Sybreon Ones Nought

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Since I was in Bandar Utama yesterday, I decided to pop by 1U just for the heck of it. Since it’s just days before Chinese New Year, the whole place was decorated for the festive season and I was even lucky enough to be there for the lion dance performance. This actually brought back some memories of my days with the CULDT. I could actually identify about half of the music.

Before that, when I first arrived, I bumped into someone whom I’ve not seen in 6 years or so. She’s two years my senior at university and we were friends and group mates at one time. It took me a few moments before realising whom it was. So, I then went up to her and called, “CC!”. Turns out that she’s actually working around the area and hangs out in 1U quite a bit. Even so, it’s still quite lucky for me to bump into her like that.

Then, I went off to watch the lion dance performance by our national lion dance champions. I ran back to my car (in the parking lot) to get my camera to take some photos. So, I was watching most of the performance through my camera lens. It was a rather dramatic performance. At one point, one of the poles that the lion was jumping on was felled by the act. As a result, the lion was trapped at the highest end of the poles and was ‘trembling’ there from fear. Then, after contemplating the wide chasm, the lion jumped and landed on the poles on the other side. That brought a rousing applause from the audience.

After the show, I went off to see another show – of Honda Citys! They had a number of the new Honda cars on display at their 1U roadshow. I got into one just to see how spacious the new model was – it was surprisingly very spacious. I sometimes wonder how these Honda engineers did it – built a car that looks so small from the outside but is so spacious inside. Honda cars have always been engineered well and it shows.

Randomness@1U. I think that I will probably hang out there a bit more in the near future.

Oh my frakkin’ gods! The final episodes of Battlestar Galactica are finally here and they are starting tonight. I am so psyched up by this and I cannot wait to find out who the final Cylon is. I have some suspicions and I am also in denial. A friend and I did a quick run down on who was left and why they could or could not possibly be the final Cylon. Let’s start from the left of the photograph of the main cast (the ones whom are non-Cylons already).

1. President Roslin (extreme left)
   It is very unlikely that she’s The One as she was dying from cancer earlier and had to be saved by a treatment of Cylon blood. If she was already a Cylon, she wouldn’t have needed the Cylon blood transfusion. Therefore, it is unlikely that she’s The One unless the script writers can explain that discrepancy away.
2. Lee Adama (fourth from left)
   He is a dark horse in this race. There are no indicators that he is a Cylon and the script writers could just spring a surprise. However, they would have to explain his entire life away and show how a baby Cylon was sneaked into the Adama’s family in the past. This could tie in nicely with the launch of a new series “Caprica”, which revolves around the Adama family 50 years ago. So, I think that this would be a very likely commercial probability.
3. Kara Thrace(sixth from right)
   She is a possibility as there is the case of her “coming back from the dead” under mysterious circumstances. The script writers have yet to satisfactorily explain the situation away. Furthermore, she’s had Cylonic visions and can hear ‘the song’ too. However, she hates Cylons too much and would be devastated to be one. Furthermore, I love her and I would be devastated if she was a Cylon. Therefore, she cannot be one! (I’m in denial)
4. Karl Agathon(second from right)
   While he is not a confirmed Cylon, he is unlikely to be one. He was chosen to father a half human-Cylon baby precisely because Cylons cannot reproduce (they only replicate). So, if he turns out to be a Cylon, the script writers would have a hard time explaining two whole seasons away on his relationship with Sharon. But then again, Saul Tigh supposedly impregnated a #6 (though we’ve not seen the baby yet).
5. Bill Adama(extreme right)
   “If I’m a Cylon then you’re all screwed” – Bill. Bill is the leading contender for the final Cylon. However, he is too obvious a choice. I believe that most fans would be let down if he was the best that the script writers could come up with. Therefore, I do not believe that he is The One (even with the obvious scene of him being spaced in the trailer below).

Anyway, everything is pure conjecture at the moment. We will find out soon enough as there are only 10 episodes left to go. From the trailer below, things look extremely exciting and I am looking forward to watching them at some point (and so is my mom).

Just when I thought it was going to be safe to buy a budget laptop, here comes a luxury laptop that will knock your socks off! I will let the photos speak for themselves. There isn’t much to say about it except that it is designed to be an AirBook killer. Anything else is pure speculation at this point. Enjoy!

Photos are (CC) BrianSolis.

The more I consider it, the less likely it is that I will ever buy myself a NetBook PC. A NetBook PC is basically a stripped down laptop that usually weighs less than 1kg and comes with a 10″ screen or so – basically a small and light laptop that you can carry around in your handbag. The main component that makes all this possible is the use of low power microprocessors, which reduce the need for an expensive and bulky cooling system.

However, due to price reasons, it is making less and less sense to actually get a NetBook. For example, consider the following devices from Lenovo (single unit dealer prices are quoted):

• Lenovo S10 (NetBook) – Atom 270/1.6GHz/512kb/533FSB/10.2″/1GB RAM/160GB HDD/GMA950 (RM1619)
• Lenovo G410 (Laptop) – CoreDuo T2390/1.86GHz/1Mb/533FSB/14.1″/1GB RAM/160GB HDD/X3100 (RM1489)

It is plainly obvious that the G410 is a better computer than the S10. It has a better graphics chip, a faster processor and a larger screen. The G410 is a real machine that can be used to do real work while the S10 is more a toy that is useful for checking email than running simulations. Moreover, if the devices are further scrutinised, there will be further advantages for the G410 including the cheaper price tag of RM130.

The only advantage that the S10 has is size. It is sufficiently small to be mistaken for an organiser while the G410 is a real laptop. Therefore, netbooks are pretty much only useful for yuppies and teenagers with rich daddies. For a price conscious student or a serious worker, an older model laptop is definitely a better buy.

However, I am quite interested to see a Atom based server system though. These babies would work very well in the data centre. Some early benchmarks have shown that an Atom 330 with two cores at 1.6GHz and capable of running two threads each, has excellent MySQL performance, easily beating a Pentium 4 2.8GHz machine by 265% (and consuming less than 5% of the electrical power).

I am now considering buying a Atom based system to power my back-end file server. I plan to set up a file server for storing all the encoded videos that I will be encoding for my HTPC. Having a dedicated file system would allow me to grow my storage according to my requirements. That way, I can just get a HTPC system without any built in storage (or remove any bundled storage), which will further reduce the noise levels of the system.

PS: As for the claims of being ‘energy efficient’, this does not translate into real world advantages. While the NetBook uses less power than a normal laptop, it also comes with smaller batteries. In effect, you still only get 2-3 hours of effective use before the thing dies on you. Less so, if you’re using wireless or 3G Internet.

Our dearest former PM has recently suggested that Malaysians should show our disgust at the events happening in Gaza by boycotting American companies and products. I guess that he meant that we should stop doing things like buying our Frappucinos from Starbucks. This had many of our local franchisees up in arms as they feared for their businesses (never mind the fact that our dearest former PM was the one who encouraged local bumiputera businessmen to engage in franchise businesses).

The fact that our country is so small, means that any boycott that we engage in, would inadvertently only harm ourselves. If we wish to use economic power as a way to send a message to certain super powers, it needs to be coordinated internationally. Farish Noor mentioned in his recent blog, some previous examples where such tactics were successfully employed in applying economic pressure on political regimes.

In addition, the boycotts would need to be directed at very specific entities. A blanket ban on all American products is stupid as we will ultimately feel the problems ourselves. So, the boycotts should be targeted at specific companies that invest heavily in Israel and be coordinated globally to have any sort of affect on them. Now, that is the difficult bit to achieve.

As for myself, I have been doing a quick mental inventory of things that I buy. Surprisingly, I have already been avoiding many American made products, particularly those with investments in Israel. For example, I typically buy either AMD or VIA based computer systems and not Intel ones. As for software, I have avoided Microsoft products like the plague and they have investments in Israel too. So, even though I have not been actively trying to boycott US companies with investments in Israel, I have been doing it anyway.

I cannot avoid using Google though.

PS: I like the fact that our government had convened a special session of parliament to discuss the war perpetrated by a state that our country does not recognise. I wonder how does one send a message to an entity that does not exist.

It has happened to me again. I went to my local Steven’s Corner to have dinner today and was greeted by the person at the counter: “Yes uncle, sudah order?” (Yes uncle, have you ordered?). Uncle??!! My oh my, I must’ve looked damn terrible today to have been called ‘uncle’ by someone who was obviously older than me. Fortunately, since I like Steven’s Corner, I will forgive this particular slight on their part.

Right outside Steven’s Corner, there were a bunch of really young pups who were doing a roadshow for P1WiMAX, a new wireless broadband provider in Malaysia. It is a subsidiary of Green Packet Bhd, which is one of the 4 companies to get a WiMAX license from our government. It is good to see that there is more competition in Malaysia for the broadband business but it is very sad to see that Telekom Malaysia is still entrenched as the fixed line monopoly.

Pretty much every phone line in Malaysia is installed and run by Telekom Malaysia. As such, they have practically been the sole provider of broadband services to homes in Malaysia. Since it is a giant government linked monopoly, it does not need to worry about competition much. Therefore, service has been terrible and the ‘broadband’ speeds that we get are technically defined as ‘narrowband’.

On the wireless side, we have our mobile service providers selling 3G/HSDPA wireless broadband access. However, from my own tests and reports from others, they are no better. Both Maxis and Celcom ‘broadband’ also fail the definition easily. It is extremely difficult to achieve high speed connections on these services. Furthermore, there is something wrong with the Maxis network implementation that I am unable to access GMail (I have figured out what it is and have come up with a work around but that’s the subject of another blog entry).

Now, there is a new WiMAX service provider. The touts were happily showing us YouTube streaming on the wireless modem. While I do believe that WiMAX technology is far superior to the rest, I am not jumping for joy and I will tell you why. It will suffer the same problem that we have with Telekom Malaysia – lack of competition. With only 3 WiMAX licensees in peninsular Malaysia, it is trivial for them to cut things up between themselves (northern, central and southern regions).

That is why I do not believe that they are going to be any better than any other monopoly. While their speeds may be extremely impressive at the moment, once their network bandwidth is saturated with subscribers, things will get bad and there is nothing that any consumer can do. WiMAX has about a 10Mbps bandwidth at 2km. That is not much bandwidth once the slots are fully utilised.

So, as much as I hate the ADSL service provided by Telekom Malaysia, I loath switching to some other provider who will ultimately turn into another monopoly. Now, if only our government would open things up thoroughly.

I have recently just made a family wide wipe out of Windows. My sister’s home computer recently got infected with a virus (all it took was a simple connection to the Internet) and I was tasked to fix it. My mom complained that she did not have enough games to play on the same computer. So, the solution to both these problems (and more) was just to install Linux on it.

Since I had a free CD of the latest Kubuntu install, I decided to install it everywhere. I installed it in my dad’s computer at home and also my sister’s home PC. Adding that to the Linux installs on my two laptops and my home theatre PC, makes every PC in my family, Linux running. Although I still think that Slackware is probably the coolest distribution around, *buntu makes a very compelling case for the desktop market.

The fact that this distribution has made great inroads in the short time that it has been around, speaks volumes of it. It has recently been featured in a New York Times article, along with its backer, South African billionaire – Mark Shuttleworth. My experience with Kubuntu has shown me that desktop Linux is already here. I honestly sympathise with the people who struggle along with Windows simply because they do not know any better.

However, this article was as much about Mark as it was about Ubuntu. I liked the fact that Mark is a technical guy who understands technical things and is truly passionate about open source. The fact that he is a billionaire, and who can afford to fund a free operating system out of his pocket change, is quite appealing to me. Sometimes, I feel that more of the rich would emulate people like Mark, who put their money to good use and fund things that can fundamentally change the world, rather than to just hoard everything.

People like him are my heroes. People with technical knowledge, who put it to good use, make wads of cash and continue to turn that cash into doing some real good and making a positive change in this world. Now, Mark certainly does not have enough money to take on the empire that is Microsoft alone, but with an army of volunteers behind him, he can definitely succeed – and he has just such an army of trained volunteers.

Finally, I love this quote from the article: “It is not because I need to watch porn in high-definition but because I want to see what you do differently.” – ditto.