auyongtc’s blog

We all know it’s not tmnet’s fault, but it’s tmnet’s ignorance that we’re all furious about. Slight drop in performance they said (read here) - and up until now, no further news from tmnet. Way to go…

Connection to international websites and online services are down to a crawl. Productivity is affected. Nowadays, the Internet is not just for fun (not just for idiotic girls to chat up michaelooi ), people’s lives are depending on it!

Let’s start rallying support for monetary compensation to refund our streamyx bills! I bet they’ll say that the Internet access is just fine, except that accessing international sites are at snail’s pace. No way we’re gonna take that, Internet to us doesn’t just revolve around Malaysian networks!

Having to financially suffer a dip would very well teach tmnet not to be ignorant in terms of notifying its users and keeping them informed, and to be pro-actively involved in ensuring that the network in Malaysia doesn’t suffer such a big network slowdown again.

How on earth can we ever pitch to be a technology-centric country besides boasting what’s left of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)? How on earth can we ever compete with countries like India to be a global or regional outsourcing hub when slowdowns like this can happen and drag on (perhaps until April 20 for the links to be fixed!)??

Would like to hear your opinion… please comment (and keep it clean okay?)

UPDATE: 5 mins after blogging this, my internet connection improved a bit - access to my site was really slow, but now it’s somewhat improved. Hmmm, conspiracy…

Just reformatted my computer today. And decided to fancy up the boring desktop layout… here’s how it looks like now:

Cool, huh?

… tweaking my ADSL modem?

Actual Bit Rate (NEAR END FAST CHANNEL): 5152 Kbps
Actual Bit Rate (FAR END FAST CHANNEL): 736 Kbps
Actual Bit Rate (NEAR END INTERLEAVED CHANNEL): 0 Kbps
Actual Bit Rate (FAR END INTERLEAVED CHANNEL): 0 Kbps

Now if only I can improve my line’s SNR (Signal-Noise-Ratio) and hold on this speed stable. SNR is quite bad at the moment for my line

Yeap, Microsoft is gonna sell the half-priced, half-featured, but-not-half-as-buggy-and-vulnerable Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition here in Malaysia next month (according to The Register).

How many of you would buy it, install it, and be compliant to the software licensing requirements? Or would you still embrace the RM 5 el-cheapo Full Professional (with extras!) version you got from *insert your favourite games/software/VCD/DVD/pr0n supplier here*?

According to The Register as well (in another story):
“Users can have up to three programs and three windows per program running concurrently. Further simplification of the operating system includes the display resolution set to 800×600 maximum and no support for PC-to-PC home networking, sharing printers across a network or more advanced features such as the ability to establish multiple user accounts on a single PC.”

Recently, my blog’s comment facility has been abused by an individual, which only bothered to advertise his site (an underground site regarding the college I attend). Initially, he only commented his advertisement over college-related blog posts, but last night it was just lame, commenting onto irrelevant posts. Frustrated at his unwelcomed and downright rude attempts to ride on my blog to popularize his site, I e-mailed this to him last night:

Hey lowlife,

Au Yong

Just a while ago, I got a reply from him:
How does that make me a low-life? You do not own your site, the blog hosting company does. It’s made freely available on the WWW for anyone to post, so certainly nothing illegal was done. If it was such a violation to your privacy and your feelings, you should have just said so. You didn’t have to be insulting. I mean hey, I could have said your blog was pathetic, but I didn’t; fact, I made it look worth posting on. Looks like you owe me an apology AND a thank you. I accept.

Oh boy, you’re so wrong, low-life (he doesn’t provide a name, so I’ll stick to this)…
Firstly, I DO OWN MY SITE. This site is not a free-service given by any blog hosting company. Don’t go assuming, didn’t your mom teach you a thing or two about ASSUME?

Secondly, although it’s made publicly available on the Web, but you’re in my domain (and I’m not talking about the Internet domain here), so it’s either you play by my rules, or go play with yourself.

It was rude for you to first assume that you’re doing the right thing, by commenting irrelevant advertisements on my blog postings. So don’t lecture me about the insults.

I’ll apologize, sure, to the world that you were born into this world. And I’ll thank you, for the enlightment on how ignorant some people on the Internet can be.

This came very much as a surprise to me. Read it first at Jeff Ooi’s Screenshots that Maybank2U will be charging RM 12 per annum (in 2 half yearly payments of RM 6 each), as covered here.

I’m not at all happy at this sudden change of terms for the service. I have a savings account, an i-account (Internet-based current account), 6 credit cards (well, all on the same credit limit, 3 for myself, and 3 being supplementary for my mom), and a business current account with Maybank. As such, I have 2 separate Maybank2U accounts, one for my personal banking, the other for business.

What the new terms means to me is that I have to pay RM 24 per annum just to maintain the Maybank2U online banking access and privilege. Well, it may not appear to be much, but this sudden change with less than a month’s notice (effective 20th December 2004) is really catching a lot of users off-guard. Some other users may argue about the ATM charges of RM 0.50 per withdrawal transactions above the first 4 transactions per month, but I can still accept that as being reasonable. Perhaps because Maybank doesn’t charge for the new Maybankard ATM chipcard when it was introduced, while some other banks charged a fee for that.

What really irked me is that how they’re changing their stand on the i-account, labeled as the Internet banking account. What’s an Internet banking account without default/free access to the Internet banking facility? If Maybank2U wants to charge other account holders (savings, business, etc) for Internet banking facilities, it’s justifiable. But charges extra for the features that was supposed to be the main feature of the account? This is just plainly unreasonable.

Of course, I can choose to convert my i-account to a standard current account, but losing the Internet banking facility would also mean losing the ability to get my monthly statements online. And if I were to get printed statements from the bank branch (read: hassle), then I will be charged RM 10 for the statement printing service PLUS RM 1 for each additional page! This is absurd!

Perhaps I’ll check with Jeff on how to bring up this matter to the attention of Bank Negara. We just can’t let these corporations stomp all over us as they please!

I just got myself another Linksys WRT54G router today (many thanks to CheeV for the help in getting it and the lunch too at Kiwi Express, Sri Hartamas). Promptly installed the latest pre-release 3rd-party firmware by Sveasoft (gotta subscribe for USD 20 per year for the firmware and support), and it’s been great!

Beefed up the wi-fi security, and then enabled the Quality-of-Service (QoS) feature. Now I can smoothly use multiple applications with ease, not worrying about service quality especially when services like Voice over IP (VoIP) is concerned.

All my downloading applications are on a Bulk only priority, where as VoIP and SSH gets Premium priority. As such, the fat pipe (all 4.5mbps of it ) can be left to download stuff on P2P networks, and when VoIP applications such as Skype is running, Skype will have higher priority on the packets. Now I don’t have to worry about throttling the P2P apps’ connection speed whenever I talk on Skype

Also, I’m able cap the LAN ports. Hehe, don’t tell my sister that her port is being capped at 256kbps only

Really, there’s no service like QoS!

I received the above screenshot image from Benet, my very good buddy from high school days. Apparently, due to my recent influx of swearwords on my blog, Benet could no longer access my blogsite from Curtin U, Sarawak campus’ computer laboratories. Benet, however, said he still managed to access my site, by using a SOCKS proxy server… kih kih kih, that cheeky fella… he’s constantly wreaking havoc in the computer labs there!

To remedy this problem, for Benet and other visitors, I’ll try my best to reduce my swearing, or at least rename to something that the system doesn’t catch, like fcuk instead. It’s tough not to swear on my blog, especially when I have RT giving us all hell (see: Bastard Lecturer From Hell).

Let me know if you face difficulty accessing my blog too
^ weird, come to think of it, if you are denied access to my blog, how would you know of this post?

… as I woke up this morning, to see dim and distorted display on my monitor. Horrifying! First thought that my Samsung SyncMaster 173V LCD monitor gone bonkers…!

Tried plugging the monitor to my laptop, realised it was working fine… phew!
Took out the desktop’s el cheapo Milkystar NVIDIA GeForce2MX-400 card to realise that the active cooling fan on the heatsink spoilt. Darn!

First instinct, was to go out to the living room, unplugged the living room HTPC (home theatre PC) that is pretty much dormant now, and plug out its ATI Radeon 7000 series card (that has CRT, DVI, and RCA video output) and yanked it into my desktop. Removed the NVIDIA Detonator drivers, installed the ATI Catalyst drivers, and voila, colours become more vibrant than before! Yay!

Everything was working fine for 5 minutes, then the screen become tinted yellow. Uh-oh! Thought it was the connector on the CRT not plugged tight enough, wiggled it, worked fine and then gone! Darkness!

Apparently due to the ATI card not having an active cooling fan, it overheated and died-ed. Fuck! I’ve now 2 useless AGP 3D cards lying around. Resorted to the desktop’s on-board video adapter for display now. No more vibrant colours, as the adapter can’t do more than 24-bit on 1280×1024 resolution!

It’s a bad day, fried 2 graphic cards… sigh… now no more to do my project documentation…. fucked up!

… since there are quite a number of people doubting my uncapped Streamyx ADSL line… oh well, there are naive people, and then there are dumbfucks (terasa eh? ) who commented about my recent posts on the uncapped line…

Contrary to popular beliefs, I’m no photoshop expert, I would gladly be doing a degree in multimedia or graphic design if I am, I even suck in art… that’s why I’m doing my degree in network computing instead…

Okay, back to the uncapping issue… all the DSL connection in a particular neighbourhood is connected to the same telco exchange office or central office (read: that white and boring Telekom building nearby your area, often you can see a lot of antennas at the top and a few Telekom service vans parked there while the engineers technicians hang out at nearby mamak stalls during office hours). Inside this exchange is where all your phone lines in the neighbourhood connected to, and in the case of DSL service, you’re connected to a port in the DSLAM (Dunno-what, Something La, Aiseh Man).

Myth #1: How can you get 2.5mbps (and then later over 4.5mbps) when the connection at the exchange to the internet gateway is only 2mbps?
- Well, the connection from the exchange office to the TMnet backbone is on ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode, not your father’s wallet, you dumbfuck!), so it’s not a 2mbps leased-line or whatever shit you learned from the back alley. Think about it, one exchange office is typically responsible for at least 5km radius of connections, and that’ll be quite a lot of DSL connections as well. If it’s only 2mbps shared, how on earth can everyone still get, say, the subscribed speed of 384kbps/512kbps and download at 40kb/sec ~ 55kb/sec all at the same time? And if you don’t know, full-rate DSL can reach up to 8mbps. So consider this myth debunked.

Myth #2: You must be lying since you are telling us weird connection speeds like 2,592kbps, 4,736kbps, 832kbps, etc… the service is of multiples of 128, so your speed must be fake/fabricated!
- This is another poor observation of the DSL technology. DSL technology typically (at least ADSL is) limited to 5km at most from the exchange office. Having the connection nearer to the exchange will yield stable speed while being far from the exchange will result to deteriorated speed. As such, my connection may be excellent at 512kbps/256kbps, but when it’s upped, the copper quality (this area is at least 15 years old) and line noise comes into play, thus reducing the speed I can achieve. Consider this myth debunked too.

Myth #3: You must have paid the Telekom engineer technician some $$$ to have him uncap the line for you.
- No, I didn’t and I don’t even intend to do that should this is possible with any technician in my area. With Pak Lah still active against corruption and graft, I’m not gonna get myself in trouble doing this. No I’m not totally pro-Pak Lah’s administration, but I’m totally not pro-corruption and graft. I’m happily paying RM 66 per month (okay, add another 10 bucks just cause I needed the Hotspot wi-fi account)

Myth #4: You must be using some kind of compression software and/or connection optimizing software to achieve such speed.
- I don’t believe in any of those products, and frankly, they may optimize your connection to say, 5-10% extra, but that’s it. Show me a software that can up the speed as much as my uncapped line, and I might consider giving you a tour to see my connection speed

Myth #5: YOU ARE A LIAR/CHEATER/PHOTOSHOPPER AND YOU FAKE ALL THIS CRAP!
- *this is directed only to some dumbfuck childish idiots* Sure, and you’re a dumbfuck wanker who have no substance in your comments. If you don’t know a damn bit about how things work, do us all a favour, and just SHUT THE FUCK UP. It’s a handy advice, trust me, people may think that you’re a dumbfuck, but when you open your mouth, it removes all doubts.

This is my blog, I post what I want, I can bend the truth, but that’s not my style, if you don’t believe and want to make a big deal out of it, then just heed my advice: GO FUCK YOURSELF!

And no, I still won’t tell you how to uncap your line

kthxbais!