LCD Flat Panel 23"

It's like dream come true. This morning I saw carrefour advertisement in Kompas, they sell LG LCD Flat Panel 23LC1RB 23" wide screen for Rp 3.5 Million (around $380) from original price Rp 5.6 Million. Have checked on the internet, most store sell it at $600-800 . Also in www.tokolg.com for 20" is Rp 4.6 Mill and 26" is Rp 7.6 Million This afternoon I went to Kelapa Gading Carrefour, but there is no stock available. They said the LCD is run out and we can still buy it, on Monday they will deliver it.
Can't wait till monday, arrgghh. It will be very comfortable using 23" for my computer monitor & TV in my study room.
The spec for LCD are :
- Resolution 1366 x 768
- HD ready
- Viewing mode 176° x 176°
- Contrast Ratio 700:1
- Weight 20.1 lbs

If you stay in Indonesia, hurry up as this is very good deal, while stock last! And don't forget to buy Durian Thailand for only Rp 8750/Kg at Carrefour :-)

Free wireless for community

There are few free wireless community out there. One of the famous one is the service provided by Fon. It's quite interesting service. You need to buy the wireless access point hardware from Fon at cost $39.9. The wireless access point is installed on your internet broadband, and there is configuration how many bandwidth you would used by your own, and how many kbps will be shared. And Fon will give you username & password, so you can access wireless where the Fon community exist. Have checked the location, but there is no Fon community in Indonesia. But there are many community in Europe, North Asia.
Probably because internet bandwidth is still expensive in Indonesia and the impact is the internet broadband for unlimited service still not attractive.

3G-Net / CSM WiMax

This ISP, I guess, the first ISP that implementing WiMax technology in Indonesia (didn't count Aceh). All information below is gathered from Internet. 3G-Net/CSM WiMax is using technology 820.16-2004 and frequency 2.5/3.5 GHz as according to Postel Indonesia, CSM has both frequency allocation. And the WiMax equipment is provided by Aperto.
But I surprised, why the speed is limited to max 384 Kbps Downstream and max 64 Kbps Upstream ?

NetZap frequency

I'm interested with NetZap advertisement in couple mailing-list. Some information about NetZap which I've collected from internet are :
- Netzap using TD-CDMA technology. This technology similar like W-CDMA, except it doesn't need to pay fee to qualcomm and the technology is using TDD.
- The service similar to 3G, but NetZap doesn't buy 3G frequency allocation from Indonesia government.
- NetZap doesn't use 2.4 GHz, so that mean it will use other frequency allocation
- NetZap have certified equipment & license from Post & Telecommunication Indonesia

So, which frequency used by NetZap ? According to Wikipedia, TD-CDMA is using 1.9 GHz, 2 GHz, 2.5 GHz and also 3.5 GHz.

I've found the answer from Postel http://www.postel.go.id/update/id/baca_info.asp?id_info=388
NetZap is using 2GHz.

SAP Consultant

I still remember when my lecture said about SAP consultant one year ago. If you are end user and you are deploying SAP, becarefull with your brightest SAP programmer/analyst asset. SAP will try to get your programmer/analyst work with them, and your company become depend on SAP. SAP will charge with consultancy rate 10 times than normal salary of your SAP programmer/analyst, and the consultant sometime are your previous programmer/analyst :-) What a strategy!

This practice actually not only happen in SAP, but also in Telco environment. I just notice last week when somebody say exactly the same scheme happen in huge Telco vendor, guess who ? Pay attention with your brightest enginner/programmer and create a system that you have backup engineer/programmer with similar quality. Some telco have agreement with the vendor where vendor can't hire person from the telco.

The services from vendor take important role for vendor's revenue. With selling services, vendor will still get annual revenue from end users. Without it, vendor only can get revenue every 3-4 years.

The Pursuit of Happyness

This movie is recommended to be watched and will inspiring you. It's about real life story of the founder Gardner Rich, Christhopher Gardner. The story is begin with his struggling to his live . His wife runaway because she can't life in poverty. He has a dream as a broker, and this is his answer during interview as broker candidate "I'm technical guy. If I don't know the answer, I will say I don't know. But I know how to find the answer". Before interview, he just get arrested because he can't pay the fine of car park :-(
After six months without getting salary, where he also homeless with his son, Gardner is accepted as a broker. The happy moments after his boss give congratulation is very touching. I like the words that he told his son "Don't say that you can't do it, even to me". Great acting for Will Smith and Jaden Smith!

About Beijing

I need to share my experience visiting Beijing. First rule, very difficult to find someone that understand English. Don't try to take Taxi to anywhere if you don't bring the paper with mandarin written of your destination. Also if you take Taxi, be carefull. My first come to Beijing, I've got cheated by Taxi driver. From Airport to Hotel normally 100 Yuan, but they charge me 300 Yuan.
For internet, I've checked few website are banned. Example wordpress.com and wikipedia.org. But if you have VPN to you office, please do so. They won't filter traffic inside tunnel VPN, like IPsec and even PPTP.
If you would like to buy something like souvenir, you should know the price first. Without knowing it, you also can get cheated. Actually not really cheated, for us their price is consider is low, but the right price should be half than the original or even 1/10. I bought some Beijing T-Shirt, originally they offer 120 Yuan, but after negoatiation I could get 12 Yuan. And after I walk to another shop, the other shop offer only 10 Yuan :-))
I have only few experiences about place for buying souvenir. The first one is before Great Wall Badaling gate, and the other place is Wang Fu Jing.
Things are very cheap here, you would like to spend all of your money here :-)

Wimax World in Beijing

I've come 17 April 2007 night in Beijing, the venue itself start from 18-21 April. It's my second time come here. The weather is perfect, 10-20 degree celcius. Fortunately I've stayed the same hotel with the Wimax World venue. The conference divided to few class such as Service Provider, Application and Service, Technology, Universal Broadband and Wireless Cities. In the Service Provider Track, I show one conference about Business Case for Wireless Indonesia. I have attended the Wireless in Indonesia session, but unfortunately is cancelled by the host. Mr Berge, the host, told me he already invited many Indonesian telco to become presenter, but no one response :-(( Haiyaaaa. I think he send to the wrong company, he should send to my company.
In Day 1, half day is on the big conference, talking about Wimax/Broadband wireless prospect and also deployment Wimax in India. One the last half session is finished after TD-SCDMA session. TD-SCDMA topic is very interesting. China use their own standard for their 3G. It's smart move as they don't need to pay fee to Qualcomm. The presenter say it will use TD-SCDMA as 3G HSDPA and also for Wimax. But for Wimax, I think TD-SCDMA still not good solution for Internet as Internet need higher pipe.
One second half day, with the Yankee Group research about mobile prospect and also mobile application.

ICT Expo in Hong Kong

ICT Expo is hosted by Hong Kong Trade Development Council started 14 to 17 April 2007.
I stayed at Park Lane Hotel, about 1 KM walk to Hong Kong Expo. It's fourth time come to Hong Kong. There is shuttle bus every 15 minutes from Hotel to Hong Kong Expo. I thought in ICT expo I will find many big vendors there, about 1/3 vendors are selling USB OEM (USB camera/flash/etc). I found few interested product such as :
- WDM/100FX to Ethernet interface at cost below $20
- OEM SFP/GBIC also below $20
- Load balancer cost below $400
- Small CPE/Voice box also with a good price

I don't recommend this venue for people looking for core network equipment. But it will be suitable if you are reseller for OEM product from China. Other equipment that interesting but not related with network equipment are :
- Photo frame with LCD inside with multiple images
- DVB-T TV
- Paperless Fax
- Fix Phone for GSM

DNS Blackhole for Spyware/malware/adware

Everybody should familiar with DNS blackhole for SPAM. Many organizations like spamhaus (http://www.spamhaus.com) provide feeds for spammer IP addresses. These listed IP address not only suspected SMTP IP address but also IP address of URL domain inside of body e-mail.

But not many people familiar with DNS blackhole for spyware/malware/adware. The way it works is a bit different with above explanation. It use list of domains instead of IP address. The using of domains will be very effective as if the spy website change IP address, it still can be caught. In Bind, the configuration will be like this :

zone "coolwebsearch.com" { type master; file "/etc/namedb/blockeddomain.hosts"; };

where coolwebsearch.com is spyware domain and inside the blockeddomain.hosts file will point anything to 127.0.0.1.

More detail explanation and the feed for listed spyware/malware domains could be find here :
http://doc.bleedingthreats.net/bin/view/Main/BlackHoleDNS#Configuring_your_DNS_server_Bind

If ISP implement this feature in its DNS server, there will be reducing not necessary traffic flow to spyware/malware website and also will protect its customers.



Note
Spam is e-mail that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients. Thus, a common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE).
Spyware is computer software that collects personal information about users without their informed consent.
Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent.
Adware or advertising-supported software is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertising material to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used.

Half of Internet traffic is P2P!

According to NTT reports and others, P2P occupy 50% of internet traffic. As people know, normally P2P is used to download movies, songs, books which are violating the copyright. So in few country, P2P is blocked by the ISP. How about Indonesia ? I believe many companies/ISPs also have tried to block P2P but not because of copyright, but because bandwidth consideration.
Blocking P2P for corporate users might be ok as users should use internet for their job (not for downloading movies), but for home users may be not acceptable in many cases. Home users will try to find other ISP that don't block P2P. If the policy come from government forcing all ISP block P2P, it will be good. At least 50% of internet traffic can be used for the usefull things.

90% e-mail in Internet are spam!

According to Spamhaus, about 90% e-mail traffic in Internet are Spam. Using the right filter will decrease a lot of spam e-mail. One of the filtering is Policy Block List, that I believe many ISP in Indonesia doesn't implement it. Currently I'm using ADSL Speedy, my IP address is 125.161.193.140 but not listed in PBL.

125.161.193.140 is not listed in the SBL 125.161.193.140 is not listed in the PBL 125.161.193.140 is not listed in the XBL

Why my IP address should be listed there ? It have to be listed as I'm using ADSL that give dynamic IP address, this kind of service normally used by spammer to do their action. If the e-mail originate from MTA using the range IP address of ADSL and listed on the PBL, this e-mail will be rejected by the recipient MTA.

http://www.spamhaus.org/effective_filtering.html

Indonesian, Alcohol and Zheng He

Have you ever read the news in Indonesia about few people drunk, then fight and the one get killed. Normally it happen in the dangdut concert, rock concert or sometime a place for hang out.
Don't be surprise, Zheng He (Cheng Ho) a greatest admiral from China have reported 600 years ago the similar thing happen when he went to Java. At that time he reported the citizens like to drunk and sometime after that they kill each other. (source National Geographic TV)