Mr / Ms-Know-it-all

My dearest called me to asked me about a problem that her neighbor is facing. Her neighbor, an old man (affectionately known as "uncle") said that his PC was fine the afternoon, but turns off by itself after it loads up Windows while he was using the PC at night. My dearest who is an IT grad, suggested that the problem should the power (which might be accurate). In this case, I believed she done good job advising the uncle what's the problem. She faced this problem before and solved it by installing an Auto-Voltage-Regulator, which suggests the problem was the power. Kudos to her!

But, how many times have we met with IT-illiterates trying to show off claim they are smarter over an IT graduate? This reminds me of my previous company, which a manager openly challenged me and claiming that I cheated him. While my boss and colleague wasn't around (because they were outstation), Mr. smarty-ass-pants wanted to borrow a Windows XP CD. Since we do not have any Windows XP CDs, what we have were actually image of Windows XP (IT literate should know what I'm talking about) which only work on *certain* brand of PCs, so I told him off that I can't lend him. Even if I did, he couldn't install on his PC and it won't work.

I guessed Mr. smarty-ass-pants didn't buy it and went home and asked his friend. So, I'm not sure what the so-called-smart friend of his told him what. The next day, I got a scolding from Mr. smarty-ass-pants, saying that his friend told him there's no such thing as a (insert-whatever) installation CD, he said I was treating him like a kindergarten kid. Not long after that, I was briefed by my boss saying don't mess around with Mr. smarty-ass-pants.

Being insulted even though I was right, that just never felt right.

So, have you met annoying users lately?

I have not come across any "I-know-it-all" users in my current company. Hopefully I won't. :)

of TMnet monopoly and Satellite Internet

It is not strange that monopolisation occurs in every single field including IT , or Information Technology (or ICT, whichever suits you).

The benefits of monopolisation is that it allows everyone to follow one's standard, one's way of progress and one's way of handling of problems, procedures' and all that. When you follow all the above,this will avoid deviation from the standards created by monopolising company / organisation. Everyone will just follow with no questions asked.
In the end, everyone is happy (or sad) and life goes on.

BUT, there's a BIG BUT (no pun intended) here. Because monopolisation does not encourage deviation, it forces everyone to accept whatever standards created by monopolisation organisation , be it good or bad.

In the case of Broadband providers in Malaysia, it seems everywhere you go. The cheapest still is Streamyx from TMnet. (yea I know you TMnet fckers, smile as much as you want). But, everytime someone applies for TMnet Streamyx is like a "try-your-luck" experience. Sometimes you have to wait for "port-to-be-available", sometimes you don't. Basically, there's just no guarantee that you can ALWAYS get TMnet Streamyx. I mean what is this?! Because TM monopolises the Broadband market, other players can't do shit about it. It's a take it or leave it situation. There's no saying of "oohh since TMnet can't provide Internet to me, I'll go for another company". There's no such luxury for broadband users in Malaysia (unless you live in the urban areas of course). I assumed that politics does play an important role to ensure that TMnet is one and cheapest broadband provider around all broadband players. However, there's a still a little hope. Introducing 3G, the next "cheapest" solution. As with alternative solutions, there's always a problem.

Coverage. Although 3G coverage has improved a lot over the years, (Celcom touted the widest 3G coverage of whole Malaysia), it is still insufficient. The rural areas are still in the meagre GPRS coverage speed which is only up to 115.2kbps, which sometimes even dial-up can be much better. The only drawback is for dial-up there's no unlimited package, while GPRS has unlimited usage package (eg. Digi prepaid unlimited RM149, when your GPRS data usage is up to RM149 within the month, it will not incur any more charge WITHIN that month). Some of you may argue why these people staying in these rural areas needs fast Internet access anyway, well, some of these people are staying there because of their work. People who work in agriculture industry usually have their agriculture site, eg. nurseries, estates situated far away from town. These people need Internet access to check with their suppliers / vendors about any issues related the agriculture products they are using. Imagine driving 2 hours to town just hand in an Excel report in a USB drive. Times that by 5 or 6 days, this will caused wastage of fuel, time and financial resources. By this time, you will wondering is there still hope yet for rural areas to get high speed broadband access. Fortunately, there still is. Enter Satellite Internet. The final frontier. sort of.

The marvel of Satellite Internet is that it basically has no geographical issues. There's no "you're too-far-away-from-our-exchange" issue or coverage issue. This is because regardless of where you are, satellite receiver should be able to beam as well as receive signals from the satellite in the sky. So, no matter where you are, you're covered. 1 satellite or another. Again, there's a catch. For satellite Internet, it's always more expensive than Streamyx that is providing the same bandwidth, say for the 1Mbps package, it costs around RM100++ for monthly access fees, but for satellite Internet with the same speed , the monthly access fees can costs up to 4-5 times the price of Streamyx access fees. So, again it's up to the cusstomer to decide. Take it or leave it. Again, politics plays a role to make sure that prices have to be more expensive than Streamyx. (If not, everyone will be running out to get satellite. Now, THAT would really hurt Streamyx. TM, you won't be happy if this happens right?)

In the end, I guess the monopolisation of TMnet (as well as politics) has played an important role to ensure that Streamyx survives the day while its competitors hold to whatever scraps left by them. In other words, no one is playing fair. Those who claim they are, are just a bunch of lying bastards. THE END.

Blogger new feature! Blog in future

well, not exactly blog in the future. But you can write a blog and post it at a later date or day or time. which might be the day that you can't access blogger to blog your post.

"Scheduled post publishing, which we talked about testing on Blogger in draft last month, is now live for everyone. If you set a post’s date into the future, Blogger will wait to publish until that time comes."

for more info, check out this link for more info.

Street Fighter IV!!! ooh yeah

It has been quite a long time that Street Fighter series appeared on PC. The Street Fighter game I remembered was Street Fighter II Alpha. correct if I'm wrong (in the comments. :P).

Now, there's a new Street Fighter series being announced. Enter STREET FIGHTER IV. From the debut trailer, it seems quite good. (of course all trailers look good, :P) .

One of the reason the trailer caught my eye, it seems to have this very HK-ish comic style look. Exaggerating lines and color and all that, sometimes it just feels like a drawing with all the strokes of a paint brush. Indeed a great job done by Street Fighter demo team. Kudos to all of them.

Looking from the gameplay video. There's a lot that has been buffed up as well. The animation of the street fighters look better. More colorful and vibrant looking colors. The background characters are more lively as well, although they still don't do much tho.not that they are expected to do anything anyways.

Here's 2 videos of Street Fighter IV. The first a debut trailer of Street Fighter IV.


Here's one of a the gameplay video



All the above videos are from Gametrailers.com

Overall, it does seem like a game to look forward to for all Street Fighter fans.

Nvidia to acquire AGEIA

AGEIA, the industry leader in game physics has recently been acquired by NVIDIA, (Nasdaq: NVDA), the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU.

click here for more details.

what could this mean? could the developers still get the free SDK for their own development or will the developers have to pay good money to get these SDKs? after the acqusition.


interesting question to ponder.

Halo 3

Forum.Low Yat.net down?!

This is what I saw when I tried to log into forum.Lowyat.net this morning around 9.50am. hmmm....

Update :
When I check in the forums November 28, 2007, 9.15pm, it's A-OK.

forum.lowyat.net, Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition

I only knew about this OS when I read about this thread from forum.lowyat.net

It's cool that you can learn and read about lots of things from forum.

I also found that Lowyat.net's forum also has a forum for Hardware sales. Most of their prices are cheaper than those on market. REALLY COOL. REALLY COOL.

Well, there's other piece of good news.

Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions Beta 2 Available for Download NOW!!!!!!

click here for more information.

Jing .. Jing ... Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnngg!!!

After reading an article about Jing Project, I was kinda impressed about it.

So, what is Jing? Well, Jing Project is basically a software allows to share what is on screen either showing the person in contact list with screen shot or capturing what is happening on screen in video format.

This is how Jing Project describes about their product. "The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere."

Give JingProject a try. Do share your comments with me ya?

Honored and Shocked!!

Medal of Honor : Airborne demo to be released on August 30th!!!

Bioshock PC demo will be released before August 21st!!

Windows Server 2008 is out!!

The title says it all.Currently, the following versions are available for download:
1)Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Standard
2)Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Standard 32-bit
3)Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Enterprise
4)Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Enterprise 32-bit
5)Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Datacenter
6)Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Datacenter 32-bit
7)Windows Web Server 2008 Beta 3
8)Windows Web Server 2008 Beta 3 32-bit
9)Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 for Itanium-based Systems

The following verions are available for ordering in DVD format:
1) Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Standard
2) Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Standard 32-bit
3) Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Enterprise
4) Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Enterprise 32-bit

Seems like M$ seems to encourage people to download their OSs instead of ordering.

For more info, click here.

Intresting tips from Geeks Are Sexy.net

Tip #1 :
Remember those ‘Spot the difference pictures’ when you were a kid? Remember how long it took you to find them all? I had troubles - enough so that I was the last person to finish them and go out and play kickball! No longer, I say!

Here's how the way to do it.

Tip #2:
Got a blog? and earn money from blogging?

Get some guidance from the lovely people of geeksaresexy.net aka. GAS.net

Father of LCD R.I.P

The father of Liquid Crystal Display died at the age of 74.

Click here to more details.

TMnet offers 4Mbps package

TMnet offers 4Mbps package.. Woo hooo... Definitely something to look forward to if you're under their coverage area.



Note: some may viewed me as anti-TMNet. But, honestly, I'm just one of the pissed potential TMnet customers who have decided to do something, rather than complaining day and night , and did nothing to fix the situation. So, I don't hate TMNet, it's just that consumers should know they have alternatives.

Unsure on upgrading to Microsoft Office 2007?

Not sure whether to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007?

Click here to download the trial.

Satellite Center visit Part II (Photos )

Here are the photos of the Smart Satellite Teleport Centre in Bukit Jalil, Technology Park Malaysia.
There you go. SMART Satellite Teleport Centre sign just beside the entrance.
Here's another perspective of SMART Satellite Teleport Centre.(Noticed there's a building beside the BIG ASS satellite). I'll talk about what's inside later.

One of the big satellite receiver from bottom view.

This is one of the panels that is within the building. All the panels and equipment are mainly used for used for management of the Teleport satellite. Their functions includes:
1) Breaking the data packets into smaller chunks so it's easier to receive and send thru Teleport satellite.
2) Controlling the Teleport satellite's movement so it's in optimum receiving position and
3) etc. (will update when I get more info)

This is one of smaller dishes (which I'm not mistaken used for testing purposes)

Satellite Center visit

After subscribing to Smart Malaysia's satellite broadband service, a buddy of mine who worked for company invited me their satellite receiving center in Bukit Jalil for a visit.

The center itself is located in Technology Park Malaysia in Bukit Jalil. The place wasn't as big as I expected. But, it was quite fun to get to walk around and looking at the BIG ass satellite dishes.

Some of the biggest measures about 9 metres in diameter, some of smaller ones are probably 1.8 metres.

Basically , how the satellite broadband works is like this:
1) The Internet user types in the website address , eg. donkeykong.com
2) The satellite modem receives the signal from the computer and beams the signals via the satellite dish installed on-site Internet user's home.
3) The satellite in (space?) will receive the signal and beams it back down the satellite receiving center in Bukit Jalil.
4) The satellite receiving center will receives the signals from satellite and goes through its myriad of equipment and 3 major pipelines (which they leased from 3 companies, Jaring, Paneagle and .....?)
5) Once the data related to donkeykong.com is found, it is sent back to the satellite, and the satellite sends it back to the satellite dish installed in the user's home.

The conclusion, it still needs to go thru wires at sometime (step 4). But, most of the transmissions are wireless. So, unless there's heavy rain (or something that disrupts the ISP network that is on land), then basically there's no problem at all.

Overall, this has been 25th day I've been using satellite broadband. The service has been quite satisfying. Though there were occasionally downtime during the early March, but the quick response from their support centre indeed impressed me.

Lotusphere 2007 in Malaysia Part II

The high turnout in the morning session. There are basically 2 big screens in the ballroom which is used for the Lotusphere 2007 launch. After a long speech from Pam Chandor (Director, Global Portal and Connections Sales, IBM Software group) and Stephan Wiseel (Lotus Technology & Productivity Advisor , IBM Singapore), we had a short coffee break, which everyone rushed for tadaaa....













Orange juice and some beehoon and cupcakes.


After that, we few more speeches from
1) Christian Nybye of Business Strategist ASEAN, IBM Software Group
2) Sven Mashake , Deputy Head (Global Data Center) of DKSH Corporate Shared Services Centre Sdn. Bhd.
3) Cheah Kok Hoong , General Manager of Sunway IT Shared Services
4) Jane Lim , Regional Manager of Information Platform & Solutions, IBM SOftware Group ASEAN / SA.

Most of them are quite well prepared, but presentation-wise, some of them do fall short by a bit. By far, I give 2 thumbs-up for Cheah Kok Hoong humourous intro during his speech.

After lunch, the speeches are different into 2 track sessions:
a) Business & Infrastructure
b) Technical & Developers

You can only attend 1 at a time. Though you can attend the other track while it's going on.But, I chose not to do so.
Since I don't I'll be able to understand technical stuff, I chose the Business & Infrastructure.
Then, it's more and more speeches.

Chicken n erm .. forgot what's that (from coffee break).

After the coffee break, a colleague from another office , joined me instead in the Business & Infrastructure track because the Technical track was "boring" according to him.

Then, after the final 2 speeches from
Simon Lee , Business Strategist ASEAN/SA,Workplace Portal & Collaboration Software and
Jonathan Wong, Technical Leader, Lotus Mobile and Wireless , IBM Singapore.

Simon Lee has brought a quite energetic feel to the whole Lotusphere 2007 event. Everytime I longed for to talk more on-stage, but he's also quite funny , cracking jokes here and there to make the speech exciting.

Jonathan Wong on the other hand, has very Americanised-English accent which I kinda liked too. Overall, he's quite okay too.

Finally, it's time for lucky draw.As you can see the people have gathered around the demo booth from various Lotus products vendor, waiting for the lucky draw results.



Here's a picture of the funny guy of the day, Mr. Simon Lee.

Overall, it was quite great experience attend this conference despite my initial reluctance to attend it. I also met my mom's classmate (yes you read that right.) who works for Sime Darby too. I'm definitely looking forward to attend more conference like these.

WiMAX License Winners (Malaysia) Announced!!!

The 4 winners for WiMAX License has announced:

Bizsurf , MIB , Redtone-CNX and Asiaspace.

This is certainly bad news for Digi (after not being awarded 3G) , again missing the opportunity of having the WiMAX license.

For more information, you can refer Reapfield Technology.

Update:
At the time of my posting(17/02/2007) 10.30am(+8H GMT), I went thru Bizsurf, YTL Corp. Berhad, Green Packet, and Redtone-CNX and found nothing related to the WiMAX winners.
MIB Comm. Sdn. Bhd. website was unable to be located as well.

Lotusphere 2007 in Malaysia Part I

Lotusphere was up and running in Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Subang, Malaysia. Photos will be uploaded soon. Tada..... turn left to Lotusphere 2007.
The breakfast for the morning. Kueh (something) with curry. (After some discussion with my colleague, I found out that it's called Roti Jala because of the shape of kueh looks like a net (jala) not Kueh Lapis as we initially thought).