Old Computer and Memories

The two pictures shown are actually the old motherboard with working Pentium 233MHz processor with 32Mb of ram. The heat sink is somewhere. I bought this in somewhere around late 1990s if I remembered the date correctly.

This old computer ran on the following Windows OSes: Windows 95,Win 98,Win Me and even Win 2000! It served as a testing platform for many applications. I remembered I used it to program C/C++, and other programming languages, including Matlab!

Ah, taking about Matlab. Yes, I remembered that I used Matlab to run and processed Imaging Processing stuff. Of course, the old computer ran very slowly to produce any significant results.

I even tested with Win 200 Advanced Server and it worked though it ran very slowly because of only 32Mb of memory.

Initially, I wanted this computer to be a simple file and print server, but the old and steady S3 Virge 2Mb graphics card died some time ago and I can't find any spares available and had to put it offline.


- wong chee tat :)

System Status / Updates

Modified and improved my custom script command to perform more house-keeping duties for my lappy.

- wong chee tat :)

Attack on UltraDNS affects Amazon cloud customers

Attack on UltraDNS affects Amazon cloud customers

DNS service provider says attack was focused on US West Coast data centers
(12/24/2009)

A DDoS attack on a large provider of DNS management services caused downtime and sluggishness for many of its customers Wednesday evening, sending ripples to customers of firms that included Amazon Web Services and Salesforce. Amazon’s online shopping Web site experienced problems as well and so did Walmart.com, CNET reported.

This is a second DDoS attack on UltraDNS this year, following an April 1 incident, which also affected both Amazon and Salesforce, besides other clients. Amazon’s cloud computing services – some of whose customers felt effects of this week’s attack – also suffered from a direct DDoS attack in October, when one of its client’s virtual machine instances was flooded with a large amount of UDP packets.

CNET reported that this week’s attack was targeted at Neustar (owner of the UltraDNS brand) data centers in Palo Alto and San Jose, Calif. A Neustar official told the news service that alarms went off around 4:45 p.m. PST.

Amazon Web Services detected a problem about one hour later, reporting on the Service Health Dashboard around 6:10 p.m. PST that some Elastic Compute Cloud customers in northern California and in northern Virginia were having trouble with resolving DNS. Some of the company’s S3 customers were affected as well.

Amazon reported that DNS issues had been resolved around 6:40 p.m.


- wong chee tat :)

DDoS attack hobbles major sites, including Amazon

DDoS attack hobbles major sites, including Amazon

- wong chee tat :)

More singles signing up for dating services during festive season

More singles signing up for dating services during festive seasonCHR
Channel NewsAsia
Channel NewsAsia - Thursday, December 24


SINGAPORE: Christmas is not only a season for giving but for some, dating as well.

Dating professionals said more singles are signing up for their services this month, up 20 per cent from last month.

For many busy professionals like Benjamin Low, the year—end holiday is a good break from work.

However, he dreads spending it alone and has signed up with a dating agency, hoping to find his special someone.

He said: "Well first impression does count, how the person presents herself is very important and the ability to hold a good conversation. It depends if we are meeting for lunch or coffee, then table manners would matter as well."

Benjamin is not alone in the year—end rush to date. Agencies MediaCorp spoke to said it is peak season now as many clients have taken time off work to find the right partner.

Lydia Gan, manager, Cliquewise, said: "A lot of singles made resolutions last year to find someone to spend the rest of their lives with, but Singaporeans are very busy and before you know it the year ends.

"And they realise they have not fulfilled their last year resolutions and they decide to do something about it before year—end."

Agencies said their clients are mainly working professionals aged between 27 and 35 from the banking and IT sectors.

Despite prices going up for Christmas and New Year dinners, agencies said they have not increased their prices during the period. Agencies charge between S$40 and S$300 to set up a date. Activities include Christmas parties and high—tea sessions.

So, will the spark in such relationships sizzle or fizzle?

Betty Goh, co—founder, Who Works Around You, said: "It depends on the both of them whether they have the chemistry. Some might last and some might not, it depends on the both of them."

So whether it is finding the right opportunity or person, the year—end season definitely seems to be helping singles get in the mood for love.

— CNA/vm

- wong chee tat :)

Enya - Silent Night (in Irish) Christmas Lyrics

- wong chee tat :)

Thousands throng Orchard Road for last minute Christmas shopping

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20091224/tap-831-thousands-throng-orchard-road-mi-231650b.html

Channel NewsAsia - Friday, December 25

 
Thousands throng Orchard Road for last minute Christmas shopping

SINGAPORE: Hordes of tourists and Singaporeans were at Orchard Road to soak in the atmosphere or get that last—minute Christmas gift.
Some people, put off by the thought of battling the crowds, scaled back their plans. But as the day before Christmas wore on, the lure of Singapore’s prime shopping belt proved irresistible.
Many people sought last—minute bargains, while others pondered the several options. Gift wrap counters did brisk business, and crowds, with shopping bags in hand, started building up.
Being Christmas Eve, supermarkets in town also saw brisk business as people picked up supplies for dinner parties.
However, with the crowds came traffic jams — compounded by rain in some parts. Moreover, there were long queues for taxis in some places.
Still, for both tourists and Singaporeans, it was all part of the fun — especially with a revamped Orchard Road that has seen at least three new malls open recently.
While final numbers of the Christmas shopping season have not come in yet, anecdotally, store executives said they have seen better passenger traffic form the month before, and are hopeful of positive earnings figures by year end.

— CNA/sc

- wong chee tat :)

Discussions

Had many interesting discussions with the in house gurus: Robert, Jasmine and Johnny for the past few days. Johnny also shared some of his experiences when he encountered some problems and how he overcame them.

- wong chee tat :)

Latest MOM figures show hiring demand up, with services leading the way

Latest MOM figures show hiring demand up, with services leading the way
By Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 23 December 2009 2122 hrs

SINGAPORE: Latest figures from the Manpower Ministry show that hiring is definitely on an upward trend.

Taking the lead was the service industries, with 26,000 openings in the third quarter. That's 30 per cent higher compared to the previous three months.

With the integrated resorts opening next year and new malls popping up on Orchard Road, demand for retail and hospitality staff is high.

As of September there were 1,200 openings for shop assistants and close to 1,400 vacancies for waiters and cooks.

Dhirendra Shantilal, senior vice president, Asia Pacific, Kelly Services, said: "Because of the festive seasons that we have right now\ for Christmas and Chinese New Year, we see a lot of contract work coming on for the retail space. This will adjust itself after Chinese New Year."

The construction industry is also in need of close to 3,000 workers, including 780 labourers.

Construction and retail sales are two areas that normally have difficulty attracting Singaporeans. Recruiters said the impact of the recession has softened the resistance some Singaporeans have against retail jobs. But whether this will hold up as the economy continues to improve remains a big question mark.

Hiring in the financial services sector has also been picking up pace and recruiters are seeing "significant" recovery across sales, risk management and IT positions within the sector.

Roger Olofsson, associate director, Information Technology, Robert Walters, said: "A lot of organisations are getting headcounts approved and gearing u with sentiments and confidence in for the new year and they want to be up to staff levels that they potentially had in place before the crisis happened."

“We're actually seeing Q4 at the moment. It's busier this year than any Q4 we've experienced so far in the last 10, 11 years that we've operated in that market."

And with the government ramping up hiring of teachers and early childhood educators, there are 2,750 openings for teaching professionals.

Of these, 2320 openings require at least a polytechnic diploma.

Openings in the manufacturing sector also point to a steady recovery.

As of September, there were 5,600 positions available, up from nearly 3,900 as of June.

- CNA/vm

- wong chee tat :)

System Updates

Currently still monitoring and accessing systems that are using Google Public DNS and other publicly available DNS.

- wong chee tat :)

Tomato 1.27

Submitted by jon on Sun, 2009-11-29 11:44

• Firmware

Version 1.27

• Fix DDNS "-1" error when service used HTTPS.

»Download

Upgraded.
 
- wong chee tat :)

Tomato 1.26

Submitted by jon on Thu, 2009-11-26 22:43

• Firmware

Version 1.26

• Allow a different port to be entered in Basic:Network:Static DNS (enter as "ip:port"). Be aware that dnsmasq must act as the DNS server (the default setting) when not using the normal port 53.
• Allow DHCP to serve the user-entered gateway (in Basic:Network) if the option in Advanced:DHCP is enabled.
• Do not start miniupnpd early to avoid warning messages.
• Update Australian DST (need to re-select), add Darwin, Brisbane TZ. Thanks to Peter O. for the info.
• Avoid double loading of tomato.css
• Fix possible null dereference in sendpage
• Collapsed all menus. For the old look, set nvram: "web_mx=status,bwm,tools"
• Obscured some key/password fields when not in focus.
• Accept more than two MAC addresses per IP address (ex: one IP for a laptop either wired or wireless [one at a time]). Note: Some computers may not like seeing the same IP unless it's restarted.
• Added LED options back in Admin:Buttons/LED.
• Added ID for WLA2-G54L, TrueMobile 2300 thanks to Nick B. and David J.
• Added EditDNS thanks to Keith M.
• Added UTC+4:30 Kabul time zone.
• Fixed port set validation allowed more than what could be handled.
• Allow rstats to log if WAN port is used for LAN.
• Update dnsmasq to 2.51, miniupnpd 1.4, busybox 1.14.4, matrixssl 1.8.8. 

- wong chee tat :)

Toyota to put college grads in factories

Toyota to put college grads in factories
Mon, Nov 02, 2009
The Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network

Toyota Motor Corp. has decided to deploy about 900 university-educated first-year employees who entered the company this spring to its factories for about three months beginning in January, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Saturday.

These employees, including those in white-collar and engineering positions, are scheduled to help assemble cars and perform other factory jobs. Although university graduates usually are sent to factories as a part of training, it is extremely rare for them to join assembly lines in full operation.

Toyota's production sites are facing a labour shortage because its hybrid cars such as the Prius are in great demand. However, it is difficult to employ new workers due to cost-reduction efforts and because future demand for such cars is uncertain. To cope with the situation, the company decided to utilise its first-year employees to help alleviate the labour shortage for the time being.

These new employees were assigned this month to the company's headquarters, branches and research institutions after completing training at factories and distribution outlets.

Their new workplaces likely will be plants producing Toyota's major car models, including the Tsutsumi factory in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, which has been producing the Prius.

The number of cars Toyota produced domestically dropped to 140,000 a month in February, when the company was forced to make its largest-ever production cuts.

However, Toyota sales have been improving thanks to the government's introduction of tax breaks and a subsidy system to encourage consumers to change to more environmentally friendly cars. The trend is expected to continue before the subsidy system expires at the end of March. To cope with Toyota's plans to produce about 300,000 cars monthly between January and March, the company has been forced to secure more production staff.

Toward this end, Toyota is using support personnel dispatched from its business partners, including car parts makers, since June and began employing temporary workers in October for the first time in 16 months.

However, Toyota likely will be cautious about employing a large number of additional temporary workers, as the company was criticized for its decision to not renew temporary worker contracts.

Toyota is believed to have decided to utilise its first-year employees because demand for cars might decline after the government's support measures end.

-The Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network

This is quite interesting. Will our local grads willing to do that?

- wong chee tat :)

Harder to find jobs

Dec 16, 2009
Harder to find jobs

More degree-holders are without jobs and taking longer to find one

By Kor Kian Beng, Political Correspondent

More university graduates are without jobs and taking longer to land a job. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

DESPITE signs of a turnaround in the job market, university graduates are no better off.
In fact, more of them are without jobs and taking longer to land a job, according to revised official figures released on Tuesday.
Part of the reason is that they often tend to seek jobs that pay close to what they used to earn, said MP Josephine Teo, who is also assistant secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress.
However, economists interviewed foresee their lot improving in the new year, when growth is expected to hit 5.5 per cent, according to a recent poll of 20 private-sector economists by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Meanwhile, the labour market in the third quarter, following Singapore's exit from recession, shows 'encouraging signs of a turnaround', said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).
The revised figures show more jobs were added, fewer people were laid off and there were more vacancies between June and September.

Read the full story in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times.
kianbeng@sph.com.sg


- wong chee tat :)

Stealth

Watching this one Channel 5 now with family.


- wong chee tat :)

Cascada - Last Christmas

- wong chee tat :)

GMAT cheating worries US colleges

GMAT cheating worries US colleges
Thu, Dec 17, 2009
China Daily/Asia News Network

US universities are concerned about Chinese students' cheating on entrance exams across the country, according to experts.

"Anything from China is suspect in the United States now in the education realm," said Steven Dickinson, a China-based lawyer and former law professor at the University of Washington who worked with the school's admissions office to select international candidates.

The problem stems not necessarily from the students themselves but rather from the resources Chinese rely on to study for admissions tests, like the Graduate Record Examinations and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).

In 2008, 98,510 Chinese students went to study in the US, growing 21 percent over 2007, a report by the Institute of International Education said. China was the second largest source of foreign students in the US after India.

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which distributes the GMAT exam, sued Passion for copyright infringement after it posted "live" test questions from GMAT exams online and distributed PDFs from test books.

A Beijing court ordered Beijing Passion Consultancy Ltd on Nov 23 to pay a fine of 520,000 yuan (S$106,496) for copyright infringement and publicly apologize for its actions.

Passion, a company that has trained around one third of Chinese students applying to the top 10 American business schools, said on Tuesday that it was sorry for selling GMAT materials without authorization.

After testing materials were removed, the traffic of Passion's website dropped by 70 percent in the past week, according to Internet traffic monitoring website Alexa.com.

Chinese students frequent a number of websites that reportedly hire staff to pose as test-takers and post reconstructed "live" questions from the exams for free online. Some of the proxy test-takers have employed hi-tech gadgets, including cameras and microphones, to obtain exam material.

"They will hire people to take the test and then steal the test book," Dickinson said. "Or they will get even more nasty and get an insider to send the text book that is coming out next and then get the answers to certain tests."

Even with GMAC's litigation against Passion, many other test-prep websites exist providing materials to Chinese students facing stiff competition to get into foreign schools.

Silent Night

- wong chee tat :)

System Updates / Status

13th Dec

I quite busy these few days and so I don't have much time to provide updates.

As mentioned in the last post, I cleaned the old heatsink and fixed the broken fan. What do you think I should do with them?

- wong chee tat :)

Do they know it's Christmas

- wong chee tat :)

Happy Techno Christmas

- wong chee tat :)

System Updates / Status

Here are some updates for the past week.

6th Dec

I am supposed to provide some updates some days ago, but I can't find the time to write. Anyway, here are some updates on system maintenance on the systems.

System Maintenance:

- Area Cleaning
- Clean and clear off the dust residing in systems since last semester... Well, as many of you might know that dust is fatal to the electronic components. Dust love to attach to the cpu fans, casing fans, etc. I don't want a dusty power supply that easily heat up and ultimately kill my systems. Took them off and clean them one by one.
- Update all necessary patches for all systems
- Check those IDE & SATA hard drives are still in working condition
- Evaluating the rerouting paths for optimal performance
- Evaluating and reconfiguring systems using Google Public DNS

10th Dec: Lost my ezlink card .... Broke =(

12th Dec:

Unfortunate Incident

While testing out one of the systems, accidentally used a sharp object and brushed onto one of the cpu fan while the system is running. As a result, one of the fan blades flew out. I stopped the testing and I had to canceled all the rest of the events in the latter part of the day and I quickly purchased a new fan and installed it. I did a more through cleaning for the old heatsink and the broken fan.


- wong chee tat :)

Officially Missing You - Tamia

- wong chee tat :)

Crazy frog - Jingle Bells

- wong chee tat :)

Best of Techno - Speedy Christmas

- wong chee tat :)

Silent Night (with lyrics)

- wong chee tat :)

Christmas Techno

- wong chee tat :)

Die Hard 4

- wong chee tat :)

Silent Night - Olivia

- wong chee tat :)

Ling Kai

It was said that her song generated more than a million hits on youtube. Let's enjoy!

- wong chee tat :)

Public DNS Servers

Public DNS Servers

Level 3 Communications (Broomfield, CO, US)

4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
4.2.2.4
4.2.2.5
4.2.2.6

Verizon (Reston, VA, US)

151.197.0.38
151.197.0.39
151.202.0.84
151.202.0.85
151.202.0.85
151.203.0.84
151.203.0.85
199.45.32.37
199.45.32.38
199.45.32.40
199.45.32.43

GTE (Irving, TX, US)

192.76.85.133
206.124.64.1

One Connect IP (Albuquerque, NM, US)

67.138.54.100

OpenDNS (San Francisco, CA, US)

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Exetel (Sydney, AU)

220.233.167.31

VRx Network Services (New York, NY, US)

199.166.31.3

SpeakEasy (Seattle, WA, US)

66.93.87.2
216.231.41.2
216.254.95.2
64.81.45.2
64.81.111.2
64.81.127.2
64.81.79.2
64.81.159.2
66.92.64.2
66.92.224.2
66.92.159.2
64.81.79.2
64.81.159.2
64.81.127.2
64.81.45.2
216.27.175.2
66.92.159.2
66.93.87.2

Sprintlink (Overland Park, KS, US)

199.2.252.10
204.97.212.10
204.117.214.10

Cisco (San Jose, CA, US)

64.102.255.44
128.107.241.185

Google (updated)\

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

- wong chee tat :)

Introducing Google Public DNS

Introducing Google Public DNS

12/03/2009 08:35:00 AM

When you type www.wikipedia.org into your browser's address bar, you expect nothing less than to be taken to Wikipedia. Chances are you're not giving much thought to the work being done in the background by the Domain Name System, or DNS.

Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster, we're launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out.

Most of us aren't familiar with DNS because it's often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names — e.g., www.google.com — into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers — e.g., 74.125.45.100 — that computers use to communicate with one another.

The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading. This can slow down the browsing experience. Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users' web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable. You can read about the specific technical improvements we've made in our product documentation and get installation instructions from our product website.

If you're web-savvy and comfortable with changing your network settings, check out the Google Code Blog for detailed instructions and more information on how to set up Google Public DNS on your computer or router.

As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager


- wong chee tat :)

Google Public DNS service not ideal for everyone

Google Public DNS service not ideal for everyone

In its effort to organize the world's information, Google is offering to handle your DNS lookups, but the new service may only be really attractive for those with bad ISP-provided DNS service.

By Iljitsch van Beijnum

But according to Google: Why should you try Google Public DNS?

By using Google Public DNS you can:

* Speed up your browsing experience.
* Improve your security.
* Get the results you expect with absolutely no redirection.

And of course, just point to IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers.Here are the issues that address the privacy issues.

- wong chee tat :)

Xmas Trance

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Full Moon

Full Moon today

- wong chee tat :)

Astroboy

- wong chee tat :)