Colin Charles Agenda

In a mere eight days (March 29, 2008), the vote for the fast-track of ECMA-376 will have to be concluded. In the APAC region, the Participating (”P” member countries) countries are Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. Back in September 2007, Australia and Malaysia abstained, while Singapore voted to approve, and the rest, voted to disapprove.

So, will there be a change in votes, come eight days? India, has chosen to lead the pack and say that they still disapprove (much kudos to Venky for this information).

I’ve largely not followed the debate, but seeing Doug Mahugh’s blog posts, and how he seems to act rather immaturely, I can only hope that PIKOM, and naturally SIRIM look at the previous abstain vote, and decide to change it to a disapprove. Naturally, that’s not the only reason (that in itself will seem childish) - its just that the OOXML specification seems largely incomplete, despite the 8,000+ pages that exist out there (I’m including edits in the specification in that number).

Now, back to the real point of this. I challenge an adult to read, the following entries, and tell me if Doug doesn’t seem childish:

• PIKOM Meeting in Malaysia - Note the misinformation on the “IBM’s side”. It seems that Microsoft views that everyone anti-OOXML must be from IBM (its not only this blog post, I’ve spoken to Microsofties who utter the same corporate line). How untrue. This is not an IBM agenda against Microsoft - please wake up. Please do read the comments, because its really useful to the entire blog post
• An “open standards” meeting in Malaysia - This one takes the cake, clearly. I simply love the conspiracy theory on how Doug was removed from the meeting. Problems with Yoon Kit and Ditesh not showing up on time, and them waiting 30 minutes? Sure, it was bad form to be late, but being late happens everywhere, even in the US, Doug. I’m surprised that he also adds Madam Tan (from MAMPU) into the conspiracy mix. Its just an amusing read, something that maybe you’d have read in a Nancy Drew novel, when you were eight.

Naturally, one must read Yoon Kit’s response to all this childishness. Its interesting (but not surprising) to see that Microsoft goes through great lengths, to sully the standards process. But Yoon Kit brings up an interesting point.

Can someone, not from the nation, participate in a standards discussion, with having the nation’s interest at heart, over their companies interest? I believe its generally impossible. Its similar to applying to go work in the military/army - the requirements are simple, in that you have to be a citizen of said nation. After all, in war, where do your loyalties lie?

Anyway, the next eight days will be interesting. But if you’re to look at the antagonist behaviour in that blog post, I am just so glad that no matter what happens in the next eight days, MAMPU has opted to drop Microsoft Office from their stable of machines by year’s end, and the government agencies can only follow suit, and back ODF. Naturally, I’m hoping from an abstain to a disapprove, but I shall not count any eggs before they hatch (this analogy seems weirder, during the Easter vacation).

And… if you believe the Microsoft FUD about OpenOffice.org 3.0 supporting reading/writing of OOXML, and support should equate to a standard, that is an untruth. OpenOffice.org needs to support file formats that are out there in the wild. It supports reading from WordPerfect 5.1 documents (via libwpd), does that make WordPerfect’s document format a standard? No.

The opinions here in no way reflect the opinions of my past, present, or future employers. Standard blog disclaimer applies to this post.

Technorati Tags: brm, ecma-376, ooxml, odf, india, doug mahugh, standards, document formats, pikom, sirim, yoon kit, opendocument, microsoft

Deciding to spend my credit note immediately at CPL earlier today, I picked up a 2GB stick of 667MHz DDR2 SODIMM, for laptops. Getting home, I popped open the Eee (breaking the warranty void if seal broken sticker), took out the 512MB stick, and replaced it with the 2GB of RAM.

Booted it up, and the Eee is going faster than ever. XFce4 with 2GB RAM is just fabulous. Best $69 that was spent today.

I was looking for RAM sometime last month, even in Kuala Lumpur, and was told that it was all out of stock, so I’m generally thrilled I managed to grab it here, today.

I like to spell with British English. Its probably because of my upbringing doing the O Level Examinations, at my high school.

For the last few days that Mac was annoying me, so I found out how to have British English available for all my applications. System Preferences -> International -> Input Menu. Select British. It will ask you to look for the Input Menu, I just selected the British flag and got rid of the input menu, to reduce clutter from the menu bar.

Firefox however, still decided to misbehave. It was then I realised that we had to download additional dictionaries for Firefox. That was easily done, thanks to the plugin architecture - visit Add-ons: Dictionaries. I wonder why it doesn’t use the system dictionary (I noticed that even in Linux, I had the dictionary add-on).

Now, I’m happily typing and not noticing typos of the spelling kind.

Technorati Tags: british english, language, spelling, firefox, macosx

Thats a tag/wrist-bracelet I wear, while its fading, is still going strong on my right wrist. And it cannot be more true.

Consider this, one week’s notice, that I’m relocating to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the near future. This relocation has been in the works for the last couple of weeks, but I’ve been too busy to write about it, and you also don’t want to write about something that isn’t confirmed. For me, confirmation, was actually getting the plane ticket sorted out, which I did today. Easter (or the period around it) has always been a time for new beginnings for me (and I say this, not being a religious person, at all).

The last few months, have been filled with change. First up, I left the sticks. Then, the company got acquired. And now, I’m leaving Melbourne, which has been home to me, for the past seven years or so.

Those following my Twitter feed, probably got various hints. Mustering 140 characters sometimes, is easier than writing lengthy blog entries.

Anyways, once the move is complete, I get to focus on growing and building the developer community further, and have travel stops that can make an air steward jealous.

I’m excited about the future, quite naturally!

In the meantime, there are some books I have for sale ($10? $20? Pay whatever seems sensible, and it’d be nice if you collected it). Those that know me well, know that there is a large collection of scotch (that I will not be bringing back to Kuala Lumpur), that I should probably also dispose of. Thoughts of having a mad raving party during Easter has crossed my mind, but I’d rather rid myself of the bottles of Green Label, Chivas Regal and Glenfiddich. I’ll be waiting for your email (byteATaeon.com.my) if you’re after a book…

P/S: If I haven’t written you personally, or called you, its not because I don’t love you, its really because I have been busy. And this isn’t goodbye, I’m sure to be back, and will be moseying in and out of Melbourne often enough.

Just as a head’s up to students that are thinking about participating in the Google Summer of Code 2008, and were planning on being affiliated with MySQL. You can - MySQL has just been accepted into the Summer of Code 2008.

We have an ideas page (watch it closely, there will be many changes in the coming weeks), we also have a mailing list (subscribe to it, and discuss with potential mentors), and now, all we want are plenty of students!

This should also be a note, that its a call for mentors. Last year, we had Paul McCullagh and Sheeri Kritzer Cabral, mentor projects from outside MySQL, and it was great. Participation from the community, will simply rock.

My advise? Note the timeline, closely. Students: April 1, 2008, 00:00 UTC is your deadline. Mentors, you need to be paired up with your students by April 11, 07:00 UTC. Mentors, start signing up, now!

Here’s to another great Summer of Code!

Technorati Tags: gsoc, gsco2008, mysql, google, summer of code

All in Melbourne, keep the evening of Thursday, 20 March 2008, free. Why? We’re having a Meetup Mashup, right here in Melbourne, Australia. This is the Sun and MySQL tour around the world!

Details:
Date: 20th March
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: RMIT University (Swanston St)
Room: 10.08.04

Contact Tristan on 0422 501 726 for directions to the venue. (or me, at 0412 593 292 if you have any questions, etc.)

After we’re done at RMIT, discussing the recent acquisition (you’re guaranteed to see Support Engineer Gary Pendergast, and me speak, and answer questions), we’ll head over to the bar nearby, and grab some grub. Its a great opportunity to come and get your questions answered!

Are you already part of the MySQL Meetup in Melbourne? If not, check out the Melbourne MySQL User Group.

P/S: To all those in Sydney, there are plans to have one possibly in early April. Interested? Why not drop me an email or leave a comment.

The Economist, is easily one of my favourite magazines out there. I occasionally buy a copy from the newsstand, but more often than not, get it free while I’m on a plane. I think the tipping point to subscription for me, happened today. Some articles I’d like to bring to your attention, with select quotes.

Malaysia’s election | The no-colour revolution

“In five states, including the most populous, the opposition will form the government. This is extremely good news for many reasons. The most basic is that democracies need a vibrant and credible opposition. Any party that stays in power for half a century is liable to show signs of complacency, arrogance and corruption, and UMNO is no exception.”

“Second, the election result is a victory for hope over fear. At times the government has used harsh laws against opponents.” It goes on to say, “the National Front has played on the fears evoked by the ghosts of 1969, when opposition advances at the polls were followed by bloody race riots. A vote for the opposition, went the none-too-subtle message, would risk bloodshed as the Malay majority took its revenge on
the minorities. Yet it was not only many ethnic-Chinese voters (about a quarter of the population) and, especially, disgruntled ethnic Indians
(about 8%) who deserted the National Front. Many Malays switched too.”

It wasn’t electoral suicide: “That is a third reason for optimism: communal tension may not be the tinderbox that Malaysia has for so long assumed it to be. If so, the result may herald new thinking about the institutionalised racism of the pro-Malay affirmative-action policies introduced after 1969. The opposition parties campaigned on a platform of “colour-blind” affirmative action—help for those who need it, not for a particular ethnic group.”

On the NEP? “Many seem to have recognised that the policy has become less a means for redistributing wealth to the disadvantaged than a vehicle for
corruption and cronyism.”

The Internet and Malaysian politics | The perils of modernity

“Even before election night, the internet had already played a big part in the vote. Malaysia has an unusual combination of high internet
penetration and pliant mainstream media. It is therefore fertile ground for cyber-politics. According to the government’s multimedia regulator,
3.9m of the country’s 28m people have dial-up internet subscriptions and 1.2m broadband. Some 60% of the population, it reckons, use the
internet. Even if that is an overestimate, the limitations of the mainstream media are enough to drive politics online.”

On why Dr. Mahathir did something useful: “Television hardly ever covers opposition rallies and speeches. But the online world is delightfully free. Anxious to make Malaysia a high-tech cyber-hub, the county’s former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, exempted websites from the annual licensing requirements that help keep print publications deferential. The 1998 Communications and Multimedia Act decreed that there would be no censorship of the internet.”

“Mr Pua thinks all parties underestimated the effects of “secondary access” to the internet, as news broken on the web—of opposition rallies, for example—was disseminated by word-of-mouth and mobile-phone text messages.”"Most worrying for the government and the mainstream media, Malaysia is young. A new generation sees the internet as its primary news source.”

Malaysia’s election upset | Anwar overturns the apple cart

“After 22 years of rule by the abrasive and authoritarian Mahathir Mohamad, Mr Badawi was seen as more conciliatory and more committed to tackling corruption. He has indeed offered a less acerbic style. But few believe corruption has lessened. Instead, there has been a series of ugly scandals. And the high-flying Mr Khairy, Mr Badawi’s son-in-law (and a former intern at The Economist), has become what one observer calls a “walking, talking, boasting” symbol of nepotism.”

That’s a lesser known fact - Khairy Jamaluddin, was an intern at The Economist.

“M. Manoharan, an ethnic-Indian lawyer, was elected to the state assembly of Selangor, despite being detained without charge under the
Internal Security Act after a street protest last November. He was elected in a predominantly ethnic-Chinese constituency.”

Once you’re done reading the amazing Economist, don’t hesitate to read the comments as well (that’s something you can’t get in the paper version of The Economist, eh?).

Technorati Tags: economist, malaysia, elections, NEP, Internet, freedom of speech

I thought I’d try to get OpenOffice.org going, and see if my presentations run well, on my new MacBook. It turns out, its just plagued with issues.

First up, OpenOffice.org 2.3.1, available on the porting site, will not allow you to run Base, or anything that requires Java. At least the message in red, tells all:

Please note that the Java features of OpenOffice.org are only available from OpenOffice.org 2.4 (more specifically milestone m237) and later. This means that the Wizards, Base and some other things are unavailable in 2.3.1 or earlier. All other functionality of OpenOffice.org remains on Leopard.

Now, after its downloaded, the install is easy. Drag to the Applications folder, and just double-click (it never was always this easy!). You at this stage will think that toggling Command+Option+a will allow you to go into full screen mode. You are very wrong.

X11 Preferences, allowing you to be in full screen mode

A little searching on the Apple X11 mailing lists, and I came across some gems from Ben Byer, an engineer in Apple’s CoreOS group. It seems that X11 is now based on Xorg as opposed to XFree86’s codebase. And during the rebasing, Ben realised that full screen support was broken and couldn’t fix it. The suggested fix? Find X11 from Tiger (not even on Apple’s site), or you don’t have full screen support.

I guess I’ll file a radar bug against it, but knowing my luck, it’ll be closed in no time, with a reference to a bug that I myself won’t be able to access. I can only hope that this is fixed soon. In the meantime, maybe I need to give OpenOffice.org Aqua a twirl, or even NeoOffice/J. If you’re interested in the history of X11 in OS X, don’t hesitate to read X11.app “pedigree”.

Bottom-line: If you’re reliant on OpenOffice.org on your Mac, you’ll find that making presentations using Leopard, is going to be problematic. And its not OpenOffice.org’s fault, its on Apple’s head.

Technorati Tags: openoffice.org, openoffice.org aqua, macosx, X11, full screen X11