how?

true enough, we may say rooney is an idiot off the pitch. but how come we never go about pointing out stephen hawking is crap at football?

car2gether, ubercab, airbnb and a few more. when will they be replaced by google maps/earth?

p3 500.
p4
athlon???

if we got a full squad for the whole season...

NEW v ARS FT
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why can't they use swap!!!!?

failed to start a vm under hypervm/xen because i dun have enough ram - at least thats what hypervm is saying.

but i cannot install kloxo. the admin page wont show up - something is not running.

may try to reduce dom0's memory allocation by the 10mb that hypervm is saying i lack..

may follow the wiki and skip innodb loading to cut ram usage by 100mb.

dun understand why both dom0 and domU don't just use swap. i may have limited ram, but i got swap!

is this right?

1. USA invaded Afghanistan because when asked to extradict osama bin laden, their government dared to ask for proof or something like that. have 100k people died in that war already?

and this mike mullen dude dares to say wikileaks has the blood of afghans on their hands? have a sense of scale!

and better yet, afterwards his boss the defense secretary admits wikileaks didnt leak anything sensitive - http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/16/wikileaks.assessment/index.html?hpt=T2

2. some basic math apparently. the world is quite underpopulated actually. what's all the fuss over overpopulation about?

http://simplyshrug.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63:the-overpopulation-myth&catid=31:general&Itemid=50

outsourcing/exporting social issues

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/in-high-school-chem-labs-every-camera-phone-can-be-a-spectrometer/

is really very nice.

except that people die to make those things..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/10/foxconn_abuse_report/

downgrading!

am trying to migrate winxp to a different machine using odin right now. 13+mbps, 10gb img file. hope it works..

after that the plan is to make the new machine, a p3, take over all that the previous machine, a p4, did - host 1 site and 1 email domain.

that shld consume much less power. for a while.

the next goal is to run xen on the p4, put centos+klaxo on it, and move the website over..

and possibly run untangle on that too.

in real life, you'd have put him behind bars for aggravated assault

first he did :


then he did :


and then he did this :



and then finally this:

lousy weekend

wanted to go to gan fish farm(and sungei buloh) yesterday. went before via yew tee taking the feeder bus that belongs to the farm resort(more like chalet) beside it and via kranji taking the kranji express minibus. but friends i went with didnt want to wait 1/2hr for kranji express, and we all boarded 925, which they thought went to the area as well. well, it didnt. went home after that.

put together a system from old parts. i think its a socket 754 athlon. havent powered it up. don't have a lan port to connect it to either. will do it in time to come..

wasted lots of time scanning negs. didnt notice the auto tone feature was on - had to rescan everything. fook.

arsenal lost to west brom 3-2 last night. i responded to http://www.ashburtongrove.co.uk/2010/09/wenger-fails-to-blame-almunia-for-west.html with...

it seems that we're not going to get an akinfeev or ochoa anytime soon..fair enough, if we're not willing to pay up. but really, if the goalkeeping standard is going to be this low, then why not just play mannone and wj? at least i can console myself that they're 'young' if they screw up. and i doubt they can screw it up any worse than what we're already seeing.

i made a comment there..

http://www.ashburtongrove.co.uk/2010/09/szczesny-to-leave-gibbs-boost-wenger.html

and was incensed by "as a professional I think he has to accept competition for places" and "playing a season in league one does not make you a Premier League keeper"

so i responded with :

the issue about Szczesny is that the 2 'senior' keepers are not much good. any keeper will do, if arsenal are prepared to accept the standard of almunia/fabiansk; and if any keeper will do, then why not Szczesny? in fact, instead of putting fabianski in goal, why not just play without a keeper? probably concede less without him flapping harmless crosses into his own goal or giving the ball back to the opponents to let them take quick free kicks. the only time i've seen an arsenal keeper win the match for the team(instead of costing the team, like what almunia/fabianski do all the time) since lehman left was when mannone played against fulham. so , based on what i can see (i havent seen Szczesny play,ever), i think mannone is by far the better keeper compared to almunia/fabianski. its a bit like the time when lehman left...i cannot imagine any reason how almunia can be preferred in goal ahead of lehman. if arsenal were to pick keepers on merit, then almunia should not be the 1st choice, and fabianski shld not be allowed anywhere near gloves.

guns vs spuds

rednapp was saying fans want to see winners, not kids. van der vaart, in jest or not, chimed in that spurs is a bigger team than arsenal. yet rednapp played more than a few kids. arsenal too actually..as always for the league cup.


Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal
Uploaded by gisonnet80. - Check out more sports and extreme sports videos.

what do i do with an extra machine?

thinking http://grsecurity.net/features.php and http://pax.grsecurity.net/ are quite cool..

thinking i want to try running my own wave in a box when its released..it sounds cool...

why are there no mobile/android versions of uusee, sopcast and stuff yet? haiz... tho i heard theres ustream for android though... so its not impossible!
i had, for a while thought about streaming from my desktop to a url that i can access from my phone with browser or with a video app.. but thats retarded really.

about inception...why do they all dream violent modern day dreams? why not dream of unicorns and fairies? or wwII fighter planes? or ancient Greek/Roman times? or kinghts and vikings?

extra free domains

how shall i make use of lzsays.boldlygoingnowhere.org, lazylizard.dontexist.com and sanguisfrigidus.dontexist.com?

port forwarding, i think, doesnt work so well on windows..i'm probably gonna find some issues trying to run one more machine here...but its possible...i shld get back the p3 from ang, and i can still build an athlon..

but what?

openfire? elgg? os commerce? taskfreak? fog project? otrs? zimbra? wordpress? drupal again? mambo? joomla?

or something along the lines of mythbuntu? boxee? xmbc?

all at the same time? ahahaha

sites and backups...

1. leadercommand vs otrs vs igsuite?

2. using odin to backup the machine that runs my websites now..easy to use. restore the disk on another machine, or with bartpe. since you just need to boot, you don't even need to burn odin onto the bartpe disc, you can have it on the same usb drive or whatever that you store your img file on..

3. can't think of a personal use case for the fog project still...

4. its easily available, portable clam; but trying to make fsav portable is a pain because i can't even capture it properly with thinapp because it reboots after installation..or something like that...

5. heheh, but i must say i think moviesndroids.com, spamserve.com and lazylizard.doesntexist.com:88 all look fine now...which reminds me that i have to go make use of lazylizard.dontexist.com, sanguisfrigidus.dontexist.com and lzsays.boldlygoingnowhere.org....dyndns is going to reduce the current 5 free domain names to 2...

6. still got a spare machine(sort of,its not assembled but the parts are there) with athlon and stuff..wonder what to do with it...probably can't run it at home on account of the utilities bill...where though???!
and what to run on it? mythbuntu? i don't need a zimbra appliance, seriously...

hi-score..

if Earth were a game, the cockroaches may be holding the high score right now...they saw off the dinos and are now watching as the humans lose the plot...

if the aliens came and asked to speak to 'our leader', i wonder if a cockroach might come out and speak for us...

the Earth doesn't need saving, it'll be just fine. the cockroaches are doing just fine too. and will do just fine.

its the humans that need saving.

what next?

1. migrate shop to p3-800?
2. or what use is the p3-800?
3. what use is the p4?
4. still to build the athlon!

5. go jemaluang with existing lenses!
6. maybe bring speed graphic?! probably wont make it in time. but nothing wrong with the rollei 35 or the ultron or the robotar!
7. what am i getting next?
8. the enna lithagon or the vf135 perhaps? or the petri color 35? i dun think i need the 28mm ebc fujinon badly? the rest are no good.

the matter of having plans

its so funny i could die?

i've been watching the world cup without making much in the way of comments.

but the anglo-german match last night really pushes the boundary.

so, in a group consisting of slovenia, usa and algeria, nobody showed up the weaknesses of the english, and they were able to essentially bully their way past slovenia for their knockout round qualification, scoring their 2 goals(1 against usa, the other against slovenia) of the group stage from 2 moments of individual quality.

but otherwise, if one looked at their match against algeria, it was rather plain to see - they have no clue. only individuals, some with talent, some with endeavor, and sometimes both, but all rarely exhibited.

there was a heskey-gerrard moment against usa...a simple lay off from heskey followed by gerrard doing everything else on his own. and then there was a milner-defoe moment against slovenia...a good cross from milner and a fantastic bit of play attacking the cross from defoe. and nothing else.

and then they met the germans last night, the germans who found the key to unlock the australians(didnt know what hit them), persevered against the ghanians(more physical, but less tactical awareness), and did not possess enough quality to score against the serbs(check out the all-star serb defense!).

for a summary of what happened, this is from the horse's mouth :

Low also revealed the tactics he used to exploit England's weaknesses. "We knew that the midfielders - Gerrard and Lampard - always support the forwards and that their midfield would be open," he said. "We knew there would be spaces.

"Our objective was to set Terry up with Klose to force him to come out of the defence. We knew the full-backs would be very much to the side, and that would create space that we could penetrate. We could have been 3-0 up in the first half because we did penetrate them.

"We knew that we would have to try and tackle the English early on in midfield and take away any space they would have beyond midfield. We knew they might become impatient and lose their discipline. We did that successfully, but Fabio Capello is very experienced and extremely knowledgeable. I bow down to him."

i don't really know what the last bit is for, since nothing capello did during the match changed a thing. only gerrard's burst of action, igniting some of his teammates, late in the first half, saw england make a mark on the match.. half time and the linesman saved the germans from that and when the match restarted in the 2nd half, gerrard was no longer in that mood.

for the record, germany could have been 4-0 up by the time gerrard rallied his troops, whereupon they pulled one goal back, and saw another not credited(it bounced over the line and then out of the goal again, but the linesman failed to spot it). then the germans sat back in the second half but managed to score 2 more on the counter anyway..and started to substitute key players out to let other squad players have game time from as early as 70 min...

just a btw...theres also the japanese..who gave me the strongest impression of "having a plan" yet from watching the matches thus far..more so than the germans...they'll be playing paraguay soon in the knock out stage. i hope they get through. their single mindedness has me chuffed to bits...the multi layered defending, the measured long balls, and the % crosses, and the freekicks..all things that a team with a plan and single minded dedication to it can do...which they do need to get anything out of this competition, since they're obviously physically and technically nowhere near even the paraguayans, nevermind the spainish or argentinians...

May 19, 2010 6:08:59 PM

103°52'48"E
1°19'36"N
WhereBlogger!

If the people made sense, they would not need a anti spam solution. If their spam problem were beyond what their mail server could handle, then they could use any spam gateway. It/they could run hermes and spamassassin. And if they got their own vmware cluster,then they must surely use a vm. Why would anyone need anything else?

May 17, 2010 10:16:20 AM

103°45'6"E
1°18'53"N
WhereBlogger!

The vista webserver is way too slow. I will see if i can increase the ram amount. Or I'll swap for xp.

Aside from that,I've been reading about the need for regulation on the software industry,and legislation to make software developers liable for damages. Basically, either outlaw the adherence contracts in use now and introduce tort law to software litigation, or regulate it with standards for both software and software developers or any and all of the above. the idea that consumers do share some of the fault in not securing their systems is mentioned somewhere, but most of the issue is about the tremendous cost of software problems on society and how the software industry has not been held liable for anything. yet, although i think negligence should be punished, possibly thru tort law, i think the vaster part of the solution lies elsewhere. firstly, the internet is designed for sharing information. not for locking people out. it is not secure by design nor by philosophy. if one has serious security concerns,use a secure system. atms are secure. they employ their own network. if you needed to be absolutely secure, then use your own private network! 2ndly, there are many technologies available that make the internet somewhat secure. at the very minimum theres 2 factor authentication. it would be more secure to do online transactions if you had a hardware box that included a credit card reader-you had to have it scan your credit card and give it your electronic signature, before it dialed up its private network to conduct your transaction. but who would pay for that? and notice how consumers already complain endlessly about the rsa dongles that banks issue them. 3rdly, linus torvalds wrote his own os from scratch. Lots of new programs are written from scratch all the time. If governments or whoever wanted something better, they could easily write their own. Or modify some free software to suit their needs. Do they really need to continue using windows and pdf documents if they're really so insecure? How about a hardened linux and encrypted text files?

I mean, i.t. networks were built in a certain way. It worked very well for the people who built the systems. Then other people thought they wanted a piece of that. And used it for other purposes without understanding the scope of what the underlying technology could do. And don't even attempt to employ known fixes and solutions to their problems. And want to legislate their way to what they want? Its as laughable as the evil bit proposal-and at least that was an april fool's joke. But seriously, if the current internet is so bad, why not build a new one? And leave the current one to the people who could live with its shortcomings?

May 15, 2010 10:59:52 AM

103°48'54"E
1°16'5"N
WhereBlogger!

How is an honest i.t. business supposed to make money?

Free mail and web hosting can be had with Google apps. If self hosting were desired, then hmail and any of the drupal wamp stacks works. Free av in the form of clamwin+winpooch, avast, avira or avg. Zonealarm, comodo, online armor or even coreforce for software firewall. Odin for system backup. Or if shut downs are tolerable then clonezilla is tried and tested. And besides duplicity,there must be dozens of other proven yet free file backup and sync tools. Openoffice? Or Google apps again? And we're still in windows land! Hell,the default in Linux land is free..

May 12, 2010 7:43:40 PM

103°51'43"E
1°17'32"N
WhereBlogger!

If i offered mail hosting at $15 per domain per month and actually used Google apps to host it would it be dishonest? How about further using safensec for spam filtering? Good stuff. Free to use. Only people all don't know about it.

May 3, 2010 8:33:58 PM

103°48'8"E
1°16'36"N
WhereBlogger!

A gsm alert system!

This is a project my friend was doing...


http://cgi.ebay.com.sg/Motion-Detector-GSM-Alert-/110525328357?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_216&hash=item19bbd2abe5

And this is what he says about it :

This is a Motion detector that I have designed, developed. It is capable of sending alerts(text/SMS Message) over a GSM Network. It is a standalone system requiring nothing more than a SIM Card to operate. The system is extremely easy to configure as all the aspects can be controlled by sending text messages to the System. For example to disarm the System, just send a text message with the word "Disarm". To arm the system send "Arm".
Initially one needs to register his/her HP number as the admin number. To do this simply keep the "Set Admin HP" button on the device pressed, and send a text message with word "Admin". The system registers this number as the Admin HP Number and subsequently only responds to commands from that number. The admin can change the Admin HP Number by using the command "Admin XXXXXXXXXX" where XXXXXXXXXX is the new Admin HP Number.
The following is the list of supported commands:
Arm: Arms the System i.e alerts are sent when an intrusion is detected.
Disarm: Disarms the System i.e alerts are not sent even if there is an intrusion.
Add: Add a HP Number to the alert recipient list. There can be a maximum of 9 alert recipients.
List: Returns the list of alert recipient.
Erase: Erases a particular alert recipient from the list.
Erase All: Erases the complete Alert recipient list.
Status: Returns the current System Status i.e whether the System is armed, or if the Snooze is on.
Snooze: Used to disable the alerts temporarily. For example to disable the intrusion alerts for 1 hour, send "Snooze 1"
Alert: Used to set the number of times the Admin gets an alert when there is an intrusion. For example the text command "Alert 2" will ensure that the Admin gets alerted twice when there is an intrusion.

The System is extremely easy to setup and use. Considerable effort has gone in to ensure that it operates reliably. You just need to ensure that there is enough balance in the SIM/prepaid card so that the System can send out SMS.

I am not in the business of selling lemons as I will try my best to help if you have any problem with the device. As an electronics enthusiast it is not just about making money. Equally important is the satisfaction that comes from delivering a good product. If you prefer certain modification to this device, you can write to me and I will let you know if I can accommodate (for a reasonable price though) that. For example you may want to remotely turn on a certain device.

Any doubts or queries, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will sincerely try to reply to all your queries. I will provide a 1 year local (Singapore) warranty.

Thanks

Apr 26, 2010 8:45:43 PM

103°48'8"E
1°16'36"N
WhereBlogger!

Plan to wipe the pc that i successfully tried out the drupal-uc-recurring payments-product keys-who bought what on and put in the lighter tiny xp. Then install drupal on iis manually. Instead of the bitnami wamp stack that i was using for testing. Then yet again put hmail and webmail lite on it, but this time try the php version. And also try the drupal webmail modules.

And see what else i can do with the mowes on my thumbdrive.

And yeah,bitnami is a great way to do testing if its got the applications you need. One click is all you need to install a wamp stack. How convenient.

Apr 23, 2010 11:09:32 AM

103°51'7"E
1°16'56"N
WhereBlogger!

Why must this area routinely get fucked up by road works,runs,cycling events,walks..and all and sundry who want to gather?

Apr 21, 2010 8:25:43 PM

103°50'57"E
1°18'14"N
WhereBlogger!

On the mrt now. The interesting thing is that Google is starting to win big customers for their Google apps. In a world with asymmetrical information,like second hand cars,just sell anything,someone will buy. Just depends on how many. Fresh paint and cleaning the interior would help. And the market is big. Enough room for everyone to make some money. But if Google apps expands their presence in everyone's mindspace-lets say they get quite a few more big customers or they start advertising,then more and more people will end up using Google apps. Small firms can use the standard edition for free. They can even use safentrix's spam filtering free. But some big firms will prefer to run everything in-house due to control,legal or performance issues. Those firms will continue to buy appliances. Maybe in vm form. And then theres the problem with small firms, some don't even have their own i.t. people. So possibly they'll be the last to convert to Google apps-they'll be the last to know about it.

Apr 21, 2010 10:08:15 AM

103°45'41"E
1°18'39"N
WhereBlogger!

The keyboard and mouse don't work on the 2 test machines at work. When in windows. Makes no sense to me at all. But its very irritating. A usb mouse is working but usb keyboard no. Makes no sense at all. So now i going on the mouse i use with the laptop and the on screen keyboard. Bloody hassle. Sugar is quite the sales suite. Nothing out of the box about managing inventories of software license keys and subscriptions. Wonder if theres a module or extension for that purpose. Also toyed with ocportal and spreecommerce. Not it either. I'm thinking to figure out opentaps next.

Apr 16, 2010 4:27:52 PM

103°44'24"E
1°20'11"N
WhereBlogger!

Raining here all of a sudden. Stuck here. But I'm at my usual coffee shop. Which helps somewhat..

Apr 13, 2010 9:52:41 PM

103°50'49"E
1°16'31"N
WhereBlogger!

My plan would be to install opentaps on the machine thats running my test mailserver and see how its like. And then after looking thru the crm things i can look into web servers..

Apr 12, 2010 9:12:16 PM

103°47'7"E
1°17'41"N
WhereBlogger!

Ok. This is really quite crazy. Why is anyone paying for email or anti spam? I suppose big firms have all sorts of proprietry requirements and Google apps is free only til 50 users, so I'll leave them out of it. But hell, if i were any organization with less than 50 people,I'd be on Google apps. For its 7.3gb mailboxes and shared documents(1gb ) and calendars. If i were ok with a simpler website I'd even use Google sites. And then I'd use safentrix as my spam filter. Thats something Google'd charge for but safentrix is doing it for free. Then besides the fancy website, I'd only need to handle mail archival myself. Maybe mailstore? Not free. But excellent to use.

Apr 12, 2010 10:08:21 AM

103°45'52"E
1°18'15"N
WhereBlogger!

I've figured out how to get hmail working.. theres av scanning with clam, web mail with afterlogic's webmail lite, and theres even spamassassin. But whats the point when Google apps is free and actually better-faster,great search,and failover all taken care of. Haiz.. Anyway i guess I'll have to be taking a look at means to track software subscriptions.. Thinking about how to go about doing it.. install drupal and try out the relevant modules? Or ask our current webmin to try them? After all he's already got a staging setup with drupal and ubercart on it.. and then i can try other stuff like vtiger or adempiere. And then i can think about what to install them on.. somehow I'm thinking about jumpboxes and virtual appliances..but i dun have a esxi setup here. Maybe I'd have to stick to turnkey linux or stuff like bitnami.. but choices are limited..

Apr 9, 2010 4:20:38 PM

103°51'14"E
1°18'14"N
WhereBlogger!

A few days before i left for my jemaluang trip i finally gave in to the itch and went to seow choon games to get my psp fixed. Two things. One is that I'd already checked that the audio port component cost us$10 or less on ebay. And I've read that its a simple to replace thing. But i don't have a screw driver tiny enough to open up the psp with. And its quite low on my to do list to get e screw driver, buy the audio port and replace it myself. The other thing is that seow choon has a great reputation as a games distributor. But yeah, I was going to their console repair service located on the 2nd floor above their retail space. Anyways they quoted me $45. which i thought was expensive since the component cost less than 15 and it probably takes them only 15min to replace the part. but since i was already there and wary of the trouble I'd have to go into to do it myself i agreed to let them do it for 45. I thought they'd do it on the spot. But instead they wanted a week. So i wont be bringing it to jemaluang. But i still oked it. And then now it got really interesting. 2 days after i was back-more than a week later, i received a sms from them saying its going to cost 65 and asking if I'm ok with that. I replied the exact words-'please do not proceed' And so today i went back there to collect the unfixed set. 1. Someone at the back loudly commented '65 dollars he don't want to do' when the front desk dude asked for confirmation as to the status of the set. 2. They stuck a sticker on the psp that noted the status of the thing. I wonder how is their attitude towards customers and their own technical stills like. The dude in the back was unhappy about something,maybe because i just deprived him of maybe 50 dollars profit. But he's expecting me to pay him 50 dollars for 15min of turning screws that i can do myself if i were bothered to? Ok,so i wasn't bothered to,but now i am. And what were they implying to me when they got back to me with the raised quote without so much as a justification for the increase? That they don't know what they're doing,the component cost much more than they thought,and its far more difficult to swap the part than they initially thought? i.e. their initial discovery was a botched job and they aren't professional enough to stick to their quote. I'm going to trust this bunch to fix my machine? and for 50? like i said,I'm now suddenly bothered enough to fix it myself.

Apr 7, 2010 7:56:40 PM

103°51'32"E
1°17'31"N
WhereBlogger!

Lousy day. Somehow attempts at using the wpi tool to install iis on the sp1 version of tiny vista all failed. Going to try one last time on a clean install tomorrow. Else i go back to the sp-less version. Then I'd have to do standalone installs of drupal and whatever else i gonna put on it. Probably hmail with webmail lite. And maybe find a crm or project management module for drupal that can track subscriptions. And see how good vembu is at backing everything up. And see if safensec can be added to that mix somewhere somehow. Haiz..

a healthy median sort of equal opportunity life

1. there are only 2 kinds of taxes; income taxes and consumption taxes.
2. income tax is the difference between what you earn and what you can spend.
3. cpf is something that you earn but cannot spend.
4. from sg$800/mth to sg$2000/mth, the income tax rate in singapore is around 30%. it is progressive until around sg$5000/mth, whereby cpf contribution is not required anymore. official income tax is slightly progressive beyond this point. but overall, the income tax system, including cpf, is regressive beyond $5000/mth as cpf contribution stops at sg$5000/mth.
5. in most systems, people pay income tax, but get benefits. e.g. retirement, medical, unemployment, etcetc
6. in singapore, the single most important benefit is the recouping of the cpf money, which generally behaves like retirement benefits. people who earn below sg$800/mth do not enjoy this benefit.
7. in most systems, the high income earners are expected to pay more tax to subsidise the low income earners
8. in general, consumption taxes are regressive. lets say an average person needs sg$800/mth to fulfill basic needs. anyone earning sg$800/mth is taxed a full 7% of his/her income. someone who earns sg$5000/mth may spend sg$4000. sg$1000 of his/her income is untaxed.
9. there are generally 3 kinds of equitability:
i) making sure everybody has the equal income
ii) making sure everybody has the same oppotunities
iii) making sure the 'last man' is not too far behind
10. in general, socialist systems have been so poorly run as to bring the aim of ensuring equal income a poor reputation. moral hazard is a major issue affecting productivity.
11. in general, as the wealth gap widens, opportunities become less equal. the poor are busy being poor. the rich afford better education, have more capital and are able to bequeath wealth to their offspring.
12. in general, measures of the wealth gap, like the gini coefficient, are an accepted norm for estimating societal equitability.
13. the HDB system was started to provide affordable housing for singaporeans.
14. 1 in 7 or 8 HDB loans are in arrears. 70-80% of singaporeans do not think housing is affordable.
15. for a median wage earner(sg$2200/mth - no official income tax, sg$1760 take-home after cpf, total of sg$760 contributed to cpf of which sg$440 is the employee's contribution and sg$320 is the employer's), a normal 4-room HDB unit in a normal HDB estate may cost sg$400000. The HDB loan interest rate is maybe 2.5% - that adds sg$10000 per year to the cost of the house. If the house were to be paid off in a normal timeframe of 20 years, the total cost would be sg$600000 - sg$2500/mth - about 100% of his income( of $2520/mth, including employer's cpf contribution) during that 20 year period!
16. assuming he could actually use all his cpf money to pay for his house he will not enjoy $760/mth*12mths*20years=sg$182400 worth of retire benefits when he can finally take money out from his cpf account, even if we do not take into account the interest that cpf pays.
17. why is he paying for the house alone? because his spouse would be taking care of their kid(s) full time to give them the as equal an opportunity/education/blah as anyone else(anyone else wealthier). anyway this is not realistic since he obviously cannot use 100% of his income to pay for his house.
____________________________________________________________________

18. a more realistic family would have 2 median income earners of $2200/mth each, and they can use only 2/3 of their CPF money(the Ordinary Account) to pay for their flat. that'd be around sg$1000/mth of cpf for paying for the house.
19. they would pay for the flat over 30 instead of 20 years. total of sg$700000 = about sg$1944/mth.
20. they will have to top up ~sg$900 out of their income-after-cpf to pay for their house.
21. their combined income-after-cpf would then be sg$1760x2-$900= ~sg$2600
22. they would hire a maid for sg$800(including extra food to feed the maid?) to look after their kid(s).
23. they have sg$1800 household disposable income.
24. they may hire 1 or 2 tutors. thats sg$400-sg$800. to give their kid(s) an equal opportunity!
25. utilities may cost them sg$200?
26. they have sg$800-1200 for living expenses. for 2 working adults + 1 or 2 kids.
____________________________________________________________________
27. this couple would have used up 30 years' worth of cpf money to pay for their flat.
28. can they both retire at 65 with their cpf monies?
29. if they got married at 30, and had their kid(s) by 35, their kids would be repeating their cycle just as they finish theirs. i.e. they too, have sg$800-1200/mth household disposable income. so they cannot depend on their kids for financial support, i suppose.
30. they would still have 15 years' of cpf 'savings', assuming they started their working lives at 20 and they always earned median income.
31. to them that would be worth about $136800+interest each.
32. they would have to leave sg$18000 in their medisave required amount.
33. so now at 65, they can withdraw a montly payout from their $120000 cpf minimum sum, plus whatever interest accrued of the cpf 'savings' as a lump sum now.
34. 15 years' compound 2.5% interest would be around $45000 i think.
35. their monthly payout from cpf would be in the region of sg$500-600/mth? and if they spread their sg$45000 out over 20 years they'll have another sg$200/mth?
36. suddenly now they're retired they're rich! sg$800/mth each!!!
37. and when they die, the house hopefully can be sold and their kid(s) would have something to inherit! and with that they could probably afford a car as well! and live on better than the sg$800-1200/mth that their parents had...

SpamServe.com

SpamTitan is an award-winning Free-BSD based spam filter that I've been looking into recently. Basically, besides the features that almost all good anti spam technologies will have, what it does that is different from the crowd would be that it provides every user with a individual spam digest or summary - everybody else gives you an aggregated digest.
We've run VMs for it for up to 400-user organisations, and thus far, its been performing excellently. no issues whatsoever.
Essentially what SpamServe.com does is to run SpamTitan as a service rather than selling it as a hardware spam gateway or a VM. Subscribers to this service edit their MX records so that the SpamServe gateway is the top of the priority list, and provide SpamServe.com with their incoming mail server address(pop3.example.com? imap.example.com?) so that the de-spammed mails can be forwarded there. Thats all.
It costs sg$2/user/month, and one month's usage is free. If the subscriber has less than 50 users, they just go ahead and change their MX records and tell SpamServe.com they want to try. When SpamServe.com turns their service on, it just works..and SpamServe.com will send them a Paypal bill for the next 11 months. If they pay the Paypal bill, then the service just continues, and if they don't want to continue with the service/trial, they just ignore the bill and revert their MX records. Nothing could be simpler.
If the subscriber has more than 50 users, then they will have to pay the 11 month bill first, before SpamServe.com will turn on their service. Again, they get 12 months' service - 1 month is free. The idea is that for trials, the number of users is limited to 50 max.
MX records are part of the DNS records of any domain, stored at wherever the domain is parked(godaddy? enom?), for the purposes of knowing where mail for any particular domain is supposed to go. Its presented as a priority list with the smallest numbers given higher priority. So the idea is that the subscriber should add the SpamServe.com gateway's address to that list and give it a priority with a smaller number than the current incoming mailserver. And then mails will automatically go to SpamServe.com first to be filtered of spam, then SpamServe.com will forward the mail back to the incoming mailserver provided to them.
Visit http://www.spamserve.com/ to take a look.

Apr 6, 2010 8:22:38 AM

103°48'53"E
1°20'0"N
WhereBlogger!

Why is the traffic always stuck up until exactly hereabouts? Do alot of drivers imagine they're waiting for the erp to go away?

theo walcott, the coming???!

1.
Arsenal v Barcelona
Uploaded by imorenball. - Discover the latest sports and extreme videos.

2.

3.

4.

Apr 1, 2010 10:16:18 AM

103°45'18"E
1°18'43"N
WhereBlogger!

I just chatted with a friend about symbian and android.. and i came away with the impression that open source seems to be viewed with some suspicion by some people. I consider that friend of mine a well informed and clear thinking individual. But essentially he believes that symbian and android are somehow owned by nokia and google respectively. He thinks that open source in symbian's case only means that one could use it as one liked but commercial implementation would mean paying royalties to nokia. I wonder why. I would have thought its clear that symbian is royalty free and free now - free as in speech - acknowledged by the fsf. The symbian foundation may or may not be incestuous with nokia, but under its epl, you are not limited in anything you want to do with the symbian code - even contribution back to the code base is possibly avoidable - the epl is more permissive and business friendly than gpl. And as it is, because its fsf-free, they may or may not charge you money for compiled software, but they cant do squat if u take the source and compile for yourself. And android is exactly the same except for the google accounts parts. As experienced by cyanogen, u can redistribute android as you like,but not the google maps,mail, and such. In the end cyanogen provided a means for modders to backup their google accounts so that those can be restored after flashing to the cyanogen mod. I wonder if people have difficulty grokking free-as-in-speech. The idea is that people are free to say what they want. No limitations. That includes monetary limitations. So free software always provides the words/source. And you can repeat those words-copy the source, as you like. But a free license does not prevent you from charging people for listening to your or the open source developers talk - you can sell open source software. Only you have to publish the words of your script - provide the source and any changes you made, when you sell that software.

Mar 30, 2010 11:58:22 AM

103°50'19"E
1°21'40"N
WhereBlogger!

This week or so is for everyone to visit the graves and ash urns of their dead kin. Not so clear about the religious aspects but I'm here to wipe the urns anyway.

Mar 24, 2010 8:02:35 PM

103°50'48"E
1°16'27"N
WhereBlogger!

Somehow my install of iis,php,mysql and drupal didn't work. I think I'll install a clean os tomorrow to start anew. Wonder if tinyvista will work? Vista ultimate seems heavy..

Then maybe I'll start with xmail and get it to work first before adding drupal.

And my 486. Hope its still working! I'll take it out tonight to see what i can do with it. I'm hoping to run a gallery thing. Hope theres a really light open source gallery thing i can use,and hopefully it does static pages. Or lets me set up cacheing easily.

Mar 21, 2010 7:54:33 PM

103°51'33"E
1°17'21"N
WhereBlogger!

On the bus back.

The macpup/p3 system at home lacks 2 things crucially. sound and office.

I'm going to cycle thru all the sound driver options before giving the machine a separate sound card instead of using on board sound. And i hope open office runs ok on a p3 500mHz. After which i can think about a better video card than the on board video.

Tat settled, it'd be the 486 next. Will slitaz or deli run ok and at least browse the net on it? I wonder if i can add xampp and/or a mailserver+mailscanner and clamav on it? Probably too much. Especially the latter i guess. SMS requires at least a 500mHz pentium or k2. But what other use is such a machine?

i hope to keep the p4 as it is and figure out how to make it record tv and stream the recordings. maybe this could run the web and mail too.

but if so what to do with the 486?

ha ha.

Mar 21, 2010 9:50:51 AM

103°44'37"E
1°19'13"N
WhereBlogger!

Sian. The macpup p3 system can go online. I haven't tried openoffice on it yet.

I'll see if that'll work properly on it first before i go about changing the sound and video cards.

Currently its using the on-board sound and video. and theres no sound. and youtube clips play at maybe 5 frames per second?

and the mkv file i tried to play didn't play. either i figure out how to add codecs to it or i get totem or maybe a p3 500 is really just underpowered for modern video playback.

free mac

i've setup a p3-500mhz system with 192mb ram and a 4.3gb hdd with macpup...

i think i still want to retain my p4 systems for whatever usage i have for them in the future if possible...maybe for running some sort of hosting from home, i dunno...

so i'm going to pass the p3-500 to my friend who needed a system 'just to surf net'...

the hardware actually ran xubuntu 9.1 just fine from livecd. so its actually even speedier on the much lighter macpup...

and macpup probably looks better than xubuntu...

if he protests violently then i'd maybe swap the p3 macpup for a p4 running ubuntu 10 or something...

Mar 18, 2010 10:13:14 AM

103°51'10"E
1°17'49"N
WhereBlogger!

A Republic of Steak has just set up shop here. while stocks last,they say. about their $29.90 wine fed wagyu.

in other news, I've no problems at all connecting to my ftp server using its internal ip. but when i connect by its name, or external ip, all i get is 'econnrefused'. why?! i suspect i left out something basic. maybe i put in the port forwarding rules but didn't turn them on or something.

Mar 16, 2010 1:43:18 PM

103°39'21"E
1°29'20"N
WhereBlogger!

An aunt stays here..

Mar 16, 2010 12:20:40 PM

103°46'45"E
1°30'9"N
WhereBlogger!

A cousin stays here..

Mar 16, 2010 9:58:01 AM

103°46'38"E
1°27'8"N
WhereBlogger!

Touched down on malaysian soil..just like aa paper,no jam. been thinking the whole morning if its economic to purchase a pack of cigs here just for the day..but i simply cant bend my mind around the numbers..must be because woke up too early...

except that i think they're all a joke

totalitarian/fanatical regimes.whats wrong with them?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,675298,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/11/scientologists-try-block-german-film

on a less extreme topic, how come its become such that one must not offend the religious people, but one can totally offend the non-religious ones?

i think in some places there are still blasphemy laws? and then theres lots more other places with laws against inciting religious conflict..

hey, i am offended by your saying that i will go to the worse place possible if i don't join your book club!

found this on flickr..nice...

maximum social good

1. Some other interesting notes about Gmail:

• The original invites system wasn’t a marketing ploy, it was simply an engineering decision to make sure they could scale
• There’s a 30-1 engineers to products managers ratio in the Gmail team — it’s certainly one of the biggest ratios at Google
• The Gmail team is spread over a few offices around the world (including Zurich), it used to be more, but they consolidated to help the product.
• There are “hundreds of million of users” — the third-largest email provider
• In India, Gmail is the number one email provider
• Gmail is growing fasters internationally than in the U.S.
• Gmail is available in 53 languages
• Internally, the Google Buzz team was known as “Team Taco Town” after an SNL skit
• Google uses Gmail internally (obviously), switched over from Microsoft Outlook at launch (about 6 years ago)
• Gmail is slow for some users mainly because they have a ton of emails saved. A fix for that is coming soon
• Most of gmail is written in Java, JavaScript, C++
• There are several hundred thousands lines of javascript in Gmail – one of the biggest in the world
• No new feature can launch for Gmail that adds latency to the product

2. At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.

“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Mr. Jobs told Apple employees during an all-hands meeting shortly after the public introduction of the iPad in January, according to two employees who were there and heard the presentation. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

One of these employees said Mr. Jobs returned to the topic of Google several times in the session and even disparaged its slogan “Don’t be evil” with an expletive, which drew thunderous applause from his underlings.

3. the example of how google does things is gmail. they gave it away. they worked on the technical bits mostly. we all chose to use it because it was good.

lets see how android compares to gmail.

they're essentially giving it away. its open-source. theres an official release from google. but anyone can cook their own android. witness the cyanogen mods. and the unique versions customised for/by each handset maker.

they even started out just like how they did with gmail. they invited only HTC at the start. then they made their own low volume Nexus One. android phones are not everywhere, just like gmail accounts were not everywhere.

and the technical bits..its best summarized by 'anything iDon't...Droid does'

gmail changed webmail by giving everyone huge mail storage. and even now, its functions are more powerful than either hotmail or yahoo mail.

android by itself probably does not have any breakthrough function. but what it does is let anyone develop for it freely. it means that a flash enabled browser will be available on android anytime, as at least mozilla will be developing for it. whats more, we also know that opera and skyfire are working on it too. and this is despite that android has just 7% of the smartphone market. all of them develop for windows mobile and symbian, the biggest markets - they gotta pay the bills i suppose, and everybody is there. but android allows them to develop for the android platform without unnecessary restrictions.

and it allows any phone or electronic device maker to focus developing the hardware, and only do minimal customisation to let android work on their device. witness the hordes of android based media players, netbooks , tablets and phones being released by chinese manufacturers nowadays - the barriers to entry are drastically lower. you no longer need to be a multi billion dollar firm to be in the business.

and i think that is the breakthrough function.

it lets anyone and everyone in to the smartphone and phone apps business.

whereas apple is trying its best to keep others out of the smartphone business and to keep a close tab on its apps developers.

you would have to question why google is trying to do this for us - to encourage the smartphone and apps market for free. but i think its a better social outcome if we had more phones and more apps rather than 1 phone and some apps. even if all those phones came with 1 browser with 1 default start page at google.com. i mean, after all, its much easier to change the browser, failing that, the browser homepage, than to change your phone.

p.s. http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.com/2010/03/publish-your-scripts-to-apps-script.html

p.p.s. its not all rosy. i hear that android code has been dropped from the linux kernel because google has made no effort to reconcile their code with upstream stuff. i'm hoping, waiting for them to ,um, do the right thing..haha...

Mar 13, 2010 5:13:24 PM

103°51'30"E
1°17'43"N
WhereBlogger!

So its the 3-monthly i.t. show again. The crowds inside suntec are ridiculously large. And the traffic like shit. Wonder why they all bother. Hardware zone posted a flickr album of all the posters and brochures found in the show. They don't even need to come to see,only to buy. If they have something to buy at all. The prices at the show are not magically low,and they're held every 3 months. Whats making everyone come? If anything, looking through the brochure scans, only 3 things caught my attention. 1.There're way too many digital media players..i believe they'll be all over the shops after the show anyway-there's no need to get one now. 2. The buffalo terastation quad and the dlink dns343 are the cheapest 4 bay Nases at around 300+. 3. The people selling planex are selling a bluetooth earpiece at $20,which is cheap enough for me to get one to play with,if I'd actually find it in myself to brave the crowds..

Mar 12, 2010 10:21:17 PM

103°47'5"E
1°16'48"N
WhereBlogger!

Does Guinness still come from the Dublin factory?

Mar 11, 2010 6:51:30 PM

103°50'36"E
1°17'56"N
WhereBlogger!

On the pie. On the 154. What an amusing day! If there're no barriers to entry why isn't everyone doing it?

Are some people already laughing their way to e bank? We just need 2 weeks to see..

sell gold

arsenal 5 porto 0, fabregasless..

and




Arsenal v FC Porto
Uploaded by plazios201. - Basketball, baseball, pro wrestling and more sports videos.

Mar 10, 2010 1:59:01 PM

103°50'35"E
1°17'57"N
WhereBlogger!

Am at plaza sing..the text to speech thing for their queue system is amusing..Edit me

Mar 10, 2010 1:54:01 PM

103°50'36"E
1°17'56"N
WhereBlogger!

With friend at starhub.. he's wasting his 58$ plan on a free phone like mine..but theres no better specced android phone with resistive screen..and hopefully a hardware qwerty too..

i wonder if this works...

http://www.program-glitch-esc.net/

Mar 8, 2010 3:10:19 PM

103°51'39"E
1°17'36"N
WhereBlogger!

Suntec tower 5.. boring day..started real early too:(

spleen

its all my fault of course. but i still think..

1. outlook express is the waste product of the algae that grows on top of the scum that collects in the cracks of stinking sewers.

ok, i dunno how outlook express works. i dunno imap folders. even more so, i dunno how outlook express deals with imap folders.

2. i already cannot connect the bledy ibm and the aw1 with the safensec. why add fsis to the bledy ibm? why introduce more factors that can screw up the thing???

ok i think its connected but it just doesnt create a new db. dunno where go wrong either.

3. whereblog succeeded in updating this blog once. otherwise it just says publishing succeeded. so where the flying fuck is the post?

why once?????

4. why cannot spotmessage just send a sms with the map link? why must email? maybe i didnt set it up with sms function? really?

5. the bledy gdoc app has successfully uploaded a something akin to a text file up to my google docs account. but it cannot see the existing ppts. wtf?

6. i absolutely suck at go.

found this on flickr...nice mono....

Mar 8, 2010 8:21:41 AM

103°51'22"E
1°18'7"N
WhereBlogger!

At bugis super early.. have a Prata first..

found on flickr

nice colors

this android fragmentation issue is boggling my mind real bad

there're programs that work on 98 only.

there're programs that work on xp only.

there're programs that work on vista only.

there're programs that work on both 98 and xp.

there're programs that work on both xp and vista.

there're programs that work on all 3.

what is this big deal about having many different versions of android all at the same time???

what about apt and yum? don't alot of different oses use them? is there an issue there?

debian has a problem because ubuntu was forked out of it? are debian users confused and angry about ubuntu?

ditto fedora, rhel and centos?

and google doesn't even own android. its just one of the open handset alliance partners. htc, lg, motorola or samsung could certainly have had a say in the development of android.

and if htc decided to make a stupid phone (tattoo) that has a 320x240 pixel screen , thats google's fault too? and i think its not limited to just htc. there will be more phones coming from other phone makers that don't have a 480x320 pixel screen.

and yes, of course, the last refuge of foss(gpl v2 and apache 2 in this case), if u really don't like it, roll your own. android, in this case.

http://jkontherun.com/2010/03/05/android-fragmentation/

Mar 7, 2010 10:43:50 AM

103°51'33"E
1°17'43"N
WhereBlogger!

Suntec road diversion again! Probably some idiotes going for an en masse jog..again:(

Crimes Against Humanity

so recently apple has been busy suing HTC. contrast that with nokia, who bought symbian to open source it. and google, who bought etherpad, android and more recently remail..and open sourced them all..

let us remind ourselves that the aim of society granting patents to inventors is to encourage more invention, not less. society benefits from enjoying more variety. when inventors invent things, variety increases.

same deal with the threat of android 'fragmentation' thats been much talked about. the point of an open source os is not to 'rule them all'. for that we can all use win mo. or iphones. the whole point of this is that there is more choice. any phone maker can roll a smartphone out with android(and symbian too, actually, i think) now - without having to pay ms for the privilege. and they can roll their own flavour.

and this 'fragmentation' - it reads 'flavours'. there'd be 1000 os choices rather than 1! and there could be 10000000 programmers selling their apps/games/whatever that are better on some and not other oses, each likely earning less than the one big software firm selling 1 app/game/whatever on that 1 os choice that ruled them all, who hires maybe 1000 programmers.

but back to the apple suit, the pragmatics of the matter, imo, is that if it drags ms and google(HTC basically makes phones that run win mo or android) into the suit, then its declared war on some very big foes with very deep pockets indeed. and of course, theres also the altercation with nokia, another monolith... in the latter case, i can imagine they'd probably invented lots of stuff that had to do with the basic functions of mobile phones in general - they look to me like they practically invented handphones together with motorola...i can almost imagine also that nokia may have wanted to license the extremely broad patent apple has on multi-touch interfaces(not on a specific way of implementing multi touch, but the very idea of multi touch) in exchange for apple's use of their own patents on stuff that every mobile phone would require, maybe even the use of gsm itself...and yes, the suit against htc is very probably about this multi-touch as well...

i wonder how long has multi touch been around anyway..i think drug/medicine patents last only 5 yrs..

p.s. i'd been amused by http://www.afterlogic.com/ for some time now...but perhaps they're no longer relevant now...with google apps you get 7+gb mail, contacts and calendar sharing and 1gb online document store...and now they'd just bought docverse...and it looks likely that they'll add docverse functionality over to google apps...why would anyone(qualify that: anyone below 50 users?) want to host their own email/messaging/collaboration platform now?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"everybody" has a nokia

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/03/04/uk_smartphone_survey/

We should point out up front an important caveat: just over 89 per cent of those who took part in the survey said they own a smartphone, defined for the purposes of the study as "a mobile phone that combines voice services with applications including e-mail and/or internet access".

That definition takes in a broader array of devices than you might expect - these days, the ability to download apps is what sets smartphones apart - and the market penetration of true smartphones is actually around 14 per cent, according to most market watchers.

So either a large proportion of punters think their feature phone is a smartphone, or Fanfare's sample is significantly more biased towards smartphone usage than is the general population.

basically, if it runs symbian, palm/webOS, winmo, android, or if its a bb or an iphone, its a smartphone. apple has maybe 1/3 of the smartphone market. win mo and bb are the incumbents in the US, symbian(read:nokia) for the rest of the world. and if its not a smartphone, its probably a nokia, samsung, LG, motorola or sony-ericsson. or maybe its a wince device from china; wince is huge in china - how many phones do they sell there?

and about apps, part of the reason symbian, win mo and bb are incumbent is because there're actually useful apps. they won't have 100 different fart apps to choose from, but they will connect to your corporate messaging system.

another interesting development is samsung's bada os. now with the open-sourcing of symbian and the open-source-almost-from-day 1 android, why does any phone maker need to spend development money on a phone os? if its about differentiating their product and avoid becoming box pushers, how about better design and better hardware? or maybe exclusive, bespoke apps like samsung's very own midori ?

"Simple mistakes can shatter lives. Your actions could stop them happening"

recently, aaron ramsey got his leg broken at the away game against stoke by ryan shawcross.

1. ryan shawcross broke francis jeffer's leg before(7 mths out?) and almost did it to adebayor later, rendering him out for 3 weeks.

2. arsenal in the last 3-4 years had eduardo's leg broken by martin taylor(birmingham), and diaby had his broken by dan smith(bolton?).

i will avoid talking about patterns.

but i will say this. road accidents are accidents too.

if i accidentally shoot somebody while at the range, thats an accident too!

but i will repeat

"Simple mistakes can shatter lives. Your actions could stop them happening"

so, i suggest

1. we could apply the rule of law(for us hoi polloi) and charge the footballers who inflict grievous bodily harm on their colleagues with assault or battery, as it would likely happen if they did it maybe 100m away, just outside the stadium.

2. or we could ban the injurer for as long as the injured player. and maybe have him conpensate the injured player with half his pay too. or something along those lines.

the idea is, if the cost of breaking somebody's leg is 2 weeks off from work, its probably too low. if we can raise the cost of injuring others(just like we do in real life) , maybe footballers may think harder before they do something stupid(again, just like we do in real life).

i'm in favour of 1.) because

1. why does law stop on the pitch? and for players only?
2. if i went down to the pitch and gave a player a good kick and broke his leg, i'd be charged for battery/assault too
3. you cannot contract for somebody to break laws, i believe. since i cannot sign a written consent form to allow you to kill me-the police will still arrest/charge you, i think playing football in a stadium with 10000s of witnesses doesn't mean you can break my leg either.

PandaHome

i've added pandahome and openhome, on top of the default android and lg homes..and i think pandahome would become my default...until i try others and find them better..(or i could just run multiple homes?)

that could be gde...its certainly shinier than pandahome graphically, but i like pandahome for its ability to use other home themes-in fact i'm using a openhome theme right now...and its already quite shiny enough for me - it can regularly/randomly change themes and/or wallpapers, touching the screen gets a bubble/glow/color effect, and i can choose how many home pages i want(5..more than that would be too many apps for the poor phone? and definitely too many apps for me to keep track of!)...

on another front, this dreamhost apps beta thing is really quite amusing...u get to play with a bit of drupal, zenphotos, phpbb, mediawiki and wordpress..and google apps too! functions are much duplicated, to various degrees, between the 6 platforms...

its finally over

i got the lg gw620. cost me $0 with $25 starhub plan. the $248 sticker price the main stumbling block to my getting the acer neotouch and its snapdragon...

got a bunch of apps to manage apps..ahahhahaha...

gonna try out watching anime on it, managing wordpress with the wordpress app, try a couple of rpgs in time to come, maybe install OpenHome and see what happens... plus maybe even run a ftp server on it(why not Apache/Mysql/Php???! its already got the "L"! ahahahahah!!!)..

thats about it, i guess

1. i can only sigh. i think i will buy the acer neotouch. the 1ghz snapdragon, i think, will let it remain relevant for some time to come yet. but it will be the most expensive phone i have ever bought. this month i will eat home everyday.

2. why not android? this is still the early days of android. i just heard that in the us, they are mulling plans to upgrade every single android phone to 2.1. some phones will actually need to be wiped to do that. and before this, the situation was that other than htc, the other manufacturers were not interested in android roms at all - samsung, lg, etc. as for htc, even without official os updates, there shld be something to flash the phones to.

but the situation outside the us is less clear. will the samsung spica and the gw620 get android 2.1?

the platform can wait - to develop a 'modus operandi' so to speak - how updates are handled, at least.

and because it will only become more popular, there will be better and possibly even cheaper android phones to come.

and the gw620 and spica are not the most powerful phones around. the spica can probably be considered quite fast for now (although its limited by its 128mb of ram) - but its samsung 800mhz arm 11 maybe only around half as powerful as a 1ghz snapdragon.

a few months down the road, when other phone plan, used by my mom, is up for renewal, i'd probably see a better selection of android phones that i am seeing now. something cheap, with plain android, easily upgradeable os, and running at least a 1ghz snapdragon or omap3.

by then, the high end phones probably would be running tegra..

3. if the samsung omnia hd were as cheap as i saw it a week ago(when i could not number port because my singtel contract hasnt run out), then i'd simply opt for that. but now the pricing aberration has been corrected (well at least ang got the benefit from that after i alerted him to it), its no longer an outstanding buy in my books.

its got more video processing power than the acer, but less cpu. i think i'd be more interested in cpu than gpu, for not every app is video acceleration dependent. and it runs symbian s60 v5, which could be considered as young a platform as android, since compatibility with the vast library of symbian apps is not assured - they'd mostly work with s60 v3 - non touch screen phones.

htc magic enters my consideration!

a few other things to note...

m1, besides trying very hard to get rid of the htc tattoo(starhub's is 268, theirs is 68) , which i wouldn't touch with a 10-foot-pole because of its non-480x320 screen resolution, is also pretty rich with their subsidy on the htc magic - its only $98 now! this i can consider....its almost the same phone as the htc hero, only lacking the senseUI and the flash enabled browser. it would take some effort to put a hero rom(i wonder if that includes the flash capable browser? i think it shld!) on the magic, but that should work. and when skyfire for android is out, it will browse flash too anyways..

.....this adds yet another choice..acer neotouch, samsung spica, lg gw620, omnia hd or now this, the htc magic...

but yah, its lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack is a very big problem from my point of view..so the leaders in my mind are still the neotouch and the gw620..and the omnia hd if its 138...

my brain is melting

so irritating, there was a deal for omnia hd gold edition at a shop near bugis thats 150 cheaper than what starhub is selling it for. starhub is selling at 388 with the 25/mth plan i have in mind, with the 100 number port discount it'd be 288 - but it'd be 138 at this shop. 138 for such a well-specced phone is a deal i cannot resist - even if the quickoffice suite on it can only view documents and i gotta pay for the version that can create/edit. but it may not be available anymore by next monday, when i can finally switch providers.

the cheaper choices left to me would be the samsung galaxy spica. very fast processor for the price. but no office suite. it'd be 88 with singtel, and i can get a 4/mth bill rebate.

or i could get a lg gw620 from starhub at 38 after the 100 number port discount. slower chip than the samsung(528 vs 800), and smaller screen (3 vs 3.2). but it has a office suite(again viewing only) and a 5 row hardware qwerty keyboard. the qwerty is something that interests me..

or i could go for the 248 acer neotouch, with singtel, with 4/mth bill rebate. high cost up front, yes. but this is one of the handfull of phones with a 1ghz processor - the other 2 i can think of are the nexus one and the htc hd2, both much more expensive. running winmo it will have no issues with web browsing, and it will have the full office suite. and the screen is big at 3.8in, which could mean the touchscreen is less challenged for real estate when i use the onscreen keyboards...

i really don't know....i just hope that the omnia hd deal resurfaces so that its an obvious choice and i don't need to think so much about this!

the near future?

1. drupal+'backup and recovery' content
2. spamtitan..possibly the whole messaging shebang.
3. on-site support

a 2nd hand chinese phone

i got my parents(i leave it to them to split..who wants the sony w910 and who wants this one) a changjiang a968 tv-phone. and they don't seem happy about it.

why?

its loud. its big. the on-screen buttons are big. as a phone its useful.

and it can watch(and record) tv. n tune(and record) radio. and play mp3s.

its a non-smart phone geared to do only specific functions, and after plying with it for a day, i think it does them all ok(played a bit of bejeweled on it too).

why don't they like it? because its chinese and its 2nd hand.

i mean, on the other hand, i'm proud of it. it cost me only $80..thats cheaper than a handheld tv! and it comes with phone, radio and mp3 player too!

its got an ancient arm 7 (unlike the 1ghz snapdragon on the neotouch or the 800mhz arm 11 on the spica which i'm eyeing), but because it does all its require to do(my guess is they use hardware codecs for the video/music bits). mp3s play. pictures display. tv reception is clear(from my room). phone talk quality is ok. its loud like no branded phone too(well, the sony is louder than my e51 and still my mom thinks its not loud enough).

but yah, its not a versatile platform onto which you can install new functions(i.e. not smartphone)..and most of all, it doesnt have a html browser...so i'm still going to get either the neotouch or the spica at the end of the month. not a chinese phone(apparently they all use similiar arm 7s..even the iphone lookalike sciphones..i'd rather it can watch tv anytime rather than look like an iphone, really...)




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recently i took a few pictures at chinatown..they're here.

2tor, tvgorge and america's unemployment

This is what i'd like to see become ever more common. Essentially i don't see the difference between attending a lecture live, viewing the video of the lecture in real-time, or time-delayed. And i think if the tutors and students can interact like we do on facebook, its probably alot more efficient than 'visiting hours'. At the very least, something like facebook is 1. sharing knowledge since others can see the result of the discussion and 2. can take the place of some 'visiting hours'...a 80/20 thing...80% can be a facebook style discussion, 20% actual face time...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/2tor-20-million-online-education/

Why i cannot access bbc iplayer or hulu here is purely due to profit motives. Advertising uk and american products to asia and maybe south america is a waste of time and resources to most uk/american advertisers. Thats all. They're not going to waste their bandwidth streaming their video to unimportant markets. Thats it. So how does this work?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/tvgorge/

The employment rate is like working-population/population-looking-for-work. So if more give up and stop looking for work, the unemployment rate will drop.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/02/employment-report-20k-jobs-lost-97.html.

Laptops on my mind...

The cheaper version of the Asus 1005HA is slightly slower and has 8.5hrs battery life. the dearer one is slightly faster and goes up to 10.5hrs.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002DYIXN2?ie=UTF8&tag=hl0f-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=B002DYIXN2

The HP mini 311 seems to be a reasonable compromise..6hrs battery life and is ION based..so it will play HD content..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ONCBVC?ie=UTF8&tag=l0476-20&link_code=wql&camp=212361&creative=380601

The HP elitebook 6930P has even longer battery life than this, but its rather more expensive. The Dell Latitude 6400's battery life is probably the 2nd longest of any laptop out there...

http://www.dell.com/us/en/business/notebooks/laptop_latitude_e6400/pd.aspx?refid=laptop_latitude_e6400&cs=04&s=bsd

Otherwise, i may also give the cheaper and lighter Asus Eeepcs , Acer Aspire Ones and MSI WindBooks a look to see how they measure up in weight/performance/price...

justice

more of what sgEntrepreneurs is saying about the JooJoo..essentially Fusion Garage has more or less let CSL buy them out...but really..see http://lzsays.blogspot.com/2010/02/smartdevices-smartq-v5-and-v7.html for a sample of the competition...there are dozens of chinese manufacturers making things like these...the open competition there would hopefully deliver us a well-designed, powerful, easy-to-use product thats also cheap...

http://sgentrepreneurs.com/news-stop/2010/02/04/csl-partners-fusion-garage-and-makes-strategic-investment/

the story goes like...boxee makes an app to allow boxee users to access the hulu site easily...hulu finds a way to disallow that...boxee does it again...hulu breaks their effort again...and so on so forth...when essentially what boxee does is to wrap the hulu website in a nice interface thats more tv-like instead of the web-browser interface that people experience when they access hulu on their computers...

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/02/04/boxee-responds-to-nbcs-jeff-zuckers-misleading-statements-to-congress-re-hulu-boxee-relationship/

and yeah, of apple...the thing is , flash is integral to the internet now. html5 may be the solution, but just like ipv6 at the time of its introduction, its not here now, and its going to take time before people adopt it. and if i want to browse the web now, i cannot get a full web browsing experience without flash support. i'll deal with the future when it comes.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/04/adobe_responds_to_apple/

and the other thing.. apple makes 1 smart phone now. they may or may not have a couple more models in the future. they may or may not accede to adobe's demands and let flash be integrated into their phone os' browser. but what google has done is to offer every single firm that wants to make a smart phone a free os to make that phone with. and also for every single app maker a platform to release their apps for, for free as well.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/smartphone-shipments-hit-new-record-148?source=rss_mobilize

http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/apples-iphone-slips-googles-android-gains-858?source=rss_mobilize

and one more thing, steve jobs, like our great leader, may be growing old...like us, time is not on apple's side...

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/02/03/0034214/Why-Time-Flies-By-As-You-Get-Older