Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Neighbors

Cuppa has moved to the new place and first thing he did was to visit his neighbors, feline ones.

This boy is dozing off


Thursday, December 25, 2008

Carbide.C++ is Given Free (Quietly)

New thoughts as of Dec 26:
On the PC-front, Apple's Mac OS is gaining market share and this could be the most serious threat MS has to deal with. Linux although has been touted as the Windows replacement for years, due to its decentralized nature of development, I feel it still has a long way to go.

Will MS release Visual Studio for free when further threatened by The Fruit? We will see, but the giving away of Carbide.C++ will keep me from buying any MS development tools in the near future. Freebie is good. :)

-------------------
Carbide.C++ is an IDE for Symbian OS, developed by Nokia. As recent as a few weeks ago it was still selling for as much as 3500 Euros for the OEM edition where the user gets all the works.

The tide has changed course and all editions are available for download, totally free of charge.

Nokia must has felt the heat from gPhone (running Android), iPhone (running trimmed down Mac OS?), and probably phone running a new OS from Palm (pPhone?). This step is on the right path, but its effectiveness remains yet to be seen. For the mean while, I am delighted to have the full-featured IDE to play with.

What Lessons Can We Learn?

First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The world economy is in a mess, and a lot of economists are predicting the worst is yet to come.

I could still recall when the sub-prime morgage crisis just reared its ugly head a while back, there were 'experts' and even banks claimed this issue was limited to individual institutions. The disclosed amount of poison assets was far lower than what actually turned up to be, and the rest was history.

If we inspect this string of incidents, step back, and think for a while, we can draw some observations:

The tip of iceberg: when a financial institution fails due to exposure to questionable assets, it can't be an isolated case. There must a systemic problem that manifests in the background and I even argue it is safe to say most of the institutions with similar nature will be affected, those not affected are rare exceptions.

So what have been hot beside banking and finance in the last few years? Answer is: Outsourcing.
Both of them are Irrationally hot: some point in time everyone was rushing or considering to do banking, and every company was rushing to outsource, or at least thought of outsourcing.

It seems outsourcing, too, rears a pretty ugly head: Satyam Computer Services, from India, is banned by the world bank from doing business with it for 8 years. News is here.

If we apply the lesson we learned from the banking system failure and assume the lesson can be applied, I will check my accounts and the deliveries very carefully if I had dealt with these outsourcing companies before.

Luckily, I haven't.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

The Time When Vista Doesn't Suck (Too Much)

In my previous post, I mentioned I got myself a notebook computer, BenQ S42, which is equipped with Windows Vista Home Premium. Since the S42 is equipped with hybrid graphics cards (integrated Intel GMA and nVidia 9600M GT), downgrading it to XP will disable one of the cards permanently. However each of those has its own advantages: the GMA is weak in graphics processing but it uses less power while 9600M is much more powerful, but also is very power hungry at the same time. Therefore I have to use Vista. This is not the first time I use Vista, the last time I used was around 15 months ago with my company's notebook computer. That experience was less than optimal and I promptly downgraded to XP in a few days.

Fast-forward to today, I have been using Vista for close to 3 weeks and the experience is different. It is much more pleasant than last time. Has Vista improved in leaps and bounds in 15 months? I will say yes it has improved somewhat, and also note the hardware I have now is also way more advanced. Given these two factors, I find Vista is entirely usable, and admittedly, it has addressed some nuisances of XP that are really inconvenient.

For example, in XP your can either be a user or an administrator. If you login into a regular user account, you are forbidden to perform most system-level changes. You have to log-out and re-login as an administrator. In Vista, it will automatically prompt you for administrator password. Although it is still quite annoying, but at least you can do most stuff in one account.

You see, 'Vista sucks' is one of my assumptions that I believe so deeply for a long time. I avowed I would avoid using it as much as I could. Though I still won't entrust my precious data to it (that is ZFS's job, period), as a system for entertainment and casual net surfing, it is quite adequate.

What I have in hand is an assumption that is no longer valid due to external changes (M$ improves it and hardware advances). My concern is: how many of the assumptions I still believe in are no longer valid now?

It reminds me a quote by a Caltech professor, which goes something like: "except strictly forbidden by physics, or else anything is possible"

The only mitigation I can think of is to experience more and keep challenging our own assumptions. Be adventurous, be meticulous, open your head, and most importantly, have fun. :)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Why Screw Yahoo?

A former worker of Yahoo! recently has made a video titled "Screw You Yahoo" (link is here).

I sympathize the plight of losing one's job. However, I just feel there are a lot of people think they are entitled to their jobs and it is as sacrosanct as their birth rights. And when they suddenly got fired, they were in a very rude awakening, realizing so far they harbored neither skill nor money to withstand the ever changing world.

If we look closely to those families who are hit by the waves of retrenchments and lay-offs, I am sure there are a lot of heart-wrenching stories: kids can't go on with their educations, old folks can't retire and have to continue working, couples fight and quarrel over petty cash, family cancel their holiday plan, etc. It is therefore much more relevant and useful to learn from others' mistakes and not to repeat those.

I think what I can learn from this wave of economic crisis is:
  1. A lot of conventional assumptions are proven wrong. Usually people will think banks will never fail, hey, they can just print more money! Now, a lot of banks have gone belly up. My other thought is when people are flooding a particular place/field, we should avoid that place entirely. For example, banking and the financial sector have been the hot babes in town. Countless people, from the working professionals to high school kids all want to be bankers or financial analysts because of the obscenely high salaries. Think about it, where does all the money come from?
  2. Usually people will jeer at people who put cash under their pillow as silly and ignorant, however this crisis proves those people's money seem to be safer than those who put in the bank. Those who entrust the almighty banking system may not even see most of their money if their savings are over the insured limit.
  3. Complacency kills. If you don't push yourself hard enough, you won't make it when the external world pushes you. Case in point is the car manufacturers in the states. They have been complacent for decades, even after losing market share year after year to Japanese and even Korean car makers, no attempt was done to revamp and streamline the product line. The outcome is when the crisis stroke, they fell flat on their faces. Guess who gotta foot the bill....?
The world is changing in a faster and faster pace, and definitely all rules are made to be broken. We have to be vigilant and keep studying the environment in order to keep abreast with the latest development. The bad news is we can't rest. The good news is, change does bring about opportunities. So if you study the world carefully and apply common senses, it is much easier to be successful than in the normal times.

Good luck ;)

Thursday, December 11, 2008

How To Recession-Proof Your Career

Here is a good article on how to recession-proof a programming career, but almost all of the advices can be applied to any technical career with minor modification.

Here is the summary, with some of my own thoughts
  1. Volunteer to Lead a Big Project
  2. Another way is to take control important projects such that you become indispensable. Most of the time, 'important' means 'money making'


  3. Show Up Early, Leave Late

  4. Make sure you look busy.


  5. Start a MicroISV
  6. MicroISV refers to an one-person software house. Since that article is targeting programmers, the author is talking about starting one's own business that can generate recurring incomes.


  7. Moonlight

  8. Getting a part-time/contract job may not be practical most of the time. But in this economy, temp jobs will be aplenty because companies will refrain from hiring perms.


  9. Become a Popular Blogger, Author, Speaker, Podcaster, etc…

  10. Increase one's popularity. Marketing is vital nowadays.


  11. Become a Trainer

  12. Becoming a trainer has double advantages: it is a good marketing tool for your prowess and also serves as respectable income source


  13. Write Technical Articles

  14. Same as above


  15. Work for a “Recession-Proof” Company

  16. This idea may not be practical nowadays, as it is hard to tell which industry is 'recession-proof'...


Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Weird Quote

While reading this article on the new OpenSolaris 08.11, I came across the following quote:

The OpenSolaris project launched its first pseudo-commercial release, code-named Project Indiana, in May, with the goal of getting the open source variant of Solaris humming along in binary form and being used by the development community and other cheapskates who like to play with operating systems but who don't want to pay for them.


What caught my attention is the author labels those who tinker with open-source, free software as cheapskates who don't want to pay. Hey come on, if Windows were open-source, i promise I will install Windows everywhere, including the flush system of my loo.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Weekend Trip

Last weekend I attended my ex-colleague's wedding dinner at Kuala Lumpur. Four of us departed Singapore by car and the whole trip took around 5 hours.

Oil palms along the high way

The North-South Highway of Malaysia that connects Johor in the South to Penang in North (there is a state north of Penang, but I forgot its name...)


Rest area along the highway, I have reservation about the food quality though...

Petaling Street in KL, a tourist attraction for good food


Bride and groom are giving speech

During the wedding, the bride couldn't control herself and cried, especially when she was giving speech and thanking her parents. I was wondering if my bride will do the same, and if she does, should I do nothing, like what my ex-colleague did, or should I give her a pack of napkin, or just give her a hug and kiss? Hmm....

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Amazing Song

I came over Minnie Riperton's "Loving You" when watching The Simpsons 'Mapple' store episode, and boy, I was amazed.

The Simpsons no doubt is funny as usual, but the song played, even though only for a few seconds, impressed me enough that I searched it up and down for the singer and lyrics. Initially I thought the song name was "Take me away" and I found one by Avril Lavigne, but nope, not it. Yucks.

The Simpsons:



Here is the Minnie Riperton's song. If she were alive today, she will beat almost every female singer out there hands down. Nowadays these so called 'singers' just can't sing, they only know how to act sexy. That is true in the west as in the east.


Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Random Thoughts

Recently the looming depression has caught everybody's eyeballs. Discretionary spending around the globe is dropping like stone, while retrenchment and salary cut are affecting more and more people. I foresee the greetings exchanged in the near future will be either "You got a pay cut?" or "Are you retrenched?" instead of "How are you doing?"

Another issue that shook the world will be the terrorist attack at Mumbai. I really have nothing much to say except this world is getting more and more crazy.

See, although economy and terrorist attack seem irrelevant, but what commonality they share? Well, they are all rooted in something pretty arbitrary and artificial. Finance sector is not part of the nature, so do all the religions in this world. We human beings invent all these initially for the betterment of human races, but end up screwing everybody deep and hard.

When I was young, I remember an old guy told me the older he got, the less he understood the world. Now I understand what he meant..., damn, that means I am also getting old...?? :P

Sunday, November 30, 2008

My New Toy

I haven't updated this blog for a while. Past week was a hectic one and I was busy hunting around main IT centers in Singapore for my kill.

It seems my effort was not wasted. Here, let's welcome the new addition to my tech gadget: the BenQ JoyBook S42!!
S42 together with the freebies: a 160GB external HDD and a mini loudspeaker :)

The specs are as follow:
  • Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz)
  • 4GB of DDR-667 Memory
  • 14" of LED-backlit LCD. It claims to be full HD, but I am not sure
  • nVidia GeForce 9600M GT with 256MB of dedicated memory
  • 2Mpixel webcam
  • 250MB of WD hard drive
  • 3 year of local warranty
  • Running Windows Vista Home Premium
However I must confess I finally venture into the 'dark side' by starting to use Vista. So far Vista is relatively stable, but I still see no reason compelling enough for XP users to upgrade. That is most probably why M$ wants Windows 7 to ship asap.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

One Reason Why I Distrust Closed-Source Apps

Google recently announced Lively, the application by Google to compete with Second Life, will close shop end of 2008.

What irks me is:

We'd encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms.

This is exactly one of the perils for a user who threw in hours of effort and ends up left with some silly videos and screenshots. This further affirms my belief open source is the way for me to go, but I am flexible enough to accept CDDL.

More information on GPL can be read here and here.

The Alchemy of Modern Food Taste

I am not a fan for processed food like ice cream, snacks, or fast food because I didn't feel well after taking those stuff. After reading this article, it seems my gut feeling is right.

It is a little lengthy, but worth the read. Enjoy.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The Reason I Won't Buy a Mac

I just come over a post about all new macbooks are rigged with HDCP (High Definition Content Protection). That means you need to have HDCP-compliant devices in order to show the content, or else you will get the above message, implying you are a filthy pirate.

This reason alone is more than enough to drive me away from buying any Apple products. I am thinking to get a notebook in a couple of months, but not macbooks anymore.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Enabling CIFS (SMB) on OpenSolaris

Updated: Aug 16, 2009
For snv_111b, it seems SUNWsmba is needed again. Instructions updated.

Updated: Jan 14, 2009
There are posts out there that advise the install of SUNWsmba, but so far my experience shows it is not necessary, and could add to unnecessary hassles. My new setup is with OpenSolaris snv_101b and M$ Vista with SP1. All the following steps are still valid.


---------------------

I thought enabling SMB on OpenSolaris should be straight forward and just like a stroll in the park, I was dead wrong.

It was partly my own fault, because I used to associate OpenSolaris with Unix, and in turn that means stability and no reboot required. According to my dictionary, rebooting to make changes to take effect is sissy, and is only for Windows. My (biased) assumption costed me a few hours of debugging.

Note: Recently even Linux distros like Ubuntu also need reboots after upgrade. Duh!

Before I start, here are my environment settings and assumptions:

  1. One OpenSolaris machine with snv_100a (NEW: verified and working under snv_111b also)
  2. One Windows XP Pro with SP3 in the default workgroup (Vista Home Premium will work, too)
  3. Both machines are on the same subnet
  4. NEW: Due to my machines are at home, security is not my main concern. If your set up is exposed to public or/and hostile environment, please think twice for the smb settings.

My goal is to have OpenSolaris to host a Windows-accessible directory.

Here are the steps that work for me:

  • First assume root privilege and install the smb packages


# pkg install SUNWsmbskr
# pkg install SUNWsmbs
# pkg install SUNWsmba


  • Reboot your machine. No, I am not kidding, this was where I tripped. Without rebooting, smbd won't start and "smb/server" will be in maintenance mode. Some people suggest running "rem_drv smbsrv" and then do "add_drv smbsrv". That didn't work for me.
  • Import the Solaris CIFS service SMF manifest.
  • # svccfg import /var/svc/manifest/network/smb/server.xml

  • Start the CIF service. You may see an error message emitted by "milestone/network", complaining on multiple instances of "network/physical". From my understanding this can be safely ignored.
  • # svcadm enable -r smb/server

  • Update the "/etc/pam.conf" file by adding the following line to it

  • other password required pam_smb_passwd.so.1 nowarn


  • Next you need to reset the password of the username who will access the SMB service. In order to do that, you need to run the passwd and you can use back the same password, the goal of this is so that the line we entered in pam.conf will be processed

  • # passwd username

  • Import the SMB manifest
    #svccfg import /var/svc/manifest/network/samba.xml

  • Copy the example configuration file over
    #cp /etc/sfw/smb.conf-example /etc/sfw/smb.conf


  • Edit the smb.conf and list the directories you wish to be exported. Since the authentication is troublesome to set, I have the following lines in my smb.conf. The hosts allow provides a very weak form of security and should not be used for untrusted networks. The 'share' mode for security disables the authentication (default is 'security = user')

    security = share
    hosts allow = [IP of Windows machine]

  • After this you can proceed with creating the zfs dataset and enable the SMB either through sharemgr or 'zfs set sharesmb=on'. There are ample references on these operations, I will just skip the details here.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Useful Application

DropBox gives 2GB of free storage and allows a user to sync between Windows, Mac, and Linux. Looks cool, though I have yet to test it.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Hard to Find Engineers in PG?

Updated Nov 12:
I was told the 'going-rate' for a degree-holding IC design engineer with roughly 4-years of work experience can fetch RM12k in Malaysia (KL) per month. That is significant amount of money, even for those who work in SG now.  If you are into IC design and find this figure tempting, it is time to reconsider other options ;)

=--------------------=
I like to browse job-searching sites. These sites contain a lot more of information than merely jobs: they also provide tell-tale signs about the job markets, average salary level, the health of a particular industry, and more. When piecing these bits and bytes of information together, one often can tell how a particular economy is doing well in advance.

Today I came across an ad at jobstreet, looking for people to fill software engineering positions in Penang, Malaysia. What shocked me is the salary level: S$5000 to S$8000 which is the standard salary level for software architects in Singapore. In other words, one will get at least RM12000 (S$1 ~= RM2.4) if that person is hired, and RM$12K is not small money, mind you. You may question: "This could be a typo." This is highly unlikely though because if it was in RM, no one will bother to apply from Singapore.


Upon clicking at that ad, here is the content. I am sure people as smart as you can tell which company this is. :P


A few questions to think about:

If companies in Malaysia have to look for people in Singapore and pay salary in Singaporean dollar, how attractive is Malaysia now and what are the incentives for high-tech companies to stay?

Moreover, given the current crime rate and tax rate, how attractive is Malaysia to those working in Singapore?

There are issues a lot more important and urgent to ponder upon for the government officials than wielding a weapon and shout stupid slogans. However, let's not expect too much... -_-

Week In Review

This weekend I did some shopping for a laptop. Since I play computer games occasionally, I am shooting for a laptop with good graphics card, and I saw HP's DV5-1034TX. There is no URL because this model isn't listed at HP's website.

This DV5 specs a Core 2 Duo P7350 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 250GB of HDD, and most impressively, it has a NVidia GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics card with 512MB of dedicated memory. Usually laptops with this kind of specs are sold around S$2400+, but curiously this dv5 sells at a 'special student promotion' price of S$1699. The most exciting thing is: they will sell to me anyway even though I told them in unequivocal terms I am no longer a student.

Needless to say, the price seems good and tempting. Being an alert shopper, I searched the web to check on user reviews as a final stage of my purchase, and I found out this model of laptop tends to overheat (See the discussion forum posts here). From the posts, the laptop is reported to have problem in cooling and the 9600M chipset tends to be so hot that it would be disabled to protect the circuitries and therefore making the whole system lag. Though this could be limited to individual units, the pricing of it corroborates with the suspicion something isn't really right.

Here I am, back to square one. What caught me unexpected (and drooling) is Apple's new line of MacBook. For so long I had been a big critic to the then MacBook's flimsy Intel integrated graphics chipset, and now things have changed. The new MacBooks are equipped with much more decent nVidia GeForce 9400M GT. That makes my heart to beat much much faster... I just can't breathe!!

Also, HP's potential overheat problem reminds me of why the new MacBook's body is made of a solid piece of aluminum. On top of the better look, I suspect the metal body also serves as a giant heat-sink.


Will Cuppa give in to Uncle Jobs and get a shiny MacBook on his next trip to the IT mall? Stay tuned...

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Math Text


This is a really funny one, from the same site as previous one. I laughed and laughed after reading the last box. If you ever study from Rudin's books before, you will understand why.

As a background, Rudin's style is damn succinct on proofs and he usually leaves a lot of gaps in proofs while lemmas and 'simpler' theorems are, well, left as exercises....

Things that are true

Interesting image here. After reading that you will have a very powerful way to counter any disagreement.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Official News

It has to be official now: I am gonna change job. The new job will be putting embedded linux on smart cards and phone sim cards. Since I have yet to tender my resignation letter, I will run through my thoughts here.

There are two forces at play here: the pushing forces at my existing company, and the pulling forces of my new company (and its environment).

Pushing Forces:
  1. Management doesn't respect engineers. Since the CEO is from marketing background, he trusts people who are similar to him. RnD is usually at the receiving end for all the blames and shit, while the marketing people take the credits and all the cool travel perks.
  2. The Linux packages used by our products is very dated (most packages are from year 2000). This issue is much more serious for Linux systems because they change real fast. Needless to say, for my co's products, a lot of known bugs and security holes are wide open, inviting exploits. However, our technical manager is too afraid to change anything that is not broken.
  3. All the staff are getting a 10% 'pay deferment' recently. In other words, all the employees' salaries are cut 10%. The management blames the world economy at large and said they will repay the deducted salary when the company's financial health improves. I am doubtful about that because it has a track record of not keeping promises. In fact, just a few months ago there were a few big business deals went through in the order of million dollars, and curiously employees got nothing at all. But when bad time is looming close, it swiftly puts the employees in front to cushion the blow. I can't deny those pointy-hair bosses are smart in someway.
  4. No viable/value-adding projects ahead. I have finished my satellite demodulator project and the software was released Friday. After that my manager tried to talk me into a terrestrial DVB-T demodulator project. Although technologically they do differ, from an embedded system perspective, the difference is trivial. The demod chip can be viewed as a black box with a few modulation-specific outputs. Those outputs are handled in a similar fashion by firmware and thus there isn't much new stuff to play with.
  5. My current place is in the east of Singapore. I rent a room in a 2-room flat. The landlord stays in the other room with his wife. Although he is a nice person, the problem with him is he is a heavy smoker. I am always choked by cigarette smoke seeping through my door when he smokes in his room. No, diplomacy doesn't work here.
Pulling Forces:
  1. Phone programming seems something quite cool. During the interview, the manager showed me an OpenMoko phone. It is always interesting to play with new toys.
  2. The CEO called me up personally and invited me to join his company. Note this doesn't mean he will be good to me or will put RnD at higher priority, but heck, at least I have a hope.
  3. The offer is of course having a higher salary than my existing job, or else why bother?
  4. I was told my job will be doing PoC (Proof of Concept) and technology transfer only. That means I have relatively more freedom to do things I like and choose technologies as I see fit.
  5. The new office is at the west of Singapore, close to Biopolis.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Week in Review

These days Cuppa has been quite busy on several fronts.

Personally there is not much update, I am still like, hmm, an engineer. Some people keep on asking why I still don't have a girlfriend, since there are a lot of ladies showing interest.

Well, there are a lot of girls out there who are pretty and nice, however so far they still lack of something. I have pondered upon this question for years, and all I can conclude is the tactile memories in MSEE years ago are indelible.

Job-wise I am having a frantic rush for a product release tomorrow, only uncovering a lot of bugs at the last minute. This sucks...

Here is an interesting article supposedly for young engineers, but I think it is quite general for people young and old, engineers or not.

Politics... well, it ain't pretty either in Malaysia or US, I will spare you with all these.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

On Foreign Talent and the Consequences

How to deal with foreigners, or to be politically correct, 'foreign talents', has been always a hot topic in Singapore (other topics could be ERP, where to eat, and how to do water sports without water)

Singapore government is trying its best to convince the mass, especially Singaporeans, the importance of attracting and retaining foreigners.

Among the reasons are these people can help Singapore to grow, and it is better to get them in instead have them compete with Singapore elsewhere. These reasons are indeed valid, however this doesn't capture the whole spirit of why it has to attract eligible foreigners.

The ultimate driver for all these is: investment. Investments come in many forms, and the most useful form for the government will be business investment (BI). BI not only contributes to the GDP, it also hires and trains the local people, and pays the bulk of taxes.

In order for a business to thrive, the government must be efficient and corruption free, on top of that, the country should have a fair tax regime, sufficient human resources, strong infrastructure, and an open, robust financial market. If we check this list against Singapore, we find that Singapore has been doing well on most items, except human resources which are always limited, and financial market which still weak in comparison with those of New York, London, and even Hong Kong.

We will skip the issue on financial market and focus on lack of human resources in Singapore. Due to geographical constraint, Singapore has limited human resources to draw upon. After getting talents from Malaysia for years, it already hit a limit on what it can get. Here is where other foreigners come into play. Not only they can meet the demand of employers, but these people also effectively drive down real salaries while supposedly push up the qualities among employees.

This scenario is mean and definitely not pretty to the employees. Now one not only must be good in what they do, but they must do that cheap enough to be attractive. In other words the profit-to-be-realized and price ratio of someone must be high enough to survive this globalized economy. Thus when we hear people lament and complain about foreigners taken up their jobs, we can safely assume they are either not at the top of the food chain, or having quality of lives which don't commensurate with their abilities.

So what can Singaporeans do? Actually they have two ways. The first way will be to improve themselves to the extent they aren't afraid of competition. The second way will be to become employers themselves, or in another word, to start on entrepreneurship. By no coincidence, this is one of the things the government is pushing hard recently. Again, it is BI, silly.

Therefore all Singapore employees rejoice! We know if we can't keep our jobs, we can always start our businesses and fry kueh teow, and the gar'ment will help us.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

When Everything is Aplenty

Recently in IT, there is an explosion growth of everything.

Around ten years ago, things were much simpler. You didn't have much choice on hardware, OS, or computer languages.

However things have changed: There are a lot of devices that can beat any high-end desktop from ten years ago, and no one would ever dreamed then these devices really can compute.

Similarly there are just a hell-lot of operating systems. Aside from the oldies like Unix, Mac, and Windows. We have some pretty new contenders like Linux, and those old-but-revamped like Minix and OpenSolaris. I will leave Linux derivatives alone as there are too many to count. In fact, there is an OS which is a cross between solaris and Linux, but I can't recall its name off my head right now.

On the programming language front, there is literally a revolution. Partly because computers are much more popular now, and another important factor is nowadays computers are much more powerful with comparably more storage. The latter is important because theoretical stuff that couldn't be realized or too inefficient last time finally are possible now.

Given all the happenings in IT, do you think we are blessed, or cursed? You judge.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

This Week in Review

This was not a hectic week professionally, even though there were customer complaints and feature requests, things were still under control. So no more update on work.

On my personal front, I quited coffee and things that contain caffeine effective Wednesday. All these stemmed from my recent unsatisfactory sleeps. I thought long and hard for the reason, and coffee seemed the chief culprit, and I am right. So far I have been coffee-less for 4 days and the sleep quality has been improving. Now when I am sleepy, instead downing a cup of coffee, I just go and take a nap whenever possible.

Btw, here are news that I am aware of this week:

  1. China's milk scare is eclipsed by the space walk program. I think this is a very sad state of affair. Chinese (or the Chinese government) has a strange urge to please the outsiders (especially the Westerners) and from my observation, it is against its own people Chinese can be the most mean, cruel, and merciless. This happens at the government level and among the people. The Sanlu Milk Scare is a typical reflection of the mentality: "face is important, people's lives? Who cares?". Do note most of the affected babies were from middle-class or poor families, while better well-to-do parents definitely will buy foreign milk powders. This is yet another reason why the Chinese government only did the minimal to the officials responsible, well because the affected people are poor. They don't have the mean and money to litigate or protest anyway.
  2. Wall Street Bail-Out. This is a very comical episode only available in US. Those working in Wall Street has fucked up while trying to rack in more money, despite the fact they are paid much higher than they should given their quality and contribution to the society, the magical moment comes is when they fail, they have the bless of Uncle Sam to foot the bill. In fact, those hardworking Americans who pay taxes promptly and deposit money in bank are actually in higher risks than those bankers: first they have to take the risks of failing banks and disappearing deposits, second they have to help those bankers to repay the debt bought by Uncle Sam. What do these people get in return? Yes, more taxes.
  3. Symbian is very dead it seems. Symbian is bought by Nokia and UIQ and S60 are going to merge in 2009. It seems my phone is going to be obsolete in months. This story teaches me it is time to look out for Android or OpenMoko. For my next phone, I will opt for a more basic phone with a small price tag. Good for my mental and wallet health.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Weekend With Cats

F1 is held this weekend, however I am not a F1 fan, and I just find it pretty stupid to pay for things zooming past so fast that you can't even see how they look like.

So I decide to post pictures of cats that I have collected from the net. Here you go:

"I surrender..."

"Caught sleeping with chicken... ah..."

"Very sleepy after surfing net..."


"Pet's pet"


"S&M Style Sleeping"


"Painful look"


"Garfields?"

"Do not disturb... k?"


"Perfect circle"


"hug and kiss..."


"no eye see"


"camouflage cat"



"Soldier! Wake UP!"


"zzzzz..."


"New furry plant species"


"Turn on the tap..."


"Cat in a wok"




"Another quite painful sleeping position"


"Necking couples"

"BBQ cat..?"

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Complain-Fu of Singaporean

We have Kung-Fu for the art of self-defence, Code-Fu for the art of computer programming, now, allow me to introduce [drums rolling]: Complain-Fu, art of complaining!!

There is a guy in Singapore found out his new-born daughter has the number 444 as part of her birth-cert serial number. Obviously upset, he went up and down to complain, including the local major newspaper, the Straits Times, as posted here.

I am amazed this can also be complained. Although it is understandable as a parent he wants the best for his daughter, but nitpicking on this is really pushing things too far, and too hard. Imagine how many serial numbers typical adults have had, if we had to make sure every number has no 4, 13, or the combination, we wouldn't get anything done at all.

The well-being of the baby girl is dictated by the values and principles bestowed by her surrounding, and people around her. I think she is kind of bad luck in this case, not because of the cert number, but the presence of not so smart, superstitious, and like-to-complain parents.

There are people I just can't understand.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

New Blog!

I have set up a blog on computer programming, it is listed under "Personal Blogs" at the right panel of this blog. From now on, programming stuff will go there, while the rest will stay here.

With the new blog, I hope to have a show case of my programming skills for potential employers.

Comments are welcome :)

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

5th Anniversary of Working

Five years ago this day was my first day in the working world. I still could recall I attended the orientation. I met SoothSayer there as well as we were under the same manager.

Five years passed just like that. Today definitely I know more than I knew then, but I am losing steam and a lot of ambitions along the way. This is what they call growing up I guess which I have experienced, but never really understand.

Friday, September 12, 2008

The Haunt of Scope Creep

Yet this is another fine Friday evening. As usual, Cuppa is blogging while having a beer by his side.

Scope creep is the topic today. This term means uncontrollable changes in project scope.

This happens very often in job because of pointy-hair boss thinks "it is just a trivial change that takes only 3 minutes of your time", but the job blows up and you lose 3 weeks of your time. However our pointy-hair boss is far more brilliant than just adding merely one task on your plate, at that point, you are having a scope creep.

For Cuppa, the scope creep happens when I am drilling deep down into C++. On my way I found a lot of interesting tidbits, like generic programming, pattern design, the STL, and a lot of libraries written in C++. I am side-tracked by all these topics to the point I nearly forgot what my initial intention was to get a better understanding of core C++ first.

This is not the first time scope creep happens to me. For example way back when I was in college, I was studying multi-dimensional calculus, but ended up getting a lot of irrelevant maths books on my way back from library. I would go and get books on topology, number theory, functional analysis, etc. All of those which were (and still are) beyond my comprehension then.

Therefore this time I will concentrate only on the topic on hand, and will put aside all those topics until I am done.

How about my personal life? Well, my mom once again is concerned about my getting a girl friend. At this stage, I already admit defeat of winning MAK over and just let my mom do whatever pleases her. I told her "Whatever, as long as she is a woman, not too ugly, not too bitchy, and can tolerate a nerd like me, fine."

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Topics of The Week

I can't help but to blog these:

  1. Microsoft's Ad: After get mocked by Apple's ads for years, Microsoft hits back with a $300 million ad campaign: the first installment dubbed "Jerry and Bill". The YouTube link is here. Honestly I don't quite understand what message the ad wants to convey and thought it could be because my English is not good, after reading the reviews on the net (this one, for example), it seems most people don't either.
  2. Google Chrome: This browser really generates a lot of talks around the world. I have no intention to do any technical analysis here, but I just thought about what kind of strategies Google has by throwing resources behind this project. The most obvious motive will be trying to ease M$'s grip on web browser, and after that, my guess is Google wants to unify the user interfaces for both PC and portable devices (e.g. hand phones) like what Apple is doing, therefore building up a Google-centric kind of business model.
    To me it all sound nice and warm as I choose to sit by the curb and see the war unfolds itself. It is always interesting to watch from afar.
That is all for today's news. [BEEP]

Friday, September 05, 2008

Friday Night, Beer Night

This evening is a lonely Friday night, and again Cuppa is typing away on his keyboard at home. With no uncertainty, a can of Tiger is found beside him, and one more can is sitting safely in the freezer, of course.

So what am I up to lately? Phew, it is an interesting question.

Personal Life:

First of all I dumped the pictures in my hand phone and post some of the more interesting ones as follow:
I went to St. James Power Station, a Disco near to VivoCity, 2 weeks ago. I was totally sober throughout the night, to the extent I could take a nice picture with steady hands, as above. That was my fourth time there and I felt a little bit bored. I just filled with emptiness and nothingness. Downing more beer obviously won't help, that is why I am here blogging. At least I have the peace of mind in my room.

The following day, my housemate invited me to a dinner organized by a temple. The picture above shows the auction of items to raise funds for the temple. Curiously, that temple worships the legendary monkey king Master Sun (孙悟空). This kind of dinner is very popular in Singapore during the seventh month of the Lunar calendar, during which traditional Chinese believe the hell gate is open and all the ghosts will walk the earth. This dinner is set to celebrate this special month and there are special food items (not in the picture) just for the "good brothers and sisters" (aka ghosts). The good point of such dinner is there is absolutely free flow of alcohol (white beer, black beer, and Hennesy VSOP). Cuppa likes it. :)

Professional Life:

My company's platform is built on top of Linux and a set of libraries written in C++. They are reasonably well-built, and even though the software system is a little bit dated (built circa 2000), the main architecture is still worth studying. I have been looking at the graphics library (QT), C++ general library (boost), communications framework (ACE), and all the technologies I have yet to discover. In fact I have moved on to work on the C++ files, though my manager isn't too approving my act, he doesn't explicitly forbid it. I just do it anyway whatever. I always remember my ex-boss told me "It is much easier to ask for forgiveness, than to ask for permission". ;)

Monday, August 25, 2008

论民主

"民主,就是手上有一本护照,随时可以出国,不怕政府刁难;民主就是养了孩子知道他们可以凭自己本事上大学,不需要有特权;民主就是发表了任何意见不怕 有人秋后算账;民主就是权利被侵犯的时候可以理直气壮地讨回,不管你是什么阶级什么身份;民主就是,不必效忠任何党,不必讨好任何人,也可以堂堂正正地过 日子;民主就是到处有书店,没有任何禁书而且读书人写书人到处都是;民主就是打开电视不必忍受主播道德凛然地说谎;民主就是不必为了保护孩子而训练他从小 习惯谎言;民主就是享受各种自由而且知道那自由不会突然被拿走,因为它不是赐予的。

  民主并非只是选举投票,它是生活方式,是思维方式,是你每天呼吸的空气、举手投足的修养,个人回转的空间。"
-- 龙应台 <<为台湾民主辩护--与华人世界对话>>

Friday, August 22, 2008

This Struck Me...



Good news is I am not alone, bad news is we all are screwed. :(

Original from here.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

EE vs. CS

Disclaimer: Original article from here. I copied it here just in case that site is down or something.

Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science

Wire wrapped board. Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"

One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."

Big Island, Hawaii The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."

"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."

"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."

"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."

"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."

"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!)."

The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

解决VLC中文字幕的乱码问题

当用VLC播放电影时, 中文字幕却显示乱码或四方格, 那表示VLC里的设置不对.

解决方案很简单, 前提是电脑里要有中文字体:

去 Settings->Preferences, 在Video->Subtitles/OSD->Text renderer, 选一个中文的字体.

本人用的是 "C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\simhei.ttf"

解决方案引用自这里.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

I Want To Be An Engineer???

Came across this picture on the web

As of my current standing, I think most of my fellow male engineers will disagree with the advice above...

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Saturday Casual Walk

Today, as usual I had my dinner, and as usual I took a stroll to a park near to my flat.

However I found something unusual at a place I visited so many times: a Möbius strip shaped climbing wall. Such strip is unique in the sense it has no absolute 'outside' and 'inside'. Aptly enough, this climbing wall is called 'infinite wall'.



I am amazed I kept overlooking this for so long...

Saturday, August 02, 2008

The Quality Problem of My Sony Ericsson P1i

Updated 8/8/2008:
SE called me today and I was told they had the phone main board changed. But when I got my phone, it was a new one. The staff seemed quite reluctant to admit they gave me a new phone. All in all their service was not as bad as what I read on web. Case closed. :)

NOTE: I went to the SE service center at Simei

------------ End of Update ------------------

My P1i has a broken jog dial recently. Since no product is perfect, I just took my phone to the SE service center without much complaints.

Initially I was told the phone only needed a few days to be repaired, it was reasonable and I waited.

However, yesterday I got another call from SE and was told due to lack of parts, it will take a further 2 weeks. This is clearly not acceptable. Worse still, the phone loaned to me cannot send SMS properly and it really makes no sense for consumers to buy high-end phones from SE if the reliability and service level are so low.

Let's talk about consumer loyalty. I think my next phone most likely will not be SE.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Upgrading OpenSolaris

Updated: Dec 12, 2008
OpenSolaris 2008.11 is officially out. Download link here. The new version is far superior than 2008.05 with a lot of new features and bug fixes.

=====


I just upgraded my OpenSolaris box from build86 (the version installed from the CD image) to build 93. To get the build number of your existing system, use 'uname -v' and it will show 'snv_xx' where xx is the build number. This post only discusses the upgrade from snv_86 to snv_93.

The upgrade process is not straightforward. First of all, use 'upgrade all' or install the 'entire' package in Package Manager will render the system unbootable because of changes in GRUB boot system. Second, direct 'image-update' may also fail due to another bug. Therefore we will do the update manually by creating and updating another BE (Build Environment).

My main reference is this post from OpenSolaris forum. I will list (read: copy directly from the post) the instructions that worked for me. Despite the dollar sign ($) at the following commands, you need root privilege to proceed.

Again, standard warnings in place: back up your important data, don't believe anything on internet, use at your own risk, call your mum, yadi yada.


Steps:
  1. Make sure the latest version of IPS software is installed

    $ BUILD=`uname -v | sed s/snv_//`
    $ pfexec pkg refresh
    $ pfexec pkg install SUNWipkg@0.5.11-0.$BUILD

  2. We will build our BE (Build Environment) manually:

    First, display the list of the existing BEs on the system

    $ beadm list
    BE Active Active on Mountpoint Space
    Name reboot Used
    ---- ------ --------- ---------- -----
    opensolaris yes yes legacy 2.23G

  3. Here we can see the machine only has one BE namely 'opensolaris'. We need to create another BE and populate it with build 93 files. After we are done, we tell opensolaris to boot the new BE in the next restarting of the machine. By convention, let's call the new BE 'opensolaris-'. Note the trailing hyphen (-).

  4. Execute the following sequence of commands to create, mount and update the new BE

    $ pfexec beadm create opensolaris-
    $ mkdir /tmp/mnt$$
    $ pfexec beadm mount opensolaris- /tmp/mnt$$
    $ pfexec pkg -R /tmp/mnt$$ image-update

  5. !!!IMPORTANT!!!: Failure to perform this step will render your machine a piece of dead meat. Update the GRUB configuration on your ZFS boot device(s):

    $ pfexec /tmp/mnt$$/boot/solaris/bin/update_grub -R /tmp/mnt$$

  6. Unmount and activate the newly created BE

    $ pfexec beadm unmount opensolaris-
    $ pfexec beadm activate opensolaris-

  7. [Optional] You can delete the old BE using beadm. Refer to the man page or google around...
  8. Reboot and you should be good to go. :)

Monday, July 28, 2008

Office Blues

This is a true story:

A customer support manager in an IT company thinks the existing customer database is too unorganized. Any support issue older than a few months old at best will need to go through a lot of departments like logistics, manufacturing, and IT to collect information, but most often crucial information like hardware configuration, software version will just be anyone's guess.

The support manager announced proudly he would implement some form of data keeping: customers or vendors gotta fill up support requests, while all the support engineers will need to record down all transaction histories with customers, in MS-Word files.

All the MS-Word files will be saved somewhere as part of the support database.

In case you, my dear reader, don't understand how comical this is, allow me to explain.

First and foremost, these files serve _no_ purpose if they are not integrated and accessible by all relevant stakeholders. For example the support engineer has no easy way to tell what configuration a customer has, and the logistics department doesn't know what kind of bulk discount to give as again there is no easy way to tell what a customer has bought from the company.

Second, there is no known reliable and fast method to search multiple Word files. If you have 100 Word files and need to search through them for a particular customer, good luck. Moreover, Word file format is proprietary and it is at M$'s mercy if future MS-Word will be able to read back old Word documents. Even though the latest docx is in XML format, the question still begs for a rational and technically sound answer.

The most straight forward way that I can think of would be implementing a web-form that updates a centralized database. In this way, the issues are much easier to track.

It is so sad to slowly realize Dilbert actually isn't that absurd.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

No Want to Go Back

Today I got an email from JobStreet. Upon opening it, it was my old friend, Intel Penang, looking for a senior BIOS engineer. Due to my background, coupled with the dire situation in Malaysia to find experienced and competent engineers, a lot of MNCs are looking everywhere to hire the suitable candidates.

I recall BIOS engineer is one of the rarest animals in the engineering kingdom, but the salary doesn't seem higher because of that. During my days in Intel, our department had been looking for years for a BIOS engineer.

Usually BIOS is the software that starts once CPU boots up until the execution is handed to the operating system. A bootloader is part of BIOS, but there are other modules like POST (Power On Self Test) and device configuration (RAID, HDD boot sequence, etc.). In a nutshell, BIOS deals mainly with initialization, self-test, and configurations of hardware system.

BIOS engineers not only need to know programming well (especially code optimization because the memory on chip is limited), they also need to know protocols like I2C, SPI, etc., and have an adequate understanding of electronics. On top of all the above, they must have a lot of patience in debugging because at the BIOS level, even the CPU is not yet fully initialized, let alone the memory systems and other peripherals. With all the above requirements, a good BIOS engineer will need typical 5 - 8 years of experience to be competent, and you understand why they are so rare now? ;)

Back to the resume request, I thought for a while, recalling all the memories I had back in Penang. I shook my head and rejected the request.

It is time to move on.

Friday, July 11, 2008

This Week In Review

This past week has been pretty painful, literally, for me.

I got rid of my lower right wisdom tooth, after its attempt to break free and impacted on my jaw bone. The pain was non-trivial and I was waken up at mid-night and frantically searched the web for "wisdom tooth extraction" in Singapore.

Its attempt was proven futile, but costly, I had the wisdom tooth removed promptly within a few days, and it costed me S$520, inclusive of GST.

After the operation, I was given a 5 day medical leave, and deliberately I only notified a few of the buddies in Singapore. Then I did a clean up of reading materials in my room, starting from the Financial Times I bought from UK, the pile of library books which would be due in a few days time, and the online news sites.

Aside from the time I was drugged to slumber by the almighty painkiller, I kept on reading, reading, and reading.

The first front was on investment. At that time Iran just test-fired some missiles to warn the westerners not to screw with its nuclear programs. I thought crude oil price would shoot through the roof and hit US$150. If this were true, stock prices would take a hefty hit and dropped like a stone. That means a put option on the stock index, or simply put option of any banks would earn me money. However I warned myself not to jump in haste, mainly I made too many mistakes not because I acted too slow, but too fast to the point I didn't think carefully. Hence I did a sand-boxing of the equity I was about to buy. The first day after the test-fire the stock really dipped slightly and the sandbox showed a small profit, but the imaginary profit evaporated in the following few days and now the accumulated loss at the sandbox is around -5%. Note this trend is oscillating, so eventually I could be correct. I will let the sandbox result guide my subsequent decision.

The second front was on my doing an MBA. Now I am kind of convinced getting an MBA won't take me too far. In fact, I am more and more confident keeping my core competency as technical guy would be much more better off. On top of that, an engineer who knows about finance and management will be much more sought-after (and thus valuable), than a manager who knows engineering and technology.

Monday, July 07, 2008

The Search of Stability

My ex-Intel colleague just bought a house, and he shares some of the pictures. I include one of those below.



We attach very heavy weight on our place of stay, or what we call 'home'. I admit I am also longing for a relatively stable place where I can rest and recuperate. But not now, because living a too comfortable life will reduce my desire to take risks. Anything good enough is usually not good enough, especially judging from my current achievements.

When turning back is the cliff, just forge ahead and fight. Cruel, but useful.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Happy Birthday

I thought I would forget, but no, I never forgot even once in these years.

However this is the first time I won't tell her. I reason it is time to let go, it is nice for her to forget also. Any slightest hint from her will drive me crazy for weeks. Life has to move on, especially while there is no common goal to fix the relationship.

Happy Birthday. Forgive me.

Love,

7/4/2008.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Birthday Gifts

This year's birthday, although I was away, but I still received quite a lot of well wishes through friendster, or sms's. I believe if I were online during that period, I would have received even more (you see then only you remember?)

Nevertheless I also received some very nice gifts from friends. One from Mr. Snail, one from my Filipino friend EM, and another one from my Burmese friend Myo.


The ultra good looking Cooler-Master laptop cooler from Mr. Snail, cute nodding monkey decoration from Myo, and a steel parker ball-point pen from EM

Here I would like to thank all those who remember my birthday. :D

Friday, June 27, 2008

Remote Desktop and VNC in OpenSolaris

After gone for holiday for sometime, I am back to OpenSolaris.

OpenSolaris has Remote Desktop (RD) pre-installed, however RD has its constraints: someone at the local console can see exactly what the remote user is doing, and vice versa. This is sometimes not desirable. For example I have my Solaris box sitting in lab while my cubicle is somewhere else, I don't wish to let everyone in the lab to see what I am doing at my box remotely. Even though I can shut-off or even remove the local console, RD still is not a good solution for remote access. Luckily, Virtual Network Connection (VNC) fits my purposes, though there are some work involved which I shall discuss below.

My set up is as follows: in lab the OpenSolaris box has a hostname of 'Solaris', while in cubicle a Linux box named 'Ubuntu'.

  1. First of all, enable the default Remote Desktop at Solaris. Enabling RD serves two purposes: test the box's network connectivity, and RD is useful for subsequent troubleshooting of the VNC setup. I shall skip RD setup in this post.
  2. Once RD is up and running, goto Solaris and invoke System->Administration->Package Manager. Type 'vnc' in the search box and you should see two packages: One is vncviewer, another is vncserver. Install both.
  3. At command line, run vncserver as follows:

  4. vncserver

    If this is your first time running vncserver, vncserver will ask you to supply a password, this is the password to access your VNC session only, therefore for security purpose, it is recommended not to use the same password as your current login account. The following is the output from a session running at my Ubuntu machine. Output from OpenSolaris will be similar. Observe the output is in the form of [hostname]:[number]. The number identifies your session number, and yes, you can have more than one sessions running at the same time.

    You will require a password to access your desktops.

    Password:
    Verify:

    New 'ubuntu:1 (chai)' desktop is ubuntu:1

    Creating default startup script /home/chai/.vnc/xstartup
    Starting applications specified in /home/chai/.vnc/xstartup
    Log file is /home/chai/.vnc/ubuntu:1.log


  5. To access the VNC sessions at Solaris, from Ubuntu, I use Vinagre, a VNC viewer for GNOME.

  6. The last piece of hurdle we need to clear is on running Gnome desktop under VNC. By default the VNC is configured to run TWM, a fine desktop manager, albeit not as pretty as Gnome. To accomplish this mission, we will edit xstartup under /.vnc (note the period in front of 'v')
  7. Comment out the following line by adding a hash sign (#) in front

    twm &


    The commented out line will look like:

    #twm &


  8. Add the following lines in the xstartup

    unset SESSION_MANAGER
    gnome-session &


    Whenever Gnome (or other session managers like KDE) runs, it will set the variable SESSION_MANAGER, and by default Gnome will not run when another session manager is active. We unset this variable to circumvent the check.
  9. Finally, to end a VNC session:

    vncserver -kill :[session number]

    In our case, the correct command will be

    vncserver -kill :1