Metaphorically Speaking

What if u were told, u have only about 3-6 month to live, how would u have lived the rest of your life.? That was a question post to me. Ironically, the question has so much relevance to what I am facing that it caught me by surprise.

Yeah, how would i live my live now, if u know your days are numbered?

a) Would I live it up and enjoy?
b) Would I just make preparation for the eventualities and take care of people close to me?
c) Would I even disclose this news from my friends and loved ones?
d) Would I fight and look for ways to survive and recover (if it was even in my control)?

Now,these are question that is currently racing through my mind and it seems to be overusing my brain CPU. So many questions, so little time. Ah well, maybe I shud take one day at a time .......................... at this particular moment.;)

Hung up on broadband Wireless Technologies

We are sometimes hung upon technologies that comes our way. We also tend to take news about technologies on face values that we tend to be gullible on its claims. Take the example of Wimax and 3 G,there are so much claims on its speed and capabilities that we sometimes fails to examine them in relation to the laws of physics.

To demonstrate this claim in relation to reality, let us look at the claimed performance vis-a-vis to the reality on the ground. The common claim is that WIMAX will be a solve all technology due to its endless performance capabilities in broadband performance. Let us examine this claim in reality.

Limitation of Spectrum (Frequency).
Transmitters using WiMAX usually is deployed at base station to transmit broadcast signal to the end users for broadband usage. To transmit it effectively in a one to many configuration, the base station will be configured to transmit in a sectorial mode. The operators deploying these base stations will choose how many sectors depending on the amount of spectrum resource that is available to them. Normally, in a typical country, these spectrum resource allocated is around 20 Mhz. If the planning calls for 4 sector to cover the 360 degrees coverage, then the spectrum reserved for the deployment maybe 2 (with adjacent sectors using a different frequency). The client set may opt to use a different frequency band for transmitting back to base station, hence effectively u will have 3 frequency band to be allocated within the 20Mhz spectrum.

That will mean roughly per band you can only have 6 Mhz of spectrum. When U have 6 Mhz of spectrum , there is no way u can pump out more then 10 Mbits of bandwidth per band. It just defies the law of physics (at this present moment).

Transmitting Distance
Another myth is that WiMAX can transmit more then 25 km in distance. Generally this is true if and only if, u have a transmitter that has high enough wattage that may fry the birds (or at least causing hazardous health concern - in regulatory speak) coming close to the transmitter and u are only transmitting one way - to a passive reciever.

What most people forget is that if U are just receiving broadcast from the transmitter that maybe OK, but the client system also has to broadcast back to the base station. With current limit of 1 watt at the client devices, there is no way on earth that the client system can transmit back beyond 5 km (or thereabouts) unless using some high gain antenna. That would defeat the idea of portability, wud it.

So people, lets us not go and repeat this story without realizing the fact and reality on the ground.

Broadband Penetration - Reality of the Matter

Everytime I come across an article about Broadband Penetration, I squirm at the statistics being bandied around. We are always trying to benchmark ourselves with neighbours and regional Economic Tigers when we have not really looked at our own statistics and socio-economic determinant in details. The commonly quoted statistics are , "Oh, we have only reached a broadband penetration of 8 to 10%, we need to do more".

What we fail to examine are the followings:-

a) The number of Copper lines laid down by Telekom Malaysia is 4.2 Million Copper lines of which 2.9 million are household. In Telco speak, there are 2.9 million DEL to home users
b) There is 25 Million people in the country of which the average household members are 5, which means that we have roughly 5 Million household in the country.
c) There are 2.5 Million inhabitant in Klang Valley which translate to roughly about 500-600K household (depending whether if we use 4 to 5 members in each household) just in Klang Valley.
d) Based on the copper cables availability and the limitation of household, the maximum possible number of broadband users in Malaysia at this moment is between 2.9 Million and 4.2 Million subscribers (assuming everyone is a Broadband freak)
e) When TMnet claims that they already have 600K subscribers, my immediate take of it wud be that half of that is from the Klang Valley. (Which in turn translate to almost 50% of the Klang Valley market). The other half have other forms of livelihood that may not require them to pay RM88 per month and willing to settle for RM20 just for dialups.

For all U know, the market for broadband in Klang Valley and almost everyone has an internet account in sofar as Klang Valley resident is concern and the broadband market in Klang Valley is already saturated and not there anymore.

Now if U look at neighboring countries statistics, the population profile is different and the household ratio is different. Singapore (a nation state) may have a population of 4 Million people and household population ratio of 2.3 to a household. This translate to 1.73 Million household. Their DEL (copper lines) is approximately 1.8 Million which means every household has a phone and almost every household has broadband. Even if they have 1.5 Million broadband subscribers, their statistics will look much better then ours in terms of penetration and reach.

I think we need to check and conduct logical arithmetics to review what ever statistics that we hope to claim to promote Broadband.

History of Computing - Lesson Learnt

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81. The thing I remembered out of this was, that I bought it from the shelf of a Magazine shop called WHSmith in 1979. I also picked up a magazine and learnt programming in order to use this Sinclair. This was my first encounter with the Programming world. I also remembered that 1K or RAM is not much becoz, as I was typing the listing in, the cursor sort of didn't want to move further.

My Second computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. This came with a 48K RAM (Whoooohh, lotsa RAM at that time - mind U this is a 8 bit machine), and there are lotsa of listing of games. I learnt to create characters out of block figures and it was also my first introduction to gaming. Sprite was only available on "higher"end computers like the ATARI. I think the rubber keyboard gave away within 6 month.

I later "upgraded" to a BBC Micro with 32 K RAM because it was suppose to have a more "superior" BASIC which had structured Procedure calls. This was my first serious Computer as it had Disc Drives as opposed to the Sinclair which depended on Audio Tape Cassettes for Storage ;)

Early on in my working career, I then moved on from desktop computers to Minis and Mainframes. This was my first encounter with Prime Computers and Fortran. I need to learn Fortran to run simulation and analysis on engineering problems. As the programme were run on "batches" (phantom mode), I kinda picked up cracking at this stage as I needed a Super User ID. I used to leave simulated "Login screen" created with CPL scripts just to capture Admin password. The other thing that I picked up during this time is programming dicipline. I had a mentor who had a ruler beside his monitor screen to unsure that the Subroutines and Return statements were aligned for ease of debugging.

My annoyance with the IBM Mainframe and the costly price required to upgrade the DASD (Disk Drive to you and me), drove me to revamp the IT Division to use Novell. This upgrade saves the organization half a million Ringgit. I also remember the stress in trying to churn out application within 3 month, till I discovered a neat 4GL application Builder called Clarion. I was churning out simple apps at the rate of 2 for every week.

Tinkering with the PC, I got wise to its memory management at that time, trying to squeeze every bit of available memory in order to fit the Fat Novell Client. I also saw the war between the Emm386 and XMS386. It was also at this time I picked up assembly language trying to make use of the extended memory area of the PC. I was and still am continously amazed at a programme called Sidekick, (which had a calculator, notepad and a few other utilities) all written under 48K and fits nicely inside a memory space just above the 640.

My most memorable time was the availability of Tools made by this brilliant guy called Peter Norton. I survived and live by his Diskedit and DiskTools having to use it dwell into File Allocation Table and copy protection at that time.

It was also this time that I got myself my next computer which was a PC with 386@33Mhz/387 Co processor and with 8 Mbyte RAM(woooohhhh and Ahhhh) becoz I needed to run AutoCAD. That did not last long as Intel had immediately launch the 486 Chip which revolutionizes computing as we know it. RAMS got bigger and cheaper, programmes got fatter and more complex. The change of pace and rate of change also kill my appetite in chasing technology in so far as keeping up with the Super Chips for my Desktop/Notebook resource. It is also during this time a ran a Bulletin Board and later discovered the Internet.

I remember the Internet nearly drove my life to the ground. I live, eat , sleep on the Net. I also remember stalking and tracing someone on the net at 3 am, while emailing to and from with an acquaintance by the name of MAL (Dr Mohamed Awang Lah).

Looking back, it has been a memorable 27 years of history with the Computers. So much lessons, so little time.

Weekend Rambling - Boys and their Toys

Sometimes offers comes at a time when you don't really have cash to spare,but becoz of "nafsu", you just can't pass a good offer. I got a pair of these for a scream of a sum (almost 40% of market price). Not wanting to enjoysuffer alone, I tried to coax close frens to enjoy suffer collaboratively,by smsing them the offer. there were no takers, hence I got myself two phones, one Nokia N70 and the other being the cheaper model, the 6680.

The excuse I gave myself, testing out 3 G service from two major Cellular provider - yeah right. Who am I kidding.

This weekend also was the day I paid my specialist Doctor a visit. The good news is that my glucose level has subsided and my blood pressure is only marginal. The doctor was quite surprised at the results. He took me off the Reductil and just ask me to continue with the Glucophage.

Also went to Starbuck/Borders to catch up on frens after which I drop by PC Fair in my attempt to buy my notebook. All I got to see were the back of peoples head for half an hour. That was one disapointing PC Fair, which puts me off buying my replacement notebook - AGAIN.

All in all, it was a mix weekend, some joyous moment and some not so interesting events. Looking forward to next week.

RFID - Surrendering my Privacy to Information Collectors

Having attended the launch of the RFID event at the MCMC, I was left bewirlded as to what benefit these new fangled technology is going to bring the average Joe Consumer. As I understood, RFID is nothing new and has been used by the US Military for quite sometime to track their assets (soldiers, guns etc).

I understand the need to promote the use of such technology but I am of the opinion that you need to present both side of the case. The seminar started well, but in the end went into a product marketing mode, which I don't really appreciate. A lot of the guest and audience still came out not able to digest nor comprehend the benefit that can be capitalize from this technology since the real benefit or value either of cost benefit or otherwise could not/have not been presented.

What I do see the benefit of this technology is the ability to use the tag (throw away or reusable) to track concurrently items and assets using RF antenna upto 100 m in radial distance. The immediate benefit highlighted is the ability for shoppers to go out of Superstore (such as Wall Mart) with the bill and reciept immediately presented at check out.

My paranoid take on this is that, it is another technology (if wrongly used) can be used to track item, people and asset and thus invade consumers privacy. There could be privacy issues in the data mining of the information especially for cultures with lacksadasy attitude to managing information. Imagine these tags are embedded in under garment of man and woman. Since the tag is unique, one can identify what brand, type and flavour that the man/woman is using and how many times it is being used in a week.

Someone might come up to U and ask, why are U wearing NXXX Boxer shorts three times a week only??

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Have we looked into our Rights or are we Left? - Long Post

Watching some discussion on the Blogs and monitoring recent events got me into thinking, how does one protect copyrights of printed material especially on the Net.? I was also being hinted by a journalist acquaintance on this issue. How does one protect writings and copyrighted ideas when the culture of the community maybe inclined to take the easy way out of copying without acknowledgement.?

In the olden days, ideas and thought processes were written and later published as journals, books or magazine and this was distributed in exchange for wealth through the sale of such materials. Leakage of wealth and reduced sale were managed through the management of intellectual property and infringements were dealt either through licensing or suits.

Though simplistic in its description, but what is clear is that in the traditional method, every start of the process is backed by clearly defined documents (legal or otherwise) and hence responsibility and accountability can be traced.

With the invention of the photocopying machine, this technology then poses a big challenge to the protection of copyrighted materials and its distribution. With the proliferation of the internet, this infrastructure just brings distribution to a new all time high (positively or negatively).

ISPs are now being roped in to assist authorities in shutting down sites hosting files infringing copyrights issues in the form of mp3 and movies. This is becoming a prevalent issue and is being taken seriously in the music/movie industry fraternity. What will be more interesting is to observe the community come together to police the abuse of intellectual property rights of journals, news and ideas put forth on Blogs.

Now then, what are the challenges of protecting and distribution of ideas or writing on the Net.? Perhaps one way to explore this,is to look into issues and challenging in operating a Blog. In its simplistic form, a Blog is a journal of the writer published on the Net. The Journal can consist of ideas (new innovation or observation), hypothesis and/or photograph or any other multimedia files published in an electronic form.

The Author of the Blog does own some if not all of the Intellectual Property of the Blog if the writing and ideas put forth are original, of his own minus the acknowledged referrals and quotes. Unless and otherwise stated or claimed by the author, theoretically anything published on the Internet/Blog maybe deemed Public Domain and thus distributable. Recently there are initiatives of claiming IP rights on materials written by author under the banner of Creative Common. These are sets of terms which set forth the claim to rights and simplify the conditions on what and how the materials can be distributed.

What makes the Blog further entertaining is the ability for the Author to source comments from the Net community. The comments put forth are generally accepted as being owned by the commenter and thus is not part of the Blog author. However, there are other school of thoughts that implies that the comments forms part of the content and thus the Blog owner owns some part of the Blog and thus responsible for some of the Content. This can be quite challenging for the Blog owner.

The challenge is now extended, if the content posted does not comply with the law of the country ie if the content is sexually abusive in nature and the law in this country prohibits the publication of such content whether in print or otherwise.

The question pose to me is which Act and Legislation (if any) covers the Protection of Copyrighted Materials on the Net and which Act covers the regulating of Content published on the Net? How many of us are aware of our rights to claim and to pprotect our ideas. For those concerns on the issues of content, how many of us are aware that the content on our blogs is still subject to regulation under the Publication and Printing Act?

I think the general public may not be aware of their rights and responsibility of the content of their Blogs in relation to Law of the Country. I think there is a lot of work to be done in this area of educating the Malaysian Internet Community.

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