Sybreon Ones Nought

For the first time ever, we had a live political debate on television, between an opposition leader and a government minister. Although this is something that happens quite often in many civilised democracies, who are we trying to kid anyway. I have only watched bits of it on YouTube but I kind of like the idea. Regardless of who won the debate, I think that it is healthy to have more of it.

We could feasibly have a fortnightly debate on some important topic of the day. Then, we pick a politician from the opposition and government and let them lose on each other on live TV. It is a win-win-win situation for everyone. The television channel wins by having more viewers tune into the show. It can always rent out advertising space at the bottom of the screen. The people win by having the opportunity to actually listen to the drivel spouted out by politicians from both sides. The politicians win by scoring points and getting their precious TV time in front of a captive audience.

However, the politicians selected should not be random. This is where a shadow cabinet comes in useful. For any important topic, we could just pit the minister or deputy minister, against the shadow minister. At the very least, we can be see whom is better suited for the job, the actual minister or the shadow one. However, I am still waiting on the opposition to form a shadow cabinet.

They can’t really say that they lack the numbers anymore. So, I am wondering what excuse will the opposition come up next. They’re probably bickering over who will form the real cabinet come September 16, assuming that they manage to overthrow the government.

There are just so many important topics that we can debate on.

What is a doorknob?

According to the Wordnet dictionary:

doorknob
n : a knob used to release the catch when opening a door (often called `doorhandle’ in Great Britain) [syn: doorhandle]

I was quite confused when my friend told me that I was a doorknob. So, knowing that it was some term used to describe people, and not a doorhandle, I looked up the urban dictionary:

a term for an easy girl who sleeps around. called a door knob because everyone gets a turn.

This obviously didn’t apply to me either. Then, my friend further confused me by saying that I’m a chatty doorknob, as opposed to different kinds of doorknobs. I would like to figure out what it all means because my friend says that it is exactly the position that I want to be in. A doorknob with a personality.

What is a doorknob?

The ecosystem surrounding one of my microprocessor designs is growing slowly, but surely. In addition to the world’s leading software defined radio project, already using my processor core, I have just been notified today, that another group intends to use my processor as the core processor for their hardware platform. If their platform takes off, it could potentially be the world’s leading router platform.

So, now I have to think about throwing additional resources into my hobby project to grow it into something more significant. All this time, it has been pretty much a project that I took up as a learning opportunity. If there was something interesting that I’d like to learn about microprocessors, I would try it out on my processor design to see how it works. I’ve always learned by doing, rather than reading.

Presently, all that I have is the processor core. I have not written any software for it nor have I built any hardware applications around it. The people who used it had to build everything around it from scratch. All I did was provide the core along with some support for it. When they faced problems, they would contact me for help. In return, if they fixed any problems, they would send patches to me.

All is well so far.

However, with more and more professional projects taking up an interest and using my core, I have to think of a long term support infrastructure and ecosystem around the core. It might actually be prudent to consider porting Linux to my core and making a basic demo platform that others can then build on. I should probably consider further developing the software capabilities to add value to the core.

But all these things take time and effort. While it’s been mainly a hobby project, I could choose to do things whenever I was free to do so. However, with more and more commercial projects sellling devices built around my core, it might be prudent for me to charge some sort of ad-hoc maintenance fee. I think that I will have a discussion with the different projects who use my cores, to work out some sort of payment schedule.

I don’t expect this thing to make me rich. I only think that it’s fair to compensate me for any time and effort in supporting their commercial projects.

Waste Allocation Load Litter Earth-Class (WALL-E) is the name of the main character of Pixar’s latest classic. And it is a beautiful story. The entire movie had very little dialogue but the emotions came through crystal clear. The love story that focuses around WALL-E and EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) is so touching and emotional, again, told with practically no dialogue other than each others’ names.

I think that it’s the best movie that I’ve seen this year, up till now. The only possible movie that can unseat it is probably Batman, coming out in a fortnight. I plan to catch that movie as soon as it comes out. I’ve been reading previews and it’s all good. I love the kinds of dark movies that screw around with my head and it seems that the dark knight might just do it.

Go watch WALL-E when it comes out. It is a wonderful family film. And remember to watch the closing credits. It’s practically part of the movie itself!

The letter from an anonymous student who had to sit through a BTN camp lecture seems to be making the rounds today. Actually, I seemed to have been unfortunate enough, to have missed out on BTN camps. They sound like really exciting stuff.

From the second hand stories that filter out of the camps, it seems that there are lots of interesting lectures in these camps. It would be really interesting to be able to capture a recording of these and let the greater public share in their grand ideas. According to some other blogs, it seems that they would confiscate all recording equipment, in order to protect the intellectual property of the lectures. These lectures must have some really classy stuff in it.

However, I was just wondering, if the cinemas are unable to stop people from bringing in video cameras into a film, a truly concerted effort at recording the lecture series to educate the public, should be technically feasible. Let us assume that there are people checking the bags and pockets of participants for electronic snooping devices. So, let me put on my black hat and hack this problem.

The most obvious way to hack it is to place the recording equipment in the lecture halls before the lecture is held. Goodness knows, if students can smuggle answers into an exam hall, under the watchful eye of multiple invigilators, I’m sure that the students can figure out a way to bring some recording equipment in.

An MP3 voice recorder, is so small that it would snugly fit under almost any chair or table, with a nicely applied piece of gum. A 4Gb device configured to record a mono audio channel at 64kbps rate, can record continuously for almost 6 days before running out of storage space. The battery probably would not last half as long. So, a backup battery will be needed. Adding it is a 5 minute surgery.

A wireless webcam or something similar can be used for video. These webcams are rather small in size and can be tucked away in a corner and configured to only record when it detects movement. The bulk of the recording equipment would be kept in a laptop, that I assume, would be kept safely in a bag outside the hall. Again, a small battery may be needed.

But now for the really classic coup de grace. The lecturers themselves use off-the-shelf laptops to conduct the lectures.

Ever heard of Van Eck phreaking? Probably not. Anyway, it is a well documented method of capturing the video signals of any display, off the air, as all electronic devices emit electromagnetic radiation. So, it can be used to capture the videos and slides that the lecturer shows, without actually having to steal the machine or hacking into it, which is incidentally a crime!

Copying the lectures off the air can at most, be classified as a copyright infringement, which is not a criminal offence. Unless of course, the course materials are classified as official secrets. However, in such a case, the attendees must agree to keeping it a secret first, by signing some sort of NDA or similar piece of contract. Otherwise, it is definitely not a secret.

So, it’s actually technically feasible. It’s only a question of preparation and will.

I am at a loss for words. This advert is so cheesy that it is actually cool. I recommend that anyone who works with the pipette, watch it. It’s an ad by a company selling machines to automate the task. The ad is from Eppendorf (should be familiar to people working in life-sciences).

Is it just me, or do you agree that the whole idea of “reality” shows has grown stale. There are just too many of them and most of them amount to nothing but “popularity” shows and not “reality” ones. But for some reason, Malaysia seems to be coming up with wacky ideas for random shows. I guess that it shouldn’t surprise me one bit as we all like our dose of sandiwara reality.

But I think that this newest one, called D’Graduate is too weird for me. First of all, the name, which I think is a totally confused title. It’s trying to do a French by dropping the ‘e’ from ‘De’ but that’s the wrong article to use anyway. I guess it’s just some person trying to do a phonetic sounding ‘The’ by choosing to use a letter ‘D’ instead but then, it is the wrong pronunciation for it as well.

Then, the whole idea of turning job interviews into a popularity contest, doesn’t quite resonate with me. Instead of hiring the person who is right for the job, the most popular person would get the job instead. Anyone willing to take bets that the winner will most likely be a sweet looking girl? Therefore, it is no wonder that the winner will only get a 6-month contract as a management trainee.

I wonder if any of the participants actually know that according to the labour law, 6-months is the length of the probation period for any job in Malaysia. So, most employers would expect the employee to learn during this period and only confirm an employee after the 6-months, which then entitles them to various protections under the law. So, this 6-month contract doesn’t actually mean much at all.

However, the whole idea of making a reality show out of job interviews, is rather amazing. I really have to give props to the person who came up with this idea. It gives everyone else the opportunity to learn about how not to handle job interviews, which will prove quite useful. I’m hopeless at job interviews as well. I’m just hoping that my luck will change soon, like really soon.