Alas, a blog! Live life, like you give a damn!

This was on a mailing list and thought I should publish it here for posterity.

(Tech Support | California, USA)

Caller: "I need to report a very serious computer crime! The local university
is running an illegal computer system!"

Me: "Could you please repeat that"

Caller: "The local university is running an illegal computer system! They've
hacked it!"

Me: "How could you tell they'd hacked it"

Caller: "Well, when it booted, it didn???t say Windows or Microsoft or
anything! It said something about Deviant Linux, I think, and the main
screen looked nothing like my good, legal Windows screen at home!
I think they hacked that, too!"

Me: "Do you mean Debian Linux"

Caller: "Yes, that! Is it some sort of computer mafia or something"

Me: "Uh, no, it's just a different operating system. Nothing to worry about."

Caller: "But it's illegal! It's not Microsoft, not even Windows! They're on a
normal Microsoft computer, so they're breaking the law! I think they stole
my identity when I came in the building! I'm calling the FBI!" *hangs up*

So, the PSLE results came out today, November 26 2009. My son did well (got 3As and an A*) and his "aggregate" is 241. Next step is to apply for secondary one. In a way, the system is freer now compared to when I did my PSLE 38 years ago. He has a much wider range of options but there are some Singaporean idiocyncracies in it. FWIW, he did very well for his second language Malay, getting an A for it. Considering that my Malay was all from National Language which was from my primary and secondary school days, and we don't speak anything other than English at home, I am really, really pleased to see him do very well in it. Full credit goes to his school Malay teacher, his Malay tuition teacher and his daily reading of the dead-tree edition of Berita Harian.

Last week or so, Lee Kuan Yew apparently acknowledged the mistake of his ways in insisting on a second language as an important subject. There are more to it that just this admission of mistake.

Firstly, the schools use the term "Mother Tongue" when referring to second language. This is a not too subtle spinning done by the PAP-led government to subconsciously suggest that the second language done in school is the child's "mother tongue". Of the four official languages in Singapore, historically, only Malay and Tamil are indeed the mother tongues of those who are Malay and Tamil. To every one else, the four official languages are technically non-mother tongues. But the clever use of "mother tongue" helps to imply to the Chinese Singaporean, the Malay Singaporean and the Indian Singaporean, that Mandarin, Malay and Tamil are their respective mother tongues. It is not and never has been. Clever PAPesque wording but stupid social engineering.

Keeping that in mind, let's consider the plight of a Singaporean child going through school. She has to do a 2nd language compulsorily. Compare that with a foreign child attending the same school who is exempted. Who do you think would do better overall - given that no time and energy is spent on a subject with weightage that is not needed? Is it then a surprise to read enough stories of Singaporeans who uproot and move to Australia (mainly) and citing that the 2nd language policy is the push that made them leave? How many good people did we loose as a result of one man's flawed reasoning? Singapore invites people from all over to settle on her shores and contribue to the economy, culture and the arts. But these newbies are not burdened with the mandatory 2nd language albatross.

Earlier this year, at a secondary school open house, I asked if students who join the school next year can choose to continue or discontinue the second language? The reply was that "so long as Minister Mentor is in the cabinet, it will continue to be a requirement to do 2nd language" - not the exact words, but the winks, nods and smiles implied it and I choose to put those words in their mouths.

The exam system has been gamed by those who can answer questions in the way that the graders cannot but pass and whether or not the child has any learning per se, is hard to determine. Looking at my son's primary six science and english language text books, the contents of the books were so superficial that it is no surprise that the teacher did not even use it the whole year.

All is not rosy. Too many mistakes are in the system and political leadership is called for. Not sure if Lee Hsien Loong can rise to it, not sure if Ng Eng Hen (the education minister) cares, but we need to fix the problems. We are loosing (and have lost) good people due to stupidity on the part of the policy makers aka politicians from the PAP.

Happy to have helped with the launch of Fedora 12 at the Singapore Polytechnic. It was a lunch and learn affair and we had about 120 or students in attendance - including about 10-20 faculty. Nice to see the interest. Good questions were asked: does it have AutoCad? How about PhotoShop? What about drivers? Was able to show them Fedora Electronics Lab and scribus and inkscape. Good interest and good feedback. Hopefully some will sign up as Fedora Ambassadors.

Quietly pleased to be recognized with a Merit Award from Spring Singapore for "meritorious service and contribution to the Singapore national standardisation programme". Thanks, ITSC for giving me an opportunity to serve.

Spring Singapore Merit Award 2009

My Mom was asking me for a small laptop for her to use and I figured that the best thing would be to get a netbook. With my sons and nephew in tow, we trooped down to VivoCity to see what's on offer. Best Denki was the first stop and nothing that caught my eye. I had with me, my USB drive that runs F11 so I can test out the machines before I buy them. Better than using a live CD because not all the systems have CD drives.

Then we moved to Challenger and I was pleasantly surprised to see on offer the Acer Aspire One D250 preinstalled with Andriod and the some other OS version 7. I promptly, with a puzzled sales person overseeing me, plugged in my USB drive and booted the machine. Fedora 11 came up sprightly and the built-in camera, audio, wifi, bluetooth, 3 USB ports, ethernet and SD card reader all were detected and configured.

I did check out the set on display and the Android is a customized edition. The challenger sales person asked me if I wanted to "set up the machine". I asked him why and he said that the Other OS is pre-loaded, but not configured. I said that doing a configuration would mean I have to agree to use that Other OS which I am not prepared to and that I am really interested in the Android and Fedora as the two OSes. He was not much of a help because "you are trying to run a freeware from your storage USB drive?". I told him that, like Android, I am running another Linux distribution, called Fedora and that I would not need any other OS - especially the Other OS in the machine.

It appears that I can default the machine to boot from Android but I will first have to "set up" via the Other OS, which I might just do, so that I can get this machine to Mom.

Here are the specs of the machine (from lspci -vv):

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort+ SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 0: Memory at 58280000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
	Region 1: I/O ports at 60f0 [size=8]
	Region 2: Memory at 40000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	Region 3: Memory at 58300000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
	Expansion ROM at unassigned [disabled]
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Region 0: Memory at 58200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
	Capabilities: access denied

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 0: Memory at 58340000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
	Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
	I/O behind bridge: 00005000-00005fff
	Memory behind bridge: 57100000-581fffff
	Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 0000000050000000-0000000050ffffff
	Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR-
	BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- Reset- FastB2B-
		PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn-
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0
	I/O behind bridge: 00004000-00004fff
	Memory behind bridge: 56100000-570fffff
	Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 0000000051000000-0000000051ffffff
	Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR-
	BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- Reset- FastB2B-
		PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn-
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=0
	I/O behind bridge: 00002000-00003fff
	Memory behind bridge: 55000000-560fffff
	Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 0000000052000000-0000000052ffffff
	Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR-
	BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- Reset- FastB2B-
		PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn-
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver

00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=04, subordinate=04, sec-latency=0
	I/O behind bridge: 00001000-00001fff
	Memory behind bridge: 54000000-54ffffff
	Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 0000000053000000-0000000053ffffff
	Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR-
	BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- Reset- FastB2B-
		PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn-
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 4: I/O ports at 60a0 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 17
	Region 4: I/O ports at 6080 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin C routed to IRQ 18
	Region 4: I/O ports at 6060 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin D routed to IRQ 19
	Region 4: I/O ports at 6040 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 0: Memory at 58344400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=05, subordinate=05, sec-latency=32
	Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort+ SERR- PERR-
	BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- Reset- FastB2B-
		PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn-
	Capabilities: access denied

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt, intel-rng

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 28
	Region 0: I/O ports at 60d8 [size=8]
	Region 1: I/O ports at 60fc [size=4]
	Region 2: I/O ports at 60d0 [size=8]
	Region 3: I/O ports at 60f8 [size=4]
	Region 4: I/O ports at 6020 [size=16]
	Region 5: Memory at 58344000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: ahci

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 17
	Region 4: I/O ports at 6000 [size=32]
	Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
	Kernel modules: i2c-i801

01:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e016
	Physical Slot: 1
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 0: Memory at 57100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: ath9k
	Kernel modules: ath9k

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. Device 1062 (rev c0)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022f
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 29
	Region 0: Memory at 55000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
	Region 2: I/O ports at 2000 [size=128]
	Capabilities: access denied
	Kernel driver in use: atl1c
	Kernel modules: atl1c

This is the fdisk output:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7529554a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        1567    12586896   27  Unknown
/dev/sda2            1568        2090     4200997+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda3   *        2091        2103      104422+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4            2104       30401   227303685    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5            2104       30401   227303653+   7  HPFS/NTFS

The Android partition is /dev/sda2. I have backed up each partition and kept them as a tgz file. The android partition is about 1.3G uncompressed.

I think my next task is to file for a Other OS refund. Looking forward to the fun.

I truly wonder how the US PTO can even grant US Patent 7,617,530 in the first place. It is not so much that Microsoft got the patent, but the fact that it was approved. Looks like the US PTO is 0wn3d by Microsoft!
Great article at Groklaw on this. Please, someone, anyone, do something to fix the US PTO.

[sballmer@M]$ make sudo
[sballmer@M]$ make patent
[sballmer@M]$ sudo make install DESTDIR=/us/pto

[courtesy of Demosthenes T. Mateo Jr.]

It was a real delight to see the level of excitement when we did the document creation and editing at the POSSE day 4 session this morning by Karsten Wade aka Quaid all the way from the ether (aka Santa Clara?). The culmination was surely the way Mel showed the screencast she did using Istanbul. Good awesome morning. Lunch was awesome as well and the one dish that got emptied out was otak-otak.

Looking forward to a meeting on open standards later this afternoon with a couple of people from Microsoft. Should be fun.

Mention portfolio to an artist, and she will be only too happy to show off the work she has done. You can then, based on browsing the portfolio's contents, decide to commission the artist to paint the centerpiece of your home. Looking and assessing paintings, photographs, poems, books, articles and so on is really the only rational way to understand and appreciate the true skill of the artist, photographer, poet, writer and journalist. Doctors, dentists, lawers, engineers have to have their craft and skills certified and constantly updated and revalidated. It is interesting to see that the legal system will fail utterly if the laws, decisions, judgements and so on are all not available to all and sundry to read, listen to and watch. The skills of a surgeon in pieceing together the severed artery is no less a display of amazing skills, but also the fact that it is open to review by peers.

Given that human endeavours have always needed to be peer reviewed and validated, why is that we do not seem to insist that in the case of software developers? Why do computer science schools continue to teach programming in isolation and not as part of the free and open source community? What better way than to read someone else's good working code to gain a deeper understanding of both the subject matter, but also the art of coding?

Let me pose this question: when you are faced with hiring a newly minted CS major, how would you assess the person's coding skills? Would you be going by the candidate's GPA, or the score in a particular course? How about if you are going to hire a new visual artist for making icons, images etc for your product? It is not unexpected to ask the visual artist to provide her portfolio and following an interview or more, the hiring organization is rest assured of the skills. Contrast that with the CS major. If the person has been coding in, say C# or .Net while in school, would that person be maintaining a portfolio of code written? How would one do with these proprietary platforms when these platforms are hidden behind NDAs and such? How would the hiring manager truly assess the skills of the applicant? If, instead, the applicant had been coding in the open source arena, when asked, the applicant need only point to where her code, image, how-tos, etc are kept and let the interviewer figure the quality.

For many years, hiring a developer has been an exercise in blind faith and Russian Roulette. You had to take a risk on some individual coming with the right skills at a level that is of high quality and acceptable performance. You have no way to check other than to ask previous co-workers and perhaps even her manager (and even LinkedIn for that matter) on the quality. Why can't we look at the code?

This brings me to epiphany that there cannot be any other way to hire a developer other than by checking out her portfolio. If the portfolio is hidden behind a proprietary NDA-wall, it becomes buyer beware for the organization. That itself explains, via conjecture, the enormous waste in software projects - US$1Trillion at last count. Singapore is currently wasting over S$1b on a proprietary implementation of the Standard Operating Environment, but what is S$1b compared with US$1T - a rounding error. But a huge rounding error paid out of tax payers monies.

We have to require all CS students to maintain a repository of code that they wrote while in (and perhaps before school) so that potential employers can make references to that in hiring decisions. QED.

This is really a note-to-self because the StarHub website http://www.starhub.com/maxmobileprepaid/selfhelp is horribly broken (aka it needs and works with Internet Exploder only) and I have not been able to use the service since I bought the pre-paid card. How someone can even design and deploy a disaster I cannot fathom.

This StarHub website does not tell me exactly how to activiate the service via SMS and found that the info is buried deep in their manual.

So, for the record this is how it can be done via SMS to 6782:

 2M1H => 2.0 Mbps speed; 1 Hr plan
 2M1D => 2.0 Mbps speed; 1 Day plan
 2M3D => 2.0 Mbps speed; 3 Day plan
 2M5D => 2.0 Mbps speed; 5 Day plan

 7M1H => 7.2 Mbps speed; 1 Hr plan
 7M1D => 7.2 Mbps speed; 1 Day plan
 7M3D => 7.2 Mbps speed; 3 Day plan
 7M5D => 7.2 Mbps speed; 5 Day plan

For the 2Mbps plan, the download speed is 2Mbps, upload 384kbps, while the 7.2Mbps plan has a 7.2Mbps download and 1.9Mbps upload speed.

So, there, no more secrets. Someone, buy StarHub marketing a cluebat!

Coming to the 2nd half of day 1 of the first ever POSSE in Singapore. Working on how to use IRC, subscribing to POSSE-APAC mailing list and creating a feed into planet fedoraproject.org and/or planet teachingopensource.org.

StarHub's prepaid mobile broadband is annoying to use! Urggh. Appended is the settings that I have to add to the phone before it will work.

Manual Settings
GPRS Settings:

Menu key > Settings > Wireless Controls > Mobile Networks > Access Point Names > select 
Menu key > tap New APN


Name: StarHub GPRS
*APN: shwap (in the event not able to connect to internet pls change it to shppd )

Proxy: 10.12.1.2

Port: 8080

Username: Leave it blank
Password: Leave it blank
Server: Leave it blank
MMSC: Leave it blank
MMS proxy: Leave it blank
MMS port: Leave it blank

MMC: 525
MNC: 05

APN type: Leave it blank

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In this post done in 2006, I predicted a few things, but the one that is closest to being spot on is how Vista would be banned from deployment (point b). So I was somewhat wrong. It was NOT deployed at all by even Intel. What makes anyone think that yet another "upgrade" of their OS is going to be any different?

Here's what I predict (yes, it is early for end of year prediction, but hey!):
a) Windows 7 will be yet another spectacular failure (following the path set by Windows ME and Vista) but this time because of how they are pricing the product and the fact that a lot of devices and applications will not run properly.
b) The EU will slap on more punitive damages because of the way MS Europe is trying to hoodwink Europeran users over Windows 7.
c) The Singapore SOExcruciation project that is rolling out Vista (imagine that!), is going to be stuck with a huge upgrade task (which falls on EDS who won the deal). I would not be surprised if there is a security incident just because of the mess.
d) Netbooks will revert to running Linux (Moblin, Fedora, Android) and the Taiwanese vendors will just snub Windows 7.

Today, October 15, 2009, I complete my obligations to serve my country in the uniformed services. Today, I stand down from the Singapore Civil Defence Force. I was enlisted on January 18, 1978 in the Singapore Police Force, got my commission as an Inspector of Police on October 11, 1978. Spent my two and a half years in the Police Academy and Queenstown Police Station. A lot of amazing experiences - "mati" cases, AWOL, drunken brawls in Holland Village, "mini-turf-club", anti-vice and anti-drug raids, drunk driving incidents, etc etc etc. RODed from SPF in 1980, did about five years as a reservist Inspector, than transferred to the newly formed Singapore Civil Defence Force in 1985. Did service there, was part of the emergency command center, got trained as a public warning systems officer, participated in a bunch of war-time exercises, then transferred to the MRT shelter company as Company Commander of SC102 (Newton MRT station) in 2002. Was mobilized as a deputy commander of the 1st Contingent of Operation Lion Heart in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami and was on the ground in Banda Aceh for ten days. Never expected to ever be mobilized for anything, but when the call came in, I said yes. And today, I stand down. Thanks. It has been fun.

Isn't something to read that India could save US$2billion if FOSS is adopted at 50% levels in India. Compare that with the S$1.x billion that has been earmarked and being spent on the Standard Operating Environment (euphamistaically called SOEasy) in Singapore. The migration of the existing Lotus Notes databases to the new fangled MS Sharepoint IS not included in the costs - yet no one in the establishment is spilling the beans. The people who want to do the right thing are being sidelined and or silenced. From all accounts, the top tier of the civil service and the cabinet is shielded from the mess and the waste. The middle management mandarins (aka scholars) are too happy in their "escalator career" that there will not be any ruffling of feathers and change of status quo.

A friend of mine who went to school at Nanyang Technological University recounts a visit of the campus by Old Man Lee who, when seeing students run up a sidewalk wet from rain and slipping and falling, saying to the then NTU president "why are there no covered walkways? I told you to get that it done that last time" - or close to that. Lo and behold, the sidewalks at NTU are now covered. If OM Lee still has to be there to get things done right, perhaps he does deserve to live long. From the grapevine, I hear that the Wireless@SG and the current Next Generation Network projects are all a result of OM Lee being asked by foreigners why Singapore does not have it.

What a pleasant surprise to read that the Singapore Ministry of Education has signed a deal to deploy Google Apps for use by teachers. This is a huge win that we have to shout out loudly.

I, however, do have one caveat. Reading paragraph one of the press release above it says: "... to adopt an open standard cloud computing platform". I think it is not right to say that Google Apps is an "open standard cloud computing platform". Well, not just yet. Not until we have a set of standards that allow people to move from one cloud infrastructure to another. As is, Google Apps is not fully open - yet. Don't get me wrong - I am thrilled that Google is the provider not someone else. At least Google has a Clue about open standards and open source. At least now schools can just use Open Office and Google Docs interchangeably. No need for any proprietary office tools. I really want to meet the MOE officials who did the Right Thing and buy them a beer!

As I read that MOE went with Google, I was listening to a series of horror stories from the poor "rest of Singapore government officers" who are now burdened with the so-called "SOEasy" standard operating environment roll out. All those in IDA who have been "moved" to the "new easier platform" are now thoroughly annoyed. The play on words "SOEasy" (allegedly to mean "so easy"), is a disaster that we have to have stopped. Tax payers monies are being spent on stuff that reduces the efficiencies of the work process and forces clued-in IDA officers (yes there are some) to have to bring in their personal laptops in order to get work done. I am hearing from some government officials that I should not expect any replies from them via email after 5 pm because they refuse to bring their worthless "locked down Windows laptop" home. If I expect a reply, it will only come during office hours and only if they are in the office. So much for improving efficiencies. A few days ago, I was told by yet another government official that the emails that were on their Lotus Notes system does not automatically get forwarded to the new M$ exchange email server and that they have to cut and paste the mails between the systems. I was also told that the budget for the SOEasy project did not include data migration costs from the Lotus Notes database to M$ sharepoint. Imagine that! I am getting really concerned here because, unlike the NCB of old, the IDA of now is a technologically lost. I think we need to reboot IDA. Would you want to help me?

Yes, I am biased against the other behemoth because, unlike Google, the other behemoth does not have the "do no evil" ethos. The other behemoth only believes in vendor lock-in, even more vendor lock-in and to be kept on the constant upgrade path.

Congratulations, MOE, IDA and Google. The Singapore-Redmond nexus (some say axis of evil) has been cracked. And BTW, left hand MEET right hand!

[Update]

Eugene says that "Isn't that from one proprietary platform to another. I don't see how that's happy news. Plus, privacy should be another concern.". I agree with him that it is still a proprietar platform. But the way I see it, you can extract mail out of the Gmail system as well as pulling down all of your documents if you want to. As for security, Google email did have a leak as recently as last week. But I think it has been resolved (although apparently Google took days to do this) and haven't said why it is the case. Years ago (2000/2001), when I was running Inquisitive Mind (www.iqmind.com - not available anymore), we had a problem with some of our Singapore school customers who were able to see email from other schools. It turned out that the proxy servers run by the MOE were broken (they were MS proxies after all) and they cached all the contents aggressively. We had to put the time stamps in the html to be 01-Jan-1970 and also to add the nocache prama to the html. Painful experience, but that fixed it.

I think it is very early to welcome Microsoft to the right side of the history of computing and consumption and creation of software despite their announcement (with major cavaets) of the set up of their CodePlex Foundation. It is therefore interesting to read the headline here that uses the world "glasnost". The last time Glastnost was a real force for change, we saw the melting away of the USSR and the Eastern Block. Would that be the case here as well? I hope so.

I was asked by @tonynewling for my take on "Vista One Year Vulnerability Report". I finally got time to look at it and subsequent reports by the same author and I have to applaud the report's author for cleverly clouding the report.

To his credit, he does say that he would have still done the report even if his employer's product came out looking not so rosy. Granted that that report is over a year and a half old now (September 9, 2009), it is really passe to consider. But I am sure that MSFT would have used that report to try to make their Vista product look less vulnerable (considering how @tonynewling wanted my inputs). The author's methodology is clever. He took the first twelve months of a product's GA to analyse the vulnerability and patch efficiencies. He was also clever to say he was only going to compare Vista with Red Hat's Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4. And this was to have been done even though Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 had already been out for almost twelve months. He was happy to run a test of twelve months of RHEL4 GA (which was in March 2005) to Vista which I think came out in 2007 (I am not going to check and am sure someone will correct me).

If we are to look at any software product's development methodology (open source or closed source), every study (see David Wheeler's page), shows that by being open, you are assured that if there are vulnerabilities and defects, IT WILL BE FOUND AND FIXED. Earlier last month, an eight-year-old vulnerability in the Linux kernel was discovered and fixed. Try that for ANY MSFT product. I am not begrudging their business model. What I am begrudging is the smooth "lies" that they constantly put out - including the cleverly crafted report referenced above.

Nevermind the past. Let's move forward and look at what is looming on the horizon. Vista will be dead soon when MSFT releases their Windows 7 sometime this year. And how do they intend to bring it to the market? How about with blatant lies? I did pose the question earlier today and hoping that someone from MSFT will respond. It is HIGHLY unlikely anyone will (right @osrin and @tonynewling?). Now I read that the same lies are done with Mac as well.

Why can't MSFT do an honest job in selling their product? Why do they have to resort to outright lies and misrepresentations? The whole MSFT business is an intellectual vacuum and morally corrupt.

Last Friday I promised a good friend that I will provide him with a LiveCD that contains a bunch of anti-virus software that will be able to scan his heavily infected windows machine. It continues to annoy me how Microsoft can continue to get away with utter and complete incompetency in shipping totally flawed operating system software. I downloaded PLoP live CD and went about setting up a bootable USB drive. Unfortunately, in that process, I accidentally messed up the master boot record of my functioning Fedora 11 machine. So, this post is really to remind me what to do to recover from these mistakes in the future.

a) Boot from a live CD - F11 would suffice
b) If the drive that needs rescuing is the internal drive (usually /dev/sda) and if the boot partition is /dev/sda1 (usually), then do the following:
i) Open up a Terminal
ii) Become root with the command (F11 root has not password):
$ su -
iii) run the grup command:
$ grub
iv) within the grub prompt do the following:

grub> root (hd0,0)
grup> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

Note that the line "root (hd0,0)" refers to the 1st drive on your system and the first partition. GRUB starting from 0. So hd0 is the first drive and 0 is the first partition.

Now, if you don't know which one is the boot partition of your drive, then you will have to run fdisk /dev/sda. For example,

[root@qbic ~]# fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4998.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6f1824f1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          26      208813+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2              27        1501    11847937+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3            1757        4998    26041365   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda4            1502        1756     2048287+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5            1502        1756     2048256   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Command (m for help): 

The output above is generated after invoking fdisk /dev/sda and hitting the p key. Naturally, you need to be root to do this. So, if the boot partition was say /dev/sda2, then the grub command above would have been root (hd0,1).

Happy National Day! Here's the pledge which we can recite at 8:22 pm - the time is chosen because that is when the parade reaches it's conclusion.


We, the citizens of Singapore
pledge ourselves as one united people,
regardless of race, language or religion,
to build a democratic society,
based on justice and equality,
so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and
progress for our nation.


[taken from wikipedia]

Now, trying twiting that in 140 chars. It contains 38 words and 241 characters.

Here's my attempt:

V e ctz of Spore pldg oursls s 1 untd ppl rgdls of rce lng or rel 2 bld a dcrtc soc bsd on jstz n eqty so s 2 ach hpins prsp n prgr 4 ou ntn