Blogwalking in UI Staff Blog

Just blogwalking and found interesting blog:

http://staff.blog.ui.ac.id/rani/
==> Blognya mengenai sejarah pergerakan mahasiswa. Keren pisan, oy!

http://staff.blog.ui.ac.id/syam-mb/
==> Blognya isinya IT, ada cara ngalahin virus2 kompi.

http://staff.blog.ui.ac.id/arif51/
==> Buat yang suka pemikiran filosofis. Bahasanya sederhana dan enak buat disimak.

http://staff.blog.ui.ac.id/jp/
==> Blog paling *ahem* keren sejagat. :P

Bah, seperti kambing, blog untuk staf juga menyimpan gem2 tersembunyi.

Coy ada yang punya link blog di UI?

Are We Liberated?

Take a look at those poor IT and tell me that slavery is non-existence.

Yet Another Nonsense

Hate is a feeling from your heart that comes when you are in a pitch. A feeling of yours over something that you feel cannot be reached. An overwhelming feeling that comes when suddenly that precious is taken from you.

Despair is a state where you stop trying.

Love is a feeling of wanting someone, according to others. Heck, how should I know?

Pride is a feeling of protecting one's existence. It's a self-defense mechanism from being volatile.

Smile is an expression of a heart or a decoration of your wound. It is there to stop people from asking and to play the role of a happy person.

Thinking is a result of your processing unit. It's like a ultra mambo jambo mandlebrot equation that it grows exponentially yet at the big scene forms a great painting of life.

Afraid is a self-defense mechanism of traumatic people. It is actually a heuristic value to determine what to choose next step. Simply put those value away from equation is insane. What you have to do is work out to find  the correct formula to play with it.

Man is a being of lustful creature with simplicity in mind. These creature have their pride. Their inhabitants were found in the tiny world called ego. Their simplicity often creates mysteries that attract other.

Woman is a being who loves to torture themselves, love to change, love to masqurade, love to be enslaved, and love to be loved. Their ability of detailed perception often misguided.

Human is a being -- not a machine. It's alright to cry, it's alright to lean on someone shoulder, it's alright to be different.

Lazy is a sign when I stop this nonsense.

Justification of IT Strategy

This is a reply to Feha in How to Profit comment. I've decide to make it as a new post, since this is a good topic of IT Strategy. Sorry for non IT, some of the terms here you must google it for yourself. Please comment if you disagree or wants to add something, any comment other than SPAM is welcome.

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Yeah, IT does have a tricky part when it comes to justification. But, it is not just FOSS, but also the propetary too. There is no silver bullet to it, as the world also learning. Of course, we are talking about non IT-based company, a company that runs other business than IT that use IT infrastructure. Let's take email infrastructure as an example to understand what I mean.

For instance, it is hard to justify an anti-spam solution for a corporate. One might find the equation is to measure the level of spam with and without it. But, that's naive. It would make the anti-spam solution somewhat is under value. Anti-spam companies then again modify the solution to put these:

1. Connection wasted on spams. (Bandwith cost)
2. False-negative/spam that get through.
3. False-positives/legitimate emails that get caught if it were using other solution.

But, that's also plain naive. How would you justify false-positive if you weren't sure that the email really get bounced? What measure that you would have to take that? What would you sum here is just a raw view of IT, it only covers basic. 

One of the strategy to measure IT performance (mind you that this is a real case) is to charge every departement that use IT. It might sound silly if the IT guy on your own company charge you with some bills over something that trivial. They would bill you on something that you use as a service. With this kind of dealing, IT departement would have some income written in the annual report, not just expense.

Again, that's just a way to say that an IT implementation is working great, but not a rigid way of telling how effective that implementation. For instance, if your company have a great deal with other company, have you ever been charged on emails that you have sent and received? How many percents being part of the deal's expense you would put on emails?

One of the hidden value of good email spam that is often got away from equation is how many hour per year that your employee spent on deleting SPAM. One might find it silly, but since 2001, SPAM became more hostile. These days, it can cost half of your employee time. This, however, would be a good evidence that you may miss some good parameters of how valuable your IT implementation.

In the end, how a company to come up with monetizing an IT strategy is to measure the outcome of using it. Again, these techniques is only a measure of user satisfactory that hold no real value. They would calculate on potential lost and potential gain. Also, they would calculate on how the company performs before and after the IT implementation just like cosmetic adds.

Because of these potential values, many company would fallen into the trap of spending rollercoster budget. You might find that some of the vendor costs is acceptable for you. You might also find it over-priced and half-baked. This part would simply because of business owners' lack of understanding in IT and sometimes it just for making the company looks cool in front of other company. Yeah, kinda like childish ego of using Power Mac in Starbucks and Blackberry.

How would your company calculate ROI on IT implementation?

Qt anyone?

Okay, KDE 4.2 is the reason why I'm trying to convert. Recently, I have been programming with Swing as GUI platform. Yeah, I'm the generation that grew up with Java. But, as we have el cheapo machines and tight budget (yeah, love it when it comes to budgeting that we must think harder), we would reconsider using Java. I have moved to SWT and growing fondly with its ability to embed browser into its platform.

Then again, I love to hear about Qt. It manage to have WebKit in their arsenal. It even have the revolution that it would embed in Nokia's device. (Hey, I'm using Sony Ericsson here) It would bring much better new possibilities. Waiting for 4.5 by the way.

So, where should I start? C++ is a b*tch that I don't take since programming OpenGL long ago in my Computer Graphics class. I'd prefer plain C than that C++. But, hey, they say stop learning is a dying process. Besides, the toolkit (oh, I mean Qt) has a new editor and also an Eclipse plugin.

Enough saying, wish me luck!

How To Profit From Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)

This writting is inspired by [RANT] that being pointed out by [ANTA]

To begin with, the meaning of profit is not money (though in the ends it counts). Profit is a net gain that you have after doing something painful. In better term, profit is something that you achieve after you sacrifice. No pain, no gain!

Many IT guys/girls out there sprouting bad about FOSS and its gain in the term of competition. They would argue that it lack of common sense and it even have so many choices that it scares people away by having a deep thought of what should be implemented. Yes, the "all I want is to do the job done" argument making FOSS looks like a geek toys than a silver bullet. The only real reason why people would want to move to FOSS is because of legal aspect. They're forced to have a steep learning curve.

But, hey, what if there is other reason that you could have when deciding to move into FOSS solution?

First, we begin with the misconception of asking:

What is your Business Process?

If this is the main question of choosing solution for you, then FOSS lacks behind its proprietary counter. Many proprietary solutions have been tailored to the way of doing common business these days. Furthermore, they have the ability to demonstrate feasible ways of fitting its system with client's business process. So, FOSS would be a screw decision, isn't? To have a system that has no "real" benefactor is scary.

Let's take the question further and make it into the right concept of business (you do want your business sustainable, don't you?):

How far can you change your Business Process?

Or, how can you rationalizing your business process? Can you evolve?

Many didn't know that a software is part of your business process. Yes, let me get it clear for you: software you are using is your business process. Many finds that a particular software can lead to cut down in some of business process to achieve gain. But, what if it also a way to lock down your business into a single business process. Worst, it made you, client/user/buyer, as the slave of a certain vendor?

Let say that you are completely fine with a spreadsheet tool to overcome your needs to do the right thing. In case that you have study recent technology update or new technique of management, you find out that you can study your past to gain certain trend and able to follow. IT persons called that Business Intelligence stuff. How would you move on to the technology? Well, hire another vendor or tell current vendor to upgrade your infrastructure and let them bill you with a rollercoaster.

In fact, many of those documents are archived and never looked back. Even with the same vendor, there would be a compability issue that a vendor would not support an issue long enough.

But, what if you have the FOSS solution to begin with and you have open standarding your documents? There would be someone in the planet that would produce a converter that suits your need. Even if you can't find it, you can find that many software will happily convert open standards into new one. Why? Because everyone can have a verbatim copy of that standard (hey, that's why they are called open)

The way of business change often reflect on how the software doing. Some vendor would not go far for you not because they are arogant or lazy, but just they simply can't do it. Proprietary vendor would lock their software that it can't be devised for other purposes. The political reason to it is about intellectual property, but often it is because the original developer(s) left the band.

Many proprietary softwares also have the difficulty of changing their API (programming methods/procedures) simply because it would break their architecture, protocols, and even ruining a perfect system. Time constraint in development making some of the software are heavily patched. They wouldn't mind for that, it may be a great feature for them, as the term for it is "obfuscating the code/protocol".

Classical example of FOSS apologetic is the scenario when the vendor running out of business. You can't sue a non existence vendor, or can you? But what can they do? What can you do?

So, my dear reader, as the world is progressing to strive FOSS solutions as sane solutions. I will sum this writing to you so you would not bored (I know some country men are lacking to read and research):

• How often you evaluate your business?
• In what degree that you would change all/some of your working flow?
• How do you prospect the future?
• How valuable your data are?

In those questions, I will assure you that FOSS kick *ss! And for the reason why FOSS can do that is left as an excercise to the reader. (or maybe later if I have the RAJIN meter up again)

Reference:

[RANT] http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/userfriendly/userfriendly5.php

[ANTA] http://anta40.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/apa-itu-os-yang-user-friendly/

Decoupling Your System

You could google about the definition of decoupling, [GGL] but let's take it from my perspective. Decoupling is a process to make each part more independent. This is a process that modularize your system. As any algorithm in this world, it has many weaknesses. So, let me summarize it for you:

#1 Architecture Overhaul

Architecture overhaul can become tricky if it means of changing a big API. Take Linux kernel as an example, each minor release take major interface change that makes specific driver are not compatible. But then again, this argument can be broken by the way of Linux kernel is developed: monolithic. No wonder it can have so many modules tightly coupled.

Even so, a proper way of making modularity and system planning, can make architecture overhaul is nothing -- yeah, it still costs you something, e.g. money. Pay attention to intermediary services. It is often what ever changing beneath will not so much cost you, but when you change the way of any subpart communication, it will break down the system.

Consider using deprecating method. However, watch out for deprecating that can lead into regression. Whatever that breaks it will stop your system. Often regression is something that you wish to have so that your customer shall upgrade your system. But, that's felt like cheating. Take a look at Sun Microsystem, Microsoft, [BIG VENDOR HERE] and any of their software, they always take compatibility a big issue that it sometimes make the new software crippled.

#2 Web of Modules

Too much interface also can make each of your module become messed up and ended up with chaining each other, breaking the rule and the first objective. Theoritically, this should be impossible. But, with extreme conditions of many big projects and with the not-so-mature-and-strict company policy about documentation leads many modules ended up chained each other so much.

Solution is implied: do documentation strictly, plan your architecture well, and creates some labs. If you have (D)VCS, you would have the main development kept in the trunk, some modifications in branches, and mature releases in tag. There, I just gave you the tips of using (D)VCS.

Ah.. penyakit gw kambuh... :P

To be continued.

[Spoiler] of Apa Yang Kurang?

Yes, yes, I know it's a post without a body. But, it holds dearly to something. Okay, I forgot not put deep mind tag to it or else people will starts to put thinking about it. Anyway, like an art or any philosophical stand point, one must describe what to tell.

Let's begin with a definition of blog. What is a blog? Well, from the definition, obviously blog is an online journal. It's, as the name suggested Web Log, is a collection of personal thought of a person over something. Evenmore as it evolved, it is refined as a collection of writings that have personality on it, even if it is a corporate blog. The different of a blog than a news entry is the mixture of personal feeling in the writing. So, no matter how objective you are, in a blog entry there is an urge to have your personal entry.

When we look on the technical note, the first use of blog is a way to capture tacit knowledge and documentized it into external knowledge. It is a way more convinient to capture one's thought that it is different than that of wiki, whitepaper, and the useless microblogging. :D

See, I even put a smile on this post, trying to become more personalized. Okay, I went to far, I don't want to discuss of a blog. Back to topic... :P

Yes, it is a place to get your personal feeling get mix up. It is like words that come out of your mouth. It is something that you can bring it out.

The post of  "Apa yang Kurang" is a reflection post that would took you to your very soul and ask yourself, my dear reader, what is something that make you restless. Something that you wish that you could describe. Something that even *you* don't know of. Something that formless but it moves you so much. Something that you can't made into words.

So, what is it?

Apa Yang Kurang?

God's Little Prank

There were times in life you felt like deserted and you felt like the world caved in around you. Everything became nuisance and you f*cked up. Felt like the whole live that you journeyed had no end and you couldn't sought the light. Adding to the worst part where no friends were there when they were needed the most.

Heavy. Wished that you didn't in the position you were...

No way to run. Wished that you had wings to take you to another place, wished you were someone else.

In the end. You surrendered and turned out that everything were alright. In an instant, everything were possible. Boom! Miracle happened!

Welcome to God's candid camera. You've been pwnd. :P