USB Port Blues

As a regular user of a computer notebook, I've noticed many deficiencies with the design of more notebooks. One of the areas that of the late I've been rather picky on is the placement of the USB ports. My first notebook was an IBM X21 notebook which is considered as one of the best notebooks on the market with its noticable titanum case. For additional note, this notebook series have received several awards in reputable trade and consumer magazines making it one of the best of the smaller and more portable 12" notebooks. Contrary to what many people feel about small notebooks, I had first hand experience in carelessness in which I accidentally dropped my notebook over the desk a couple of times - in which to my surprise and delight, it was working!





After a couple of years using the notebook, after my warrantee was expired, I decided to try a few tricks I usually like to do - and one of them involves the upgrading of the bios. Flashing the bios has not been recommended by experts due to its dangerous consequences in which many computer manufactors will void the warrantee if they found that the user has done that process. However as I was rather proficient in flashing bios on various desktops mainboards, I thought that upgrading the notebook mainboard bios could squeeze some additional power on what is an increasing aged notebook. After a brief few minutes of the bios update, I found out that my notebook just simply "ceased to exist" and it was dead - which was ironic that it survived a number of drop-tests and rough handling by the owner. Its a first hand experience on knowing that flashing the bios is considered to be one of the most dangerous aspect in the computer - what that can't kill a computer from the outside, and be killed in the inside :-/

So after that day, I had to shop for a new notebook. As being a rather technological saavy person, I wanted to find a notebook that fits my image. Though I don't really care much about fashion, I do feel as a technological expert, its certainly worth to pay extra to find a right notebook for myself. After a huge decision making process, I ended up buying a Fujitsu S6120 series notebook after figuring that I best buy one of the better and more established brands in the market. My cause was helped when I found a person who was willing to off-load a brand new notebook a huge fee lower than the official selling price in the local market.





On the initial usage of the S6120, I found that the notebook was adequate, though at a 13" configuration it was a little larger and heavier than my original X-series notebook. After usage for a while, I start to find more and more reasons why the IBM notebooks were considered to be better than Fujitsu if on the same price scale. A very good example would be the placement of USB ports. On the X-Series, the notebook had 2 USB ports. One of them was in the back, the other in the side. The side configuration was used for an external mouse, whereas the back were used for other devices. On the Fujitsu S-series notebook, there are also 2 USB ports and they are located on top of each other on the back of the machine. Though I didn't really thought much about that, after a few weeks of usage I found that the USB configuration of the machine was inadequate. A very good example would be from the fact that I always use an external mouse if possible. Once an external mouse has been fit in one of the USB port, it was hard to place the second device in the port above. Some devices such as thumbdrives are huge, and it requires a lot of vertical space forcing me to take out all USB devices if I wanted to connect that.

As I wanted to point out here, the number of USB ports in the notebook is certainly not a good indicator of how good the notebook is. Sometimes placement and smaller details do make a huge difference - in which I appreciated the IBM X-Series notebook alot of its placement whereas I had a more critical time with the Fujitsu S-Series notebook.

Though I had a huge USB Port Blues with my notebook, I easily solved the problem by having an additional device I bought for my notebook which was a USB hub. My acquisition many months ago was a Targus USB 1.0 Hub. If you wondered why I didn't buy the USB 2.0 Hub, I wanted to point out that the price difference ($10 for a USB 1.0 vs $30 for a USB 2.0) I felt that the extra speed is hardly required for the Hub. Most of the devices I connect to the Hub were mouse/keyboard/joypads. These input devices can serve me well when I only had the 9.6 kbps serial port and certainly that is little reason to upgrade. Anyway, this whole rambling blog is nothing more than a quick reminder to ask ourselves whether we really need the fastest and best accessories. Its easily noted that at times, its more important to figure what you really need and the rest would easily be solved, and that is the lesson I leave here :)

My Perspective on The Thai Government Policy on Zoning in the Troubled Southern Region

It just hit me when I heard on the news report about the PM Thaksin Shinawatra stating out his desire to end all the disturbances and trouble in the southern region of Thailand. After a complete election rout of the TRT party down south, he came up with an idea that since the Military has already created Zone of Influence in which they can allocate military personal adequately to the danger. Our PM decided that the spending of public money on improving villages would also be held with a similar fashion. In other words, zones that are designated as green are areas that are safe, and normal budget allocation would be done. In red zone, it means high rebellious elements exist, in which he said that coupled with higher military presence, a huge cut in villages with bad track record are recommended. He claims that the Government has exhausted all means of peaceful solutions and now is resorting to the stick method in solving the violence as villages will strive to be safer - inorder to be able to ask for budget to support basic infrastructure.

When I heard that, I was completely aghasted to hear such rationale. During my younger years in HighSchool - I happen to have hold of the Anarchy's Handbook. If you haven't heard about it, the Anarchy's Handbook is a collection of things that are usually deemed dangerous by governments. Topics in the handbook include the Bomb Making, Weapon Making, Communist Manifesto, Ways to Cause Rebellion, How to Sow Distress in the General Population, Phone Phreaking, Lock Picking, and other deviant behaviors - which is like a Beginner's Guide to Terrorism and Revolution. It is known that schools in the US backlist any student with that handbook as dangerous and quite able to commit vile acts - which reflects much on its heavy nature. Though the book was a rarity before, after the internet revolution, multiple copies of this handbook can be downloaded from various sites, which makes it much more of a common knowledge - though somewhat outdated.

One of my favorite articles on the handbook were on how to make revolutions in your country. In the articles on revolution, it mentions the scenarios in which it would be ripe for a mass uprising of a large scale. An uprising from the masses can only happen if there are a huge number of dissendents to the regime. Once there is dissent, it is the duty of the revolutionaries to try to create even more dissent by engaging in all forms of misinformation and trying hard to provoke heavy-handed incidents with authority in power. When there is suffering, it is noted in the revolution handbook not to help in aiding the local population if the local authority have slow. The rationale behind it was to show examples of how the local authority have been neglecting the needs of the population - and try to sow up dissent to the point of breaking over. With the cases and incidents to rally around, it would be possible to instigate a uprising from the population of a certain size depending on how ideal the environment around the revolution were. In addition to the Anarchy's Handbook, some of my favorite literature based on revolutions were biographies, history books on popular uprising, in which I find the Ho Chi Minh's struggle to free Vietnam from French Colonial rule to be one of the most fascinating modern history.

In my time as a highschool student, I did a number of uprising against certain school policies with rather mixed results. Though I managed to make the school change certain elements, I have to admit that the highschool students were not quite the right people to sell ideology of a better future to considering their mixed agenda. A very good example would be the question of freedom of religion in school, which my uprising was easily put down to apathy in the student body. Most of the student body were bribed by the religious teachers of high grade in being a sheep and threaten anyone who join my movement with low grades. In other words, with the threat of retailation in grades, the revolution was doomed from the start, though as an individual I managed to gain certain concessions from the school.

Talking about the lessons I learn from my own revolutionary endeavors, I just can imagine myself if I'm a seperatist in Southern Thailand, I would be eyeing with glee with the next mishap that the Thai Goverment has done. The dissolvation of many security organizations in the south has allowed sleeper terrorist cells to be active after decades of inactivity. The Tak Bok incident is a rallying cry and incident in which trouble-makers can rally along - much like the MiddleEast using Palestine as a rallying cry. The new Zoning directive, will further alienate the population. Instead of having one or two terrorist in each village, any village caught in the Red Zone would be denied fundings and support making them even more succeptible to convert enmass to swell the dissendent's rank which would be highly symphatetic to the seperatist cause. I suppose none of this scenarios should be an ideal situation for Thailand at all.

As another committed and worried Thai citizen with no agendas in this conflict, I also join in the long line of academics who have been highly critical of the zoning idea, in asking the government to listen to the voice of reason. I understand that TRT is still smarting from losing big time in the Southern Consititencies, but using this stick as a retailiation to their snub of TRT is certainly a path that will lead to ominous events in the future. To what extend - that is something I don't feel I want to discuss at this moment... Its too depressing...

Pop-up ads invade Department of Homeland Security

I just noticed the article in my favorite technological news update website which I find it worrisome. I've always noticed the huge amount of ironic elements in the current US policy - e.g. No Child Left Behind, Clean Air Act - in which the policy name is actually the opposite of the end result of the policy. Talking about it, it just hit me that the appointees to the US's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee is actually one of the world's largest offender in gaining private information from the net.

Pop-up ads invade Department of Homeland Security
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/02/23/gator/index.html?source=RSS

There's a gator guarding your privacy at the Department of Homeland Security.

Among the appointees to the department's 20 member "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee" is D. Reed Freeman, the "chief privacy officer" of Claria Corporation.

That's the company formerly known as Gator, infamous for its software, a.k.a. GAIN, which stands for Gator Advertising Information Network. It's sadly familiar to many frustrated Web surfers, who have been surprised to discover it mysteriously installed on their desktops serving them extra helpings of ads.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Dow Jones Company sued Gator back in 2002 for the way its ads appeared as parasites on their sites. But even though the original Gator software can be considered one of the original plague carriers of the spyware blight -- be careful about calling it that. The company has repeatedly threatened its critics with libel lawsuits for dubbing it "spyware."

The fact that a "privacy officer" for a company that made its name sneaking onto computers all over the word is now helping to determine what should be done with data collected by the Department of Homeland Security might be alarming to some people. But is it really all that shocking? The D.H.S.'s own chief privacy officer is no stranger to the ins and outs of interactive marketing either. She used to work for the online marketing firm, DoubleClick.

The Privacy Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting April 6, 2005 in Washington D.C. Can pop-up ads promoting every fluctuation in the terror alert level be far behind?

-- Katharine Mieszkowski

If you look at the companies involved - Gater and DoubleClick, its a huge shock. Talking about it, DoubleClick was famous for its tracking cookies that are used to gain information about user's browsing patterns and information without asking the users if they were willing to send info. Gator itself is one of the early pioneers of those pesky spyware applictions that routinely send information from your computer to their servers. Not exactly the right people I want in my neighborhood especially if they deal with my privacy and/or data integrity.

Anyway talking about it, would you prefer a goverment that is clueless about issues and do nothing, or either a goverment that allows unscrupulous individual in ranks of power? Hard to say, I prefer neither :P

Bangkok Radio - Recommendations

I just noticed that FM 98.5 Mhz is a radio channel based in Bangkok, Thailand that offers a rather smooth, jazzy selection of songs, and its currently my favorite radio channel. If you like jazz, I would like to pass it on that this is a channel you should turn to :)

Short Updates on Life in a Bullet Point Format

I'm alittle busy at the moment, but decided to post a little about my short updates on life in a bullet proof format.

- Last Saturday I went to talk as a special guest speaker at มสว university on the topic The Relationship between the CS Degree and Game Development along with Khun Honda and Phot from PromptNow.
- Currently I tabling a new revolutionary top secret MMOG Game design and I'm going to table this design in a very short time. I have reason to suspect if this goes ahead, it should be one of the revolutionary game in this Genre, and I'm have high hopes for it :)
- My proposal to the university to set up a new lab is proceeding well. The documents need a little more modification and editing before I will table this final document to the directors waiting for approval.
- Current finishing up my Machine Learning Game Othello/Cross-4 applications after struggling alittle with some of the hard to find bugs in the game. By the rate I'm going, it should be done in a few hours so its a good sign.
- Mercanary is a cool game. Go get this game if you have a PS2.
- Generally, I'm in a bored mood. I'm uninspired but I hope that some time soon, I'll shift into a higher gear.

So there goes another week in a nutshell ;)

Literature of this Week

I just thought it would be interesting to reflect the massive amount of reading that I've went through the last week. I'm pretty surprised to see me reading this much in such a short time that I wonder what hit me. Anyway, here is the list:

Arms and The Man - Dr. Gerald Bull, Iraq and the Super Gun
pg. 335
by William Lowther

An interesting book about Dr. Gerald Bull who was argubly one of the world's premiere gun scientist who was gunned down under mysterious circumstances. He is best known for his work in implementing the super gun which the Iraqi Government has sponsored.

The Teaching of Buddha
pg. 550 (dual language)

The English translation of the Japanese version of the teaching of Lord Buddha.

Blood on the Shores
pg. 287
by Viktor Leonov, translated by James F. Gebhardt

A very interesting memior of the Soviet Union's most famous special operation seal during WWII, Viktor Leonov, which is augmented with additional research by Gebhardt.

After the Gold Rush
pg. 182
by Steve McConnell

This book is an interesting book discussing about the possible future of the Profession of Software Engineering.

In Service

During the last few days, I was on a huge reading spree. One of the books I finished was an English translation of the Buddha's Teaching. I've noticed one topic which I especially liked and decided to post here as it deals alot on in Service, a guide to good goverance:

Buddha's Teaching the BrotherHood - In Service

A wise ruler will temper his verdicts with compassion. He will try to consider each case with clear wisdom and then make his verdict in accord with the five principles.

The five principles are: First he must examine the truthfulness of the facts presented.

Second, he must ascertain that they fall within his jurisdiction. If he renders a judgment with full authority, it is effective, but if he does so without authority, it only causes complication; he should await the correct conditions.

Third, he must judge justly; that is , he must enter into the mind of the defendant. If he finds that the deed was done without criminal intent, he should discharge the man.

Fourth, he should pronouce his verdict with kindness but not harshness; that is, he should apply a proper punishment but should not go beyond that. A good rule will instruct a criminal with kindness and give him time to reflect on his mistakes.

Fifth, he should judge with sympathy but not with anger; that is, he should condemn the crime but not the criminal. He should let his judgement rest upon the foundation of sympathy, and he should use the occasion to try and make the criminal realize his mistakes.

An Alternative Valentines Day

I wrote this poem back over a decade back during a disappointing mood I had over Valentine's Day. I think this is a great poem for those still seeking love but haven't found the right person. All the best wishes, and don't let all those couples get in your nerves, but be grateful on what you are and what you have ;)

Good Evening, Heartache

I feel sorry, I feel angry,
I feel down, and I feel drown,
I feel hopeless, I feel stressed
I feel pested, and I feel distressed
In that Little Heart in my Soul,
But tommorrow the pain might grow -
For who knows what fortune I might rake,
But tonight, Good Evening, Heartache.....



Pisal Setthawong

ZIL TWIN V8 MISSILE LAUNCHER 8x8 TRUCK EX - MILITARY

They said that EBay is the mother of all public autions. Someone told me that there was a very interesting item for sale there, and when I reached the link, I found a very suprising post about the sale of a ZIL TWIN V8 MISSILE LAUNCHER 8x8 TRUCK EX - MILITARY without missiles for sale.



Talking about it, I want that though honestly I don't know in the world would buying that be useful :P

Some Pictures from Dhurakij Bundit Seminar on 04/02/2005

Below is a quick photo diary of the seminar at Dhurakij Bundit 04/02/2005 about MMMOG Game Development - Trends and Technology.

First of all, we reached the seminar place.





I later quickly settled down to make last minute checks on the slides.





During that time, Phot was getting a little uneasy as he has little experience speaking in front of lots of people.





However, when the seminar started, it was all fun and educational at the same time.





That concludes the quick photo diary. If you want to know more about the contents, feel free to invite me over to speak at your local educational unit ;)

p.s. Shameless self-promotion :P

Work Work Work

Oh well, the last week was hectic. I was supposed to arrange 2 seminars - one at BangMod (KMUTT) and another at Assumption University, and the planning took a bulk of the time. Sandwiched between the two seminars, I was also had to make a quick visit as a guest speaker to Dhurakij Bundit University to talk on a special topic titled MMMOG Trends and Technology on February 4, 2005. On the meanwhile, I had to talk on the faculty Major Guidance seminar which added to the hectic week. Not only that, I was also asked to draft my plans for a new Game Development lab in my department after approval by the Deans - something which I have fought for years, and I do have to admit, that really made all the hard work seem like yesterday ;)

If things goes as well as planned, then the lab would be up and running in a few months after approval. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and wish me luck :)

February 3 - Veteran's Memorial Day

Once a year, you will notice along the busy streets of Bangkok, a number of students and armed force personnel selling imitation poppy flowers for 10 baht a piece. This is done only on February 3, which is the Veteran's Memorial Day.

If you don't know yet why the imitation poppies, then I'll explain briefly. The poppy is used to process morphine - which is one of the most potent pain-killers. As you know, the armed forces after being injured are usually treated with morphine and that is why the poppy plays a very significant role in the treatment of injured personnel which has been done over the years. Though it is known that morphine has addictive and dangerous side effects, its medical uses as a painkiller is highly required especially for people severely injured such as veterans that are injured during the line of duty.

February 3 is the day in which the general public can help over the welfare of army personnel that are injured in action, and by buying those imitiation poppies for just a fraction of your loose change is a very small and trivial way that we all as loyal citizens of Thailand could help to alleviate the suffering of the injured personnel that has thrown their life in line defending out country. I want to take this opportunity to remind us of this occasion.