the Asian Version, so the upgrades were good for Chinese Character recognition which made my English character recognition even worse.

Anyway, the upgrade process was fortunately relatively simple! Just go to the Nokia Software Update Site, and follow the 5 steps.

Backup Phone Settings (Tools / Mem / Options / Backup)
Download the Windows based Software Updater (16MB)
Install the Software Updater ( I had to install twice - the first attempt rolled back)
Download the latest Firmware - 47.9MB (!!)

Upload the Firmware to the device. It took about 8 minutes to upload the info to the E61, and the progress bar was moving slowly but surely. The device rebooted twice, and the last one showed the NOKIA logo (much to my relief) however it looked lower onscreen than usual.

Upon the restart,

Had to reset the city/time settings
Restore most settings from the memory card backup
Restart the device again.
Type in *#0000#

2.0618.06.05
14-07-06
RM-89
Nokia E61

Updated!

I didnt see much difference, only that the colours of the top two icons (Tx power and Battery indicators) tend to not change when the background fades. Otherwise its suppose to be faster. I guess I didnt have enough time with the old version to tell the difference.

yk.

Open Malaysia: "Open Malaysia Campaign"?

Posted: October 17th, 2006, 2:19am BST

Tags: [edit]

Image: One of the Tak Nak campaign posters (click image to view full size)

Last month I presented ODF - Towards True Open Standards (in ODF .odp format - right click and save) at the MNCC-CICC-OUM Asia OSS Training 2006 in Kuala Lumpur. During Q&A, a participant gave me a very interesting suggestion.

He said since I am promoting ODF, open standards and everything "open", why don't I get the Malaysian Government to run a national campaign on "open"?

After all, he reminded the participants and I, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage have spent millions running the Tak Nak (Don't Want) anti-smoking campaign (hmm... women smokers I know don't have teeth that bad -- no wonder the campaign flopped) and the Budi Bahasa Budaya Kita (Courtesy Our Culture) campaign.

Yeah, I responded. Why not? Possibly something I will bring up to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

For ODF, perhaps it will be along the line of the ODF T-shirt design that cafepress.com is selling. Like the one shown here. The tagline there reads "OpenDocument - The choice that lets you choose" coming from the OpenDocument Fellowship. Try translating that: "DokumenTerbuka - pilihan yang membenarkan anda memilih." Yucks, doesn't sound right. Okay, okay, we need to put more heads together to get the right words.

The ODF icon options proposed by the OpenDocument Fellowship will certainly be considered.

Then there will be other "open" messages (open standards, open source, etc.) to be considered in such a campaign. Or should we not dilute the campaign with too many messages?

If Datin Siti Nurhaliza sings Budi Bahasa Budaya Kita (Courtesy Our Culture), now who should we get to sing for our Open Malaysia campaign? Perhaps the band Disagree?

I might just bring this up at the next ODF SIG meeting...!

Bakhtiar: Quickie: Loadbalance your two gateways

Posted: October 11th, 2006, 4:48pm BST by kedai

Tags: [edit]

If we have access to two upstream links, we can actually load balance the traffic to use both the uplink. This is not onding, but load balancing. Haven't yet tried bonding. Here's how to: edit /etc/iproute2/rt_tables, enter the table name for both liweofije...

Mohd. Kamal Mustafa: this is sucks !!

Posted: October 11th, 2006, 2:31pm BST by kamal

Tags: [edit]

So you wouldn't know how sucks blogspot is until you try to post some code. Ughh, I missed dokuwiki ...</content>

Mohd. Kamal Mustafa: Customizing Drupal form

Posted: October 11th, 2006, 2:31pm BST by kamal

Tags: [edit]

By default, Drupal Form API would render each element per row. To alter the presentation, we have several ways. The simplest one is by defining #suffix, #prefix attributes in the form elements. The prefered one is by defining the theme function that would override the default presentation. Consider the following form definition:- function customer_form($customer) { <pre> $form = array(); $form['name'] = array('#type' => 'textfield', '#default_value' => $customer->name, '#title' => 'Nama'); $form['address'] = array('#type' => 'textarea', '#default_value' => $customer->address, '#size' => 30, '#title' => 'Alamat'); $form['postcode'] = array('#type' => 'textfield', '#title' => t('Poskod'), '#size' => 5, '#maxlength' => 5, '#default_value' => $customer->postcode); $form['city'] = array('#type' => 'textfield', '#title' => t('Bandar'), '#size' => 30, '#default_value' => $customer->city); } </pre>The form is build by the following function:- <pre>function customer_new($customer) { return drupal_get_form('customer_new', customer_form($customer)); } </pre>So to override the default presentation, we define the theme function as `theme_form_id`:- <pre>function theme_customer_new($form) { $output = new Container; $output->add(form_render($form['name'])); $table = html_table(); $table->add_row(form_render($form['address']), form_render($form['city']), form_render($form['postcode'])); $output->add($table); // render the rest of the elements $output->add(form_render($form)); return $output->render(); } </pre>References:- http://drupal.org/node/47582 Notes:- This example make use PHPHtmllib library to build the HTML table.</content>

Ow Mun Heng: MySQL : Collation & Case Sensitivity

Posted: October 11th, 2006, 7:18am BST

Tags: [edit]

The naming convention for collation in mysql is as follows:

*_bin: represents binary case sensitive collation
*_cs: case sensitive collation
*_ci: case insensitive collation

[mysqldatabaseadministration.blogspot.com]

Also see this for Case Sensitivity in table/database names.

# [dev.mysql.com]
lower_case_table_names = 1

Yusmar Yahaya: clean air needed...

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 10:14pm BST by Yusmar

Tags: [edit]

the air quality in KL is so bad, made me feel like breathing off the scuba tank... and since I'm Nitrox certified, I could ask for the EAN40 (40% oxygen) tanks :-)

Mohd. Kamal Mustafa: just trying this blog !!!!

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 10:01pm BST by kamal

Tags: [edit]

just trying this blog !!!!</content>

Mohd. Kamal Mustafa: 3 years already ?

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 10:01pm BST by kamal

Tags: [edit]

Man, I can't believe I created this blogger account back in 2003. So this is not my new blog, it's my old blog !</content>

Mohd. Kamal Mustafa: Python inside PHP ?

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 10:01pm BST by kamal

Tags: [edit]

<div style="text-align: justify;">Ian Bicking blog about <a href="http://svn.pythonpaste.org/Paste/apps/PyWordpress/trunk">PyWordPress</a>, in his effort to run WordPress under Python as <a href="http://www.wsgi.org/">WSGI</a> application using <a href="http://pythonpaste.org/wphp/">WPHP</a>, a python module that allow you to run PHP process inside Python. Sounds cool, but I don't think it solve the real problem with Python that is deployment issues. Python while it's fun to code, is totally pain when it comes to deployment. Though with the arise of WSGI, things look's bright for Python in web development but it's still pain. PHP on the other hand, while coding in it would always end in wtf, was so easy to deploy. Either through the conventional mod_php way or as fastgi process, it's relatively easy for anyone to deploy PHP application. Not to mention the widespread support from shared hosting provider. So why not the other way around ? Create something that would allow python code to be run inside PHP ? What we gain here ? Certainly not about performance since PHP alone already sucks in performance. But maybe for fun. I can happily code it in Python and then happily deploy it under PHP. Win-win situation ?</div></content>

Mohd. Kamal Mustafa: Developers are from Mars, Programmers from Venus

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 10:01pm BST by kamal

Tags: [edit]

Reading through the the <a href="http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=90">article</a>. we'll get the usual feeling that - programmers are bad, developers are good. Personally, I prefer to describe my job as programmer though judging from the article point of view I'd also did most of the developers work. But get real, in the end it's still about programming. The article was linked from OSNews and there's some good <a href="http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=16122">discussion</a> there too and of all the comments, I like this one:- <blockquote>It's not the difference between programmers and developers. It's the difference between good programmers and bad programmers. - <a href="http://www.osnews.com/user.php?uid=867">John Nilsson</a> </blockquote></content>

Paul Ooi: Hackem

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 3:43pm BST by Paul Ooi

Tags: [edit]

telnet and hackem, well… Have fun Run this command either in terminal and command prompt.

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

Open Malaysia: ODF Alliance Newsletter 9 October 2006

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 1:32pm BST by Hasan

Tags: [edit]

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=800,height=129,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/odfalliancelogo_12.jpg"></a><a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=800,height=129,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/odfalliancelogo_13.jpg"><img title="Odfalliancelogo_13" height="79" alt="Odfalliancelogo_13" src="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/images/odfalliancelogo_13.jpg" width="490" border="0" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px" /></a> I missed posting in this blog the previous <a href="http://www.odfalliance.org/">ODF Alliance</a> newsletter dated 19 September 2006, but it can be found at <a href="http://www.odfalliance.org/press/Newsletter%2020060919.pdf">this link</a>. The latest newsletter below includes items not recently mentioned in this Open Malaysia blog, e.g.&nbsp; the ODF Day at aKademy 2006. Read on: ODF Alliance Newsletter 9 October 2006 French Government Report Urges Europe-Wide Adoption of ODF In a report prepared for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, French National Assembly Deputy Bernard Carayon called for a law requiring use of ODF by French government departments when they create or distribute documents, and recommends ODF for official document exchange at the European level. Carayon Report (french) - <a href="http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/BRP/064000728/0000.pdf">http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/BRP/064000728/0000.pdf</a> Info World - <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/03/HNfrenchodf_1.html">http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/03/HNfrenchodf_1.html</a> ZDNet UK - <a href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39283880,00.htm">http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39283880,00.htm</a> OpenDocument Day at aKademy Features Discussion of Status of ODF in European Public Administrations, ODF Test Suite and Developers Kit Open Document Day at aKademy 2006, the annual meeting of Alliance member KDE, was held on Sep 26 in Dublin. The KDE desktop environment for Linux includes the ODF-supporting KOffice suite of applications (KWord, KSpread and KPresenter ). Keynote speaker Barbara Held from the European Commission spoke on the process and politics around technology standards in Europe. Prof. Lotzi Bölöni from the University of Central Florida spoke on some Intel-sponsored work his students are doing on an ODF Test Suite. Rob Weir from Alliance member IBM spoke on a proposal for an OpenDocument Developers Kit (ODDK). ODF Day Release - <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061002/sfm056.html">http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061002/sfm056.html</a> Slides/Presentations - <a href="http://akademy2006.kde.org/codingmarathon/opendocumentday.php">http://akademy2006.kde.org/codingmarathon/opendocumentday.php</a> ODF Test Suite - <a href="http://netmoc.cpe.ucf.edu/Projects/OpenDocument/TestSuite.html">http://netmoc.cpe.ucf.edu/Projects/OpenDocument/TestSuite.html</a> Rob Weir Antic Disposition - <a href="http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/10/in-dublins-fair-city.html">http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/10/in-dublins-fair-city.html</a>EPO Releases New Electronic Filing System Requiring Use of Proprietary Formats The European Patent Office (EPO) announced the release of PatXML version 1.33, its new electronic filing system. Like previous versions of PatXML, version 1.33 can only be installed on Windows 98, 2000, or XP2002, and you will need to use Word 97, 2000, or XP/2002 to file documents. If you become aware of other instances where access to public services is retsricted to users of one brand of software or proprietary document formats, please share them with me. European Patent Office - <a href="http://www.epoline.org/portal/public/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0v">http://www.epoline.org/portal/public/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0v</a> Case Studies Highlight Cost Savings of Move to ODF; Ramboell Report Available in English In order to continue serving as a resource for governments, the Alliance has assembled case studies of migrations to ODF-supporting applications and any estimated cost savings. The case studies include the so-called Ramboell Report showing that the central government of Denmark could save U.S. $21m over five years by implementing ODF while switching to OpenOffice.org instead of upgrading to Office 2007. The report is now available in English. On June 2, 2006 the Danish parliament adopted a decision that all digital document exchange with government institutions be carried out in formats based on open standards by January 2008. Ramboell Report - <a href="http://www.osl.dk/upload-mappe/ram_engPDF/">http://www.osl.dk/upload-mappe/ram_engPDF/</a> Market Share Analysis - <a href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Market_Share_Analysis">http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Market_Share_Analysis</a> ODF Template/Clipart Competition Launched OpenOffice.org, in conjunction with Alliance member Worldlabel.com Inc, launched a Template and Clipart Competition. Create and submit templates and clipart as part of the competition and be eligible for a share of the cash and other awards totaling over USD$5000. Winners will be given the opportunity of including their templates in the OpenOffice.org installation sets. The competition runs through October 31, 2006. OpenOffice.org Documentation Project - <a href="http://documentation.openoffice.org/contests/template_clipart_2006/announce.html">http://documentation.openoffice.org/contests/template_clipart_2006/announce.html</a> World Label Release - <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/9/prweb438382.htm">http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/9/prweb438382.htm</a> ODF Applications Support Update: Odendahl SEPT-Solution's Mobile Office We are happy to highlight through the newsletter any new applications support for ODF, the most recent being SEPT Solutions release of Mobile Office, an office suite that is the first and only implementation of ODF for Symbian or any other mobile platform. Mobile Office – <a href="http://www.sept-solutions.de/English/office.php">http://www.sept-solutions.de/English/office.php</a>; <a href="http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/4350_Open_Office_viewing_on_S60_3rd.php">http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/4350_Open_Office_viewing_on_S60_3rd.php</a> New Members Please welcome the following new members: Southwest Jiaotong University (China); Avanquest Software (UK); 60AT6 (USA); Comsultia, Ltd. (Slovakia), OPS! Consulting (Spain). ******************ODF IN THE NEWS*************************** Danish government weighs switch to OpenOffice Study shows gov't could save $21m over five years if it adopted OpenOffice instead of Office 2007 By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service, Oct 4, 2006 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/04/HNdanishopenoffice_1.html">http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/04/HNdanishopenoffice_1.html</a> OpenOffice plug-in plan set for debut Following in Firefox's footsteps, the next version of OpenOffice.org will support extensions to attract developers to the open-source productivity suite by Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com Published on ZD Net News, Sep 22, 2006 at 2:00 PT <a href="http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6118676.html">http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6118676.html</a> Resolvo launches online OpenOffice.org training portal Linux PR (press release), Sep 25, 2006, 15:47 UTC <a href="http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/9067.html">http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/9067.html</a> Massachusetts CIO quits The chief information officer of Massachusetts is stepping down, complaining about a lack of funding for the commonwealth's technology initiatives by Martin Lamonica Staff Writer, CNET News.com Oct 4, 2006, 8:10am PDT <a href="http://news.com.com/Massachusetts+CIO+quits/2100-1022_3-6122613.html">http://news.com.com/Massachusetts+CIO+quits/2100-1022_3-6122613.html</a></div> <div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=a4JZlFHv"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=a4JZlFHv" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=aosew9OR"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=aosew9OR" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=AVwM7YXB"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=AVwM7YXB" border="0"></img></a></div></content>

Ong Hean Kuan: switch off wordpress rich text editor

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 10:35am BST

Tags: [edit]

It reach my limits, I switch off the rich text editor. Wordpress uses TinyMCE, it is so buggy, it cause me so much problem. But Wordpress do not use the latest rich text editor from TinyMCE, check out the latest WYSIWYG editor from TinyMCE here Its that call "tiny" ? Its too complicated for me.

Compare blogspot, opera and wordpress richtext editor, I like opera's. It is simple but "errorless" and it is efficient for me. I wandering what rich text editor they use.

Seymour Cakes: Google search source code now

Posted: October 10th, 2006, 10:27am BST by Seymour Cakes

Tags: [edit]

Something new from Google, "Advanced Code Search"

POSIX regex search
License aware
package-constrainable
search even if contained in archived files

I tried it, and it was fun.
See what I mean here, here, and this.

Well, you go try now.
http://www.google.com/help/faq_codesearch.html

Ow Mun Heng: MySQL Table Full

Posted: October 9th, 2006, 8:36pm BST

Tags: [edit]

So.. I went ahead and tried to get the script to work. (It worked perfectly, to a fault.)

However, (there is always a BUT or a However isn't there??) Halfway along the way with the replication, an error message was prompted.

table MyTable is full

i was wondering what the heck was happening! InnoDB is supposed to not really have this error. It can't be my filesystem since the data file isn't even touching 200MB!

I googled a bit, found this and I saw the problem was in my my.cnf file. It seems that it has this as default

# you may wish to change this size to be more suitable for your system
# the max is there to avoid run-away growth on your machine
innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend:max:128M

So.. that was the reason, it was autoextending, but there was a maximum clip!!

As I read further, then I thought, perhaps it would be better to also have the option to have the different tables into different files, which would/should make things faster right? It's better to have the data split by their respective tables rather than all merged into one gigantic file right??

So, following the instructions I found in the MySQL site (above) and the links on one of the comments, I tried to have them segregrated into different files.

First, place this into the my.cnf file

# This will place all innodb tables into their own datafile. In the future you
# would be able to reclaim the excess table space on a per-table basis.
# [dev.mysql.com]
innodb_file_per_table = 1

After that, I went to this site and downloaded some simple, yet elegant scripts which would make this transition a much better experience for me,

You can get the scripts from the site above which really does makes things easier. (it dumps the structure as well as the data for you for all the tables/databases automatically)

Ong Hean Kuan: Logo for LBE (Linux By Example)

Posted: October 9th, 2006, 7:19pm BST

Tags: [edit]

160x160 px

32x32 px

16x16 px

Open Malaysia: Going Local

Posted: October 9th, 2006, 3:05pm BST by Dinesh Nair

Tags: [edit]

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Much has been said by all and sundry about the need to Beli Barang Buatan Malaysia. And yet, the common lament among local innovators is that they just don't get opportunities when it comes to procurement, both by government and by the private sector. The latest to <a href="http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Monday/National/20061009084810/Article/local1_html">make this call</a> is none other than the Prime Minister, <blockquote>Give local inventors and their products a chance. This is Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s message to Malaysians with a penchant for imports. Abdullah said Malaysians were generally sceptical when it came to locally made products, but embraced imports without question.(October 8th, 2006) </blockquote> The PM's message is very apt, as the mindshare and perception problems faced by Malaysian innovators is both very real and entrenched in the psyche of the nation. Too often we find that an imported solution is used, inspite of the availability of much better locally developed solutions. As a result, the local innovators will eventually find their funds&nbsp; (and support) drying up and much worse, lose the enthusiasm to further innovate in their respective fields. The net result would be the slow but steady colonization of our industries and our economy by foreign companies. I've been told many times by well-meaning folk that we should actually be basing our company in Europe or the United States, and from there make our approach into the Malaysian market. Apparently, we would be more accepted through this method as we'd be seen as an imported solution. Coupled with our technological advances, this would (they say) make us a shoo-in for projects we submit proposals for. Many a time, I find it hard to disagree with this line of thought. To do this however would raise our costs of production, and this in return will result in a higher price paid by the Malaysian customer. To top it all off, this just seems to silly given that the solution originates in Malaysia, and is worked on by Malaysians and would be supported from Malaysia by Malaysians. MSC notwithstanding, I think a better way needs to be found in order to address the issue. The cause of the problem should be eradicated. For the mindset to change, an impetus with far reaching impact should be made. The cause of the problem lies deep within the Malaysian psyche, which is still shackled by the mantles of colonialism when it sees imported solutions as being better. This malaise rests in all sectors of our industries. To make a change here and to bootstrap the local software development capacity of Malaysia would be the single most influential thing any administration could do. While preferential policies may raise the ire of &quot;fair and balanced&quot; arguments by the US and the WTO, the fact that the present situation is unbalanced viz a viz, the unwritten preference for imports over supposedly inferior locally developed solutions. Procurement of government solutions should be made on a truly fair and balanced basis, with local solutions being evaluated on par with foreign solutions. This would require greater enforcement by the relevant agencies to ensure that such practices are maintained and that personal preferences for imports do not creep into procurement decisions. Building our local software capacity and our technological prowess will provide a strong impetus to our future economy, as the reliance on imports and foreign exchange are reduced. Short sightedness in proliferating the perception that imports are better irrespective will only serve to harm our innovation and domicile us as industrial colonists in the long run. The change has to happen now, and words must be translated into concrete action one way or another.</div> <div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=5aB76XzO"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=5aB76XzO" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=7hmTItCQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=7hmTItCQ" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=jcaTZtFn"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=jcaTZtFn" border="0"></img></a></div></content>

Colin Charles: Interview with Si Chen, of opentaps

Posted: October 9th, 2006, 9:20am BST by byte

Tags: [edit]

Si Chen, lead/core developer for opentaps (formerly known as Sequioa ERP), talked with us recently, and there’s an interview available. opentaps is an Enterprise Resource Planning solution, which is rather scalable and has a lot of functionality. It uses MySQL, of course. Give it a twirl!

Do you use MySQL for your application that you develop? Want to talk about it? Drop me a line at colin[AT]mysql.com.

Aizat Faiz: This Must be How the Dinosaurs Felt

Posted: October 8th, 2006, 10:32pm BST by aizatto

Tags: [edit]

The weather here in Malaysia is bad, bad, bad, BAD. The air conditions here are terrible! Okay, maybe not as bad as last year, but they are still terrible. Luckily I haven’t picked up the usualy symptoms this time. These symptoms typically included: pain in the ears, constant ringing the ears, until its really difficult to hear, and a very very sore throat making it difficult to speak, swallow, and eat.

Also makes me a bit more worried about the food I’m eating. As its fasting month, I tend to purchase food at the pasar near my housing area. An open bazaar. Similarly goes to mamak stores. The two (haze + food) don’t sound like a good combination. Actually, no matter the situation I should always be cautious about my food.

Luckily it rained Friday night, giving us clear blue skys on Saturday!

With the weather conditions like this, I sort of missed the clear blue skies in Penang.

I guess this must be how the dinosaurs felt like when their world ended. Makes me have an awkward feeling that the world is coming to an end, especially with all the stuff in the news, and the actions of large corporations and governments.

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/08/Ow_Mun_Heng__MSSQL___gt__MySQL_Replication_Scripts'

Ow Mun Heng: MSSQL -> MySQL Replication Scripts

Posted: October 8th, 2006, 8:03pm BST

Tags: [edit]

I've just finished up the scripts for doing the replication.

I'm not currently doing the testing. It seems to work well. (at least for now)

It'll take some time for it to get in 'sync' I suppose.

There are a few more things/tweaks which needs to be done before it's fully complete. Namely:

1. What to do if there are additional columns in a table
2. Sending Emails alerts if there are/is problems
3. Possiblity to add/alter the DB/tables to add new columns when one is added so replication will not get held up. (or at least inform if there are additional columns)

But, for now, I think it should be ready to give it a go tomorrow.

If anyone's interested, do let me know.
(I won't be posting it until much later)

Aizat Faiz: GNU Screen Tip! Multiple configuration files

Posted: October 8th, 2006, 2:46pm BST by aizatto

Tags: [edit]

Not many people have heard of GNU Screen. (Wikipedia) And to those who have heard it, not many actually use it. For people not familiar with screen think of it now as tabs for terminals. But it's more powerful than that, so perhaps think of it as lsd-induced-super-intense-spectacular-tabs.

I'm a heavy user of screen actually, and use it in combination with vim, as it provides me with speed.

But there is a shortcoming of screen which, either I couldn't figure out, or difficult to google. So what I did instead was created a script to help me out.

The scenario is that I have several projects, say a Drupal, and a Ruby on Rails project.

With screen you can start off with multiple tabs open and settings optimized for your needs. Well I had different needs, different needs for each project.

Screen saves its configuration files in a screenrc configuration file, and the user default configuration of screenrc is saved in ~/.screenrc. I wanted a individual screenrc for each of my project. I initially thought screen was able to load both the default and unique screenrc, so I ran:

PLAIN TEXT CODE:

$ screen -c ~/screenrc/drupal

Didn't work, as it didn't load my default screenrc settings. I continued trying.

PLAIN TEXT CODE:

$ screen -c ~/.screenrc -c ~/screenrc/drupal

Another failure.

Next was google, but that wasn't too helpful as well. Great choice to call it "screen", such a generic name/word makes it difficult to search for.

What next then? Yes I could if I wanted to hacked the GNU Screen source, and solve the problem. But I'm not a C guru, not exactly my area of expertise, plus I wanted to do it quickly.

So what I did was make a Ruby script which parses my default screenrc file, and my project's screenrc file. This would include the default file contents into the screenrc file automagically.

You can download the script here. Don't forget to make it executable.

The script works by entering:

PLAIN TEXT CODE:

$ ~/path-to-script/generate_screenrc.rb project

Where project is the file containing project specific screenrc settings.

So what now? Well now have I have a folder called "screenrc" in home directory and I fire up screen with:

PLAIN TEXT CODE:

$ screen -c ~/screenrc/project

Where project is the project I want to load.

You don't have to use this for coding, perhaps you might want to have a screen instance with monitoring programs running.

In my case I would then have a file called ~/screenrc/monitor and maybe include this configuration:

PLAIN TEXT CODE:

screen -t top 0
screen -t iptraf 1
screen -t irssi 2 irssi
screen -t nload 3 nload

Customize it however you want.

Another Tip

For VIM users, include this vim modeline, in your default screenrc settings, and your produced screenrc file will have screen's syntax enabled.

PLAIN TEXT CODE:

# vim: syntax=screen

For more GNU Screen tips have a look at their manual, or the Gentoo Wiki. I particularly like the visualization of the "tabs".

Instead of going through all this I could probably use an actual IDE...

Muhd Najmi A Zabidi

Posted: October 8th, 2006, 8:20am BST by mnajem

Tags: [edit]

What it takes to be sanitary engineer I keep asking myself whether people who achieved great science and mathematical achievement were borned with that de facto and de jure "gifted" IQ level. And since I've got the chance, why can't I achieved that level of understanding? Or it just that something come across my life plot and yet to have to accept that as "fate". Well, Tom Hanks in his movie

Ow Mun Heng: Date Math (Is 1 date better than 2 dates?)

Posted: October 8th, 2006, 6:55am BST

Tags: [edit]

Been trying to figure out how to increment date/time in a *nix script. (This is basically for getting my DB replication to work)

I finally realised that I can always rely on using EPOCH time. This way, I can increment the date by, lets say, 2 seconds and still be able to use it to query the DB for data for that 2 seconds.

eg:

select * from table
where date >= "2006-10-07 12:00:00"
and date < "2006-10-07 12:00:02"

where the date, in *nix time is :

$date -d '2006-10-07 12:00:00' +%s
1160193600

So, how do I plug the values in? I should think it's simple.
I set a base date eg:

#!/bin/bash

base_date=$(date)
epoch_base_date=$(date -d "$base_date" +%s)

while true
do
increment_epoch_base_date=$(( $epoch_base_date + 1))
new_base_date=$(date -d "1970-01-01 $increment_epoch_base_date sec GMT" +%Y-%m-%d %X )
echo $new_base_date
epoch_base_date=$increment_epoch_base_date
sleep 1
done

which results in

2006-10-08 08:23:13
2006-10-08 08:23:14
2006-10-08 08:23:15
2006-10-08 08:23:16
2006-10-08 08:23:17
2006-10-08 08:23:18
2006-10-08 08:23:19
2006-10-08 08:23:20
2006-10-08 08:23:21
2006-10-08 08:23:22
2006-10-08 08:23:23

So.. another problem solved. :-)

Aizat Faiz: MyOSS Meetup October 2006

Posted: October 7th, 2006, 7:26pm BST by aizatto

Tags: [edit]

Curry Fish
FOOD
Drinks

What exactly am I showing? Well pictures of the meetup of course!

Kudos and thanks once again to Open University Malaysia to not only sponsoring us a place to have our meetups, but food! To be honest, I was taken a back and shocked that a full course meal was actually provided. I was only expecting refreshments in the sort of kuih and the sort.

participants

TOR

ODF

You have a look at the pictures here. I have also uploaded the PgOSS Meetup September 2006 photos..

Ow Mun Heng: SQSH - the *nix interactive SQL client (and handling of NULL values)

Posted: October 7th, 2006, 3:38pm BST

Tags: [edit]

SQSH (pronounced as S-Q Shell) can be obtained from [www.sqsh.org].

The homepage describes it as

Sqsh is much more than a nice prompt, it is intended to provide much of the functionality provided by a good shell, such as variables, redirection, pipes, back-grounding, job control, history, command completion, and dynamic configuration. Also, as a by-product of the design, it is remarkably easy to extend and add functionality.

Sqsh was designed with portability in mind and has been successfully compiled on most major UNIX platforms supported by Sybase, such as Linux, FreeBSD, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, SunOS, Solaris, Dynix, OSF/1, DEC Unix, SCO, NeXT, DG/UX and CP/M (just kidding). It should build relatively easily on most POSIX and X/OPEN compliant systems. Sqsh has also been ported to Windows NT/95 using the Cygnus/Red Hat cygwin porting toolkit.

What is nice about sqsh is that it provides an CLI for accessing into a MSSQL server. (It links against the FreeDTS library.)

I'm playing around with SQSH because I want to do some level of replication between a backend MSSQL machine to a fontend MySQL machine which hopefully is not as loaded as the main backend machine. (sort of like off-loading the main DB and directing all traffic to the front-end, read-only DB, which happens to be MySQL (I didn't try PostgreSQL) )

Anyhoo, my main method for getting replication done (since I don't have rights (except for SELECT) on the MSSQL Server, and there isn't really a tool which can do MSSQL->MySQL replication, usage of Sqsh bridges this gap. (I can use bcp and load data infile)

However, it is not without pain as I found that in it's native form, (unhacked) it does not offload the data in a format which MySQL understands for 2 reasons.

1. MSSQL dateime and MySQL datetime format are different and it can't be loaded in if it's not correct.

This was easily fixed as sqsh has an option to change the datetime in the form of


sqsh -S server -U sa -P Pass -i ~/bcp-drive.txt -L $bcp_colsep=',' -L datetime='%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'

2. NULL values returned from the DB is not inputted as NULL values.

sqsh returns the datafile in this format


AAA,,BBB

note that the above really means AAA,NULL,BBB but it is not interpreted that way by MySQL. In MySQL, from the manual, it is described that for MySQL to understand that a NULL should be NULL and not as "" (empty character string), its format should be in the form of "N".

However, as mentioned, sqsh, in it's native form is not able to handle it and try as I might, I couldn't find a way around it from googling. So, I had to look at the source.

A few hours later, grokking through the source, I found(and changed) this


--- sqsh-2.1.4/src/dsp_csv.c    2005-07-24 19:41:19.000000000 +0800
+++ /tmp/dsp_csv.c      2006-10-07 17:06:01.000000000 +0800
@@ -141,7 +141,7 @@
                    }
                    else
                    {
-                       dsp_col( output, "", 0 );
+                       dsp_col( output, "\N", 2 );
                    }
 
                    if (i < (desc->d_ncols-1))

and that, my friend, is why, FOSSware is friendly.

Lee Chin Sheng: Security Implementation is not about BrandName

Posted: October 7th, 2006, 11:23am BST by geek00L

Tags: [edit]

I have to write this since I feel sick with brand name products that kills my brain. Talking about network security implementation, we can always listen people who are brainless discussing about how powerful those commercial appliances - either firewall, ids or whatever commercial hype terms are. Those companies used to release old technologies with their powerful packaging idea. Due to that lots of enterprises start to believe and trust them for their network security deployment.

Outsourcing is another trend that follow up to provide all kind of network security services. Those third party vendors who provide the network security services also form alliance with the companies that selling their so called brand name security devices. We can see that this trend will be the future indeed.

Lots of enterprises start to buy in those vendors to plan and deploy their network security structure, and then hiring all the dumb system admin to maintain their workstation and fixing small network issues, and they can play blaming to the third party vendors if their security deployment is broken somewhere.

Now come back to the topic, yes and those third party vendors will deploy those branded network security devices such as ciscock, junipet, and so forth since those devices can do A to Z, but my point here should be no matter what kind of security devices you have, the problem occurs if you have faulty network security implementation. I do know those security service provider will plan properly so that they can maintain their business consistency. But I do believe one thing - trust your internal sysadmin and network admin when comes to network security implementation. They are the one who know and understand what is running in the network, yeah you may tell me how about internal threats however this is not in my discussion here.

I'm open source centric person, but I just don't want to compare what open source security applications can do comparing to commercial branded name applications here. It will only create stupid flame war which I don't want, I'm just try to awake those dumbass(enterprises?) when comes to implement your network security.

- Think brain > brand

- Network & Service profiling(Trust your internal sysadmin and netadmin for this)

- Plan, plan & more plans(Discussion of your tech team with vendors maybe)

- Implementation & Deployment(Never ask for what kind of brand name devices that they can provide, asking what kind of security implementations they can deploy which suits your network)

- Never trust non-tech people to discuss with security service providers - they are the dumbass!

- No undertable - corruption used to happen because those dumbass will accept money from security provider for their buy in especially if those dumpass are one of decision maker and hey, that's easy money.

- Don't think buying 100K branded firewall can cover your ass!

- Improve over time based on the changes of your network architectures

I have seen and talk to lots of technical department managers out there, apparently they are coming from management or business background, ouch! You shouldn't have hired this kind of people at the first place. Those talkers can't do all the tech stuffs but bullshiting a lot. Kick them out of the room, please!!!!! By the way don't tell me you have CISSP, I don't bother.

To those people who insist believe a very good brand name products can survive todays threats, I can tell you that yeah, the products may not suck but you suck of believing those marketing hypes.

For those people who work as real sysadmin|netadmin|secadmin, saluteeeeee!

Happy Ranting :]

Yusmar Yahaya: i'm hungry...

Posted: October 7th, 2006, 10:32am BST by Yusmar

Tags: [edit]

The best plate size crab I had was in Jimbaran, Bali... wonder if there's anything similar in town.

Open Malaysia: French Recommendation for Interoperatibility Supports Use of ODF

Posted: October 6th, 2006, 8:01pm BST by ditesh

Tags: [edit]

Some background information on the <a href="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/10/mixed_week_odf_.html">French ODF recommendation</a>: On the 3rd of October 2005, the prime minister of France (<a title="Dominique de Villepin" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_de_Villepin">Dominique de Villepin</a>) asked Carayon to head up a new report that would focus on, to put it blightly, world domination for French companies. In particular, the report would analyze the constraints and opportunities for France and among other things:  <ul><li> “to weigh in the production of standards, in particular technical, by the international authorities, in particular European”,</li>  <li>to sensitize the companies “with the negotiations in progress”, and</li>  <li>to inform them “of the stakes and the content of the international discussions in the fields with regard to them”.</li></ul>  His report, titled "<a href="http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapports-publics/064000728/index.shtml">On Equal Terms</a>", was published in September 2006 and made policy recommendations that:  <ul><li>ODF be used as a document format in the French public sector as well as a document exchange format with other European countries</li>  <li>France fund an open source research security center</li>  <li>a system to share best practises in open source between French governmental agencies be set up</li></ul>  In an interesting coincidence, a <a href="http://www.osl.dk/upload-mappe/ram_engPDF/">study</a> done by Ramboll Management reported that the Danish government could save USD$ 21 million over the next five years if they adopt OpenOffice. This report was commissioned by the Danish Open Source Business Association.  With <a href="http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25009">other recent developments</a> in this area, strong governmental and business interests in pursuing an agenda of promoting forth Free Software and Open Standards (FSOS) for cost reductions, economic impetus and national sovereignty are no longer just minor data points but a strong upward trend. <div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=7K9BMed6"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=7K9BMed6" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=iXCbKzTr"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=iXCbKzTr" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=BfELytL1"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=BfELytL1" border="0"></img></a></div></content>

Colin Charles: Nokia N73: impressions on the Optus network, and a Mac

Posted: October 6th, 2006, 12:14pm BST by byte

Tags: [edit]

I am now the proud owner of a Nokia N73. Thank you Optus. Of course, getting to use it is a little quirky.

I’ve not been able to get the Flickr Upload working. Maybe this is something Optus decided to disable? Anyone can confirm this? Instead, I’ve decided that a ShoZu account is probably what I want, and that’s my “interface” to Flickr or even to Wordpress it would seem. Oops, scratch that. Flickr Upload does work, it just seems to be configured a little differently (and if you’re doing it on a Mac, you need to send the file via the Bluetooth File Exchange utility in Applications/Utilities). One thing ShoZu is missing seems to be the MovableType API.

I’ve not been able to get it to sync with Linux, which is a bit of a pain, but I’ve managed to get it to sync with iSync on the Mac. You want to read Adri’s excellent post on the topic, and get this file. I’d say read the site, but I can’t read German myself. Now my calendar and contact details are on my phone, which is rather nifty, because unlike the iPod, I can edit entries here.

Inserting the memory card is a pain. You need nails. I just cut mine yesterday. I thought this was bad on the Nokia 770, but this one’s worse. Speaking of which, the chargers for the Nokia 770 and the N73 are similar! No more old Nokia phone chargers (though they do provide the dongle for it, if you absolutely need to use it).

I can’t figure out how to display the time thats being taken on the current call. Help? This was available on the Ericsson T610, and the Minute Minder is generally useful as here we have free 20 minute calls to other Optus customers. Also, the Autolock seems daft - why do I need to enter a pin to unlock a keylock? On the T610, after 20 seconds it’d keylock the phone, but unlocking it was simple and didn’t require a PIN. Can this be replicated?

It has a built-in radio. Very cool stuff. I just paid $5.50 so I could get my favorite ring tone, Bittersweet Symphony on the phone. Talk about a Optus Zoo sham. Worse, its not even the tune that I wanted, but a twenty second MP3 rip!

And the camera phone, probably the reason I went with this, is just amazing. The photo quality is great. Its got more megapixels than my first digital camera. Technology has come far!

Quirk: once I’ve locked the keypad, and open the camera, it takes a while before all things start working. This is with the radio playing in the background.

Anyways, more after some playing. In other notes, I’m sick. High fever, flu, and its really hot outside. Sigh.

Meling Mudin: levenshtein distance and html content comparison

Posted: October 6th, 2006, 11:20am BST by spoonfork

Tags: [edit]

dear l33t readers,

i’m writing a (currently simple) ruby script that posts random values to html form variables, and checking the results. each value may give different results. so what i want to do is calculate the difference between the results so that i can group them together. to do this, i perform a post with defined values and set this as a baseline to be used as a comparison for the next post (the result of the first post is sort of like a ’signature’ for the web page). and then i start posting data, and calculate the difference with the initial baseline. this can be done by levenshtien distance. unfortunately, my test scripts runs extremely slow*, and i have no idea on how to speed up the operation (one way is to use curl and use my ruby script to calculate the distance).

i can continue with this, but i’m wondering if there are better alternatives. so got one?

* it runs slow simply because i’m comparing tons of strings… maybe i should just strip the html tag…

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Linux Command by Examples

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 2:14am BST by mypapit

Tags: Linux tutorial guides example commandline [edit]

Today I want to introduce you to another excellent website from a bunch of nice people that I know, Linux by Examples. Unlike other GNU/Linux related site, this blog teaches you on how to use common Linux command by giving simple, practical example that are easy to follow.

The GNU/Linux commands are also grouped by categories according its functionalities such as :

Administration
Archive
Developer
Network
Text Manipulation

and other common commands.

The examples presented in the blog itself are easy and simple to follow, and is accompanied by step-by-step explanations from writer.

I suggest that you have a look at Linux By Examples website and bookmark it for future reference, because it can be a handy in the future

Tags: linux, tutorial, guides, example, command-line, linux howto, howto

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Open Malaysia: Mixed week - ODF updates in Massachusetts and France

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 2:02am BST by Hasan

Tags: [edit]

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=417,height=328,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/massachusetts.jpg"></a><a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=417,height=328,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/massachusetts_2.jpg"></a> <img title="Massachusetts_3" height="157" alt="Massachusetts_3" src="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/images/massachusetts_3.jpg" width="200" border="0" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px" />Image: Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA In August, I blogged about <a href="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/08/massachusetts_p.html">Massachusetts proceeding with ODF by January 2007</a>, citing Louis Gutierrez, CIO of their ITD (Information Technology Division) releasing the Massachuestts <a href="http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=itdmodulechunk&amp;&amp;L=1&amp;L0=Home&amp;sid=Aitd&amp;b=terminalcontent&amp;f=accessibility_odf_accessibility_midyear_ltr&amp;csid=Aitd">Mid-Year Statement Regarding ODF Implementation</a>. This week we learnt of CIO Gutierez sending in his resignation letter. How unfortunate. His reason for resignation has to do with issues of Massachusetts budgetting for the ITD initiatives. I await further developments in Massachusetts, but I am at least comforted by the <a href="http://news.com.com/Massachusetts+CIO+quits/2100-1022_3-6122613.html?tag=nefd.top">quote</a> from a Massachusetts spokesman, Felix Browne saying that Gutierez's departure will not derail the state's policy of adopting <a href="http://odfalliance.org/resources/AboutODF.pdf">ODF</a> as the state's default document format. Selected links on Gutierez's resignation: <ul><li>Computerworld: <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&amp;articleId=9003866">Mass. CIO Louis Gutierrez resigns - He's upset about the state legislature's lack of funding for IT projects</a></li> <li>Bob Sutor's Open Blog: <a href="http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1116">HR news from Massachusetts</a></li> <li>Andy Updergrove's Standards Blog: <a href="http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20061004161417881">Louis Gutierrez Resigns: Deja Vu on Beacon Hill</a></li></ul> But this week also brings cheer! <a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=113,height=122,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/franceflag_1.jpg"></a> <a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=113,height=122,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/franceflag_2.jpg"><img title="Franceflag_2" height="161" alt="Franceflag_2" src="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/images/franceflag_2.jpg" width="150" border="0" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px" /></a>Vive le France! OK, so this year they disappointed me by losing in the final of the World Cup. But now I'm happy to learn that a report commissioned by the French Prime Minister has recommended that all government documents should be made available in ODF. France is also to ask other European nations to do the same. And the report further recommends &quot;the government fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security, and set up a system to help national and local government agencies exchange information about best practice in the use of open-source software.&quot; Selected links: <ul><li>News.com: <a href="http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-6122939.html">French government report lauds ODF</a></li> <li>Jeff Kaplan's Open ePolicy blog:&nbsp; <a href="http://jakaplan.blogspot.com/2006/10/france-says-vive-le-odf-vive-open.html">France Says: Vive le ODF! Vive Open Source!</a></li></ul></div> <div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=AA1rtfZc"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=AA1rtfZc" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=jWFYNqq3"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=jWFYNqq3" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=les4JMnm"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=les4JMnm" border="0"></img></a></div></content>

Praburaajan: HITB Training - Zone-H Hands On Hacking 2.0

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 7:19pm BST by prabu

Tags: [edit]

Hack in the box (M) Sdn. Bhd. will be running Zone-H Hands on Hacking 2.0 from 28th - 29th November 2006

Date: 28th & 29th November 2006
Time: 0900 - 1800
Venue: The Westin Kuala Lumpur
Trainers: Roberto Preatoni & Lauri Korts Parn
Cost:
USD1299 // MYR4799 (before November 1st)
USD1499 // MYR5599 (after November 1st)

Note: This course is HRDF claimable! All lunch and coffee breaks will be provided. Certificate of attendance will be provided. Students are expected to bring their own laptops.

Overview:

Hands-on Hacking 2 is targeted at IT professionals who wish to delve deep into the latest security threats and most advanced techniques used by malicious hackers today. The course is the ideal continuation of the Hands-on Hacking Unlimited course. Each topic will be examined in detail while a variety of hands-on exercises is provided throughout the course. This course builds on the concepts and techniques introduced in the Hands-on Hacking Unlimited course, providing the latest knowledge and hands-on experience needed to proactively secure systems and develop countermeasures for possible future attacks.

For more information on the training please visit [training.hitb.org]

Praburaajan: HITB Training - Advanced Banking Application Security

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 7:17pm BST by prabu

Tags: [edit]

Hack In The Box (M) Sdn. Bhd. will be running an Advanced Banking Application Security training from 27th - 29th of November 2006

Date: 27th, 28th & 29th November 2006 (3-days)
Time: 0900 - 1800
Venue: The Westin Kuala Lumpur
Trainers: Fabrice Marie
Cost: USD1699 // MYR6199 (introductory rate)

Note: This course is HRDF CLAIMABLE! This course is a hands-on lab and all computers will be provided. All lunch and coffee breaks will be provided. Certificate of attendance provided.

Course Benefits :

Examine threats and vulnerabilities exposed through web services.

Examine trivial and advanced techniques to uncover web application vulnerabilities.

Each Concept has a corresponding hands-on session on a real-life application with the assistance of the trainer.

Detail the proper way to fix or avoid each vulnerability.

Provide general management guidelines as well as deep technical explanations.

For more information on the training please visit [training.hitb.org]
Â

Ong Hean Kuan: shutdown script using xmessage or zenity

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 5:13pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Uses xmessage

#!/bin/sh
# Say bye to shutdown your pc

#uses xmessage to ask first.
answer=$(xmessage  "Are you sure you want to shutdown? " -buttons yes,no -print)
if [ $answer = "yes" ]
then
        # Do shutdown at here.
        #Ubuntu probably needs gksudo instead of sudo
        sudo init 0;
fi

Uses zenity

#!/bin/sh
# Say bye to shutdown your pc

#uses zenity to ask first.
zenity --question --title "Shutdown Confirmation" 
--text "Are you sure you want to shutdown?"

if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]
then
        # Do shutdown at here.
        #Ubuntu probably needs gksudo instead of sudo
        sudo init 0;
fi

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Read and Write NTFS filesystem with Ubuntu Linux

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 4:54pm BST by mypapit

Tags: Linux ubuntu debian ntfs fuse [edit]

This is one of the most popular questions that, previously i would suggest using the native NTFS linux kernel driver, but the driver itself only has a limited write support.

The best way to enable writing to NTFS partition is with the ntfs-3g userland driver. It uses the fuse driver and although still in BETA, tests proven that the driver really works for writing into ntfs partition.

For Ubuntu users, all you need to do is follow the instruction given in this website : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ntfs-3g

I’ve tried it, and it worked perfectly with my machine, no need to depend to intermediate FAT32 partitions to transfer files from Linux. But one word of advice, although it seems to work, you still need to keep in my that the developers of ntfs-3g driver still consider it in BETA release, so be advice and don’t rough it up too much :p

Tags: linux, ubuntu, debian, ntfs, fuse, kernel, linux kernel, filesystem, filesystems

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Open Malaysia: Water in the cracks

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 4:47pm BST by Dinesh Nair

Tags: [edit]

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">When engineers build roads, they're usually faced with what seem to be insurmountable barriers in the form of ridges, hills and mountains blocking the proposed path of the highway. There are two ways around this, to either reroute the highway around the barrier or the more brute force method of going straight through it. If they choose the latter option, splitting a mountain is by no means an easy task. Thousands of years of geological growth is not going to allow itself to be broken apart easily. Engineers however sometimes use the strength of Mother Nature against herself. A common way of splitting mountains is to make cracks in the mountain, and then pour gallons of water into the cracks. They then freeze the water and take advantage of the fact that the volume of water will expand when it becomes ice. The expansion of the freezing water pushes the cracks apart and the mountain is then slowly broken into two by the forces of nature and physics. Just like freezing water splitting a mountain, the opening up of the telecommunications mountain by IP telephony is breaking down barriers artificially put in place by legacy providers. The continuing growth of the Sessions Initiation Protocol (SIP) commonly used for IP telephone calls and its near ubiqutous availability is allowing individuals and enterprises to wean themselves away from their providers and at the same time take a firm grip on their communications needs. <a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=292,height=638,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/dlinkvclick_1.jpg"><img width="100" height="218" border="0" src="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/images/dlinkvclick_1.jpg" title="Dlinkvclick_1" alt="Dlinkvclick_1" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; float: right;" /></a> Because SIP is an IETF open standard, anyone can implement a SIP stack into their software. We are increasingly seeing the IP telephony enablement of traditional enterprise applications like ERP, HR, financial and operational systems and this is a good harbinger of the converged network. Some legacy handset manufacturers have read the writing on the wall and have either released or have plans to release SIP enabled GSM mobiles. I <a href="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/08/open_your_netwo.html">wrote about one such device</a> by Nokia, the E61 which I use on a daily basis. D-Link will soon <a href="http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=6731">release a WiFi/GSM handset</a> which is based on Linux and contains a SIP client as well.&nbsp; These two will not be the last SIP enabled devices either. As more of these devices proliferate in the marketplace, enterprises are going to realise that there is a whole lot more their communications systems can do for them through open standards and interoperability. True interoperability which is based on open standards would make it trivial to connect your enterprise's IP PBX with your Web 2.0 AJAX driven application. Our developers at QubeConnect, led by <a href="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/z_posts_by_ditesh/index.html">Ditesh</a>, are exploring this right now and are producing some really cool applications based on Javascript, AJAX and Firefox plugins. For this growth to sustain however, the adherence to the SIP standard has to be complete and clear. Too often, vendors are known to bastardize a standard in order to create an intentionally non interoperable product in order to lock in customers. Nowhere is this practice more pervalent than in the telecommunications industry, <a href="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/06/valkommen_till_.html">as even we've experienced</a> before when attempting interoperability with a very large legacy equipment vendor. Additionally, regulators should also be wary of telecomms operators who accidentally on purpose block SIP calls over their ISP networks. Wary of the next generation network eating into the revenues of their incumbent parent, these ISPs usually try to stall these moves until they have a competing service in the market and then use less than ethical practices in QoS to show why their service is better than rival players. But like water eating into cracks and breaking up the mountain, the&nbsp; flow of openness in the telecommunication sector will erode the barriers which are put in place. As more enterprises and individuals go towards IP telephony, the relevance of monopolies of old will become less of a factor. This includes companies like Skype, popular though they may be, who are still based on closed and unpublished standards to create a walled garden for their subscribers. Communications is all about being open and connected, and we are not going to be able to get this done well if we practice a closed approach to the matter.</div> <div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=mKAe2mla"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=mKAe2mla" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=DIcbAE86"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=DIcbAE86" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=M6VEgvtX"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=M6VEgvtX" border="0"></img></a></div></content>

Meling Mudin: fear the command line

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 11:21am BST by spoonfork

Tags: [edit]

trainings sucks, especially if you’re giving one, and your students come from windows background (or what i call “double-click” environment). it’s sad, and it’s very frustrating teaching them, or rather, telling them what to type.

and i have the bad luck of giving back to back trainings in which using the command-line is a must. what i observe is this:

* when it comes to typing commands on the command-line (in bash for example), they’re just freaking s.l.o.w. it is as if they’ve never typed before. how hard is it to type: cd /etc/init.d?

* the command: many just don’t seem to grasp the concept of command. commands are very simple (for example: cd, ls, ps, make, make) and after each command, there must be a space. so when i say “okay now you type cd dot dot”, they type “cd..” resulting in command not found. this happens so many times, even after two or three days doing the same thing.**

so what is wrong? are most people coming from the windows environment are so freaking alien to the command line? is opening up a shell and typing commands so difficult that it become mental shock to them?

i don’t know. i don’t have the answer. even with clear slides with all the commands highlighted, they always get it wrong.

inability to grasp the simple concept of commands is one, another is the navigating directories: cd .., cd /usr cd /var/log, cd /etc/, cd .. they’re just lost. and yes, all the necessary introductions have been given, but yet…

i need a solution because if all of my trainings are gonna be like this, i’ll end up hanging myself on a taugeh tree…

** no point saying “cd space dot dot” because there will be some that will type “cdspace..”. i’m not kidding.

Lee Chin Sheng: Argus - Read This!!!!!

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 10:13am BST by geek00L

Tags: [edit]

For people who plan to use argus and don't know what it actually is -

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2724.txt

Lets RTFM

For people who want to know how argus can do in Network Security Context -

[www.qosient.com]

For people who want to try out latest argus -

[ftp:]

Enjoy :)

Khairil Yusof: Life Out of A Suitcase

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 9:43am BST

Tags: [edit]

Life out of suitcase

So I bought one of those laptop traveller's business cases, to put all my work in and all the peripherals I need such as my trusty X40, camera, chargers etc. Between that and my suitcase, I think I have enough to get me going for the next 2 weeks in Manila for another training.

IOSN South Asia and ChennaiI just got back incidently from Chennai, India to visit the IOSN team there. They made sure I tried out the variety of Indian cuisine there. I still think Kerala food was best though. If you're working or wanting to find out more about FOSS in South Asia, feel free to drop them an email at southasia@iosn.net You can find out what's up in the region by visiting the South Asia section on IOSN.

Dhanesh and Tushar from IOSN South Asia

Reading MaterialOne thing good about India is the the books there are much cheaper than those in Malaysia, and there seems to be a wider variety of non-fiction books. I tend to find that Malaysian book stores are filled with a lot of silly books on how to be successful and the like.

At a book store called Landmark, I picked up Amartya Sen's book Development as Freedom. His approach is really interesting, because it provides a basis for me to look further into the economic costs of the removal of freedoms due to stricter IPR, closed standards and proprietary software for the IT industry. I am where I am now, because I had the freedom to learn, freedom to choose how to apply my knowledge that I've gained and the freedom to share it with others. I also picked up Python Cookbook. I like these books vs the "how to program" because it provides a lot useful applications (eg. removal of duplicate emails) and then explains it and how it could be improved. I look forward to writing scripts, so I can squeeze some more time out by automating some tasks.

LPI Level 1 Training MaterialsOne of the reasons I'm doing a lot of travelling is to train and work on the free training course we are developing (based on the work of others also). LPI Level 1 objectives are really worth going through for anybody getting a start in FOSS either as a developer or as a system administrator. Knowing and understanding the basics, lowers the learning curve as you move on to specialise on other tasks. Skills like regex and text processing will server you well, whether you're a developer doing databases or a sysadmin writing rewrites for Apache. Better yet the materials are free, and if you want to do the certification, we are helping with the help of the LPI proctor system to lower the costs. I hope to setup a one stop page for the sysadmin training section to provide more info on the proctor system and where to get training from the trainers we have trained for each of the events. We hope to keep it going.

One of the most active community efforts is Malaysia, and we're (the Malaysian FOSS Community) holding the next community certification event in November.

Gnome 2.16 on FreeBSDSomewhere in all of this, I found the time to upgrade to 2.16 on FreeBSD. We now have hald on FreeBSD, and I can start porting some ports now such as thoggen.

Gnome 2.16 Desktop with Device manager and power management

Gnome 2.16 Desktop with Device manager and power management

Click for full size image

Lee Chin Sheng: Argus-3.0(dev) - Ragraph

Posted: October 5th, 2006, 9:25am BST by geek00L

Tags: [edit]

Argus 3.0 is in active development, I guess most of argus users should give the development version a try since there are a lot of changes from 2.0 to 3.0, by the way tools like ratop, racluster, ragraph and etc are added. I have no problem to get it compiled however I have problem when I run ragraph, anyway I just solve it with pkg_add since it requires certain perl module to work.

shell>pkg_add -r p5-RRDTool-OO

This is just note to myself in case I have forgotten next time, by the way I think argus 3.0 will be in FreeBSD port when it is released.

Cheers to all arguser :]

P/S: Feel free to contribute to argus wiki page -
[www.vorant.com]

Ong Hean Kuan: insert special symbol in linux

Posted: October 4th, 2006, 12:09am BST

Tags: [edit]

I accidentally discover that I can insert special characters by pressing CTRL + SHIFT and hex code.

Try it out, CTRL + SHIFT then type A4 you will get a sun ( ¤ ) symbol.

Follow this ASCII MAPPING TABLE

Aizat Faiz: Why I Hate Systems Analysis and Design Classes

Posted: October 4th, 2006, 11:30pm BST by aizatto

Tags: [edit]

The topic of Systems Analysis and Design is important in the development of software systems. I agree its important in the development of good quality Software, in the sense of propper planning, analysis and design.

But when it comes to my universitiy/college classes on teaching it, it is just so boring. The importance of the subject is not felt at all.

When it comes to developing, or describing a system for class, I despise it, and I believe I speak for alot of other people as well.

Somethings I despise about SADN class:

I despise drawing Context Diagrams
I despise drawing Data Flow Diagrams

Oh but I do find drawing Entity Relation Diagrams easy and fun.

When the lecturer gives us the assignment to design a system, its typically a few page descriptions about the fallacious organization and the system they want, or are using. We are typically suppose either draw out their current system, or design them a new one.

The main reason I despise SADN is because in the development of a system, there are a large number of variables that the assignment typically doesn't cover. Generally we are to make assumptions for the development of the system.

For example; When conduting what is dubbed as "requirements analysis", obviously the cost of the system is very important to the customer. But for our assignments the total cost of ownership can be in a large huge and gargantuan amount, which in reality I believe people would disagree upon.

My take is that these assignments should have a stricter set of constraints by the "customer", and should be more realistic, and believable.

In APIIT, SADN was taught in the first year. As I had prior experience with messing around with databases, and building my own "systems" it was easy for me to understand some of the aspects that were taught in the class. But when you come with no development background, and you try to understand importance, its a bit difficult. People don't know what to exactly "deploy" as they were never taught the tools, all they know is to deploy a "database", but which one is the suitable one. Perhaps SADN should actually be taught in the second year?

In Monash, SADN is actually taught in the second year. The first year its labelled as "IT In Organizations" (Monash Code: FIT1003), its basically the same thing under a different disguise, but we don't build systems. We describe ones that have already been built, and build our pretty diagrams for those.

They leave too much up to the imagination to patch that for me, it feels like the assignment does not carry any weight at all as it is completely fallacious, fictious, and completely in accurage. Thus making it tedious, and especially boring.

Or maybe I just hate doing assignments.

Ow Mun Heng: MSSQL to MySQL DB Syncronisation/Replication

Posted: October 4th, 2006, 9:17pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Does anyone here knows of any (FOSS) software preferably that is able to do database syncronisation between MSSQL Server to a MySQL Server?

Please do comment.

Open Malaysia: Open Innovation - IBM Innovation Center launched in Malaysia

Posted: October 4th, 2006, 4:30pm BST by Hasan

Tags: [edit]

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=800,height=744,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/iicribboncutting.jpg"><img title="Iicribboncutting" height="279" alt="Iicribboncutting" src="http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/images/iicribboncutting.jpg" width="300" border="0" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px" /></a> Photo: Steve Wilkins, Director ISV &amp; Developer Relations, IBM Asia Pacific, Voon Seng Chuan, Managing Director, IBM Malaysia and Rashmy Chatterjee, Director IBM Software Group ASEAN/South Asia officially launching the IIC Voon Seng Chuan, Managing Director of IBM Malaysia during his welcome speech at the official launch of the IBM Innovation Center (IIC) for Business Partners yesterday emphasized that innovation (unlike invention) is more often done collaboratively with others than done alone, and IBM has chosen not to be in the business of developing software applications -- thus the IBM Innovation Center for Business Partners allows for such open innovation, to create and enhance solutions of joint clients of IBM and IBM's partners. The press release for the launch is <a href="http://hasansaidin.typepad.com/openmalaysia/IICpressrelease.pdf">here</a>. The Star covered the launch as follows: <a href="http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/10/4/business/15623099&amp;sec=business">IBM makes Malaysia Asean hub</a> Excerpts:<blockquote dir="ltr">&quot;IBM chose Malaysia due to the country's strong developer base and the excellent IT infrastructure and facilities here,&quot; he said after the opening of Kuala Lumpur ICC [should be IIC] yesterday. Voon said the setting up of the ICC [should be IIC] in Malaysia to serve the Asean region was testimony to IBM’s commitment to support and collaborate with its business partners to generate more innovative solutions for their customers. Sited at IBM Malaysia’s new office in Bandar Utama, the ICC [should be IIC] will provide the tools and hands-on support that will help IBM business partners to build, port and test their solutions and industrial applications on IBM hardware and software platforms. It will also help IBM's business partners cut their development costs, shorten their sales cycle, leverage on innovation to compete and get their applications to market faster. IBM also provides hands-on workshops and technical seminars to help developers update their technical skills on key IBM technologies. On top of the workshops and seminars, the ICC [should be IIC] will also provide assistance on prototype and proof-of-concept development, porting and testing services, validation, integration testing, performance and scalability testing, technical support and secure remote virtual private network (VPN)... ...The Kuala Lumpur ICC [should be IIC] is one of IBM’s 32 ICCs [should be IICs] worldwide and the sixth in the Asia-Pacific after Seoul, Tokyo, Bangalore, Shanghai and Sydney.</blockquote>The software platforms provided at the center includes Linux, the most exciting open source operating system that has been gaining acceptance by the the marketplace, including in Malaysia.&nbsp; There is also emphasis on <a href="http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=677">SOA</a> (service oriented architecture) in the development of solutions by ISVs (independent software vendors) signing up at the IIC. An earlier coverage of IBM Innovation Centers worldwide was by CIO Magazine: <a href="http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25011">IBM to Open Innovation Centers to Startups, VCs</a> Excerpt:<blockquote dir="ltr">IBM can give startups free advice on how best to approach markets outside their home countries, for instance, how a company in China can sell its offerings in the U.S., Clark said. Startups also can talk to IBM’s technical architects either face-to-face in the centers or remotely from their phones or computers to take advantage of their specific areas of expertise.</blockquote>Thus, another role of the IIC is to help partners go to market, locally and globally. Other news coverage on the launch: The Edge Daily: <a href="http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_e7564c50-cb73c03a-3eec1a00-9e365ed1">IBM opens first Asean Innovation Centre in KL</a> Excerpt:<blockquote dir="ltr">The RM10 million investment included skilled resource, equipment, state-of-the-art facilities and networking</blockquote>Business Times, The New Straits Times: <a href="http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BT/Wednesday/Corporate/BT589418.txt/Article/">IBM Innovation Center launched in KL</a> Excerpt:<blockquote dir="ltr">IBM also provides business partners with resources to help them accelerate the development of open standards-based and small and medium business-focused solutions.</blockquote></div> <div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=ocTa0mZa"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=ocTa0mZa" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=i96w6waM"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=i96w6waM" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=anowZVKm"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=anowZVKm" border="0"></img></a></div></content>

Open Malaysia: MNCC 2006 Open Source Award Winner

Posted: October 4th, 2006, 11:30am BST by ditesh

Tags: [edit]

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This is slightly delayed as I have been busy but as is said, better late then never, eh? Well, MNCC <a href="http://www.mncc.com.my/ictawards/winners-2006.html">announced</a> the winners of the 2006 Open Source Award, as follows: <blockquote>The winning Open Source Software for 2006 is ‘<a href="http://mymirror.asiaosc.org/FIRST/">Forensic Investigations&nbsp; &amp; Recovery Systems (FIRST) LIVE CD 1.2.0</a>’ developed by a team from MIMOS Cyberspace Security Lab and led by Mr. Azril Azam Abdul Rahim. The software is a complete system built on top of a collection of open source software solutions that has been posted onto a bootable CDROM. FIRST aims to provide the ideal system environment to handle security, incident response and computer forensics. The software compares favorably with other competing products and unofficially holds the record for the smallest distribution, fastest boot-up sequence and lowest minimum memory requirements.</blockquote></div> <div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=KBW3Ogn8"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=KBW3Ogn8" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=N4Kmbzhj"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=N4Kmbzhj" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?a=yfGzt1sk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/OpenMalaysia?i=yfGzt1sk" border="0"></img></a></div></content>

Lee Chin Sheng: Crime Detections

Posted: October 4th, 2006, 9:18am BST by geek00L

Tags: [edit]

While watching news on TV yesterday night, I were surprised that our police enforcement don't have computer system that keeping track of criminal activities. With this kind of criteria, I'm wondering how our security is guaranteed in such a way, the criminal profiling is handled in very inefficient ways which is decentralized and by each branches in different locations.

And now only they come to realized that they need to have centralized management and start to build the database system, this can be considered as good new since it is never too late to do it while other countries have this kind of system ages ago.

I think with this kind of system, the correlations can be done and it is time saver as well since each branches doesn't have to take much times to query the records and profiles of criminals. The information sharing within each branches will help and all the police stations are now merged into empowered body even they are all separated physically.

They should be sharp in crime detections with this kind of deployment. By the way I'm wondering when the system will be completely built while the project is started on December of this year if I'm not mistaken.

Cheers :]

Lee Chin Sheng: Bittwiste - Revision

Posted: October 4th, 2006, 9:03am BST by geek00L

Tags: [edit]

Talking about editing pcap files, I always have this problem where I want to change the IP address to another IP address, for example I want to change 1.2.3.4 to 192.168.48.21, I can do it easily if it is only fewer records or small pcap files with netdude. However I always have problem with this kind of Pcap files where IP 1.2.3.4 is in the source and destination IP field(bidirectional for example TCP connections), if I use netdude to change the IP address by highlighting the pcap records, all the source IP will be changed to the same as 1.2.3.4 which I don't want. In TCP connections, we usually have this kind of connections,

1.2.3.4 -> x.x.x.x
x.x.x.x -> 1.2.3.4
1.2.3.4 -> x.x.x.x

So if I use netdude, it will becomes -

192.168.48.21 -> x.x.x.x
192.168.48.21 -> 1.2.3.4
192.168.48.21 -> x.x.x.x

This is very inconvinient and I have to manually change either the source and destination IP. I feel that there's lack of tool that can do the thing I want and fortunately we have latest Bitwiste which able to do this type of thing.

Let's say now I have this Pcap file called TCP-Learning.pcap -

shell>tcpdump -nr TCP-Learning.pcap
reading from file TCP-Learning.pcap, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet)
17:19:46.623049 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: S 676482397:676482397(0) win 65535
17:19:46.623101 IP 1.2.3.4.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: S 814542684:814542684(0) ack 676482398 win 5840
17:19:46.834035 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: . ack 1 win 65535
17:19:46.882274 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: P 1:313(312) ack 1 win 65535
17:19:46.882323 IP 1.2.3.4.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: . ack 313 win 6432
17:19:46.883334 IP 1.2.3.4.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: P 1:615(614) ack 313 win 6432
17:19:47.184978 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: . ack 615 win 64921
17:19:53.598808 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: P 313:625(312) ack 615 win 64921
17:19:53.599825 IP 1.2.3.4.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: P 615:1229(614) ack 625 win 7504
17:19:53.927832 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: . ack 1229 win 64307
17:20:09.744646 IP 1.2.3.4.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: F 1229:1229(0) ack 625 win 7504
17:20:09.946046 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: . ack 1230 win 64307
17:20:14.316555 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 1.2.3.4.80: R 625:625(0) ack 1230 win 0

Now I want to change 1.2.3.4 either in source or destination IP field to 192.168.48.21, what I can do is just one liner with bitwiste,

shell>./bittwiste -I ./TCP-Learning.pcap -O TCP-Learning-edited.pcap -T ip -s 1.2.3.4:192.168.48.21 -d 1.2.3.4:192.168.48.21

shell>tcpdump -nr TCP-Learning-edited.pcap
reading from file TCP-Learning.pcap, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet)
17:19:46.623049 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: S 676482397:676482397(0) win 65535
17:19:46.623101 IP 192.168.48.21.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: S 814542684:814542684(0) ack 676482398 win 5840
17:19:46.834035 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: . ack 1 win 65535
17:19:46.882274 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: P 1:313(312) ack 1 win 65535
17:19:46.882323 IP 192.168.48.21.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: . ack 313 win 6432
17:19:46.883334 IP 192.168.48.21.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: P 1:615(614) ack 313 win 6432
17:19:47.184978 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: . ack 615 win 64921
17:19:53.598808 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: P 313:625(312) ack 615 win 64921
17:19:53.599825 IP 192.168.48.21.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: P 615:1229(614) ack 625 win 7504
17:19:53.927832 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: . ack 1229 win 64307
17:20:09.744646 IP 192.168.48.21.80 > 222.64.79.60.3493: F 1229:1229(0) ack 625 win 7504
17:20:09.946046 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: . ack 1230 win 64307
17:20:14.316555 IP 222.64.79.60.3493 > 192.168.48.21.80: R 625:625(0) ack 1230 win 0

This is clean and neat, thanks to Addy(author of bittwist) who has added this feature for the ease of use. Feel free to download it at here and give it a try.

What a powerful pcap editing tool!!!!!

Enjoy (:])

Ikmal Ahmad: And the server rest forever…

Posted: October 3rd, 2006, 12:31am BST

Tags: [edit]

Aha… 1 of my server will shutdown. Today it last day that server serve all of you. I will shut it down after today… October 04, 2006 0100 am (+8 GMT). Some basic info of the server: # more /etc/slackware-version Slackware 11.0.0 # uprecords # [...]

Aizat Faiz: eGenting Competition 2006: Workshops

Posted: October 3rd, 2006, 11:04pm BST by aizatto

Tags: [edit]

So it's suggested that I attend these "workshops" to build up my skills and expections before attending the competition. Frankly these workshops are boring.

The workshops covered:

Embedded SQL
Data Flow Diagrams (AHH THE HORROR!)

Embedded SQL is new to me, and I don't exactly know the benefits vs normal SQL queries. As for the lesson on DFDs, horror! I hate DFDs, and anything related to Systems Analysis and Design...it's just so boring...

On an interesting note they defined one table as:

PLAIN TEXT SQL:

CREATE TABLE activity {
...
actDate integer NOT NULL,
...
}

Is that an integer I see for a data type which could possibly be a date?

From the workshop sheet:

Dates are stored on the database in YYYYMMDD format, but the date range submitted to the reporting program must be submitted in DDMMYY format. Two-digit years from 70-99 are in the twentieth century. Other yeras are in the twenty-first century.

Aizat Faiz: Transformers!

Posted: October 3rd, 2006, 10:37pm BST by aizatto

Tags: [edit]

Transformers go!

Been messing around with XSLT recently, and it is some cool schnit. Alright, perhaps I may do the same with say a scripting language, just parse the well formed and valid XML file with a scripting language, and make it output certain elements in a format I want. I mean sure...there is that way, but it is always fun to learn new (or old, xslt isn't something really new) technologies. Though not a bright thing to do when you have an assignment under your belt due in a few days...

XSLT: XML transformations made easy. (hell I wished the syntax was alot better actually). There is some real kungfu in XSLT; as can be seen from the docbook2html example. But it does take a bit of time to get used to.

Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail: Install Java 5 SDK and Java JRE in Ubuntu

Posted: October 3rd, 2006, 4:22pm BST by mypapit

Tags: ubuntu Linux java sun javasdk [edit]

Installing Java Runtime and SDK has been made easier with Ubuntu Linux. Here’s a quick tip to install Java 5 SDK or Runtime in Ubuntu Linux.

1. First, go to System->Administration->Software Properties,

Check all options/channels

2. Close the dialog, and go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager

Search for Java package,

Select sun-java-sdk, and install the package,

3. Read and accept Sun Java JRE agreement,

4. Finally, test the java application using console, Applications->Accesories->Terminal

And that’s all, you can run and compile your java program using Ubuntu Linux, have a lot of fun!

Tags: ubuntu, linux, java, sun, java sdk, jdk, java 2, java 5, java runtime, debian

Thanks To Our Sponsor: Get GNU/Linux CD/DVD in Malaysia Fast & affordable, delivered right to your doorsteps

Meling Mudin: vault: a very simple personal document manager

Posted: October 3rd, 2006, 3:52pm BST by spoonfork

Tags: [edit]

i’ve been looking for a simple, web-based document manager, and most have features that i don’t need such as:

* revisions and controls
* workflow control
* security and access control
* multiple users with multiple roles

furthermore, the web-based ones do not scan for files in a directory, you need to add them to the system one by one, which is time consuming and not productive. so i wrote one that fits my needs:

* scans a directory, and insert the file’s information to database
* does not require any file uploads
* file categorization is done via “tags”

screenshots: 1, 2, 3

grab it here. the html is a bit raw (i’m not a html dude :))

Praburaajan: Cheap Server Co-Location @ Jaring IDC !

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, 7:23pm BST by prabu

Tags: [edit]

The Interunix Co-Location promotion is back !, the servers will be hosted in the Jaring IDC @
TPM Bukit jalil, which is said do have the largest bandwidth in Malaysia
of 2.5Gbps the details are :

1 x I.P Address

1 x Power source

1 x 10/100Mbps Network Connection

Unmetered data transfer

Unlimited physical visits

*The pricing is :*

RM 160/month for 1U
RM 320/month for 2U
RM 480/month for 3U
RM 640/month for 4U

Total first month payment : RM 500 (Setup + Deposit + First month
payment) [ONE TIME FEE]

and the following months RM 160 for 1U, RM 320 for 2U and so on.

Rackspace is limited we only have 10 more left !

*First Come First Serve Basis*

*Promotion valid until 6th of october 2006 !!*

Please e-Mail prabu@interunix.net for more info

Seymour Cakes: Penang First OSS Meetup

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, 5:46pm BST by Seymour Cakes

Tags: [edit]

I was glad I make it. Took some pictures and here they are.

Praburaajan: HITBSecConf2006

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, 5:24pm BST by prabu

Tags: [edit]

This Year’s HITBSecConf went really well it rocked ! we had more people than last year ! we had excellent speakers ! we had loads of fun but yea i know conference has been over two weeks ago but yea i been lazy to post about it. Anyway we hope everyone enjoyed the conference and can make it back to HITBSecConf2007 somewhere in september next year ! and hope we can make it bigger and better !

The Setup (17th September)

The Training (18th September - 19th September)

The Conference (20th September - 21st September)

The Party (Night of 21st September)

See You Guys Next Year @ HITBSecConf2007 :: Kuala Lumpur which will be on the 3rd - 6th September 2007 !!!

For all conference presentation slides please visit [conference.hitb.org]

For all conference photos please visit http://photos.hackinthebox.org

And last but not least i would like to thank Zone-H for making me their Malaysian Staff Member im honored and hope i can do a good job, Thanx Roberto !!

Meling Mudin: sheep in the box

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, 3:09pm BST by spoonfork

Tags: [edit]

usernames and passwords captured during hitbsecconf2006 are here.

Ong Hean Kuan: How to fold a T-shirt ?

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, 2:31pm BST

Tags: [edit]

My mother always told me, have to mix with the wise! Eddie always show me great tactic to do something, this time he show me how to fold a T-shirt with very fast manner, that he learn it from a japanese lady. Haha ! It works! I am gonna use it for my shirt for future when I stay at KL.

Who say youtube causing brain rod ? I learn how to fold T-shirt from there. [www.youtube.com] Check it out!

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/02/Ong_Hean_Kuan__%e6%88%91%e7%88%b1%e5%8f%b0%e5%a6%b9%ef%bc%8c%e5%8f%b0%e5%a6%b9%e7%88%b1%e6%88%91'

Ong Hean Kuan: 我爱台妹，台妹爱我

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, 11:56am BST

Tags: [edit]

This is the song I keep listening to nowadays! I found the MTV at youtube. [www.youtube.com] Nice song isn't it? haha

muhd. zamri: An encounter with VLAN

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, 9:15am BST by zamri

Tags: [edit]

2 days ago, I helped my friend setting up internet connection for his office's LAN. As he showed me the network diagram, I realised that there are 6 VLAN that I need to cover to make them connect to the internet. INTERNET The problem was to get the clients in each VLAN to communicate each other and to communicate with router. All clients should also be able to access dhcp server located in one

Ow Mun Heng: Modular X and the missing XV extension

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 9:21pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Was wanting to play some files in mplayer and then mplayer started to bork. Spitting out message that it cannot initialise the -vo device. (I'm using XV because it's more or less the only one which can scale the video to my full 1400x1050 fullscreen resolution.)

It keep spitting out messages and i couldn't locate the suitable extension. I tried googling but found nearly nothing except for one little titbit about extmod and using Xorg -configure.

I switched to the console, shut down XDM and did the Xorg -configure and saw that perhaps I needed to load up 'extmod' into xorg.conf.

i tried that, and wah-laH!! I have it back.

SWEEeeEET!

Permalink for 'Planet_MYOSS/2006/10/01/Ow_Mun_Heng__SQL___Database_Migration_MSSQL___gt__MySQL__in_Linux_'

Ow Mun Heng: SQL : Database Migration MSSQL -> MySQL (in Linux)

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 5:40pm BST

Tags: [edit]

So.. in order to test how "fast" MySQL would run natively in a Linux envronment, I had to set up the same database in my gentoo linux laptop.

I already had the create table scripts and I've already have the data (in the form of a bulk insert SQL statements)

So.. it should be simple right?

Well, you're half right. The only major problem which I faced is that MSSQL comes from the Windows(tm) world and over there, there's no such thing as case sensitivity and as such, the exports of the table/data are done in a Mixed case manner. (I don't know why) and that caused a few minutes of headache as i tried to convert the necessary names to UPPERCASE.

I tried to do a few manually, then I got bored. (I didn't know it was so extensive a problem!)

So.. In the end, I solicited the help of tr and sed.

sed is more useful than tr.

normally when one wants to do replacements, one would do


$ sed -i 's:aaa:AAA:g' File

right?? Well, the only thing with the above is that it's doing it one word at a time.

Well, there's another flag one can use


$sed -i  'y:abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz:ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ:' File

and with that, i've done the migration.

Ow Mun Heng: SQL : Performance Metric - MSSQL vs MySQL

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 5:34pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Perhaps this not a fair comparison, but oh well.

This is what I'm testing against.

The Machine
----------------
D600 Laptop w/1.4G PM
1.5GB RAM

Virtual Machine
--------------------
Windows XP SP2
512MB RAM allocated to it
MSSQL 2000
MySQL 5.0.24a (InnoDB Engine)

The database is the _same_

Running a query, (this query uses subqueries and it each subquery joins a minimum of 3 different tables and there are a a total of ~6 subqueries which make up the main query) to return a total of 334 rows and 46 columns

DB : Time
MySQL : 13609 miliseconds (~13 seconds)
MSSQL : 98157 miliseconds (~1m 38 seconds)

Running the exact same query natively on a Gentoo Linux Box (my Laptop) yields 9 seconds of execution time only.

Doing the same query again, w/o restarting the server (so that we don't use the cache) yields

DB:Time
MySQL : 406ms
MSSQL : 99360ms (~1m 39 seconds)

Running it natively yielded ~409ms

Key parameters in my.cnf
query_cache_size = 32M
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 120M

I don't have a clue how to speed things up for MSSQL, so I don't think I will start. :-)

Ow Mun Heng: SQL : Mysql Administrator HangUps

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 5:10pm BST

Tags: [edit]

This is a BUG and it's only evident in the *nix version of it.

I'm using version 1.1.10 and each time I click on the "User Administration Icon" it will hang the whole application.

This is filed as Bug #17879. There is however a known workaround for this bug.

export DEBUG_DONT_SPAWN_FETCHES=1
mysql-administrator

Ow Mun Heng: SQL : Differences between MSSQL and MySQL (Int/Float/Numeric/Decimal)

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 2:42pm BST

Tags: [edit]

As far as I know, these options exists in MSSQL in terms of types of data-types.

Data Types	Description
bigint	Integer data from -2^63 through 2^63-1
int	Integer data from -2^31 through 2^31 - 1
smallint	Integer data from -2^15 through 2^15 - 1
tinyint	Integer data from 0 through 255
bit	Integer data with either a 1 or 0 value
decimal	Fixed precision and scale numeric data from -10^38 +1 through 10^38 -1
numeric	Fixed precision and scale numeric data from -10^38 +1 through 10^38 -1
money	Monetary data values from -2^63 through 2^63 - 1
smallmoney	Monetary data values from -214,748.3648 through +214,748.3647
float	Floating precision number data from -1.79E + 308 through 1.79E + 308
real	Floating precision number data from -3.40E + 38 through 3.40E + 38
datetime	Date and time data from January 1, 1753, through December 31, 9999, with an accuracy of 3.33 milliseconds
smalldatetime	Date and time data from January 1, 1900, through June 6, 2079, with an accuracy of one minute
char	Fixed-length character data with a maximum length of 8,000 characters
varchar	Variable-length data with a maximum of 8,000 characters
text	Variable-length data with a maximum length of 2^31 - 1 characters
nchar	Fixed-length Unicode data with a maximum length of 4,000 characters
nvarchar	Variable-length Unicode data with a maximum length of 4,000 characters
ntext	Variable-length Unicode data with a maximum length of 2^30 - 1 characters
binary	Fixed-length binary data with a maximum length of 8,000 bytes
varbinary	Variable-length binary data with a maximum length of 8,000 bytes
image	Variable-length binary data with a maximum length of 2^31 - 1 bytes
cursor	A reference to a cursor
sql_variant	A data type that stores values of various data types, except text, ntext, timestamp, and sql_variant
table	A special data type used to store a result set for later processing
timestamp	A database-wide unique number that gets updated every time a row gets updated
uniqueidentifier	A globally unique identifier

in MySQL, the following are the data-types:

MySQL Datatypes
Ty p e	S i z e	D e s c r i p t i o n
CHAR[Length]	Length bytes	A fixed-length field from 0 to 255 characters long.
VARCHAR(Length)	String length + 1 bytes	A fixed-length field from 0 to 255 characters long.
TINYTEXT	String length + 1 bytes	A string with a maximum length of 255 characters.
TEXT	String length + 2 bytes	A string with a maximum length of 65,535 characters.
MEDIUMTEXT	String length + 3 bytes	A string with a maximum length of 16,777,215 characters.
LONGTEXT	String length + 4 bytes	A string with a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 characters.
TINYINT[Length]	1 byte	Range of -128 to 127 or 0 to 255 unsigned.
SMALLINT[Length]	2 bytes	Range of -32,768 to 32,767 or 0 to 65535 unsigned.
MEDIUMINT[Length]	3 bytes	Range of -8,388,608 to 8,388,607 or 0 to 16,777,215 unsigned.
INT[Length]	4 bytes	Range of -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647 or 0 to 4,294,967,295 unsigned.
BIGINT[Length]	8 bytes	Range of -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 or 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 unsigned.
FLOAT	4 bytes	A small number with a floating decimal point.
DOUBLE[Length, Decimals]	8 bytes	A large number with a floating decimal point.
DECIMAL[Length, Decimals]	Length + 1 or Length + 2 bytes	A DOUBLE stored as a string, allowing for a fixed decimal point.
DATE	3 bytes	In the format of YYYY-MM-DD.
DATETIME	8 bytes	In the format of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.
TIMESTAMP	4 bytes	In the format of YYYYMMDDHHMMSS; acceptable range ends inthe year 2037.
TIME	3 bytes	In the format of HH:MM:SS
ENUM	1 or 2 bytes	Short for enumeration, which means that each column can haveone of several possible values.
SET	1, 2, 3, 4, or 8 bytes	Like ENUM except that each column can have more than one ofseveral possible values.

So.. as you can see, they're roughly there same. However, that's where the similarity ends.

In MSSQL, when you create a table/row, you signify whether that column will be of int/bigint/float or anything like that. (Same goes for MySQL)

eg: Let's say you have a table name TTT in MSSQL


CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TTT] ( 
    [Value1]	int NULL,
    [Value2]	int NULL,
    [ID]    	varchar(25) NULL 
    )
GO

[1] select value2+1 from ttt
 column1    
 ---------- 
 1071  

[2] select (value2+1)/1000 from ttt
column1    
 ---------- 
 1      

[3] select cast (value2+1 as float) from ttt
 column1    
 ---------- 
 1071    

[4] select cast (value2+1 as float)/1000 from ttt
column1    
 ---------- 
 1.071

Note that when creating the table, Value1 and Value2 is defined as data type INT.

Note also that in statement [2], when one divides Value2 by 1000, the result is 1. (which is true because it's an INT but that's not what you would want.)
So, the only way to get what you want would be to CAST() it into a float/decimal/numeric as per [4] and you will get what you wanted.

Now, let's do the same thing in MySQL


CREATE TABLE TTT ( 
    Value1	int NULL,
    Value2	int NULL,
    ID    	varchar(25) NULL 
    )
GO

[1] mysql> select value2+1 from tttG;
*************************** 1. row ***************************
value2+1: 1071

[2] mysql> select (value2+1)/1000 from ttt G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
(value2+1)/1000: 1.0710

[3] mysql> select cast (value2+1 as float) from tttG
ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'float) from ttt' at line 1

[4] mysql> select cast (value2+1 as decimal)/1000 from ttt G
ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'decimal)/1000 from ttt' at line 1



As you can see from above, when using MySQL, all that's needed is just statement [2] and you get your answer. There's no need for usage of CAST().

Apparently, the MySQL DB engine can do this on the fly for the user, unlike MSSQL. Note, however, I'm no expert and I can't think of why, MSSQL does it like that, or restricts it in that sort of manner.

On the other hand, MySQL does have a CAST() function , however it restricts the types of data-types it can be converted to :


    *      BINARY[(N)]
    *      CHAR[(N)]
    *      DATE
    *      DATETIME
    *      DECIMAL
    *      SIGNED [INTEGER]
    *      TIME
    *      UNSIGNED [INTEGER]


So.. this is another stumbling block. If I would want to do the queries against a MySQL DB rather than a MSSQL DB, there would have to be some amount of re-writing of the queries, which isn't all that hard or painful. However, having said that, I've got to ask, where's the motivation to do that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an Free and Open Source Software guy, but in the environment where I have my day job, FOSS isn't really regarded with much awe.

So, what do I want to do?? I guess I have to do/prove these things.

1. Can FOSS DB handle the LOAD?
2. What sort of MODEST hardware can I get away with??
 -> As of right now, the only hardware I can get away with is
   -> 1 Intel Celeron 1.7G Processor
   -> 2x256MB RAM
   -> > 200GB of HD space. (This is a NON-issue really)
3. If I can get a few of the above hardware, is it possible to get them to work in a cluster and serve clients?

Basically, in a nutshell, what would be nice is to have (some sort of) replication between the Main MSSQL server to a MySQL/PostgresSQL server(s) and then have all the queries directed to the MySQL/PostgresSQL servers.

I've already got the tables schema in place, I believe I can get the queries re-written with little problems. (I've already got an idea as to which queries which needs to be re-written anyway)

Ow Mun Heng: SQL : Rounding Errors(?) between MSSQL and MySQL

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 2:34pm BST

Tags: [edit]

Hmm... I just found out that when dealing with numbers, MySQL is more *forgiving* to mistakes in coding.

Consider this example.

MySQL:


mysql> select 1E8/1071 G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
1E8/1071: 93370.681605976
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select 100000000/1071 G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
100000000/1071: 93370.6816
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Doing the same thing in MSSQL :


 column1           
 ----------------- 
 93370.68160597573 

 column1    
 ---------- 
 93370

For whatever reasons, the behaviour is different! And when you add it all up, there would be rounding errors present somewhere along the way. Now, rounding errors are OK for some applications, but they might be frown upon in others.

Wei Chong: WCHAN the waiting channel

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 1:34pm BST by weichong78

Tags: [edit]

I was curious about this column in ps command for sometime now. Finally yesterday I could find myself some free time to dig deeper into it.
From here, it is stated that "In the Solaris OS, the WCHAN column is the address of a synchronization variable on which the thread is blocked. On Linux, WCHAN is the routine in which the thread is sleeping".
So, lets find out how does Linux implement wchan.
First lets do a "ps -l", which gives (with the name modified):

F S UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD
4 S 0 1004 1 5 75 0 - 659 wait tty1 00:00:01 bash
0 R 0 1014 1004 0 78 0 - 595 - tty1 00:00:00 ps

cat "/proc/1004/wchan" gives "do_wait".

Ok, so our bash process 1004 is sleeping in the routine do_wait, but how did the kernel implement it, where does the value "do_wait" come from?
Let "use the source", let's go into linux/fs/proc.

In linux/fs/proc/array.c, I found do_task_stat(). Within it, I found a line "wchan = get_wchan(task);". In addition, in linux/fs/proc/base.c, I found proc_pid_wchan() with a description of "Provides a wchan file via kallsyms in a proper one-value-per-file format". Looks promising. It turn out that proc_pid_wchan() use get_wchan() to get a long value (maybe an address?) and use kallsym_lookups() to resolve the value (address?) into a symbol.
So, the actual "meat" must be in get_wchan() (or its callee). Let's go there.
Where do we find it? well, it looks like some architecture dependant thingy (usually those program counter or instruction pointer related stuff are), and it is.

We found it in linux/arch/i386/kernel/process.c.
Here it is (2.6.17 code with my own additional (and potentially misleading, misunderstood and disclaimer applied) comment:

unsigned long get_wchan(struct task_struct *p)
{
unsigned long ebp, esp, eip;
unsigned long stack_page;
int count = 0;

/* My own guess:
* Don't do anything if it is not a valid task_struct,
* or if it is either the current running process,
* or it is a process ready to run.
* (Note: TASK_RUNNING doesn't mean it is executing,
* it just means the process has all the needed resource
* and is ready to be schedule for execution anytime)
* The reason behind this is that wchan is "waiting channel",
* so when the process is not "waiting", it has no meaningful interpretation. */
if (!p || p == current || p->state == TASK_RUNNING)
return 0;

/* My own guess:
* Get the page that kernel stack reside in */
stack_page = (unsigned long)task_stack_page(p);

/* My own guess:
*/
esp = p->thread.esp;
if (!stack_page || esp < stack_page || esp > top_esp+stack_page)
return 0;

/* include/asm-i386/system.h:switch_to() pushes ebp last. */

ebp = *(unsigned long *) esp;
do {
if (ebp < stack_page || ebp > top_ebp+stack_page)
return 0;

/* My own guess:
* ebp+4 gives the return address to caller of the current routine
* in the stack frame.
*/
eip = *(unsigned long *) (ebp+4);

/* My own guess:
* compare that the eip does not fall within
* __sched_text_start and __sched_text_end
* which is the range of address where
* the scheduling related routine text image fall within
*/
if (!in_sched_functions(eip))
return eip;

/* My own guess:
* unwind to the previous (caller) stack frame
*/
ebp = *(unsigned long *) ebp;
} while (count++ return 0;
}

So, in summary, it looks like get_wchan() is just taking the process task_struct, make sure it is in a state not ready to run (that is it is "wait" or "sleep" or "block) and then unwind the stack frame until it find the first caller address that does not fall withing the scheduling code (it does this so that we can differentiate from where the thread of execution was block, otherwise most if not all of the blocked would have its current address fall within the scheduling code, which would defeat the purpose of WCHAN in the first place).

Armed with this knowledge, lets find out if it is in fact consistent with our observation.
By "cat /proc/1004/stat and looking at the number corresponding to wchan (the 7th from the back), we get 3222345382 in decimal which is 0xc01116a6 in hex:

1004 (bash) S 1 1004 1004 1025 1032 8388864 1237 2703 2 1 76 96 60 96 15 0 1 0 4566 2732032 370 4294967295 134512640 135115388 3220282176 3220281448 3085243310 0 65536 3686404 1266761467 3222345382 0 0 17 0 0 0

A "grep -C 3 do_wait /proc/kallsyms" give us:

c0110e7c t wait_task_zombie
c01111ce t wait_task_stopped
c0111434 t wait_task_continued
c0111522 t do_wait
c0111892 T sys_waitid
c0111914 T sys_wait4
c0111956 T sys_waitpid

So, it seems that our 0xc01116a6 falls within 0xc0111522 (do_wait) and 0xc0111892 (sys_waitid). Therefore it is indeed inside the function do_wait().
Let see what exactly are those instructions around that address 0xc01116a6.

0xc01116a6 - 0xc0111522 = 0x184 (decimal 388)

If we look at the gdb (via gdbserver) disassemble...
Dump of assembler code for function do_wait:
0xc0111522 <do_wait+0>: push %ebp
0xc0111523 <do_wait+1>: cld
0xc0111524 <do_wait+2>: xor %eax,%eax
0xc0111526 <do_wait+4>: mov %esp,%ebp
0xc0111528 <do_wait+6>: mov $0x5,%ecx
...bla...bla...
0xc011169f <do_wait+381>: jne 0xc01116ab <do_wait+393>
0xc01116a1 <do_wait+383>: call 0xc024c452 <schedule>
0xc01116a6 <do_wait+388>: jmp 0xc011157a <do_wait+88>
0xc01116ab <do_wait+393>: mov $0xffffe000,%eax
...bla...bla...
Looks like 0xc01116a6 is the next instruction after returning from schedule(), so that is where we are blocked.

Well, this is a little investigation I did on my own. So, usual disclaimer that I am not sure if my approach is correct. Any technical comment or guidance are welcome.

Ow Mun Heng: SQL : Stmbleblock #1

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 11:39am BST

Tags: [edit]

Seems like the default format for querying the datatime in MySQL is different than in MSSQL.

MSSQL :
Select * from t where date between '6/1/2006' and '7/5/2006'

MySQL :
Select * from t where date between '2006/6/1' and '2006/7/5'

Going through the MySQL Reference Manual, I found this :

Although MySQL tries to interpret values in several formats, dates always must be given in year-month-day order (for example, '98-09-04'), rather than in the month-day-year or day-month-year orders commonly used elsewhere (for example, '09-04-98', '04-09-98').

On the other hand, MSSQL Seems to understand both syntaxes so, perhaps that is not too bad a thing. (meaning, I may be able to code around it)

This would make porting slightly more "difficult".

Aizat Faiz: MyOSS Meetup October 2006

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 10:16am BST by aizatto

Tags: [edit]

Aizat Faiz will be speaking on The Onion Router, or more commonly known as Tor.

With the war on Terror in full swing, governments are cracking down on privacy to secure their nation. Created and Funded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tor is a anonymity network aiding in protecting your privacy and anonymity over the Internet.

When:
Thursday, 5th October 7:00 PM

Where:
Computer Lab, Zone B,
Open University Malaysia
Jalan Tun Ismail, 50480
Kuala Lumpur

Located near Putra World Trade Center (PWTC)

Need a map?

* Official Map - http://oum.edu.my/portal/index.php?op=view&m=8&page=118
* WikiMapia - http://www.wikimapia.org/#y=3158813&x=101691213&z=16&l=0&m=a

15 minute walk from the PWTC LRT station!
5 minute walk from the Putra KTM station!

The Meetup will be held in the Theatrette in the OUM Campus. Participants may have to register with the security guard. Just say you are going to OUM. You may have to sign a form which will be acknowledged later. There is ample parking in the premises, but please park in the designated (OUM) area.

Praying facilities are available on the campus.

What:
Meetup Agenda
7:00pm - 7:45pm Meet each other
7:45pm - 7:50pm Opening by the Organizer
8:00pm - 8:45pm Privacy/Anonymity with Tor by Aizat Faiz

8:45pm - 9:30pm To Be Confirmed

Cost:
FREE. No registration required, just come right in, have a seat, and join the crowd.

Contact:
aizat.faiz@gmail.com
017-690-8783

Interested in helping out the Free and Open Source Community in Malaysia?
Check out [foss.org.my]

If you would like to do a presentation, please contact me at the above email address.

Learn more about the MyOSS Meetups at [foss.org.my] .

Thank You,
Aizat Faiz

This meetup is possible due to the support and facilities provided by Open University Malaysia.

Ow Mun Heng: SQL ; Migrating from MSSQL to MySQL

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 10:07am BST

Tags: [edit]

Some of you have asked : What is the Database which I've been playing with, well, it's MS SQL Server 2000 and, it's part of the job.

Today, I'm going to learn more about MySQL and thus, I've installed MySQL-5.0.24a(Win32 version) and I'm trying it out.

I'm moving my "Play" MSSQL server's data from my virtual machine into a MySQL Server (also in a [same] virtual machine).

MySQL comes with some MySQL GUI Tools which are available for the Windows(tm) platform and with it, comes also a data migration tool, aptly, MySQL Migration Toolkit.

Using it is quite a simple affair, the only requirement was that it has to have a Java JRE installed (I used Sun-Java 1.5) and it guides you step-by-step to do the data migration. There wasn't much issues with the migration except for the fact that the MSSQL server's Tables being used uses a (proprietary) function called
db_name() which essentially just puts the current Database name as one of the column/row names per data inserted.

Due to this, there was a error, which was easily fixed by removing the corresponding create table structure

eg:
create table t (
`location` varchar(8) NULL DEFAULT db_name()
)

to
create table t (
`location` varchar(8) Default NULL
)

Once that's done, it's time to play with MySQL and see if I can port over some pre-written scripts and all

Goa-india » Planet MYOSS » October 2006

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