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.