Sybreon Ones Nought

I am seriously in love with my ergonomic keyboard. It is so much easier to type on the new ergonomic keyboard. I have noticed that my hands and brain begin to have clear division between left and right hand functions. There is less muddle between the two. I think that I will go buy myself a new ergonomic keyboard for home use at some point.

I have too many key-maps in my head at the moment. I have the ergonomic key-map for my office machine. Then, I have the non-ergonomic key-map for other computers in the country except my home computer, which uses the GB keymap because it was bought in the UK. So, I have to constantly switch between the different key-maps in my head.

I have also noticed that I can type more efficiently on an ergonomic keyboard. It takes a while to get used to the work division between the two hands but after that, it is far easier to type on an ergonomic keyboard. Finally, the QWERTY keyboards begin to make some sense. The two hands work separately off each other and hit only the keys that they are supposed to hit.

I wonder how much these ergonomic keyboards cost. I won’t pay and arm and a leg for them though. I know that the high-end ones cost something like RM300 each. I’d be happy to pay around RM50 for one. These things should not cost more than RM100.

I have recently subscribed to a new icecast channel on the Internet, XAMFM, at work. I have always relied on music to help me to work. So, instead of ripping a bunch of OGG files or bringing some CDs to work, I decided to just exploit part of our uber-high-speed network to listen to some online streams. One of the songs that really gets me dancing in my cube is Lies by T-ara, a k-pop girl group.

Interesting dance moves, yes? Another song that gets me moving is I hope by F.T Island, a k-pop boy group.

And my sister wonders why I like listening to foreign songs – that’s because I listen to music!

I don’t even know where to begin. This is just the stoopidest thing that I have heard today. Actually, I lie. It is the stoopidest idea that I have heard of for a long time, and I have heard a lot of dumb ideas in my life. Our country is planning to form a 1Malaysia Formula 1 team. Whoopee doo! Seriously. According to this article in TheStar, “the 1Malaysia F1 Team, a joint venture between the Government and private sector, will participate in the F1 race beginning next year.”

Formula one is an extremely competitive sport with high-budget teams competing against each other. According to the article, we have managed to secure the participation from several of our richest businessmen – Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes, Datuk Kamarudin Meranun and S.M. Nasarudin S.M. Nasimuddin. Alright, so maybe we have enough money to throw around and these people can secure some bragging rights to owning an F1 team.

Formula one runs at the cutting-edge of technology with the latest and greatest technology making its way into the cars. According to the article, industry and academia have signed up including Proton and Lotus, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS as well as Composite Technology Research Malaysia. Alright, so maybe we have the wherewithal to come up with the latest technologies.

Unfortunately, the article glazes over a few facts. Let’s look at the technical aspect of this entire venture.

We need an engine. PETRONAS worked on its own engine design at one time, the E01 but even Proton did not use that engine design. In the end, the team ended up using re-badged Ferrari engines as PETRONAS one. Maybe our F1Malaysia team will continue to use re-badged last season Ferrari engines and we will be none the wiser. This ensures that we will never win an races, but we would at least have enough engine power to get a good run around the track.

While Lotus were once kings of formula one, Team Lotus’ heydays were a long time ago. According to the wikipedia article, they were dominant players in Formula 1 during the 60s and 70s. I highly doubt that many members of the original successful team are still around today, much less actually still working at Lotus. All Lotus has now is a brand name and legacy to live up to. As for the chasis of the car, I don’t really know much about CTRM to speculate if they have the necessary technology to make things work.

And then the driver. Our own Alex Yoong had a short stint as a Formula One driver in which he was consistently out-classed by the rest. I was happy if he actually finished a race, even if he ended up coming in last. I’ve heard that we have another young driver currently competing in the F3 series and he might be upgraded to the F1 series with team F1Malaysia funding his super-license. So, with them two, we will at least have two drivers for the team.

Honestly, while I can see the F1Malaysia team actually happening, I highly doubt that it would be competitive enough. Even a well funded team, with the necessary motivation and drive as well as technology – Toyota – still struggled in F1. It is not an easy competition to break into. Unless of course, they know something that we don’t – like most of the major teams might be pulling out of the competition next year or something like that.

A good friend of mine has recently started a book club and since I was more than supportive of such a venture, I got roped into it naturally. The first book that we are supposed to read is Air by Geoff Ryman. Since I did not have the book, I opted to go buy a paperback instead of downloading an online PDF version of it. I am quite particular when it comes to these intellectual property things.

Air is the story of a town’s fashion expert Chung Mae, a smart but illiterate peasant woman in a small village in the fictional country of Karzistan (loosely based on the country of Kazakhstan), and her suddenly leading role in reaction to dramatic, worldwide experiments with a new information technology called Air. Air is information exchange, not unlike the Internet, that occurs in everyone’s brain and is intended to connect the world. After a test of Air is imposed on Mae’s unprepared mountain town, everyone and everything changes, especially Mae who was deeper into Air than any other person. Afterwards, Mae struggles to prepare her people for what is to come while learning all about the world outside her home.

Anyway, hunting down the book was a small adventure on its own. I was in KLCC last weekend and decided to drop by my favourite book-store in the country – Kinokuniya. Unfortunately, they were out of Air. No worries right? Yesterday, I went to Mid-Valley and visited both Borders and MPH. Neither one had any Air in stock. The information counter staff at MPH was happy enough to check out their other branches for me but told me that none of their branches nationwide had any Air in stock.

I remarked that the book must be a good one, seeing that it was sold out nationwide. So, I sent my friend an SMS saying that it was really difficult trying to get hold of the book. I hope that the next reading assignment would be a book that is easily available. Anyway, I went to The Curve today and found two copies of the book rotting on the shelf at Borders. Their paper had all turned brown by now. Finally, I could breath easy now that I had found Air.

The timing could not have been better either. I had just finished Inversions by Ian M. Banks yesterday. So, I was just about to start Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds. Instead, I will start reading Air and hoping that it would not bore me to end. I think that a book club is probably a good way of exploring different authors. I have this habit of sticking to the authors whom I am already familiar with.

I hope that I will learn something new from this book.

David Waitzman published a Request for Comments (RFC) 1149, titled “A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers”. In his RFC, he introduced what he terms an “experimental method for the encapsulation of IP datagrams in avian carriers”. Essentially what Waitzman is talking about in his paper is the use of homing pigeons as a way to transfer data from one point to another. He expanded on his theory on the 1st April 1999, with the publication of RFC 2549, a Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, with Quality of Service information.

The rules of the competition were simple:

1. No Cats allowed
2. The same amount of data will be sent on the landline and via the pigeon, on a SD card ( 4 gigabytes)
3. The race is from Howick to Hillcrest
4. The Pigeon flies from Howick to Gillits, and then will be transported via car to the finish site ( where the landline data will arrive)
5. The day will be announced closer to the time
6. Birdseed must not have any performance enhancing seeds within.
7. Data is not to be compressed.

Guess what? The verdict is in – and the pigeon won! Seriously, the South African ISP – Telkom, has been shown the bird – quite literally. Seems like they often race pigeons in South Africa. I reckon that it gives their pigeons an advantage over ours. They would probably have race breeds.

I wonder how our main broadband provider – Telekom – would stack up against a trained pigeon in terms of speed and cost.

I hope that the right people will eventually find their way to reading this article. It is a very fair description on the behaviour of technology professionals. I shall reproduce parts of the article ad-verbatim. The credit goes to the original lengthier article.

The elements of the stereotypes

Ego — Similar to what good doctors do, IT pros figure out that the proper projection of ego engenders trust and reduces apprehension. Because IT pros’ education does not emphasize how to deal with people, there are always rough edges. Ego, as it plays out in IT, is an essential confidence combined with a not-so-subtle cynicism. It’s not about being right for the sake of being right but being right for the sake of saving a lot of time, effort, money and credibility. IT is a team sport, so being right or wrong impacts other members of the group in non-trivial ways. Unlike in many industries, in IT, colleagues can significantly influence the careers of the entire team. Correctness yields respect, respect builds good teams, and good teams build trust and maintain credibility through a healthy projection of ego. Strong IT groups view correctness as a virtue, and certitude as a delivery method. Meek IT groups, beaten down by inconsistent policies and a lack of structural support, are simply ineffective at driving change and creating efficiencies, getting mowed over by the clients, the management or both at every turn.

The victim mentality — IT pros are sensitive to logic — that’s what you pay them for. When things don’t add up, they are prone to express their opinions on the matter, and the level of response will be proportional to the absurdity of the event. The more things that occur that make no sense, the more cynical IT pros will become. Standard organizational politics often run afoul of this, so IT pros can come to be seen as whiny or as having a victim mentality. Presuming this is a trait that must be disciplined out of them is a huge management mistake. IT pros complain primarily about logic, and primarily to people they respect. If you are dismissive of complaints, fail to recognize an illogical event or behave in deceptive ways, IT pros will likely stop complaining to you. You might mistake this as a behavioral improvement, when it’s actually a show of disrespect. It means you are no longer worth talking to, which leads to insubordination.

Insubordination — This is a tricky one. Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity. The difference is both subjective and subtle. Good IT pros, whether they are expected to or not, have to operate and make decisions with little supervision. So when the rules are loose and logical and supervision is results-oriented, supportive and helpful to the process, IT pros are loyal, open, engaged and downright sociable. Arbitrary or micro-management, illogical decisions, inconsistent policies, the creation of unnecessary work and exclusionary practices will elicit a quiet, subversive, almost vicious attitude from otherwise excellent IT staff. Interestingly, IT groups don’t fall apart in this mode. From the outside, nothing looks to be wrong and the work still gets done. But internally, the IT group, or portions of it, may cut themselves off almost entirely from the intended management structure. They may work on big projects or steer the group entirely from the shadows while diverting the attention of supervisors to lesser topics. They believe they are protecting the organization, as well as their own credibility — and they are often correct.

Credit whoring — IT pros would prefer to make a good decision than to get credit for it. What will make them seek credit is the danger that a member of the group or management who is dangerous to the process might receive the credit for the work instead. That is insulting. If you’ve got a lot of credit whores in your IT group, there are bigger problems causing it.

Antisocial behavior — It’s fair to say that there is a large contingent of IT pros who are socially unskilled. However, this doesn’t mean those IT pros are antisocial. On the whole, they have plenty to say. If you want to get your IT pros more involved, you should deal with the problems laid out above and then train your other staff how to deal with IT. Users need to be reminded a few things, including:

* IT wants to help me.
* I should keep an open mind.
* IT is not my personal tech adviser, nor is my work computer my personal computer.
* IT people have lives and other interests.

Like anyone else, IT people tend to socialize with people who respect them. They’ll stop going to the company picnic if it becomes an occasion for everyone to list all the computer problems they never bothered to mention before.

I have always been a little wary of the whole idea of cloud services simply because it means different things to different people. However, I am starting to appreciate some interesting uses for a cloud. I have recently been listening to an icecast streaming service for music, at work. During one of the commercial breaks, it advertised a shout-casting service. Seems like some companies with excess bandwidth are selling them to casters to stream their music online.

To me, this opens the world of broadcasting to pretty much anyone. You can literally buy some bandwidth, shove some songs up to the servers in the cloud and have them take care of the global distribution of your music collection. There are just so many useful applications for this. Personally, I am beginning to think that it is now the age of the individual. Anyone and everyone can now do things that were once only the province of large mega-corporations We can reach any other individual on the planet and influence them with our ideas. Governments and major multi-nationals are still grappling with the control of such freedoms.

Maybe it is time to finish reading “Future of Ideas” by Lawrence Lessig. Never quite got round to finishing it. I still prefer printed books to pdfs. It is free for download, by the way.

In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counter-revolution of devastating power and effect. The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation. Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internet’s very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information–the ideas of our era–could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. But this structural design is changing–both legally and technically.

Control of information is the death of man. I think that this may just be a cause that I can dedicate myself to preventing. That is a curious spark that I will explore further in future posts.