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open journal, no hidden/locked entries. i will be exactly 27 years old on this date, hour and minute. tags works with recent entries. click for available tags.

i'm sorry i have to talk about work.

i'm just disappointed at the choices people make in their lives. as much as i'm merely doing my job, i can't help but wonder what made them choose to do something like that. part of me wants to understand why they opt for such things. are they really out of options? i'm not talking about blatant ignorance. i was in a position where i could take it all away from them. yet i chose not to. some are just passing their second decade in life. others you'd expect a certain sense of maturity.

do i project this aspect of myself into my relationships?

should i just let them do whatever they so wish, with disregard to how their choices and decisions could lead to something undesirable?

how much is too much?

how much is not enough?

at which point should someone step in?

who's job is it anyway?

let me pose it this way, who else would step in?

let's look at it this way.

everyone uses the internet pretty much for free. and like what was discussed in 1994 in my earlier post turned out to be a fact now. people create content. content is paid for by the internet. users like us benefits from the content. content providers benefit by selling advertising. and when users are attracted to the advertising and buy a product that they like, retailers will benefit.

and then there are people like marc who has a vision to make something that was just text based and actually turned it into something that's visual.

so he added images to the internet, which subsequently allows for the images to be linked to something else. and lo behold, it will definitely be used to link an image (it can be a brand image etc) to information such as a company behind a brand. and when information began to grow, people allowed their content to be searchable, people wanted to be searched and subsequently to be found, and reached (contacted). That's probably what ken wanted to emphasize in his speech in that 1994 presentation.^[1]

that's how the internet was expected to work down the road when marc proposed the IMG tag.

(with reference to vuestar's patent) how innovative an invention would that be? did he revolutionized search? what if marc patented the IMG tag? we'd be coughing out $$$ just to view the internet visually. and we'd be better off with bbs.

so when someone who creates a company like vuestar and expects any commercial (even government and non profits/personal) to be granted a license in order to use their so called innovations, it really takes away the freedom in using the internet. every google image search will cost you some. i'm not well versed in the law regarding this patent so i'm just taking the most lay man's approach.

on the other hand, there will always be other truly remarkable innovations on the internet. a russian developer, Vladimir Slepnev released his creation in the GPL license, and because of that something as cool as this gets developed (although with patents, proper acknowledgement and monies owed through licensing will be given accordingly. so yeah, if used in such a scenario a patent is important)

some opinions i feel strongly towards is on prior art and person having ordinary skill in the art. given that linking images would lead a person who'd want to make his search better create a search function using identifiable images linking to another website with contact information.^[1]

what prompted me to post that little history bit on my journal was due to the fact that i'm still feeling angry over the news the other day. about this vuestar issue...

just some more reading here, alvinology wrote in his blog. another local website wrote their point of views over here as well.

and here are some interesting cases with regards to online infringement, streetdirectory VS SLA over copyright of images.

a wiki entry on Vuestar Tech for the non initiated and some discussions brewing in hardwarezone with more interesting points to note. another discussion here.

the article at zdnet (you may want to follow alvinology's posting as there are more articles referencing to this matter) that prompted me being pissed off.

a local company, trying to be entrepreneurial?

or downright extortionist?

however this reminds me of the GIF patent issues that was a big hu-ha on the internet back when it was still relatively new.

even the popular jpeg file format was under a patent ambush by a tech company. another article from wired

the tech company earned $105mil through royalties from that patent, the fact that they managed to get even large corporation like Sony to pay royalties (but Sony can pay for just about anything anyway). here's some info on the jpeg patent issues on wikipedia.

what worries me is that this local company (a $2 start-up owned by an australian, living in ozzie) will get its way due to how IP rights in singapore may be different (as a lay man's point of view).


is there anyone out there who can shed a light or two with regards to this issue?

when Marc Andreessen proposed the usage of the IMG tag (that's html for allowing an image to appear on your browser) all he wanted was to make mosaic a better browser.

he along with co-worker Eric Bina worked on creating a user-friendly browser, one which allows graphics to be displayed. subsequently, with his vision of the web browser's potential, he distributed his browser for free.

sometime in '95 - '96, i sort of scraped my piggy bank and bought a 56k modem. and i ended up raking my first month's usage with Pacific Internet to a tune of about $400 odd worth of internet usage. my parents were not pleased when they found out i used my ang pao money and tried to hide that fact from them (i totally forgot that the telephone bill also shot up hence they got to know in the end).

i discovered that the internet were mostly created by enthusiasts who learned html on their own. i also discovered porn amongst other things. and that there are so many different things that i have never known about the world i live in.

i created my own "Hello World" using html sometime in that year. and i completed my history project using flash animation, video clips of world war II and put them together as a "website" and showed it to the whole class. i wasn't called innovative or anything like that, but my history teacher gave me a pat on the back and some words of encouragement on putting the effort in my project. i failed my history subject for that year, the project accounts for a small percentage of the marks obtained.

in 1998, the following year, myself and another friend were tasked by our secondary school to create the school's website, to be listed in MOE's school's directory. what we learned was that many other schools actually hired some "professionals" to make their websites. of course we were proud to say that our school's website were done by ourselves.

i didn't lose interest in history however, and got a B4 for the O levels that year which i thought wasn't so shabby.

there were geocities, angelfire, tripod.com and so much other websites that offered free webhosting. i'd like to think i tried them all. that was perhaps the first kind of myspace or facebook ever? a space on the internet which you can create to your own specification and share whatever you'd want to share. and then i purchased my first .per.sg domain in 2000 (i wonder if any of you recalled?). which prompted me to get my own .com as well. it was exciting to be listed in DMOZ or searchable in yahoo. and those were way before google. (ps. google has stopped recommending "if i meant cairn" whenever i search for my name)

like most of us who uses our computer on a daily basis, we have so much to thank people like Marc for enabling us to view the world through our computer screens. information has and will always be visual.

have you seen this yet?

my train of reasoning will be as follows. ( + )

Cuz I love the way you say good morning.
And you take me the way I am.

guess i didn't take you for who you are...

from one of the cds a while back. the ipod seems to be picking this song quite a few times lately. guess it seems to know me...

while adding the scriptaculous engine into a site that i'm trying to work on at the moment, discovered that it causes ie6 to crash. which is very annoying. thankfully, someone posted some info on what's causing the crash. the root of the problem caused by how ie6 handles the creation of those dynamic elements. bad ie6.

on other news. if i'm given a unique ability, i'd like to have that heroes ability where you can say something and people will follow? i mean, karma aside, i'd like them to take their pill and choke on it next time. coming to my office shouting that they're old and sick and needed to eat pills and all that. you want to drop dead in my office? please go ahead. old man. next time, don't leave your house. since your daughter is some big shot lawyer, ask her to take care of you since she can afford it! amazing, these are the people who take the trouble to get free medicines when they can jolly well afford it. i thought those things are meant for the needy?

oh... this heroes wiki is so fun to read!

actually i'm quite proud of it. hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

( + ) and the real reason why i decided to get myself a psp slim over the weekend, was to be able to play patapon!

on the other hand, now that i'm on 8 days hospitalization leave, i decided to grow a goatee. mmm... not sure if the look suits me... so i've not shaved for the past few days, and that's the outcome on the left.

ended up getting for myself a shure SCL2 in-ear, earphones and a zen stone plus (with speaker, this one's for running). since choon and i braved the traffic to the IT show, even though his 17" macbook pro was out of stock at suntec, i wasn't gonna go empty handed. i have to admit, the SCL2 has redefined how i listen to my ipod. i'm the sort of guy who can't tell the difference when it comes to sound quality, but i can definitely tell that the music coming out from the SCL2 were so much clearer and cleaner. and i don't even have to turn up the volume on my ipod! although i have to get used to how i have to wear the earphones.

rediscovering catatonia.

( + ) and it was raining so heavily yesterday. sent choon off to get his coach at goldenmile. was glad to hear from him when he reached home in kl.



met the boy for dinner at pasir panjang for some seafood after fetching him from work. heh. someone's a team leader now.

:-)

attempt to get my reflection. choon was trying his best to foil my plan.

anyhow. he's back in sg and staying over for a few days. while we hunt for his macbook pro 17". turns out stock ran out in the IT show (though he could have gotten it if he did not go and vote on saturday.)



drove around from one apple reseller to another. and finally. the last macbook pro was found at harbourfront's apple reseller. given the 4gb upgrade at no cost + some other small freebies. choon's one happy boy after that.

i on the other hand have cramped legs cos of the darn traffic. goodness... i hate driving to town on weekends.

the past few days, conversations were filled with malaysian politics... not social commentary. but rather, the youtubes we've seen.

oh by the way, 10,000 BC (the movie currently showing) reminds me so much of my Patapons on the psp.

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com
You scored as Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

You are a light and humorous person. No one can help but to smile to your wit. Now if only the improbability drive would stop turning you into weird stuff.

on the other hand... loved the spectators shouting along with the music!

obviously, i'm facing that period of time where i'm absolutely bored, and have nothing else to do with my time.

picked up the new laptop from my starhub recontract. kinda sucky having to create my own recovery discs. but apart from that kinda like the idea that neither my keyboard or mouse is tethered to the desktop.

hehe. hail 2.4GHz of radio frequency. on another note, the image above is from the E51, the image below is from the W810i.

just watched top gun for the nth time in my life. it always leaves me with the same emotions as it did when i first seen it years back. i just realized that this movie prolly resulted in my fixation to yukikaze and macross.

aviator ray bans still look classic.

unfortunately it wasn't able to recover 100% of the 2 (out of 5) partitions which it is able to recognise. however, it seems there's a possibility it might be able to access the hard disk and bypassing its filesystems altogether, using the alternative tool PhotoRec, which came along with Test Disk. when i did try PhotoRec, it was able to uncover some images but the rest of the hard disk will take another 300 odd hours. 12 days? let's see if i can find any other alternative first. but at least, it looks like all is not lost. think i need to dig a little deeper. *croses fingers*



on the other hand. decided to add another 320gb WD external harddisk. aptly named after the first external hdd. had a great time with my team at a buffet lunch yesterday. apparently another patron sitting across us overheard me saying "...fat lady behind us..." while we're taking pics, heh. minus karma points for me.

at the very least, Test Disk 6.8, a freeware opensource utility, is letting me access some parts of the nearly unuseable hard disk. basically windows is not recognising the internal hard disk at all (I/O error of some sort, seems like its a physical mulfunction) which was why neither Spin Rite or getdataback is able to do any miracles. now out of the 5 partitions, 2 logical partitions can be identified (and at least i can get back to my Heroes), which leaves the 3 remaining extended partitions in hard disk limbo. i am quite resigned to having the hard disk replaced if nothing else can do the trick.

pray that the remaining 3 extended partitions can be recovered too. thanks for the leads to those other tools/utilities that everyone has helped pointed out.

between this and the IRA issue, the latter should be making me more concerned, but i guess Heroes addiction is a very big deal to me. i'm not exactly sure what options i do have (so much for being naive years back), but the phone conversation yesterday gave me some notion of hope.

and so, death was imminent, although Spin Rite 6 did give me a glimmer of hope at one point. ( + )



right now, conclusion is total hardware failure. in just 72 hours. looks like its time to dig up for my hitachi's warranty card and see if i can get it replaced. to all those suggestions, thank you very much, i really appreciate.



looks like its all up to GetDataBack 3.30. i hope it works. its been 4 hours and its just 2% though.