Brasero creates a hidden md5 checksum in Data CD/DVD

Brasero is my primary disc burning application. Today, while burning the completed anime series from my ever growing collection, I noticed something at the root of the disc.

A file named .checksum.md5. The content?, MD5 checksum for all the files in the CD/DVD.

Now, this is convenient :D.

OpenDocument Templates by Lotus Symphony

I browsed through Lotus Symphony website just now, just to check out what new in Lotus Symphony as the first and the last time I used it was during its alpha stage.

One thing great that I noticed, a whole gallery of templates in ODF Template format!!! http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/gallery.jspa. Stuff ranging from document templates to presentation designs and cliparts. And due to it uses the ODF Template format, I can open them in no problem on OpenOffice. And I thought, "Great!, some free templates to use, but, what these are licensed on?".

Looking at the term of use:

Content from this Web site that is not provided under an agreement, such Content is not provided as "public domain"; you may use such Content for your personal, non-commercial use only and only in connection with your use of Lotus Symphony.

Erm, ain't that defeat the purpose of providing business document templates (invoice, meeting, project status, reports, sales plan, etc), but in the same time restrict the template to non-commercial?.

IANAL, but the phrase "only in connection with your use of Lotus Symphony" sounds like I'm also prohibited to use these on OpenOffice (or any other ODF editor) on stuff unrelated to Lotus Symphony.

Git and FedoraPeople.org

I just started learning to use git a few days ago. Mainly because of the convenient of being able to host a git repository on a dumb http server, and ability to local commit.

However, I had a minor problem pushing a git repository to my fedorapeople.org account through ssh push. "Permission denied when executing post-update hook". Asking at #fedora-admin got me this answer - "home folders are mounted noexec", now, thats explains. Nonetheless, a minor hack by replacing the post-update script with a symlink to git-update-server-info seems to get around it.

Surprisingly, when I woke up today, I saw Jeremy Katz's post : More git support for fedorapeople. FedoraPeople now have a functional GitWeb and gitserve! - eventhough its beta and might go away, still, thanks a lot Jeremy!!.

P/S: OneClickInstall is a misleading name, renamed my python parser for OneClickInstall metadata from yum-oneclickinstall to Chitin (Dead insects trapped in Amber might leave some trace of Chitin after its organic structure disappeared - source). With this new git support in fedorapeople, I moved the code from my play-around-googlecode-svn to this shiny new home at fedorapeople gitweb. Checkout using :

git clone git://fedorapeople.org/~izhar/chitin.git
# or
git clone http://izhar.fedorapeople.org/git/chitin.git

.

OneClickInstall for Yum

Spent the whole day today learning Python ElementTree. And the product, a yum plugin for parsing OpenSuSE's One Click Install metadata, though, its still quite incomplete.

I've always wanted something like OCI, and I've been using RPM MetaPackages for most of my previous use. However, MetaPackages have some limitations, one of which it might conflict with existing RPMs, and if I use a lot of metapackages, I'll end up with a rpm database filled with them and each of them must have a unique name. That is good enough for sysadmins, but it can be a hassle for the so-called 'users' in the long term.

OpenSuSE's implementation looks more suitable for me, so, after waiting for quite some time for someone to implement it on fedora (and nobody has - or I didn't notice it), I decided to jump and write my own. However, the implementation on OpenSuSE is only for YaST (which I guess it beats the purpose of having the XML format multi-distro), so, I need to write my own parser.

I have experience writing yum plugins for adding features into yum for specific purposes, so what I needed is to figure out how to extract data from the XML file and install them. Gladly, ElementTree serve that purpose very well. Python Rocks!!.

For those interested to try it out, the code is here - http://kagesenshi-private.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/yum-oneclickinstall/. It works ok through command line, though for GUI, I guess it'll need some work.

To use, first, install it as you would to install any yum plugin (I won't help here, coz I don't want any 'users' to use it at this moment). Get a OneClickInstall XML file, theres an example in the code folder or write your own (OpenSuSE specification is good) and run:

# to install packages
yum oci-install oneclickinstallxmlfile

# to query metadata for packages
yum oci-query packages oneclickinstallxmlfile

# to query metadata for details
yum oci-query details oneclickinstallxmlfile

# to query metadata for repositories
yum oci-query repositories oneclickinstallxmlfile

(Of course, thats nowhere near being One-click)

Installing packages kindof works, but I'm still working on the ability to install 3rd party repository (the code is there, just need to think of some way to make it safe). Adding 3rd party repo feature is controversially not safe, as mixing repositories might make user end up with dependencies and compatibility problems. So, need to think of a good way to handle that.

Anyway, happy trying it. :D

Tadaima!!!. ( I'm Back!! )

So, i've been away from blogging for about 3 months now .. Reason? .. simply lazy and lack of motivation to blog .. haha .. Anyway, I'm back :)

Btw, I got myself this a few weeks ago!



:P

Instant noodles + Miso + some stuff from freezer = yum3

Something off-topic once a while.

Went experimenting with the microwave oven just now, wondering if I can make something more tasty than a plain instant noodle. Went through the freezer and thrown in some stuff, and it turned out great!.

Maybe someone want to try it out, here's the recipe.

1 packet Instant Noodle (curry flavour)
1 frozen crab stick
some frozen vegetables (just pick how much u like, I simply grab once and throw)
some miso paste (2 tablespoon or so)
some margarine (1/2 teaspoon or so)
water

Boil water and put it into a microwave safe bowl. Take out the frozen stuff from the freezer, wash it and throw them into the hot water. Throw in the miso paste and margarine too. Open up the instant noodle, and put the soup stock into the bowl.

Put the bowl into the microwave oven, and heat it up until its boiling for 30seconds or so. Stir. Put in the noodle, restart microwave for 2 minutes. Eat :P.

The miso paste gave some nice texture and improved the taste of the soup. The margarine for some oily taste. The vege and crab stick are simply some garnish.

Off to enjoy da late-night menu~ :D~ :D~

My Life (too) ..

Saw this in Planet MyOSS today. Hey!! Its my life too!!!.

Shakugan No Shana Season 1 : @ NTV7!?

Looks like NTV7 just started showing one of my all time favourite anime! .. Shakugan No Shana!!!!. I noticed it just now, when they air the first episode. And guess what, it remains in Japanese, which ROCKS!!

So, Saturdays: 12:30pm, Malaysian anime lovers get the chance to see Shana in action, on Malaysian TV!. I have the whole 2 seasons (season 2 just ended a few weeks ago) in my anime collection, but I guess I'll still watch the TV version (although, undoubtedly, it might have some parts cut).

First Trinity Blood, then Jigoku Shoujo, and now , SHANA!!!!!!. And all of them broadcasted in the original Japanese language, which preserve the beauty of the original seiyuu, the sound effects, and most important, the moe-ness!!.

Go NTV7!!!!

A little hack to get a working Skype RPM with less painful PulseAudio support

This is almost a very old news I presume, nonetheless, I just noticed it today while wasting my time jumping to random Open Source project sites.

It is well known that skype and pulseaudio doesn't play well together. Skype's ALSA implementation doesn't really implement all of the standard ALSA API which caused alsa-plugins-pulse to not work with skype. Fortunately, as stated in PulseAudio Perfect Setup page, the skype static OSS (Open Sound System - another sound standard, different than ALSA) package can be used to work around this issue through padsp.

However, the skype_static-oss package come in a tarball, of which, is ugly/inconvenient to certain people (like me). So, I've hacked together a spec to repackage that binary blob and make Skype almost JustWorks for Fedora. I don't know what Skype's regulation for redistribution of their binaries, so, to be safe, I can only provide you the RPM spec file.

Here is the spec file : skype_static-oss.spec.

Just put the skype_static-oss tarball in your rpmbuild SOURCES directory, and invoke rpmbuild -bb with the spec file. Install the generated rpm and use it as you would normally.

For those who are not familiar with rpmbuild, heres a little script to get you going


# as root
yum install rpmdevtools

# as user
rpmdev-setuptree
cd ~/rpmbuild/SPEC
wget http://izhar.fedorapeople.org/misc/skype_static-oss.spec
spectool -R -g -A skype_static-oss.spec
rpmbuild -bb skype_static-oss.spec

# ... wait ... wait ... wait
# grab the generated RPM
# rpm -ivh (the generated rpm)
# enjoy~



Oh btw, the spec is under WTFPL. Just do wtf you want with it.

Separate taskbar / window list on dualhead GNOME

I noticed this just now when playing around with the panel on my dualscreen setup.

If both screens have a panel with window list on it, the window list will only show the windows of the screen where it resides.

Cool feature.

Workspace Upgraded!

First up in this post. Workspace v0.1.



This was my workspace since I started my internship with Inigo. Small, compact, with only my 1024x768 resolution of my loyal companion Thinkpad R51.

After 4 months with Inigo, 1024x768 started to feel too small to work with. So, on the last PIKOM PC Fair, I decided to grab one external monitor to plug to this laptop for extra screen real-estate. Kaeru recommended me to grab one very big screen - 22inch - and I went for it.

Lucky for me, Dell was having a promotion for their E228WFP Entry Level monitor. For only 849 MYR (approx 265 USD), I'll get a 22inch TFT monitor with 5 years warranty. Tempted, I bought it. Its not cash-n-carry, so I had to wait a week for the monitor.

A week after

The monitor arrived!!!



Setting up for dual display is a little bit tricky with my laptop's i855gm. First, Xrandr couldnt detect all of the resolutions of my 22inch screen. After some tweaking with Xorg.conf and guessing config entries, I got it working at last.

Second tricky part was setting the dual screen layout for left-right position. Sadly I discovered that for i855gm, maximum virtual space is only 2048x2048. So, I had to instead use top-bottom layout to get dualhead working.

Once I understood and accepted the two limitation above, the new gnome-display-properties rocks!!!. It make it easier to configure dual display screen locations and enabling/disabling displays using Xrandr.

And .... Workspace v0.2 is released!!!!





Now, If only I can put that 22inch monitor higher so that i don't need to strain my neck typing on the left, with the display on the right.

yay~~~

Genius: A gift?, or a curse?

The news spreading around the net about Sufiah, a child prodigy 10 years ago who was accepted to Oxford at the age of 12, is now living in a pitiful life as a hooker.

This is not the first time cases like this happens to Malaysian-born genius, previously, (I forgot his name), the boy who managed to fluently read when was 3 years old, is now, a drug addict. There are also some other similar happenings to people around me which I happened to see throughout my school life transfering from state to state with my family.

What possibly have been the cause of this?. Why does these born-geniuses suddenly end up in a pathetic situation?. My opinion, its because of the people surrounding these geniuses and also the media.

These gifted childs, are often the pride of their family and the people around them. Some family, or people around, being very proud of these childs, wanted to show the world about the child. And there came the media, news, gossips, and in a short time, these childs became well known to the world. However, this action, IMO, is a very bad action. The media coverage, the news, and the popularity these children gain from the media, started to create pressure against these childrens to perform well in their academics. Young childrens, they are not emotionally strong when facing this type of pressure , they are very vulnerable to it. By giving media attention to these gifted childs, it created an environment where the children started to be bounded to their gifts. Honor of family, hope of race and nation, hope of people around them, started to turn their gifts to a curse of life. Slowly everything accumulate, and these children .. cracks .. and break. Together with them, the loss of the talents they have, the loss of the potentials these children might open to the future of mankind.

The same goes to the life of normal children. Parents, teachers, family, tend to push children to their limit with very high hopes, very high expectations. Forcing childrens to go to tuition daily, forcing them to strain themselves into studying to get good results, etc. This, IMO, is very bad. The children became overworked, tired, and pressured. Strong ones will be able to cope, but the weak ones started to crack. They started revolting, creating problems to people around them, and destroying themselves. Even the strong ones, they might have some parts of them broken, because of the way they have been raised.

Children are meant to be happy, that is how they develop their minds. Don't cause them to break by putting a lot of pressure to them. These small minds and simple logic can't cope with too much pressure. For the gifted ones, please don't put them to the eyes of the world, let them grow and enjoy their childhood freely. Protect them. When they are older, when they are ready to carry the burden of popularity, that will be when its time to let the world know about them.

My parents does not pressure me on how they want me to be and let I choose the path I want to take. And I am very glad about that.

The are no such thing as "free" in this world. Everything have a payment - not necessarily in term of money. Even Free softwares have their payments - effort to learn how to use it. Gaining popularity == losing your freedom as the world will be watching at you. Having gifted, does not mean that gift won't ask for its price sooner or later.

You want something, you'll lose something. You create something, you'll destroy something. Give and take. Every action have a reaction. From great power, comes great responsibility. Everything have a price. No such thing as a perfect Utopia. Thats how nature keeps it balance. What important is to find the point optimum point.

Catching up

Catching up on stuff that happened this week:

MAMPU Migrates Malaysian Government Agencies to OpenOffice/ODF

MAMPU Migrates to OpenOffice.org

Hooray to kaeru and OSCC!. This is a great success indeed.

UTP-OSS meetup March 2008

Our little special interest group in my University just held a meetup last friday. We haven't done any meetups for quite a while now and to my surprise, it looks like the number of really interested people have grown a lot. The turnout was approximately 20 people, and I can be sure at least 90% of them used linux in some point of their life and have some clue about OSS world. Compared to our previous big meetup which was mostly attended by uninformed people.

Yondie presented his presentation from the last Ubuntu meetup and I share my experience working with an Inigo and how OSS economics works.

IMO, this meetup was a great success and I hope those who are in UTP-OSS can continue this momentum and help building UTP-OSS reputation among UTP academician as a great knowledge-community.

p/s: wheres our cameraman, da.blindheart???. I want the pictures!!. Upload it somewhere pls. :P

Malaysian Election 2008

Seems like its getting near, and people from both Barisan National (BN) and Opposition parties started doing their usual crazy stuff. Both sides with their promises. Both sides with their accusations about their opponent. Which will win?. Lets wait and see. Which party I will vote?, Nobody (because I'm not yet legal to vote :P ). Furthermore, I prefer to be neutral. I value practicality more too.

I myself is not really excited with this event. Why?. Well, I just don't like the system of voting for a party and the party who decides who will become the leader. I see this method, is somewhat not really voting for a leader who will represent my voice and interest, but rather simply choosing what group of people will be the government. Voting for a group, IMHO, made me unable to choose one particular individual, who I feel, is suitable to lead Malaysia better.

In both BN and Opposition, there are good leaders, also in both of them a bunch of lamers (though I admit, IMO, theres one particular side which filled with lamers, but still, there are some good leaders in them too). Voting for a party does not guarantee me that my vote won't help those lamers. I don't want those lamers to become Malaysia leaders, because they sucks!.

When a party wins in a certain state or wins in overall Malaysia, its the people within the party are the ones who choose who will be the leader for that state or the leader of Malaysia. This system, is bad in a way that, its not people who chooses the leader. Within a party, there will always be cronism, etc. Thus, those who wins to be the party leaders, are those who have best influence within the party. I don't like this 2 layers of choosing leaders.

I want to vote for a Person NOT a party.

The Barisan National party, being having too much majority, and always-win, made them Microsoft-like with hidden corruptions. While the Opposition parties, with their impractical promises, accusations, and lame attitude. So, which party will win this time around?. One thing I'm sure, no matter who win, its not us who will get to choose the person who will become the person who will really represent us.

Oh yeah, Go Barrack Obama!!! Go Larry Lessig!!!..

To: Anonymous Coward Who Don't Understand What My Motivation of Reviving UTPchat

Seems like theres one anonymous coward (or maybe the rector himself hide this student's identity), responding at rector's note at UTP ELearning.

Dear Datuk Dr. Zainal,

I would truly support UTP Management to close down IRC and DC++ regardless what reasons given by the students.

I agree that UTP facilities are meant for academic, not for entertainment.

As far i m concern, the request of not to ban IRC shall not be entertained at all. This kind of request carries no value at all as the matter of fact, majority of the students use IRC for non academic purpose, and i admit that i m part of the majority.

I dont understand the reason behind why these students still want to fight for it as if they are paying for the facilities for entertaiment? Why dont they spend their time to struggle and get 4.0 every semester?

So what if the students get the IRC? would they still perform well and obtain 4.0 every semester? Definitely NO because entertainment are more enjoyable than study.


Let's put it in simple term... Who provide the internet facilities? Student or UTP Management? Obviously is UTP Management. So the UTP Management has the fullest authority to do anything, and there shall no be any questions about it. If the students do not like it or dissatisfied, please leave UTP and go create their own IRC in other campuses. I believe there are thousands of SPM leavers and DIploma students who are craving to enter UTP.

Lastly, i hope this issue should have a full stop because it has been carry over and over again. Nothing to be negotiate anymore. Students should understand their responsibility as a student. And that explains everything.

I am sorry for such informal feedback. Perhaps i feel very close to you due to your concern of us.

Dear Anonymous (whoever you are),

Obviously you, either have not been in UTPchat during its glory, have not known any of our graduated older seniors, have not seen what the importance of living as a community, living for others, not only for yourselves.

In any organizations, its the people who made up the organization. The leaders, or organization authority, only lead the way and make sure everything is in control, but its the people who make the organization strong. Without their students, a university will just a building with lecturers and management team.

UTP graduates, since years ago, is well known of their ability to mix with people, and good in both life and studies. But seeing the juniors, I have a feeling that, the identity will no longer be there in the future. Since, they sit in their room, study ,study, study, trying to get 4.0, to the point, a lot of them, forget one important thing - being a good citizen and a good community person who cares about others.

There are more in life than only 4.0CGPA. Your exam results, will only serve you to get your first job, just that. Your future jobs after that, its not your results that matters, its your contribution to your previous employer. But, lessons you learnt from being a good community person, you will bring it to your death. If you look around you, a lot of newer students in UTP nowadays, have lost this community value. They care more about themselves. The spirit of living in community is just not there in them. In the previous UTP era, UTPchat, and Grapevine, served as the environment where this community spirit was built upon.

About the term "entertainment" you mentioned above, for your information, I am not fighting to legalize those DirectConnect hubs. Being an OpenSource contributor made me very familiar with all these Digital Millennium Copyright Acts and related. I am not fighting so that we can share illegal stuff all around UTP, what I am fighting for is, a way for these long lived communication mediums to be revived in a way that is legal, and beneficial for students. I have no problem with disabling filesharing etc, provided that there are acceptable, logic reasons for it. We IRC Operators are ready to cooperate if requested correctly.

There are more in IRC and Forums than just "entertainment". It serves as an convenient environment for people to share ideas, share opinions, voice out problem, discuss for solutions, etc. You, obviously have not been in the industry/world of which IRC and Forums are being used for professional purposes. Professionals, does make use Forums and IRC as a way for them to communicate with other people, usually asking for support or for a simple teleconference. I know because this is how my company do things. And how a lot of others (usually OpenSource industry-related), take advantage of these technologies as a way for them to collaborate globally. I am fighting to build this type of community within UTP, this is what my primary motivation is.

Let's put it in simple term... Who provide the internet facilities? Student or UTP Management? Obviously is UTP Management. So the UTP Management has the fullest authority to do anything, and there shall no be any questions about it. If the students do not like it or dissatisfied, please leave UTP and go create their own IRC in other campuses. I believe there are thousands of SPM leavers and DIploma students who are craving to enter UTP.

UTP provide the facilities, and students who pay for it. Granted, majority of us are being under PETRONAS Convertible Loan Contract, but read that again, its a LOAN. We will need to pay that back later after we graduate. Either by money, or by working with PETRONAS (read: you are going to be a bounded-worker, not being able to have your Freedom, for 10 years). Frankly, if its not because the Convertible Loan Contract stated clearly that my location must be at UTP, I have been long gone from UTP, to some other university that worth that Loan money which I put that 10 years of my future Freedom at stake. Knowing people from other universities, and involving with them, made me noticed that, I have missed quite a number of real-life opportunities to improve my skills, simply because I am stuck at the hidden desert of Sri Iskandar. Furthermore, all these policies, while might benefit the Engineering students in some way (through, well, restricting them from being in ICT), is a discrimination against the ICT students. ICT world is unlike Engineering world where results matters more. ICT world, skills worth more than the results. Results only shows that you have learn this,this,that formally, but not the students skills. ICT talents can usually identified from what the students have done beforehand, what they can prove they worth. And these marketable skills, are not acquired through formal learning, but through experimenting and exploring around with technologies and involving with the communities which share the same interests of that technology. However, the environment in UTP, is not condusive for such activities. I know UTP have more Engineering students than ICT/BIS, but that does not mean, we, the minority, can be ignored from our opportunities.

SPM students craving for UTP?. Think about it, its because the way UTP market themselves to those students, not because they really know how is UTP . Oh yeah btw, I believe, quite a number of students who joins UTP, is not because they want to join UTP. But instead, because they get that Loan-which-masquerade-as-Scholarship, I am quite confident that quite a number of students who entered UTP, are those who applied for Oversea studies with PETRONAS but failed and get to UTP instead.

UTP popular marketing phrase is "Well-Rounded Students", students, who have balance balanced in all aspect of life - not only studies. From what I am seeing now in UTP, well, a bunch of people who have their "Study" bar high, but other bars (especially in ways of living as community), low, which does not make a Round, but some random shape instead.

Lastly, i hope this issue should have a full stop because it has been carry over and over again. Nothing to be negotiate anymore. Students should understand their responsibility as a student. And that explains everything.

And a human, should understand their responsibility toward other humans. A person in a community, should understand their responsibility toward the betterment of the community. These are some values, that a formal education will never teach their students. Students will learn this, through living and contributing to a community. IRC and Forums, are some examples of the medium to build a community.

I doubt this will be a full-stop anytime soon, but this is what I believe in - I will try my best to make UTP understand the technical/community advantage and importance of these two technologies. These technologies have benefited me in my current career, and my community - #linux of UTPchat. I believe it can benefit others too if it is implemented in a proper controlled manner.

I don't believe in stopping these technologies ever fix anything, it'll creates new problem instead - or worse, losing what they can benefit for it simply because we are ignorant and treat everything is bad. What important here, is to educate people, the proper way to use these technologies so that it won't be abused. "There are no such thing as a bad technology, technologies have no mind to think, its the users who make it good, or bad." So, instead of living in denial through blaming that technology is bad, this technology is bad, the user themselves who should be blamed because they are not being responsible for themselves and abuses the technologies to the extent it corrupts them.

Re: An Open Letter for the Rector of PETRONAS University of Technology

The long awaited reply from the rector have arrived!!. Its accessible from UTP ELearning Moodle Site.

=========================================

Thanks for the reply Rector,

--------
5th March 2008
UTP Chat - Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Dear Students ,
Further to some comments/complaints made by a couple of you on the above, please see the following explanation :

As you are aware, we faced serious network problems way back in 2005. Based on the network study conducted, it was found that the network congestions were caused by several factors including servers hosting Internet Relay Chat. After much deliberation, discussion, information exchange with other higher institutions, checking with experts as well as feedback from the students themselves, we found that the disadvantages for outweigh the advantages.

I am aware of that. However, note that I am not against the current network infrastructure which separates the 5 villages. Didn't I said in my original letter that I am a sysadmin too?, I know the advantages/disadvantages. Plus, considering I am someone in the community and experienced things first-hand, I am confident with my knowledge. What I want to fight for here, is reviving the two communication medium which was once flourished in UTP community. Below are my arguments related to your reasons + some mythbusting which somehow, UTP students, some ITMS, and those complaining students, don't understand the real technical background.

The above action had to be taken because the following happenings were noted:
1. Downloading of non-academic related materials e.g. movies, songs, graphics, etc. These are all big size files that chew up a lot of network resources which are very expensive and limited. This had hampered genuine users who are in dire needs of this resources to accomplish their tasks/assignments or any education related matters.

2. Downloading of obscene materials. These materials are then shared over the networks. Please bear in mind that these are not only violating UTP rules and regulations but also Malaysian law. (some students are now waiting disciplinary action)

This is related to the access control at the UTP gateway level. It is not related to UTPchat, neither Grapevine. I am aware of the layer-8 problem which students abusing the upstream connection and caused problem with the connection. Connection to the Internet is not related to UTPchat operation, as we are operating within the UTP LAN itself. Even if we do use the upstream connection, the IRC protocol, is a very light text communication protocol. The link utilization is very low, even lower than people browsing the Internet.

These 2 reasons, are in no way directly related with UTPchat.

3. Playing online games over the network. We also noticed some computers are never being switched off, indicating that the computers are working all night long. This is not only a waste of valuable resources including electricity but worse still it affects students performance due to insufficient rest

Games are games, IRC is IRC. I am fighting for the survival of IRC and the Forums. I myself does not play game much. Maybe once a while. But most of the time, I spend sharpening my ICT skills, and contributing to Open Source projects, and helping people at the IRC channels. Its much more fun and worthy :P.

4. There are also cases of hacking or intruding into computers of others including staff. We treat hacking activities very seriously, hence stern action has been taken on those responsible.

This is the problem of UTP designs itself, and the lack of monitoring and lack of competent people to maintain the vulnerabilities. The staff computers, are poorly maintained. The Operating Systems are not updated with latest security fixes, etc. New vulnerabilities are discovered everyday, its ITMS's job to make sure all of those computers are being patched early before anything happens.

Frankly I say this, the new network layout, in no way secure those staff computers from real crackers. Theres several ways to reach those computers, make it remotely from room, or from other ways which include going as near as possible to the computer. Nonetheless, the new layout does stop the lame-cracker-wannabees in UTP, so, I guess theres one benefit of it.

"No such thing as a 100% secure computing environment, its just the matter of time until someone figure out the method". This is why, maintenance, and competent IT security team is a must.

Again, this point does not relate in any way with my quest to revive UTPchat and its also not my quest to change this network layout as I'm quite okay with it.

5. We also noticed that the chat room is fast becoming a forum or platform to condemn certain personalities, use of abusive words, spreading of rumours, sexual harassment etc. which had offended so many people. Furthermore, hosting IRC had attracted unnecessary traffic to certain portion of the network resulting in network congestion/bottleneck and hence complaints from users.

Again I mention this, IRC is a very light text-based communication protocol. Its traffic (at least for the UTPchat IRC) does not even utilize 1% of out network bandwidth, if theres a congestion/bottleneck somewhere, there must be someone else (which I also hate), doing something.

Rumors, condemn, is a normal thing in communication. Even without those, people will still spreading rumors etc through the traditional way -> "The Mouth". These students, are already above their legal age, by rights, what they said, is their responsibility. Us operators and moderators, can only moderate them, its not our rights to stop them from voicing their opinions. In my opinion, whatever words they use, whatever rude they are, what more important, is their opinion, make it bad oponion or make it good opinion. Condemns, is also opinions in a way, but instead of stopping them (and caused them to condemn even more), find a way to resolve it. Nonetheless, whenever there are reports of objectionable content which have a valid reason, the operators/moderators will take it down. But those students, instead of reporting to us to resolve it, they report to ITMS/UTP management who dont know a thing about it. Which results on hurting innocent people (usually the operators and moderators).

For your information sir, us UTPchat IRC Operators, does have our rules in handling these abuser, such as banning, etc. Theres a popular saying "IRC is a priviledge, its not a rights. Abuse, and be ready to face the consequences". However, this require users to report to us who are abusing the system so that actions can be taken. But, those some UTP students, being themselves who don't understand the technology, take IRC as a rights for them, and instead of reporting to us for us to take action, they reported those to ITMS and even UTP management, which technically, not controlling the IRC infrastructure. And ITMS and UTP management, not doing what to do, start taking weird,annoying,irrational actions which caused problems to innocent people.

Nonetheless, even us IRC operators and Forum moderators, who technically maintain the system, have our limitation of enforcing our rules. Sometimes we need cooperation from higher authority (such as ITMS), to track down and eliminate the abuser, but we don't have that power/technical access to the facilities to track down of those - which results to -> us being blamed.

(I think this is the only point from you that valid and related to my open letter)

6. Some students employed tunneling tools to monopolise the bandwidth utilization.

HAHA!. Okay, I'm guessing this is what ITMS or those people who don't understand the real technology and complains based on rumours told you right?. HAHA! . (pardon me, I cant help it, as I am expecting this answer from you, and I really want to bust this myth)

Sir, these "tunneling to steal bandwidth" thing, is a myth. Tunneling, in computer networking term, means putting one type of traffic from a certain protocol, into another protocol for transmission. The common use of tunneling in UTP is for certain students, to access certain network protocol ports outside of UTP, such as IMAP (port 143 or 993 - for downloading email for offline viewing), SMTP (port 25 or 465 - for sending email ), SSH (port 22 - for controlling a remote computer at home/work - like me), to access external IRC network (port 6667-6669 - I need this a lot for me to communicate with other Open Source people), and others. UTP network is too restrictive which only allow port 80 and 443 (http and https), so, people who need those other protocols, had to tunnel out through some service provider. The Internet is not only what people see in the web browser, its more than that.

Granted, that through tunneling, users can also try to download from torrent or other services, nonetheless, traffic shaping (limiting speed) can always be done. A good traffic shaping rule and a dedicated and competent admininistrator who are dedicated to hunt down those abusers and take action on them, will be able to keep those at par (instead of this lazy only-port80-and-port443 rule).

We have spent so much time and effort to correct the situation resulting in the following outcome :

1. A stable and efficient production network.
2. Complaint pertaining to internet access has significantly reduced to only 3% which is only due to some site/configuration/equipment limitations.
3. Network congestion has been reduced tremendously and the network efficiently had reached more than 75%.
4. Minimized or reduced the chances of virus attack to the whole network. In term of operation, it will be more efficient and easy to isolate the network should outbreaks or attacks occur.
5. Rectification time pertaining to internet access problem or any network related problem is very much reduced. This resulted in more efficient services to all users.
6. Good feedbacks received from users pertaining to internet and network services.

This , (again) in no way related to my quest to revive UTPchat. This is more related to the network separation, and better access control at the gateways. Again, I am not fighting the network separation, and I am not fighting those NetworkBox gateways.

I believe the Internet Relay Chat is not the only way for voicing opinions , views, etc .There are more meaningful activities such as debates, elocution, and other co curriculum activities that provide opportunities to voice your opinion, develop your soft skills, etc.and engaging in intellectual discourse. There are also other activities that can nurture your creativity such as IDS, EDX etc.

Yes those are some of the options. But if you look again, they are mostly academical. Debates and elocutions, does those actually voicing a real concern which happening around and asking for a change?? - rather than debating/speaking, simply for certificates and winning competitions??. The equality is not there, only debaters can voice their opinion, but how about those people , those audience who does not have time/chance to join such thing? are they should be ignored ? are they does not have the rights to voice out?. Some people, take time to think and arrange their points, they can't quickly speakup and debate in real-time manner (I know I am. Blog, letters, and text-communication which allow some time for reply is my way to voice out). Does these people opinions, who will surely lost in a debate event because of they need time, be ignored ?. Some people also, have nervous problem which cause them unable to go to bigger public, does their opinion can be ignored too?. My answer, is a big NO.

These Internet technologies such as IRC and Forums, provide a different medium for these people to voice out, on their free time, without any limitation (that they need to join debate/elocution etc). Anyone, make it people with good grades, people with bad grades, people who does not these chances to voice out in real public, are able to voice out. The virtual environment encourage people to read the opinions itself, rather than questioning who are giving the opinions. Anyone can voice out, anyone can be listened, anyone can reply, regardless who you are.

About events like IDS/EDX/etc, those develops only skills that relates to that events (event management, communication between committee, etc). Again, they serve more academical purposes. What about people who want to develop skills different that those?. They need their own medium, they need their own community. IRC and Forums, can give them a place and communication medium for knowing/finding people who have the same interests build their own community. One notable example, is #linux of UTPchat. That IRC channel, consist of people who share enthusiasm related to the Linux operating system and Open Source world (that includes me). We use the medium for us to gather more people who share the same enthusiasm, help each other, and develop skills related to our interest. We are quite hidden from management right now, as we prefer to do our events unofficially due to bureaucracy takes too much time for us to handle. You can try asking our CIS Dept Head of Dept, Dr. Kamil. He knows about us under the name UTP Open Source Software Association, and he's been quite supportive for us.

All in all, UTP has spent a lot to develop and maintain all these facilities yearly. It is only wise that you use it for meaningful purposes whilst at the same time develop good moral values in you as individuals.
I hope you understand our rationale on the above . We only want the best for you .

For the network design implemented on 2005, I understand and accept the rationale, because I've been spent 1 whole semester during my foundation years trying to understand the network. :). But I am still not getting an acceptable rationale that UTPchat and the forums are bad.

========


Considering my original open letter was misinterpreted. Let me make it clear what I am fighting for here, in point form.

• UTPchat and Grapevine existed in UTP as a community environment since years ago. Also a symbol of Free speech in UTP.


• UTP network redesign on 2005, caused UTPchat and Grapevine to be unstable.


• On the same period too, theres a case which was a stupid-irresponsible UTP student, caused UTPchat and Grapevine being attacked because of false accusation through blocking our physical ports and caused the servers had to be moved around UTP. Directly caused Grapevine to die, and UTPchat to lose momentum.


• After 3 years, those who have been in UTP since the era of UTPchat and Grapevine (including me), noticed the change in UTP community life. Students, especially younger generations, live in their own microcommunity, not knowing others besides people in their class, people who they worked together in events. We, the earlier generation, noticed that UTP students, is slowly losing the quality which our seniors had in themselves. The environment in UTP, no longer have the aura it have several years ago. Learning from our experience, we conclude that, the loss of UTPchat and Grapevine, is one of the major reason this problem to happen.


• Me, as one of the people who are in charge of UTPchat - and the person who have been working hard to maintain the intrastructure, decided that, I must do something, before I end my studies in UTP. UTPchat must be revived, if possible, as an entity which is approved by UTP, and managed in a proper way by a community. I don't want, after I left UTP, these communities and infrastructure will die together with the loss of me. Maintaining this IRC network is hard, and I can't find any new talents who I see as capable to succeed me - mainly because, the many new students, are hidden in their room/class, trying to score 4.0 CGPA.


• What I'm requesting here are:




• cooperation from UTP, for UTPchat, to be revived as an approved entity. I am willing to help with the technical matters, and resolve any issues which UTP might had with us during the previous era.


• I want the large community UTP students, to be revived back, maybe not exactly like the previous era, but having a large community who knows each other, have benefits on its own. New students must know what they have been missing. Having knowing a lot of people (especially seniors) helps them too in the future. Theres a saying, "90% of the job market, is from the hidden world of social network". Having good grades, while it helps to make students pass the filters, could not beat the power of knowing people who work in the company.


• An official cooperation from ITMS, for us to properly control and stop abusers. Also, some additional resource - namely, a subnet, which can be accessed from any villages easily, for us to put UTPchat server. This will reduce the complexity of UTPchat (from 5 servers , to only 1) and hopefully, I am able to find someone to succeed me. This server also, will be also be used to provide a facility, for growth of usage of Open Source technology in UTP.

I hope you will consider this request. Thank you.

====
Update - some additional message to Rector

Forgot to mention this, with my quest of reviving UTPchat as a proper medium of communication in UTP, I am putting together a document/plan for utilizing IRC protocol and Forums in a way that will be beneficial for students and also certain others like lecturers.

http://devel.foss.org.my/~kagesenshi/pub/colUTPit/

It is not yet complete as I still need time to gather ideas and information from several sources and put everything together. Currently I am on my internship and most of my time are focused for my current job. Nonetheless , there are still something there for you to refer to ..

Thank you

An Open Letter for the Rector of PETRONAS University of Technology

DISCLAIMER:
THIS OPEN LETTER IS MY OWN OPINION, FROM MY OWN POINT OF VIEW OF LOOKING AT THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IN UTP. IT DOES NOT REPRESENT UTP STUDENTS AS A WHOLE, NEITHER IT TRIES TO REPRESENT THEM. SOME MIGHT NOT AGREE, SOME MIGHT, BUT I BELIEVE THOSE WHO LIVED DURING THE TRADITIONAL LEGACY OF UTPCHAT AND THOSE WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE COMMUNITY ONCE SURROUNDING UTPCHAT AND GRAPEVINE WOULD AGREE TO SOME, IF NOT ALL, OF MY POINTS BELOW.

Dear Datuk Dr Zainal Abidin Haji Kasim,

I am Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail (ID 7857), an ICT student in UTP from batch Jan2005, and also one of the active UTPchat IRCOperators. I am writing this because I feel like UTP action of forcing UTPchat to it knees several semesters ago is giving a bad impact on community life in UTP. A bad impact which caused UTP to waste the potential of the (so-called) 'cream de la cream' which UTP have grabbed early after their SPM examination.

UTPchat IRC Network, existed originally around more than 10 years ago, is an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network for UTP students to socialize, do activities, as a community environment, place of discussions , and many more. We existed inofficially in the UTP network, yet was known by basically all UTP students and to some extends, staffs. The IRC network flourished as a place where UTP students meet each other, have fun, explore possibilities, voice opinions, share informations, bring up talents, and much more. UTPchat, indirectly contributes to the community spirit of which previous UTP graduates have. The spirit of caring each other, spirit of protecting what they believe is right, spirit of being a part and contributing to a community.

However, a change on 2005 in UTP network infrastructure, which separated the 5 villages in UTP to 5 separate networks, and an unexpected incident which relates to a stupidity of one of UTP's own student, caused UTPchat to face problem from UTP Management due to false accusation from those who don't understand the technical details behind the infrastructure. We faced trouble of keeping our infrastructure intact from the seemingly unstoppable mental and technical attack from UTP managements, thus lead to UTPchat's decline from the student's hearts.

The downfall of UTPchat , followed by the downfall of Grapevine, a LAN based discussion board indirectly affect the UTP students, their ability to voice their opinions truly from their hearts, in term of their ability to live as a community which care each other because they care. UTP students, indirectly became a group of people who only care for themselves, and do stuff for rewards/accreditation/certificate rather than doing stuff because they love doing it. This can be reflected by the decline of informal activities by students, the reduction of events/movements/groups in UTP which values creativity-building and community building, and the worst, UTP students no longer bother to protect their rights - which can be greatly reflected from the lack of interest for MPPUTP, lack of interest to try to make a change, lack of interest to voice their opinions. I believe that these downfall of other community movements in UTP was indirectly affected from the downfall of the medium where they communicate and voice their thoughts.

UTP students now, are more like a bunch of heartless robots, who come to UTP, simply for studying, to get their degree. They joined events because they wanted certificates, because they wanted to put those in their resume. We have lost the people who do stuff because they love it, do stuff because they care about it, do stuff because of pure interest without bothering for certificates, without bothering for accreditation, etc. UTP students now, they simply do whatever they have been told, without really questioning whether the decision are really good for them or not. They have lost their ability to voice out their opinions, they have lost their ability to fight, they have lost their ability to stand up and be true to themselves. The culture of previous UTP students, is just not there.

I remember that several years ago, during my junior days, UTP was such a fun place to be. Students from different batch, different courses, different races, different nation, mix with each other and befriend each other as equals. It was easy during that time to share thoughts and information with other friends. I miss the time when student are loud in declaring their opinions, their views about things, their suggestions. I miss the time when there exist a communication medium and a bond between students and other UTP residents through the network. I miss the time when UTP was filled with people who I can say that they are respectable people. I miss the time where there are a lot of creative thinker community in UTP, people who explores and create new ideas and stuff regardless what public says about them, people who are willing to try because of pure interest rather than being forced.

What happened to UTP motto of creating so called 'Well-Rounded Students'?. Is that motto is simply a way to get students to come in and study in UTP and make them slaves (read: robots) who simply follow what their master told them to do?. Or does the definition of 'Well-Rounded' for the UTP Management means, people who spend more time on studying to get 4.0 CGPA? people who are obedient to orders? people who can be easily controlled? people who doesnt fight for their rights? people who only know what their course and events they joined taught them and can't do anything else? people who do things for rewards not because they really want to do it? Does getting 4.0 really matters if a student is only good academically but can't really apply what they have learn for the betterment of the nation? Reminds me of a poem by Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken. How willing are us to go against the flow and make a change?.

Sir, I'm asking you, "Is that what you want it to be?". If yes, so be it. There are still 2 or 3 batch of students from the old legacy in UTP, the generations who still carry the spirit of community from our seniors, and we are slowly reducing in number every semester. The new students, from my observations, are more interested in studying, excel in university's co-curriculum, rather than living as a community. Newer students mostly match my description of a bunch of robots, or, more likely, a bunch of obedient high school students, NOT university students who are adventurous to explore more in what they learn and louder to voice their opinions. The culture of previous UTP graduates are just not there in their hearts. Once these 2 or 3 batch of students graduated, I'm afraid thats the end, both for UTPchat and wholeness of UTP graduates.

Yes, I know posting this kind of thing is bad for UTP reputation and might be bad for me too. But something need to be done. Something need to change. Sitting behind the scene , complaining, ranting and watching the communities die won't get us to anywhere. A university is a place where students learn to utilize their potential, a place for students to develop their creativity beyond what being taught in class, beyond the academic perspective. There exist people with lots of talent and potential in UTP, but their potential got limited due to the restrictions put on them.

There are still a lot of points I wanted to raise to you sir, but they are more in the technical term rather than the points above which relates to 'soft' values of UTP students. So, I would keep those for later. If this letter somehow offended the some of the readers due to my sharp words, I am sorry for that.

Regards.

Automatic kernel crash reporting?

I updated to today's rawhide and rebooted. It boots but crashed when loading Xorg. Rebooted again and it back working. After login, a libnotify popup appeared (and I thought it was Xorg which fscked):



There's another popup after sending to notify it successfully sent but I was too late to screenshot it as it disappears after a few second. Anyway, this thing is neat!. Finding data after a kernel crash is not something 'users' would do, but with these, upstream gonna have some good data to work with.

Statistics are gathered at KernelOops.org

3 days on Rawhide

I've been on Rawhide for almost 3 days now. So far there are no showstopper bug that prevents me to do work. The new GDM looks cool, Firefox3 is great, new System-config-firewall is great, but Xorg is a little bit scary (I've expected this problem : OneSecondX feature brings a lot of changes into Xorg - unstability is unavoidable).

What I can't do for now:
* Switch VT - I can't switch back to X after that
* Use Compiz/3D apps - X crashes right after starting compiz/glxgears - #427643
* Exit X/Logout - X could not restart

All problem above resulted in a total lockup from physical access. Box still responding through network.

For others, everything works fine like usual (at least for my purposes, and of course, the versions are newer than F8 versions).

Zenoss on Fedora 8

I've wasted 1.5 day trying to get zenoss from their RPM to run on my F8 laptop using compat-python24 from livna. I've tried lots of ways like recompiling, export PYTHON and PYTHONPATH env variables etc but without much luck. I solved it just now after looking into the python files and noticed that they are all hardcoded with /usr/bin/python instead of /usr/bin/env python. There are even some that uses /opt/zenoss/bin/python. Here's my little hackfix to make zenoss starts cleanly.

Before running this, I recommend existing zenoss install to be removed, rm -rf /opt/zenoss, and reinstall it clean.


#!/bin/sh

ZENOSS_DIR="/opt/zenoss"
PYTHON="/usr/bin/python2.4"
cd $ZENOSS_DIR

find . -type f -exec sed -i "s|/usr/bin/python|${ZENOSS_DIR}/bin/python|g" '{}' ';'

cd $ZENOSS_DIR/bin
rm python
ln -s $PYTHON python


A little description about the above script. It simply change all /usr/bin/python to /opt/zenoss/bin/python and replace the symlink /opt/zenoss/bin/python to point to /usr/bin/python2.4

Now Zenoss can be started using /sbin/service zenoss start.

Happy that I have a test instance now, time to figure out how to install it on freebsd qemu. >.<