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.

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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.