There are lessons to be learned from the looming war between Google and Oracle. However, one lesson to take away as a developer is this:

Never Let Your Company File for Patents on Your Work

James Gosling is usually pretty cryptic in his non-technical writing, but I think if you read carefully, it seems to me that Gosling regrets that Oracle now holds his patents on Java. I know developers get nice bonuses if they let their company apply for patents on their work. I also know there’s pressure in most large companies to get more patents. We, as developers, must simply refuse this. We invent this stuff, not the suits and the lawyers who want to exploit our work for larger and larger profits. As a community of developers and computer scientists, we must simply refuse to ever let someone patent our work. In a phrase: just say no.

Even if you like your company today, you never know who will own those software patents later. I’m sure James Gosling originally never considered the idea that a company as revolting as Oracle would have control of everything he’s invented for the last two decades. But they do, and there’s nothing Gosling can do about what’s done with his work and “inventions”. Learn from this example; don’t let your company patent your work. Instead, publish online to establish prior art as quickly as possible.

For some reason, our mainstream media has recently gained an obsession to highlight baby dumping issues. I guess that since they cannot highlight other ‘sensitive’ issues, this is the best that they are allowed to do – social issues. You sometimes really need to leave it to our government officials to come up with the craziest notions on what is wrong with our society.

Widespread access to pornography and weakened family ties have led to an increase in baby dumping in the past five years, according to Federal CID director Comm Datuk Seri Bakri Zinin.

Honestly, while I understand that porn is an easy target for weakened family values, it is definitely not the cause. In fact, studies done overseas have shown that there is generally, a reverse correlation between porn and rising social crimes. The more accessible porn material is, the less social crimes there are.

Women’s Aid Organisation executive director Ivy Josiah said there was no correlation between a rise in baby dumping and pornography.

The crux of the matter isn’t the easy availability of porn but the lack of education among our young. Abstinence programmes have proven to be a failure and so, let’s avoid them here. Young people should be taught about their bodies – physical, physiological and psychological aspects of sex.

Sex education should not be treated as a taboo but introduced to combat problems like baby dumping, said Malaysian Council for Child Welfare honorary secretary Ismail Majid.

That is exactly the kind of solution that we need to the problem – instead of just vilifying porn. Don’t mistake me for defending porn, I am attacking stupidity. Anyone who knows me knows that I have zero tolerance for stupidity. Our police chief should learn to keep his opinions to himself and to channel them through a proper channel such as a media spokesperson.

A HONG KONG film-maker is aspiring to become the first person in the world to release a 3D erotic movie. Director Christopher Sun said he was racing against time to complete the filming of the flick titled 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy.

While I know that 3D is all the craze these days, I’m not quite sure how it would translate porn. Porn is largely viewed in the privacy of homes where availability of 3D devices is less, and there is less need for it because of the smaller viewing experience. However, I’d be interested to find out how it does around the world.

Selepas Tsunami (After the Tsunami) from Pusat KOMAS on Vimeo.

I like the term – Memperkasakan Rakyat – empowering people.

Having previously attended one of his talks, I can say that I like his lecture on Student Power. It was very informative and educational, without being boring and intellectual. It made me ask a simple question – why was all this history suppressed? I would have loved to know the kinds of achievements that the students made in the swinging 60s.

I would think that such acts of courage, thought and conviction would serve as examples and encourage students today to think outside the box and to develop themselves into creative thinkers, capable innovators and future leaders.

Seriously, anak sendiri mati kelaparam, why?

I have recently been helping a friend build some stuff – a special kind of website, really. The reason that I agreed to help them was because I felt that their objectives were sound, that they did not have anyone who could do it right, and that I did it as a favour to my friend.

I have been working on the system for about 3 weeks now, as the sole developer building the things. This friend of mine keeps suggesting ideas that I keep trashing. Yesterday, my friend suggested another idea and after I rejected it, my friend took it up with the team looking for support. In order not to waste time debating the idea, I pulled rank and shut it down.

My friend is confused – software development work is not a democracy.

Design by committee is a term referring to a style of design and its resultant output when a group of entities comes together to produce something (often the design of technological systems or standards), particularly in the presence of poor and incompetent leadership. The defining characteristics of “design by committee” are needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision.

If you want to develop mediocre stuff – maybe – but if you want to build something good, it is not a democracy. Look at the good software products – they were the brainchild and work of generally one person e.g. Linux. Even today, when Linux is worked on by thousands of contributors, when it comes to policy decisions, Linus calls the shots. Classic examples – monolithic vs microkernel, c vs c++.

The reason for this is simple – when it comes to technical decision, you cannot leave it up to the majority who tend not to know a thing about it – you leave it to the technical expert in charge. Say, when it comes to adding a feature that has the potential to compromise security of the system, you leave the decision to the security guy, not a majority vote.

In addition, when there is only one guy writing the code, you leave it to that guy to make the call. He is responsible for delivering the feature and making sure that it works correctly and safely. Only he knows how much effort and rework might need to be done to cater to that one feature. Only he has any idea what needs to be done to get things to work.

Any software that is designed by committee is going to suck, universally.

Often, when software is designed by a committee, the original motivation, specifications and technical criteria take a backseat and poor choices may be made merely to appease the egos of several individual committee members. Such products and standards end up doing too many things or having parts that fit together poorly (because the entities who produced those parts were unaware of each other’s requirements for a good fit).

A similar thing happened a couple of weeks ago. They wanted a feature that I opposed and after wasting over an hour debating over it, they finally came to the natural conclusion that my way was the right way. I could have told them that right from the start! I am not going to waste more needless hours debating over other features.

I’ve already given my friend notice because I know that I cannot work with these bunch of people. I have zero tolerance for stupidity.

PS: This also explains why the stuff at work, generally sucks and why life sucks in general too.

Seems that there is a major development in the Teoh Beng Hock case – the sudden surfacing of a suicide note that was found months after his death. The circumstances in which the note was found makes it difficult to admit as evidence in court but in the spirit of Malaysia Boleh, let’s just assume that it does make its way into court.

In that case, it still does not change the crux of the problem.

I have always insisted that the people in charge, grow a pair and take responsibility. Regardless of whether TBH was murdered by Chinese triads (goes one conspiracy theory), thrown out a window by the MACC (goes the coverup theory), or jumped out of the window on his own volition (goes the suicide theory), it does not change the facts of the matter.

The facts of the matter are: that TBH went into the MACC office on that fateful day, through the front door, to assist in certain investigations; and the next day, his body was found outside the building, below an open window, sustaining injuries consistent with falling from a great height. These are facts of the matter that are not disputed at all by any party.

Let’s keep our eye on the ball.

The MACC is responsible either way. If he was murdered by outside parties on their premises – the MACC were responsible for his safety. If he was dropped out the window in the course of the investigation – the MACC were responsible for dropping him. If he had jumped out of the window in desperation – the MACC were responsible for taking care of him as a witness.

In all cases, there is no reason for him to have died if the MACC had carried out their duties. The only question that needs answering is whether he died of malice or negligence. In any case, the MACC has greater responsibilities that its leaders are expected to live up to.

I just got to watch Inception today, after hearing rave reviews on it from many people. In the end, I didn’t think that it was all that great and I might not even buy the BluRay when it comes out. Don’t misunderstand me, it is a good movie, just not great.

It was not as much of a mind-bender as I had hoped for. The story is pretty straight-forward and the ending was totally expected. The only question that remained is whether the last dream was a deeper dream level or if it was the superficial dream level. Either way, he managed to go down 5 dream levels! Since each dream-level over-clocks the brain by 20 times, that means that his brain was over-clocked 3,200,000 times!

The ending is definitely a dream, for various reasons – the fact that the kids didn’t seem to age a day and that the totem was spinning non-stop for the ending.

The best thing about the movie is Ellen Page – Ariadne (she’s even got a cool character name!). I’ve loved her acting since I saw ‘Hard Candy’ years ago. She pretty much carried off that entire movie, that and ‘Juno’ too. I honestly think that she is quite a good child actress that has grown well into adult roles – unlike Dakota Fanning.

That said, I may still get the BluRay if they throw in some extras.

I just read an article in TheStar that touches on information security and our government. Okay, regular readers will know that I just have to say something when our government decides to dabble in technology. I shall quote two portions of the article.

He said the Cabinet decided on Feb 24 that these agencies must obtain the Information Security Management System (ISMS) certification within three years to ensure that they were ready to face cyber threats and attacks.

What this means, once it passed through my BS filter is: Our Cabinet has mandated that certain agencies must now spend some money to enrich certain parties in order to hire security consultants, conduct security training, hold security certifications and what nots. This might be a good opportunity for certain applied research institutes that shall remain nameless, to get a slice of the pie and provide secure infrastructure to these agencies.

Any certified information security professionals should start picking up the phone and making calls to their friends, and friends of friends, to secure contracts to provide security training. Unfortunately, it seems that all the pie is going towards one security agency – Cybersecurity Malaysia – who are our local agents for various international security certifications and training.

CyberSecurity Malaysia chief operating officer Zahri Yunos said the most worrying threat was distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.

This almost made me fall off my chair in Secret Recipe. I know for a fact that this is not the most worrying security threat faced by our government, or any other large organisation for that matter. A DDoS attack is the most basic of all potential threats and the solutions to handle the problem are already widely known – all it takes is more money as the solution is an arms race between attacker and defender.

The most worrying threat to all security systems is internal – human beings. All major technology companies take great pains in locking information down. Anyone who has worked in a major technology company will have stories about glued USB ports, removed CD-writers, restricted network access and more. Some organisations even fire employees that bring in mobile phones and cameras.

So, I think that it is scary for the COO of Cybersecurity Malaysia to talk that way. Granted, he’s not the CTO but maybe he should have picked up a little about security from his colleagues before mouthing off.

I am sure that everyone has heard about the case of Vui Kong by now. Above is the campaign video and story that drove me to tears while enjoying a piece of cake in Secret Recipe. I certainly hope nobody noticed me wiping my eyes!

This story has forced me to question my own opinions on the matter. It brings together two strongly held opinions into conflict – that illegal drugs are evil; that state sanctioned murder is evil. While plenty can be said about the various enlightened solutions to both evils that would never have resulted in a mandatory death sentence to Vui Kong, the immediate nature of the case makes these things moot. I had to make a decision fast on what I feel is the right thing to do in this case.

While I can sympathise with his background and story, I am reminded by the fact that there are many other people with similar stories who did not resort to being a drug mule like he did – case in point: none of his other siblings. I also question the fact that he was a repeat offender and that if the situation was turned around, he would be enjoying the riches that such high risk work gets. I also wonder at the number of other lives that he may have helped ruin in the process of his work. However, I also think that state sanctioned murder is not the right way to handle the situation.

Do I think that someone like Vui Kong deserves a second chance at life? Yes. Do I think that he will make the best of his second chance? The probabilities are stacked against him, unfortunately. He is far more likely to fall back to his old ways after a period of relative quiet. It is not his fault actually – that evil people will find their way to him is unfortunate.

Since I am of two minds about the situation, I can only direct my impotent anger at the real criminals behind this problem – the drug lords and the politicians.

If drugs were legalised, the drug lords would no longer have a business and the government would gain additional taxes. If the government got its act together to lift people out of hardcore poverty and to educate the most vulnerable groups, this scenario may have been happily averted. If the legal system had got it’s act together, they may have been able to side-step this public relations disaster.

However, neither is the case here. This is a case of an unfortunate individual, caught in a tragic situation of his own making, without the adequate resources at his disposal to handle the situation.

(A case can be made against his original public defender!)

Since Vui Kong has turned Buddhist, the only thing I can do is to hope that he finds solace in the teachings and to learn from the mistakes of this life and not to repeat them in the next. I hope that he can find peace through meditation during his final days and that he leaves this world in peace and equanimity. I can only imagine how difficult it is to be in his situation but I cannot help but think that he has no way out of this.

I know that it may sound heartless and harsh, but in this case, it is a lose-lose situation.

PS: If he has to hang, let’s try to at least bring him home and do him that little kindness. Dying in a foreign land away from his family just seems a little unnecessary.

Love the song sung by my favourite Glee characters – Kurt and Rachel.

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I’m through with playing by the rules
Of someone else’s game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap

It’s time to try
Defying gravity
I think I’ll try
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I’m defying gravity
And you won’t bring me down