Archive for March, 2006

Busy, or lazy?

Written on March 30th, 2006 by
Categories: Nerd Public Journal?

Though it might not seem like it, but actually I’ve been quite busy lately that I couldn’t get my blog updated (why are you laughing, don’t you believe me?). Anyway, just to give some ideas of what had happened in the previous few weeks:

1. Codefest@AOSSS
Almost 4 weeks ago (2006-03-04/05), me + Bro Adli + Mahmud joined Codefest, a supposed to be 30 hours coding marathon, held in conjunction with the 7th Asia Open Source Software Symposium. The codefest was held at Mimos, while the symposium itself was at Nikko Hotel. I didn’t go to the symposium (though I was dying to be there) and so don’t ask me about it. Noris sez it was good and Bro Adli should know that better than anyone that I know. Our project is called Campus Slax, and if you’re interested to have a copy of it, please let me know. I still couldn’t figure out the best place to host the big ISO file, and it would be helpful if anyone can volunteer for that :) You can also check my photo gallery if you’re able to digest all the 102 photos that I’ve uploaded, which was actually a a collection of photos of various lenses of the people joining the Codefest.

2. Usrah Linux
Though I announced myself that 3xb055 is the official name of our weekly meetup group, I still prefer to call the meetup Usrah Linux. 3xb055 for the group, and Usrah for the meetup. As in my previous post of the meetup group, we’ve started to take turns to speak ourself a topic during the meetup session. I’ve missed to cover 2 meetup here, and here’s a brief of each of them:

2006-03-16
Speaker: Shakir (me lah)
Topic: Own your own mohdshakir.net
I’m getting tired of discussing bits and pieces of how do I set up this website, and with some people keep on telling me that they’re gonna have a website of their own, I came out with the topic, on the day that we’re supposed to have the meetup. Been talking about what to do before and while building the website, some internals etc2.

2006-03-23
Speaker: Bro Adli
Topic: Hidup Bersama Paket
It started with some basic network stuff, and went along with some cool things to do with tools such as tcpdump, ethereal, and netwox. We were provided with 176MB of packet dump of brontok attack on a network to be analyzed. When being asked why was the slide in Malay, his answer was simple; saje gatal :) The session ends with a demo on video/audio streaming using VLC on 2 battery critical (mine was 1% left) laptops.

Slides are available at my download section. Don’t be fooled by the slides, since they are just ad-hoc products that we came out with while waiting for dinner to be ready, or simply just minutes before the meetup starts. Ok, we’re lazy (or actually buzy), but we need to have that for formaility and most importantly, for documentation. I’ll update the content if I have the chance to (most likely not, hehe).

3. Hey Shakir, you’re on the news (paper)
Naa, not really. It was just a news coverage of the Codefest that I previously joined, with a photo of the event which somehow has me on it. It was just showing my back, and even more, the printed version had me cropped out. It has been mentioned and discussed here anyway.  Noris is making fun of it at the shoutbox (it’s in the main page of this site), and yes, it’s funny :)

Gentoo @ BHarian?

Written on March 23rd, 2006 by
Categories: Information Insemination

Came over this this morning, and perhaps any of you can verify this:

OMG, passwords in the plain

Written on March 21st, 2006 by
Categories: Information Insemination

Many people were shocked when root password readable in clear text with ubuntu, but that was nothing much to me since I’m not using ubuntu, and don’t plan to return back to it after my dissapointing 2 day trial session with it before.

The shock came to me when I found out that gaim stores password in plain text too!. It might be nothing new to some people, but for me, I found that out when checking my ~/.gaim/accounts.xml. My YM and google talk account has been set to auto login with saved password (I’m just too lazy to login everytime), and apparently, settings of each of the accounts are stored in the file in xml format, and the passwords in the plain.. I don’t mind much for people to use my id with the instant messaging stuff, but to use the password to login to my email accounts, which might lead to discovery of passwords to other account’s. Sigh..

Guys (and gals), don’t be a lazy person like me and stop using the ‘remember password’ function.

p/s: for those who keep their terminal open, people can easily install web developer extension to firefox and to able to view the stored password that’s normally replaced with *** (asterisks) in plain text using the Show Passwords function.

Sawi vs Mawi

Written on March 20th, 2006 by
Categories: Information Insemination, Nerd Public Journal?

Just gotten myself a Proton Savvy, and people keep on hitting me with the same question, "Why don’t you go for Myvi?". Been driving both cars, here’s my answer for that.  I can say it’s somewhat a Linux vs Windows duel.

Savvy / Linux Myvi / Windows
Built tough, no airbag Not a strong build + with breaking fibreglass floor, but comes with airbag
Low adoption / penetration rate Very good sales
Fast (Max achieved speed: 180km/h) 1.3 dvvt can achieve 160 km/h
Stable at 150 km/h Feel like flying at 120 km/h
Good ICE (In Car Entertainment) Crappy sound
Very good handling Handle with care

About the Linux vs Windows part, it’s up to your own imagination to translate the above table into that :)

(updated 2006-03-21)
For more info, visit these forums:
http://www.savoc.net (savvy owners club, registration required)
http://www.peroduamyvi.com

3xBO55 is now official

Written on March 9th, 2006 by
Categories: Nerd Public Journal?

We’ve had another meetup tonite of what I previously called Usrah Linux. It was not like our ordinary session since we were not there to talk about anything technical, but to actually discuss directions and plans for our meetup group. To make it easier for me and saving this writeup from being a draft forever like many others, I’ll just do a quick copy and paste of what I took note of our previous discussion there:

  • Topic
    • Year plan
  • Issues
    • Group Name
      • 3xBO55 (Bandar Baru Bangi OSS User Group)
    • Frequency
      • Thusrday (once a week) - 8:00pm – 9:30pm
    • Topic
      • Free to presenter (+-40 minutes)
      • Lightning round (light talks)
    • Presenter
      • Rotation / turn
      • Invited talk
      • Pre-schedueled (sequence, starting next week); shakir -> adli -> hafiz -> acap -> mahmud -> najib -> fadli
    • Logistic
      • FTSM-UKM – till August
      • Projector – sponsor!
    • Membership
      • Open
      • great hacker vs great attitude
    • Field Work
      • Promote FLOSS by organizing events, volutary work etc
      • Starts with academic institution
    • Breakaway
    • Code of ethics
      • Do no evil
    • Organization
      • Secretary?
    • Giving back to the community
      • Slax Campus

Oh yes, after the discussion the three of us who joined the codefest last weekend shared their experience, and they also showed what and how of the things that they did during the event.