I am Haris!

My political compass, August 2012

2012-08-09T12:26:00.002+08:00

I missed doing this in January. Let's see where I stand now.

There seems to be a pattern forming here, and here.

Flying the flag

2011-03-09T11:28:00.003+08:00

+ B2 C2

Thoughts on comparing the reactions of Sony and Microsoft to getting hacked

2011-02-23T05:34:00.000+08:00

I read this article on Mashable comparing the reactions of Microsoft and Sony to the Kinect and PS3 getting hacked. I feel that the comparison isn't quite fair.

Hacking a peripheral device is a different degree of severity (I guess) compared to hacking the main console itself. That said,
Microsoft has gone after a guy who offers to mod 360s for cash which resulted in the prosecutors dropping the case, I assume to prevent the DMCA being tested in court. Granted, I am unable to find an instance where MS went after the guy who actually hacked it, but I think there was less publicity surrounding the hack as well. Which brings me to,
Microsoft's 360 has been hacked from day 1 as far as I can gather. They're probably used to it. The PS3 has just been hacked after 4 years. Sony is probably butthurt that this was not due to their amazing engineering, but rather it was because people simply wasn't interested. Consoles getting hacked quickly was pretty much the assumption then so the 360 being hacked didn't make much of a ripple. The PS3 remained unbroken for 4 years and suddenly being spectacularly cracked open was big news. The publicity that the hack and the hackers themselves were getting probably inflamed Sony even further.
In comparison, who the fuck hacked the 360? This is a good thing, maybe. I don't think they've managed to get to anyone from fail0verflow.

I think Sony is throwing a tantrum. I think MS's decision to release an SDK for the Kinect is good. I think if MS were put in the same situation as Sony, they would react the same way. I think that if you don't want to get taken to court, stay anonymous. I think that getting the case to court is potentially a good thing as it could get issues like the DMCA and who owns hardware I bought sorted out. Geohot is asking for donations for legal funds (first round is closed but there are some good links to read there). I think fuck Sony Entertainment.

My political compass, January 2011

2011-01-13T19:51:00.000+08:00

I think this should be an annual event. I took the Political Compass test again and lo and behold! Compared to last year, apparently I have become more socialist within the past year and become just slightly more libertarian socially.

I'm not quite certain why but I am guessing that it's because I feel that corporations should not be allowed the same freedoms and rights as actual human people. Some statements seem to be worded in such a way that when I evaluate them I go into corporations-should-not-be-a-person mode. Maybe it was meant to be that way. I would like to think that if the words "corporations" or "businesses" or "companies" was replaced with "businessmen" I would be a bit more liberal in my choices.

And the more I think about it the more I seem to not agree with separating personal and business liabilities… I think I need an education.

All children are psychopaths

2011-01-01T09:53:00.000+08:00

Yes, you read that right. I did write all children are psychopaths.

What proof do I have? None whatsoever.

But remember that time you had to teach your little precious that other people feel pain too? That other people can feel sad? You know why? Yep, it's because your little precious is a psychopath.

Now don't get me wrong — he or she or it is probably be a cute little psychopath. They kind of have to be to survive past the age of five.

By the time they're teen-aged the cuteness wears off because they don't need it any more. By now you've probably become too attached, invested too much into your psychopath to do anything about it. Hence the so-called "terrible teen years". Don't delude yourselves: they've always been terrible. They just stopped being cute.

There's not much you can do about it now (legally) other than persevere and hope your psychopath develops into a proper human.

RIM declares ISPs to be made responsible of online piracy #RIMjob #ISPLiability

2010-11-27T20:11:00.000+08:00

We present to you: The ISP Liability Act!

This new law called the ISP Liability act, will be tabled in Parliament next month, according to Recording Industry Association of Malaysia (RIM) chairman Norman Halim.

RIM has been lobbying the Government for an ISP Liability act for the past 5 years as illegal online downloads have been cannibalising the legitimate sales of music, worldwide.

“The act makes the ISPs responsible for curbing online piracy. The ISPs will be fined if they don’t take action against illegal downloaders. The ISPs have the technology to track P2P users,” said Norman.
The Star. Emphases mine

Have they presented proof that (a) legit music sales has declined, and (b) that the decline is caused by online pirates? I have yet to see such data.

I maintain that if you make good music, fans will go above and beyond to give you money (unless you're a dick). If domestic music sales are indeed going down, perhaps that says something about the quality of the music we make?

The article says nothing about how "offenders" will be identified.

I have yet to see any comment from any of our ISPs about this, though. And that is very strange, considering that the bill will place extra burden on them. Perhaps they were caught unawares as the news broke on a Friday evening. I hope that is the case anyway, and they are not simply going along with it out of habit.

Also, it's outrageous that this bit of news was announced by the RIMchairman, and not the MP who will actually present the bill to Parlimen.

Do we have a chance of convincing our MPs to vote No on this?

And it's November again

2010-11-05T10:46:00.000+08:00

So what's new?

I got an actual job. In KL. It's a support type job but I don't have to deal with end users so that's a plus. Yay for me!
Did I mention that the job is in KL? So I'm crashing at my uncle's place. That's nice. Also, a challenge. I'm looking at you 5-year-old boy who shall remain nameless
And due to me being in KL, no PS3 :(

So Ubuntu released version 10.10 last month but I don't think I'll upgrade to it. In fact I am thinking about switching to some other distro. Perhaps a rolling distro so I don't ever have to think of an "upgrade" as a chore that it is right now.

One thing I may have to consider though is that I don't have access to wired internet at the moment and some distros don't have the proper wifi drivers in on the CD. I think I tried sidux some time ago and it needed to grab non-free drivers for my wifi.

Bah, decisions!

Anime is dangerous!

2010-09-28T10:25:00.001+08:00

Japanese anime is among DVDs identified as dangerous as they contain negative elements which can corrupt the minds of Malaysian children, said Film Censorship Board chairman Datuk Mohd Hussain Shafie.Source: The Malaysian Insider

Some people still don't get the difference between medium and genre. Anime is a medium and many genres that use the medium of animation to tell their stories. The Censorship Board needs to get it in their collective heads that just because it is animation it does not automatically mean that it is "for children". Some anime are made for adults (on a separate but related note: not all video games are made for children, too). And as adults, we demand the right to make our own decisions about what we want to watch (and/or play) without some Figure of Authority saying that this is Bad For Us.

Thank you very much.

Huawei E1552 on Ubuntu Lucid

2010-07-29T16:37:00.003+08:00

Update 20101025: Install the usb-modeswitch package.

$ sudo aptitude install usb-modeswitch

Created a udev rules file at /etc/udev/rules.d/60-huawei-usb-3g-modem.rules with the following contents:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="1446", RUN+="/lib/udev/modem-modeswitch -v 0x%s{idVendor} -p 0x%s{idProduct} -t option-zerocd"

And restarted udev.

$ sudo service udev restart

Plugged the modem in and configure it in "System > Preferences > Network Connections > Mobile Broadband". The settings for all Malaysian mobile ISPs should already be available by default. Pick your poison.

A homeopathic standard to ensure its safety and efficacy? You must be joking

2010-07-14T09:54:00.002+08:00

The Star reports that apparently the Ministry of Health has developed "a standard for homeopathic medical studies to serve as a guideline to ensure its practice is safe and effective". One wonders just how exactly such a thing to be achieved since, well… it doesn't work!

The short article is full of such gems as:

The ministry's resolve in enhancing the quality of homeopathic medical studies has been proven when the Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences started to offer a degree in homeopathy in 2009

Liow also said that homeopathic medicine should be registered under the Control of Drugs and Cosmetic Regulations 1984

*sigh* At least the ministry is utilising its resources to ensure that we Malaysians get the highest quality of woo…

Are there no MDs in the Ministry of Health? Do they know that a homeopathic preparation is likely to not even contain a single molecule of its "active" ingredient (i.e. it's water)? In the UK for example, doctors are actually calling for a ban on NHS funding for homeopathic treatments because there are no scientific evidence that it works. The level of awareness of what homeopathy is here appallingly low.

I'll let James Randi explain:

Also, xkcd:

Today is a great day

2010-07-04T01:27:00.000+08:00

… All the teams that I did not want to win the World Cup have been knocked out of the competition. The last team to go home was Argentina and they got their asses handed to them 4-0 by the Germans. It is fitting considering that "Schadenfreude" is a German word

Goodbye, Italy, England, Portugal, Brazil, and, Argentina! May you fail again as spectacularly the next time.

Pioneer One review

2010-06-22T14:38:00.002+08:00

Update 20100702: Looks like they've managed to get over US$20,000 in donations. We have some science fiction to look forward to then.

I watched the pilot for the "made for torrent" scifi drama Pioneer One. It's quite short at just over 35 minutes, and it's available for free/percuma/gratis under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license. You can either watch it via streaming above, or download it from their website. If you like it, do consider donating to them so that more episodes can be made. As of the time I'm writing they've managed to get just over US$10,000 from donations.

SPOILERS AHEAD! As far as the story goes, it is intriguing enough (as befits a science fiction drama): An object descends from space and explodes, raining radiation over Montana. A pair of DHS agents are assigned to investigate. They discover a survivor wearing a flight suit with Soviet insignia. They also discover that he is apparently the child of Soviet cosmonauts who have been living on Mars since the mid-1980s. Decent enough, no? But …

The shaky cam has got to go. If done well it can be a plus but here it does nothing to help tell the story and only served to distract and annoy me.

Also, who are these people? After 35 minutes I don't even know the characters' names! I'm sure they're mentioned at some point in that 35 minutes (I hope) but for the life of me I cannot remember if they did. That tells me that they didn't manage to make me care enough about the characters to remember their names or to listen when they talk. That is not a good thing. I don't know whose fault that is, whether it is the writing, directing, or acting but it needs to be fixed.

For the time being, the story (and the fact that it is legally available for free online) is enough to keep me watching the next few episodes just to see if the show improves. I really hope it does because you can never have too much science fiction.

Three strikes for Malaysia?

2010-06-15T18:26:00.005+08:00

Malaysiakini has an exclusive interview with Ismail Sabri, minister of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism, about his proposed amendments to the Copyright Act to include harsher punishments for those caught infringing, including cutting off their internet access (article is behind a paywall). Also,

… anyone caught downloading illegally could face a minimum fine of RM250,000 under the Copyright Act.

The article is vague on the details of the proposed amendments but it does say that it may "follow the South Korean model". I did some googling and found that apparently they are the first country to have the now infamous "three strikes" laws against file-sharing. No further details on how infringements will be identified and whose responsibility that will be.

Earlier this year there was news that they were considering criminalising the possession of even a single pirated DVD (the Bernama link there is dead though). So that's probably going to be in there as well. I am not a lawyer but I think under current laws (PDF. Quote below found on page 35) the possession of pirated material for private use is not an offence:

Section 41. Offences.

Any person who during the subsistence of copyright in a work or performers' right -

makes for sale or hire any infringing copy;

sells, lets for hire or by way of trade, exposes or offers for sale or hire any infringing copy;

distributes infringing copies;

possesses, otherwise than for his private and domestic use, any infringing copy;

by way of trade, exhibits in public any infringing copy;

imports into Malaysia, otherwise than for his private and domestic use, an infringing copy;

…

For the purposes of paragraphs (a) to (f) of subsection (1), any person who has in his possession, custody or control three or more infringing copies of a work or recording in the same form shall, unless the contrary is proved, be presumed to be in possession of or to import such copies otherwise than for private or domestic use.

Interesting, no? As for why these amendments are being put into place:

In just 10 years revenue has plummeted six-fold, with record companies reporting total earnings of RM57 million in 2008, a paltry sum compared to RM315 million in 1997.

Here's something to consider: maybe the record industry is making less money because they are putting out crappy music (I know the article is talking about movies, but the same principles apply I think).

Fuck off, Paul Masefield

2010-02-28T04:24:00.002+08:00

Aaron Ramsey just suffered a horrible injury to his ankle, much like what happened to Eduardo a couple of years ago. Paul Masefield though, said that while it was a bad tackle, there was no "malice" in it, and proceeded to blame Ramsey for being "too fast" What the fuck!

I have a theory, totally not based on experimental data, just general man-on-the-street observations. This is the third time our players got their leg broken after suffering a bad tackle in a game: Eduardo, Diaby, and now, Ramsey. Our list of injured players also seem to be overly long. It seems ridiculous to assume that Arsenal's reputedly excellent network of scouts to somehow miss all these players injury-proneness.

I've often heard it said that Arsenal don't like it when their opposition plays rough, and I believe that the saying has subconsciously (maybe), influenced referees and players. I believe that match officials are more lenient when fouls are committed against our players, and I believe that other teams know they can get away with more when playing Arsenal.

The end result of all this rough play: more wear and tear on our players. It may not show up immediately in dramatic fashion like the injuries to Eduardo, Diaby, and Ramsey but the stress builds up and results in "regular" and "mundane" injuries which we pass off as our players being injury-prone.

MAG: the first week

2010-02-07T19:23:00.000+08:00

I have been playing MAG for just over a week now. I couldn't make up my mind about which PMC to join but I settled on Raven GmbH primarily because there seemed to be more of them at the forums I hang out on. Yeah, yeah I succumbed to peer pressure. But really, teamwork is essential in this game. More often than not when joining a game solo, I tend to get put in a squad with a quiet squad leader who doesn't talk or set FRAGOs, or worse: a squad that totally ignores the leader. So yes, I picked a PMC that guarantees me easy 8-man squads.

Well, over the week that we've played we have slowly improved. In the beginning it was hard to win a match as Raven but over the last couple of days we've managed to own Acquisition matches. We still have problems with Sabotage and Domination game modes.

I do have some issues with the clan list interface though. It needs to be sorted by who's online. At the moment I'm not sure how it is done but it's all over the place. Hunting through the clan list looking for who's online is a pain.

Thoughts on MAG open beta

2010-01-14T00:49:00.002+08:00

MAG had an open beta-test from the 4th until the 10th. It is supposedly an MMOFPS with huge maps supporting up to 256 players at a time. I participated in the open beta and the first thing that I noticed is that the graphics and sound effects seem to not be up to par with the likes of Modern Warfare 2. I think this is mainly because you have to download the client for the open beta and file sizes needed to be kept low. But, the effect was that the game did not feel as polished as others I could name. Hopefully they ratchet up the audio and graphics quality in the final release.

You have some objectives which you have to defend or capture to win the game. Squad leaders (or is it platoon leaders? I never played as squad leader) can give the order to take or capture an objective, destroy enemy assets, or repair yours. As with any multi-player game, the experience varies but by far I had the most fun when I got into squads that actually work together and use their headsets to actually communicate rather than just to talk trash.

I loved playing Domination. This is the 256-player mode where everything is just plain chaotic. People shoot at you from everywhere, and you've got to defend/destroy bunkers and SAM sites and gates and towers and APCs. It's just plain crazy. And I loved it.

I haven't quite made up my mind which faction I'll join though. I played the beta primarily as RAVEN, but I think I like the menu colour scheme of S.V.E.R. better. Thoughts?

My political compass, January 2010

2010-01-04T17:09:00.002+08:00

I thought it'd be a good idea to take the Political Compass test again just to see how I've changed since last year. I managed to misplace the previous result, but I seem to remember it showed me being slightly left-er on the economic scale, and slightly more libertarian, socially.

Catching up — Modern Warfare 2 is awesome, Avatar is awesome

2009-12-23T12:00:00.004+08:00

Wow, I really haven't posted in a long time!

Modern Warfare 2 is mostly to be blamed for that — I really got sucked into the online multiplayer. I'm still not much good at it but a shotgun makes up for a lot of skill :p. That took about a month.

Also, last week I went to see Avatar in 3D and it blew my mind. It was simply amazing how much detail was in every frame. I probably could spend hours just watching the office workers do office-y things. It is just that beautiful. Seriously this movie is a must-watch in 3D. It's probably even better on IMAX 3D, but since the nearest IMAX screen is in Bangkok (I hear the one in KL has shut down which is just sad) it's unlikely that I'll ever get a chance to see it.

ACTA 101

2009-11-13T07:11:00.002+08:00

by Michael Geist

I got my copy of Modern Warfare 2!

2009-11-12T10:06:00.001+08:00

My copy of Modern Warfare 2 arrived by courier yesterday, and I managed to plow through the campaign in one night. It was on regular though. It was short, but it had plenty of action and twists. I especially loved the part with the snowmobiles. Going downhill felt great!

I tried to get on the PSN to play online, but the Modern Warfare 2 servers were having problems. Lets hope they fix that soon. [UPDATE: It looks like they fixed it. I played for a couple of rounds. I sucked, as usual.]

I tried to play split-screen with my brother but they did that 16:9 split-screen thing instead of just a line down the middle, so the viewing area is really tiny on my 24" monitor. At first it was kind of a problem, but we moved closer and we got over it.

Baldur's Gate Trilogy on Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 Linux

2009-11-09T08:00:00.021+08:00

I had been feeling the itch to play Baldur's Gate again. To my eternal shame I've never actually finished either Baldur's Gate or its expansion and sequel. I found this guide and managed to install and play Baldur's Gate using the Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BGT) mod on my Linux box. BGT is a mod that makes it so that all Baldur's Gate games are played as one giant epic continuous game. It starts at Candlekeep and I suppose it ends wherever and whenever Throne of Bhaal ends. Since I've never actually finished it I don't know for sure but the idea is intriguing.

The installation was successful and I've played it for a bit. There are a couple of issues though:

I can't seem to put it into windowed mode
It sometimes hangs when I quit while actually in a game. I usually get out of this by doing a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and going back to the gdm.

I haven't run across anything else so far. I'll update when I do.

So here's what I did:

First things first, make sure you have a copy of the original Baldur's Gate, it's expansion: Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, and Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. You have to have all of them. If you don't, I suggest getting the Baldur's Gate 4-in-1 boxset.
Make sure you have the following packages installed: mmv, tofrodos, and wine. If you don't have them or you are unsure just execute the following command:
```
$ sudo aptitude install build-essential mmv tofrodos wine unrar-free unzip libjpeg62-dev zlib1g-dev  
```
Execute
```
$ winecfg
```
Under the "Audio" tab, make sure that only the box labelled "OSS" is checked. Click OK.
Download and save winetricks into a folder in your PATH. Execute:
```
$ ./winetricks directplay
```
Download Mos Pack and extract the contents of the source directory within. I extracted the files into /home/haris/src/mospack. Execute:
```
$ cd /home/haris/src/mospack
$ make -f makefile.unix
```
This will create the executables mospack and mosunpack
Move, copy or create symlinks for the resulting mospack and mosunpack in a folder in your PATH.
Using wine, install Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, and Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. Make sure you install everything. I installed Baldur's Gate at /home/haris/games/baldursgate and Baldur's Gate 2 at /home/haris/games/baldursgate2. When you see these folder names in this post just change them to match where you installed the games on your system.
Then, if you need to, download the appropriate patches for Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 from Bioware's site and install those too.
Download Baldur's Gate Trilogy-WeiDU and extract it into your Baldur's Gate 2 folder. The current version is 1.08.
Download bgt_linux.rar and also extract it into your Baldur's Gate 2 folder
Download the Linux version of WeiDU. Unzip it into a folder in your PATH. Personally, I extracted to a new folder and added that folder to the PATH. Whatever you choose to do, switch to whatever folder you extracted it to and execute:
```
$ tolower
```
Change to your Baldur's Gate directory and execute tolower:
```
$ cd /home/haris/games/baldursgate
$ tolower
```
Change to your Baldur's Gate 2 directory and execute tolower:
```
$ cd /home/haris/games/baldursgate2
$ tolower
```
Still from your Baldur's Gate 2 folder execute:
```
$ ./bgt-linux/bgt-linux
```
When prompted, type in the location of your Baldur's Gate install. In my case this is /home/haris/games/baldursgate.
Wait.
After the installation is done, put in your Baldur's Gate 2 CD and type:
```
$ wine baldur.exe
```

Enjoy!

Adapted from BGT in Linux (Successfully I think) by lodgey
References: DirectPlay Games at Wine wiki

I want to be a ✭Rockstar Scientist✭!

2009-11-08T04:05:00.000+08:00

We went to Penang for a couple of days and saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3D at Gurney Plaza. I think Gurney Plaza's GSC is the only cinema with 3D within an hour of my place so there's not much of an option. We had great seats too: last row center so the viewing angle was 90°-ish. It was awesome.

And the movie itself was great, too. I don't particularly know who wrote the screenplay or directed but he/she/they nailed it in my opinion. I especially loved the fast cuts of Flint Lockwood describing his actions when he's doing science. I also loved the posters little Flint had in his bedroom, specifically the Tesla poster.

Going in, I only knew that Bill Hader and Anna Faris were the main characters. I didn't know that Mr T was in it. Nor did I know that Neil Patrick Harris voiced Steve the monkey.

The jokes were good, too. Some were obviously targeted at the kids in the audience. But there were more than enough geeky/nerdy ones in there to satisfy me. Hell, they had Bruce Campbell, Mr T and Neil Patrick Harris. I am well-satisfied.

The 3D was used to great effect. As my brother said: this is a disaster movie. There wasn't a lot of things flying out of the screen, but the depth perception lends a bit more oomph to the destruction that is happening. That said, it isn't necessary to have watched the movie in 3D to enjoy it. It is plenty good enough to stand on its own.

Dragon Age: Origins — No top down view. No spell-casting while paused. I am a sad panda

2009-11-05T02:40:00.006+08:00

Playing on the PS3 after finishing the PC version, I felt hamstrung by the console interface. In combat, it replaces the expandable ability bar and hotkeys by mapping spells and abilities to the face buttons. You get two sets of commands and can alternate between them with R2 (or right bumper for the 360).

Tactical combat is sadly stripped down for the consoles. In the PC version, you may use a handy top-down viewpoint of the battlefield. You can maneuver the camera above the characters on the console, but it doesn't scroll in and out. It's also more difficult to command characters to take specific positions on the battlefield, and I couldn't cast spells while paused. This really takes away from the combat -- it's a shame that console players again don't get the options that PC players enjoy. via 1up.com

I was very much looking forwards to playing Dragon Age. But after reading that, I'm a bit bummed out. Getting it for Windows is not really an option because I don't run Windows anymore. So the PS3 is my main gaming outlet.

Why do console games get "simplified" interfaces/control schemes by default? It's not like I can't plug in a USB keyboard and mouse on my PS3 and game away. I understand that it might be an unfair advantage in multiplayer games. But this is single-player AND multi-platform. A keyboard and mouse control scheme and its attendant advantages should at least be an option for games like this.

Failing drives annoy me

2009-11-03T06:48:00.004+08:00

I had a surprise when I upgraded the netbook to Karmic. It installed a SMART monitoring tool by default and it reported that my hard drive is failing. I did not experience this when I installed Karmic on my laptop but that was a clean install, not an upgrade. I did a search on Google and discovered that many are experiencing this and it is apparently a known bug. So this is the output of sudo smartctl -iA /dev/sda (install smartmontools first):

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     TOSHIBA MK1652GSX
Serial Number:    29AGF4FCS
Firmware Version: LV020J
User Capacity:    160,041,885,696 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Tue Nov  3 06:21:31 2009 MYT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Always       -       1129
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       10235
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       147
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000b   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0005   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   088   088   000    Old_age   Always       -       5027
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0033   253   100   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       240
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       34
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       47116
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       63 (Lifetime Min/Max 23/68)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       138
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
220 Disk_Shift              0x0002   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       108
222 Loaded_Hours            0x0032   089   089   000    Old_age   Always       -       4505
223 Load_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
224 Load_Friction           0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
226 Load-in_Time            0x0026   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       334
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0001   100   100   001    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

I have since discovered that SMART is not monitored by default in Jaunty so it's not a surprise that there were no warnings. I have no idea what the reallocated sector count was pre-Karmic, but I think that the hard drive was already going bad — there were signs even though it was mostly running fine. And the numbers does seem to indicate that it is genuine rather than a bug. After thinking it over I am leaning towards prudence and simply replacing the netbook's hard drive and buying an external enclosure for it in order to use it as portable storage. It's probably for the best.

That said, I'll take note of SMART beforehand the next time I do an upgrade to Karmic.

UPDATE 3/11/2009 11:21 p.m.: Upgraded another computer from Jaunty to Karmic. Zero problems.

Lesson from TV: It doesn't pay to become Good

2009-11-02T17:21:00.001+08:00

I saw the latest Dollhouse episode just now and it made me feel sad for Topher. Supposedly he is an amoral genius, but he is now starting to have questions about what is right and wrong. This will not end well for him.

Switching your alignment to Good is, ironically, almost never good. Just switching is never enough. You feel the Need to Atone™ for your past misdeeds. This need, if left uncontrolled, can lead you to doing Stupid Things™. Eventually, if your supposed "sins" are perceived to be severe enough, it will Drive You Crazy™.

Switching to Evil on the other hand, is almost always good. You stand to gain obscene amounts of power, and with power comes happiness. The key is of course to Never Overextend™. Learn where the limits of your abilities are and curb your ambition to match. Many who have fallen to Evil failed to observe this simple rule and paid for it.

This is a lesson I learned from many hours of watching TV and movies and I bestow it upon you.