Just another ordinary day

"Open Source" Terkendala Peranti Keras?

2009-02-14T20:31:00.003+07:00

Kompas, 12 Februari 2009

"Open Source" Terkendala Piranti Keras? Hari gini? Lebih tepat sih "Open Source" di Indonesia terkendali birokrat bodoh.

Kepala Bidang Kemitraan Lembaga Tehnologi Informatika Kantor Menristek Agus Setiadi mengatakan "Sampai sekarang driver memang masih menjadi masalah dalam penggunaan open source software, terutama untuk menjalankan applikasi yang bersifat multimedia. Mencari driver untuk piranti seperti printer atau modem memang menjadi kesulitan bagi pengguna open source software."

Hari gini? Masih complain masalah driver di Linux? Belum lama ini saya mengerjakan transisi ke Linux untuk komputer2 di tempat saya bekerja. Saya memakai distro Xubuntu dan Ubuntu. Hardwarenya terdiri dari Pentium II s/d Pentium IV. Kesulitan driver? hanya 1-2 kasus dimana saya harus 'install' sendiri driver untuk LAN card-nya.

Juga tertulis di artikel Kompas ini "Kantor Menne Ristek terus memperbanyak driver open source bagi perangkat keras yang diedarkan di Indonesia."

Saya juga bingung, perangkat apa sih yang diedarkan di Indonesia yang spesial banget? Kebanyakan perangkat yang diedarkan di Indonesia adalah limpahan dari Singapore. Tidak pernah saya temui hardware yang khusus dibuat untuk Indonesia.

Kelihatan banget kalau IGOS ini dijalankan oleh orang2 birokrat yang kurang kompeten. Padahal banyak orang Indonesia yang jago Linux dan jago ngoprek. Yang dibutuhkan memang cuman niat dan tujuan. IGOS adalah nothing more than a project. Mungkin supaya Menneg Ristek kelihatan ada aktivitas.

Hare gene komplain Linux susah drivernya.... 10 taon yang lalu sih iyah deh kali...

AC Daikin sucks! Pengalaman buruk menggunakan AC Daikin.

2009-02-12T14:44:00.004+07:00

Bulan Agustus 2007, AC di kamar ibu saya rusak. Mungkin saatnya untuk mengganti AC yagn lama. Dengan pertimbangan merek, kwalitas, dan fitur yang ditawarkan, akhirnya saya memilih AC Daikin tipe Inverter 1pk walaupun dengan harga yang cukup mahal. Waktu itu harganya adalah Rp.3.8jt, dan rata2 AC 1pk pada saat itu berkisar diantara Rp.3 s/d 3.2jt.

Ternyata harga mahal dan nama besar tidak sebanding dengan KWALITAS produknya. 3 bulan setelah pembelian, AC Daikin itu rusak. Saya call Customer Servicenya (CS) untuk claim warranty. Pengerjaan kurang lebih 3-4 hari, dan kerusakannya katanya evaporatornya bocor. Well, fine, pikir saya pada waktu itu. Namanya juga barang elektronik, lagi sial yah rusak ajah.

TAPI 1 tahun 3 bulan kemudian, akhir Desember 2008, ACnya rusak lagi. Symptomnya sama. Berhubung akhir tahun, baru pada awal tahun saya call CSnya Daikin. 1 minggu tidak ada kabar. Lalu pada tanggal 8 Januari saya call lagi, dan tanggal 10 Januari tehnisi datang. Ternyata problemnya sama, yaitu evaporator bocor, dan indoor unitnya diangkut ke workshop Daikin.
Beberapa hari kemudian, mereka menginformasikan ke Ibu saya kalau biaya spare parts adalah Rp.1.6jt. Tapi bukan itu saja, SPARE PARTSNYA HARUS INDENT SELAMA 6 BULAN. WTF!!!!!

Saya menghubungi CS dan minta konfirmasi tentang masalah ini. Kalau masalah harga masih relatif walaupun menurut pendapat saya, harganya lumayan mahal. Tapi yang tidak masuk akal adalah bahwa untuk spare part yang bersangkutan saya harus indent selama 6 bulan. Saya sempat bicara dengan Pak Bambang yang katanya menghandle masalah komplain. Beliau mengatakan akan membicarakan masalah ini dan akan followup dengan saya. Saya tunggu sampai 1 BULAN!!! Tidak ada followup.

Saya kembali menghubungi mereka pada tanggal 11 Februari 2009. Di pingpong banyak kali dan sempat diputus 1 kali, sampai akhirnya sempat bicara dengan bagian Pak Ranu dari bagian workshop. Pak Ranu berjanji akan coba untuk me-las bagian yang bocor. Saya berterima kasih untuk inisiatifnya untuk menyelesaikan masalah ini.

Pointnya : Nama besar dan harga mahal, belum tentu mendapatkan kwalitas bagus. Nama besar dan harga mahal juga tidak menjamin ketersediaan suku cadang maupun harga suku cadang yang masuk akal.

Lebih baik sewaktu membeli AC, pertimbangannya adalah
1. LAMANYA GARANSI (misalnya ada AC Toshiba yang katanya garansi 4 tahun (mungkin garansi kompressor saja).
2. MINIM FITUR (semakin minim fitur, semakin "standar" itu AC. Ujung2nya lebih mudah mengganti sparepartnya karena misalnya evaporatornya lebih standar, blowernya lebih standar....)
3. Lupakan deh AC Mahal yang menjanjikan fitur HEMAT ENERGI. (Kecuali kalau ACnya nyala 24jam sehari dengan kondisi listrik yang tidak naik turun.) AC sekarang life spannya cuman 2-3 tahun, setelah itu pasti evaporator bocor. Alih2 mau irit karena ACnya hemat energi, buntut2nya tekor karena sparepartnya mahal (dan harus indent).

****
update : Akhirnya ACnya kembali harus diservis. Nyerah deh. Sekarang semua AC di rumah ayah saya adalah Sharp. Bukan karena AC Sharp lebih bagus dari AC Daikin, tapi Customer Servicenya yang lebih responsif.

JOBINDO SUCKS!!! PENGALAMAN BURUK DENGAN JOBINDO

2009-02-09T20:47:00.005+07:00

Beberapa hari yang lalu, seorang teman, via YM minta tolong kepada saya untuk memuat iklan lowongan di internet. Sebelumnya dia telah pasang iklan lowongan di koran Kompas, tapi yang melamar kurang banyak.

Saya melakukan quick survey, dan memberikan 3 alternatif kepada teman saya ini. Pilihannya adalah Jobsdb, karir.com dan jobindo.com. Harganya sekitar Rp.1 juta (jobsdb, 2 posting), Rp.700an rb (karir.com, 2 job posting), dan Rp.500.000,-/4 jobposting 60days.

Jobindo paling murah bukan? Teman saya memilih jobindo.com

Hari Minggu saya regiter ke jobindo.com untuk 2 job posting. Menggunakan alamat email saya yang asli, nomor telp saya yang asli, juga alamat postal yang bisa diverifikasi. Rencananya pada hari Senin (9 Feb 2008), saya akan minta teman saya untuk transfer pembayaran untuk invoice dari jobsindo.

Tapi Senin pagi saya cek ke jobindo.com, posting saya sudah tidak ada, bahkan account saya sudah terhapus. Saya telp ke customer servicenya. Dengan entengnya CSnya menyarankan saya untuk daftar ulang, dan menjelaskan kalau ada kemungkinan account saya sudah terhapus karena dicurigai sebagai perusahaan fiktif. Si CS menjelaskan kalau registrasi di jobsindo sangat mudah sehinggga banyak perusahaan fiktif yang mendaftar.
Saya tanyakan ke dia, bagaimana kok tidak diverifikasi ulang? padahal saya menggunakan alamat email yang asli, menggunakan no HP yang asli juga. Pada dasarnya mereka menghapus sebuah account hanya berdasarkan curiga TANPA VERIFIKASI!!!

BT, dan CSnya tidak bisa menawarkan penjelasan lebih lanjut. Selesai? Tidak. Ternyata mereka mencoba untuk "how low can you go".

Setelah menutup pembicaraan (tanpa bantingan telp, bukan karena saya orang sabar, tapi karena masih sayang pada HP), 1 jam kemudian saya mendaftar kembali. Mengisi semua data dengan IDENTITAS ASLI, dan begitu mendapatkan invoice dari mereka, saya langsung menghubungi teman saya untuk melakukan transfer.

Tapi apa yang terjadi? Petang hari ketika saya ingin mengecek ulang job posting saya, TERNYATA SUDAH DIHAPUS LAGI seperti pada pagi hari!!! Padahal mereka sudah mengirimkan invoice ke saya, dan saya sudah melakukan pembayaran!!!!

I can't wait till tomorrow to scream at them. Yes, this lousy company only open from 9-5 m-f.

The points are :
- DON'T USE JOBINDO.COM. JANGAN MENGGUNAKAN JASA JOBINDO.COM. They treat you as if you're a fraud. Mereka menganggap setiap orang yang mendaftar adalah penipu.
- VALUE FOR MONEY. Ada harga ada barang. Saya seharusnya hanya merekomendasikan jobsdb.com (dan mungkin karir.com).

UPDATE (10 FEBRUARI 2009).

Saya mengirim email ke mereka untuk menginformasikan kalau pembayaran sudah di transfer. Mereka email balik minta saya untuk fax bukti transfer (YA, MEREKA TIDAK BISA CEK SECARA ONLINE KALAU PEMBAYARAN SUDAH DILAKUKAN. SATU LAGI POINT MINUS).
Saya call teman saya untuk fax bukti pembayaran. Setelah bukti pembayaran di fax, DAN MEREKA TIDAK MENGHUBUNGI SAYA, saya email kembali mereka untuk konfirmasi kalau bukti pembayaran sudah dilakukan.

Tak lama kemudian saya mendapatkan telp dari CSnya. Menanyakan login yang saya pakai. Saya memberitahu ke CS tersebut. Kemudian si CS menanyakan PASSWORD saya. WOW! INI ADALAH SANGAT-SANGAT TIDAK SECURE DAN TIDAK DIREKOMENDASIKAN. Menanyakan PASSWORD via telp? C'mon....
Saya tembak langsung saja si CS, ada apa sih pak? kok tanya2 password segala?

Ternyata, mereka mencoba untuk meregister untuk diri saya. Yah saya bilang, saya register saja sendiri. Dan juga entry yang sudah saya masukan 2 kali sebelumnya, saya harus entry lagi. MENYEBALKAN!

Si CS minta maaf dengan mengatakan kalau system mereka bermasalah sehingga banyak account terhapus. INI BERBEDA DENGAN PENJELASAN PADA HARI SENIN, DAN UNTUK SEBUAH PERUSAHAAN YANG BERGERAK DI BISNIS ONLINE, TIDAK PUNYA BACK UP SYSTEM? A big joke.

Well... akhirnya sore ini saya sudah posting kembali job posting yang dibutuhkan oleh teman saya.....

Semoga permasalahan sampai pada hari ini saja.

Kapok gw.

Vintage Computers

2008-12-08T15:04:00.002+07:00

Photographs of Old Computers

Gaji presiden SBY vs pemimpin dunia lainnya.

2008-12-05T13:06:00.001+07:00

Gaji Presiden SBY menurut sby.info adalah sebesar Rp.Rp.62.497.800,- per bulan PLUS dana khusus operasional sebesar Rp.2 Miliar perbulan. link

Total gaji per tahun adalah Rp.749.973.600,- (USD60.000,- kurs 12500).

Tidak beda jauh dengan gaji Presiden Putin.

Berapa gaji para pemimpin dunia lainnya?

Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore
(Country GDP: $235.6 billion - 2008)
Annual salary : $2.46 million.

Barack Obama, USA
(Country GDP: $13.81 trillion - 2007)
Annual salary: $400,000

Kevin Rudd, Australia
(Country GDP: $773 billion - 2007)
Annual salary of $330,300.

Angela Merkel, Germany
(Country GDP: $2.585 trillion - 2006)
Annual salary: € 242,000 (€ 22000 bonus included) ~ $ 307,340.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France
(Country GDP: $1.871 trillion - 2006)
Annual salary of € 240,000 ~ $ 304,800.

Stephen Harper, Canada
(Country GDP: $1.274 trillion - 2007)
Annual salary of $280,000.

Gordon Brown, UK
(Country GDP: $2.772 trillion - 2007)
Annual salary of € 187611 ~ $238,266.

Vladimir Putin, Russia
(Country GDP: $2.076 trillion -2007)
Annual salary of $81,190.

source : The Manggo Blog

Arsip foto LIFE di Google

2008-11-25T22:49:00.002+07:00

Google sedang mengarsipkan hampir semua foto2 koleksi majalah LIFE. LIFE adalah sebuah majalah yang tertua di Amerika yang terkenal akan foto2nya.

Foto2nya bisa dilihat di LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Salah satu fotonya adalah sang mata-mata CIA yang sekarang sedang terkenal :

Kenapa Pria tidak memakai Bra?

2008-11-25T12:35:00.002+07:00

Kenapa sih kaum pria tidak memakai Bra alias BH? Saya rasa salah satu alasannya karena tidak ada yang menjualnya....... SAMPAI SEKARANG.

Ya! Untuk para pria yang mendambakan untuk memakai BRA, kini sudah bisa membelinya di http://item.rakuten.co.jp/wishroom/mensbra/ Harga 2,900 Yen.

Roy Suryo : Kemane aje lu!

2008-11-21T09:29:00.002+07:00

Gunz msg me this link yang kena hack

Hi Roy!(tm)

How Indonesian Intelligency Agency works.

2008-10-26T12:59:00.003+07:00

An ex BIN (Badan Inteligent Negara, Indonesia's CIA) agent was called to a witness stand in Munir's (a human right activist) murder case.

In the last paragraph of the news, loosely translated : "To kill Munir, Padma planned 4 stages. They were surveillance, terrorize, voodoo, and poisoning."

VOODOO? WTF!!! LOL. Not that I don't believe voodoo (I've seen quite a lot of illogical things here. hey, I live in Indonesia), but please just keep it as a top secret method, at least to uphold the integrity of your former workplace (which is Indonesia Intelligence Agency).

An email from Bambang

2008-10-12T21:34:00.005+07:00

Look what I found in my junk mail folder? An email from Bambang Suharto! :) Maybe Bambang is really trying to ask some assistance from me. Maybe I can help him to hide some of his assets from his ex-wife? hmmm who knows...

What A Zillionaire Like Bill Gates Do After Retired?

2008-09-12T21:01:00.002+07:00

Apparently he tried star in a sitcom with Jerry Seinfeld

Quick note : Dimana beli baterai & mata pisau

2008-08-09T11:09:00.003+07:00

Jika butuh baterai notebook beserta adaptornya, silahkan ke gudangbatere.com

Tapi jika butuh batere dengan ukuran aneh, bisa coba contact ke :

Sarang Baterai
Pertokoan Glodok Jaya,
Lt. Dasar Blok A No.30,
Jakarta Kota 11180.
Telp : (021)659-7889
Fax : (021)659-7889

Minggu lalu saya membeli baterai 1/2AA 3.6V untuk Mac Cube saya. Ketemu percis merek Tadiran. Harganya Rp.75.000,-. Merek Sharp harganya Rp.125.000,-

Kalau butuh mata pisau untuk pisau gergaji, potong, dan untuk applikasi mesin dan industri, coba ke :

Manis Mata
Lindeteves Trade Center (LTC)
Lantai GF1 Blok C27 No.6 & 7
Telp : (021)6220-1436
Fax : (021)3006-3965

Kemain beli mata pisau SKH Double Planner ukuran 610x38x6mm seharga Rp.275.000,-

Kompas.com, Lebih Lengkap, Lebih Luas, dan LEBIH BLOATED!!

2008-07-19T14:20:00.006+07:00

Beberapa waktu yang lalu ada peluncuran kompas.com versi baru. Wah seremoninya sangat meriah. Pakai ngundang orang orang vip dan tobbt. Di koran Kompas juga diberikan data statistik yang menunjukan bahwa Kompas.com lebih banyak dikunjungi dibandingkan situs berita A dan situs berita B (saya klik situsberitaa.com dan situsberitab.com, kok engak nongol yah... :P)

Ada apa dengan Kompas.com? YANG PASTI SUPER BLOATED. Dibawah ini adalah screenshoot dari kompas.com secara keseluruhan disandingkan dengan screenshoot dari cnn.com

Tidak masalah sih kalau kompas.com mencoba lebih banyak content daripada cnn.com, TAPI KALAU MAU SAMPAI ADA 16 FLASH ELEMENT, ITU NAMANYA KETERLALUAN.

Kenapa sih para designer (dan terutama yang menamakan dirinya WEB DESIGNER) di Indonesia kebanyakan adalah FLASH FETISH? Dulu Detik.com, sekarang Kompas.com.
Salahnya dimana yah? Apakah para 'web designer'nya otodidak? atau SEKOLAHnya yang engak mutu? Kalo kwalitas web design kompas.com yang ada 16 Flash content, saya jadi ragu akan kwalitas sekolah Universitas Multimedia (yang satu grup dengan Kompas).

PENGGUNAAN FLASH/ANIMATION SECARA BERLEBIHAN (kalau 16 sih sudah OBSESIVE) MENYALAHI PAKEM WEB USABILITY. link ke artikel Jacob Nielsen

Berapa konten Flash yang dimiliki oleh CNN? kadang 1 atau 2 tergantung dari iklan yang sedang ditayangkan. (oleh server iklannya, kadang ditampilkan iklan yang .jpg atau animasi .gif). Tapi di kompas.com, terhitung 16 animasi Flash.

Selain menyalahi pakem web usability, penggunaan konten Flash akan :
1. Memakan lebih banyak bandwidth daripada gambar statis. Negara Kesatuan RI ini khan masih statusnya fakir bandwidth.
2. Memakan lebih banyak resource pada cpu pengunjung. Alias komputernya akan melambat. Kenapa saya tidak pernah mengunjungi detik.com lagi? selain karena animasi iklan2nya yang obnoxious, juga karena melambatkan komputer saya.

SO, SARAN SAYA KEPADA KOMPAS.COM : CARI WEB DESIGNER YANG BENAR2 PAHAM AKAN ARTISTIK DAN DESIGN USABILITY.

Kompas.com... memang lebih bloated.

Cara Vector Art

2008-07-07T21:47:00.003+07:00

Cara pembuatan gambar Vector dari sebuah Photo via Photoshop.

http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-vector.html

Kecepatan Internet di Jepang

2008-07-03T08:05:00.004+07:00

Berapa cepet sih Internet rumahan di Jepang?

via FuckedUpJapan

Kabel ethernet paling mahal di dunia

2008-06-15T21:22:00.000+07:00

Ini mungkin adalah kabel ethernet paling mahal di dunia.

Merek : Denon. Harga $499,- untuk 1,5 meter.

Sangat cocok untuk orang yang kelebihan duit dan kekurangan IQ.

Link ke halaman produknya :
Denon USA | AK-DL1

via Slashdot

Perbandingan gaji pekerja IT di Indonesia vs Asia

2008-06-15T20:59:00.002+07:00

Gaji pekerja IT di Indonesia dibandingkan dengan rekan2nya dari Singapore, HK, Malaysia, bahkan Thailand.

Indonesia meduduki rangking terakhir.

Yah namanya juga bos2 di Indonesia itu kurang appreciate dengan keberadaan IT. Sadar akan kepentingan IT cuman waktu koneksi internet terganggu dan email tidak jalan. :)

Artikel selengkapnya :
Asia IT Salary Benchmarks : Experience pays well for those in IT : IT employment Trends - ZDNet Asia

via enda

Indonesia Internet Cencorship (continue)

2008-04-09T17:19:00.005+07:00

Following the Ministry Instruction (the last post), YouTube had been blocked nationwide by local ISPs.

JakartaPost has the news : link

Reporter without borders : link

Several other big sites are also reported being blocked :
Multiply.com
MySpace.com
Liveleak.com
Rapidshare.com
elance.com (by telkom speedy)

Ministry of Communication and Information yesterday had a discussion with IT and blogger community, but resulted nothing. No surprise, since the government is not really into public aspirations.

UU ITE (Information and Electronic Transaction Law) = Law to allow information censorship by Indonesian Government

2008-04-08T10:55:00.007+07:00

Indonesian government has produce a law that govern information and 'electronic transaction'. It called 'UU ITE' Undang Undang Informasi & Transaksi Elektronik. The law aimed to prevent cyber crime such as carding which is quite popular in Indonesia.
The draft of the law can be viewed here

However, a lot of people see it as a law and base for the government to do internet censorship.

This week (week of 8 April 2008), it's widely known that a popular site YouTube has been instructed by Ministry of Communication and Information to be blocked nation wide. This instruction has to be complied by all ISP.

The reason for YouTube blocking is because there a video called Fitna made by a Dutch politician that has been touted as a misleading critique of Islam.

As of today, the whole Indonesia that use local ISP can not access YouTube. Some ISP go even further by blocking a few other site including multiply.com

Below is the Ministry's letter to ISP :

photo credit : KOMPAS/RENE L PATTIRADJAWANE link

A loosely translation of the content :

"In relation of the video called Fitna (made by Dutch politician, Geert Wilders' that circulate via internet media, and can cause inter religious disharmony globally.

Because of that, we instructed you to coordinate with APJII (Indonesia ISP Assosiation) members and IIX (Indonesia Internet Exchange) authorities with all effort to block the site and blog that post that video.

This was told to be done obidiently.

Ministry of Communication and Information
Muhammad Nuh

cc : Indonesia Police Chief.
"

News in Jakarta Post regarding Fitna link

Using Mac will make you 'dumb' 'dull', using Windows will just waste your time.

2008-03-04T20:45:00.007+07:00

Yes, if you spend too much time using Mac, you'll eventually become ~~'dumb'~~ 'dull' in technical troubleshooting sense of way. You've taken by granted that everything in Mac will just work.

Yesterday's evening, my brother in law called me. He signed up for Speedy ADSL service. The technician came by to install the modem. He tested it using his notebook (with XP) and worked with no problem. Then he tried to connect the modem to my bro's Vista. It didn't work. In my conversation with the technician, he said that he got no experience with Vista, thus didn't know how to troubleshoot the problem. It is suppose to be plug and pray right? The ethernet suppose to automatically get an address from the modem. Apparently it didn't work.

So I have to drive to his house, 20 minutes away. When I arrived, the technician was quite confused, as also it's already 8pm, and I don't think he is being paid overtime. I told the tech guy to leave, since he proofed that the internet is working using his notebook.

I started tweaking with the network setting in Vista. Automatic addressing, didn't work. Manual address, didn't work. Strangely I saw 2 'network connections'. One being the ethernet port itself, and the other was 'unidentified network'. What the heck. Did Vista has new network feature that I didn't know about?

Darn, I didn't bring my Powerbook with me. So I had to drive back home, bring my PowerBook over. I plugged in my PowerBook, and whoala! it worked!

I started tweaking with Vista network setting again. A strange sign was when I ipconfig, in the gateway there's 2 entries. They are '0.0.0.0' and '192.168.1.1'.
It was suppose to be only 1, which is the 192.168.1.1.
I go to the TCP/IP prop, go to Advance and check the gateway entries, nothing there.

Diagnosting and Repair feature didn't help, but wasting my time.

Finally, I tried to reenter the IP address info manually, including entering several fake gateway addresses, click Apply, and then erase them, and click Apply. Set to automatic, and whoala! it works! The 0.0.0.0 was gone!

So, because I am using too much Mac, I become ~~dumb~~ dull. It should't took that much time to troubleshoot this problem. I begin to loose my troubleshooting skills and feeling, because aint much to troubeshoot in Mac.
Because my brother in law use Vista, he wasted my whole evening, just for this silly problem.

[update : the very next day]
Aparently the problem reappeared the very next day. Darn! If it can't established a network connection due to "unindentified network" problem, then I can't connect to internet and google. Disable, enable, and restarted several times, and on one lucky shot, it connected to the ADSL modem. I quickly google for this problem, and whoala! we are not alone! And there's no single solution for this problem, as nobody for sure knows what caused it (including those MS MVPs).
One of the most possible solution is to download Norton Removal Tool link. The notebook came with Symantec Internet Security preinstalled.
[Tips from lockergnome.com
I downloaded it, and run it TWICE just to make sure. Restart the notebook and it connected after reboot. The problem went away, or did it?

[update : the next day]
Aparently it didn't go away. So I recheck everything again. Run Norton Removal Tool again, uninstalling unneeded programs, and updating the network driver. It didn't work. However, I notice that if the modem is on before I TURN ON the notebook, then the notebook can connect to the modem, but if the notebook is on before the modem, then it will goes into "unidentified network" status, and can't connect.

SOLUTION : Turn on the modem, wait for 1 minutes, then turn on the notebook.

MORAL : Using Vista is just a waste of time. You'll most likely end up troubleshooting for something that suppose to work. You'll loose your precious time. You better stick with XP or use Mac OSX.

image credit : http://www.gameshout.com/news/windows_home_server_bug_causes_problems1/article9922.htm

Our Lovely Busway Bus on Fire!!!

2008-02-22T21:56:00.002+07:00

got it from a forwaded email

Pariwisata Indonesia : Oh Mama Oh Papa....

2008-01-09T20:26:00.002+07:00

Hong Kong didatangi oleh lebih dari 28 juta turis di tahun 2007 dan diperkirakan akan meraup pemasukan melampaui HK$130 miliar (kira2 16,6 miliar US$). link

Sedangkan menurut situs budpar (yeah.. what a name..), pemerintah Indonesia mencoba menarik 7 juta wisatawan di tahun 2007, dan mengharapkan pendapatan 6.4 milar USD. (estimasi 941US$ per wisatawan).
Budget promosi yang diadakan adalah sebesar 15 juta USD.

(Kalau tertarik, silahkan bandingkan 'budget promosi tourism' kita dengan laporan keuangan HK Tourism Board, sebuah badan di HK yang dibentuk khusus untuk menjalankan pariwisata HK secara profesional : link

Jadi dibandingkan dengan HongKong yang wilayah daratnya tidak sebesar Jabodetabek, maka target pengunjung sebanyak 7 juta orang adalah sangat sangat kecil. Hanya 1/4 jumlah turis yang ke HK di tahun 2007!
Apakah tidak bisa ditargetkan target yang lebih tinggi? Atau memang karena pemerintah Indonesia tidak terlalu optimis untuk menjual Pariwisata Indonesia?

Saya sendiri sih tidak terlalu optimis untuk menjual pariwisata Indonesia ke luar negeri. Mengapa? Karena untuk menjual, tentunya harus rapih2 dulu... dandan dulu... Kalau saya mau membuang uang saya di Mal, tentunya saya tidak mengharapkan tempat yang becek dan bau amis. Saya mengharapkan lokasi yang nyaman, ber AC, free hot spot. Untuk semua itu, saya berani membayar parkir mahal (Rp.2000,- per jam).

Satu2nya tempat di Indonesia yang bisa menjual dirinya hanya Bali. Bagaimana dengan daerah lain, misalnya Jakarta?

Ini adalah apa yang harus dialami oleh seorang turis kalau datang ke Jakarta :

Toilet di Bandara yang bau pesing menyambut para turis yang baru mendarat dan keluar dari pesawat.
Ketemu loket Imigrasi. Petugas Imigrasi dengan antusias selalu akan mencoba untuk memeras orang luar negeri (kalau orang lokal tidak usah diperas sudah tst...). Seorang rekan saya dari China dimintai uang oleh 'oknum' berbaju Imigrasi dengan cara mengibas2kan uang HK$20,- karena tidak bisa bicara bahasa Mandarin/Cantonese. Rekan saya itu memberikan uang HK$20,- kepada si oknum mengira bahwa itu memang fee-nya. Saya tidak tahu harus tertawa atau malu ketika rekan saya menceritakan hal itu. (Moral dari kisah ini, belajarlah bahasa asing sebanyak mungkin, karena jika bisa berbahasa Mandarin, maka sang 'oknum' akan dengan gampang meminta HK$50 atau HK$100).

Lewat Imigrasi, ketemu 'oknum' Bea Cukai. capeee deh... Keluar dari Bea Cukai, harus melewati lautan calo2 taxi gelap. (sekadar reminder kalo ini cerita masih di Bandara Soekarno Hatta, dan bukan di terminal Kampung Rambutan). Kalau tidak hati2, walau sudah memilih taksi resmi, bisa2 diperas untuk borongan.

Setelah keluar dari Bandara, harus menikmati kemacetan yang kadang dimulai dari ruas tol Bandara. Kalau beruntung, si turis bisa menikmati Venice ala Jakarta, karena ruas tol Bandara bisa tergenang air.

Bagaimana dengan situs pariwisata di Jakarta?
Kapan terakhir Monas memperbaharui lift-nya?
Museum Gajah yang pada hari Senin tutup jam 2 siang, tapi pada jam 1 sudah tidak ada petugas di loket? (what do you expect from a PNS?)
Kebun Binatang Ragunan yang banyak sampah karena kurangnya tempat sampah, dan sangat sudah menemukan peta.
Macetnya Jakarta membuat hampir impossible untuk melakukan City Tour dengan nyaman.

Saya rasa hanya ada 2 situs pariwisata (cmiww) di Jakarta yang worth visiting karena dikelola secara PROFESIONAL yaitu Ancol dan mungkin TMII.

Kata kuncinya adalah PROFESIONAL. Pengelolaan situs pariwisata secara PROFESIONAL. Titik.

Tapi tau sendiri dah, pemerintah Indonesia memang jagonya cuman bikin jargon. :)

image credit : http://www.my-indonesia.info/

YES!!! WE ARE NUMBER ONE, AGAIN!!!

2007-12-27T06:32:00.001+07:00

Yes!! We are number one again in the world! On December 26, WHO confirmed the death of a 24 years old in Indonesia caused by the bird flu. She is number 94 in Indonesia, out of 210 humans death caused by the virus since 2003.
Indonesia accounted for almost half of the fatalities.

I don't really see the government is really into this matter. Yes, every now and then, you can see on TV public announcement about this. How we should proceed if we find suddenly died bird or chicken, bla bla bla. But there hasn't been any harsh punishment on people who still keep and sell the sick bird, live or death.

Again, why should government think about this issue? 2009 (the next election date) is a year away, and that's more important!

images taken from http://www.crdf.org

Merry Xmas!!! :)

2007-12-24T23:33:00.000+07:00

Merry Xmas... peace on earth...

image taken from http://www.mitchoconnell.com/glittergraphics.html

Maybe the most expensive web site in Indonesia

2007-12-17T21:26:00.000+07:00

Indonesia may have a lot of people in poverty, but that doesn't stop our beloved clueless and brainless government to throw away money.

This Minister of Culture and Tourism's website cost 17.5 Billion Rupiah (equivalent to approximately 1.9 Million USD @ 9300 rate). (Kompas, Monday Dec 17th, 2007)

Do you think it worthed? Personally I would rather spend all those Rupiah to renovate Elementary School (SD) across Indonesia.

(picture from Media Indonesia)

Richest man in Indonesia, is also the man responsible for the biggest environment dissaster in Indonesia in the last 3 years

2007-12-14T08:32:00.000+07:00

Aburizal Bakrie, according to Forbes, is the richest man in Indonesia. link

But his family own company, Lapindo Brantas, caused an environment disaster back in 2006, causing thousand of peoples homeless, jobless, loosing their precious belongings, and depressed. And the company trying not to compensate the lost.

Aburizal Bakrie, since you're filthy rich, you should be ashame of yourself as some of your wealth are based on other peoples' (we are talking thousands) misery.

Shame.. shame....

And Aburizal Bakrie is Coordinating Minister for People Welfare... What an irony.

Image of the Lapindo "Bakrie" Brantas mud disaster :

image taken from corporatewatch07.wordpress.com

Iklan Leopard di Kompas

2007-11-02T08:52:00.000+07:00

WOW... ada iklan 1 halaman penuh di KOMPAS hari Jumat 2 November 2007 halaman 22. Kayaknya saya tidak ingat ada iklan VISTA 1 halaman penuh sewaktu launchingnya (atau saya mungkin melewatkannya. Maklum.. beli korannya eceran... :))

Sedikit yang perlu saya kritisi :

1. Dalam fitur : Boot Camp. Run Windows software right on your Mac at native speed. Seharusnya "Run Windows right on your Mac at native speed", karena "Windows software" memberikan illusi seakan software2 yang jalan di Windows bisa berjalan Parallel di OSX.

2. Launchingnya di EMAX Kemang (6pm) dan iBox eX Plaza @ 7:30pm. Kalau bisa mampu untuk pasang iklan di Kompas 1 halaman, kenapa engak put extra duit untuk sewa ruangan di Hotel, sekalian bisa mempresentasikan ke 300 fitur baru yang disebutkan?

3. Apple... Apple... di Indonesia, kenapa tidak ada representative resmi dari Apple untuk Indonesia, sehingga bisa menaungi seluruh penjual/toko Mac? Iklan Leopard ini adalah iklan dari salah satu Authorised Distributor/Reseller (PADI?), jadi toko2 yang mengambil dari distro ini saja yang tertulis... Tidak ada nama MacData atau toko milik AA Noto di Bdg..... Sama seperti di pameran, 3 (atau 4) booth besar yang menjual Apple...

Monster Initial Sticker Generator

2007-10-23T10:15:00.000+07:00

Got this site from boingboing. It's a halloween themed typo generator from this site imockery

Quick and simple cooking @ simplyrecipes.com

2007-08-12T14:21:00.000+07:00

I love to cook, although I don't cook as often as I wanted to.

Mainly just quick prep food. Most of the time, they are instant noodle.

This site has a collection of quick-to-made recipes, along with quite clear instructions, and most importantly, color pictures.

Simply Recipes

Another free stock photo site

2007-08-11T22:27:00.000+07:00

I stumbled upon quite a good site for free stock photo.

http://www.freerangestock.com

How Nerd Are You?

2007-05-20T00:22:00.000+07:00

Another Plane Crash, again...

2007-03-07T13:59:00.000+07:00

The third major plane crash in 3 months period.

I don't know what to say except my deepest condolences to all the victims.

These are some video screen grabs from the news (by MetroTV) :
(Taken from a mail circulating around. Thanks to the person who snapped these pics)

2007-01-11T15:42:00.000+07:00

Did you know that you can blog from Google Docs & Spreadsheets?

This blog is posted from Google Docs.

Yayasan Kesehatan Payudara Indonesia

2007-01-06T08:01:00.000+07:00

Kanker Payudara adalah pembunuh no 2 di Indonesia setelah Kanker Rahim. (Menurut apa yang saya dengar kemarin di Radio Delta FM).

Risk kanker payudara semakin meningkat dewasa ini dikarenakan kondisi lingkungan hidup dan gaya hidup sekarang. Polusi udara semakin parah, bahan2 pengawet makanan, dan juga polusi yang masuk kedalam makanan.

Parahnya penyakit kanker payudara di stadium dini tidak menimbulkan sakit, sehingga wanita (dan juga pria) yang terjangkit tidak menyadarinya. Diteksi dini hendaknya dilakukan secara rutin oleh para wanita, bisa dimulai dengan self-check secara rutin.

Yayasan Kesehatan Payudara Indonesia adalah salah satu pusat informasi (hotline) yang berhubungan dengan Kanker Payudara. www.pitapink.com

Adam Air crashed..... (RIP for all who died...)

2007-01-03T13:14:00.000+07:00

It is sad to start a new year with this accident. A plane from Jakarta to Manado, via Surabaya was lost. Up until this very moment (03 January 2007, 13:22), the whereabout of the plane (or the wreckage) is still unknown.

Yesterday, Indonesian government received and announced some false information about the plane being found and there are 12 survivors. Later last night, they reissued some statement announcing that the plane has not been found.

Updated news can be found in Google News

Searching more on the web, I found out that the plane crash is an accident waiting to happen.

Some interesting 'facts' I found :
- Lame maintenance/service records of Adam Air's plane. It had been mentioned 4 months ago in airliner.net. link

- The owner, Adam Suherman, is only 22 years old. Drop out of foreign university, came back home, and his dad give him money to start this airline business. 22 years old, school drop out, and rich brat. Would you trust you life by flying with his company?

- Adam Air was founded in 2002 by Agung Laksono and Sandra Ang. Agung is the Indonesian House of Representative Leader.
With his as the political backing, no wonder in the last incident (a plane went lost in sky, but luckily landed safely in a small airport), there's little, if not none, investigation going to probe the safety of this airline.

****

A discussion @ a local forum, indoflyer.net : link

In Memoriam : James Kim

2006-12-11T16:37:00.000+07:00

I don't know James personally. Knew him only from the TechTV plus a few gadget reviews @ cnet.

Last November, after ThanksGiving, he along with his wife and 2 daughters got lost in the Oregon wilderness. After the 14 days ordeals, his wife and the daughters were saved, but unfortunately James didn't make it. He left to find some resque a couple of days before the resque team found the wife and daughter. He died of hypothermia.

I spent a couple of years in Oregon. The scenic is just beautiful. It is so sad that it can also kills.

Click here for the story @ SFGate.

This is a detail map of their journey. If he can survive another 2 miles down the creek, he would have found a lodge where they can shelter for sometime.

Here's a link to GoogleEarth based projection.

quick tip : how to send WOL magic package

2006-11-17T23:05:00.000+07:00

From Linux :
http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/jpo/software/wakeonlan/

From OSX :
http://www.coriolis.ch/article18.html

From PC :
http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-gui.aspx

What needed :
- IP ADDRESS
- Netmask
- MAC ADDRESS

quick note : SCP command line

2006-10-30T15:11:00.001+07:00

SCP (Secure Copy)

syntax : scp -P [port number] [local/source file] [username]@[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]:[remote path]

default port will be tcp 22

Free Stock Photo

2006-09-20T12:25:00.000+07:00

My sis in-law is opening a noodle shop. So, it'll become my 'duty' to design a menu for her. The problem is that she doesn't have a decent picture of a bowl of noodle, so I have to quest for a decent picture of a bowl of noodle.

First stop, www.fotografer.net, a local photographer community portal. I signed up, and search for 'noodle'. Found a couple. But, in order to view them in viewable size (not thumbnail), the portal need to verify my true identity by requesting me to scan my ID and email the scanned ID to them.
(This is not secure practice, although in this case, I trust fotografer.net. **NEVER SCAN AND EMAIL YOUR ID CARD TO SOMEONE YOU DON'T KNOW PERSONALLY**)
Anyway, I don't have time to scan my ID, and wait for them to verify me.

So I give uncle Google a call. Most of the results are Royalty-Free Stock Photo, which is not really free, but you have to paid for the picture and then you can use the picture freely.

One result came out, http://www.sxc.hu. It's a community portal that exchanges 'stock photo'. Free. :) It does need a registration before you can 'download any picture.

I found the noodlelicious noodle picture. :)

Online Favicon Generator

2006-09-19T12:22:00.000+07:00

To quickly create a favicon for a web site, you can visit this site http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/

Visit the site to generate a favicon.ico from image that you have, preferably an 16x16 or 32x32 pixel images.

Put the favicon.ico @ your site.

Put the following text into your html code inside head section

link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico"

Creating mini zine from 1 sheet of paper

2006-09-15T11:01:00.000+07:00

From boing2.net link

How to create a mini-zine from one piece of paper.

Link to the original flicker set : link

RAID information

2006-09-14T11:08:00.000+07:00

This site provide a good illustrated information about RAID system

http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

Hi Roy! :)

2006-08-03T14:48:00.000+07:00

Sudah lama tidak mendengar kabar dari pakar multimedia ternama di Indonesia, KRMT Roy Suryo. Hi Roy!

Lagi sepi orderan yah?

http://www.jawapos.co.id/index.php?act=detail_c&id=239720

Playboy Indonesia, Second Edition : Magazine with no ads.

2006-06-12T10:34:00.000+07:00

After vacumm for 1 month, Playboy Indonesia (PI) rolled out the second edition of its magazine in Indonesia in June 2006.

The first edition which came out in April 2006, drawed much protest, mainly from the close minded self-claimed religious extreme groups. As the result of the protests :
- The office building where Playboy Indonesia resided, got ransacked by Front Pembela Islam (Islam Defender Front).
- After the raid, PI moved to another office, still in Jakarta. Due to an uncondusive safety (Jakarta Police Department, shame on you....), PI suddenly just dissapeared. Aparently the staff worked from home, while the main office relocated to Bali.

Playboy Indonesia, accused of being pornographic, actually contained no nude picture whatsoever. I was thinking of joining the next FPI demonstration to PI office. Hey, maybe those dudes from FPI were angry because they felt decieved when they expected fully nude babes only to find out babes in sexy cloths. They maybe wanted to demand their money back!! :)

Playboy Indonesia might be one of its kind. Maybe the first Playboy that contain no nudity. Maybe the first Playboy that published in the world most moslem populated country in the world. One thing for sure, there are 10+ man entertainment magazines in Jakarta prior Playboy Indonesia (plus dozens of yellow news papers), and they are more 'vulgar', yet only Playboy drew a lot of protest because and only because its name, PLAYBOY.

The second edition of Playboy Indonesia came out last week. In one talk show, the chief editor told the audience that they had asked the distribution agents to closely monitor the distribution. Playboy is suppose to be sold only instore, and never meant to be sold in the traffic light. (a few days ago, I saw the newspaper boy was offering PI @ traffic light.)

Content are still the same. No nudity. :(
A good interview with Tibo (the might be wrongly accused death-sentenced terrorist). One or two playboy cartoons. Raw data. Playboy Advisor (which I think are fake, since the letters and answers seems like a stiff translation rather than a real letter written by a real Indonesian.

What's interesting with this edition, is that it might be the only commercial magazine that contain no advertising at all. (well, there's a mini 3cm by 3cm picture of a man perfume sponsoring a forum.). In space of the advertisings, Playboy has writen 'This place is dedicated to our client that was threatened when they advertise with us. This place is reserved for (a cigarette ads)".

So guys, run to your nearest magazine stalls, and buy this magazine, not because the sexy babes (if you're looking for that, get another magazine... they offer more skins for your Rupiah), but because of its uniqueness. It can be the reminder for all of us, that tolerance and so called democracy in Indonesia is still a one point of view system. When some ppl disagree with others point of view, they will resort to violance at the first step.

quickie : how to boot into single user mode in Linux

2006-06-09T15:07:00.000+07:00

Last week, due to an error in our mail server, I was looking for a way to boot into single user mode. (I'm not an expert in Linux, so I have to google. :))

Yesterday, a friend of mine reminded me. I better write it down rather than google it again when I need it.

****

if boot_manager = GRUB then :
- type p if you passworded GRUB.
- Select the kernel you want to boot with, and type e.
- You will have a bunch of lines at your screen. Select the one with kernel and type e to edit the line.
- Go to the end of the line and type single
- Press enter, and type b to boot.

****

Spam, part deux

2006-06-09T14:51:00.001+07:00

Beberapa setelah gempa Djogja, beredar spam/hoax via email dan sms yang mengatakan bahwa akan ada gempa susulan dalam beberapa hari yang akan lebih dahsyat dari gempa Jogja.

"Menurut CNN,disiarkan 3 hari yang lalu bahwa lempeng bumi di australia sedang bergerak ke utara menuju asia.diperkirakan bisa bertubrukan dengan lempeng bumi di selatan pulau jawa.Diperkirakan 11 hari setelah gempa jogja, atau rabu besok(7 juni) akan adagempa dahsyat dan memungkinkan terjadinya tsunami.Mohon doanya n plis forward ke temen-temen laen, jagan sampai putus di tangan kamu."

Saya pikir hoax semacam ini cuman akan berlalu, dan tidak akan ada yang secara serius menanggapinya. Tapi saya mungkin salah ketika ada media cetak yang mengutip hoax ini.

Priyadi memaparkannya lebih lanjut tentang hoax ini di blognya.

2 hal yang perlu dipoint out :
- sangat menyedihkan kalau dalam bencana Djogja, masih ada orang yang iseng menyebarkan hoax untuk kesenangan pribadi.
- sangat prihatin juga melihat keterbatasan sebagian masyarakat dalam menyaring informasi dan juga kemampuan dari information-mining. Jaman sekarang, so many information, so little truth.

Pedoman untuk menjadi seorang manusia

2006-06-05T15:44:00.000+07:00

Ketemu satu blog dengan 'pedoman' yang cukup mengelitik di http://jimjimblund-snicksnack.blogspot.com/.

Terjemahannya kira2 adalah sbb :

1. Anda akan menerima sebuah tubuh. Suka tidak suka, itu akan menjadi milik Anda untuk waktu saat ini.

2. Anda akan belajar. Anda akan masuk ke sekolah informal yang dinamakan kehidupan. Setiap hari di sekolah ini, Anda akan mempunyai kesempatan untuk belajar pelajaran. Anda mungkin akan menyukai pelajarannya, atau berpikir bahwa mereka adalah hal2 yang tidak berguna.

3. Tidak ada yang namanya kesalahan, yang ada hanya pelajaran. Bertumbuh adalah sebuah proses mencoba dan salah, experiment. Experimen yang 'gagal' adalah bagian dari proses, sama halnya dengan experimen yang 'berhasil'.

4. Sebuah pelajaran akan diulangi sampai dimengerti. Sebuah pelajaran akan disuguhkan kepada Anda dalam berbagai macam bentuk sampai Anda mengerti. Sewaktu Anda mengerti, Anda akan mendapatkan pelajaran lain.

5. Proses belajar tidak akan berakhir. Tidak ada bagian dari kehidupan yang tidak mengandung pelajaran. Jika Anda hidup, maka ada pelajaran-pelajaran untuk dipelajari.

6. "Di sana" tidak lebih baik dari "di sini". Ketika Anda "di sana", akan menjadi "di sini", dan Anda akan menemukan "di sana" lain yang akan kelihatannya lebih baik dari "di sini".

7. Orang lain hanyalah cerminan dari diri Anda. Anda tidak dapat mencintai atau membenci sesuatu tentang orang lain, kecuali jika sesuatu itu merefleksikan apa yang anda cintai atau yang anda benci tentang diri Anda sendiri.

8. Apa yang Anda akan perbuat dengan hidup Anda adalah terserah Anda. Anda memiliki semua alat dan perlengkapan yang cukup. Apa yang Anda akan perbuat dengannya adalah terserah Anda. Anda bebas memilih.

9. Jawaban-jawaban Anda ada di dalam diri Anda sendiri. Jawaban untuk pertanyaan-pertanyaan sekitar kehidupan ada di dalam diri Anda sendiri. Yang Anda butuhkan hanyalah membuka mata anda, membuka telinga Anda, dan sebuah kepercayaan.

10. Anda akan melupakan semua hal di atas.

Blast from the past

2006-05-12T14:55:00.000+07:00

3 days ago I received a 'hi' email from a long lost good friend. "A Good friend". :)

It's true that time will heals all wounds. It was so painfull at the last good bye. Sorrow and betrayed.

6 years passed by.

She lives happily with her husband and a 4.5 yo son now.

Her sister was married and has a 1.5yo kid.

Her parents, good old folks, moved to SF. Good for them to less worried of their two daughters and enjoy the retirement.

She owns a furniture shop in Manila, and plans to open an asian cafe with her sis in SF.

I'm married to my wonderful wife and got two babies (1 and 2 yo).

Looking back, sometimes I wonder of how stupid of me trying to fight for a lost cause. But if I didn't I will never know, and my path would be different.

Time will heals all wounds... and it did. :)

Nice to see you again my friend. :)

Quickie : How to change short name in OSX

2006-04-17T17:18:00.000+07:00

I knew how to do it the hard way. But the easy way won't hurt too.

http://homepage.mac.com/frakes/MOSXPT/content/shortusername.html

Thanks Dan and James.

Endangered Site in Nias, Indonesia

2006-04-17T15:18:00.000+07:00

Bumped into this link.

http://www.wmf.org/resources/sitepages/indonesia_omo_hada.html

It's a forgotten ancient site. If it was in Java or Bali island, maybe it would't got forgotten. It's a pity.

Activating Chinese Language feature in OS 9

2006-04-06T14:00:00.000+07:00

A staff called me earlier to ask for the instruction to activate Chinese language in OS9. It has been ages since I did it. I googled and found this site which has quite a complete coverage on this topic.

http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/index.html

Thanks Council on East Asian Studies @ Yale University

We are poor and corrupt, but we love holiday

2006-03-27T21:46:00.000+07:00

It's official last week. http://www.kompas.com/utama/news/0603/21/070914.htm

Government has finally declare another set of holidays. A few years ago, Indonesia shifted from a six working days to five working days. Among the reason was the efficiency and to give staff more time to rest.

Then, I think, 3 years ago, the government made a rule that if a holiday is close but not next to a Saturday or Sunday, it is to be shifted to the nearest Saturday or Sunday. The reason was to make a long week end, and encouraging people to travel on a long weekend, thus promoting tourism that has been slow after the riot and crisis.

This year, I think, they changed the rule a bit. Instead of shifting the holiday, the government declared that the day between is also a holiday. They called it 'cuti bersama'. 'Cuti' means paid leave and 'bersama' means together. Roughly it means that the day is a holiday, but it will be counted as a paid leave. (In Indonesia, we only got 12 days paid leave within one year, so that's really a bummer).

So let's see how many holidays and days off do we have in Indonesia in year 2006.
Religious and Ceremonial holiday (dd/mm):
1/1, 10/1, 29/1, 31/1, 30/03, 10/4, 14/4, 13/5, 25/5, 17/8, 21/8, 24/10, 25/10, 25/12, 31/12 = 15 days.
New 'cuti bersama' holiday :
31/3, 26/5, 18/7, 23/10, 26/10, 27/10 = 6 days
Saturdays and Sundays : 102 days
Total : 123 days.

Roughly, we, Indonesian are only working 2 out of 3 days. (123/365 days).

Personally I'm not an workalohic. I like holidays, and no complain of too many holidays IF I have a lots of money. (Yes, they say money can't buy happiness, but sadly but true, if you don't have money during holidays, you stay home and watch TV).

To make things worse, what the heck is the problem with the government of Indonesian? Don't they have much more important things to do such as fighting corruption in all line of government agencies? Improving social services? Fixing the whole law system : the police, district attorney, and the judge? Fixing the high cost economic? There're zillion more things to do, BUT THEY ARE BUSY IN DECIDING THE HOLIDAY DATE!!!!!

Indonesia is among the most corrupt country in the world. We are so corrupt that we are able to fix the survey not to put Indonesia on the top most corrupt country in the world.

Indonesia was once the big power among countries in south east asia, now is merely a big bum. Singapore is definitely more developed than Indonesia since forever. Malaysia is now one of the largest player in rubber and palm oil, and leave Indonesia in the dust. Thailand is a lot more advanced in their agrobusiness, and Indonesia is now importing fruits and rice from them. Vietnam is now the favourite place for foreign investment, while foreign investors left Indonesia because of the uncertain of law and high cost economic.

BUT WHAT THE HELL. WE MIGHT BE POOR AND CORRUPT, BUT WE CERTAINLY ARE LAZY. (WE = INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT who for sure don't care the difficulties that faced by Indonesian people.

Just a bit note, do you know who initiate this ministry law? This law is issued by Menkokesra (Menteri Koordinator Kesejahteraan Rakyat = Coordinating Minister of Social Wellfare). Who is the Minister? He is Aburizal Bakrie. He is one of the black conglomerate, who was incompetent in running his Bank (Bank Nusa) which resulting his bank is being liquidated by the govenment, and tax payer money had to pay for the settlement of his bank. But because of very good connection with the big and corrupt political party, Golkar, he got away, and with the help of his good friend, Jusuf Kalla (now the VP), he now become the ministry. Before the current minister position, he was the coordinating minister of economic.
He is well know for his remark when the hike of liquid gas price sparked a lot of protest. He said "If you can't afford the gas, then don't use the gas."

So, one more time, WE MIGHT BE POOR AND CORRUPT, AND STUPID, BUT WE CERTAINLY ARE LAZY. (WE again = INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT).

The perfect dollar bill.

2006-03-24T14:15:00.000+07:00

Yesterday, I went to a local bank (Bank Central Asia) to make a USD deposit.

I already know that in Indonesia you better have a crisp perfect US dollar bill. No marks, no stapler holes, no ballpoint mark, no bent mark, not even a single dot. Else it will be valued less. Even worse, it might got rejected by banks, money exchangers, and stores.

What I found out yesterday :
1. If your bill is dated year 96, 99, and 01, you'll get charged Rp.20/$1.
2. If your bill serial number started with one of these letters : CA, CB, CD, CF, DB, and DH, banks might not recieve it.
3. Bank (at least BCA) only receive 100 $ bills. Smaller changes such as $1, $5, and $10, will be rejected.
4. You have to sign a letter stating that if in later date they don't like your dollar bill, they have every right to return it to you. (And they photocopied your ID). And they also write down every single serial number of the bill. And I have to pay Rp.6.000,- for a 'meterai' (a stamp that legitimate a letter).
5. The whole stupid simple deposit, wasted me 2 hours.

But all the bank personels are very helpful and courteus. :)

admins are from mars, users are from hell

2006-03-15T17:22:00.000+07:00

I'm an System Administrator and I hate dealing with users. Some users are okay, when they give us a call for a real problem. But quite a lot of calls were about problems caused by the users that thought they are expert enough with their computer (aka smartass).

For instance :
A coleague of mine recieved a call from an user @ a branch store. This user thought that he was smart enough to, without any confirmation to us, came in the morning, and plugged an application dongle into the server. His action caused the server to crashed. Then he call to report the problem.
We were unable to guide him via the phone, because it sounded that he's a bit reluctant to do it himself and he was more expecting us to go there. Anyway, we had to go there to troubleshoot anyway. So we went down to the store, take a look at the server, open the Service and restart the Sentinel (dongle) service. And all set. Only took 5 minutes to do it, plus we had to waste 2 hours drive to the location. All this because of this user that think it's okay to just plug a dongle into a server.

Another occation :
Our office were relocating a department to another office. In this department, 99% of the user uses Mac, mostly the candy color iMac and eMac. We got a lot of call from them asking us to help them unplugging the computer. Yes, they called us to help them to unplug the keyboard, mouse, ethernet, and power cable. They might be afraid to broke something, as they might be a novice user, right? WRONG!!!
After the move, after we replugged all the cable, I saw some of them took the keys out of the keyboard to clean it. YES THEY KNOW HOW TO TOOK THE KEYS OFF THE KEYBOARD, BUT THEY ARE TOO SCARED TO UNPLUG THE USB, NETWORK, AND POWER CABLE!!!! Or maybe they just plain lazy...

In many occations, users will keep opening emails from strangers that contain attachment no matter how many times you told them not to. User will often forget to update their virus dat file. Are they novice, so they don't know these things even though we already go over this thousands of times? NO... BECAUSE THEY ARE SMART ENOUGH TO INSTALL BLUETOOTH DONGLE + BLUETOOTH APPLICATION TO SYNC WITH THEIR CELL PHONE!!!

They certainly are from hell.

spam_ascii

2005-04-15T10:41:00.000+07:00

spam_ascii
Originally uploaded by magnor.

Spammers now a days are getting smarter and smarter. Started from a plain text emails, which is basically very easy to be detected by spam blocker, then they moved to an image (gif or jpg) that contains text.

A few days ago, I received this spam email that contain only random ascii characters. The real msg is 'hidden'. These random characters, if you set the font to monospace type, will form the msg. Very nice. :)

Spam blocker can't recognize this email as a spam. It's not yet as smart to figure what's the msg behind this random ascii character. It's good for spammers to get the msg into someone mailbox without being detected.

However, the "downside" (for the spammers, not me), is that the reciepient of the email will not be able to recognize the msg right away. Most of the email client program will not display the msg in monospace font (such as Courier). Most of them will display it in either Arial or Times, which will just shows a series of non-sense characters.

Spammers, one thumb up for you for this trick, and "go to hell" for you for keep spamming.

Cool ransom-note online generator

2005-04-07T16:59:00.000+07:00

darmadi

I found two online tool to make a ransom-type text from images. (from boingboing.net)

http://blog.outer-court.com/yahoo/letters.php5
Will search the equivalent of the word from yahoo.

http://metaatem.net/words
will search the equivalent of the word from flickr.

The result from flickr is nicer, as you can see the sample I've created.

Evaluating 2 OSX blogging client

2005-04-06T11:11:00.000+07:00

Usually I blog directy via blogger.com. It's quite suite what I needed. A few days ago, someone told me to try blogging using a client.

I checked out versiontracker.com for any freeware blogging client that support blogger.com (I'm poor, so I can only afford any freeware. :) Also I live in Indonesia which is very difficult to do online payment, thanks to those carders).

So I downloaded 2 freewares : iBlog (the freeware one, not the shareware one with the same name), and WeblogPoster.

iBlog was a bit confusing for me, and I was too lazy to play around with it. Then I tried WeblogPoster. This program come with a better documentation, especially on how to do setup for blogger.com.

So this is my posting using Weblogposter.

update :
When posting using Weblogposter, aparently the 'title' didn't get posted. I don't know whether this is a bug, or my fault.

Why most Indonesians are dumb, and will stay dumb for a long long time... Thx to Bill Gates.

2005-03-31T12:29:00.000+07:00

Microsoft just recently launched a product called Windows XP SE (SE = Special Edition ?. We just called it 'Sunat' Edition. Sunat = circumcised).
Basically it is a lower cost Windows XP (around $30 to $40 only sold to Computer maker/builder and not to public), but has a lot of feature being crippled compare to the original Windows XP.

What features are being circumcised? Actually they are not 'circumcised' but they are new features (for dumb people):
1. It's available only in local language. So in Thailand, it will be in Thai language, and in Indonesia, it will be in Indonesian language. (So far Windows XP SE only launched in these two countries).
Don't let those ppl in Thailand and Indonesia learn English, not even single word such as 'print', 'save', 'open', 'unexpectedly quit', etc. Lets keep them use their own language, so they won't have any competitive advantage (as for example, know a few English words) in this globalization era.

2. Win XP SE only can run a maximum 3 applications at a time. Hmmmm... does spyware, trojan, virus, antivirus, spamblocker, antispyware counted as "application"? If so, then user won't be able to run anything at all!
And, oh yeah, dumb people can't keep track more than 3 opened application at a time. So to prevent a confusion, Microsoft help user by setting this stupid limit.

3. Maximum screen resolution : 800x600. Aparently Microsoft think that Thais and Indonesian are so poor, that most of people here still use 14" monitor. Thais and Indonesian can't afford to buy a 15" CRT, let alone a 20" LCD monitor. Stupid and poor, how pathetic.

4. Unconfigureable Firewall. Yes. Microsoft is smarter than you, you're dumb, so don't mess with the preconfigured firewall. You don't even have any idea what's a firewall is, so bug off and go play solitaire.

5. Single user. Since the users are so dumb, they will always forget their password, so why bother.

6. No Microsoft networking (except TCP/IP). Well... I don't know whether this is good for user or not... but limited networking capability? well, since the target are dumb users, they won't know that's the problem with this limited networking capability anyway.

***
Thailand and Indonesia are two countries that had the honor as the pilot project for this Windows XP SE (code name : "dumb and dumber").

It's sort of secret pilot project, you can't find this product listed in Microsoft web site. ( http://www.microsoft.com/indonesia/windows/default.asp ). Don't let this word out to dumb peoples. After dumb peoples have feeling too, and they might be upset because they have been given a special treatment by Microsoft.

Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information (menkominfo) attended the launching of WinXP SE, and immidiately commended Bill Gates as the person to first enter the heaven. Wow... some peoples are just dumb beyond belief.

http://jkt2.detikinet.com/index.php/detik.read/tahun/2005/bulan/02/tgl/22/time/16419/idnews/296647/idkanal/111

That's why I said that most Indonesian are dumb.... We even has a dumb Minister.

Way to go!

postscript :
One of my staff is localizing a POS program. We developed the POS program in house, and as a standard we choosed to use English. After a years, some users complained that they are having a hard time understanding the English menu. (So now we are in the process of localizing it.)
One thing that I can't understand is, how hard is it to learn one or two english words (such as 'input', 'inventory', 'cash drawer', etc)? It's not that they are retard or has IQ below a cockroach. They fluently can navigates thru cell phone's menu!!
Only one thing came to my mind, they are just lazy. Thus they will stay dumb... and will for a long time.

A silver lining of this is that their lazy attitude is the thing that will separate us (who are willing to learn), from them (who are not willing to learn).

My staff is learning a great deal of language vocabulary when translating from English to Indonesian. Those lazy users, learn nothing. Good for them.

2005-02-17T11:11:00.000+07:00

Big Bad Ass Truck. Never knew that they still exist and running!!! This truck was hauling some machine from the factory where I work.

2005-02-17T11:08:00.000+07:00

This is one of the biggest Moth I've ever seen (Moth is still sibling with Butterfly). It stayed on my front door in the morning. The wingspan is appx 21cm. It so big, it did scared me a bit. It was gone when I came home @ night.

my Linux Software RAID was failing

2005-02-01T14:50:00.000+07:00

Yesterday, I took a peek at the status of my Linux file server, and one of the disk in the RAID-5 volume was failed.

Being blank and pretty newbie in Linux, I absolutely had no idea on how to recover from such event. The volume still intact, but might not be if another disk fails.

I search google and found this link. The Software-RAID HOWTO: Reconstruction

All I need to do is just do the command :

raidhotadd /dev/mdX /dev/sdX

It successfully reconstructed the volume yesterday.

This morning, it failed again. I'm trying to reissue the same command again. If it fails again, maybe it's about time to change the harddisk.

(Well, anyway it's an old pentium III, with some used and old SCSI hard disk. 5 SCSI at only 17Gig each.)

cinnabon... finally here...

2005-01-31T10:14:00.000+07:00

Cinnabon finally opened an outlet here in Jakarta. It used to be my fav when I lived in Eugene, OR, 12 years ago. Oh.... that Moccalatta, and the cinnamon with extra frosting..... :d

2 weeks ago, they opened an outlet in Taman Anggrek Mall, 3rd Floor, next to the movie theatres, replacing Famous Amos (Bye bye.... I'll miss their chocalate cookies... :( )

Price is okay. 10k or so for a minibon, and around 14k for a regular roll. However, they are not freshly baked, as in 'fresh from the oven'.
Nevertheless, the roll is better than Saint's Cinnamon (also located in MTA). My wife prefers Saint's Cinnamon, because they got Cheese Roll.

The Quickest way to make a web page.

2005-01-29T11:07:00.000+07:00

The Export department asked me to update the web with a new product line up. The site itself is quite old. I've been planning to upgrade this site, but always bumped away with daily routine such as broken computers, virus cleaning, internet connection lag, surfing, reading email... etc...

I got 15 pages brochures of the product from Export Department. What is the quickest and dirtiest way to put up this pages to website? At first, I asked for the designer of the pages for the Freehand files. Guess what. He didn't have the file. He trashed the file and didn't even archive it after the files was sent to the printer. Well...
He got only the original Photosop file of the image of the products. And each of the image is 25MB to 30MB in size.

So, I don't have much time, as Export Dept kept pushing this. So I'll just put up a quick and dirty pages first, before manually optimized those 25-30MB product images.

I scanned the pages. (One thing I regret is I scanned them using descreened option, which result the text to be blurry).

Scanned result was feed into Adobe Image Ready, increase the Contrast +40 around the black text area (to make the text crispier), slice the picture around each product+description, and save it as html+images.

then I open those images using Dreamweaver, apply a simple template consisting of navigation to the main page, previous page, and next page. Manually link each of the 'previous page' and 'next page'.

Connect to the server via FTP, and then upload.

Here there are.... a quick and dirty (or blurry to be precise) web pages. Times taken : 2-3 hours (mainly slow FTP transfer, because I live in a crappy country that has crappy connection).

Next week... I'll clean up and possibly redesign these pages..... if I have time....

Entourage X 2GB database file limit

2005-01-27T10:56:00.000+07:00

entourage
Originally uploaded by magnor.

Yesterday, one of the staff hitted this limit. He was using Entourage X without any update at all (as I believe, if it aint broke, don't fix it).

Yesterday it broke. Everytime he launched Entourage, it gave "-40" error. Tried the typical and advance rebuild also didn't work.

So I downloaded the latest upgrade (10.1.6) from this site @ microsoft.

I applied the upgrade, and Entourage went back to normal. However it still have a limit of 4GB.

The user have to have to manage their email.

A side effect after applying this update is that everytime I relaunched Entourage or Word or Excel, it will ask for the CD Key.

Using "Remove Office" from Office X Cd, I removed ms office from his mac, and then reinstall the Office again. Enter the CD-Key, and it's all set. Never again asked for CD-Key.

This is why I love my bos...

2005-01-26T17:20:00.000+07:00

This is my I love my Bos...

Yesterday, my Bos brought me a new iMac G5. (Currently I am using my beloved Cube, and still using it.... )
A couple of weeks ago, I was given a task to digitized a bunch of 8mm and hi8mm video cassete. My Cube was having a hard time when I tried to encode the captured video into DVD via iDVD.

It's a fine machine. Fast and quiet. Although the screen is a smaller than everybody thought it suppose to be from behind. It's a 17" wide screen. I wish it was a hi-res display. It's not quite far different in term of size from my 15" Studio Display.

Automatic user data migration (when you first turned on this new computer), didn't went smoothly.... it always stuck at "43 minutes left". Maybe my Cube's 20G hard disk is too crowded. I tried Repair Permission and Repair Disk several times using Disk Utility, and check and repair volume using TechTool Pro, but still it stuck at "43 minutes left".... (sometimes it's "45 minutes left"). Well, that wasted 1/2 of my days, so I decided to skip the process.

A few of my office mate drop by to see this iMac. They are PeeCee user, so they are quite amazed with it.... I was trying to find a way to show off this machine... and nothing came up... Apple should include a short movie of what this machine is capable of doing. A short 2-3 minutes movie will do.
I ran WorldBook instead... which wasn't very 'ohhh... ahhhh'. Neither is Nanosaurs.
Again, Apple should give some sampler or movies, at least for me to showoff this widescreen iMac.

So today, I bring a copy of Mission : Impossible - 2 DVD. Screen quality is okay, due to the scalling for full screen effect. If I watch it in normal mode, it will be too small, and the widescreen imac will be just a waste. Another 'minus' is the speaker. It's not powerful enough. My Cube's speaker is more powerful.... I might attached them to this iMac.

So the video project can wait... I'll 'test drive' this machine first. :)