The Man From Earth is what I would call a classic Science Fiction movie. The movie contains no special effects, has no action sequences nor any does it contain any fighting scenes. The movie is set in the current era rather than some futuristic setting. So what qualifies this as a science fiction movie? Well to me, a science fiction movie has to ask a "What if" question and explore the consequences of asking that question. The Man From Earth asked, "What if a man can walk the earth for the past 14,000 years?". This question naturally leads to many other questions. What would such a man be like? How does he survive? What has he done?

Meet John Oldman (David Lee Smith), a college professor with a 10 year tenure who surprised everyone by suddenly resigning for reasons unknown. His concerned friends and colleagues drop by his house to find out why, only to get the big surprise. John's friends and colleagues, who are professors in the fields of Biology, Archaeology, Anthropology and Psychologist all try to poke holes in John's claim of being a 14,000 year old man. To find out what happens next, you'll have to watch the movie. It is an intellectually exciting movie that is definitely worth watching.

Before I close, I'ld like to point out a few connections this movie has with Star Trek. The cast of Man From Earth features Trek alumni actors Tony Todd, John Billingsley and Richard Riehle. Tony Todd has played Worf's brother, Kurn, in several TNG and DS9 episodes but is probably best known for his portrayal of an adult and senior Jake Sisko in one of DS9's best episode, "The Visitor". Richard Riehle likewise played the role of Captain Picard's best friend Batai in one of TNG's best episode, "The Inner Light". John Billingsley starred as Doctor Phlox on the fifth Star Trek series, Enterprise.

Tony Todd, John Billingsley and Richard Riehle in their Star Trek roles

It is certainly interesting for me to see guest actors from some of the best Star Trek episodes starring in The Man From Earth. However, what is more interesting is that the script was the lifework of Jerome Bixby, who also wrote classic Star Trek episodes "Mirror, Mirror" and "Requiem For Methuselah". "Methuselah" also features a 6,000 year old Leonardo/Brahms but is ultimately a love story. In a way, what Jerome Bixby did was to write write two completely different but equally compelling scripts starting from the same premise. Amazing stuff.

Christmas is around the corner, I have been goofing off a little and here's the end product. A collection of "Mac vs PC" international ads, starting with some from Japan.

Here are some UK "Mac vs PC" ads.

Finally, I like to wish a very merry christmas to one and all!

If you were asked to truthfully express in one sentence who you are and what defines you as a person, what would your sentence be? Here is a promo video for the final season of Battlestar Galactica.

An alternate version, with some differences.

Powerful stuff, 'nuff said.

In my article on why I switched to using a MacBook and Mac OS X, I mentioned Microsoft's use of incompatible or proprietary standards as a means of keeping non-Microsoft computer systems from easily communicating or accessing computers running Microsoft operating system and software. One of these proprietary Microsoft-only standards is the "Server Message Block" protocol (SMB for short) that runs the Microsoft Windows Network. Just about everything you see under (just everything you see under "Network Neighbourhood/Microsoft Network" uses SMB to share files, printers and serial ports.

For over the past 10 to 15 years, Microsoft has been adamant on not releasing sufficient details of the SMB protocol. Developers, such as those working on the Samba open source project, faced a constant uphill struggle trying to connect with the Microsoft Network. As a result, despite their best work, the Samba team never quite achieved full compatibility and interoperability with Windows-based computers.

Things changed today.

As a direct result of a 9 year investigation and legal wrangling, the European Union Commission judged (also upheld by the European Court of First Instance) that Microsoft had abused its monopoly position. As a result, Microsoft now has to license documentation on SMB and several other Microsoft proprietary protocols to interested parties in a reasonable and non-discriminatory manner. These documents have finally been delivered to the Samba team today, enabling them to start work on writing software that will be fully interoperable with Microsoft Windows operating systems.

For more details on the long struggle of the Samba team, please refer to this webpage they have written on this topic.

In my first article, I focused more on the topic of "Why I do not want another Microsoft OS". The reasons generally boils down to the general feeling that Microsoft is more interested in its own profit than listening and fulfilling its consumer's needs. Today, I will talk solely about Mac OS X and the reasons why I finally settled on it and Apple computers as my computer system of choice.

Solid Architecture

Building any complex software such as an operating system is sort of like building a house. And like a house, nothing is more important than a solid foundation. The foundation of Mac OS X is an Apple open source project called Darwin and Darwin in turn is based largely upon a relatively unknown operating system called FreeBSD.

Even tech circles, very few people know about FreeBSD's complicated origins that can be traced all the way back to the great grandfather of most operating systems, AT&T's UNIX. Thankfully, quite a lot more people know that FreeBSD has been built from ground up with system security and stability as its number one objective. And FreeBSD developers have done a good job in delivering both security and stability for FreeBSD has consistently had the least number of reported issues for the past few years and is commonly cited as the OS with some of the longest uptime (of years) when used as a web server.

As a result, not only has Mac OS X inherited some of FreeBSD's security and stability, it has also inherited the underpinnings of a modern Unix operating system. On top of this solid foundation, Apple has added on its own software stacks for graphical user interfaces, codenamed Aqua, and various innovations from NEXTSTEP (another operating system developed by Steve Job's prior company before returning to Apple, NeXT). All these factors combined made a compelling case to me that Mac OS X is a well designed, modern operating system.

One more thing before I move on. In today's world of hackers, scammers, viruses and spyware, I feel that commodity software that is used by just about everyone with a computer must be audited for security loopholes. And because the foundation of Mac OS X, Darwin, is open sourced, computing professionals can look at its freely available source code (blueprint and construction plans) While most users will never need to view these blueprints, it is an added level of reassurance that any computing professional can review these blueprints for potential vulnerabilities or exploitable loopholes. As an aside, Microsoft was required to open up its Windows operating system source code for review by third party experts in the anti-trust case for this exact same reason.

Common Standards

Standards are very important to the computing industry. They are sort of similar languages such as English or French and allow different computers to communicate with each other. Unlike human beings where anyone who understands English is likely to understand a regional dialect like Singlish, computers need standards specified clearly and distinctly. Any change, however minor, would essentially be treated as a totally different language by the computer.

If you have read my first article, you would know that one of my pet peeves with Microsoft is its habit of intentionally introducing incompatibilities when they implement computing standards. This in turn results in Windows computers that can only communicate with other Microsoft computers and is a bad thing for me. It means that I am stuck with using only Microsoft products and is unable to use any other alternative products, regardless of how good these products are. In a way, Microsoft's tactics can almost be considered racist (that is, if Microsoft is a race).

Apple can almost be considered a saint in comparison to Microsoft for they recognize the importance of standards. So far, every piece of hardware I own works with my MacBook. One additional bonus I found was that so far I have not needed to install nor scrounge around for any device drivers. Right out of the box, Mac OS X was able to automatically detect and use to my home wireless network (I just had to provide the password), print on any network printer, exchange data with my Nokia mobile phone via bluetooth, use any USB device that I plug in.

All this standards compliance applies to its software too. Mac OS X comes with web surfing, email, address book and calendar applications. All of them follow whatever common computing standards there are to follow. So I could easily swap calendar data with Google Calendar, contact information with my mobile phone. I have not tried this but I've read that with a software called Parallels, I can even run almost any Windows application. Even more, because Mac OS X has Unix as its foundation, most software written for Unix can probably run on Mac OS X. Before you laugh, consider that this includes software written for all Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, etc..), all BSD variants (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD), Sun Microsystem's Solaris and many more. And I do use quite a lot of Unix software so this is all a plus to me.

The Leopard Advantage

What I have said so far applies to every version of Mac OS X. In this final section, I deal specifically with the advantages offered by the latest version, Mac OS X Leopard. I have read some articles about Leopard before I made the jump to Apple laptops, and in general most people say that Leopard offers better eye candy and Time Machine, an easy to use automated backup solution.

My take stems largely from a developer's perspective and from that angle, Leopard's main advantage over other operating systems such as Vista or Ubuntu is something called "Core Animation". In order to explain Core Animation, I will need to delve in to some history regarding graphical user interfaces.

As some of you may know, a computer screen is a rectangular grid of dots, or "picture cells" (pixels for short). In the early days, what we did to create graphical user interfaces was literally to draw them dot by dot. It is tedious and error prone. This is why modern operating systems have "windowing toolkits" that allow us application developers to simply say, "I want a window of size 500 by 300, containing a button at..." and the operating system would take over and draw the window and its contents for us. Besides simply drawing windows and such, the windowing toolkit would also handle common graphical operations like simulating a button being pressed, maximizing or minimizing a window. Windowing toolkits allow application developers to create applications faster because we no longer have to handle every minute on screen detail that needs to be drawn.


Simply put, Core Animation is Apple's "toolkit" for 3d animations such as the now famous iTunes album browsing "Cover Flow" feature. With Core Animation, I as an application developer just need to say in my application that "I want a cover flow containing these 26 images, at this location, and tell me which image the user selects", and Core Animation would handle the details of drawing 3d boxes, rotating and juggling their positions on screen, animating them based on user input, and so on. Core Animation makes 3d animations very accessible to application developers. I am quite willing to bet that in 2008 to 2009 we will see many Leopard only applications integrating 3d elements that no other operating system can currently reproduce and that, to me, is Leopard's advantage.

Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, is a forward looking operating system that has taken the first step to move applications into a 3D animated paradigm. Ladies and gentlement, this is the cutting edge. The next few years should prove to be exciting.

Sometimes when I read the regional news, such as Indonesia not wanting Singaporean companies owning majority stake in Indonesian companies, Malaysia hike water prices, etc.. It is easy to imagine that our neighboring countries are out to get Singapore. Yet an occasional event comes along and shatters this preconceived notion of negativity with a ray of sunshine.

What happened? On Sunday, 16 Dec 2007, the second Singapore Idol Hadi Mirza was crowned Asian Idol. The Straits Times has been having a field day, with Hady's photograph spashed across the front page yesterday, and yet again today in the Life section. Some speculate the reason Hady won is because he is Malay and is able to appeal to Malaysians and Indonesians, others think its because of his charming looks. I think underlying these reasons is a zeitgeist of sorts, a general feeling amongst Asians that regards Singapore at least somewhat positively.

Anyway, this is just me reading into things. Without further ado, here's Hady Mirza singing Beautiful Day and his winning moment in the second video. Enjoy!

Yes, I am now what Apple fans call a "switcher". As of November 2007, I am the owner of a brand new Apple MacBook Pro which is now my main working computer (I'm already running out of disk space lol). Since November, several of my friends have asked me various questions such as "Why switch?", "What are the advantages?". So far I have given one line answers because my real answer would require an understanding of my past 20 years of living and working in the trenches of the computer world war for brand dominance. Today is your lucky (or unlucky) day, for today I reveal the real answer to why I switched to a Mac.

Before I begin, let me state unequivocally that while I admit I am a technically inclined guy who occasionally take note of Apple related news, I am not an Apple fanboy. For the sake of disclosure, I have to mention that the very first computer I used 20 odd years ago as a 5 year old boy was an Apple ][+. You know, the one that contains a 1MHz processor, 5¼" floppy drive and green monochrome monitor. Anyway, my dad switched to an IBM PC XT clone some years later and that was the end of my relationship with Apple computers. I have been using Microsoft operating systems (DOS and Windows) ever since.

A Little Bit Of History

Here goes. One of the main reasons why I switched to a Mac is because I have a beef with the way Microsoft operates. A large part of this comes from Microsoft doing things for their own self interest rather than for the interest of its customers, business or consumer. A secondary but more personal beef is that Microsoft's tendency to think it has superior engineering and research capability when in fact the opposite is probably more true (or perhaps its engineers and researchers have been ignored by management needs).

The first time I discovered this was with my attempts at writing multitasked programs in the 80s. I will try not to be too technical in my explanation, but I have to offer my apologies as some technical know-how is still required. Multitasking basically enables a computer to simultaneously run more than one program and is a key feature that people cannot live without these days. It was first invented in the 1960s and by the 1970s most business operating systems such as Unix have multitasking. For the more technically inclined, when I say multitasking, I am refering to pre-emptive multitasking and not cooperative multitasking.

Yet, multitasking on Personal Computers were unheard of even in the 1980s. There were several reasons. The first reason was that multitasking required a multitasking enabled microprocessor that had very specific features. The first Intel PC microprocessor that could theoretically multitask was the 80286 released in 1982. There were some issues with the implementation so the 286 actually couldn't multitask. In 1986, Intel resolved this issue with the 80386 microprocessor that could multitask. At this time, the dominant operating system used on PCs was the DOS operating system, and of course DOS does not support multitasking.

So in 1990, Micrsoft released the now infamous Windows 3.0. Unfortunately, it did not come with multitasking support. I suppose, Microsoft could argue that the 386 is still a relatively new microprocessor so very few personal computers had the capability to support multitasking.

In 1992, six years after the 386 was sold, Microsoft released Windows 3.1 yet again without multitasking support. In fact, it took Microsoft nine years to add support for multitasking with the release of Windows 95. While Microsoft and its customers herald the arrival of a new era in cutting-edge computing, I was wondering why it took 9 years to do what I could do by myself 5 years earlier (granted, it was a much streamed down version).

This incident was the first in a series of incidents that I have had with the way Microsoft works. Thus, it came as no surprise to me when Microsoft was tried and judged guilty of using its monopoly over operating systems to gain an unfair competitive advantage over other companies. In fact, the Microsoft style of operating has become so infamous that in tech circles we have given names to Microsoft's tactics. One of them is the so called, "Embrace and extend" tactic that Microsoft uses to toy with classic computing standards as well as international standards.

One example is that long before there was even a Microsoft or Windows, there were already standards for remote login, file and printer sharing across a computer network, even remote windowing (using the graphical desktop of a remote computer as if it were right in front of you). Yet, Microsoft decided for various reasons to totally reimplement these in a proprietary way. This created a barrier where, for nearly a decade, non Microsoft systems had a lot of difficulty sharing files and printers, login remotely nor do remote windowing. This Microsoft tactic is so well known that it even has its own Wikipedia page, titled "Embrace, extend and extinguish".

In case you think that Microsoft has changed its ways after being judged guilty, think again. Despite Microsoft Internet Explorer's leading position as the most used web browser, it is still one of the least standards compliant and Microsoft has no intention of changing that. Even worse are the recent stunts Microsoft has pulled in order to get its Open Office XML or OOXML standard fast-tracked by the International Standards Organization (ISO). Granted there is currently no substantial evidence, but there were enough anomalies to suspect foul play.

What About Linux?

Suffice to say, I figured it is time to switch to another product that does more for me as a customer. Over the past two years, I have installed and looked at several options, including Open SUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora Red Hat. They each had the features I was looking for, standards compliant, availability of software that I need (especially good if there's an open source version), large userbase (to ensure longevity as well as support), compatible with Unix (this is a work related criteria). However, they all lacked one thing, usability. I have to say, simply having a windowed graphical user interface does not guarantee a usable interface. The open source community really needs to rethink how their applications are designed for end-users.

Having eliminated all other popular operating systems, I was left with one choice I hadn't looked at in a while, Mac OS X. In the next article, I will explain why I finally settled on the spotted cat as my operating system of choice.

After Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions failed to meet the audience's expectation, the name "Wachowski Brothers" didn't have the glamor and audience draw it used to have. This is possibly why the Wachowski Brother's next film, V For Vendetta, did not do so well at the Singapore box office.

It is a pity, because V For Vendetta is one of the better movies released in 2006. It is a movie that explore timely themes I never thought Hollywood would ever dared to touch with a 10ft pole. The plot is almost a Star Trek-esque allegory of current world affairs, that is, if one ignored V's vengeful motivation for murder and revolution. For that, I give it kudos.

The movie revolves around a masked man who calls himself "V". Who is V? I'll let him introduce himself.

V calls himself a victim and villain. His vendetta is vengeance against the dystopian Big Brother government in England. Naturally, he is called a terrorist and murderer by the nation's leaders for bombing Old Bailey, the capital of England's judicial system as well as for murdering high ly prominent party leaders. Yet V is also the anti-hero of this movie, a lone man fighting against a government with a terrible, dark secret. As you can imagine, this is a movie where no one is truly good nor truly evil. V for Vendetta is like the visual tone pervasive throughout the movie, sheathed in so many shades of shades of gray. Yet somehow, V for Vendetta ends up shining a spotlight on both the black and the white.

For those of you who think that this is only a dark and gritty story, fear not for the movie is also replete with oddball comedic gems like the short video segment you see above. For those of you who are familiar with Benny Hill, watch for a signature Benny Hill sketch, which in my opinion is worth its weight in gold.

In all, V for Vendetta is a superb mix of action, satire, social commentary and all round good acting from leading actors Hugo Weaving (V) and Natalie Portman (Evey) as well as the entire supporting cast.

Today, I'm going to talk about an ice hockey movie. Not the Mighty Ducks, the other ice hockey movie. You know, the movie written by David E. Kelly who is well know for his works in Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Boston Legal and more.

The movie is "Mystery, Alaska", released 8 years ago in 1999. Yeah the movie was made in the last century. Yeah I'm an old fart, grow up.

Actually I need to make a correction. Mystery, Alaska is not really an ice hockey movie. In fact, I'm not even sure if it is really a movie at all. You see, the thing about any show written by David E. Kelly is that it is a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get. Mystery, Alaska is shot like a movie, is as long as a movie but what movie has a main cast of about 20 actors, opens up a dozen plot lines and doesn't end most of them?

The modern equivalent to Mystery, Alaska would be Friday Night Lights, the movie. As you may know, Friday Night Lights the movie sort of became the pilot episode and basis of Friday Night Lights, the television series.

Like Friday Night Lights, the movie revolves around a small Alaskan town of Mystery. The town lives and breaths ice hockey, ritualized by their weekly "Saturday game". In fact, the town believes that on their hockey pond, they cannot be beaten. The town becomes involved in a publicity stunt for the New York Rangers when their hometown team was featured in Sports Illustrated. This ultimately lead to a match between the underdog team from Mystery, Alaska and the professional New York Rangers. Sounds like a hockey movie doesn't it? Well, no because the Mystery team lost.

So what exactly is Mystery, Alaska the movie? It is a movie about good, earnest small town folks, their lives and their situation. If you like a good character driven movie, this movie's got it.

In my last post on Web 3.0, I talked about separating out individual pieces of content to its own web page but did not elaborate on why. Today, I'll talk about the merits of doing so. Lets start with the simple and obvious reasons first.

Deliver Content That Matters

The Internet has made information readily available to everyone. However, as I have mentioned in the first article of the series that most of that information is typically found in what amounts to an information junkyard, mixed in with other information that may not be relevant to the viewer.

Presenting only the content that matters to the viewer, that's the key. It is what Google has been doing all along. Simple presentation, only information thats important is shown.

The same should be done for Web 3.0 content. When presenting an article, keep it simple. Put the article on its own webpage, and do not decorate the article with irrelevant stuff. If possible, the only decoration should be a title logo indicating the article's source and one or two non distracting AdSense-style advertisement.

Browser Liberation

All the above leads me to the what I believe is the key feature of Web 3.0 technology, liberating web content from web browsers. Increasingly, web content is not viewed on a computer, inside a web browser application like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. The most commonly cited example is web surfing on mobile phones, but that isn't the only case.

Increasingly, web-based content is being used in ordinary applications. It started with behind-the-scene stuff like a software update feature that download and installs the latest version of the software from the Internet, or verifying your account information online before enabling software features meant for registered users. Some of you might be familiar with BitTorrent applications that check RSS feeds for the lastest stuff to download, that's yet another use of web-based content. These are only the initial uses. Some applications have gone one step further and actually displaying web-based content in the application itself.

Apple's iTunes application is the perfect example. How many of you noticed that the iTunes store, your iTunes song search results are actually web pages served from Apple's web servers? In fact, Apple has so seemlessly melded web and non-web content that even I do not know for sure exactly which parts of iTunes is generated by some remote server on the internet.

Some other applications include SongBird, an audio player, as well as online video player Joost. Both applications are built on Mozilla's web suite built on Mozilla's web application framework, the same framework that is used to build Mozilla's Netscape, FireFox and Camino web browser as well as Thunderbird email client. Both SongBird and Joost seamlessly integrate web-content within an installable application.

This is what Web 3.0 is about, not web services or semantic webs. Rather, it is the fact that the web will no longer revolve purely around web browsers. Instead, application programs that seamlessly integrate both local and web-based content will be the next wave in the evolution of the world wide web.

Dennis popped this question when we met last month. I figured since everybody's making their predictions right now, I might as well do the same. To me, Web 3.0 will be characterized by two changes to how websites are designed. The two changes are the support for standalone content and the liberation of content from browsers.

1) Standalone Content

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 revolve around content filled websites. Take any commercial web portal as an example, regardless if its MSN.com, Yahoo! or even Gamespot.com. Each web page is stuffed with a mish mash of different pieces of information. These frontpages are designed to appeal to a wide range of visitors, nothing wrong there but something is definitely wrong when almost every single webpage uses this approach. Its almost like visiting a junkyard.

This snapshot of MSN's website seen below is a perfect illustration. The web page is visually broken into a set of boxes outlined in cyan (or light blue). On the right side a series of three vertical boxes, each containing top news stories from different sources. There is MSNBC news in the top window, followed by sports news from Fox in the middle window and money related news in the bottom window. Each of these boxed windows contains content that I consider as a "standalone" piece of information that is potentially useful to someone. So why not pull that small box out and put it on its own web page, without being cluttered by all the other junk?

The same can be said for most of the other boxes too. Yet strangely, MSN never does this for you. Clicking on the MSNBC news title only brings you to the MSNBC main page, which contains even more boxes containing different stuff.

My point is this, while holistically each box of content is probably interesting to some visitor to MSN, not a single visitor is interested in every box of content. To illustrate the potential usefulness of standalone content, look at the two webpages linked below:

Webpage 1: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/240087
Webpage 2: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/printerfriendly/240087?printFormat=photo

Both pages display the exact same cooking recipe for Roasted Halibut with Walnut Crust. Which webpage is more useful to you? I'm sure if you are preparing this recipe, the second standalone webpage which only contains the recipe is much for useful.

Standalone content is about delivering to the customer only stuff that they want, nothing more. That's it for today. I'll discuss part 2, "Liberating Content from Web Browsers" another day.

After reading some positive reviews about Disney's new movie, Enchanted, I decided to give it a shot. So this afternoon, I dropped by Junction 8 to catch "Enchanted".

I liked it.

Overall the movie is not meant to be spectacular nor noteworthy, but it doesn't need to be. Enchanted is one of those movies that perfect illustrates what the power of a simple but well written story can do for a movie. And that is what Enchanted is, a boy-meet-girl love story with a Disney cartoon twist. The production values are extremely good (afterall, this is a Disney movie) and the actors are great. What I like most of all are the little references to past Disney classics crammed into this movie. Everything from Giselle singing to forest animals and birds, the use of the poisoned apple, a ballroom dance like the one in "Beauty and The Beast" and a whole lot more!

James Marsden really channeled a very believable Prince Charming um... Prince Edward. And of course who can forget Amy Adams as the ever lovely soon-to-be-Princess Giselle? I have always had a soft spot for musical numbers in movies, especially romantic movies. Enchanted has several so it naturally has a spot in my heart. Here's a sneak preview of one of those musical pieces.

Enchanted is definately one of the rare movies that I find worth keeping as a DVD.