Computing | Ady's Blog

Pikom reports dip in PC sales nationwide

Hey hey hey… PC sales has dropped? From The Star Online TechCentral:

PETALING JAYA: Despite the recent tax relief offered by the Government to help spur PC ownership in the country, PC sales have dropped by about 20% in September, compared to August.

The Association of the Computer and Multimedia Industry of Malaysia (Pikom) said its members had reported the dip in sales, but it declined to provide details.

The intriguing paragraph:

Pikom, however, does not know the cause of the decrease. (But) “it is clearly evident that PC sales have dropped,” Pikom treasurer Low Wai Sun told In.Tech.

One thing that immediately popped up my mind is fuel price.

For people like me who is really nuts about PC and technology, nothing would stop me of course. But for others, would they buy more PC stuff if a big part of their income have to be allocated for a more important purpose – transportation.

I think I am not the only one who is feeling some effect on the fuel price increase. As we have to go places everyday fuel is nowadays very very very important indeed. No no I am not saying that anything is wrong or whatever, the point here is that we all feel something from the fuel price increase unless we are earning 5 digit income monthly.

What do you think?

Hey while I was at The Star Online I noticed that they also have a ‘Digg This’ button. 😉

The Star Digg This

Read more about the story here: http://star-techcentral.com/tech/…

As usual, click on the link below in case the original story link is no longer valid.

Continue reading Pikom reports dip in PC sales nationwide

Google ‘in talks to buy YouTube’

According to this news in BBC News, Google is reported to be in talks to buy popular video-sharing website YouTube for $1.6bn (~856m).

For me, it would mean less choice for video bloggers and sharers for them to upload their videos. From the business point of view, Google is once again acquiring one of its ‘competitors’. In Alexa, at the time I am writing this google.com is ranked 3 with video.google.com having 3% of the traffic while YouTube is ranked at number 10.

It’s not like Google needs to do it, but they can. Especially if combining both of the techologies (Google Video + YouTube) could possibly increase the reliability and features of the service.

The same goes for Yahoo! acquiring blo.gs (http://trainedmonkey.com/…) and FeedBurner acquiring Blogbeat (http://www.feedburner.com/fb/…).

Nothing personal, it’s business. As a Google fan I might be a little bit biased. Anyone having comments are welcomed to do so.

Traffic Shaping on TMNET Streamyx?

Everywhere I see people complaining that their Internet access speed via TMNET Streamyx is slow, and there are accusations that TMNET is using traffic shaping technology to limit bandwidth for certain applications. I don’t know how true are these, and have never bothered to check.

However lately I have been experiencing very slow Bittorrent traffic, as you can see from the table below. October traffic is much worse. I don’t really care too much as long as web browsing and POP traffic is fine. So far everything else seems fine but connections to GMail via POP3S / HTTP sometimes chokes.

While I know it is not valid (legally and morally) for me to complaint about slow P2P or bittorrent traffic, this is just an example of how slow things are becoming.

	August			September
Day	Outgoing MB	Incoming MB	Totals	Outgoing MB	Incoming MB	Totals
1	3397.6	2111.7	5509.3	2115.7	1321.8	3437.5
2	3136	1350.8	4486.8	2249.1	222.6	2471.7
3	3941.8	3239.6	7181.4	2570.1	1472.4	4042.4
4	3990.9	2352.5	6343.4	2447.6	3151	5598.5
5	3745.7	384.9	4130.6	2218.6	692.2	2910.8
6	3944.5	553.7	4498.2	1951.5	1666.9	3618.3
7	3969.4	836.9	4806.3	2485.3	1615	4100.2
8	3690.5	331.3	4021.9	2594.9	483.2	3078.1
9	3494.3	1153.2	4647.5	2754.2	911.8	3666
10	3332.9	680.5	4013.5	1979.2	1764.2	3743.4
11	3569.7	1801.5	5371.2	1752	777.2	2529.3
12	3693.2	5103.8	8797	988	255.2	1243.2
13	1476.2	3140.6	4616.8	1406.5	784.9	2191.4
14	3727	3272.3	6999.4	1459.8	211.8	1671.5
15	3740	3970.2	7710.2	1393.3	449.6	1842.9
16	3125.8	2780	5905.8	1443.7	397.3	1840.9
17	3151.6	1864	5015.6	1238.8	1774.7	3013.5
18	2158.1	6072.7	8230.9	1327.8	2465.5	3793.3
19	2077	6462.9	8539.9	1654.6	422.9	2077.5
20	1840.2	5045	6885.2	1628.3	741.9	2370.2
21	2014.2	5440.4	7454.6	1001.7	1339	2340.7
22	2151.6	2312	4463.6	874.3	908.2	1782.5
23	1864.6	2069.8	3934.4	1474.1	1133.6	2607.7
24	1843.1	1472.5	3315.6	954.8	735.6	1690.4
25	2235.3	1022.7	3258	887.9	563.4	1451.3
26	2241.9	2720.2	4962	705.6	459.2	1164.8
27	1899.7	259.3	2159	345.7	245.9	591.6
28	2173.6	1051.7	3225.3	567.4	197.3	764.7
29	2110.8	2146.8	4257.6	398.5	138.8	537.3
30	2597.5	2089.1	4686.6	475.2	833.1	1308.2
31	2308.3	524.3	2832.5
	88643.2	73616.8	162260.1 MB (158.5 GB)	45343.9	28136	73479.9 MB (71.8 GB)

The table above is combined from 2 tables produced by trafvol.pl script downloaded from the Internet sometime ago. Measurements are taken only on the eth1 interface of my torrent box, which is the external interface connected to the router. Traffic above includes web traffic as the box is also running squid serving 4 PCs in my home.

I think October results will be much lower, as can be seen below the daily traffic passing through is less than 1GB (compare this to August and September daily values).

Day	Month	Outgoing MB	Incoming MB	Totals
1	Oct	308.7	525.1	833.8
2	Oct	321.6	268.4	589.9
Month Oct		630.2	793.5	1423.7 MB (1.4 GB)

statistics last updated at 18:35:02 on 02. Oct 2006

I’m too tired to rant anymore, so from now on I’ll just see what happens, while praying that a miracle would happen and the Government will realize that if TM monopoly to the Internet goes on, their IT-vision for Malaysia is just a dream. Angan-angan Mat Jenin.

Dear aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all

Is you mom the same person as your aunt? If not, you might want to reconsider if you have been waiting for Microsoft Windows Vista voice recognition system:

Thanks to Azidin for the tip.

PHP 4.4.4 and Apache 2.2 on Win32

I have just spent more than the normal time to install Apache + PHP on Windows. Well, for me at least, as a PHP trainer. It’s quite embarassing if you ask me.

Anyway, I am writing this quick post just to let you know which Apache to download. In Apache download page today, there’s a few versions available – version 1.3, version 2.0, and version 2.2

Usually I will just fetch Apache 1.3 directly, and configure PHP as module. But currently Apache only provides version 1.3 as unix source – which is fine on my Linux box. So I went to fetch Apache 2.2 – just to find that it won’t load PHP.

So to cut in short, if you are using Windows, download Apache version 2.0 and you’ll have Apache + PHP running in no time.

Why the hell am I installing Apache + PHP on Windows? Well that’s another long story I will keep for another post. My laptop hard disk crashed on me and I decided to run fully on Windows, especially I will need a lot of digital imaging capabilities on the slow laptop – I’ve just taken photography as another hobby that I hope will make me money some day.

Update 23 September 2006:

As it turns out, when downloading MySQL you might as well go for the latest version. This is why:

MySQL currently only provides version 4.1 and above. The difference can’t be seen by anyone else except those using PHP. For MySQL versions >= 4.1 PHP utilizes the mysqli extension, because the default built-in API in PHP (MySQL 3.x) doesn’t work very well (MySQL changed certain things). The problem: PHP 4.x does not provide libmysqli.dll. Only PHP 5.x does. So the final summary is:

PHP 5.x
MySQL 5.x
Apache 2.x

The obvious thing that I noticed is the problem with MySQL passwords. If you’re worried that your host server might have older versions, you can always write your code by utilizing ADOdb.

The problems described above does not effect *NIX users, as all modules can be compiled manually along with PHP.

ALSA Support in Skype

Finally, Skype has released a beta version with alsa support: 1.3.0.30_API

Skype Beta with ALSA

Hopefully all the troubles with “Problem with Sound Device” will be history. However for users with very old kernels, and prefer to use OSS, the option is still there. The problem with Skype utilizing OSS on modern systems is that it keeps on failing to close /dev/dsp after using it. The only way to make it work again is to restart Skype. It’s a hassle and a headache. Believe me, I used to be a SysAdmin (until a week ago) for a 99.99% Linux desktop company – with Skype as one of the primary communication tools.

Storage Emergency

My 17-days old Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 300GB disk was giving a lot of error two days ago. There were a bunch of errors in my syslog:

ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0x51/40 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0x3/11/04
ata1: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
ata1: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }
ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0x51/40 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0x3/11/04
ata1: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
ata1: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }
sd 2:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x8000002
sda: Current: sense key: Medium Error
Additional sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 212833665
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 106416801
ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0x51/40 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0x3/11/04
ata1: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
ata1: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }
ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0x51/40 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0x3/11/04

Yes, that’s right. After 17 days so I can’t get a one-to-one replacement from the shop.

SMARTD Logs:

Error 6892 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 427 hours (17 days + 19 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
 
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 b4 95 af e0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x00af95b4 = 11507124
 
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:04.861  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:03.048  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:01.243  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:46:59.447  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00      01:46:57.650  READ DMA EXT
 
Error 6891 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 427 hours (17 days + 19 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
 
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 b4 95 af e0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x00af95b4 = 11507124
 
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:04.861  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:03.048  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:01.243  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00      01:46:59.447  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00      01:46:57.650  READ DMA EXT
 
Error 6890 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 427 hours (17 days + 19 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
 
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 b4 95 af e0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x00af95b4 = 11507124
 
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:04.861  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00      01:47:03.048  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00      01:47:01.243  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00      01:46:59.447  READ DMA EXT
25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00      01:46:57.650  READ DMA EXT

Error 6892 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 427 hours (17 days + 19 hours) When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle. After command completion occurred, registers were: ER ST SC SN CL CH DH -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 40 51 00 b4 95 af e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x00af95b4 = 11507124 Commands leading to the command that caused the error were: CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- -------------------- 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:04.861 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:03.048 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:01.243 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:46:59.447 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00 01:46:57.650 READ DMA EXT Error 6891 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 427 hours (17 days + 19 hours) When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle. After command completion occurred, registers were: ER ST SC SN CL CH DH -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 40 51 00 b4 95 af e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x00af95b4 = 11507124 Commands leading to the command that caused the error were: CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- -------------------- 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:04.861 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:03.048 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:01.243 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00 01:46:59.447 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00 01:46:57.650 READ DMA EXT Error 6890 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 427 hours (17 days + 19 hours) When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle. After command completion occurred, registers were: ER ST SC SN CL CH DH -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 40 51 00 b4 95 af e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x00af95b4 = 11507124 Commands leading to the command that caused the error were: CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- -------------------- 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:04.861 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d0 b0 95 af e0 00 01:47:03.048 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00 01:47:01.243 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00 01:46:59.447 READ DMA EXT 25 00 d8 a8 95 af e0 00 01:46:57.650 READ DMA EXT

Here’s the disk label:

I blamed the disk. My friend Azidin had a different idea. He said that it might be the SATA controller card that I installed on my computer that’s causing the errors. I didn’t believe him.

That night I tested the disk with Azidin. There were a lot of bad sectors!!!!! But still, I refused to blame the SATA controller card.

After work on 23 June, I immediately rushed to the shop, hoping that they would give me some help, or keep my disk for checking during the weekend but they (C-Zone) rejected me saying that their service center is closed and asked me to come the next day. I was disappointed. But I didn’t leave Low Yat plaza before buying a 200GB Maxtor disk from Startec, just in case if it’ll take months to get my disk repaired.

Back home, I installed the disk onto the same SATA controller card. The next day, I received these from my syslog:

end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 132826840
Buffer I/O error on device sda2, logical block 8210
lost page write due to I/O error on sda2
ATA: abnormal status 0xD0 on port 0x9807
ATA: abnormal status 0xD0 on port 0x9807
ATA: abnormal status 0xD0 on port 0x9807
ReiserFS: sda2: warning: journal-837: IO error during journal replay
REISERFS: abort (device sda2): Write error while updating journal header in flush_journal_list
REISERFS: Aborting journal for filesystem on sda2
ata1: command 0x25 timeout, stat 0xd0 host_stat 0x1
ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00
ata1: status=0xd0 { Busy }
sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x8000002
sda: Current: sense key: Aborted Command
Additional sense: Scsi parity error
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 133810704

I started to believe that the controller card might be causing the problems. What are the odds that all my disks end up producing errors like these? I decided to buy a new motherboard with a built-in SATA controller, without spending too much. Also, I have an unused socket 478 Celeron, so after some research, I decided to get an ASUS P4P800-MX that’s still available in Cycom. The very same night, I ran Seagate Desktop on my older disk – low-level format (zero fill). It took hours but totally worth it. This morning when the process finished I ran another surface scan of the 300GB disk and all bad sectors are gone. Pheww! I decided not to send it to the shop, but continue using it with caution. It carries a 5-year warranty anyway.

So today I went and bought a P4P800-MX from Cycom, with two sticks of 512MB DDR (to utilize dual-channel memory bus). I have just finished installing the 300GB Seagate disk plus the 200GB Maxtor disk on the new motherboard. Everything looks good.

The cuplrit? Here it is:

I don’t think it’s the chip. Maybe the card is defective. I bought it at Sri, in a plastic package (they hang such packages on a wall like in a supermarket). I thought of returning it, but I’m too tired to argue with the shop.

Oh well. I am all happy now. Thanks to Azidin for his help, and of course to my dear wife for her understanding of this matter.

Downside of IT Certification

Interesting…

The Q1 2006 Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index, released April 25 by Foote Partners, a New Canaan, Conn., IT compensation and workforce management firm, found that pay premiums for non-certified IT skills grew three times faster than for certified ones in a six-month period spanning 2005-2006.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/…

The study suggests that there has been a change in employers’ acceptance of the value of non-certified tech skills versus certifications in maintaining competitive pay for their workers.

Click more for local copy of the full article (just in case the original is removed)
Continue reading Downside of IT Certification

3 AM

It’s 3.45am and I am still in front of my PC. Not many people realizes my habit of staying up if my mind’s in a bad shape. Tomorrow’s a work day. Oh well I can still manage to go through hell at work even suffering from sleepless nights.

Instead of whining and complaining with the things that are disturbing me, I’ll write something useful for everyone.

Listening to my freshly leeched Metallica discography (encoded in FLAC) made me realize the quality difference between FLAC and MP3.

FLAC, an acronym for Free Lossless Audio Codec, is a popular free audio compression codec that is lossless. Unlike lossy codecs such as Vorbis, MP3 and AAC, it does not remove any information from the audio stream and is suitable both for everyday playback and for archiving audio collections. The FLAC format is currently well supported by many software audio products.

It’s true, most of us still downloads and listens to MP3 (and most of our devices/software plays MP3) but believe it or not lots of software plugins, even hardware: http://flac.sourceforge.net/news.html have been built to support FLAC.

Generally FLAC are bigger (twice the size or more) than MP3, but small enough compared to WAV files (directly ripped from the audio CD). When I compared the same track, one encoded with FLAC and the other with MP3; the difference is so obvious. As an example, an album encoded in MP3 format might use up 80MB while the same album encoded in FLAC might end up using 300MB of your precious disk space (while WAV most probably take double than that).

Try it. Download FLAC at http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html. For now, download the plugins or players until you decide to encode something to share with the community. As for the audio files, you have to download those yourselves. Google for them 😉 Hint: Learn about bittorrent and do a search like “Metallica torrent” in Google; most of FLAC encoded files are shared using bittorrent.

You won’t be disappointed, but the choice is yours.

Microsoft releases revamped Internet Explorer

More news related to Microsoft. The software giant has released Internet Explorer 7 Beta.

The beta version of Internet Explorer (IE) 7 is now available for download from the company’s website, www.microsoft.com. However, users have been advised that the product should not yet be used in “mission-critical environments”.

Since when did I trust IE for my mission critical environments? LOL. Well I need IE to test my web apps as there are still so many people out there using it.

There has also been talk that Google, Micoroft’s arch-rival, which has links with Mozilla, the group behind Firefox, could also launch its own browsing software.

I heard Google bought/are buying Opera. However do not take my word for it as it’s a rumor I heard at the office. P.S. I didn’t make the typo above, it was copied from the original article. 😉

Hackers have also tended to target the Microsoft browser because it is still used by the majority of internet users and therefore gives access to the widest range of targets.

So… it’s hackers’ fault eh?

Microsoft said: “Internet Explorer 7 helps keep your information safe by alerting you to potential phishing sites – sites that look legitimate but actually are designed to capture your personal information.”

Hopefully this is true. I haven’t downloaded it yet as I am too lazy to boot up Windows… and the fact that I can’t find it on IE downloads. Is it available only in the US for now?

MSIE

Read the original story here: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2019982,00.html

** I don’t hate Microsoft. They built a good Operating System and software. It’s just that it is 99.9999% impossible to remove spyware from and infected IE without reformatting the PC. Or is there? It has been a while since I used IE 🙁

Microsoft revamps blogging policy

Remember what happened to Chinese blogger Zhao Jing? His blog was closed down by Microsoft. Following that decision, many parties were outraged. So Microsoft decided to revamp its blogging policy.

News Story by Jeremy Kirk

JANUARY 31, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) – LISBON — In the face of outrage from many of its own employees over its abrupt censoring of a Chinese blogger, Microsoft Corp. has formulated a new policy to deal with requests from a government that alleges that posted material violates its laws.

From what I understand, this policy will be enforced if the government of the country reports something to Microsoft.

Microsoft is readying technology that will allow the blocking of blogs just within a specific country, Smith said. “We will act when we have the legal duty to do so,” he said. “We will act when we are given the kind of notice that clearly makes that duty binding upon us.”

Also, Google is now involved:

Google Inc. this week was planning to launch a new search service in China that censors some results considered inappropriate by the government. The service, however, will tell users some results have been blocked because of their politically sensitive nature.

I have no direct opinion on this. I think there are advantages and disadvantages of this decision (to bloggers, of course). Anyway I think (and hope it stays that way) that Microsoft can only block MSN Spaces, while Google can only block their Blogger service.

Original news: http://computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/webservices/story/…

Maybe what these companies are doing is the right thing after all. Maybe China needs closure and protection from the outside world. Some people might say that freedom is the best choice for China, but of course most people are talking out of their asses. Look what happened to Iraq? They removed the military leader and now the country is in chaos. Or again, maybe not. We shall see what’ll happen next. Ooopps.. political 😉

Second Level .my Domain Name Space

MCMC and MYNIC are inviting the public to take part in the Second Public Consultation on Second Level ‘.my’ Domain Name Space. I suggest everyone having any opinions or suggestions to email them as soon as possible at [email protected] as the exercise will end on the 10th of February, 1700 hours.

Voice up now, don’t just comment or complain after a decision have been made (as I know many Malaysians like to do).

See MYNIC website for the announcement, plus download a copy of the report before sending your email.

Beijing’s New Enforcer: Microsoft

From the New York Times:

Microsoft has silenced a well-known blogger in China for committing journalism. At the Chinese government’s request, the company closed the blog of Zhao Jing on Dec. 30 after he criticized the government’s firing of editors at a progressive newspaper. Microsoft, which also acknowledges that its MSN Internet portal in China censors searches and blogs, is far from alone. Recently Yahoo admitted that it had helped China sentence a dissident to 10 years in prison by identifying him as the sender of a banned e-mail message.

Original news here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/opinion/17tue2.html…

(As usual a copy of the original news is available when you click on more).

I hope Malaysian government will not see Microsoft as an Internet authority. But it is a scary thought, as only recently we can see Malaysians maximizing utilization of the Internet. (And some government officials still doesn’t know how to use e-mail or worst even scared to touch the mouse). I still remember 8 years ago when people only knows how to use mIRC and play games on their PCs. Well, probably still. I read somewhere that on X% of Malaysians have broadbands at their homes. YES!! Single digit. 🙁

Oh well, I can still remember some people being so amazed when I played MP3 on my notebook. Yes, there exists people like that even now, in the city of Kuala Lumpur.

Continue reading Beijing’s New Enforcer: Microsoft

Microsoft FAT Patent Upheld

theodp writes “After initially rejecting Microsoft’s File Allocation Table (FAT) patents, the USPTO has ruled them valid. From the article: ‘Microsoft has won a debate where they were the only party allowed to speak, in that the patent re-examination process bars the public from rebutting arguments made by Microsoft, said unimpressed Public Patent Foundation President Dan Ravicher.'”

Original post at /.: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/11/0555252&from=rss

If you think this will not have any effect on consumers, think again. FAT is used in almost all consumer electronics (yes, that’s your cellphones, pda, digital cameras). Yes, you wouldn’t have to pay Microsoft, but manufacturers will have to – the price will escalade to consumers, where else?

From http://www.dpreview.com/news/0312/03120403microsoftisfat.asp:

A license for removable solid state media manufacturers to preformat the media, such as compact flash memory cards, to the Microsoft FAT file system format, and to preload data onto such preformatted media using the Microsoft FAT file system format. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.
A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data: portable digital still cameras; portable digital video cameras; portable digital still/video cameras; portable digital audio players; portable digital video players; portable digital audio/video players; multifunction printers; electronic photo frames; electronic musical instruments; and standard televisions. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per licensee. Pricing for other device types can be negotiated with Microsoft.

Ooops they did it again 🙁

3G Data Card

I am so frustrated by 3G providers, Malaysian and abroad. I have a Merlin U530 from Novatel Wireless with me now (not mine), and tried to use it for Maxis. Of course, it wouldn’t work as the card was bought in Hong Kong. The provider is Hong Kong Three :-(.

The problem is the data card is LOCKED by the provider. I heard that the Huawei‘s E600 data card is also locked by Celcom. I don’t have to guess that Maxis locked their version of the Merlin U530.

What happened to this world? Can’t anything be open anymore… *sigh*.

And people actually pay more than a thousand Ringgit to BUY such data card! If it’s rented, I can understand. But in this case, people OWN the card.

Huawei E600:

Merlin U530:

Maxis 3G connect:

Everybody wants to add their logo to the card, and lock them up. The one with me have the Three logo on it to indicate that this is provided by Three:

I’ll get my own 3G data card when providers decide not to lock them. When, you ask. I don’t know. 😉