YM8 Finally Released

Finally YM8 has been released. I have upgraded to YM8 just now and it can connect to YM and YahooMail. So far so good and i hope there won't be any major issues again. If you have used YM8 beta version, then, you won't see any major difference on it's UI and also it's features. It suppports of plugins, communicating with MSN Live, and free avatars. If you like to get the direct link on YM8, follow this link : http://download.yahoo.com/dl/msgr8/us/ymsgr8us.exe. It has a version number of 8.0.0.682.

Update : In my installation, the 360 plugin was broken. I couldn't start it. It was fine in the beta version. That was strange, as it should work in the final version.

Compiling PHP5

Few days ago i tried to upgrade my PHP into PHP5 (5.1.4) on my Slackware, but i always get an error on gd that wasn't referenced to libiconv_open. That was strange, as i used the GD bundled in the PHP packages, so it should be working. I have downloaded the latest libiconv directly from GNU's website and have installed it, but still didn't work. I thought the package was corrupt, so yesterday i downloaded 5.1.4 again and replace the 5.1.4 version on my local and it has different size, so i though it has been updated and fixed, but i was wrong. It still displays the same error messages.

Hm... I'm quite curious, since i use the same parameter to compile the 4.4.2 version and it worked. I have also adjusted the parameter to skip the libiconv, but it still failed. Maybe i should install GD from the original source and give it another try. Let's hope it works in the next try. Too bad i didn't bring the parameter i used to compile PHP in my flash disk, so i couldn't post it here.

Anybody have the similar error messages?

Finally Over

Finally i had time to upgrade my Slackware system on my laptop to the latest updates. It took merely 1 hour to finish all of the updates, as it contains more than 512 MB of KDE, Xorg, GIMP, Python, and many more. As i wrote in my previous post, i have to read the changelog carefully, as it could break my system if i failed the upgrades, as it will cause a library dependency hell as most of the application relies to libpng, but luckily it solved. I didn't upgrade all of the packages, since i used some other packages, like Mozilla Firefox, which i downloaded from the Mozilla's site. I also didn't upgrade my sysvinit and udev, as i used packages from Piter Punk and it's working. I don't want to take a risk by braking up my system at midnight. Also other package which i don't apply is the dhcp client package. In the previous changelog, Pat revert it back to 2.0.4, as 2.0.6 caused some problems and it was reported to him, but it was OK for me, so i didn't revert it back and now, i'll stick with it.

I had a little problem after upgrading my KDE. When i tried to logout and switch back to textmode, it stopped and i couldn't do anything. So i used the power button to restart it. After the system has been fixed (due to unclean shutdown), i tried to login to KDE again and logout again. Hm... it worked just fine, so i guess it only happens once after the upgrades. When i looked at the error messages, it had some problems with alsa, but it wasn't the main reason why it stops. Also, there was another problem with the NVidia module, so the quick solution was by re-installing the NVidia driver and that's all. It's all fixed. I tested all of my daily-basis applications and all of them worked very well without any problem. So i guess, my upgrade process finished successfully :D

My next update schedule will be for the kernel. I have download 2.6.17.7, the latest kernel available up to now (it probably has been changed as you read this), and it contains quite a lot of security fixes for -stable version. Let's hope i can finish it this week then.

IE Via Automatic Updates

From MSDN Blogs, i read that IE will be delivered via Automatic Updates. So, if you set your preferences to automatically updates your system, be prepared for that. Here are the news :

As we get close to the final availability of Internet Explorer 7, I want to provide an update on our distribution plans. To help our customers become more secure and up-to-date, we will distribute IE7 as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates (AU) shortly after the final version is released for Windows XP, planned for the fourth quarter of this year.

During the past year, we’ve discussed many of the advanced security features in IE7 that will help make our users more secure, including ActiveX Opt-in, the Phishing Filter and Fix My Settings features. These are just some of the security enhancements we’ve designed to help protect users from malicious software and fraudulent websites, and Microsoft recommends that all genuine Windows customers install IE7. To ensure users are prepared to upgrade, AU will notify users when IE7 is ready to install and show a welcome screen that presents key features and choices to “Install”, “Don’t Install”, or “Ask Me Later” (screenshots below).

We are also providing a Blocker Toolkit for our enterprise customers who may want to block automatic delivery of IE7 in their organizations; this blocker has no expiration date. Enterprise customers can download the free Blocker Toolkit from the Microsoft Download Center today. We’ve also made additional information for IT administrators available at the Windows Update/Microsoft Update site on TechNet.

Now back to how the process will work for the rest of us…

How the Automatic Updates installation process works

As I said earlier, AU will notify you when IE7 is ready to install. Alternately, you will be able to visit the Windows Update or Microsoft Update sites and obtain IE7 by performing an “Express” scan for high-priority updates. Either way, you will see the welcome screen that allows you to choose whether to install it. (Users will also be able to download IE7 from the Microsoft Download Center.)

If you decide to install IE7, it will preserve your current toolbars, home page, search settings, and favorites and installing will not change your choice of default browser. You will also be able to roll back to IE6 at any point by using Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel. Finally, users who have AU turned off will not be notified.

(To learn more about Automatic Updates please visit the Microsoft Security site)

I think this approach strikes a good balance across a couple of dimensions - helping customers become more secure, giving them control, and providing options for enterprises.

Tony Chor
Group Program Manager

For my own preferences, i personally disables the automatic updates and set it to notify me when updates are ready. This way, i can download the updates manually and pick what updates that i want to install on my laptop.

This will be likely the screen (it's not the final design, though)

Voilaa.. There You Are

I got an email from Slackware security mailing list that there has been an updated packages for some packages in slackware-current, including Xorg, GIMP, Mutt, and Xine-lib. When i checked the -current changelog, whoaaa.... there were a LOT of updates from Pat. Mostly were recompiled packages, since Pat has upgraded libpng library, which was one of the most used library in Slackware (and in any other distro) and the developer had changed the symlink, so all packages that linked to libpng should be recompiled (or rebuild) again in order to fix the dependency hell problem.

The kernel series in /testing has also been upgraded to 2.6.17.7 which was released yesterday (that was quite fast, since he also add some patch on rc.modules for system running 2.4.x kernel). We ARE going closer to Slackware 11.0.

Warning: To those who runs current, please make sure you read the changelog carefully, as it may break your system. Some packages were merged (Python for example) and some were split (fontconfig and freetype from Xorg packages).

Tux Turns Into Paid Version

TuxMagazine has send an email to all of their subscribers that Tux will turn into Paid-circulation version this summer. I have subscribed to them since the first edition and i'm quite lucky since my free subscription will be extended until July 2007 and after that it will expire. That means, i have to pay if i want to get the digital version of the magazine. It's a bad news, but they have to do it in order to keep the magazine running as they have to find some financial input and they can have it by turning it into paid-version.

Here are the messages that i got this morning:

Dear TUX Subscriber,

This week you'll notice a change in TUX. It will move from being a free digital magazine to a paid one. Your current complimentary subscription will be extended for 12 issues (expiring after the July 2007 issue). That being said, this is just a note to let you know what's happening -- there's nothing at all you need to do today. Your free subscription will continue to be delivered to you as you had originally requested.

When your subscription does expire, we will send you a notice offerring you an opportunity to renew at our paid rate of just $9.95/12 issues. In addition, since you've been a long-time (and apprecited!) loyal subscriber, we'll make certain to offer you a very special gift if you do decide to renew at that time. Again though, there's nothing for you to do today. Your free subscription to TUX will continue through July 2007.

We started TUX in 2004 because we felt strongly it was a needed
publication within the Linux community (many of our Linux Journal readers would write in asking for exactly this, and truthfully, many of our own staff members wanted to learn more about their Linux desktops also). We invested revenues from our other publication, Linux Journal, to make it possible. We've seen it as a labor of
love. Today, however, 15 issues later, we need to turn TUX into a self-supporting publication and that's why we are asking for our readers' help.

We promise to put more heart and effort into TUX with this conversion. In the coming months, you can expect several new topics and article series introduced by TUX Editor Kevin Shockey.

Please let us know how we can make TUX better for you. We strongly encourage your feedback and suggestions; please send to info@tuxmagazine.com.

From all of us at TUX Magazine, we sincerely thank you.

New Google Spreadsheet Rival

Today, i just had a comments from Cliff in one of my recent post : "A Lot of MS Office Alternatives". He is working for EditGrid, a new online spreadsheet application, like Google Spreadsheet. Some of the feature they provide in this release:

* Real-time Update (RTU). See changes immediately when someone edits the spreadsheet you are now opening.

* Remote data update. Periodically updates online spreadsheets by retrieving live financial data on the web (includes stockquote and forex).

* Full keyboard navigation for the advanced spreadsheet users.

* 500+ functions: SUM(), STDEV(), COUNTIF(), VLOOKUP(), ... some EditGrid unique functions are coming soon!

* Advanced Data Formatting: date, time, currency, scientific, ... and even custom format strings!

* Import and export in common file formats (MS Excel, CSV, HTML, Gnumeric, Lotus 1-2-3, OpenOffice, ...).

* Excellent permalinks link to your online spreadsheets easily.

* Comprehensive access control. Share to user, share with password, share to everyone, you control!

* Cross-browser. Fully supports Internet Explorer 6.0+, as well as Mozilla FireFox and all other Gecko-based Browsers.

* Post to Blog. Want to share your data on your blog? EditGrid offers a way.

* API. Want to make use of EditGrid in your application? The ball is in your court.

You can view the comparison between EditGrid Vs Google Spreadsheet (it's also a demo for the application itself and it's not only EditGrid Vs Google, but also MS Excell 2003 and WikiCalc).

They do have a future planning about features that will be implemented and also a release schedule. Nice application, since we can know when will certain features be available.

Faster Than Printed Edition

Yesterday, i downloaded a manga for a famous japanese comic book in Indonesia, Samurai Deeper Kyo, written by Akimine Kamijyo Kodansha. The latest printed edition in Indonesia was 33, but i found (with some information of my friend in YM) for a site which has scanlation on the japanese version and translate it into english language. They have finished most of them and i have download edition 34 up to 38 and read it last night. Edition 34 starts with the fight of Kyo and his teams against Fubuki and Hishigi and it continues to 35. It was a nice fight. You should see it by yourself when the printed edition is available. All i can tell you is that it ended with a happy ending.

The bad thing is, some of the translation hasn't been integrated in the image files, so they provide some kind of translation text which has to be downloaded manually (it's small though), and it's very uncomfortable to switch between the images and the text file over and over, but by looking at it, i don't have to buy the books anymore, since it's quite expensive and it will save me five editions, which equals to 55000 rupiahs.

End Of Life Time

Fedora Project has decided to discontinued the support for Fedora Core 1/2 and Red Hat Linux 7.3/9. It means that RedHat/Fedora Core users will have to upgrade or migrate to at least Fedora Core 3, 4 or 5 in order to get support or updates for their systems. Here are the announcement taken from LinuxCompatible

"With Fedora Core 6 Test 2 set to be released July 26th, it is time we announce the End of Life of our various Legacy supported releases.

After much discussion on fedora-legacy-list and the #fedora-legacy IRC channel on the freenode network, we have decided to end of life the following releases when FC6 Test2 is released:

Fedora Core 1
Fedora Core 2

This will leave us with supporting just releases 3 and 4 of Fedora Core. As to our Red Hat Linux releases (7.3 and 9) the following has been decided:

New issues (bugs) will be accepted until October 1st of this year. No new bugs will be accepted after that mark. All existing bugs will be resolved to the best of our ability by December 31st of this year. What hasn't been completed by then will not be completed by the Fedora Legacy project. This will be the end of Fedora Legacy's support of the Red Hat Linux line of distributions. We will continue focusing our efforts on the Fedora Core line, and improving our integration with the Fedora project in whole.

Please watch for more announcements regarding our integration with the Fedora project, and for schedule information should it change (Fedora Core release schedules can and do slip from time to time)

Please direct any questions to the fedora-legacy-list@redhat.com email list."

Visual Radio in India

According to PhoneyWorld, India will become the third country in the world after Singapore and Helsinki to have a visual radio service. For now, it will only be available in New Delhi, but it may be available on many other cities also in the future, as India is growing so fast in IT industry perpective.

Taken from Wikipedia :

Visual Radio is a technology developed by Nokia for making easier for audiences to interact with radio programs. Visual Radio is built-in functionality available in an increasing number of phones that are already equipped with analog FM radio. The interactive visual channel is produced by the radio station. It offers several opportunities for interactivity in radio programming: quizzes, messaging, content download, commerce, etc.

It is important to note that Nokia's Visual Radio is not radio streaming - the audio is received via a regular analog FM radio embedded in the phone. A presentation of graphics and text, sychronized to the audio programming, is being streamed to the phone over a data connection; indeed, the FM transmission chain is unaffected by the addition of Visual Radio.

Anybody can guess when will this service is available in Indonesia??

ODF as Malaysian Standard

Malaysia has taken a big step by proposing ODF (OpenDocument Format) to become their national office standard. Using an independent format gives us flexibility to use any application as long it supports the ODF format (and it should be, as it has been accepted as ISO/IEC 26300). So far, many applications have been developed to support this format, for example OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 (with some help of ODF-Converter). Looking forward to hear from Indonesian government (not sure if it will be heard or seen by them) :D

iPod Vs Zune

As the war continues, Microsoft has stated that they will release an iPod rival. It's called Zune. Unfortunately, they didn't give any specification or information about their new product and how it will be integrated with their other services. This product is predicted to be released this year, but we understand if it will be postponed againn (as usuall, like Windows Vista that has been postponed for about half a year).

You can see a lot of comments about both products on the PCWorld's site

OpenOffice.org Clarification

There has been a leak report from a private meeting about vulnerability in OpenOffice.org. This IS a leak report which shouldn't happened. Here are the OpenOffice.org's clarification:

There has been comment in the media about a report on a French
language website: "Le ministère de la Défense met OpenOffice à l'index"

The ZDNet article [1] claims to describe the proceedings of a confidential meeting within the French public administration. It is not appropriate for the OpenOffice.org community to comment on a leak from a private meeting. However, one of the people mentioned in the article, Eric Filiol, has posted two replies to the online article clarifying the purpose of the research and correcting some of the incorrect conclusions in the original article.

The OpenOffice.org office suite is being widely adopted within the French public administration, and the OpenOffice.org community has been working closely with the departments involved. OpenOffice.org is pleased that its source code is being scrutinised by the most important and respected department of security in France.
If security vulnerabilities are suspected, there is a well defined procedure within the IT industry for reporting, analysing, and resolving any issues, which aims to minimise any public announcement (and the resulting creation of exploits) until fixes are available.

The OpenOffice.org community confirms it regards security as of the highest importance and will react immediately to any security issues reported by the French public administration or other competent bodies or individuals.

-The OpenOffice.org Team

[1] http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/informatique/
0,39040745,39362096,00.htm

See also,

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060718-7288.html

Win a PHPMyAdmin Book

Taken from phpMyAdmin's official website:

Starting from 17 July until 21 July, Packt will be giving away copies of its book Mastering phpMyAdmin. All you have to do is send an e-mail to competition@packtpub.com with your name and shipping address. Two people a day will be selected at randon. There's no catch, simply send an e-mail and winners will be contacted by Packt.

If you like phpMyAdmin, you will like the book also. Unfortunately, i'm not the lucky person up to now. Keep trying :D

Backward Compatibility

Most people like to have newer version of a program since it will bring new feature or functionality, new design, contains bug fixes, and a lot of other reason. But this fenomena doesn't apply to System Administrator or Developer, since they have to think twice to upgrade some components when they need to preserve backward compatibility with the old version to ensure that old data will work in the new program and also the new program can read and understand the old data or else, people will have to re-work to make it compatible with the new one.

For sysadmin, it happens when there's some kind of major upgrades, such as kernel updates, or library updates. Some application need some specific requirements, but it was considered old, so the sysadmin will have some kind of dillema on this. On the other hand, (s)he wants to have the system running all the time without downtime, but in the other hand, (s)he will have to think the security of the application. Old version tends to have unfixed bugs and it has been fixed in the newer version, but if the newer version needs to upgrade some other components which are being used in other applications as well, that will be some headache for the sysadmin :D

For developer, new features are expected, but it causes a lot of compatibility problems also, since the new feature must (or should be) backward compatibility with the old application, or worst, it must be forward compatible with some features that are being planned to be implemented in the future. It requires a lot of planning in the systems architecture in order to make a good application which can solve this two major problems. Other problem that make developers had an instant headache is the requirements that it should be compatible with other formats.

One good example is Microsoft's next Office product Microsoft Office 2007 which will use OpenXML format that was urged to be compatible with the OpenDocument Format (ODF) which is now a new International Office Standard Format. They have to provide a new converter for this two kind of different format (but both are based on XML).

OpenOffice.org have this kind of problems also when they wanted to switch from their old format to the new ODF format which was started at OOo 2.x. They released OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 to give customer some way (by using filter) to convert the old format to the new format (issue 34353) besides bug fixes.

OpenOffice.org Wiki

Many people doesn't know that OOo has a wiki site also. Well, it's not as popular as other wiki site, such as Mozilla's Wiki, but it's worth to see, as it contains a lot of information about OpenOffice.org itself. There are four main entries, Development, Marketing, NLC Native-Language Confederation, and User Resources, but inside this site, there are a lot more than this. You should check this wiki if you need some information about OOo or if you want to start giving contibution to the OOo project itself. Indonesian native lang project has a site on this wiki service also. It's mainly being used for giving instructions on how to work with ooo-id project. More information will be added here also, but we will see that later.

If you need any information to be added, please send me an email.

Upgrading To YM8!

My friend, Markus told me that he has downloaded the latest YM8 Beta and it's newer than the version i had. He had upgraded without problem (so, this version has really fixed the login problem which was experienced by many people when they wanted to try the beta version). So i tried to upgrade to the latest version and yes, i can connect to my YM account so far, but HEY!!! my friend's contact list are GONE!!! (See my screenshots). The other contact is still there, only the friend's are gone. I wonder how could this be? Well, let's try to uninstall, install the 7.5 version and let's see the results. I hope they will appear again.

Confusion Around Mandriva Translator

At Mandriva's mdk-l18n mailing list, some people have complained about the information where they can find the exact location of the translations files, since some file has been migrated to SVN, while the rest still uses CVS. Berty for example, she had complained about this in her email :

well, I've found urpmi under svn tree, born 2 weeks ago it seems. So I assume urpmi was moved permanently from cvs to svn.

It would have been great if we, translators, had been warned about that.

So I reiterate my request : it would be useful to know where the po are, cvs or svn, and also the planning of migration (on the wiki for example).

This migration causes so much problems, such as account problem (i had that problem also, when i tried to checkout the new modules that has been migrated to SVN, but it always refuse my old password. After i talked to Warly, then my account was restored and i can do the updates again). Other problem was permission problem like Berty had in the CVS version :

Checking in urpmi.po/fr.po;
/cooker/soft/urpmi/po/fr.po,v <-- fr.po
new revision: 1.303; previous revision: 1.302
cvs [commit aborted]: could not open lock file
`/cooker/soft/urpmi/po/,fr.po,': Permission denied

I had this problems also when i didn't recognize that DrakX files had been moved to SVN, while i'm trying to commit to CVS service.

Well, we definitely need an information where can we find the translations and also the path to the files (mostly usefull for new translators). For CVS service, it's located in their CVS Repository, but still, no exact information about the files to be translated.

Let's hope they can build a nice Wiki information about this.

Other problem that hasn't been fixed up to now is the statistics on the translations page. For example, in Indonesian page, i have finished all DrakX translations, but the page still displays the old value (it's not updated for more than 2 weeks).

YM !+ MSN = ??

What would it be if Yahoo Messenger! and Windows Live Messenger (MSN) are being combined? On the beta version of Yahoo Messenger 8, they have added new feature to add your MSN friend's accounts, so then you can chat with them via YM! and vice versa (Plus see when they're online, right from YM!). Well, for the first look, it's a good idea, since some people prefer Yahoo Messenger and the rest prefer MSN Live, but after thinking for a little while, they might cause some problems:

- What if our friends have both of the accounts? If we add them, then we will have a lot of friend contacts. Just in case one of them are offline, we still have the other one (this is the advantage), but if both of them were offline, online, offline , and online again (for example due to bad network connection), then it will be quite annonying.

- What about the Audibles which only works on YM! and Wink which only works on Windows Live? Will they have a interoperability on it?

- YM! and MSN have different emoticons and also the shortcut for the emoticons. It will make people confuse about the shortcut if they try to send an emoticons to other messenger client, since the output may different from what we expected.

- In MSN, you could add a new emoticons via a chat. So if someone is sending you a new emoticons and you like it, you can add it into your own emoticons list (since it's an image mostly). But you can't do that in YM!. The only think you can do is adding Audibles list. Of course, you can use Hidden Audibles to reveal the hidden audibles that weren't activated in default installation.

A Lot of MS Office Alternatives

Up to now, there has been a lot of Microsoft Office alternatives. You can have a fully suite product, or you can use a separate application for each purposes. You can also do it offline (usually formed as a product) or you can do it online (this is the new trends that we have right now).

For complete, product, you can choose a lot of alternatives. Some of the popular products are OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, Gnumeric, and KOffice (it's only in GNU/Linux). You can find a lot more if you are willing to find in Google or other search engine.

If you don't want to install any applications, you might want to try other alternatives which is online application and ajax/flash-based. For word processing, you can use AjaxWrite. For spreadsheet, you use Google's product, Google Spreadsheet, and for presentations, you can use Empressr (Thanks to Puji for the information). So, you can have a lot of alternatives out there. It's up to you to decide which application do you want to use.

What's New in Mozilla Firefox 2.0?

While there hasn't been any final release of Mozilla Firefox 2.0, the first beta version have arrived and it's available for public testing. This version has included some new features, such as anti-phishing, browser session restore in case of a crash, support for client-side session and persistent storage, ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs, support for JavaScript 1.7, new Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, new microsummaries feature for bookmarks, new search plugin manager and better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds, and ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs (taken from MozillaZine).

I think that's quite worthed for a major upgrade from 1.x to 2.x. It's also worthed to try (but it's recommended to wait for the final version unless you want to test some features or extensions). You can see the release note also. I hope this version will fix a lot of memory leaks that happened in the 1.x version and reduce the memory consumption, as Firefox consumes a lot of resources.

Fake Email

Just now, i got an email from fake "Yahoo Fraud Prevention Team" :

Dear Yahoo Member:


This email was sent to you from our secure
Yahoo server to verify your informations

As there was an error logons to your account on
11.07.2006{2:15 P.m}

For security reasons,your access to online yahoo
has been suspended.

If you fail to verify and re-confirm your membership details
your online Yahoo account will be BLOCKED!


*WARNING*:Please Keep Your Details Secret and Safe.

To verify your account please

Login :
Password :
Old password :
New Password :
Code Security :
Full Name :
Address :

Replay Fast with real account and your info in 24 hour

Security Password,

Yahoo Fraud Prevention Team
Yahoo Groups.

Email : account.members@yahoo.com

Yahoo! Answers > Yahoo! Answers Help > Feedback

Copyright © 1994-2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy - Guidelines - Ad Feedback
NOTICE: We collect personal information on this site.
To learn more about how we use your information, see our Privacy Policy

As you have known, Yahoo never suspend their customer's account just because they have an error while logging in (it's a common mistake to make errors, such as typo, forgot to turn off CAPS LOCK, etc). And the other mistakes made by the sender is that he/she was sending this email to maintainer@project.informatix.or.id (my alias for local OOo Documentation Project). I never put this email on my Yahoo email list, so this is trully a social engineering efforts, but sorry dude, it's not working for me :D

Please be carefull when you receive this kind of email message also.

Pirates of the Carribean Is Available

Finally, Pirates of Carribean : Dead Man's Chest is available on movie theater (the duration is 145 minutes, that's worthed to see). Many people will likely to see this movie as it has been on their queueu list. Before the movie is available on the theater, i have got the OST of this movie via Bittorrent (as usuall). Most of them are instrumental, and there's also a remix version of "He's a pirate" from DJ Tiesto. There's also some remix soundtrack from their official websites.

I'm planning to watch this movie this week (if possible). Has anybody have seen this movie? Any reviews for this movie? Is it recommended or not?

Finally : CCB

Finally, Dick and Johan have arrived at Indonesia and we will have a CCB decided today. We definitely need a CCB to decide some decision for the projects, mostly deciding which changes should be worked and which are not to be done in the current version since the timeline is very strict. We will have to deliver the final version before September 6 and there are still a lot of open issues and CR (Change Request) from the clients.

We have asked for CCB for a long time, but there hasn't been any answer from the Netherlands and the client itself, and now we have one. Ideally, CCB should have been formed when the project started, but since i haven't worked here when the project started, so i don't know about it and now, since i'm the project leader for the OWG Project replacing my colleague Mr. Yenn Madyanto, i'm urging that the CCB should have been made for now (it's quite late since Mr. Yenn have asked about this for a long time, but it's better than having no CCB at all).

FYI, i'm working on OWG Project. Here are the description of the project itself from our project page:

OWG project is a desktop-based educational application that was built to help visual and hearing impaired childrens to learn using computers as their tools. It consists of eleven modules which are categorized for learning alphabets, words, typing, basic arithmetic such as decimal numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in a fun and friendly environment. It has a text-to-speech and also highlighting features to provide both visual and audio feedback to the students. Teacher will be able to set up time limit, number of exercises, type of exercises and settings to fit each pupils' conditions.

Worst Ending

World Cup 2006 has ended this morning with Italy as the champion after having a penalty shootout win over France 5-3, but i just saw the worst ending match for a player who decided to retired from all international matches. Yes, you may have guessed it, Zinedine Zidane, who was predicted to achieve the golden ball award, being sent off after giving a head butt on Materazzi's chest. I don't know the reason why he did that, but that was a shock for many France fans, as Zidane never had problem with anybody. He always smile and very generous to everybody. People likes him so much and many player respect him.

That was a bad news to France who had lost Patrick Vierra for injury. They had lost two jendral on the field who should manage the ball flow and also the play. One more thing that i'm curious with was the substitution of Thienry Henry with Sylvain Wiltord even though they knew it would ended in penalty shootout and they do need Henry on that. It happened not only in France, but in some teams, such as England.

What has started has to be ended and the Germany FIFA World Cup 2006 has come to an end and we will see the next event in South Africa in the next four year. Who will be the champion? We will see in the next four year. We might not see some player, as they have decided to retired, but as the tradeoff, you might see new players on the field. One team that i'm sure will be a great team in South Africa is Germany. They had so much potential youngster in this tournaments and hopefully they will become more mature in the next four year.

Nice Football Match

This morning, i saw the FIFA World Cup match between Germany and Portugal who fought for third place in this tournament. It was a nice football match, since both teams played a wonderfull attacking scheme and created a lot of chances. It ended 0-0 in the first half, but at the end, the score was 3-1 to Germany who will be proud of this achievements, as they have been well known as one of the best FIFA World Cup host ever. Peoples have praised how Germany prepared everything for this event. From the renovation of the stadium which was environment-friendly, local people who were so friendly as well, and many more. This event was considered successfull to bring a nice relationship across nations (except for Germany and Argentina clash at the end of their match) and also a moral message for anti racism.

Can the final be like this? We will find out tommorrow morning at 2 AM :D

What Kind of Workplace Do You Want?

I just browsed the Internet today and i found some interesting images where it shows some workplace in different places. Here are two screenshots of GooglePlex (where the core of the engineering group of Google is housed along with) and Meebo. I don't think we will ever find this kind of workplace in Indonesia :D

The first screenshot is Meebo's and the second one is Google's :

Indonesian Version of Keep The Car

I have created an Indonesian version of Keep The Car campaign on Indonesian Native Lang Project. Please have a visit and check a look on it. Please feel free to suggest a correction for the translations.

Basically, it's an answer to Microsoft Office 2007 Test Drive campaign, but instead of just having a test drive for something which you won't get when it's finally released (unless you buy the license), you can get the real product for free without any charge when you tried and use OpenOffice.org. You can copy the logo button as publish it on your web page or blog.

Update : i have create a new logo for Indonesian version. Please update the link again as to point to http://id.openoffice.org/images/ooo_ujicoba.png.

Google Earth in Linux

Today i have installed Google Earth on GNU/Linux platform and the result was not as good as in Windows platform. The images was messed up as you can see in the screenshot. One more problem is that there isn't any uninstall options for GNU/Linux. I have asked Google about this and waiting for their answer. But the installation was great and fast. It has a nice icon also (it's the same with Windows version). Let's wait for the final version of Google Earth in Linux. I hope they will fix this problem.

Google Earth 4 Beta

Google has just released a beta version of Google Earth 4.x. This version is an improvement from the previous Google Earth and it has simpler user interface that makes it easy to navigate all the panels. They have also improve their 3D building textures, so it will make things sharper and better look. Taken from Google Earth's site :

"The textured 3D building meaning the bricks look like real bricks, the glass like real glass, and overall, the world looks more like, well, the real world. It's just one more step on the path of creating a life-like 3D model of the whole planet. There's just one catch - there aren't many photorealistic 3D building models out there. Yet. That's where Google Sketchup comes in".

It also available on Linux version, something that wasn't available on the previous Google Earth before (i think Google is trying to make all of their products available on all platforms. I believe they have achieved a good feedback on Picasa by using Wine and now, they continue their work into Google Earth).

But, they still have some typos on the program. As you can see in the screenshot (click to have larger images. It's in Windows version, as i didn't install any GNU/Linux distro on my office's laptop), Jakarta is written as Djakarta and Surabaya is written as Surabaja. Maybe they will read this post and fix it in their final release.

Stellarium

Few days ago i downloaded a wonderfull application which is a multiplatform applications. There are Linux version, Windows version, and Mac OS X version. The application is called Stellarium. It's a free open source planetarium application that can be used to see a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. With this application, you can see a lot of objects, such as stars, planets, satellites, shooting stars, meteors, constellations, nebula, milky way, and many other things that we can see on the sky. It has a lot of features, such as multi language, zoom control, telescope control, and many more. This project is also listen in most active project in Sourceforge. Here are one of my screenshot of the application



This application could be used in educational purposes or private hobbies, mainly for those who enjoys learning about astronomy.

Following Mega Thread

In LinuxQuestions forum, there is an ultimate mega thread called "When Will The Next Slackware Release Arrive" which discuss when will the next Slackware will come out and other things, such as what is the default kernel which will be used in the next Slackware release (up to now, Patrick Volkerding always put kernel 2.4.x as the default kernel in Slackware), what udev will be used, and many more. It has been made sticky also by the moderator, since many people have asked the same thing on the Slackware category, so they combine all of those post into one big mega thread. When i post about this, there has been 12 pages on it with 175 replies.

Waiting for the next Slackware is really interesting, since Slackware is basically a one-man project (Patrick Volkerding), so he takes charge of the Slackware development by himself (even though he generously takes advice from the community about the packages, like Piter Punk). This way, it's up to him to decide which packages should be the default and which one should not be included in the next release, including the kernel selection. Even though many people have urged that Slackware should come with 2.6.x kernel (and it's also mentioned several times in the Slackware-current changelog), there is still some consideration about dumping the 2.4.x kernel since it's still used by many many users around the world (mostly because it's stable enough). At the other side, those kernel wasn't updated regularly, since Linus is prioritizing on 2.6.x kernel and the 2.4.x kernel didn't support more driver than ever, so people tends to use 2.6.x kernel since it's more stable, supports many hardware, and it's faster (in some cases). If Slackware comes with 2.6.x kernel, i think it will be 2.6.16.22 which was the last stable kernel in 2.6.16.x tree. The reason why Pat don't use 2.6.17.x kernel is that because this kernel has introduced so many changes and it will take some time to test it (which is not good for production level to use untested kernel as it impact the stability of the the system). Maybe the 2.6.17.x kernel will be introduced in -current after the Slackware 11.0 has been released. That way, he can start breaking again (also testing and fixing) in -current :D

For me myself, it's not a problem what kernel version will be used for the next Slackware, as i always build my own kernel by compiling it from source. But i will need the Slackware ISO as a new base when i want to install a new Slackware. Up to now, i have been following -current development, so i don't have to do a clean install again, since i have the latest packages in Slackware (which eventually will be released as Slackware 11.0), BUT, if something goes wrong with my system and i have to do a clean installation, i will need a good base and that will be Slackware 11. If i use Slackware 10.2, then i will need to do a lot of updates (that's equal to 9 months of development cycle in Slackware). If i have a Slackware 11.0 CDs, then i will only need to do clean installation and update the latest packages counted from Slackware 11.0 release date.

Another File System For Linux : EXT4

Theodore Ts'o has proposed another File System in the future, which is EXT4 (aka ext3dev in kernel) in the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) thread. There has been an article about this topic in LWN (Ext3 for large filesystems and Time for ext4?). I'm not sure whether this proposal will be accepted or not, but extX surely needs to be upgraded due to some limitations that they had which is not adequate for current work. For example, they had 8 TB maximum size of the underlying device it can handle, which is considered too small for big companies. Usually, they had larger device than that. This limitations was caused of the underlying 32 bit system that is used in the ext3 filesystem, so the new file system is being proposed to use 48 bit (i wonder why didn't they use 64 or 128 bit instead of just adding 16 bit from the previous 32 bit? It can be used for the next five or ten years without having to develop or update the structure again).

For those who wants to upgrade, don't worry, since the ext4 code base will continue to mount older ext3 filesystems, as this is necessary to ensure a future smooth upgrade path from ext3 to ext4 users. The development of this new file system will approximately take 6 - 18 months and the first release will be very EXPERIMENTAL. Only those who knows what are they doing should try to use it, as it may break your system (even though the code base was derived from the old ext3 file system). During the development phase, when the developer has agreed that the file system is ready for his new debut, there will be a patch in the kernel itself to register ext3dev as new ext4 file system.

For now on, i'm quite happy with ex3 which is being used in my laptop and reiserfs in my desktop. Actually i prefer Reiserfs since it's faster on my system, but since i installed Slackware on my laptop first, i didn't take the reiserfs as the default filesystem and i'm not changing it now, as it has been fully configured for my need and i'm satisfied with that. Converting the filesystem from ext3 to reiserfs will need extra time and efforts (plus installing other software that i need and testing it).

Good Bye 1.1.5

After following the development of OpenOffice 1.1.x, last night, i finally decided to remove OOo 1.1.5 from my laptop and start using OpenOffice.org 2.0.3. One of my reason is that OOo 2.0.3 is stable enough and it has more features than the previous 1.1.x version since it has a major updates, mostly on OpenDocument supports, higher compatibility with Microsoft Office's files and many many things else. So last night, i compiled the latest kernel (up until yesterday, since today i saw another -stable release), which was 2.6.17.2 (and the latest right is 2.6.17.3) and also upgrading the OpenOffice.org from 2.0.2 into 2.0.3 by converting RPM files to tgz files first using rpm2tgz and then uninstalling the previous OOo (using pkgtool) and the last step is by installing the new packages using installpkg command.

There was one glitch that i found when i tried to save a new file in OOo 2.0.x (actually it may be caused by installing RC version back when OOo 2.x was on testing phase and it still refers to the old OOo settings). It always displays an error message which said that OOo couldn't find a file in OOo 1.1.4 directory (some kind of WebWizard templates) but i used OOo 1.1.5 right now. I tried to remove the directory in /opt/OpenOffice.org1.1.4, but no luck. It always displays a similar messages and it will make those directory again So i finally decided to make a backup of my .openoffice.org2 directory (which contains all the settings for my OpenOffice.org 2.0.x), removing the old OpenOffice.org installation (useless OpenOffice.org1.1.4 and OpenOffice.org1.1.5 installation) and then start the program once again. It will start like a new installation, where i should put my name and initials and then it will create a new configuration directory. Next, i tried to save a new file and the error messages didn't appear again. Yipeee..... problem solved. Now i only have one working installation of OpenOffice.org 2.0.x.