Monthly Archive for April, 2005

What password did I use for this site?

Published on 29 April, 2005 in Free Desktop. 0 Comments

I consider myself a security paranoid. Every site I sign up with a different password even different username. Over the years hundreds of account accumulated on the internet. To help with remembering, I started with standard menonics, then use associations. Nowadays I am more lazy, using standard passwords for sites that I don’t really care about.

Still the problem is how to manage passwords overload?

Many years (5?) back I found a program call Gator, the concept is simple - a program that stay behind the scene and remembers all the password and pops up when it is needed. I was like godsend. I immediately installed it. Later I found that it is a spyware and I totally wipe it off. Since then I stayed off such program that comes form a commercial company.

To side-track a little. Spywares are really the most evil software. Basically they do just what the name imply - spying on the user. With people now going online without even knowing it (turn on the computer and the internet connection is on), the possibility for mayhem is endless.

Anyway, after years of staying off password remembering softwares, I ran across an opensource version called Password Safe. I was skyptical at first but since it is opensource, my guard lowered. Truth is I am going crazy remembering passwords and I really need a tool, any tool.

Check it out for yourself. Password Safe is really a simple program. The look and feel is not polished, the interface need a little use to. But overall it is very usable.

After using it for a while, I started to save more and more of the less frequent passwords into it. Still I will remember those important passwords, somehow I never trust leaving them on the computer even strongly encrypted.

What I like about Password Safe?

Small, light, simple, does its job well
Auto-type feature.
One click entry of username password and the enter key. Brilliant.
Password generation. No more thinking of password, just generate and save. The drawback of course is the program is always needed.
Opensource, no spyware

Room for improvement

Interface not as intuitive. Not sure what the icons does on first look. The tree navigation doesn’t look like the normal Windows folder tree which is what most user are used to

Where to get it?

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

Current version: 2.10
Function: Password management utility

Develop a range of tools because …

Published on 22 April, 2005 in Quotes. 0 Comments

If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like a nail.

Managing Software Requirements: A Use Case Approach

Published on 20 April, 2005 in Readings. 0 Comments

Managing Software Requirements: A Use Case Approach, 2nd Ed
by Dean Leffingwell, Don Widrig

Just beginning to read this book after coming across good reviews about it.

The business of software development

Published on 20 April, 2005 in Business Models and Entrepreneur. 0 Comments

Came across an interesting website a few weeks ago - Tony Marston’s Web Site. The site looks really simple, unappealing even, but has substantial content on software development and PHP development architecture.

I am surprised had not stumble across this site much earlier. Software development and PHP development architecture are subjects that I surf alot on, often boasting of having seen most of the important PHP sites. It just goes to show that the internet is full of couching tigers, hidden dragons.
The amount of information and content put into the site is impressive. Although I do not agree with some of the ideas and the way the ideas are presented, I respect the author for the tremendous effort that went into preparing the site.

In particular, I find this article at once a very accurate yet at the same time a rather defensive narration of the client-consultant relationship in software development. I am not saying that the clients are always right but that consultant may sometime be wrong. It is best not to have a know-it-all attitude.

Not all clients are as un-knowledgable of technology as depicted in Tony’s article. Most of the clients I dealt with are knowledgable and I learnt from them as much as they gained from my service.

It is true though that problems typically comes from client that think they know a lot but in fact don’t. Sometime we termed them unreasonable. These are the clients to avoid. Fortunately one can smell them easy enough - they exhibit the traits described in Tony’s article.

So my contention is that the article make an excellent read for consultants and provides good get back at client. But getting back at clients always get nowhere. If a consultant ever finds the need to deliver those arguments to a client, then the consultant had already chosen a wrong client to begin with.

Never fight a battle that should have been avoided.

For my clients, I say go read the article. It is an excellent insight into what a I think when you make certain requests.

For me, I hope there never be a need to deliver those arguments.

World financial & economic climate

Published on 15 April, 2005 in Investing. 0 Comments

Have not been keeping up with what is going on on the bigger picture for a while.

A quick review.

US
The energy price is releasing its grip but is still a threat. Inflationary fear may cause interest rate to raise and growth slowed.
US likely to be full of trouble in the short to middle. Stay out of this market.

Europe
Signal are mxed but Europe’s growth look set to be slowed after some steady growth last year.
Eastern Europe to western Europe is becoming like the developing countries in Asia is to Japan. Providing low cost production, causing companies to move out, unemployment.
Time to take out some money to lock-in gain from investments here.

Asia
When considering Asia, it is customary to speak of ex-Japan. Japan however had been in the back seat for a long time. Sometime one wonders with the raising importance of China if Japan is secondary.

Markets in Asia are a mixed bag. India is growing in importance. The traditional 4 dragons of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore are somewhat back in the growth track. Asian market are also much influenced by events in US since US is the major export for most countries.

I believe good opportunities exist in the other markets but question is how to understand them and pick the fund to go in with.
General Asian funds that focuses on the more mature should still enjoy growth and less uncertainties.

Japan
Looking at it only because I have fund in this market in order to have a balanced distribution across the markets.
Raising oil price could put a brake on growth since the country import all its oil needs.

China
Analyst are of the view that China will continues to do well. So do I. Being in China I can see how enormous and unstoppable the economic machine is.
Still there are risk of raising inflation with wages that doesn’t seem to follow up.
Suggest to lock in some profit but keep the bet here.

Singapore
Future looks shakely but knowing Singapore as I do, I believe it will stablise but growth will be subdued. Larger companies that began to look to overseas market should continue to do when with the growth around Asia.

Moving GAIM profile between computers

Published on 14 April, 2005 in Free Desktop. 0 Comments

Following the move of my Thunderbird profile, I have to move my GAIM profile. Gaim is an integrated messaging client that I use. I need to be online most of the time to stay in touch with clients, partners and friends.

It turned out to be very straight forward as well.

On the desktop I just had to

Install a copy of GAIM
copy the former .gaim folder which located on the old drive
Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\.gaim
to
c:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data
Start GAIM. All the accounts and contacts will just appear. Perfect!

Moving Thunderbird profile between computers

Published on 14 April, 2005 in Free Desktop. 0 Comments

The right hinge on my HP nc4000 broke today. The left hinge broke 3 months ago. At that time, the service centre told me that it would take 3-4 days to replace the whole LCD panel. The LCD is working fine but they are not able to replace just the hinge since it comes as an assembly.

Since I work primarily on the notebook and cannot afford to go without it, I decided to “hang” on one hinge. Now I have no choice but to send it to the service center again.

Anyway that is the background.

So, I stripe out the harddisk and hook it up as an USB drive to my desktop pc. With this, I can access most of my data and use the necessary applications with no problem. One minor problem is my Thunderbird mailbox. I need to read and reply to mails still in the mailbox.

"Someone must have encounter problem before" I thought. A quick keywords search found some potential information.

~~How to run Thunderbird USB drive~~. (Link missing) Not quite what I wanted but an interesting idea. A change of keywords got me the result right on Mozilla site. Bulleye!

How To Manage Profiles.

It is really so simple. On WinXP,

Quit Thunderbird if it is running
Look for "Application Data/Thunderbird" under C:\Documents and Settings\username
Open the file profile.ini
Change these 2 linesIsRelative=1
Path=/Profiles/somenames

to

IsRelative=0
Path=drive:/full/path/to/profile/
Start Thunderbird and all the former mailboxes will appear. Done!

CPF investing charges and Fundsupermart.com

Published on 13 April, 2005 in Investing. 0 Comments

One of the best thing that had happened to CPF investing is the introduction of the ‘IA’ status in Fundsupermart (FSM).

FSM is an online financial portal selling unit trusts in Singapore. While many online sites claim to provide value, passing lower cost to customer, FSM stood out as one that provide value by way of using technology innovatively and coming out with revolutionary new services.

The ‘IA’ status basically refers to CPFIS registered Investment Administrator (IA) status. With this, Fundsupermart can draw monies directly from CPF agent bank when buying unit trust using CPF.

Take a look at this flow chart from Fundsupermart.

Of course if that is all they did, nothing great. But read this.

Summary of Agent Bank Charges

Type of transaction	Before 1 March 2005	From 1 March 2005
Per buy transaction	*$2.50 per 1,000 units or part thereof subject to a maximum of $25 per fund	$2.50 regardless of number of units and number of funds
Per sell transaction	*$2.50 per 1,000 units or part thereof subject to a maximum of $25 per fund	$2.50 regardless of number of units and number of funds
Per fund switch (This involves a sell transaction followed by a buy transaction)	Sell: $2.50 per 1,000 units or part thereof subject to a maximum of $25 per fund+ Buy: $2.50 per 1,000 units or part thereof subject to a maximum of $25 per fund	No agent bank charges incurred whatsoever
Quarterly service charge	*$2.00 per fund	$2.00 regardless of number of funds

"From 1 March 2005" refers to when the AI status comes into effect.

The banks must be hating them for doing this. High-five for consumer victory!

I always puzzled why banks setup charges like above. I can understand (with objection) if the charge is based on the transaction amount, but why based the charge on the number of units?
Just look at the same investment of $10,000 on unit of $1 and $10. The difference is staggering! The bank charges are $25 and $2.50 respectively. And the unit price has no bearing on the fund performance whatsoever.

This is one of those charges which I labelled as "We charge because we can and there is nothing you can do about it. Use it or leave it". Stinking smell on monopolistic profit-seeking-at-expense-of-consumer company.

What is the incremental cost difference to the bank for processing a $1,000 and a $100,000 unit trust buy/sell? Probably zero, since bytes of one and zero just pass through the system with any intervention.

Kudos to Fundsupermart who really gets it. May they continue to succeed by championing and delivering values for consumers.

Unfortunately, to switch to the ‘IA’ status would first require selling the existing
funds which attracts the bank’s selling charges and the fund’s sales charge.

A quick calculation on an Excel spreadsheet (download spreadsheet) shows that it is not worthwhile to switch if taking into account the fund’s sales charge. Since to switch, the fund has to be first sold and brought again at the market price with it corresponding sales charge. With sales charges averaging about 2.5% it would wipe out any saving.

For more information, refer also to IFAST Financial is a CPFIS Registered Investment Administrator (IA).

Financing Entrepreneurial Ventures

Published on 7 April, 2005 in Readings. 0 Comments

Harvard Business School Case Selection - Business Fundamentals Series - Financing Entrepreneurial Ventures

I enjoy reading materials from the Harvard guys.

Many of us, either by experience or by trial-and-error found out how to go about doing certain things. However, most never go beyond thinking why things work in a certain way, or how they relate to other things in the grand scale or even if there is any general principles.

The beauty of HBR articles are just this: They have the exceptional ability to distill knowledge and present them in a form that produces "ah-ha!" everytime I read them.

Bootstrap Finance: The Art of Start-ups is one such article. Written in 1992 many of its principles still ring
a bell. While many entrepreneur articles today focus on how to use other people’s money to start business and glorify the venture-backed startup, this article stood out with its down-to-earth commentary on how to get up and running on limited resources.

Modelling Open Source behaviours

Published on 5 April, 2005 in Business Models. 2 Comments

Just pops into my mind whether there is any research or work done to model the behaviours in Open Source development. The behaviour of the
developers, users, buyers - actors involved. How to analyse and the basis for analysis

What do I mean by model? One concept that comes to mind immediately is Game Theory. Now, Game Theory is used to model how decisions are made to optimise the reward in a particular interaction. Of course this is very layman understanding. To apply the underlying mathematics is another thing.

So back to Open Source. It would be interesting to find such model being used to analyse the viabilty of the Open Source development model. It is definitely not be exact, but like all model, it tries to fit the parameters and predict outcome.

Some questions that might be elucidated are

Why should a commercial entity pay for or support Open Source and not just use it for free? What are the incentives? How to quantify?
Is Open Source viable or sustainable? What are the variables that is supporting it? And what are the variables that is pulling it apart?
How to strike a balance? Where is this point? By balance I mean a point that benefits both the developer and the users.

Now I’m not looking for qualitative argument for and against. There are plenty of such on the net. What I have not seen (but suspect it exists) is quantitative work and modelling.

Monthly Archive for April, 2005