tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-370663442024-03-13T01:17:16.672-07:00Anh's blogTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-76268851466386371152010-08-31T05:03:00.000-07:002010-09-02T08:45:32.020-07:00The most expensive dictionary yet!It's been announced that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is moving online, at the cost of the hundred-pound print versions being terminated, forever.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/30/oxford-english-dictionary_1_n_698588.htmlMost interestingly, the price tag is set at around £250 a year per subscription. This means £2.5K per 10 years, which can be compared with the £1K print version Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-18915211764859115402010-08-21T05:40:00.001-07:002010-08-21T05:40:48.800-07:00Reading and the InternetAn interesting article discusses a new book called “The Shallows”, whose thesis is that the Internet has altered our brain, in a bad way.http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/20/internet-altering-your-mind?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterThe author, Nicholas Carr has previously written an article on Atlantics accusing Google (and the Internet bandwagon) of making it stupid. Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-52579930818894066692010-05-02T16:48:00.000-07:002010-05-02T16:52:17.363-07:00Cannot vs can notFound a great article discussing how cannot differ from can not or can't. I only recently had this mistake pointed out to me.The full article is here (also read the Further Discussion part):http://alexfiles.com/cannot.shtmlIn summary:cannot: not able to do something. E.g. I cannot swimcan not (or can't): able to to it, but choose not to. For example: I can not studyTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-79328613200915347362010-04-27T04:53:00.000-07:002010-04-27T04:59:20.432-07:00List of useful Linux commandsFor myself:1. tar zcf output Folder Archive the folder to .tar.gz2. ls -lt Listing, sort by modified time3. tar ztf file See tar file content4. find directory -name '*key' Finding all files ending with 'key'5. Ctrl+Z, fg, bg Suspend the process, bring the process to foreground, background respectively6. a2ps -o output ascii_fileConvert the Ascii file into ps, for better printingTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-36426710688037598182010-04-15T06:33:00.000-07:002010-04-15T07:45:19.235-07:00Notes on Java Threads and ConcurrencyI was taught Thread & Concurrency five years ago and it was one of the most interesting and useful modules I have ever taken. But consider how much time has elapsed, one should be forgiven for forgetting some of the stuff he learned. In fact, it is always a good thing to forget something and then re-learn it again years later, so you could look at it from a different angles and probably gainTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-63113769267900957952009-11-12T14:48:00.000-08:002009-11-12T14:52:03.729-08:00Interesting article on typesWhat a coincidence! Just when the students are pulling their hairs trying to grasp the concept of interfaces in Java, I came across this well written, comprehensive article explaining type, data abstraction and polymorphism. These concepts are presented rather theoretically, but quite easy to understand as the authors relate them to features in programming languages.Highly recommended!The link isTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-35819574883312944362009-09-15T06:42:00.000-07:002009-09-15T07:27:06.658-07:00Things learned from P2P'09Besides many excellent technical papers presented at the P2P'09 conference in Seattle, I am particularly impressed with the 3 keynote speeches. Videos of these talks are now available on the Website (I was sitting at the back, therefore can't be found). Just like to blog a few lines here to remind me to not forget what were communicated:1. Ian Clark, creator of the Freenet Project, kicks off withTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-19056677262136127182009-06-17T06:40:00.000-07:002009-06-17T07:14:29.457-07:00A note on CAN implementationContent Addressable Network is an unique structured P2P system. Its topology is a d-dimensional torus. This overlay offer constant states (number of neighbours per nodes) and short hop counts (in terms of routing path length). Some works cited CAN as using hyper-cube space as its topology, which is a mistake. It is clearly stated in the original CAN paper that the space wrapped around, meaning Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-55896450873087865232009-06-16T03:13:00.001-07:002009-06-16T03:50:58.832-07:00The cost of privacyA Slashdot article shows links to an interesting article about the Hidden Cost of Privacy, which also caught Bruce Schieier's attention. As Bruce himself said, this article presents valid points, they are summarized as below:1. Too much paperworks in the "process" of protecting one's privacy could be so overwhelming that it has negative effects on increasing one's awareness of his own privacy.2.Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-9940724778942092702009-06-03T11:05:00.001-07:002009-06-03T11:21:52.993-07:00Binary search tree feature with TreeSetThe following information is for the TreeSet class in Java.As the name suggests, this class implements a tree datastructure, achieving the complexity of O(logN) with respects to add(), remove() and contains() methods. Take the last method, contains(k), where k is the search key as an example. The implementation of TreeSet will make sure this method return True or False within O(logN). Now if k Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-22595331454289571992009-04-28T06:01:00.000-07:002009-04-28T06:07:55.508-07:00A notes on Ubuntu's fontsThis note is for ones like me who moved from Redhat family to the Ubuntu community. It can be easily noted that the fonts used in Firefox and Thunderbird are very different.For Thunderbird, it can be changed in the Preferences/Fonts to match the default settings used in Fedora, for instance.For Firefox, the fix is not that simple. Thanks to helps from a friend, the gist of the problem lies in theTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-4652258000647402062009-03-31T06:26:00.000-07:002009-06-04T03:43:38.341-07:00Exporting diagrams from LatexIt's more common to import pictures/diagrams into Latex.The Message Sequence Chart (msc) package in Latex is brilliant at drawing diagrams like protocols, UML message sequences. Unlike the algorithm package (alg2.sty), the MSC environment doesn't let you export its content to external files.The reason you may want to export these graphs is to include them into your Beamer slides, the environment Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-26733671226921232662008-12-02T04:12:00.000-08:002008-12-02T04:26:33.202-08:00Bittorrent hits the news againStarting with an article from the Register, condemning Bittorrent of starting the war on other network-friendly applications such as VoIP and killing the Internet.The P2P community responded keenly to the news. Some ponder the ease of NAT travelling this "improvement" would bring. Others turn absolutely furious against the article making mountain out of molehill. Later on (not much later to be Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-49945509000391046502008-05-14T17:03:00.000-07:002008-05-14T17:25:18.790-07:00Open office 3.0 previewThe 3.0 beta version of the most popular open source software, OpenOffice has been releasedrecently. It remains the only document editor that I use to produce Word files. The most significant added feature of this new release is the native support for Mac. Don't know how they did it, but it looks (and really is) just another cool Mac applications. It means no need to run X11 before using the Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-49862629266741267932008-05-11T15:20:00.001-07:002009-06-04T03:43:08.642-07:00Vietnam mentioned in a Firefox - virus related newsIt is the very fist time I read an article in Slashdot mentioning Vietnam. My beloved country drew attention from Firefox, as an user discovered Trojan in the Vietnamese language pack for the infamous browser. The reporter, named Hai Nam Nguyen posted the news which was quickly confirmed by Firefox. A high-school friend of my is called Hai Nam Nguyen as well. He came to the national University, Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-65746728362348230312008-05-11T14:33:00.000-07:002008-05-11T15:17:23.243-07:00Hierarchical structure of network discoveredPublished in the Nature journal, the work from a group a researcher from Santa Fe Institute (SFI) reveals that for a complex network, there is an underlying hierarchical structure regarding the connectivity among nodes. Graph cluster could be one form of hierarchical network, where small clusters make up a bigger ones that make up the network. The same can be said for modules in biochemical Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-15985390007544939382008-05-11T14:00:00.001-07:002008-05-11T14:30:11.503-07:00The number 43 I've happened to bump in to this number 43 a number of times recently. Wikipedia did not have much information about this mysterious number. After all, it's not mathematicians who bring all the good stories. Here are my 2 cents.Most nerds must be familiar with number 42, as the answer for everything. The number that takes an alleged super computers years to come up with. Well, 43=42+1, doesn't Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-40710606003162555302008-05-08T17:06:00.000-07:002008-05-08T17:46:48.445-07:00Another Mac vs PC story Yes, just another story of Apple vs Microsoft. Blah, blah, blah ...Just to set the background, I was reading some stories with my newly acquired, blindly shining white Macbook, then I stumbled on the recent cover story on Business week, titled The Mac is in the Gray Flannel suit. It lays out an interesting and insightful discussion of the war between Mac and PC, from a business perspective. To Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-66641447347483975532008-05-08T11:57:00.000-07:002008-05-08T13:02:02.891-07:00Kraken worm dissected Kraken were recently believed to be twice as big as the infamous Storm worm. There are debates on its estimated size, but it should have the army of at least several hundreds of thousands of zombie to take up such big headlines. I blogged about Storm worm being a hot research topic not very long time ago. It found the way to some of the most prestigious conferences, NDSI for example. As Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-63270917212112102492008-05-05T09:29:00.001-07:002008-05-05T09:43:19.693-07:00Code of honor for the malware market Laugh of the day for me ! The creator of the Zeus malware added the End User License Agreement (EULA) to his intellectual property. This is just a next, rational move for any emerging, profitable market of selling virus, malware online. The basic restrictions are: no redistribution to any other business and no submission to anti-virus company. Catch 22 here. Why would a malware buyer turn Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-88360093084013705552008-05-03T14:07:00.000-07:002008-05-03T14:44:38.137-07:00Donald Knuth voiced his thought on programmings Just in case the name does not ring a bell to you, Donald is the author of the infamous books The Art of Programming Language. And some may have known, he also invented the TeX language that powers our beloved, amazing LaTex. He was recently interviewed and the rather long script are published here. Credits to the Slashotter who found this. Here are my personal best bits:1. He obviously has Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-66473692688604182012008-04-29T18:06:00.000-07:002008-04-29T18:58:05.103-07:00Acrobat compatibility problem with PDFExpressPDFExpress is the online PDF validator tool that check if your PDF file is correctly formatted so that it can be published by IEEE CS and viewed online by IEEExplorer. The tale is that the error that I got back says "Acrobat version is less than 5.0". The innocent guess was something to do with the compatibility nonsense when I was generating the PDF file. I usually do these:latex file.texdvipdfTien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-20698725287916015962008-04-24T16:31:00.000-07:002008-04-24T17:10:52.384-07:00When good guys doing bad thingsThe recent USENIX conference NDSI has been slashdotted a lot. One very interesting paper describe how people pollute Stormnet, one of the biggest botnet, and bring it down to knees. One thing I learn from this paper is that the current Storm botnet is organized in a structured P2P overlay. It implements one of the very simple yet effective overlay called Kademlia. So once infected, the bot Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-76704680378081525772008-04-24T05:42:00.000-07:002008-04-24T08:14:31.522-07:00Java to open source and the story of software licensesSun Microsystem is currently removing the last hurdles in the run towards freeing its famous Java platform.The story reminds me of the days when I first used Linux. Discovering and experiencing with free, open source software is great. However, one thing that bugged me was that none of the Linux distributions has bundled Sun's Java Runtime Environment. Instead, there was a weird pre-installed Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37066344.post-75967653260984440912008-04-23T10:33:00.000-07:002008-04-23T11:09:07.150-07:00Google app engine - the next best things ?Haven't got time to catch up with recent news, but so glad that I did eventually. In "recent" news, Google announced its new Google app engine. It immediately sparked commotions not only in the Geek-world, but also in business world. A great review of the new product can be found here. Long story short:1. Google gets so proud of its extremely scalable infrastructure that it now offers us to Tien Tuan Anh Dinhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03563259235038536712noreply@blogger.com0