What is your feeling when the file you are downloading stopped at 99% especially for those huge download of a few gigabytes?  Frustration?  Wait?  Find other sources?  Or the worst case - lost patience and delete the file?  If the files were in compressed format such as zip, rar, iso etc.,  it might be useless even with a little bit of incompleteness.  Most people will wait, and hopefully it would complete one day.  I am lucky because it completed on the next day.

I guessed the server might have been overloaded since my download was not using a P2P downloading.  For P2P downloading, it is a different case, the only peer that share the file might be unavailable at the most important moment.

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P2P downloading of copyrighted material is illegal, but the download which I have done above is legal, because it is the video of Master JingKong who teaches Buddhism.  Most Buddhism material are copyright free, it even welcomes people to duplicate the copies and distribute to the public.

I am learning the “JinGangJing” or “Diamond Sutra” explained in detailed by Master JingKong.  I have tried to find the DVDs from temple but not found.  Luckily I found it on the Internet.  But I still have not finished download all of the episodes.  The total would be about more than 100 GB and I do not have enough hard disk space.

I hope I can watch the complete set of “JingGangJing” explanation by Master JingKong, and the download does not stop at the last episode.  Please tell me where I can get this set of DVD if you know, then I can save a lot of time for the downloading.

I am not sure if dream can be programmed before we go to our bed, but I have a real dream of computer programming which came to me for one or two times since last week when I slept at night.  I know the reason - I have been doing computer programming for long hours recently.

In my dreams, the PHP codes appeared, such as “echo” and a lot of dollar sign - eg. $_abc and $_xyz used for each variable, etc.  The CSS codes were also joining the party in my dream - there were a lot of curly-bracket ( {} ) and semicolon (;).  In my dream, I was sitting in front of computer doing the coding.

There is a proverb in Chinese, “RiYouSuoSi, YeYouSuoMeng” which means “what we think during the day will appear in our dream at night too“.  I believe it because I have the first hand experience.  Try to concentrate on something very hard during the day, and I believe you will get this experience too.

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A Funny True Story

I still remember years ago,  the deputy principal in my secondary school told us a way to improve our Bahasa Malaysia (B.M. or Malay Language).  He said, we should talk to our classmates in BM, talk to teachers in BM, talk to our parents in BM, write more in BM, sing in BM and also have dream at night in BM too.  :O  How to control our dream to change its language to BM?  I wonder how many students and teachers were using his method.   Anyway, he must have worked out his brain so hard to come out with this idea.

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Can you guess where did I get the picture above from?  The bear is having a sweat dream.  I took the picture above with my camera, it is the bed sheet and pillow case.

Recently, I have been using a laptop which has a different key layout compares to  my usual keyboard.  My usual way of pressing Control key (Ctrl) is by moving my fingers to the first button of the bottom left corner on the keyboard, but the laptop has Function key (Fn) at the first bottom left, the control key has became the second left key.

When I first used this laptop (which is not mine), I always made mistakes when I wanted to press on the most frequent used key - “Ctrl” but accidentally press the “Fn”.  Later I started to get used to it (Ctrl at second place).

Now here comes another problem.  When I use my own keyboard, I always made some mistake by pressing the second key for Ctrl, which is the Window button and it never happen to me before I use the laptop.

Now occasionally, I still made some mistake on both computer keyboards.  :(  I hope I can adapt to both keyboards at the same time.

This experience tells me that if I want to get a keyboard or laptop in the future, I won’t choose those that have FN key as first left button  and then Ctrl key at the second place.

Although this is a small matter, but the non-standardize keyboard actually decreases the users’ performances if the users need to switch between keyboards.

I have encountered another poorly designed keyboard owned by my friend, where the Power button is under the Delete button.  Every time when I wanted to press the Delete button, I accidentally pressed the Power button and the computer went into Standby mode.  I don’t like this type of keyboard.

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However, I have encountered other types of keyboards, such as a German keyboard where “Y” swaps with “Z”, and UK keyboard where “@” swaps with ” (double quote).  Besides, they also have strange characters on them which I have never seen on the US keyboard which I usually use.

If I were going to design a computer keyboard, I wish I can design a keyboard that can prevent foreign small objects to slip between the keys and drop into the keyboard which cause it to malfunction.  May be it is available in the market now which is similar to a laptop keyboard.

Many users especially those from the accounting department of some local companies which I have worked with previously stored a lot stapler bullets in their keyboards.  :P  There was one time, I found about countless of  stapler bullets when I turned it upside down and shook it.  Amazing  !!! ….

I am curious on how a phishing website nowadays looks like, it might have the exact same or identical design as the “real” website.  I knew I have received a phishing email asking me to go to a bank website to key in my details, therefore I did not click on the link directly, but opened it in another browser to have a look, and I have got a security protection page given by the browser.

I have tested the url in different browsers, but the rest only gave “Server not found“, the phishing website must have been taken down.

According to Wikipedia, [A phishing technique was described in detail in 1987, and the first recorded use of the term “phishing” was made in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing, probably influenced by phreaking, and alludes to baits used to “catch” financial information and passwords.]

Mozilla Firefox is one of my favorite browsers, the security feature provided is really great and might have helped a lot of people to stay away from web forgery.  However, you still have the choice to be able to enter the phishing website by clicking on the tiny link on the right bottom corner.

Actually, this was not the first time I have encountered a phishing website.  If it reached me many years ago, I would have entered some fake information into the fishing website to waste the hacker’s effort, sometimes I have even entered something to scold them.  I remember I did it quite a few times, but I usually do the easiest thing - delete the email.

A few years ago, I found some of my friends entered their msn / live login and password into phishing websites, it will retrieve their contact lists and send im (instant messages) to their contacts to access the phishing website.  Do you know the most important thing that you must do next if your friends receive some strange messages from you, but you are sure that you did not send them any of the phishing messages?  Yes, change your password immediately.

Beware while getting connected to the Internet !!!  Beware of fake SMSes and phone calls as well…

I used my brother’s mobile phone last evening (Tuesday).  The voice that came out from the other side of the mobile phone almost broke my ear drum.

The stories started from here…  My cousins were having Internet connection problem and borrowed a modem from me.  After they went home and tried to connect the modem, they faced different types of problems.  I guided them step by step through my brother’s mobile phone.

First, one of their computers have LAN failure as seen from the “LAN” light on the modem was not on.

Second, they tried to move another computer to their monitor, keyboard and mouse, but they could not find the port to connect the monitor.  They might have confused with the serial port.

Third, I guided one of my cousins step by step on how to setup the ADSL connection on the modem, including troubleshooting using ping and ipconfig in the command prompt.

While the modem was rebooting for saving the configuration setting, it seems nothing happen, and I asked her to try to browse, suddenly I hear the shout of excitement, “YEAH…  can go online…“.  It was really loud.

Finally they get connected.  It has been weeks since they have no access to the Internet.  Most importantly, they have done it by themselves with only my verbal guide.  They gave me an exclamation of their success.

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An Interesting TV commercial on broad band service

It reminds me about the recent commercial on a local TV channel, where all the Internet applications such as email, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo etc. are represented by a group of people who are locked in a prison.  This group of people are funny because they wear prison costume and accessories that represent some popular Internet application.  One of them has mailbox on his head and another one has a book on his neck.

A young man is looking at a mobile phone and shakes it left and right, the prisoner are having an earthquake because they are locked in the mobile phone.  It means that having an intelligent mobile phone without Internet connection will lock the access to those popular Internet applications which have been built into the mobile phone.

A sales person appeared and asked the young man if he wants to sign up to a broad band service, and the young man says “okay”.  Suddenly all the prisoners cheer happily because they are now released.  One of them releases a bird with both hands opened and I guess it represents twitter.  They are no longer being locked inside a mobile phone.

That is the moment of having the exclamation of success.  It all happens in a sudden.