Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by chris_c28

Gym with a Weekly/Monthly Pass in Penang

chris_c28 — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 21:46:18 +0800

I'm in Penang for a short vacation (3 weeks) and I'd like access to a decent gym during this period. Is there a gym here that offers a weekly or monthly no commitment pass option that also doesn't quote prices that would make me cough up blood? Fitness First in Island Plaza wanted RM398 for a 30 day pass. In comparison, a weekly pass for Fitness First in Sydney only costs AU$30. I didn't know Penang Island has a higher cost of living compared to Sydney.

Grad Career Dilemma

chris_c28 — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:14:27 +0800

Here's a personal dilemma of mine that has been bugging me lately. I apologise for the lengthy post in advance ....

Having recently graduated after 5 years of study in Australia, I have been offered 3 different graduate positions in Australia, the US and Hong Kong. I have serious issues trying to decide what's best for me, mainly due to concerns of me being Malaysian and a non-resident of any of these countries.

If I decide to continue working in Australia, I have the opportunity to apply for a permanent residency (non-sponsored) which I believe is more accessible than equivalent green card schemes in the US and Hong Kong. While the position in Australia pays well, there are lower benefits and little career advancement opportunities. As a much smaller/unknown firm, there is less training and less opportunities to build a long term career.

The offer in the US is for a major software company, a position which has the potential to open a lot of career opportunities, simply based upon the training I'll get and the high profile of the firm in the industry. However, I will be bound by the conditions of my sponsored working visa (H1B) and will not be able to apply for a permanent visa until much later down the road, assuming no bigger GFC occurs in the interim. For whatever it's worth, this position is extremely competitive and it required the greatest effort to secure.

The offer in Hong Kong is also for a major bank, which opens career opportunities within the finance industry. This is relevant for my other degree in Finance which provides the flexibility of career options in a different field. Again, this will be a sponsored visa, but I guess settling down in HK will be a lot more challenging than the US or Australia. As an expat hire, both the HK and US packages include relocation benefits, so living costs will not be an issue.

I am still young and have no strings attached, but I would like to build a solid career. I have traveled extensively, so living in different countries and/or a different environment is not an issue (I prefer an environment as different as possible from Malaysia). I'd appreciate some advice from the experienced folks here, especially from those who had a similar predicament.

Visa Limitations Annoying

chris_c28 — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:36:47 +0800

I'd just like to rant a little here about how I've been facing visa frustrations for being Malaysian, which I believe applies to many Malaysian professionals intending to work overseas too. I intend to work in the US when I graduate, but I recently discovered the "joys" of the US's H1B visa system, where we have to compete with droves of people from hundreds of countries for the 59,000 allocations simply for being Malaysian. My Singaporean and Aussie friends have a significant number pre-allocated (reserved) for them, so they technically only have to compete among themselves. Above that, we're not eligible for any visa waivers and are subjected to home country restrictions for J1 visas again because Malaysians are seen to be one of the most likely people to abuse their visas. No thanks to the thousands of Malaysians living and working illegally in the US, Australia and Britain.

In addition, I discovered that Malaysia is now being reviewed by Britain for this exact problem. I can only expect Australia to begin placing restrictions on us anytime soon due to the stupidity of my own countrymen. Trying to obtain permanent residency in order to freely work in Australia isn't as straightforward either as they subject Malaysians to the IELTS test for English proficiency. Having spoken and used English all my life, I find this insulting having to be tested as it's not considered my main language simply because of my citizenship. What happened to our government's efforts to improve English language education to first world standards?

The main issue here is of course I'd like to be proud to be Malaysian when I meet these immigration officials when applying for visas and not having to prove to them that I do not intend to be an illegal migrant, hence avoiding being stereotyped (typical FOB nonsense yada yada). I also find it unfair when the actions of irresponsible Malaysians working illegally overseas have hurt those trying to gain legitimate entry for education, business, skilled jobs or training. Malaysia is a well-respected nation, but this positive view wouldn't last long if people start to associate us with illegal migration. There is no reason for Malaysians to be so desperate that they have to illegally migrate. I don't feel proud when I hear accounts of Malaysians working illegally washing plates at dodgy restaurants, washing clothes, picking fruits, etc overseas (these are the jobs that we're hiring migrant workers to do in our own country). They simply feed the stereotype machine. Of course, this whole issue wouldn't be of much concern if Malaysia has adequate support and opportunities for my field that are as good as those offered overseas, but unfortunately it does not, but that's opening another can of worms.

Career Dilemma

chris_c28 — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:12:55 +0800

I have this little complicated dilemma that I'd hope someone here would be able to provide some advice.

I'm currently doing an undergrad in Australia (Software Eng) and I'm in my final year of study (yes, I'm Malaysian). I'm a Co-Op student, which means that I get paid by an industry sponsor whom I have to intern for during the duration of the scholarship. The scholarship isn't bonded beyond that, which means I do not have to work for them when I graduate should I chose not to. As I'm an international student, this amounts to quite a substantial amount, but the amount is commensurate with the amount of work requirements I have to satisfy as an intern.

Recently, I've been offered a chance to do an internship at a large software giant in Redmond for 3 months over this winter/summer, which if successful will also land me a nice graduate offer. However, taking up this opportunity would mean I have to give up my final year of sponsorship. The current place I work for is a small firm and definitely does not have the industry "weight" that said software giant will offer. I'm really interested in doing this as I feel that this will give me an opportunity to learn more things about the industry than I could ever learn from my current internship, but is it worth the sacrifice of having to pay $20k for my final year of study out of my own pocket? Affordability isn't the main issue here, but opportunity costs are.

What are your thoughts?

Why system("pause")?

chris_c28 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:36:11 +0800

This is just my rant, so ignore at will if it doesn't interest you....

I've seen way too many threads here that use system("pause") in a lame attempt at trying to stop the debugging window from shutting down. This is poor style and should never be used as it invokes a system call unnecessarily and would only ever work on Windows, hence affecting portability. There are better alternatives such as an infinite loop, using breakpoints to debug or just Ctrl+F5 if you're using Visual Studio (which I'd assume most are), so why aren't these more appropriate methods being taught?

HP Pavillion dv3000 Availability - Malaysia

chris_c28 — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:06:51 +0800

Hi,
I'm doing a general market research and would like to know the availability status for the HP Pavillion dv3000 notebook in the Malaysian market. As there are many dealers and HP resellers here, I'd like to know if this model is currently available in Malaysia. If not, do we have a release timeframe?
Please also provide the price and configuration for the Malaysian market.

http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2008/03/19/hp-r...-inch-pavilion/

Thanks

HP Malaysia Defunct?

chris_c28 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:40:00 +0800

Ok, so I've been trying to call the HP Malaysia office at this number:

http://welcome.hp.com/country/my/en/contact/office_locs.html

No one ever picks up the phone! "We are sorry, all our operators are unavailable. Please hold....". I've held on for 30 minutes each time. Have they moved and forgotten to update their details? It doesn't matter what time as I've called at 8:30, 9:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00, but it's the same response. At least put someone to answer the phone if you're going to list it on your site!

Does anyone know of an alternative way to call them? I can't call their hotline number.

I've also tried e-mailing them, but as usual, no one replies to the e-mails, not even sales enquiry. I've also contacted their "live chat person", but this person failed to reply. They don't seem interested in selling anything.

UPDATE: HP EVENTUALLY replied to my sales enquiry. I got back the same nice, helpful sales rep, the exact person I'm looking for as I've had a good experience with her before. I guess they must have some database for returning customers.
According to her, the HP Towers number won't work because their call centre isn't located there.

Anyway, everything is plain sailing now. E-mail replies seem quick when they know you're interested in purhasing from them.

Any nx8420/nw8440 users, help....

chris_c28 — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:55:57 +0800

This is quite an unorthodox issue, but I'd appreciate some comments if you own any of this series....

After extended use, it seems that the switch cover has exhibited an anomaly. This can also be a side effect from my last screen replacement performed by HP, but I didn't realise it until recently.
Basically, the top left corner of the notebook, when pressed, flexes quite a bit and has a slight creaking sound. If you look closely, there's a gap between the switch cover and the base assembly because the switch cover plastic is slightly curved upwards, meaning it doesn't seem to attach tightly to the base. The right side doesn't seem to flex as much, but the switch cover plastic on the whole flexes quite a bit.

Is this normal or should it be very tightly attached to the base without much flex. Afaik, it doesnt happen to my nc6400, but that is a smaller notebook and the design structure is slightly different.

I've attached a picture for comparison.

C++ : Single Char String to Char Conversion

chris_c28 — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:12:50 +0800

I have a little issue in c++ that I need help with (from the sifus here):
I have generated a parser using Spirit (that's not important). Now, I have tokens whose values are essentially strings and I'd like to be able to convert a single character string into a character type.
Now that's quite easy, but the challenge is I'd also like to capture the escape characters if they're presented in the string and convert them into their appropriate char.
In short, I'd like to be able to perform these conversions:
"a" == 'a'
"n" == 'n'
"\n" == '\n'
"\b" == '\b'
"5" == '5'

The problem is when I iterate over the string, I get '\' as a separate character from '\n', but that's expected since my input is "\n".

Are there any built-in converters that allow me to perform such conversions? I have access to the boost libraries.

TIA.

[addedon]March 25, 2007, 8:43 pm[/addedon]Anyone????

Microsoft Office 2007 Pro Academic

chris_c28 — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:30:01 +0800

Are academic retail versions available for sale in Malaysia? If so, where can I get it (and for how much)? Do I have to be a Malaysian student to qualify or it's valid as long as I'm a student (and have proof).

[addedon]February 12, 2007, 5:11 pm[/addedon]So, there are no such versions offered locally? The Microsoft Malaysia Rep doesn't have a clue either.

Tomcat Help

chris_c28 — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:45:09 +0800

I need some help with a Tomcat setup on Linux. Basically I have a webapp which serializes to certain files in my webapp/App directory. Now, whenever I start Tomcat in Linux using the startup.sh script in the bin folder, the application works, but all the IO files are written and expected to be in the bin folder too. I want to know how to set the working path/directory for Tomcat in Linux.

In Windows, you get a GUI that allows you to enter the working path, so your app works within that specified folder. I need to know the equivalent of this in Linux.

Any Tomcat experts?

Thanks!

[addedon]February 4, 2007, 1:14 pm[/addedon]I solved it (hacked). If anyone is interested to know, just create a softlink from your webapps/MyApp directory to the startup and shutdown scripts in /bin and use that to start tomcat.

Notebooks without OS

chris_c28 — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 17:16:48 +0800

I hope this is the right thread to discuss this issue, but if it isn't feel free to move it.

Lately, I realised that many notebook manufacturers are selling notebooks without Windows pre-installed. Often, such notebooks are installed with FreeDOS to ensure that the system has an operating system so the notebooks are technically "operational".

However, we all know that virtually nobody keeps the FreeDOS installed because it's not very useful. The issue is, do most people then install Windows over it using a copy they have legitimately purchased, a non-genuine copy of Windows or a flavour of Linux. If most have taken the non-genuine Windows route, doesn't this encourage more software piracy?

I'm not an advocate for Microsoft, so I have always wondered why it's not easier for the manufacturers to pre-install a Linux distro on it. I know there are issues with support, but FreeDOS notebooks don't have software support anyway. A pre-installed Linux distro will ensure that the notebooks are usable out-of-the-box, with a friendly GUI and common set of everyday applications. I can imagine an ill-informed shopper, with no prior experience or knowledge of Linux, will simply see this as an opportunity to install a non-genuine Windows OS when he/she finds out that the notebook isn't as usable as what they expect.

Comments, views?

HP nc6400 and nc8430

chris_c28 — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 00:21:21 +0800

Does anybody here have any experience with the HP nc6400 and/or the nc8430 models?
I would also like to know the latest pricing for these 2 models in Malaysia.
Can I configure the nc6400 with WXGA+ screen? I believe you can do that in the US, but apparently it's not configurable in other markets.