Ops Tulen 2007 - The "promo" continues

This year's Ops Tulen was not as big as last years. Almost no flyers sent via regular mail. Very little threats and scams via emails. I hoped that it was because of the market's backlash against the blatant threats just to push sales.

However today I received the latest, and probably the most brutally honest ad campaign run in this series. No subtle marketing messages here. Just the basics. Scary imagery. Offer of way out. Sell stuff. What a bargain!

Save n' be Safe. Is not a good enough tagline...
... it really should read: Threaten 'n Profit!

Thats right. They used an image of a handcuff. Is it a double-entendre? Are they suggesting that I am engaged in criminal acts ( ... is S&M outlawed)? Or is it a hidden warning against the advertised Microsoft products, which will inevitably handcuff or lock you into the vendor's treadmill of constant upgrades and limited CALs?

Can't they see how insulting it is to receive an "offer" like this? Do you think the advertisers customers would react positively towards this mailer? Is the offer so poor (purchase 6 licenses, get 1 free = a mere 14% discount) that you have to resort to criminal threats? Is Malaysia's reputation in piracy so bad that sending out threats like these are justifiable? Is this how the ICT industry in Malaysia should grow?

Perhaps it was just a rogue Microsoft reseller? Well, judge for yourself. Here is the official June "Shout out" from Microsoft sent yesterday:

Snitches are paid well ...

Microsoft and their resellers should run more constructive campaigns. Educational campaigns on Copyright which educates users on the "ownership" software, benefits of software with support, the importance of a vendor/distributor/reseller channel. Or just proper promotional activities with better bargains adjusted to the Malaysian buying power. Perhaps the piracy rate in Malaysia is higher than in the US because we pay the same amount (if not more) and are less likely to afford the software?

Shame on them for taking advantage of the BSA and Ministry of Domestic Trade, as another excuse to push more licenses. These strongarm tactics are taking its toll on the Microsoft brand, and when the Malaysian public finally realise that there are valid alternatives to these products, there will be very little goodwill or brand loyalty left in to keep us from switching.

Tell your marketeers to grow up!

yk.

Ubuntu dialup via bluetooth

After using Feisty Fawn, Ubuntu v7.04 for close to a month now, Im happy to report that things are going extremly well. Latest task was to get my e61 to work with my computer so that I can dial up to the internet whenever I dont have access to a wifi spot or wired connectivity.

I have been using a CNet CBD-021 device for over a year now, and it has some nifty tools for Windows XP, with a nice UI "BlueSoleil" which displays connected and available bluetooth devices around the computer. It also provides point and clicky access to file transfers and dial up networking.

However in the Linux world, no such niceities are provided. We have to do things ourselves, unfortunately. So heres what I had to do to get Laptop -> Bluetooth dongle -> Nokia E61 -> Maxis internet connectivity going.

First step is to get bluetooth working. Plug the Bluetooth dongle into your machine. The dmesg should read something like this:
# dmesg
[ 9383.380000] usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[ 9383.548000] usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 9384.356000] Bluetooth: HCI USB driver ver 2.9

This wiki entry for Ubuntu is extremely useful: "Bluetooth Setup" Basically make sure that bluetooth tools are installed:

# apt-get install bluez-utils ppp
# hcitool scan

[Update: 080211 yky: bluez-pin is not required anymore ]

The output I get from this is: 00:12:D1:6C:8F:10 Yk's phone

I set the computer bluetooth key using the bluez-pin utility

I then paired up my phone with my laptop via the e61 interface. Menu / Connectivity / Bluetooth / Paired Devices, exchanging a numeric key to complete the step.

To make your phone a modem, you will need to define it as a rfcomm device. To do so;

# sdptool browse 00:12:D1:6C:8F:11

of which a whole list of services will be displayed. The one of importance is

Service Name: Dial-Up Networking
Service RecHandle: 0x10013
Service Class ID List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 2
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Version: 0x0100

Highlighted is the Channel number, and for my case, its #2. So edit the /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf file

rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
device 00:12:D1:6C:8F:10;
channel 2;
comment "Yk's phone";
}

This means that everytime bluetooth is enabled and your phone is detected, a modem device will be created and accessible as /dev/rfcomm0

[Update: 080211 yky: You will now need to restart the bluetooth service with a /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart for the rfcomm0 device file to appear]

The next step is to configure wvdial. This blogpost has some information "pairing bluetooth modem di feisty fawn" Fortunately I can read Indonesian. To configure wvdial to dialup to maxis, the configuration for /etc/wvdial.conf is:


[Dialer Defaults]
Phone = *99#
Username = maxis
Password = wap
New PPPD = yes
Dial Command = ATDT
[Dialer E61]
Modem = /dev/rfcomm0
Baud = 460800
Dial Command = ATDT
Init2 = ATZ
Init3 = ATM0
Init4 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","unet"
FlowControl = crtscts
Modem Type = Analog Modem

Note the Init4, username, password and phone number have been modified, as described in "Using a phone as a modem" from maxis themselves.

You should now be able to dial into maxis by typing:

# wvdial E61
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.56
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ ATZ OK
--> Sending: ATM0 ATM0 OK
--> Sending: AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","unet" AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","unet" OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99#
--> Waiting for carrier. ATDT*99# CONNECT
~[7f]}#@!}!} } }2}#}$@#}!}$}%\}"}&} }*} } g}%~
--> Carrier detected. Waiting for prompt.
~[7f]}#@!}!} } }2}#}$@#}!}$}%\}"}&} }*} } g}%~
--> PPP negotiation detected.
--> Starting pppd at Thu May 24 16:37:43 2007
--> Pid of pppd: 30491
--> Using interface ppp0
--> local IP address 58.71.246.115
--> remote IP address 10.6.6.6
--> primary DNS address 10.213.17.1
--> secondary DNS address 10.213.17.2

Unplug your cables, shutdown your Wifi, check your route tables. Confirm to yourself that your internet access is being provided by your phone. Rejoice.


yk.

Ubuntu: Feisty Fawn

I managed to download ubuntu Feisty Fawn from the Taiwanese servers and got it relatively quickly. I installed it last Friday, and have been using it for a few days now and Im glad to say its pretty good!

First off, the installation process was OK, although it b0rked slightly while doing a Windows document migration. I just clicked cancel and it went away. Just slightly disconcerting.

After installation, I went into System/Preference/Desktop Effects, and immediately enabled compiz. Magically, it started up immediately, and it worked out of the box without me having to install any other drivers for my laptop's ATI Mobility Radeon 9200. Wobbly windows galore!

note: nice drop shadows, transparency on background windows and frames

Not wanting to miss out on the new eye candy, I installed beryl following these instructions: 3D Desktop (Beryl and Xgl) on Ubuntu Edgy Eft with ATI card
Installation, as I have now taken to expect, was a breeze. Synaptic is very nice. I just wish it would download files in parallel, and/or change to faster mirrors on the fly (ala Download Manager).

Beryl Settings and its Emerald Theme manager are extensive. There are a whole load of gizmos to test out and modify. Changing the drop shadow blur, the K factor in the wobbly windows, how windows minimize and appear, and whether to have over-the-top effects is addictive, and can waste a good hour or two of your life. Beware.

The other things I have done in making myself at home is to leverage on Google's tools to self integrate in the many different platforms. The Google Browser Sync for Firefox makes sure that my bookmarks and cookies are stored outside my Windows and Linux partitions. Ive also had to download my must have Add-ons, Mouse Gestures, PermaTabs, Google Notebook and Chatzilla.

I have Lotus Notes installed, running on CrossOver Office. Unfortunately the Lotus Notes window crashes or rather disapears when I do a beryl rotation of the cube. Its strange.

Ive setup some network printers. Pointing to a HP printer via JetDirect was easy, but setting up a printer which was shared by Windows was strange. I set SMB as the protocol, and everytime my computer located a Windows machine, a pop up appeared asking for a password. So if your network contains many machines (like mine) "Good Luck." Other than that, I managed to type in the Windows share name, and CUPS managed to find the appropriate share on that machine and I was up and running after selecting the correct printer driver.

Only now I wish there was an option to print 2 pages in one as most Windows HP drivers have the option to.

peeking behind Firefox... Lotus Notes, GIMP and OOo Calc running 'transparently' in the back ground

Other than that, the fonts look really good on my LCD display, and its certainly an impressive distro. Try it out today.

I passed a copy to Aizat and he too is finding it worthy of an upgrade.


yk

An Inconvenient Truth

I had the opportunity to watch Al Gore's Academy Award winning documentry "An Inconvenient Truth" last night, and it was both scary and inspiring. The message was clear. The delivery was excellent. The facts were sound. I'd encourage anyone who has any moral fibre to watch that movie.

It is not just some handwaving nor vague presentation of global warming as we have glossed over over the years. This documentary actually shows honestly the scientific facts without dumbing down the content. There are no patronising quips and where there are basic points which needed to by explained, the show does it in a humourous manner, so that the people who are new would get educated and the people who already know, would be entertained. Its an excellent way of delivering a message an appealing to the entire audience.

Al Gore's treatment of FUD is also excellent. He gives a history on the misuse and spreading of Doubt. The tactics used against the message of Global Warming is very similar to what the FOSS community is facing. There are many lessons which can be learnt!

On the issue on Doubt about Global Warming, he states that in the scientific community, all 928 peer reviewed papers on this issue does not contradict the proposal that:

"Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"

None. No scientist says otherwise. And yet, yesterday in The New Straits Times, there was an article stating that there were some 'scientists' who stated that "Global Warming is a Sham." Which highlights Al Gore's findings that 48% (I think that was the figure in the movie) of POPULAR news are 'undecided' or 'cannot confirm' or 'raises questions' that mankind is causing climate change. It shows that the lobbying of oilcos are successfull where it matters: the public's perception on the threat of global heating.

Apple and the 'Keynote' the software used to present "the slide show" was featured prominently, and well deservedly so. The data was well presented in the movie. The graph which was shown which blew my socks off was this:

This is the Wikipedia version. In the Al Gore version, he projected it on a very large screen, and used a cherry picker to demonstrate how high that CO2 concentration is going. This graph shows that our CO2 creation is not cyclical nor is it normal throughout the history of our planet. It is not caused by nature but directly caused by us humans.
He then correlates this with the CO2 levels and temperature. I could not find a suitable graph in Wikipedia as the closest one is not easy to read. They shouldnt have normalised so much.

[note the x-axis is flipped]

What was hard hitting was the collapse of the Larsen B glacier in Antartica. We thought that it would not fall for the next 100 years but in 2002 it did. The immediate impact was that low lying islands had to be evacuated as the islands were literally submerged.

If Greenland (near the Artic) were to thaw out, the sealevels would rise by 6m. If parts of Antartica were to thaw out, where there are current signs of doing so, that would be another 6m. The rise in the water levels will displace over 100 million people worldwide.

There was no need to hype the facts. Al Gore's delivery was even handed and clear. The facts by themselves are so scary.

I urge all of you to see this film, and lets try to save ourselves.



visit Climate Crisis


yk.

Firefox and IPv6

Just installed Ubuntu 6.10 in my laptop for fun. Installation was a breeze, although it refused to install on the partition I wanted it to. It just kept complaining that I hadn't defined the root mount point, when I obviously did. However when chosing another partition, it went on OK. So I still have Ubuntu 6.06 in my Hard drive.

I had a strange problem browsing the internet. Firefox refused to work, giving me a "connection timeout" on every website. Ping and dns resolved ok via the command line. Even more peculiar, Konqueror worked as well. So, did a google for a solution, and managed to find this:

linuxquestions.org

of which it states:

"Try turning off IPv6 in Firefox. For some reason that tends to fix problems with Yahoo.

Type 'about:config' in the address bar and look for 'network.dns.disableIPv6' and toggle it to true"

Did that, restarted Firefox, and voila, it worked.


yk.

Nokia E61 knocked out

My E61 died when I was retrieving some emails. So "Messaging" had stopped working. Accessing this app would flicker the screen, and return to the "Standby" menu. This meant that I could not access my POP accounts for work and GMail, but more importantly, I could not open the "Inbox" for SMSes!

So I tried the usual reboots, shaking, taking the battery out and counting to 10, praying to the Nordic gods ... to no avail.

Finally, out of options, I decided to wipe the sucka. Coincidentally, there was a firmware upgrade, so I had to download the new version of the Nokia Software Updater (21MB), and then download the new firmware (48MB) for the E61.

So since the last upgrade, this new version at 3.0633.09.04 definitely feels faster. Ive also discovered more blogs which just go on and on about these Nokia phones: E-Series which discuss the hardware, and Symbianv3 which highlights new software. The improvements for the new upgrade is detailed here, some of which are quite nice.

After using it for the past 12 hours, I have found that the data network stability is significantly better. Both for 3G/GPRS and WiFi. Previously while using the browser on the couch at home, the signal would drop just because I moved my arm. Now, browsing or downloading POP email is very consistent.

I made a backup prior to the upgrade, but when I restored the data, the same problem of "Messages" not available recurred. So I had to reset the phone by typing in *#7370# with the default password of "1234". This wipes the memory fresh. But it also meant that I had to restart configuring the device all over again. I wonder if its possible to just "Restore" the calendar and contacts from the backups without the other settings?

Oh yes. The settings for POP3 for GMail is:
Connection Settings / Incoming Email:

User name: [username]@googlemail.com # note its, googlemail, not gmail.
Password: [password]
Incoming mail serv.: pop.googlemail.com
Access point in use: Maxis WAP 3G # or whatever. I have a group.
Mailbox name: gmail
Mailbox type: POP3
Security (ports): SSL/TLS
Port: Default
APOP secure login: Off

Connection Settings / Outgoing Email:

My email address: [username]@gmail.com
User name: [username]@gmail.com # note, its gmail, and not googlemail as in incoming!
Password: [password]
Outgoing mail serv.: smtp.gmail.com # note, its gmail.com and NOT googlemail.com
Security (ports): SSL/TLS
Port: Default

User Settings:

My name: [full name]
Send message: Immediately
Send copy to self: Yes
Include signature: No
New e-mail alerts: On
Reply-to: Off
Delete e-mails from: Phone and server #doesnt really remove nor archive from server

Retrieval Settings:

E-mail to retrieve: Msgs. & attachs.
Retrieval amount: All # this is IMPORTANT. If you select 30 new ones, then the mailbox will erase itself and only display the new emails.

Took me a while to get this setting right... its not obvious.


yk.

SPAM: No Listing

Ive read about the concept on No Listing awhile back, but never ventured in setting it up for the domains I look after. Reading xWingz post inspired me to try it out for real.

We currently have a few lines and therefore a few separate IP addresses within the MX groupings. So it was relatively easy for us to try this out. We just disabled Port 25 (smtp) on the main mail server. We initially just left it at that, without a response to the request to the sender. This meant that the delivery was delayed, as the sender had to wait one to two minutes before timing out to the "dummy" mailserver.

You can test this by telnetting to the port: 'telnet mail.host.com 25' and that would take forever before it returns any results.

Therefore, to be a better 'netizen, and as recommended by the No listing page, we have requested the server to return a "Reject" on any connections to port 25. This means that the connections are immediately terminated, and non-spam senders will immediately try MX record #2.

Additionally, instead of doing this blind, we have current statistics of spam rates collected over the year on some selected email accounts. So here is the graph of spam (red) vs ham (everything else) for the past two weeks:


As you can see spam for these accounts are at a "healthy" 80-90%. We shall see in a few weeks if the changes made to the MX records make a difference to our spam rates!

yk.

Firefox 2.0 - the upgrade

Ive finally upgraded to Firefox 2.0. The reason why I hadn't done earlier was because I was very happy with my setup with Firefox 1.5, and didnt really want to mess around with more settings and other twiddly things. I dont have time for that.

However I saw my colleague doing a search and I was impressed with the fact that it finally searches within text areas! Previously when I was updating large text files in webmin like httpd.conf or the aliases file, I had to Ctrl-A Ctrl-C (copy all) and Ctrl-V (paste) it into Notepad++ before I can do some proper searching and text editing.

Firefox 2's new spell checker is a bonus too. The dotted red lines are far less obtrusive than regular word processors wiggly red lines. Its nice.

What I didnt like about Firefox 2 was the way it displayed the tabs. Unlike Firefox 1.5, it would keep the width of the tabs and scroll new tabs along. This is unnecessary usage of screen real estate, and the individual close (x) buttons are either very hard to hit when you need them, or extremely easy to click on when you dont expect it to.

So here's how to change it to a better behaviour. Type in "about:config" in the URL bar. You should see something like this:

To change the close tab buttons to appear on the right hand side as in Firefox 1.5, change
browser.tabs.closeButtons = 3

To make sure that the tabs shrink to fit, change this:
browser.tabs.tabClipWidth = 0
browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 0

Firefox 2.0's tab behavior would be close to what 1.5 handled them. Add-ons like "mouse gestures" and "Free Download Manager" was automatically upgraded and installed.

So far, no hassles.


yk.

Yum, PHP and Xen running 32bits on a 64bit machine.

My host Xen server is an AMD 64bi machine. The little Xen VMs are based on CentOS 4.4 32bit, which I plan to keep it as such to allow easy migration. However it comes with abit of risk.

I managed to run 'yum install httpd mysql mysql-server' without any problems. But when I needed to install PHP, typing in 'yum install php' would result in a horrific set of errors which look like this:

Error: Missing Dependency: libgssapi_krb5.so.2()(64bit) is needed by package openssl
Error: Missing Dependency: libdl.so.2()(64bit) is needed by package openssl
etc...

which indicates that yum has detected the 64bit nature of the host arch, as 'uname' gives it away.

So how do I force yum to install only i386 binaries? Simple, RTFM! 'man yum' ... somewhere in the middle of the documentation, it states:

Specifying package names
A package can be referred to for install,update,list,remove etc with any of the following:

name
name.arch
name-ver
name-ver-rel
name-ver-rel.arch
name-epoch:ver-rel.arch
epoch:name-ver-rel.arch

For example: yum remove kernel-2.4.1-10.i686

So to get php to install nicely, just type:

yum install php.i386

and it works!

[Update: 5 minutes later.
It kinda worked. there was a problem at the end of the installation. Yum complained that 'package php-pear-4.3.9-3.22 is intended for a x86_64 architecture'. So "no problem," I thought, "I just apply what I learnt to php-pear by using 'yum install php-pear.i386'"
No. yum resolved that php needed more stuff like openssl, and decided to look for the 64 bit installation. I tried my luck and did this:

yum install php-pear.i386 php.i386

on the reasoning that I should also force yum to install only i386 archs for these two items. Surprisingly, it kept all the dependencies to i386, and it resolved it well.

So NOW it works.]

yk.

Xen and Centos 4.4

After finding it "difficult" to install extra stuff in a rPath installation, Im now trying to use the CentOS images from jailtime.org.
Got it running, and after getting the network up, I needed to install these basic administrative tools

1. webmin
2. vi

I got the latest rpm from webmin.com, and typed in 'rpm -hiv webmin.xx.noarch.rpm' It complained that it needed perl, so I had to do this

yum install perl

After downloading 12MB of stuff, rpm'ing webmin was successful. Joy.

The default editor provided by jailtime is 'nano'. Its a nice interactive editor, but I guess Im way to used to 'vi'. 'vi' is definitely primitive by anybodies standards, but I guess typing in the 'Esc-W-Q' has become ingrained in my fingers, that I can't help but to install it.

Unfortunately it is not straightforward, as 'yum install vi' does NOT work.
Googling for this is hopeless, as when you do a search for 'yum install vi', you just get instructions on how to edit yum repositories with vi, and its not very helpful.

However a 'which vi' on a system which has 'vi', gives a hint:

alias vi='vim'
'usr/bin/vim'

however a 'yum install vim' also does not work, as the proper command is actually

yum install vim-enhanced

This will do the necessary dependency checks, and will offer to download 4.5MB worth of stuff! I never knew a console based text editor would be so bulky.

Anyway, I shut down the Xen image, made a copy of it so that next time I need to prep up a virtual server, I already have one preprepared.


yk.

Rapid respawns

If you are every using rPath Linux in Xen, and you get this errors in your console:

INIT: Id "2" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "5" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
INIT: Id "6" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

you will find that that the terms are not created yet in /dev i.e.

#ls /dev
tty tty1

so you would have to create em as such:
[removed the prompt, so its easy to copy&paste!]

cd /dev
mknod tty2 c 4 2
mknod tty3 c 4 3
mknod tty4 c 4 4
mknod tty5 c 4 5
mknod tty6 c 4 6

That should get rid of the pesky messages.

yk.

Skimming through 6039 pages of MSOOXML

As a member of SIRIM TC4, I am entrusted to check out any work passing through the committee. The latest of course is the evaluation of the Microsoft Office Open XML (MSOOXML) standard which is being fast-tracked through ISO, which Malaysia has a vote.

So I dutifully downloaded the massive 49MB file from ECMA, and hoped that Adobe Acrobat would not steal too much of my system resources to view the 6039 page file.

The document is huge. Im not too sure how it can be "fast-tracked" because theres just so much to cover. The document is also full of wierd stuff. For example there are over 10 pages with pictures on how to render a 3d "button" with 3 lights and different materials. I didnt know that office document creation was as extensive as a 3D visualisation package.

As I scanned through the document, it became very apparent that there are many things not very consistent with it. Within an hour, I managed to pick up about 5 aspects, and they are quite significant issues regarding the standard.

If you are a techie, I would like to encourage you to have a look at this specification, because it is interesting that such a document could be allowed to be fast-tracked.

Here is my first evaluation of one of the problems with this standard: "MSOOXML has poor XML Element names."

You can also view a growing list of objections at grokdoc.

yk.