Virus Brontoks

Lately, our computer lab is attacked by Brontoks (or brontox or well known as W32.rontobro). Somehow, our newest database of AVG still cannot detected this virus. We already tried to update it several times and the result is that some computer manages to detect the virus while some others can’t (even when they are using the very same database).

This somehow touches my nerves. My closest friends must’ve known that I’m a very paranoid person regarding the healthiness of my computer. Although I use Ubuntu alot lately, I also use Windows just for casual computing. And I have this weird messages lately from my server that indicates that my computer somehow sent messages with unscannable attachments.

This is the very indications that maybe my computer is infected with that worm. I think I’ll just use this method instead to check wether this computer is clean or not.

Accute Copyright Infringement in My Country

A really – really weird thing happened in this country. After a spammer taught other would-be spammers on how to spam on luxurious hotel, now a ‘legalization’ of copyright infringements by somewhat a big internet company in Indonesia and the rest of the citizen.

It started the day when I browse through various topic on KafeGaul and stumbled on this topic (you have to login to read the entries) about someone selling anime scan and distribute it via CD (thus selling it). I then warned the whole forum about that here (under the name ‘punclut’).

Guess what respond I have? Everyone (well, almost) scold at me! Some of them is somewhat a no-brainer and the rest of them doesn’t even contain any logical arguments behind it. I’ll quote some here:

BARANG ILLEGAL ??????? siapa sih elo ? Polisi ? atau orang sok idealis ? sejak kapan Comicscan, e-book ataupun ROM itu barang Illegal ? kalo nggak suka jangan hidup di Indonesia, kalo loe udah cukup kaya untuk memenuhi semua kebutuhan elo, apa loe pikir semua orang indonesia bisa seperti itu ? gue suka comicscan tapi nggak berarti gue nggak beli komik aslinya selama gue mampu & sama dengan begitu banyak pembeli comicscan lainnya. so don’t bragging here and talk crap ….. if you cuold help us buy the real comic … now you could talk … if not …. JUST SHUT UP

and another one here:

sudah…sudah jgn marah2 kie sabar jangan ditanggepin terlalu serius dia gak tau kalo di sini banyak yang dagangannya lebih sangar
buat sodara punclut saya gak jualan kok siapa yang bilang jualan. orang saya cuma bantuin temen2 kok yang pengen donlot komik scan tapi gak punya waktu dan sebagai gantinya saya rasa wajar kalo temen2 “ngasih” uang sebagai ganti beli CD, bayar listrik, bayar internet ama sdikit uang lelah.

and another one:

Well ….. anak orang kaya kayaknya ? mana dia tau kalo gue harus banting tulang untuk bisa baca Komik US . Gara-gara orang sok idealis macem dia nih yang bikin gue makin kesulitan memenuhi hobi gue. gue nggak bakal beli komik bajakan selama ada penerbit Indonesia memfasilitasi komik US dengan harga rasional, kalo nggak apa gue mau disuruh ngiler terus ? mana itu WY Comics, M&C ataupun PMK yang serius mau bener-bener memenuhi kebutuhan kita , and asal tahu aja gue mbaca Comicscan karena terpaksa, kalo gue kaya ya beli komik asli. Well …. PUNCLUT … next time watch out what you’re talking about.

In short (for those of you who doesn’t speak Bahasa Indonesia), the first quote is asking me (in a harsh way) who the f*** am I. Then blurted that comicscan and other forms of ebook is not illegal, continues to rambled on that he blamed people because he cannot read comics because its price tag is too high, yaddi yadda. The second quote talks that he is only helping a friend out. And because he is helping friend, he thinks that he needed something on return (which is in form of money). The third quote is pretty much the same like the first one.

I’ll rebuttal it one by one. Nope I’m not an idealistic. I’m just an ordinary person who may or may not commit foul on the internet on my past. Sometimes in the past I did use illegal programs just because I don’t know that there’s a better and free alternatives such as Thunderbird, Linux, and the likes. After receiving knowledges about the LEGAL stuffs that I can have and use, I started to migrating things. I even use a campus-licensed Windows and campus-licensed Office in addition to that and the rest is either open source or freeware.

The arguments of “Oh this is too expensive for me� is a typical arguments of a whiner (and whiner never winner). If that’s too expensive for you, find a better job! If the job still doesn’t make enough money to ‘satisfy’ your hobby, find an alternatif! If you still can’t find it, MAKE YOUR OWN! If you can’t make your own after those steps… then YOU ARE a loser.

The “it’s too expensive� argument doesn’t make the whole thing legal. It’s downright illegal and you are a criminal by that (at least you’ve commited digital crimes of copyright). DC and Marvel Comic Scans is not LEGAL to be scanned and then DISTRIBUTED. Not to mention that NOT ALL ebooks are legal (some are free -legal and some needs you to pay a certain ammounts of money). And come to mentioned that, Indonesia has already agreed to ratify the international law of Copyright Act since the Megawati presidency. It’s straight forward that it is illegal.

And for the second quote, how on earth charging things around makes you qualify that you are doing good favor to your friends. First, it is illegal to distribute those stuff you distribute. Second, burning a CD only costs you 3000 max (make that 6k including the shipping). Oh I’m sure you’ll whine “how about my online time and connection�, well screw you! If you can’t find something better to make use of your internet connection rather than downloading comicscan and burn it and then distribute it (at a fee… which i call SELLING), then you deserve to be a loser.

This kind of pull-push controversy ravaging on Indonesian internet these past year is just a straight forward stupidity. If you said that copyright act is only benefiting the capitalist, you are damn right and that’s why there’s other type of licensing such as copyleft or GPL or CreativeCommon or whatever.

Complaining that the price of stuffs is expensive is also indicating that you are a whiner too. If you can’t afford to buy it, then don’t. Especially if its just one kind of a hobby to deal with. Find another hobby. Find the one that you can afford but still give meaning to you. Draw your own comic in change of just staring at those picture.DComic and Marvel are there to make money, not to fulfill your needs (although sometimes that is a catchy business gimmick).

Some post even discrediting my by saying that I’m not even 20 years old idealist. So what? Does age has anything to do with maturity? You see, being old is a must while being mature is a choice. Although I’m not even 20 yet, but I am proud that at the very early stage of life I can at least draw a simple line of which is right and which is wrong (infringing copyright).

By the way, I’ve reported the ‘incident’ to IMT which I held responsible because not moderating the forum on the right way. I also have notified Indonesian Police (Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia). I have notified both DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

Somewhat, I also notified vbulletin regarding the script validity that KG’s using. I mean, what a respectable forum would host a trading place full of pirated goods and links to porn stuffs and illegal downloadable programs? And add to that… who knows wether if their version of vB valid or not?

You see… messing with me means real business

PS: Hey, I looked handsome on that photograph didn’t I? And plus, I don’t come from a rich family. We only saved enough so that we can afford all those thing we can.

What is it?

I hope you all are wondering why do I put a question as a title. That is my purpose. Human always wonder, wether his wondering make him a better man or just as to filled a spare time. What I’m meant with the title is actually my own question of the very being of me as a human.

Why am I here?
What meaning should I make?
Where do I really belong?

Those kind of questions are human’s biggest secret. Most of us spent the entire lifetime to search for it and live it. The rest of us, however just live life as it is without any hassle or asking the reasons of their beings.

I might have categorized as the first group. I haven’t found my “reasons of existence� but I’m trying to. Through writings

Leadership Brutality

Hello,
You guys might think, why did I titled this entry Leadership Brutality. Mainly, because I have encountered this brutal experience several times in my track record as a leader. I have failed some mission as a leader and yet, I haven’t found a right formula to exercise my own leadership style. Adding to that, I haven’t found a person whom I can work with easily.

Science Club @ HighSchool
As a president, I blatantly failed. I have tried everything from holding a regular meeting to break fasting together. I have even tried to give a free gimmick and stuff like that but that doesn’t work. In that organization, I act as a President plus secretary plus treasury plus operational clientel.Job Expo @ College
I’m the organizing commitee president and I still failed. The main problem which I can see is that the core team seldomly meet due to the uncertainty of individual schedule. If the core team cannot meet and discuss about things, how on earth does the entire commitee can work. Plus, it’s some part my fault too because of the lack coordination.

JAMZ @ College
In JAMZ (Journey Across Marketing Sensation), I held a responsibility as vice president and focusing on marketing. Somehow the entire commitee failed. The apparent reasoning that I can see is that the president its self lack of coordination with its sub-peer. In this case, we cannot even get a decent speaker for the show thus making things hard for me to do all of those marketing. It’s not entirely failed since we are still way out of the deadline, it’s just that I can smell that this one is failing.

A Business @ College
I formed a business with 8 of my friend in college. I act as the CEOand somehow I failed again. I don’t know what syndrom gets into me but somehow I managed to fail all of the leadership task that was bestowed upon me. In this business group I really – really – really don’t know what’s wrong. I tried everything I can from motivating the people and even working on my own to make things work. I’ve invested more than 3-4 million rupiah (around $300-$400, that’s a lot on this part of the world) in this business alone in some period of time but we still cannot enjoy the fruit of the sweat.

The member is now starting to doubt me. The heck I know why. Probably because I’m not giving them enough ‘directive’ or probably I’m just not the leader type? What’s missing in me? I’ve set the job description for everyone, I’ve motivate everyone continuously, I’ve even make an outbound session for us to know each other better. I’ve coordinate with everyone on their job but after that, it should be their on creativity in play right?

Geez, I am out of option here. Probably I should just resign from the position of CEO? Taking a role as a member instead and giving them all the taste on how hard it is to be their leader. They seemed wanted to have everything done with less effort on their side. I once adopted this style and being this somewhat ‘semi-dictator’. None of the job’s done. I tried leisser faire style, none of the job’s done.

I remembered from one of the seminars I attend that leader is a lonely journey. Remember when the birds fly in packs and forming a “V� formation? The leader is in front of the pack—alone. Yes true that sometimes I changed direction, but that’s for the good of our company. Once our core is webhosting, when it didn’t work I turned to web development and somehow it didn’t work either. So then we tried a content provider (which is not working AT ALL). And again for the third and forth time, our core business changed to online store and then webhosting, back to square one.

It’s like commandeering a ship where the crews don’t know anything about a ship and as a captain I don’t know where I’m going. Or is it because that I’ve involved in too many activities? I just wanted everything to work. Probably I am not a leader type afterall.

I have negotiated something with my parents that they agree to invest some capital in my next business. I’m still confused, should I play in the stock market (bigger profit, bigger risk), buy a franchise (medium profit, medium risk, leadership excercise), or magazine (small profit, small risk, high prestige, stabil income, leadership excercise). Probably I should quit being a leader of this business group.

Someone please give me an advice…

Collective Wisdom

I know that the title is pretty much the same on my latest entry on the other blog, but this entry is totally different. Yes we are still talking about collective wisdom but not on how can my university implement it without costing its fortune.

With so many blogs scattered out there and diverse in interest and focus, we currently have a very very very massive collective wisdom system (which I would prefer to say “Knowledge Base”). I called it “wisdom”, not just information, because every people dedicated on writing and maintaining his/her blog is an affectionate lover on the subject they wrote. Yes of course we still have splog and whinners that writes how their life sucks, but even if we only count 10% of blogger population as “affectionate loving”, we still have alot.

For me it seems, this is the biggest and the most accurate (not to mention up-to-date) knowledge base in the world. 

First Impression

Okay first impression, the administration page is nice. It really looked like my other WP-powered blog but with the plugin installed as default. I’ve used a plugin that allows me to track all the blogs of people that I put as a link to show it on my Dashboard.

Other feature that I like is a built-in WYSIWYG editor that actually has a working “more” tag which is non-existant on usual WP installation (even if we have actually installed WYSIWYG plug-in since it seems that the plugin doesn’t read the tag correctly).

The problem arises when I wanted to change anything that is located under Options tab. I can’t change a thing! Not Personal, not Discussion, not a thing! Everytime I tried to changed it, the system said that the option was saved (but it’s not). What’s worse is that it leaves all box un-checked and that is why, you can’t leave comments on my first post on this blog.

I’ve sent some feedback about this though (including the error message I recieved when I’m using Kubrick’s template) and for the mean time, I’ll just override the settings with options on individual entry. 

Hello World #2

Well since WordPress autogenerates the first post, I’ll just make a second Hello World post that is generated by humans. Probably it’s a good thing to do that in the future release of WordPress (.com and .org that is), the user is given a chance to actually write his/her first post prior to installation.

As I’ve told people before on my other blog (the one that uses WP.org’s script), blog is about putting ‘people’ on the other end of the site, so it will probably be better if it’s people who writes the first post on their very own blog.

And check this out… a WYSIWYG editor default with actually a working “more” tag! Plus, thank you Eric for giving me the invitation

TO DO list:

• Categorical arrangements
• Blog planning (seriously… while blog is all about having fun, planning is something I like )
• Send something as a feedback… I think I have my WP.com blog contains a glitch (and I can’t even see the code for that matter)
• Get some sleep

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!