Mr.Buyot’s Orgy Observations

October 26, 2009

Free your mind and your ass will follow

Filed under: Poetic Code — Mr. Buyot @ 12:30 PM

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Photo by Sumardi.

And RMS will down a teh tarik for you. That’s Richard Stallman, the father of Free Software Movement.

Last weekend was the FOSS.my 2009, a conference for free, Open Source software enthusiasts. We had a lot of rockstars who were gladly to come over to our shores and share their knowledge & experiences with the local community. We had our own rockstars like John Lim of AdoDB & Dr. Yusseri of Omnilogic. It was the BOMB! Cantik menarik kau memang the BOMB!

But my FOSS high was flipped over when I saw this on Facebook (you need to be logged in Facebook to view the status post. You can view the tweet as well). That my friend, is totally not right.

That statement is misplaced because you are giving the impression to developers in OSDC.my to not to advocate the free software philosophy. That is just not right.

Without Free Software Movement, there will be no Open Source Software movement. That is history. True, proven, factual history of real life. Point one. 500 Internal Server Error.

RMS shocked a lot of people. He amazed people in the room with his own personal stand in the Free Software Movement.  But after his talk, a lot of people have found themselves having a tough time to separate the man & the philosophy. Although the man is the founder, he admits that the philosophy was not built by him alone & him alone. He carefully use the word “we” if you listened carefully.

RMS is the most extreme example of a Free Software Movement believer. It is his personal stand that he doesn’t believe in the open source philosophy. That is his opinion. That is his opinion. That is his opinion. Point two.

There, I repeated it 3 times. We cannot take home all of his opinion just because he is Richard Stallman.

But we can take him as an example of how life as a software hippie can take us to different, greater heights. Do not confuse yourself with the debate between RMS and Brian Aker of Drizzle. Brian Aker already made millions by working on Open Source projects (aka MySQL) and RMS have millions of followers worldwide by advocating the freedom of software for all these years. These two are out of my league and yours too. Both have valid arguments & the necessary experiences to have that kind of fight. You need to understand that.

What is dangerous is that some people now sort of “realize” the differences between the free software philosophy & the open source philosophy. Referring to something a fellow peer have said, “Free Software is a philosophy. Open Source is pragmatic.” Which is true. It’s like Barisan Nasional & Barisan Rakyat. BR is a philosophical coalition party (welfare based state, remember?). BN is a pragmatic coalition party. And I literally support none of them. But I understand why each has to be different, although the same.

And what makes it more extremely dangerious is that some of these people can influence national policies. If you can’t grasp the philosophical concepts behind Free Software & Open Source at the beginning stage, then I utterly have no confidence in the policies that you will imply in the near future. That doesn’t worry me as much, but I worry for the developers because I am one of them. I am one of the guys from that room who writes code for a living. I really think that some of you must take the time to fully understand how this works in real life. Point three.

I will say this again: don’t confuse yourself. Learn more about the force. It is just sad to know that our Malaysian mindset is not ready for someone like Richard Stallman. And all these while you keep saying “Malaysia Boleh”. Funny. Point four.

August 7, 2009

Developer love

Filed under: Poetic Code, Weird Wild Web — Mr. Buyot @ 11:33 AM

Noticed this video on Facebook, it’s about time someone made this!

It’s not easy being a developer. Sadly, the misconception of “things should work with a single click” is still in the minds of the general populace, which generally doesn’t improve the situation for us developers. So, please understand our pain & agony, at least.

July 28, 2009

CopySteal.js

Filed under: Poetic Code — Mr. Buyot @ 12:59 PM

Bored, due to the uninterestingness of tasks at hand, I intend to steer very far away from the objective in front, to another object of obsession. Geeks are obsessively compulsive dudes. OCD in short. Today’s subject: writing an exception handling for money politics.

Money politics does not only exist in politics, but also in corporations, federations, associations & communities. We all know the problems behind & before money politics. Instead of tackling that problem head on like everyone else, I prefer look at the problem & figure out what makes a situation rectified to be involving money politics.

Then, I stumbled upon this post about how Tweetmeme is having mad beef with ReTweet.com. It’s about somebody stealing another person’s 20 lines of code. Realising that this is also a good example of a possible trademark/copyright wars, inevitably involves money & politics in the long run, should Tweetmeme decides to pursue.

Based on this, I wrote a simple formula to start assessing the situation:

(steal) ? copy = true : copy = false;

With the power of crowdsource, harnessing feedbacks from @cheeaun & @ngeow, I came out with this in the end:

You can download a copy of the code right here.

Rinse & repeat. The common stigma.

February 16, 2009

South East Asia OpenSocial contest

Filed under: Poetic Code — Tags: , , , , — Mr. Buyot @ 3:09 AM

Here are the winners. And I’ve received 2nd place! That’s super awesome. I didn’t expect to win anything, but I won’t deny I kept my fingers crossed when I submitted my application just to add some luck. It’s an awesome feeling being able to win something cool. At times, I wish I can celebrate this.

Congratulations to Marvin Lee, which I think has made a cool application for the opinionated. Dude, I’d like to meet up with you someday.

Thanks Google & the S.E.A crew. You guys are super duper cool.

December 21, 2008

5 things I learned from OpenSocial hackathon

Filed under: Colors Of Muhibbah, Poetic Code, Weird Wild Web — Tags: , , , , — Mr. Buyot @ 2:03 PM

Aside from learning about OpenSocial, I observed a few good real life examples that can be taken as an example for Malaysia’s corporate/creative workplace.

Junk food is important. It’s fuel for the brains. – The pantry at Google.sg office is stocked up just like a tiny sundry shop where I lived. Having a pantry with a high complex mix and balance of (brain) power food & junk food will keep any developer happy! It’s a happy pantry!

Never be afraid of your idea, no matter how silly you think it may be. – Ideas make the world go around. Ideas hatched every second, everywhere around the world. The best way to find out if your idea makes the cut is to share it with like minded individuals or just throw it out to the wild general public & react to their responses. People say to think outside the box. I believe there is no such thing as a box.

Never to be afraid to share. – People might steal your ideas, copy your thoughts, but hey, doesn’t that what makes the world a little bit interesting? Most would think “my idea is original. no one must know about it.” That’s the way of the old school. We are the new school.

Hire developers/staff who are naughty. If they are pranksters, they have a better chance to get things done. – Humor, laughter. The best medicine. This is a requirement in any organisation. You need at least one prankster that can come out with the silliest (funniest) prank or activity in your office. It keeps your environment fee alive.

Always surround yourself with great, good, fun people. – Anti social is good, to a certain extend. Being around like minded individuals stimulates you in ways you couldn’t even imagine.

December 13, 2008

And it’s done. For now. OpenSocial stuff-a-thon.

Filed under: Poetic Code — Tags: , , — Mr. Buyot @ 10:46 PM

Google Singapore OpenSocial hackathon has come to an end. But fear not, the next hackathon is coming soon, closer than you think!

To Vinoaj, Andrew, Duong (I hope I spelled your name right) & Chandra, you guys are awesome. There’s nothing better than having a good time with you guys, hacking & stuffing stuff, and also thank you for having me & the rest of the attendees over to your humble abode and thank you to Google for supporting us developers at this side of the world.

Just don’t stop doing this. It’s important. It’s fun!

I had a pinch of Google

Filed under: Poetic Code, Weird Wild Web — Tags: , , , — Mr. Buyot @ 1:39 PM

Now, I’m writing & sitting on a red (my favourite color) relax couch with matching footstool in Google’s Singapore office. I have to say, the first thing I fell in love when I set my foot in the office, it’s their marvelous work spaces and environment. I can imagine myself running around the office screaming “Hellalujah!”, praying for some kindness (and improvements) for my current workspace.

I’ll be blogging (semi) live from The Goog. The Goog. Sounds like a really good title for a cult movie about The Goog(le). Watch this page for (lazy) updates.

1:30PM

Still waiting for the show to start. There’s roughly about 12 10 developers that has arrived. And it seems that I’m the only developer from KL. Met Justin Lee from e27, Budy from Indonesia. etc.

2:00PM

Vinoaj kicks off the hackathon with a kickstart session. He briefly (re)introduces the crowd to OpenSocial & its usage. In a note, 51.com contributes the largest amount of OpenSocial users from Asia, but they recently boycotting OpenSocial with several other socnets from China.

2:30PM

Vinoaj jumps around to give a glimpse of what we will be building (hacking) here today using the iGoogle sandbox.

2:50PM

Bjorn Lee (e27) arrives.

3:00PM

Vinoaj speaks about Shindig. Props to @ropu for his DevFest presentation on Shindig.

3:15pM

I’m getting sleeeeepy. Hardly slept last night. A good adventure this morning searching (and walking) for a hotel/motel.

3.20PM

Vinoaj wrapping first presentation. Now he is talking about “Socializing Apps”.

Pure social apps. Socialized apps.

3:30PM

Vinoaj wraps. Now it’s time for Widgeo.us. Whoops. e27 briefs everyone what they do. My comment: they actually bring students out from their “coconut shell”.

4:30PM

Brainstorming session. Good ideas surfaced.

5:00PM

Hacking starts. Now, who wants to team up with me? Isk isk…

6:30PM

Vinoaj orders dinner. PIZZA!

6:50PM

I’m pretty worked up on my OpenSocial idea. Will continue posting updates when dinner arrives! Hehehe.

9:00PM

All good things must come to an end. Thank you guys. Thank you Google. I’m tired and sleepy after a sleepless night & an early morning search for cheap hotels (I refused to stay at Hotel 81). I’ll write more about this, after I sleep.

December 10, 2008

OpenSocial Singapore hackathon

Filed under: Me, Myself & Eureka, Poetic Code — Tags: , — Mr. Buyot @ 3:03 PM

Thank god for pills! I will be heading to Singapore again this Friday for Google’s OpenSocial hackathon. The venue will be at Google Singapore office starting from 1pm on Saturday till late. I’ll be staying again at Uncle Nava’s place (i promise that I will write something about this awesome bed & breakfast motel) and hit me up if you want to hangout afterhours for a drink or something.

December 9, 2008

Maybank2u spits bloodied, smelly phlegm

Filed under: Colors Of Muhibbah, Poetic Code, Weird Wild Web — Tags: — Mr. Buyot @ 1:22 PM

My colleague was doing his usual banking with Maybank2u online service until he was greeted with this screen:

I wonder if they really bothered thinking about scaling, properly?

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