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Everyone in the IT world will identify IBM as one of the Open Source supporters in the world, along with other companies such as Sun, Red Hat, Zend, etc. IBM strategy in Open Source world has even become research materials for books discussing open source and user-driven community. One of the books is “Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything” which put IBM as one reference on what is the correct way to work with Open Source communities.

Therefore, it is quite a shock when an open source company (TurboHercules SAS, a relative unknown) reported IBM to European Commision because they feel IBM try to block their open source product from simulating a Mainframe.

Mainframe? Why mainframe? Most of us maybe still consider Mainframe as the dinosaur of IT world, which can be extinct any moment because it is not relevant anymore. Maybe that opinion is correct 5-10 years ago, when everyone race to prove that smaller servers (compared to Mainframe) can be used as a more effective and more efficient Mainframe replacement. But, today, a lot of people start to reconsider that opinion. This change was brought up by the advent of Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing shifts the computing paradigm to a centralized processing structure, which centralizes data processing resources (and of course storage too) to a central location, and utilized computer terminals only as user interfaces. Sounds familiar? Of course. The same thing is offered by Mainframes in the pre-PC time. This centralized model of course becomes a new business opportunity for Mainframe vendors, which currently dominated (or controlled) by IBM. So, don’t be surprised if IBM tries heavily to protect this old business, which suddenly become a lucrative new business.

As a matter of fact, this kind of monopoly allegations has been brought up by IBM competitors. IBM rivals has long accused IBM of running a near-monopolistic business practice in Mainframe world. US Department of Justice has even started an investigation on IBM for this monopoly accusations. The TurboHercules report adds to a long list of monopoly accusations, and this time it is brought up to European Commission, which is known to strongly anti-monopoly and pro-Open Source.

This report will become a regular report if only the report was not made by an Open Source company. TurboHercules is a company that tries to commercialized Hercules, an open source application that emulates mainframes. The market for this product is huge, because it can be used in general servers which can be used by corporations for development and testing environment. Without this software, companies have to buy separate mainframe for those purposes.

However, Hercules only emulate the mainframe hardware, and still requires the mainframe Operating System from IBM. This is where the problem starts: IBM sells its Operating System together with its mainframe hardware, at least from 2000. TurbeHercules has send a letter to IBM requesting permission to use the Operating System, but they have not come back yet. They even teased IBM when they say that they hope IBM will give a positive response considering IBM is one of the primary supporter of Open Source. Interesting.

I personally hope that IBM can do exactly what IBM requested from other companies: open up for collaboration with other companies in information openness to ensure interoperability. Of course by allowing companies such as TurboHercules to provide the best services to their customers, without any business limitations that doesn’t have any technical justifications.

Popularity: 3%

As part of Windows 7 Launch series of events, Microsoft run a Windows 7 Certification Hero program. The program offers interesting benefits for IT professionals who passed Windows 7 certification. Here are details about the benefits:

• The program run from 15 September until 18 November 2009
• Eligible for exam 70-680 MCTS Windows 7 Configuring
• 77 people who passed MCTS Windows 7 will receive:
  • Microsoft Achievement Plaque
  • Windows 7 Exclusive Shirt
  • Reimbursement of exam cost up to Rp 500,000,- per person, by sending the exam result to indopartner@microsoft.com
  • Enter into a Random Sweepstake:
    • 1 unit Folding Bike (Limited Edition)
    • 1 unit Home Theatre LG
    • 2 unit Microsoft Optical Mouse Sidewinder X3

To register, please contact:

INIXINDO
Permata Senayan Blok E2-E5
Jl. Tentara Pelajar
Jakarta 12210
Phone: +62-21-5794-0868

Note: please register 1 week before the exam.

Popularity: 15%

Windows 7 is officially launched yesterday, 22 October 2009, worldwide, including in Indonesia. The launch in Indonesia is done with the media at Hard Rock Cafe. I’m proud to be one of the person involved in presenting demos of this great product to journalists

After the launch, Windows 7 is officially available in all computer stores in Indonesia. Of course, while stock lasts in each stores Launch for public will be done at Pondok Indah Mall 2 on 6 November 2009, and launch for businesses and corporate will be done at Jakarta Convention Center on 24 November 2009.

To bring the spirit of Windows 7, here are 7 functions of Windows 7 that I use the most:

1. Snap, for windows management. Use you mouse to drag a windows to the right side of the monitor, and the window will snap to 1/2 of the right screen. Vice versa to the left. If you drag to the top, the window will become full screen. Keyboard shortcut? Use Windows button plus left arrow, right arrow, or up arrow. 
2. Search, directly from the Start button. Immediately after your click Start, you can type the name of the program or file that you’re looking for. For example, if you want to open Troubleshooting, you can immediately type “troubleshooting” and you can choose from the search result. For maximum result, you can use the keyboard. Just press the Windows button to show the Start menu, and type what you’re looking for, and use the up-down arrows to choose, and press Enter! Note: search is not only for file or program names, but also the content of files or Outlook emails. It can even search to your Favorites in Internet Explorer!
3. Peek, shows the thumbnails of all active windows. Just hover your mouse to the programs on the taskbar, and a thumbnail preview will show for each window. This makes searching for a window much easier.
4. Zoom, for zoom in and out of the screen. This is important for presentation or demo, when you want to show a certain part of a program or the screen. Just press the Windows button plus the button “+” for Zoom In, and Windows button plus button “-“ for Zoom Out.
5. A much “cleaner” Notification Area icons, which hides unnecessary tray icons. By default, tray icon will only show icons of programs that try to notify us something. So, even though the Battery icon is always active, but it will stay hidden until it want to give certain notification, like out of battery condition. To make it more complete, we can change the setting to our own needs. For example, in my computer, the Network, Volume, Outlook and Communicator icons are always shown to make it easier for me to access. 
6. Rotated Wallpaper and Screen Saver. You don’t need additional programs anymore, everything is covered by Windows 7. Just change the setting of Wallpaper to show different backgrounds for a certain time. Screen Saver also can use our pictures from certain folders.
7. 64-bit support that utilizes the computer memory to the maximum (more than 3 GB) but still keeps the compatibility with other 32 bits programs. It’s a waste, isn’t it, if you have a 4 GB computer but can only use 3 GB of it because of 32-bit?

The following are 7 more functions of Windows 7 that I love, but I haven’t used (or rarely used) for one thing or another:

1. Multitouch! Unfortunately, I have no multitouch notebook or desktop. During the demo yesterday, we are using a multitouch Acer notebook. Cool!
2. Previous Version, that give us old versions of our files. Just right click on the file, choose Previous Version. Simple, and really helpful for those unintentional file changes.
3. Media Center, that transformed our computer into a home entertainment center. You can connect it to TV or internet TV, it can play video and music files, it can record TV for those shows that we can’t watch, pause in the middle of live TV, and many more. Add a remote control so you can sit back and relax, and connect it to LCD TV for a maximum experience.
4. Homegroup plus Media Player that enables streaming between computers. Just right for a home audio-video network. But 1 computer with large storage as a server, and put all your video and music there. Put small computers in each room, setup a wireless network, and setup a Homegroup to connect all these computer. Use Media Center and play video and music files from each room. Simple!
5. Parental Control, to manage children’s computer usage, such as time usage, which program to use, etc.
6. PSR (Problem Steps Recorder), that record every steps that we make until a problem appears, and create a report file complete with screen capture of each steps, that we can send to IT support. Other use of this PSR is to create a program documentation
7. Troubleshooting, which help use in all point of problems, offering the best solution automatically and can fix almost any kind of problems that we commonly face, such as checking why we can’t connect to the Internet, suggesting an optimal power setting, etc.

So, what are you waiting for? Use Windows 7 and enjoy all the facilities!

Popularity: 8%

Finally, I can start playing with wireless network at home

In our new house in Bintaro, we got 1-year package of Telkom Speedy connection as part of the house purchase. After waiting for 3 months, finally Speedy reached our house 2 weeks ago. Bintaro Jaya already provided the ADSL modem, but the plain standard one, which is TP-LINK TD-8817 that only provides 1 Ethernet connection without any wireless. So, I start hunting for wireless router.

After a (quite long) discussion with my company’s IT team, I decided to use Linksys WRT320N. There are a few reasons that I need to explain here:

• Why not a combined Wireless Router + ADSL Modem? yes, the setup will be much easier with only 1 device. However:
  1. If I don’t use Speedy anymore, I need to replace the entire device. Meanwhile, if I separate the wireless router from the modem, if I need to change my connection to some other provider, I just need to change the modem and keep the wireless router.
  2. With the same price, if I buy an ADSL modem with Wireless router, I will only get Wireless-G, which is quite old now.
• Why Wireless-N? This is a technology reason, to use the latest one. Not all device support this, but all new device already supports N. So, we’d better buy N devices from now on. BTW, WRT320N uses Wireless-N 2.0.
• Why Gigabit? This is also a technology choice. Almost all Ethernet now support Gigabit. Also, Wireless-N can deliver 300Mbps which is way out of Ethernet 100Mbps. And if you want to play with video and audio between devices (later on), you’d better use a combination of Wireless-N and Gigabit.
• Why Linksys? Maybe this is more of brand confidence. We have a lot more other choices, like TP-LINK, D-LINK, Belkin, etc. But it seems that Linksys already got the recognition in networking area, plus the fact that the brand now part of the great Cisco brand. And of course, the device is really really beautiful

Now, having 2 routers (ADSL modem and Wireless), the connection will be a bit complicated. To those that understand networking, you can immediately see the problem. The first router, the ADSL modem will have Public IP in the uplink port and Private IP (default to 192.168.1.x) in the downlink port. The second router, the Wireless router, will have its uplink port using Private IP in the same network as the ADSL modem, and the downlink port using Private IP too (look at diagram).

Now, we have 2 choices, the easy way, or the hard way.

The easy way, the Wireless router uses Private IP from a different network, like, 192.168.2.x. So, we need to set the uplink port IP to 192.168.1.2 (to follow ADSL modem’s network) and the downlink port to 192.168.2.1. Done (look at diagram).

The hard way, we can force the Wireless router to use the same Private IP as the ADSL modem. For example, the uplink port we put 192.168.1.2 and the downlink port 192.168.1.3 and all other devices uses DHCP above 192.168.1.4. We can achieve this by doing a bit of “acrobatic” routing table. Can be done, but very prone to errors (look at diagram).

When opening up the WRT320N box, I found out that Linksys uses some kind of Wizard to help us setup the network. I’m curious of the Wizard’s capability, so I tried the Wizard first. You need to remember, that by default Linksys expect Public IP in the uplink port and Private IP in the network 192.168.1.x (same as ADSL modem) in the downlink port. I want to see how the Wizard can detect this issue and solve it.

So, I follow the Quick Installation Guide up to the letters

First, I take out all the Linksys items from the box. Don’t use the cables or power first, just take out the Wireless router, Ethernet cable (blue color) and power adaptor.

Second, put the CD in the computer and run the Setup Wizard. After going thru the Welcome and Disclaimer screens, Linksys tried to detect existing networks. This is the point that I realized that I just made a big mistake: I haven’t connected the computer to the ADSL modem So, I abort the Wizard, connect the ADSL modem (thru Ethernet) and restart the Wizard. It quickly detect that I have a connection to a router and asked, do I want to replace the router, or use both router. I choose the last option.

Third, following the Wizard, I unplug the Ethernet cable from the ADSL modem and plug it to the Linksys’ Ethernet port.

Fourth, still following the Wizard, I use the Ethernet cable from Linksys (blue color), plug it to the Internet port (yellow color) in Linksys and plug it to the ADSL modem.

Fifth, still following the Wizard, I put the power adaptor on. The Wizard immediately run the setup. I was stopped here because of an internal error, and got a bit of panic: maybe it failed to setup this 2 routers setup. I restarted the whole thing from the beginning (also unplugging everything from Linksys and plugging the ADSL modem back) and finally passed the fifth step.

Sixth, the Wizard ask me to change the admin password for the Linksys. This is a mandatory step, since a lot of people now tries to find open wireless networks and access the router using the default password.

Seventh, the Wizard ask me to change the SSID from the default “linksys”. This is not the most important thing, but need to be done, so that (1) the network will be unique and can’t be mistaken with your neighbor’s; and (2) to hide a bit the fact that we are using Linksys device

Eighth, the Wizard ask me to choose the wireless Security that I want to use. I choose the highest, WPA/WPA2, because all new devices can support this protocol. It also ask for the passphrase. Choose an easy to remember passphrase, but should not be easy to guess. The passphrase can be up to 63 characters, so you can use something like “iloveyou” or other easy to remember phrase but not easily guessed.

Done. What an easy steps. After I checked, the Wizard has setup the wireless router to use 192.168.0.x as the downlink. Since I need to leave home in a hurry, I don’t have the time to observe the global network settings for each point. I’ll update later on.

Popularity: 100%

Simple API for Cloud Application Services (or in short Simple Cloud API) was recently launched by Microsoft, IBM, Rackspace, Zend and a few other companies. This project allows PHP developers to write simple cloud applications which will run smoothly across major cloud platforms, including Windows Azure.

This project adds to the long list of Microsoft’s effort around Interoperability with PHP. Here are a few of them:

• Patch contribution to ADOdb, so it can utilize SQL Server native driver in PHP
• Direct involvement in PHP Core Engine development, starting from PHP 5.3
• Sample code PHP for Silverlight
• Sample code PHP for Webslices and Accelerators
• Microsoft and RealDolmen launched PHP SDK for Windows Azure
• PHPExcel: a set of PHP classes to read/write in OpenXML format

Popularity: 5%

Microsoft recently launched Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), which provided real-time protection for home computers against viruses, spywares and other malicious software. MSE is free for download from Microsoft Security Essentials website.

MSE uses the same technology as the other Microsoft enterprise-scale security product: Forefront Client Security (FCS). However, MSE is created with a very simple interface, to make it easier to use by home users. Of course, the simple interface will not provides advanced setting which often required by enterprise users. That’s why, MSE is targeted for home users, while enterprise users are still recommended to use FCS.

A few important MSE resources:

• MSE can be downloaded from Microsoft Security Essentials website
• Technet Edge provides a video webcast on how to install and configure MSE
• Please read the official blog entry about MSE

Popularity: 4%