uCertify Discount Code

I got good news from the senior marketing of uCertify regarding my review on their products. They are giving a discount for you who are interested in buying their products, by using this discount code : WILSUR and you will get 10% discount for every uCertify products.

Here's the email message:

We will publish your review on our site in a day and I will send you the link as soon as it it completed. As a note of thanks for your wonderful review of our PrepKit, we are offering a discount to the readers of your Blog. Your readers can use our discount code given on your Blog and get 10% discount on the uCertify PrepKit of their choice. Please use the following Discount code:

WILSUR

Use the discount code while you have the opportunity

French Police Migrate to Linux

It has been reported that French paramilitary police force will abandon Windows and Microsoft and switch to Linux (Ubuntu) and it will become one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break. The migration has started from 2005 and at that time, the first application they migrate is the office application. They switched to OpenOffice.org and one year later, they migrate their browser to Firefox.

They expect to change 5,000-8,000 desktops to Ubuntu and then 12,000-15,000 over the next four years so that every desktop uses the Linux operating system by 2013-2014

It's quite logical, since in 2004, they had to buy 13000 license for office suites (that's a lot). By migrating to Open Source, in the next three years, they only need to buy only 27 licenses (huge amount of reduction).

Check the news on Yahoo News

Thanks to Sophie for the news

New Private Connection

I now got a new private connection. Previously, i share the connection with my cousin. We are using Speedy for the ISP. Few month ago, i got an information that Speedy is offering 50% discount off for lecturer and it will be one year duration. So i was thinking of applying another Speedy account for myself, since i had some difficulties when i wanted to download something big meanwhile my cousin is using the Internet for online game. So finally i applied last month.

Since it was the end of the year, they couldn't process the form as fast as usual, so i had to wait. Finally the technician came today and prepare the network infrastructure and also setting up the modem and my account. Now it's already online, so i can unplug my cable which goes to my cousin's modem, since i have my own cable now.

By getting private connection, i can download more files and also use it freely

C220-601: A+ Essentials

As i promised from my previous post, this time i will write a small review about one of uCertify PrepKits, which is 220-601 - CompTIA A+ Essentials practice test. CompTIA's 220-601 test is designed to measure your ability to support computers having different hardware and software configurations. Exam 220-601 is a mandatory requirement for the A+ Certification. This test is appropriate for you if you want to be an entry-level IT professional and have job responsibilities including: IT Technician, Enterprise Technician, PC Technician, Desktop Support Technician, Field Technician, PC Support Technician, Remote Support Technician, Help Desk Technician, Call Center Technician, Depot Technician and Bench Technician.

The demo version can be downloaded from this link, but you will only have demo version. It's limited in some features, like less questions, no final test, no articles, less study notes, and less practice test. Nevertheless, it can be used for tryouts. If you like the product, you can buy the full version for USD 69.98. I got a chance to review the product using the full license number that was given to by one of the Senior Marketing Manager of uCertify.

Here's the screenshot of the main page of the application (yes, it's Windows-based)



















On the right side, you will see some items that can be used to improve your understanding about certain things related to the test, such as articles, study notes, study tips, interactive quiz, and also exam objectives. On the bottom of the application, you can track your progress and also readiness report. This will give you basic report of how ready are you to take the real exams. In the left side, you will see the main items, the test questions. In this prepkits, you will see one diagnostic test consists of 15 questions, 7 practice test, each of them consists of 55 questions, a final test with 40 questions, and also a custom test. If you notice, the button for practice and final test are grayed out, since i haven't entered my license number yet. When i clicked them, it will show a nice screen with message saying that the feature only available on full version:



















When you clicked on the Register button, a new windows will come up and it will ask for your email and order number. It will download the license number from the Internet to unlock your prepKits.


















Let's start with diagnostic tests. You have a maximum of 15 questions on this test and it can be used to identify your weakness and the focusing your preparations to fix the problem. It has two modes: Test Mode and Learn Mode. The difference is that in test mode, you can review the test in the end of the test, suitable for a simulation of the real test. In learn mode, you will have a chance to see the feedback after each answer. When the test starts, you will see this kind of window:



















In the bottom of the page, you can see several buttons that can be used for several actions, for example you can pause the test if you have something else to do (but you can still see the questions though. It would be nice if they put a white background, so the questions won't be revealed), tag the questions with a label, put a note on each questions, and navigate through the test questions. You can also give your ratings to the questions by choosing the stars in the upper section of the screen.

When you have finished the exams, you can see your results by clicking on the results button like in the screenshot below (well, i didn't take the exams and straight to the results, resulting a 0 points ). You can also see the review of each questions by clicking on the questions (check the second screenshot)






































When you have conducted several tests, you see your history and look for the progress on each test like shown below:



When you think you are ready, you can take the final test and readiness test before going to the real tests. I wish for your success...

From my point of view, this application is very helpful. It doesn't only giving questions, but also explanations on how it should be answered. The results and review features are very nice and you can track all of your tests (there are about 600 questions and it will be randomized) to make sure that you have been fully prepared. I think it's worthed to spend some cash to buy this product if you are really interested in passing the exams.

This application can also be used to download other prepkits. So you don't have to download them all. Just download one prepkits and from that application, you can download the rest of the prepkits (the demo of course). With single click installation, everything become so easy and flexible.

The only thing that i expected to be fixed is the pause feature. It should not show the questions in the background. I think it can be used to cheat Other things to be considered is the articles and study notes. It's fixed for now, but it will be great if users can add their own study notes and article that they find useful.

I personally expect a Linux version of this application as there are people who doesn't run Windows on their computer. It would be a great if they can close this gap.

That's my humble reviews. Thanks for reading....

uCertify Certification

There are lots of way to improve your career. One of them is by specializing yourself on one technology and mastering it until advanced level, for example if you are interested in database using Oracle, then study all about Oracle, from beginners until advanced technique. This way, you will have more plus point rather than other who only knows the basic of that technology.

Mastering a technology itself sometimes is not enough. You need some evidence that stated you have mastered something. It's when certification ideas comes up. Some organizations or companies gives a title to person who are considered qualifies for one of their products. For example, in Cisco, you can have CCNA and CCNP certification for several path, such as general routing, design, network security, etc and all of them can be seen on their IT Certification page.

Certification does cost some money and sometimes the cost is quite expensive, so not everybody is interested in certification. If you failed, then all of your money is lost. In order to prevent this, usually there are some preparations that has to be conducted prior to the test exams. Some organizations have published a book of the previous exams, giving a clue what might the test be.

Another solution that might comes up is by using software tools to help you prepare yourself before the exams. One of them are from uCertify. They provides PrepKits, an interactive software that helps you learn, tracks your progress, identifies areas for improvement and simulates the actual exam. They have quite a lot of IT certification PrepKits, so you are free to choose. They are:

• Microsoft Certification (MCSE, MCSA, MCAD, MCDST, MCP, MCST)
  
• CompTia (A+, eBiz+, iNet+, Linux+, Network+, Server+, Security+)
• CIW
• Oracle (OCA, OCP)
• Sun Java (SCJA, SCJP, SCWCD, SCBCD, SCMAD)
• Cisco (CCNA, CCENT)
• Adobe Photoshop (ACE)
• EC-Council (CEP)

The above list are the one listed on the upper menu. It's not static and they will add more than that in the future, so please come periodically to the site to look for new certifications PrepKits.

Their product can be downloaded for free, but in demo version. You will have limited features of the products, but you can still use it for basic preparations. If you are satisfied with the demo version and planning to get more serious, you can buy the licensed version of it. The price is different on each products, so you must see it individually.

They are so confident on their products, so that they give you 100% money back guarantee. If you don't get certified in the first attempt, they will return your money. Nice isn't? They also provide some testimonials from their users around the world who have succeeded in using uCertify products to complete their certification. uCertify also receives lots of awards because of their nice products. It's a proof that many people like their products based on the reviews on each site.

In another post, i will write a little review about one of their PrepKits, which is 220-601 - CompTIA A+ Essentials practice test. CompTIA's 220-601 test is designed to measure your ability to support computers having different hardware and software configurations, so it's like a basic skill needed to work with different components of your computer.

Why linux is Better

Some people need proof when they are told new things that are different from what they believe currently. For example, people that used to work with Windows might argued that Linux is hard to use when their friends told them that Linux is very easy to work.

If you need some proof why Linux is better, then please visit this site : Why Linux is Better. It listed some reason why Linux can be said better than Windows from several perspective. Nevertheless, Linux is not for everybody, so this site also gives you some cases where you should stick with Windows (for now, but hopefully it will be changed in the future).

This site has translations project, but unfortunately Indonesian language is not among them. Anybody is interested on translating this website?

Nokia Acquires Trolltech

Earlier this year, Sun has bought MySQL for quite a big price and now, Nokia is going to the same, but not to MySQL again, but to Trolltech. It's already being published on their website. It's a big step for Nokia and also for Trolltech, since both are one of the big companies in the world. By combining this two companies, it will improve both's strategy to fight against their competitors around the world. Let's see if this acquisition is worthed to look for.

Driver License Checking

As usual, i took Mangkubumi street when i wanted to go back from my office. From far away, i saw lots of police officer standing in the road, meaning there will be a driver license checking session (i had this few weeks ago). Since i'm not planning to go straight (as a matter of fact, i'm turning right), i moved to the right side and turn right, but when i turned, i saw a policeman forcing other people to go straight and have a checking session even though he wanted to go right. This is very annoying (mostly when it's done at noon when the weather is very hot like nowadays). They could have made the checking session far before the T-junction, but in reality, they did it after the T-junction, forcing people to go through Malioboro.

As you probably aware, the road structure around Malioboro has been changed and it's getting more crowded, thanks to the new road structure, so it's best to avoid Malioboro at peak hours. That's the same reason why i never go through Malioboro if i have another choice. I prefer to go through Mangkubumi > Tentara Pelajar which is less crowded.

Farewell....

Just now, i received a news that Mr. Soeharto, the ex president of Indonesia has passed away. I just came back from UGM and accessed Detik and yes, it has been confirmed that he has passed away at 1.10 PM. I can not say anything but farewell.... may your soul rest in peace....

OOo 3.0?

Linux users will be pleased by news about the release schedule of OOo 3.0. As stated by Charles-H. Schulz:

This year will be remembered as the year of the “3.0″ for OpenOffice.org. Besides the obvious symbolic value of the version number, the OpenOffice.org is readying itself to what will be a crucial release for its future.

What do you mean by release for it's future? Well, OOo does not only work on their products, but all of the components that supports OOo are being upgraded as well, for example:
- The Marketing Project, is busy revamping entire portions of the web site, while new means of communication (a blog aggregator) are being tested.
- The User Interface project fosters users’ input in order to improve the existing user interface
- Changes in the code base that leads to componentizing OpenOffice.org and build a rich client based on the UNO technology
- Many more....

So when will OOo 3.0 be released then? I can't tell the exact date, since i'm not the one who can tell you, but some prediction was said to be at Mid September (from OOo Marketing Blog). It has been set on the Wiki, but hey.. let's face it. Anything can go wrong and it might get delayed, but at least, you know that it will be released this year

Old Reunion

This morning, i met my Junior High School teacher, Mrs. Lily when i was going to go to the office. She was heading back to school from the church because there was a ceremony at the church and all of the students were there too. I still recognize her and so did her. She was a teacher who was responsible for my class when i was in third year.

This kind of reunion was not only done at junior high school. When i was still at high school, we often visit our teacher in elementary school when we had our reunion (mostly once a year, but sometimes two times when we had a chance). Now, most of our teachers had retired, so we couldn't visit them at school again. It's so nostalgic remembering that we had a nice reunion with our teachers back then.

I still conduct our reunion with my friends at elementary school and we have done it last year. Perhaps we could do it again this year.

HTML 5 Draft

W3C has published HTML 5 draft for public consumption for early review. You can check the current specs here. It may change in the future, since it's still in working draft status, but for some parts, it has been fixed. Web developers will be pleased to hear about this news, as it will became more standardized in the future

Top 100 Motivational Blog Posts of All Time

I have just received an email message from Amy S Quinn about 100 motivational blog posts of all time. I thought it would be a good idea to share it for public consumption.

Please note that i'm not endorsed the site nor getting paid for publishing this

Bigger and Bigger

Rapidshare has stated that they are one of the biggest and fastest web hosters world wide and it seems that it's true. Few days ago, i saw that Rapidshare still use 200 Gigabits/s for their connection and 4 PB (PetaBytes) for their storage, but today, they have upgraded to 210 Gigabits/s and 4,5 PB. Incredible amount of storage and bandwidth. It's getting bigger and bigger all the time. No doubt that it was one of the most popular web hoster world wide

I also have one premium account for rapidshare, but it will be expired tomorrow

Different Size

For this semester, i tried to make all of my presentation using OpenOffice.org in Linux platform (using Slackware). But there's one bug that concerns me about Impress. It has different file size on the PDF output compared in Windows version. Linux's version is bigger in size. For example, 1,1 MB of presentation on Linux will have 813 KB in Windows using the same source (.odp) file. Some time, the ratio is even bigger than that, so for now, i will still use Windows to convert it to PDF, while in the making, i can still use Slackware to do that

I don't see any major improvements on the next OOo (dubbed 2.4.0) for impress that are still in development process, so i guess it should be somewhere in 2.4.1 or perhaps 2.5 or 3.0 (we don't which one will be used)

Computer Problem

My desktop suddenly stopped when i was doing my activity today. I couldn't do anything, including switching to virtual terminal (i thought it was KDE who stucked, but actually it's the whole system). I had to press the POWER button to turn it off and boot it again. Again, it happened after i login to KDE for a few minutes.

I thought it was the hard disk that has a problem, so i checked my computer part by part. The hard disk was fine, so my next target was my RAM. I took my RAM off and clean it before i plug it again. After that, i clean up the dust inside my casing and testing it again and yeah... it works like normal again.

This is just a tip, but sometimes it works. Usually, if your system is locked up, check your RAM or Power Supply. This two components have the highest probability of being the source of the problem.

KO

I'm not feeling well today, but i managed to finish my class before i went home and have a nice sleep. It all started when i reached my office. My head was very dizzy, but i keep on teaching since i have two class today. It's not as painful in the first class, but after i finished my first class, it became worst. I had some rest for about one hour before my second class at 1.30 PM started.

I really enjoyed the second class, so i didn't feel anything back then (only dizzy i guess). I think i should get some sleep right now. Tomorrow i don't have any class to teach, so probably i will just rest at home.

Pay Raise

Everybody wants a raise on their salary, but sometimes they didn't evaluate their performance prior of asking for pay raise. Perhaps an article on LifeHacker can be your guide about when to ask for pay raise. There's also a link to another site which discuss this problem as well.

The situation here is very contrast with what happen in our People's Representative Counsil and People's Consultative Assembly. They were highly paid and still they urged to get more by making their own rules. Yet their work is often don't accomplish anything. There are a lot of discussion leading to dead end. It would be better if the money that were used to pay them is being used for another purpose, for example education.

Accessing Linux Files From Windows

Currently, most Linux distribution will be able to read Windows files in their filesystem (NTFS or FAT32), but not the other way around. If you are looking for tools that enables you to access your Linux files from Windows, you can look on an article from HowToForge about "Three Ways To Access Linux Partitions (ext2/ext3) From Windows On Dual-Boot Systems". The article shows three application that can be used for this purpose: Explore2fs, DiskInternals Linux Reader, and the Ext2 Installable File System For Windows.

I personally never used this tools, as i usually boot to my Linux and when i boot to Windows, i never have intentions to open my files on Linux since i already prepared two partitions that was formatted as FAT32, so from Linux, i could put the share files there.

LatencyTOP

Intel has just released a new application called LatencyTOP to identify system latency and what kind of operation/action is causing the latency to happen. It's for Linux operating system and it can be considered a siblings of PowerTOP that has been released last May.

In order to work with this application, you will need to manually patch your kernel (the diff is based on 2.6.24-rc7), since the code is not yet included in the kernel development (the author said it's too premature to include it since it will need further testing).

This application will be a great tools in the future when most of it's code has been included in the Linux kernel and can be used by public easier (without patching).

Yahoo For OpenID 2.0

In the end of this month, Yahoo will start beta testing for OpenID 2.0 support on all of their web application. By combining Yahoo ID and OpenID, they will have greater potential value in the future. As you might already know, Yahoo used their Yahoo ID as a global identifier on all of Yahoo's service. By using OpenID as the global identity as the gateway and then after it has been authenticated, Yahoo servers will add Yahoo ID session, thus users can browse Yahoo's network using an OpenID. Nice...

You can start upgrading your account on Yahoo's OpenID site

Related article:
- InformationWeek
- ComputerWorldUK

USB Cable Extension

Five days ago i bought a cable for USB Extension. I haven't been able to try it out until yesterday and i found out it was broken, since my USB couldn't be detected at all. I was using Slackware Linux on my office and i never thought it was Linux's fault. So i tried to test it on my colleague's laptop who's using Macintosh and Windows and they ended with the same result: the USB wasn't recognized.

Today i went back to the computer store and ask for replacement. They said that cables doesn't have warranty. I told them that in the receipt i got, every item which has low prices are guaranteed for two weeks. So she said that they will replace it, but only once and it will be a shorter cable. I said OK, so we agreed. Since it's only one time replacement, i went to the neighbor of this store which is a sub division for services. I asked them to try the new one and it failed. They gave a replacement and let me tried it but everything failed. I got a replacement three times, until finally they gave a better cable for me (i think they grab it from other product) and it was more expensive than mine, but it's definitely shorter, but it works (finally). So i decided to take those without any charges at all. It's a black one, similar with my computer's casing on my office.

Here's the result from Linux's dmesg:
usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 2
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 1001472 512-byte hardware sectors (513 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 1001472 512-byte hardware sectors (513 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 1001472 512-byte hardware sectors (513 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 1001472 512-byte hardware sectors (513 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0

EgoSurf Points

I have just read Maseko's post about EgoSurf and i tried it myself. I entered my name and also my blog (this one) and it came up with this result:














I tried another search, this time using my SlackBlog as the blog and i got even more surprising results. It seems that my name on SlackBlogs is more well known

Winamp 5.52

It's been some time since Winamp release their Winamp player application. In my opinion, Winamp is one of the most stable application that exists on Windows platform. I never had problems with Winamp so far (unless a bloated version causing slow response when Winamp 3 comes up that rapidly replaced by Winamp 5). Since the availability of Winamp 5.5, they have introduced a new skin called Bento and in the latest version, they made some improvements on it. Here's the latest Changelog for Winamp 5.52

• Improved: Better Unicode filename support for enc_*.dll audio encoders
• Improved: [ml_transcode] Unicode filename support
• Improved: [in_mp3] APEv2 tag support
• Improved: [in_flac] Support for reading/writing BPM metadata
• Improved: [nde] Optimized for faster mldb query results
• Improved: [vis_milk2] Pixel shaders now work on onboard Intel graphics chips
• Fixed: Comment field character limitation in Basic Info tab of File Editor
• Fixed: Playback Thread Priority middle setting resets to Lowest
• Fixed: [in_mp3] Ultravox streaming metadata stack overflow
• Fixed: [in_mp4] Crash when attempting to play non-existent files
• Fixed: [in_vorbis] Crash when clearing existing metadata fields in File Info
• Fixed: [in_wave] Transcoding of floating point WAV files
• Fixed: [ml_transcode] Memory leaks
• Misc: More miscellaneous general tweaks and improvements
• Updated: Bento skin #118

Linux To Unite Two Countries

Linux has made an outstanding achievement by making two countries that had cold war united on one development under Hana Linux Project. As Reported by Guardian, South Korea will set up Linux training centers in North Korea. As you might aware of, South Korea is one of Linux's biggest converts. Since discovering the free operating system in 2003, officials have unveiled plans to switch all government-run offices to Linux (something which is very rare in Indonesia).

Why they choose Linux for their operating system? There are several reason, but mainly are free and unification. By making one Linux version that will be used in all over Korean, it will be a Korean-universal Linux distribution, meaning that all people in Korea will use this version and it's getting easier to maintain, since almost everybody used it.

Is it possible to do that in this era of freedom when you are free to choose your own operating system? I think it does. When it comes to IT, South Koreans do things differently. Almost everyone in the country uses Korean search engine, Naver; Google is considered a poor man's substitute. MSN's Messenger plays second fiddle to the local Nate On service. Virtually the whole of South Korea snubs Windows Media Player for Gom Player. The list goes on.

Y2K38 Bug

In the next three days, every Linux or Unix people will start the thirty years of countdown before the unix timestamps overflows. This bug is called Y2K38 and it affects all unix-like operating system which represent system time as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. Here's some technical description about it from Wikipedia:

This representation also affects software written for most other operating systems because of the broad deployment of C. On most 32-bit systems, the time_t data type used to store this second count is a signed 32-bit integer. The latest time that can be represented in this format, following the POSIX standard, is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038. Times beyond this moment will "wrap around" and be represented internally as a negative number, and cause programs to fail, since they will see these times not as being in 2038 but rather in 1901. Erroneous calculations and decisions may therefore result.

If you have used 64 bit system, then you can relax a bit, since 64 bit system have used longer bits to hold the date. I hope before 2038, i already bought a new 64 bit system

Here's some illustration from Wikipedia

Lost and Found

Last night, i went to Ambarukmo Plaza and i saw an interesting thing when i wanted to collect the reward point at PASC (one of the division of Plaza Ambarukmo for information service and point exchange). There were a lot of lost and found items displayed. Most of them were ATM cards that were left behind after they made a transactions (probably they dropped it). Alex had this problem before and his card was found.

It's unfortunate that those cards were kept by the authorized people and not being misused. Otherwise, most people will lost their money (if the thief know how to crack the PIN combination). This is one thing i like in ATM cards rather than credit card. Credit card doesn't have any protection at all. You can use other's credit card without any problem, since most of the time, the cashier officer never checked the holder identity and also whether the signature of the credit card matched with the signature on the receipt. You can only complaints only after the bill has arrived next month (and you will have to deal with the police station and also bank).

I wonder when will the bank and credit card provider start considering giving better protection for it's customer? I heard that there was a plan to integrate an electronic chip, but i never heard of it again. If i'm not mistaken, it should be implemented this year.

iMacros Extension

Do you need to do something repetitive on your browser? iMacros from Iopus can help you do those task automatically. It's comes as a Firefox's extension, so you can install it very easy by downloading the .xpi file and open it using Firefox's menubar. Actually, this extension is used for web automation and web testing tools, but you do lot more than just for testing purposes. By supporting macro, you can ask for repetitive actions to be done automatically by the browser. You can use several programming language to create a macro, for example Python, Perl, Java, or even FoxPro.

Check the demo page if you are new to this kind of extension.

Steve Job Wannabe

Do you want to be like Steve Jobs who always gave a nice presentations? If you do, try this game, SteveNote Expo. In this game, you are acting as Apple's CEO Steve Jobs and you are getting ready for this years MacWorld Expo keynote presentation. Your job is to collect all the insanely great Mac, iPhone and TV Stuff you are going to present at Macworld Expo without revealing it to industrial spies and journalists. It's a flash based game, so you only need Flash player installed on your system and you're set to go

OOo Templates

If you are looking for a nice templates for OpenOffice.org, i suggest that you download OxygenOffice templates and Professional Template Pack from Sun Microsystem. It's a collection of templates for English version (there are several version available). Some of them have good looking, so you only need little modification on them to suit your style

SimCity Goes Public

One of the most popular simulation game, SimCity has published their source code for public. People can start working on the porting to other platform and other programming languages, but for now, a new project has been started by Don Hopkins (Micropolis). The project name is renamed because EA wanted to protect their trademarks.

There's been changes to the original system like a new splash screen, some UI feedback from QA, etc. The plane crash disaster has been removed as a result of 9/11. What is initially released under GPL is the Linux version based on TCL/Tk, adapted for the OLPC (but not yet natively ported to the Sugar user interface and Python), which will also run on any Linux/X11 platform.

The "MicropolisCore" project includes the latest Micropolis (SimCity) source code, cleaned up and recast into C++ classes, integrated into Python, using the wonderful SWIG interface generator tool. It also includes a Cairo based TileEngine, and a cellular automata machine CellEngine, which are independent but can be plugged together, so the tile engine can display cellular automata cells as well as SimCity tiles, or any other application's tiles.

If you want to port it, grab the source and start porting it.

Source: ASP.NET Blogs

How Should We Teach Computer Science?

There's an interesting article about How Should We Teach Computer Science? that discuss about the need of deployment phase and also a knowledge about source control. The author said that source control is the very bedrock of software engineering. He also stated:

Today's computer science students should develop software under conditions as close as possible to the real world, or the best available approximation thereof. Every line of code should be written under source control at all times

On my personal opinions, i agree with this approach. By using source control to manage the source code, students can have more benefits rather than not using it (collaboration, sharing, consistency, etc). Source control management (SCM) is now available on most platform and you can have free version on most application. Why didn't it be a standards on ways to do development phase on every project the students made?

The problem lies on the infrastructure and also habits. Not every students have a computer which is connected to Internet. Some does, but not all of them can access broadband connection. Some still use dial up, but in my opinion, it's adequate to run checkout, update, or commit process, even though it would be quite expensive if you work intensively.

The second problem is even worse on my opinion. Most of the students use Internet only for fun, and not utilizing it to improve their skill or knowledge about things that they should have learn, for example source control management application. They tends to wait for instructions from their lecturer. This is something we should change, since you can't get everything from your lecturer due to some limitations. You will get more if you work on it by your own. I have prove it on my own.

Distributed Database

Today i got a task from my lecture about distributed database application which should use replication and fragmentation feature. I have an idea about the task, but what confused me is the resources needed. I will need two until three public server that can be configured to enable replication on MySQL (i definitely need root / administrator system account for that). So far, i could only use one of my campus proxy server (it's not yet being used as a proxy as it's still under testing, so i could use it).

The other computer is my own computer at my office, but unfortunately, it didn't have any public IP, so the only computer that could connect to it is the proxy server (well, actually there are several other public server, but i don't have root access on it, so it's quite useless). Any ideas or any help on this?

I wish my team member has their own servers, so we could start working on it.

KDE 4 Released

Today, the dream comes true as the KDE 4, the next major release is tagged final and shall be released within few hours (due to timezone difference). Most Linux users has been waiting for this release and i'm sure it will be a great release.

I really can't wait to use in Slackware, but i doubt it will be included in Slackware 12.1, since most of the time, PV wait until the code is stabilized (usually by the release of the first maintenance update), then it will be included in the next Slackware release.

There will be a release event on 17-19 January 2008 which will be held on Google Campus. More information can be seen at KDE 4.0 Release Event homepage

USB 3.0

This year, we will have a new faster peripheral connection by the availability of USB 3.0, peripheral interconnect technology that has been used by every users around the world. USB 3.0 is set to deliver a data transfer rate of up to 4.8Gbps - ten times today's 480Mbps USB 2.0 data rate - and introduce optical interconnects to the bus. The goal, the companies behind the specification said, is to create a version of the bus that's able to deliver files of 25GB or more (that's quite ambitious, but i believe it's common thinking, since multimedia files are being common thing and it's growing all the time).

The third version will have it's own name, called SuperSpeed USB and it will be backward compatible with the previous 1.1 and 2.0 version

There will be two connectors for the USB 3.0 devices, electrical and optical. You can look for the images below. The first one is the electrical and the second one (smaller) is the optical version. The third picture will show the diagram why it would be backward compatible with the previous version.

Reference:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/09/ces_usb_3_revealed/
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/09/19/idf_usb_3_announced/

Timebridge

Do you ever confused making a schedule with your friend or colleagues? If you do, you might try to look on Timebridge. It provides a new way of time scheduling for meeting or any other activities. Here's how it works:
- You set an invitation and set your available time
- Your friend will receive the invitation and also set their available time
- Timebridge will calculate all the free time and give the best time for the meeting where all people can join

Best ever, it's free. Start register now

New Kernel Arrived

Yes, new kernel have arrived, but it's not 2.6.24, but rather an update to the -Stable kernel, 2.6.23.13. It's only one fix, so i won't install this version and rather wait for the final version which should be released in short time. The Changelog describe the changes.

Be Patient

After migrating to the new engine, a lot of changes was introduced and i know that not everybody like the changes. They want the same feature that was available on the previous engine. It's common behavior. Me also for some points, like the old one rather the new one, but whether i like or dislike, it's already being upgraded so i have to stop disliking it and start liking it

We do notice several problem, but now most of them has been resolved. Here are the example:

• Search function is now working (after one day of indexing about 77000 posts phpBB3 has a nice continue indexing feature, so we can continue from the last post that was indexed or it will be a hard job for the admins)
• Due to the indexing process, the performance of the forum is a little bit downgraded, but since it's finished, the performance is back to normal again
• People wants quick reply like the old forum, and today i have made it available for you guys (i have to admit, the changes for applying quick reply in phpBB3 is really evil, since the howto was made for RC release and some of them has changed after the final release. No wonder it was called Evil Quick Reply )
  
• Some post were missing due to the conversion. I can't do anything about this. Sorry guys...
• BBAntiSpam has been installed again to protect forum from spammers. It's not as much difference with the installation on phpBB2, so no big problem here.
• Since the logo size is different with the old phpBB2, it's better to hold a Contest Logo instead of forcing it. I have tried this and the tux logo was very fat

One problem that was still discussed in the forum is about the attachments. phpBB3 permits attachments in the private messages. I personally dislike this feature, since if it's not well configured, it would fill up the space. I prefer to use Pastebin if they want to share code or configuration files. For now, i will enable attachment, but with some limitation on the file size.

I know most of you will ask for more in the future, but please be patient guys. I will work as fast as i can do, but without breaking the forum. That's why i usually take some time reading the conversations on the MOD forums before applying some MOD, since i want to make sure it won't break. Well, the good news is that for now, no MOD is breaking the forum

This forum also offer bunch of new features. I don't know all of them, so there might be some setting that were wrongly configured. Please let me know if you find one

Logo Contest

Since we are in new year and new engine has been installed, i would like to conduct a new logo contest for Indonesian Linux Forum. The winner's logo will be used as the default logo in the forum, replacing the default phpBB's logo. Rules and howto can be seen at the forum.

Anybody can join the contest

Good luck...

Forum Linux Public Testing

This morning, i conducted an upgrade to the Indonesian Linux Forum to phpBB3 and i have to disabled the forum for a while, but now it's complete for most of the operation and the forum is now back online. The new URL for the new forum is http://beta.forum.linux.or.id. The old domain is still preserved for some time and i hope that no major problem arise and we can move to the old domain sometime in the future

So... we need your help for testing the new forum and report them to me if you find one. You can find the current bug or missing feature on this post

Thanks before

Pagination Extension for OOo

Most software nowadays use terms of Plugins, AddOn, or Extensions to add capabilities to the default application. Think of Firefox's addon or GIMP's Script-Fu. OOo team also has released a website that became a repository for OOo extensions. One of the extension that i found very useful is Pagination, created by Charles Brunet. This extension, if installed will add a 'Insert / Page number...' dialog to writer, which is the same behavior with MS Office 2003. It really helped a lot to add page number on OOo Writer, mostly for people who have just migrated to OOo.

Ways of Finding Money

People have their ways of finding money. Some people do it legally and ethically, while the others don't. I'm not going to say who do legally and who are don't (i'm not an expert on laws). I just want to show one example of unethical ways of finding money that was recently happened in Indonesian Linux Forum.

As usual, everyday, i got email from the forum about new member and i approve them. While the spam from foreign country is really reduced after i installed BBAntiSpam, the local spammers don't, since most of them are done manually (so normal people join the forum and post them in several places like what you can see in the picture). The results? of course they can post whatever they like and it's only time before the admin and moderator notice them (since we have quite an active moderators) and delete their post and delete the username.

This is one good example of unethical ways of finding money. I'm sure you who runs forum like phpBB or vBulletin also had this problem

BBAntiSpam Effectiveness

After i installed BBAntiSpam, the amount of spammer in Indonesian Linux Forum has decreased a lot. This is a proof that BBAntiSpam is very effective for fighting spammers (at least for now).

The only thing you should consider is updating the questions regularly. Since it's based on random questions, there's a chance that spammer who had modified it's spam scripts could answer the questions provided by BBAntiSpam. Adding questions in BBAntiSpam is very easy, since it's array-based, so you can see the pattern on the configuration file.

I will see for the next few weeks and if there's no leakage, i'm considering to change the registration method again to email, so that users who has just registered can activate their account and directly use the forum without waiting for my approval.

2.6.24-rc7

It's not final yet, but we're getting closer to that. Linus has just released another RC release to public after more than two weeks from the last RC (due to long holidays). New feature on this release is the SLUB support of /proc/slabinfo made by Pekka J Enberg. Read the news on LWN or directly at the Changelog.

If nothing big happened, we could see the result in the next one or two weeks (hopefully it will be the final)

BBAntiSpam

I missed one spammer today on Indonesian Linux Forum and it posted porn messages across the forum and i was quite late noticing it, since i just came online tonight, but i managed to remove all of it's post and delete it's username to prevent further action.

Budi from Baliwae told me a nice Anti Spam tool which can be used for phpBB and other forums. It's called bbAntiSpam. It's very easy to use and customizable. The installation procedure is very easy. All you need is just upload the files to the server and add one line in one of the file to include those files and it will start working at that time. For phpBB, you can look on this forum, meanwhile, for WordPress, you can find it here. There are a lot more.

The script is free, but it's limited in it's feature. If you want further customization, you will have to buy the license.

PHP 4 Updated

PHP team has updated PHP 4 series with the latest update, PHP 4.4.8 that contains patches for PHP 4 series which still come even though PHP 5 has been around for some time. Here are the changelog for PHP 4.4.8:
* Improved fix for MOPB-02-2007.

* Fixed an integer overflow inside chunk_split(). Identified by Gerhard Wagner.

* Fixed integer overlow in str[c]spn().

* Fixed regression in glob when open_basedir is on introduced by #41655 fix.

* Fixed money_format() not to accept multiple %i or %n tokens.

* Addded "max_input_nesting_level" php.ini option to limit nesting level of input variables. Fix for MOPB-03-2007.

* Fixed INFILE LOCAL option handling with MySQL - now not allowed when open_basedir or safe_mode is active.

* Fixed session.save_path and error_log values to be checked against open_basedir and safe_mode (CVE-2007-3378).

* Fixed bug #43010 (Fixed regression in imagearc with two equivelent angles).

* Fixed bug #41765 (Recode crashes/does not work on amd64).

* Fixed bug #41630 (segfault when an invalid color index is present in the image data).

* Fixed bug #41628 (PHP settings leak between Virtual Hosts in Apache 1.3).

* Fixed bug #38798 (OpenSSL init corrected in php5 but not in php4).

Unplanned Activities

Today, my girlfriend sent me a SMS message saying that my cousin was going to come to Jogja (strange, why did my cousin sent a SMS message to her, not for me?). They were going to go to Amplaz and asked me if could accompany them. I said i couldn't that time, as i was having my first day of my second semester for my master degree (speaking of school, i didn't realize that today was my first day. I thought it should be tomorrow. Lucky me that i saw the schedule last night). I said i could after i finished my class around 4 PM.

At 3.30, i was already finished, so i came home and ask her whether she was still in Amplaz, but she said they will come to our house, so i'll just wait for them. In short, they arrived in my house and we had a chat. I was supposed to go with my girlfriend to Amplaz (we were planning to watch movie), but at the end, i canceled it and we (me and my girlfriend) accompany my cousins to Kedai 3 Nyonya, famous restaurant that has a headquarter in Jakarta and to Factory Outlet. It was really an unplanned activities, but the result was quite good for me.

Now, they are on their way back to Semarang. Have a nice trip, and i'm looking forward for your next visit next week

PageRank Extension Updates

If you use PageRank extension on your Firefox browser, you might notice that for some time, the number displayed is not the correct page rank for the web site you visited. It was caused that the development has been stopped by the developer. If you wanted an updated version of that package, uninstall the package and get it from this site. Some bugs has been fixed and some cleanup has been made to the core. Now it works normally again.

Fixed Office

Finally i have my own office with Mr. Katon as his partner, Miss Lucia moved to another room. I have set the table (it's still empty though) and a computer (which will be formatted next week and will be replaced by Slackware Linux). For now, i don't need a shelter to place my books, since i mostly make my materials at home.

The computer i got only have 256 MB for the RAM and it's running Windows XP SP2 currently. I was considering to take the other computer, but it has the biggest space, 80 GB, compared to the other who only had 20-40 GB (it's not a high-spec computers ), but with 512 MB of RAM. Upgrading new RAM is easier than upgrading HDD, so i pick the 80 GB and with 256 of RAM. I think that's fast enough to run Slackware

New Office Hijacked

Yesterday was the day where all the lecturer have their new office in the new building (called Agape). The migration is not yet finished, but most rooms have been redesigned and today, some of us have started to work normally. I was absent yesterday, as i was leaving to Semarang and just came back last night.

Today, i went to the office and i found out that my new office was hijacked by the other lecturer to hold a final project evaluation. The room that was prepared for that event was full of items that hasn't been extracted since they have been moved from the old building, so they use my room which is big enough to conduct the evaluation.I also don't have any computer yet, so probably, i'll work with my laptop for now, waiting for a computer to be ready

First Trip In 2008

I have came back from my first trip in 2008. It was supposed to be two days trip, but my sister hasn't finished her task in Jogja, so we had to cut our trip to one day (one night actually) and we came back to Jogja today.

Yesterday, i went to Semarang around 11 AM and we reached there at 4 PM. Yes, i know it's unusual. Usually, it won't take that long, but we had lunch break at Magelang and also looking for goodies to be given as a gift which took more than one and half hours. Plus, the weather wasn't that good and also the traffic was very crowded. Nowadays, lots of trucks and buses were crossing and some of them were reckless, so i tend to slow down and stay calm behind the slow truck, mostly when the road was going up.

I arrived there at 4 PM and we directly went to my cousin's house to see the baby. He was very cute. His name is Rafael (i don't know the full name). Too bad, i didn't bring my digicam, so i couldn't take a picture and send it to my grand father in the US. He will be happy to see his first great grand son has born. At night, we went to dinner to celebrate my auntie's birthday. I slept at 9 PM and i woke up this morning at around 8 AM (i was too **** tired yesterday. Two days ago, i played cards with my cousins until 4 AM yesterday morning and at 10 AM, i drive to Semarang).

This morning, we went to buy gifts for my family and my girlfriend in Jogja and also going to the doctors for my sister. When i bought spring roll in "Gang Lombok" (near Chinatown area in Semarang), i saw a big ship in front of the Budhist Temple. It was like Noah's ship in the bible. I didn't know what that ship means, but it was very huge.

While looking for gifts, i realize that some areas in Semarang was flooded with water. Two days ago, heavy rains dropped at Semarang and it caused the water risen up and since the drainage was so bad, the water couldn't go down and in the end, some part was filled with water (even the road), causing problems to lots of people.

At noon, we left Semarang around 4 PM and heading to Jogja. The weather was (again) very bad and it was raining heavily. But, the trip was faster and i arrived in Jogja around 7 PM safely. It was a nice trip, and it would be great if we could stay longer, but duty calls. My email account is full of new messages, new forum member i should approve, any many more.....

So let's get back to work people....

Two Days Trip on Semarang

Today i will leave to Semarang for about two days. Let's hope the trip is going to be a nice trip. I don't know if i can have Internet connection there, so new forum members approval will be pending (sorry for that) and emails will be read after i came back from Semarang. Let's just say, it's a vacations for me...

Web Replicate

One of my friend told me via Yahoo Messenger that there's a website that look like my blog completely. It was www.nehomix.com. I checked the site using WhoIS Server and i found this information:
Domain Name: nehomix.com

Status: clientTransferProhibited

Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Referral URL: http://www.enom.com

Expiration Date: 2008-04-24
Creation Date: 2007-04-24
Last Update Date: 2007-11-09

Name Servers:
ns1-borden.nswebhost.com
ns2-borden.nswebhost.com


IP Address: 216.180.227.51
Website Status: active
Server Type: Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635.SR1.2 mod_ssl/2.8.28 OpenSSL/0.9.7a PHP-CGI/0.1b
Cache Date: 2008-01-01 12:34:01 MST

anybody knows why this site is replicating my blog?

Happy New Year 2008

新年快乐2008年

新年快樂2008年

Bonne année 2008

Frohes neues Jahr 2008

Ευτυχισμενο το Νεο Ετος 2008

Buon Anno 2008

あけましておめでとう2008

행복한 새해 2008

С новым 2008 год

Feliz Año Nuevo 2008

Selamat Tahun Baru 2008

Again, thanks to Google Translate

It also resembles my first post in 2008