Friday, January 28, 2011

Asia Trader & Investor Convention (ATIC) @ KL 2011

The annual Asia's largest trader and investor event, Asia Trader & Investor Convention (ATIC) 2011 is coming.


Date: 2-3 April 2011
Time: 9.00am - 6.00pm
Venue: Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, KLCC, Malaysia
Fees: RM28 for 2 days entry ticket

ATIC has travelled to 7 Asian Cities, i.e., Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Mumbai, Shenzhen and Tokyo. With participation by over 300 financial services companies, including securities exchanges, retail and consumer banks, securities brokerage firms, asset/fund management firms, listed companies and other financial services providers, the events have attracted over 100,000 active traders and serious investors across Asia.
ATIC Kuala Lumpur 2011 is targetted to feature more than 40 seminars conducted by international and local gurus and experts.

I noticed that the ATIC ticket price keeps on increasing every year. In 2009, it is free. Last year, there was an early bird price of RM18. This year, no news about early bird price yet.

Click here for more information about ATIC at KL 2011.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

IPv4 will be used up really soon. Are we ready for IPv6?

The IP address in the format of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX (i.e. IPv4) which is the basic identification of every device connected to the Internet is predicted to be fully allocated (used up) on the estimated date of 2 February 2011. Take a look at the ticking counter of IPv4 exhaustion here.

The current IPv4 address space is a 32 bit field, possible for 4,294,967,296 (4.29 billion) allocations. It is used by all network devices connected using the TCP/IP protocol, including computers, mobile devices, network devices, certain telecommunication devices, certain electrical appliances, and everything connected to the Internet with TCP/IP.

IPv4 started around 1980. By that time, only a handfull of computers, mostly in military and academic institutions (i.e. universities) are connected to the Internet and linked up with TCP/IP. The allocation of IPv4 accelerated in the 1990's when the whole world are connected to the Internet. Its exhaustion rate spurred further in the 2000's when not only computers and network devices are connected to the Internet, but also many other electrical and electronic devices, especially the mobile phones.

As a result, now we are very close to the end. All the 4.29 billion IP addresses will be fully used, and will not be sufficient for every devices that need to connect to the Internet anymore.

Various measures have been taken to slow down the exhaustion, such as special allocation for private IP address blocks (10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x, and 172.16.x.x – 172.31.x.x) so that devices not directly connected to the Internet can make use of these private IP addresses, and they can share a same Internet IP address with NAT translation at the gateway/router.

The exhaustion of IPv4 has already taken into account for these kind of measures. It should have come even earlier if without private IP address and NAT in place nowadays.

In fact, the Internet authorities have thought about this issue long time ago, and have planned for the migration to the next generation of IP address system, namely IPv6. In fact, one of my project assignment during university studies in mid-1990's is about IPv6. Therefore, you should know that the research on IPv6 has been around for more than 10 years.

IPv6 uses a 128-bit address, whereas IPv4 uses only 32 bits. The new address space supports unlimited address allocation (3.4 x 10^38). With this much amount of IP addresses available, it also eliminates the need for NAT, and every devices can have their Internet IP address, just like the scenario for IPv4 before the introduction of NAT.

The IPv6 format will look like this: XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:YYYY:YYYY:YYYY:YYYY, where the first 4 groups (XXXX part) is a 64-bit network prefix, and the last 4 groups (YYYY part) is a 64-bit host address. All the digits are in hexadecimal.

It is reported that big Internet players including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai, Limelight Networks, etc. will have a 24-hour test run on IPv6 during the World IPv6 Day on 8 June 2011. Click here to read more about World IPv6 Day.

We have to move on. Are we ready for IPv6? (Especially service providers, device manufacturers, software developers, network engineers, ...)

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Auspicious dates in 2011 for getting a baby

Here is the list of auspicious dates in 2011 for getting a baby (求嗣), which is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.

The dates have good element(s) to embro/faetus. Traditionally, the dates are referred for conception planning (making love and expecting a baby to the family). Nowadays, people also make reference to them for Caesarian delivery of new born.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Related articles:

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Using symbolic link for Dropbox to sync files/folders in any location of the computer

As I mentioned before, Dropbox is a fantastic service to sync, backup, share and publish our files over the Internet. It provides free Cloud storage between 2GB-10GB and many prefer Dropbox than Windows Live Mesh 2011 for more flexibility and interoperability.

However, the files/folders must reside in the local Dropbox folder in order for them to be able to sync, backup, share and/or publish with Dropbox service.

Anyhow, it is easy to sync the folders outside Dropbox folder, with the use of symbolic link (a.k.a. symlink or softlink).

Note: Symbolic link is not available in Windows 2003, Windows XP or earlier, but you can use Junction to serve the same purpose. You can download the Junction.exe utility made available by SysInternals here.

Example: To let Dropbox to sync the folder C:\Users\Public\Documents in Windows.

Step 1: Run Command Prompt with Administrator rights. The Administrator rights is required to make symbolic link in Windows Vista or Windows 7.

To do this, click on Start logo, expand All programs > Accesories and right click on Command Prompt. Then select "Run as administrator".


Step 2: Move the entire folder into your Dropbox folder.

C:> move C:\Users\Public\Documents C:\Users\Myself\Dropbox

Step 3: Create a directory symbolic link (or junction for Win XP/2000/2003) at the original location to link to the folder which moved into Dropbox folder.

For Win Vista or Win 7 or above:

C:> mklink /d C:\Users\Public\Documents C:\Users\Myself\Dropbox\Documents


Note: The "/d" option is for making directory/folder link. Otherwise, the command will create a file link.

For Win XP or Win 2003 or below:

C:> junction C:\Users\Public\Documents C:\Users\Myself\Dropbox\Documents

You are done. Now, the Documents is synchronized in your Dropbox account, at the same time, you can still access it from its original location as normal.
 
Example: To let Dropbox to sync the folder /home/Myself/Documents in Linux/Unix.
 
Step 1: Open the Terminal window if you are in X-Window. For Ubuntu, it is in Applications > Accesories > Terminal.
 
Step 2: Move the entire folder into your Dropbox folder.


$ mv /home/Myself/Documents /home/Dropbox/Documents
 
If you don't have write permission in /home/Dropbox directory, you might want to use chmod to set the permission correctly, or use sudo to perform the move with root permission.
 
$ sudo mv /home/Myself/Documents /home/Dropbox/Documents


Step 3: Create a directory symbolic link at the original location to link to the folder which moved into Dropbox folder. Note that for Linux/Unix, the position of the source and target in the link command argument is the other way round.
 
$ ln -s /home/Dropbox/Documents /home/Myself/Documents
 
Note: The "-s" option is for softlink creation. Otherwise, the command will create a hardlink.
 
You are done.

Auspicious dates for signing contract, register for marriage, etc. in 2011

Here is the list of auspicious dates in year 2011 for signing contract, signing offer letter, register for marriage, receiving religious baptism, and other similar agreement-related activities. It is produced based on the Chinese almanac Tong Shu.
Note that 14 February 2011 which is the Saint Valentine's day, is also one of the auspicious dates in the list. Hence it is auspicious to register for marriage on that day, except for couple which either one of them was born in the year of Horse. 25 December 2011 which is the Christmas day is also in the list.

Other interesting auspicious datea are 11 January 2011, which can be written as 11-1-11, and 1 November 2011, which can be writeen as 1-11-11.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

Related articles:

Monday, January 10, 2011

Facebook going to shutdown on 15 March 2011? True or not?

I believe by now you might have gotten the shocking message saying that Mark Zuckerberg announced in a so-called "press conference outside his Palo Alto office" announcing the shutdown of his popular social network website Facebook on 15 March 2011 as "managing the site has become too stressful".

Are you concerned?

Well, I believe the possibility for this to really happen is only 0.5%, and 99.5% chance for it to be a hoax.

Why I say so?
  • If it is really announced in a press conference, this news is not likely to be only reported by a single not-so-famous website (originator). Perhaps that website intended to gain publicity by starting this kind of rumours.
  • Although Facebook is not public listed, it has quite a number of investors and shareholders, and Mark Zuckerberg only holds about a quarter of the total shares. As such, Mark Zuckerberg cannot simply end the business of Facebook for whatever reason, without nods from the other shareholders and investors.
  • There is no such official announcement in Facebook website at all.
Anyhow, think about it, if Facebook is really to be gone, how are you going to be affected then? If you really can't live without it, this is really an alarming sign. Beware...

Friday, January 7, 2011

Online checking your election voting area registered in electoral roll database

This is not something new to Malaysian, but just a reminder for voting citizen who has already registered with the Election Commission (Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya, SPR) that you can check your election voting area registered in the electoral roll database online.

The latest URL for the electoral roll checking website is http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/.

Just key in your IC number, and the system will show your basic information, registered locality, polling district, state assembly,  parliamentary and state info.

This online checking is useful for you to confirm your area, and in case you wish to change your voting area, now might still have the opportunity to get it done before the next election come.

Sadly, there is no privacy measure in that website, and if you know any IC number, you can actually find out the person's name, gender, birth date and electoral roll information as well.