Finally back online.....

after being disconnected when both my desktop and laptop conked out on me....when it rains, it pours....

Thoughts on Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech

Recently there's been a glut of articles in the Straits Times on the subject of engineering in Singapore.

Importance of technology

The first was when ST published a few articles based on an interview with Mr Ngiam Tong Dow on 22 May, 2008. It was pretty interesting to see what are the man's views on topics such as fighting inflation, the rapid promotion of scholars, and the tax structure. In particular, I was quite intrigued by the topic of Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech. In his view, "Singapore must ensure its best and brightest continue to become engineers and not just bankers". It is the only way to become a knowledge-based economy, he says.

So why are more Singaporeans shying away from science, tech and engineering? By that I mean two things:

1. A higher proportion of Singaporean students are picking up other disciplines like business or arts rather than science and engineering.


2. More Singaporean grads leaving/less grads taking up tech-related jobs.

That's what anecdotal evidence seems to be telling me. I guess it boils down to money and job prospects. Even though a fresh grad would earn a pretty decent salary as an engineer (this also depends on the kind of industry), it'll still pale in comparison to those in finance, banking, law and medicine. And the influx of foreign workers/students and exodus of jobs really paint a bleak future for engineers.

Engineering is still prized as a academic qualification even though not viewed favourably by students. In another ST interview on 26 May, 2008, Ms Lee Bee Wah notes that even though the median engineer salary trails that of the top eight earners for six professions used to compute the civil service pay, a third of the top executives were engineers by training. She adds that engineers often move out of engineering jobs and many are headhunted by banks and MNCs. Students are also increasing drawn to business and medicine.

Supply Issue

On 31 May, 2008, ST published an article about engineering in Yale and Harvard, with a snippet of text that mentions Mr Lim Hng Kiang saying local institutions are meeting domestic demand with "a steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering & technical manpower each year".

Finally, on 1 Jun, 2008, ST has this article foreign students in local universities. It brought up the phenomena that more foreign students are enrolled in engineering and computing compared to other courses. These are the courses that are shunned by local students.

Implications

So now we have this interesting situation:

• The top brass agree that tech and engineering is important for Singapore's development.


• The skills and training of an engineer makes him suitable for other roles like working in a bank or MNC, and this is recognized by headhunters.


• Lesser locals are studying entering tech and engineering and entering the field , while more foreigners are.

It appears likely that we are going to face a future where both the developers of technology and the people who manage them are going to be foreigners.

Links:

His worry: Is Singapore becoming high cost, low tech?

A steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering & technical manpower each year

Engineers have "role in community building"

Foreign students in varsities

Amazing Graffiti Animation

For those who don't read Matthew Mullenweg's blog, check out this amazing (though freaky) clip

[youtube]uuGaqLT-gO4[/youtube]

Problem starting Netbeans 6.1 RC - resolved

Recently I've downloaded the Netbeans 6.1 RC1 and RC2 but I could not get it to work. After installing, I double-clicked on the startup icon but the program won't start. I've checked the Task Manager and most of the time the process would start but end immediately. Once the program managed to run but there was no window showing.

Did some googling but could not find out more about the issue. Now, I went into command prompt to try and see if I could start Netbeans from there. Here's the result:

C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.1 RC2\bin>netbeans.exe

C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.1 RC2\bin>nb.exe
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.
Rerunnig without "-client" option...
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

Finally! So it has something to do with not enough memory being allocated for the VM. That's weird considering I have 2 gigs of RAM and 6.0.1 worked just fine with the same programs running in the background.

Anyway, I went into C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.1 RC2\etc folder and opened up netbeans.conf. Then I changed "-J-XX:MaxPermSize=200m" to "-J-XX:MaxPermSize=128m" and it worked.

Thoughts on article "Open-source talent: Dearth or plenty?"

I was reading an article the other day on Digital Life. I thought the article brought up some interesting points.  Below is an excerpt of the article.

DIGITAL LIFE * APRIL 1, 2008 * THE STRAITS TIMES

Open‑source talent: Dearth or ‑plenty?
One firm moves to Windows while another stays its open‑source course, IRENE THAM reports

WHILE more users are going down the open‑source path, one Singapore firm will be ending its nine‑year journey on that route. Its grouse ‑ a lack of open‑source talent here.

The company is Virtual Map, which provides road maps through its streetdirectory.com website. It also develops and hosts Web‑based map applications for corporate clients.

Since its founding in 1999, the firm has been hosting its map applications on open‑source operating system, MandrakeSoft,  renamed Mandriva three years ago.

All was well until last year, when its IT administrator left. "We couldn't replace him," said Eugene Lim, director of business development at Virtual Map.

The firm ended up hiring someone well‑versed in another Linux operating system called Fedora Core.

Eugene said because skills are "not portable”  between the different open‑source flavours, his company had to move its map applications to the new operating system.

"We spent three weeks doing that all because of one guy."

The firm's frustrations did not end there. Recent , it found itself repeating the three‑week exercise, moving applications from Fedora Core to yet another Linux distribution,  as "the open-source community has decided to end support for Fedora”.

What this means is that the community will no longer develop security patches and feature improvements on the Fedora operating system.

In October last year, the firm turned to mainstream software vendor Microsoft for help.

"It would be great if we could have only one server operating system running all the time and one neck to choke if things don't work," said Eugene.

Although I'm not a system administrator, I've done some administrative tasks before on different Linux distros.  So I do find the following comment quite strange.

Eugene said because skills are "not portable”  between the different open‑source flavours, his company had to move its map applications to the new operating system.

I think stuff like quota management, user/file permissions,  network configuration, email/web server configuration, setting up cron jobs, etc are pretty portable skills.  Even though certain specifics might differ, it's very likely you can take your set of skills (and looking up some man pages) on one distro and work comfortably on another distro if you're working on the same tasks. Only potential problem is package management but it's nothing so major that Google can't handle.

Another comment that appears to be problematic is this.

... as "the open-source community has decided to end support for Fedora”.

Erm...I checked the wiki on Fedora Core and guess what the actual scenario is? Fedora Core 6 has reached its end of life, but 7, 8 are still supported.

 A reminder to users: Fedora Core 6 will reach its end of life for updates on
Friday, December 7, 2007.

Fedora 7 will remain supported until one month past the release of Fedora 9
(as things stand, this would be roughly through the end of May, 2008).

 

 - The Fedora Board

Lastly, do I see some management problems here? I mean, if you are having so much problem with the departure of a staff, to the point of having to change the OS multiple times, clearly there is some problem with the human resource management and ops and support planning. Is there any plan on the course of action to take to keep the system going in case the system admin is down? Is there no person who can cover for him? In response to the comment "We spent three weeks doing that all because of one guy," I'll say that the guy is not the system admin, but his manager.

Beautiful rendition of Masaki Kishibe's Scudding cloud（流れ行く雲）

Masaaki Kishibe is famous for the beautiful, melodic guitar pieces he creates. This Youtube clip shows a great rendition of his song, a very soothing bell-like sound.

[youtube]9FpkoViuLT0[/youtube]

Chantal Sebire's plight and the euthanasia debate

I was flipping through the papers today when I saw a very shocking image. It was a picture of a woman whose face was highly disfigured because of cancer. It's a very sad and unfortunate case, and it's one of the more extreme cases that I had read about. I sympathize with her plight and her lack of options to decide how she should live or die. We all aspire to have a good life, but if we are not allowed to have that then at least it should be bearable. Failing that, let us be granted a good death if we so choose.

French Housing Minister Christine Boutin said that if France legalizes "the right to kill, we're heading towards a barbarian society." Perhaps so if the person you want to kill is someone else, but surely not if the person is yourself. While we should not allow anyone to kill themselves over trivial reasons, it's evident that Sebire's was suffering immensely with no end or relief in sight. In such desperate situations surely it would be humane and human to allow her to end her life in a dignified way, surrounded by her loved ones?

Woman with disfiguring cancer dies, euthanasia debate lives

Euthanasia debate woman found dead

Death Sets French Euthanasia Debate