Be Bold, Buy Silver and Gold

If there is one thing that has not lost value over years and instead has gained significant value it is precious metals such as gold and silver. In fact there may never be a better time than now to buy silver. The world demand for silver has gone up dramatically and in fact it exceeds the annual production. Investment in gold is also a smart idea. Gold purchases have been made for centuries and it is a good way to preserve one's wealth as currency can lose value but limited precious metals can't. You can buy gold coin and silver coins from a company called Monex. It's actually pretty convinient as they have a personally delivery system and an option to arrange for convenient and safe storage at an independent bank or depository. This shows their reliability and makes it easy for consumers like us to purchase these precious metals.

Motorola adopts Google approach.....

Motorola is developing software which scans SMS messages on the users handset to then deliver ' relevant ' advertising, using a combination of key words from the text and also your GPS location.

The article in the Times goes on to give examples of a user texting the word ' hungry ' to then be sent adverts for restaurants in the local area.

Recent studies from Dynamic Logic for the Hilton’s Hampton hotel chain showed a positive increase in the Hotels brand awareness by advertising on weather.com’s WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) site, demonstrating there is indeed a market for relevant mobile advertising content.

All sounds interesting working in a similar fashion to Google Mail, therefore the same concerns have to be raised over privacy and relevance.

Listening to Others

It is fair to say that we humans (most of us anyway) could benefit from the act of listening, more than we do now. None of us are immune to the notion that because we think, or believe a certain way, that it must be the way of thinking or believing. Our egocentric viewpoints often prevent us from taking the time necessary to fully comprehend precisely what is being communicated to us, with the result being that we often wander aimlessly along the path of life, equipped with little more than half-truths, and romantic idealizations.

Have you ever found yourself amidst a large gathering of people, many of whom are clamoring to have their voices heard in conversation, while everyone else does their best to interrupt one another? Ever been one of those seeking to be heard? I certainly have. I have what I feel is an important point to make, or a valuable contribution to add into the conversation, but I am constantly ignored because I am not forceful enough, not loud enough, not... rude enough to make myself heard. The past has taught me that in similar situations, by the time I was given an opportunity to speak I forgot what it was I had wanted to say.

Back to Electronics - T.V

Its not long since Thanksgiving passed and now its on to Christmas season sales. If i were to name one item that was a hot deal this shopping season, it would be flat panel t.v's. The prices of flat panel t.v's have gone down drastically since last year (sadly when i bought mine). However, it is important for us, as consumers, to know where to get the best deals and places to find these deals. Of course many of us are going to use the internet as the number 1 place of research so it is also equally important to know where (as in which sites) to find these deals on. Retailers and manufactures will target internet users so it is critical for consumers to find a reliable site that will give them all the information they need. Now, even though most of the research for T.v's is going to be done on the internet, it is pretty obvious that most of us aren't going to buy these t.v's online and you know what why should we? Flat panel t.v's are a big investment and they need to be seen and compared side by side with other Tv's. After all a hitachi 42 LCD will probably be completely different from a Akai, Sony or Panasonic so it's better to see these Tv's in action in their respectable stores. This is where sites that just give you online deals fall short. Unlike those other sites out there, a site like Krillion.com will not only give you information on the latest deals but also will help you find the exact TV you want at the retailers nearest you. There is nothing more sensible than this. So what are you waiting for? Visit Krillion and get the most accurate local shopping results!

Greed Will Be the Death of You Know

We watched Michael Moore's Sicko yesterday, and his documentary was everything I expected it would be. Not long ago my brother called me saying that he had seen this film, and that he was then seething with frustration. He said that the film caused him to feel ashamed of being an American, and his hope was that if everyone would watch this movie, that viewing it would ignite the revolutionary spark that has long laid dormant in Americans. As you can probably imagine, when I popped in the DVD, I did so excited by the promises of controversial truths. I will admit that Moore has a tendency to sensationalize, and that his flair for the dramatic can often detract from the seriousness of the issue(s) he is attacking, but overall, the film was very well done, and a must-see.

My Garage stories

One thing i have always wondered about is how other people use their garage. Even though garages are meant for parking cars, i can safely say that not everyone does that. My garage is mainly used as a storage place so i have to constantly be in there. Unfortunately, my garage flooring is mostly concrete and starting to crack from different areas. If i had a choice i would personally prefer putting some tiles in there as they look cleaner and are easier on the feet. I'm sure that those who use their garages as an extra room of some sort will agree with me on this also. What do you think?

Anyways, for those of you lucky ones with newer floors, you can keep it that way for a long time by using some epoxy on it. This will also help in keeping scratches and cracks off your floor. After all we all like durability.

Replication In MySQL

In some forums, i often saw a question asking about how to synchronize a database to some database servers (it could be local servers or even public servers via Internet). Using a dumped SQL is not very efficient if you want a real time access. Using mysqlhotcopy needs some resources, so it would rip off the performance of the system. The solution is by using Replication. Here's some information from MySQL's manual:

Replication enables data from one MySQL database server (called the master) to be replicated to one or more MySQL database servers (slaves). Replication is asynchronous - your replication slaves do not need to be connected permanently to receive updates from the master, which means that updates can occur over long-distance connections and even temporary solutions such as a dial-up service.
Today, at UGM, i got a material about replication (actually it was last week's material, but many of us had failed, so we had to restart it again. I was absent last week since i had to go to ILC 2007, so this is my first class actually). As always, Manual is the best place to start. I managed to set up one computer as a master and another computer as a slave in less than 10 minutes, so i guess it's pretty straightforward. By using this scheme, the slave would only have read-only access, meaning it only retrieve the updates from the server. Changing the slave wouldn't affect the server. In order to get a round robin model, we should use the daisy-chain model, which is like a P2P technology, where a computer became a server and also became a slave. To do this, it only requires some modifications and it won't take more than another ten minutes to configure it.

Planet For Linux Community

At the last ILC, i have been discussing about a need to have a central site which will aggregate all of Linux community in Indonesia. At that time, i talked to Vavai and Budi. Vavai was willing to provide the space for hosting, so my job was to lobby Ronny Haryanto to add a new sub domain under linux.or.id for the new planet and point the NS to Vavai's NS. We agreed that the sub domain will be http://planet.linux.or.id.

Few days later, i got a reply from Ronny and he agreed with the idea, so the process was very smooth. In just a few days, the Planet has been up and now it's already officially launched. It's made by Vavai and so far, we have managed to aggregate Slackware-ID, Ubuntu-ID, and some LUG (there are others, like Fedora-ID, OpenSUSE-ID, but they haven't been aggregated yet. Perhaps they haven't submit any posts).

We really appreciate your comments on this new idea, so please share your thoughts to me and Vavai via our email address.

If you want your organization to be included in the aggregation, please email Vavai for this, as i don't have any account on the server. For now, we will only aggregate LUG and Linux communities. We don't plan on aggregating an individual, since sometimes the topics is out of context.

Meizu M8 MiniOne (16GB)

Dubbed the Chinese iPhone, we’re familiar with the form factor and touchscreen looks of Meizu’s miniOne. We know that Meizu will take out telephony, at least for the time being, and we’ve learned recently of the miniOne’s face-lift. I know it takes a lot of effort to get interested in the miniOne’s specs outside the superficial form factor, the need to be objective compels us to be give our attention. So here are Meizu miniOne PMP specs.

- ARM11 533MHZ (perhaps Samsung S3C6400) processor

- 128MB DDR SDRAM cache (two 16 512Mb chip components 1024Mb 3 2)

GSM+EDGE+WCDMA

- WIN CE6.0 based on the Windows CE kernel FOR MEIZU M8

- Video decoder CODEC (Possible Samsung S3C6400 built-CODEC)

- 3.32-inch TFT VGA （720 x 480） 16 million colors Touchscreen

- 3 megapixel camera and a .3 megapixel VGA for conferencing (Autofocus, no flash)

- 1600mAHBattery : 1600mAH

- Bluetooth (with GPS access) , Line Out with DMB support, Wi-Fi connectivity with wireless card

- Plays 30fps 720 x 480 AVI, MPEG4, WMV videos and other mainstream video formats, even Real player through decoder, also video recording, and digital TV and GPS through DMB with downloadable maps.