Couldn’t believe I haven’t found this earlier – even if you don’t use Debian, still read it anyway. This ebook is simply amazing. Good stuff.

[HOWTO: Securing Debian ]

Finally, after living in UK for 6 years, it’s time for us to return back to Indonesia. Our parents are now old, so we’d like to be together with them while we still can.
Since we already got UK’s Permanent Resident status, we can always go back to UK pretty much anytime we want to anyway, should we change our minds later in the future.

But for now, goodbye England.

Kebetulan membaca artikel ini, disitu diingatkan mengenai suatu hal yang jarang dibahas – perhatikan temperatur di ruang server Anda.

Kita sudah bersusah-payah membuat server kita tahan banting dengan banyak cara – pasang UPS, RAID, prosedur backup, dst; tapi kita justru sering lupa memikirkan apa yang akan terjadi jika AC di ruang server mati ?

Beberapa server bisa shutdown sendiri otomatis, namun beberapa harus kita konfigurasi untuk demikian terlebih dahulu – kalau tidak, maka server Anda rusak karena kepanasan.

Untungnya, jika AC di ruang server mati, biasanya ada cukup waktu untuk shutdown server secara manual sekalipun, sebelum suhu ruangan menjadi terlalu panas. Tapi kalau Anda tidak tahu, tentu tidak bisa melakukannya. Untuk itu, memasang alarm temperatur adalah ide yang baik, misalnya – [ 1 ] – [ 2 ] – [ 3 ] – dll.

Tapi kalau server Anda terlalu penting dan tidak bisa di-shutdown karena ini, lebih baik Anda juga membeli AC portabel misalnya.

Sekali lagi, jangan lupakan soal temperatur, atau Anda bisa jadi akan sangat menyesal di lain hari.

If you need to upgrade your Debian stable / woody’s kernel, here’s a page which may be useful to you:
[ HOWTO : Debian kernel 2.4 upgrade ]

Also thanks to Andika for contibuting more information on this topic, via debid@yahoogroups.com

After observing the late tsunami disaster and events around it, I think only a Public EWS (Early Warning System) will be able to protect us significantly from such thing in the future.

The problem was not because of lack of EWS – there were reports on newspapers that warning has been sent to bureaucrats around the world : Thailand, India, and probably to Indonesia as well.
However, the warning got lost in the bureaucracy – and the tsunami managed to hit the people before they even know what it was.

Therefore, there should be a similar system, but available for public. So in case of another disaster, the bureaucrats won’t cause so much death again anymore – we’ll know straight away, and can take the appropriate action ourselves.

It’s a disgrace really that we have to do this, since we already elected and paid the bureaucrats to serve us. But if we value our lives, looks like we need to take matters into our own hands.

So here’s a list of things to do :

• Raw data is already available from [ LISS ]. To my knowledge, we can use this freely, especially since this is not a commercial venture.
• Need to convert raw data to earthquake co ordinate
• Need to develop a reliable algorithm to find out if the quake will cause tsunami – does the epicenter is on land or sea ? Is it strong enough to cause tsunami ? etc
• Notifications : SMS, email, pager, efax – make this done as much as possible by the machine, to speed up the process.
• Security : notifications should only be send after the analysis verified by an on-watch geologist. The geologist will then press the red button – and only then the notifications will be send to all over the world.
• Need someone to manage the contacts : we don’t want everyone to subscribe because false alarm may then cause chaos. But we also want as many people subscribed as possible – not just the politicians/bureaucrats (which may prioritise a political interest over a warning). Universities and NGOs are good contact points.
• Need to develop the system to be resilient : make it easy to run multiple servers providing this service, with automatic fail-over when the master suddenly become unavailable.

Those are the requirements that I can think of so far.

Yes, indeed we’ll need to consult a geology expert to create this system, especially to develop the algorithms. I think this would make an excellend PhD thesis *hint* *hint*

What I can offer : I have a dedicated server on USA which can be used to develop and host this service. I may also be able to join in the development soon if it uses PHP/Ruby.

If anyone’s interested, let’s get in touch and co ordinate our efforts.

I have a feeling that Apple will make another breakthrough again – finally establishing computer as an appliance, with the launch of Mac Mini.

People may finally start looking at computer as yet another household appliance – just like a microwave, fridge, washing machine, DVD player, etc. People will just use it, without needing to know much how it works under the hood.

It’s good because it’ll make computer more ubiquitous, and people will be able to benefit from it. It’ll hopefully enable people to do things they were not able to do before – sell their goods online / work from home, socialize with people on the other part of the world, finding out the knowledge pools on Internet, etc..

However, if that does happen, Apple will also need to think of a way to make sure that they all stay secure, seamlessly / without burdening the users. Something like Windows Update / Debian’s “apt” facility, but making sure that it won’t break things (unlike a few updates from Microsoft). It should be MUCH easier though, because Apple is working on a homogenic environment – unlike PC’s various configurations. So it’d be a complete disgrace if Apple failed to do this.

That said, I still won’t use Apple’s computers, because they’ve had bad track records on customer service – irreplaceable iPod battery, proprietary hardware/software, etc. I don’t like being locked into a certain vendor, it makes me feel like a hostage to their wishes. (and it has happened before)
However, don’t worry, I won’t criticise your personal decisions about this 🙂 I have too much things to do.

I’d be interested to see how the PC camp will react to this though.

I’ve been interested in and looking for an ideal multi-function device for years now, partly because it’ll enable me to work anywhere anytime, without getting bogged down with big & heavy equipment.

The Treo 650 looks most interesting now, especially after a series of hacks which increased its capabilities significantly.

However – at this form-factor, I’ve found they’re still not powerful enough, because Li-ion (at that size) simply still doesn’t have enough capacity to power a more powerful processor, for an acceptable length of time.
Various wireless features (bluetooth, WiFi, GSM, etc) also suck on batteries like babies on milk bottle.

So after years of waiting, I must concede defeat, and will forget my dream for now – until a much better battery technology become mainstream.