Screen Capturing

Just read this from a newspaper column:

Taking screen shots from a Mac is dead easy: three, and sometimes four, taps on the keyboard and you have the image captured forever...[p]ressing cmd-shift-3 takes a snapshot of the screen.

- Page 43 of Livewire, The Age, 23-10-2008

Have they never heard of the print-screen key on a PC keyboard?

Pre-crime

CCTV cameras which can 'predict' if a crime is about to take place are being introduced on Britain's streets.

The cameras can alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering and unusually slow walking. Anyone spotted could then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. 

Source: MailOnline

Firstly I would like to know accurate these cameras are. If it gives out false alarms half the time it will only overwhelm the CCTV operator, who would simply turn off the alarms.

Secondly what are you going to do to the man lurking suspiciously in the alley? Even if he really is about to commit a crime he hasn't yet done so. Sending the police after him does nothing since they can't arrest him for standing around doing nothing constructive. Suspicious activity is not illegal activity.

Finally, and most importantly, this whole concept just will not work and here is why. If you tell would-be criminals cameras are tracking and analysing their every move, they will just do their evil deeds in some other place where the cameras can't see them. Alternatively they will figure out how to carry out their crimes without triggering the alarm. The key point here is people can change their behaviours if the rules are changed. A system that relies on spotting specific behaviours will therefore not work.

Praying for a Stranger

Today a couple from a nearby Christian church knocked on my door. They went through a brief introduction about themselves and their church. After that they did something very special. They asked if there was anything they could pray for me. Naturally I told them my exam in four days, thinking the "prayer" would be performed when they returned to church. Instead they began praying right there, outside my front door. Being a Catholic myself I am no stranger to these kind of prayers so I too bowed my head and listened to the man pray. He delivered the prayer so eloquently it was hard to believe we had known each other for less than five minutes. I could hardly tell my wants to God better than he did.

After they left I felt almost indebt to their kind actions. What stopped me short was the realisation that I too have the ability to do the same thing. Instead of repaying them directly I can do to others what they did to me: spread the Good News, pray for strangers. The prospect of actually carrying this out scares the hell out of me. It is simply not in my nature to start a conversation with a complete stranger, nor is making a request (praying for them) that has a high probability of rejection. Also I am rather slow with creating words. Slower if it is to be used in a prayer. Even slower if I have to make up stuff from thin air. However I do not totally deny myself of this wonderful task, shall the opportunity arises. Part of believing in God is about, well, believing in Him, that he will not give me a task I cannot fulfill.

Despite our (slight?) differences in beliefs, I felt our prayer had been heard. And they left me with such an emotional reactions! God bless them for sacrificing their time for such a wonderful cause. They shall always be in my prayers.

Reliable Technology

Half a week ago I was working on my final year project report, when my laptop suddenly began to behave strangely and randomly shutting down. A day later I found the problem: the CPU appeared to have died, causing the laptop to prevent overheating by shutting itself down. All my data, which resides in the harddisk, fortunately remained intact. It did gave me a good scare.

A few hours ago, I was applying final touches to the report. I was working on my laptop (with an improvised cooling system) while doing other tasks on my desktop, including writing a long todo list for the report. All of a sudden, my desktop rebooted, taking with it my unsaved todo list.

It is most frustrating when computers start shutting down or rebooting unpredictably. When you are working on an urgent piece of work, that becomes a frightening experience.

Feeling insecure about more data losses, I decided to search for a more reliable technology. The report must be word-processed, that I can do nothing about. The todo list, on the other hand...

I picked up a pen and some scrap paper and began rebuilding the list.

Blog Readability Test

Movie Reviews

Not entirely sure how accurate it is, but seems like a fun thing to try out on your blog. See if you can score a "genius" level.

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Friend Blogs RIP

A few years ago many of my friends kept their own blogs. Most wrote about their lives, essentially keeping an electronic diary, while a few had thoughtful, analytical essays on topics of their choosing. I, too, was swept up by the trend and posted first on Xanga and now here.

For the last two or three years, quite a few of these blogs were abandoned. Now, I might see one or two updates every month if I am lucky.

What does this mean? Surely blogging in general is not dead. In fact, many well-known blogs are able to capitalize on their success at capturing large numbers of subscribers. It is the causal bloggers, those who initially blogged out of curiosity or just following their friends' lead, now got bored with the responsibility and moved on. I bet a lot of them moved on to microblogging sites such as Twitter.

Hence there is nothing wrong with casual bloggers feeling disinterested in maintaining their blogs. After all, we see trends materialize and fade away daily. This is just another one.

However, I did enjoyed reading my friends' blogs, even if they just wrote about their lives. In a way it kept us connected even though we might be thousands of miles apart. The writer/reader relationship also differs from a normal conversation. The former is a one way communication (not counting comments) and the writer is in charge, wherea the latter have both friends on equal standing. This allows me the reader the see my friend in a different light. You might also turn the last sentence around, that is the writer is able to present himself in a different light to his friends.

On the subject of new trends of blogging, I hereby declare I hate microblogging. Limiting your message to 140 characters means you can't present any complex ideas, like this post does. It encourages users to tell others about what they are doing right this moment. It appeals to our desire to peep into others' lives and laziness, because we don't have to write long paragraphs anymore. That makes the content empty and without substance. You can't look into the other's mind when all they post is what they just ate for dinner or a link to a funny webpage.

I can probably rant on for another three or four paragraphs, but I better stop. One of the side-effects with friends giving up on their blogs is that they also don't read any of their friends' blogs. It is not much fun writing alot when no one reads it.

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Bad IT Systems; Stupid Customer Service

=: Late Fees And Charges Still Apply :=

My Aunt died in January. CitiBank billed her for February and March
for their monthly service charge on her credit card, and then added
late fees and interest on the monthly charge... the balance had been
$0.00 and now is $60.00.

I placed the following phone call to CitiBank:

Me: "I am calling to tell you that my aunt died in January."

CitiBank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges
still apply."

Me: "Maybe, you should turn it over to collections ..."

CitiBank: "Since it is two months past due, it already has been."

Me: "So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?"

CitiBank: "Either report her account to the frauds division, or
report her to the credit bureau... maybe both!"

Me: "Do you think God will be mad at her?"

CitiBank:" ... excuse me....?"

Me: "Did you just get what I was telling you... the part about her
being dead?"

CitiBank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor!"

(Supervisor gets on the phone)

Me: ''I'm calling to tell you, my Aunt died in January."

CitiBank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges
still apply."

Me: "You mean you want to collect from her estate?"

CitiBank: "[stammer] Are you her lawyer?"

Me: "No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given... )

CitiBank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"

Me: "Sure." [Fax number is given]

(After they get the fax.)

CitiBank: "Our system just isn't set up to deal with a death."

Me: "Oh..."

CitiBank: "I don't know what more I can do to help..."

Me: "Well... if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep
billing her ... I suppose ... don't really think she will care ...."

CitiBank: "Well... the late fees and charges do still apply."

Me: "'Would you like her new billing address?"

CitiBank: "That might help."

Me: "Odessa Memorial Cemetery, Hwy 129 [plot number given]."

CitiBank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"

Me: "What do you do with dead people on your planet?!!"

-- Lifted from a mailing list email

Looks like CitiBank needs a new CTO. As for the customer service reps, what were they thinking? How can they let an IT system (and a bad one at that) constrain their actions? If they can't deal with unusual situations like this, then they are not adding value on top of the system, and the company is better off firing these guys and let customers talk directly to the computer.

Technology should support our work, not the other way round.

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Facebook Friends Search

Today I was doing some research on Facebook as part of my work, when I hit upon an interesting feature. Actually it's just the friends search function. The interesting part comes from Facebook trying to show you people you are more likely to know, and it does that by looking at the number of mutual friends between the two of you. What's really cool is Facebook will show you these mutual friends.

Still, why is it interesting? Because it lets you discover connections you never thought existed. Most of time the mutual friends are from the same "group", for example my primary school friends, so it is not surprising they are all friends with that person. Occassionally, I find a person knows two of my friends but from different groups. As far as I know these two friends aren't related to each other, but they know the same person!

I wonder if this feature can be used for some kind of datamining application, such as finding out if two of your friends from different groups knows each other. I am sure more malicious applications exists. It is also remarkable that I can find these connections given I have only added about 60 friends. Imagine what you can come up with if you have hit the friends cap of 5000?

From Introvert To Extrovert

Before my Costa Rican volunteering trip, I was rather nervous. Not because I was going to a foreign place whose people speak in a language I didn't understand, nor was I worried about the security of the country. ISV assigned to me a community project, meaning I would be working closely with the locals. Being an introvert there was some concern that I would find it hard to fit into the culture. Throughout my life I was always the person no one really cared about. My friends don't totally ignore me, but I'm definitely not the most important friend, the first one that comes to mind. I am never great at creating conversations -- in fact I question the need to converse just to break the silence -- which doesn't help with attracting my friends' attention. All these experiences lead me to conclude that I will be left out in the project: the person who works in the background, and when he leave the project no one would remember him, or even notice he has departed.

My fears turned out to be unfounded. During the project I felt I was being recognised by the locals as well as my group members. You can say this was my first taste of being an extrovert. As a result I now feel more comfortable working with people. I am still a long way from becoming an outspoken person, the centre of attention. That's fine. I don't aim to be a celebrity in my life. All I need is enough courage to actively look for people I can help, rather than wait for them to seek my assistance.