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Archive for the 'Tech Talk' Category

Some Initial Thoughts on Oracle’s Deal to Buy Sun

Published April 21, 2009 in My Thoughts and Tech Talk. 0 Comments

Oracle to Buy Sun
Image from Sun Microsystems

When a banner like this is published at Sun official website, we know this is not a rumours anymore, but a solid fact. And yes, Oracle acquisition of Sun is agreed at approximately $7.4 billion.

If either of these 2 tech giant names is infamiliar to you, the  this news is most probably not of your interest. As to me, this headline has provoked some immediate thoughts in me, cos there are too many Sun labels in my office laptop, my job has a lot of direct relations to Sun open source stacks.

In general, personally, I’m not in favour of Sun acquisition by Oracle. The first thought when I read Joe’s tweet before having dinner, was “ha??? why Oracle? sh*t!”

To me, based on Oracle’s past acquisition records, Oracle is not really considered a company who has keen willingness to pump in huge monetary support on open source projects. The only relation that I can think of on Oracle acquisition moves, is to wipe out competition. Oracle is still very much a business entity with corporate directions heavily driven by commercial licensing. On a related note, IBM actually shows better commitment in supporting open source projects, and use them as the code-base for value-added commercial products.

Following are some of my initial thoughts on the fate of some products from Sun open source stacks.

Java Programming Language

Luckily, I do believe very much that, Java will still survive very well and grow stronger with Oracle acquisition. Right now, many tools that come with Oracle products are actually developed on Java. Besides, Oracle is also into the business of Java application server with WebLogic. Oracle Fusion Middleware is also very much dependent on Java web technologies. In other words, I don’t think Oracle can live without a strong growth in Java. In fact, Oracle’s presence in steering of Java technologies and directions, will give them a competitive edge, with control and influence over the future specifications.

As highlighted in many press releases and news entries, Java is one of the most important assets gained by Oracle from this acquisition.

MySQL

This is something that I’m getting worried. I don’t think Oracle is interested in the code-base of MySQL, as Oracle itself actually began its presence in the tech world with database business.

If MySQL code-base is not beneficial to the array of Oracle database products, I really doubt how much monetary investment will Oracle be pumping into MySQL development.

Besides, Oracle sales agents couldn’t go out and sell subscriptions of 2 different database products right?

NetBeans

I think NetBeans will very likely be replacing Oracle’s JBuilder, since NetBeans’ adoption is undoutedly at an encouraging stage, and JBuilder is at nothing close to its competitiveness. Oracle can always develop some extensions and plugins to support connectivity of Oracle products, and bundle into NetBeans.

GlassFish

At first thought, GlassFish appears to be conflicting with WebLogic. However, at second thought, I think GlassFish will still continue to play an important role in the development of Java EE. As long as Java EE continues to get R&D support from its new fund master - Oracle, there’s still an undoubtable need for GlassFish to grow as model implementation of the latest Java EE specifications.

But sadly, I think GlassFish might only stay as the model java EE application server implementation for community, instead of unleashing its full potential to have a real big significant presence in enterprises. As long as enterprise presence is concerned, Oracle can choose not to provide commercial support for GlassFish, and focus their bullets on WebLogic. Without commercial support, it’s very hard for GlassFish to make real presence in enterprise deployments.

Solaris OS and Sun SPARC Servers

Solaris and Sun servers, with almost no doubt at all, will get definite love from Oracle, since operating system and hardware business was something not within Oracle’s offering, until this acquisition is realized.

With control over server and operating system technologies, Oracle can also specifically offer some advanced database features which are only available in Solaris on Sun hardware. This is especially important as cloud computing and virtualization is getting as the next big buzz word in the tech world.

Well… let’s keep our fingers crossed, as for now. Shall we believe some nice words mentioned in Oracle’s FAQ (pdf)?

How to Reply Tweet without Spamming Every Twitter Follower?

Published April 4, 2009 in Tips & Tricks and Web Applications. 1 Comment

If you’re like me, following a small but very active group of Twitter users, Twitter will soon be blended into part of life. Now, where ever I go, as long as I have a few minutes to sit down or wait for someone, then I will surely fire up my phone browser and nagivate to m.twitter.com. If I don’t read tweets I’m following for 1 day, I think I will easily miss out at least, at least 60 tweets.

At times, you might come into situation when, someone asked you a question on Twitter, and you don’t feel like exposing the responding answer to all your Twitter followers, for personal resaon, privacy concern or simply don’t want to spam every single reply to all followers.

The alternative option available in this case, is to send Direct Message. By sending Direct Message using Twitter, only the intended recipient will be able to read your tweet.

How to Send Twitter Direct Message?

  1. Login to your Twitter account, and go to Home page. You will see a menu link labeled “Direct Messages” on the right sidebar.
  2. In the Direct Messages page, you will be able to select a recipient from the list containing all your followers. Select a recipient, type in your message, press the Send button, and you’re done with it.

In TwitterFox, there’s a panel that shows all direct messages that you have received. You can also send direct message from TwitterFox using this format — d twitterUser yourMessage. Example: d google this is a direct message to google. Note that it doesn’t require the @ character

Upside-Down YouTube

Published April 1, 2009 in Google. 0 Comments

Upside-Down YouTube

Today, as the world is probably fooling around on 1st Apr, YouTube is also joining the crowd by introducing a new TouTube page layout - Upside-Down. When the flip=1 parameter is appended into URL of any YouTube clip, the video player as well as most of the text in the page will be flipped.

These are some suggestions given by YouTube, for you to enjoy a new video viewing experience.

  1. Turn your monitor upside-down
    • Our internal tests have shown that modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when put upside down—just like it’s best to rotate your mattress every six months. You might find that YouTube videos look better this way.
  2. Tilt your head to the side
    • Imagine you have water in your ear and need to get it out. Tilt your head towards one shoulder and watch the video
  3. Move to Australia
    • As you probably know, everything in Australia is upside-down, so moving to Australia may provide you with a more natural YouTube viewing experience. (Note: If you live Down Under and the page is still upside-down for you, then we recommended moving to the northern hemisphere.)

Java: How to Generate Encrypted String without Any Special Character

Published March 4, 2009 in Java. 0 Comments

Many times, when we generate an encrypted string, the resulted output string is filled with all sorts of special characters. While this encrypted string is usually fine and safe for database storage, but it’s a big problem in some instances - such as XML file, or when it’s needed to be transmitted as HTTP GET request.

In this case, we can apply Base64 on the encrypted string, convert it to an US-ASCII character string. Following is an example of code snippet. Please note that, the Encryption class is just a dummy example to simplify this example. You may use the Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) Cipher class to achieve reversible encryption.

String encryptedString = Encryption.encrypt("StringToBeEncrypted", "key");
String base64Encoded = Base64.encode(encryptedString.getBytes());
System.out.println("Encoded: " + base64Encoded);

byte[] base64Decoded = Base64.decode(base64Encoded);
String descryptedString = Encryption.decrypt(new String(base64Decoded), "key");
System.out.println("Decrypted: " + descryptedString);

In the above example, I’m using com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.dv.util.Base64 (found in rt.jar of Java5 and above) to apply Base64 encoding. You may also use org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64 found in Apache Commons Codec to achieve the same result.

When Google Claimed all Search Results as Harmful

Published February 1, 2009 in Internet. 0 Comments

Yesterday around 11pm when I did a few Google searches, I was shocked with Google claiming LinuxJournal.com as: “This site may harm your computer”

“ha?? How could this be possible?” However, judging from logical mind, I copied and pasted the URL manually into browser, and continue browsing to a LinuxJournal.com article, with so-called “at my own risk” :p

Apparently, the problem was, Google has mistakenly tagged all sites in the world as harmful, including Google’s own site. You can see relevant screen shot at here.

As reported by Google, the issue began appearing between 6:27am and 6:40am (GMT-08:00) and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25am (GMT-08:00). In other words, for Malaysia, Singapore and China Internet users, you could have faced the same issue if you did any Google search between 10:27am and 11:25am.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long time for Google to realize and take immediate action to resolve this issue.

As explained by Google, it was a human error.

What happened? Very simply, human error. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. (more details at Google Blog)

While the technologically advanced infrastructure and highly optimized binaries are deriving reliable search results in fraction of a second, still, human error could ruin the process. When this issue happened, tons and tons of related tweets are flooding the Twitter-sphere.

If Google analyzes the search for “google” keyword during this time frame, I’m sure it hits the all time high, as many people were trying to verify if Google tags its own sites as harmful as well :)

First Time Seeing Membership Card with Rewritable Visual Info

Published January 25, 2009 in Life Log and Tech Talk. 2 Comments

Everytime my brother comes back from Singapore, you know what I like to do??? Dig his bag :p Being a fashionable guy, his bag is always quite interesting - new clothes, or some very useful yet cheap goodies.

This time, he has a new Esprit bag again (yes, again~~) for me to examine.

Stack of membership cards

This card holder, with 15 plastic envelopes, was bought at SGD4. Each piece of the plastic envelope is of good quality and design too - the design allows every card to be easily pulled out from the envelopes.

Within the stack of membership cards with various popular brands, an ordinary looking card caught my attention. This is the Singapore Fashion Fast Forward (F3) membership card.

Singapore Fashion Fast Forward membership card

At first glance, nothing really too special. However, take a closer look at the information printed on the foil, and I started having a question.

Are the “points this visit” and “total points” printed with real figures? Which means, visual information on this foil is updated on every swipe??

Apparently, yes, the foil is made with rewritable thermal recording material, called Hot Foil Stamping technology, which allows visual information to be updated for as much as 500 times. hm… interesting… quite a cool membership card ;)

Which Levi’s Jeans suits You?

Published January 18, 2009 in Life Log and Web Applications. 0 Comments

Been telling myself to buy a new jeans, as I’ve not been buying one for years. And yes, this task was marked as “accomplished” this afternoon, bringing home a Levi’s Red Tab 505, with an additional RM249 in my upcoming credit card bill.

Out of so many varieties from the outlet, ranging from 501 to 505, 512, 550 and bla bla bla, I’ve picked a 505 (tight fit) and a 550 (relaxed fit). But, I’m just not standard-size enough la… relaxed fit doesn’t really look fitted on me haha, too loose for my liking. Very obviously, 505 is a lot better on me.

However, the tight fit is not labeled so for nothing. When I put on my typical size, W31, it was so fitted that I can’t even conveniently put in my SE P1 and wallet. So, tried an inch larger, and finally I satisfyingly settled for W32.

What Levi Thinks I Should Wear?

Fits suggested by whatsmylevis.com

Just out of curiosity, I went to whatsmylevis.com. This is a site solely dedicated to Levi’s fit guide. Simply put in some general information about yourself, and most importantly, your gender and vital stats - chest, waist & hips. Then, you will be presented with your body type, following by suggested fits.

Haha.. I was trying to find out what suits me best, and yet I’ve already bought :p

My body type is described as “lean and mean“:

With long arms, legs and torso, your trim shape means you can carry off those skinny jeans really well - good on you, because these are definitely the “it” jeans everyone wants to wear!

And…. dang dang dang dang~~~ I’ve got suggestion for Levi’s Red Tab 505 luxury heritage jeans. Bingo! I’ve bought an ideal one :p

Best Day to Start Work After Chinese New Year 2009

Published January 10, 2009 in Tips & Tricks. 9 Comments

Are you looking for advice on the best day to start work or commence your business in the year of Earth Ox (己丑) after Chinese New Year 2009?

I’ve received a tip from Joey Yap - the world renown Chinese astrology and feng shui master, with a quote as follows:

“If you look at the Tong Shu, the good days right after Chinese New Year is on the third day (28th Jan), but normally most Chinese will take the 1st week off. So, the most appropriate day to start work would be the fifth day (30th Jan) of Chinese New Year. It is actually a very good day on the horse hour (11am - 1pm) but the best day to start work is the 8th day of Chinese New Year (2nd Feb) at the dragon hour (辰時) on 7am to 9am. This day is actually a remove day but the remove day helps remove the old problems that you have on the year of rat. And in fact this day is good because this is a Dong Gong auspicious day and there are a lot of auspicious stars for the rest of the year.”

You may watch Joey Yap’s “Start Off on a Good Date in 2009″ video clip at http://www.masteryacademy.com/eb/lesson01/

In summary, these are the good dates to commence your work after Chinese New Year:

  • 28th Jan (Success, 成日)
  • 30th Jan (Open, 开日)
  • 2nd Feb (Remove, 除日)

Hehe.. good thing is, I actually plan to apply leave for the first week of CNY, and begin working on 2nd Feb :D To those working in KL, 2nd Feb is a public holiday though.

How Do You Tweet to Twitter?

Published January 8, 2009 in Phones and Web Applications. 0 Comments

TweetStats - Interface Used

Using TweetStas to generate statistics graphs for my Twitter account, I’ve managed to find out analysis of interfaces that I’ve used to tweet.

Out of the 831 tweets updated since May 2008:

  1. 371 tweets from TwitterFox (Firefox plugin)
  2. 258 tweets from mobile web (m.twitter.com)
  3. 69 tweets from TwitPic

Of all the interfaces I used, mobile web, TwitPic, txt (SMS) and Fring are from mobile. I actually tweet using SMS when I’m not in Malaysia. Check out my previous post on how to tweet from mobile.

As shown, I have quite a lot of text tweets twitted from phone (31%) using the mobile web, and never the less, about 8.3% of pictures posted from phone via TwitPic.

Personally, Twitter is meant to be a mobile companion for me, such as for the following events:

  1. simply want to let my friends know where I am or what I’m doing
  2. want to hao lian (show-off) the food that I’m eating
  3. a different way to express “I’m bored”
  4. vent out bosong-ness (grumble la hehe)
  5. thank someone

Most of the time, time factor is important in sharing a message. At a particular moment, when I’m in the mood to tell something, then instant mobile twitting is definitely more shiok :p

Even when I have nothing to twit, I’m also used to accessing m.twitter.com every now and then, just to check out latest tweets received. The law of kepo-ness kicks in.

But as similar to all other social networking goodies, there ought to be a community of yours, in order to enjoy the usage. And yes, most of my followers are active Twitter users, especially from the mobile interface.

So, how do you tweet?

Flickr Pro Account Gift Code at RM30 - 1/3 of Original Price

Published January 4, 2009 in Internet and Tips & Tricks. 1 Comment

—– Updated on 26th May 2009 —–

WARNING: Don’t Buy Flickr Pro Gift code From Third Party

After 5 months of sweet enjoyment with my Flickr Pro account at discounted rate, I have got the following mail message from Flickr:

Flickr Pro Gift codes cannot be resold or purchased from a third party. It’s been determined that the Flickr Pro Gift Code(s) you used had been purchased from a third party.

We’re very sorry sorry, but the Flickr Pro Gift Code that you redeemed on your account has been revoked.

That’s right, the tips written in this post DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE. So, lesson learned, only buy Flickr Pro from Flickr.

—– Original Post —–

When I realized that my Flickr Pro account is expiring in less than a month, I was Googling, hoping to try my luck to stumble upon any Flickr gift code offering some discounts.

Then, I found this catchy topic at Photokaki, and aparently, someone is selling Flickr Pro 1 year subscription at RM30, and 2 years for RM50!!!

Which also means, I only need to pay 1/3 of the original price (USD24.95)! I was trilled.

Flickr Gift Code

Then, seeing some positive replies of success stories, without second thought I PMed the author to confirm its availability. Then, bought a RM30 DiGi reload code (yes, the payment method is DiGi prepaid reload code) via Maybank2u, and yes, I received an email from Flickr, with a gift code of “LgS00Jke” (not valid anymore)

So, if you are renewing your Flickr account, why not give it a try? Please PM the author to confirm its availability.

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