One Reason You should hate Anti-Virus companies

Darn. After I signed up and downloaded the trial version of their product. It never stops sending me this stupid reminder, everyday. To stop this, you need to click a relatively small hyperlink at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe yourself.

It's a curse right?

Apa Macam Ni?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is investigating a hacker attack on Citigroup Inc. that led to the theft of tens of millions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Citing anonymous government officials, the Journal reported that the hackers were connected to a Russian cyber gang. Two other computer systems, at least one of connected to a U.S. government agency, were also attacked.

Citigroup denied the report. "We had no breach of the system and there were no losses, no customer losses, no bank losses," said Joe Petro, managing director of Citigroup's Security and Investigative services. "Any allegation that the FBI is working a case at Citigroup involving tens of millions of losses is just not true."

The Journal reported that the attack on Citigroup's Citibank subsidiary was detected over the summer, although it may have occurred up to one year earlier. The FBI, the National Security Agency, the Homeland Security Department and Citigroup worked together to investigate the attack.

Cyber crime is of increasing concern to businesses and the federal government, with President Barack Obama calling it one of the "most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."

Obama is expected on Tuesday to announce the appointment of Howard A. Schmidt, a former eBay and Microsoft executive, as the government's cyber security coordinator.

Think Out of the Big Box

A bank customer of us was requesting helps to solve a sudden problem dealing with their IBM DWE server. Apparently from certain date onwards, all the processes executed within the DWE console were failed as shown in the following figure:



Interesting because there are few applications running in DWE and some of them already run for more then 2 years without any problems and now all of them failed at once?

Looking at the logs, obviously db2cmd.exe is throwing out a return code of 5 with exception code SQL1042C which means:



And oh shit, what the hell is the meaning of return code 5?

Tried to google, lookup IBM forums, contacted IBM Support and no one can tell me the definition of code 5?

The real fun is almost all other DB2/DWE components are running fine. db2cc, db2hc, db2start, db2stop, db2licm and many others I tried works. It seems like db2cmd.exe being cursed.

I did many other novel investigations. To name a few:

1. Rule out Windows environment variables
- Open up an instance of command prompt, clear off every environment variable.
- Run db2cmd.exe, still failed with the same error message.

2. Rule out Windows registry
- Open up regedit, throw away \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IBM and one under Current User(Of course, you backup it first)
- Run db2cmd.exe, still failed with the same error message.

3. Rule out corrupted files #1
- Copy db2cmd.exe and all the necessary dll files from my machine into the server.
- Open up command prompt, and point every thing to my new db2cmd.exe folder
- Run db2cmd.exe, still failed with the same error message.

4. Rule out corrupted files #2
- Reinstall DB2 Admin Client (Same FP)
- Run db2cmd.exe, still failed with the same error message.

5. Rule out corrupted files #3
- Reinstall DB2 everything (Latest FP)
- Run db2cmd.exe, still failed with the same error message.

6. Trace through AD GPO/Windows stuffs
- Use gpmc.msc, gpresult, gpedit.msc and many windows tools
- Trace into event viewers
- Look for suspicious items. Nothing found

7. Diagnosing DB2 #1
- Set DB2TEMPDIR to non-existing folder/folder where current user don't have security right to access/write
- db2cmd.exe normally will throw DB2CMD.EXE -> 0, Access denied message.
- Nope, still DB2CMD.EXE -> 5

8. Diagnosing DB2 #2
- Put DIAGLEVEL to 4, restart db2, run db2cmd.exe
- Nothing useful in db2diag.log

9. Diagnosing DB2 #3
- Use db2trc, turn it on, run db2cmd.exe, turn it off.
- Nothing useful.

10. Diagnosing DB2 #4
- Execute db2setcp and db2clpsetcp independently with success.

11. Diagnosing DB2 #5
- Fooling around using db2set, removing settings, changing value to bogus one and adding things.
- Still Error code 5 with db2cmd.exe

12. Finding what the heck is error code 5
- Open db2cmd.exe with notepad, look for any potential hints. Found a list of API used. Cross check API name with return code 5 using Google.
- Seems like return code 5 is usually associated with Access Denied error.

13. Finale
Google again "db2cmd.exe -> 5" +SQL1042C. Found one related post in a china forum. Apparently the fella who faces the problem is a student who was trying out DB2 for some homeworks or so. No solution from the post either.

Very interesting... What is the connection or similarity between a student machine in china and a production level server machine in Malaysia? Indeed, I found the answer to this question and yes, it solved the problem!

Any idea? :D

Pelikan Warehouse Sales 2009

Pelikan should definitely send out flyers to all its shareholders about any incoming warehouses. I never aware of such an event until I accidentally saw it on TheStar newspaper yesterday night.

I've long wanted to get myself a decent Pelikan pen because my current one keeps failing on me with its loosely aligned cap.

Me and my bro reached Puchong around 9am+ then we stopped by at some restaurant to have our breakfast. PappaRich sucks because apparently there's no breakfast set. I need to fork out extra bucks by making each item order one by one. It sucks.

We arrived at Pelikan warehouse around 10:30am. They actually used their cafeteria as the venue for this sales. Well, not really as crowded as some of the warehouse sales I been to but still I'm having some hard time try to squeeze myself into some of the boothes. One of the discount bin was emptied, not sure what goodies were in there before being deserted.





You pick up the items you wanna buy, then you proceed to the check out booths. Once each item being checked into the payment list, you can move on to the payment counter and settle it once and for all. See the payment counters below?



I got myself a Pelikan Tradition R215 Rollerball Pen and a K7 pen along with some refills. It costs me near to RM300. One thing to comment is that the higher end product lines showcased during the sales are pretty limited. R215 comes with 3 years warranty.





All my looted goods are inside this picture :D



Total damage is RM600 for the day, Phew....

Pelikan to raise RM188.74m from rights issue

Written by Joseph Chin

KUALA LUMPUR: Pelikan International Corporation Bhd plans to raise RM188.74 million from a proposed renounceable rights issue. This will be on the basis of one rights share for every two existing ordinary shares held.

The company said on Wednesday, Oct 21 said the rights issue involved up to 171.58 million new shares of RM1 each at an issue price of RM1.10 each.

If fully subscribed, the proposed rights issue would increase the company's share capital from RM343 million to RM515 million.

Pelikan president and chief executive officer Loo Hooi Keat, said the group had embarked on an aggressive expansion throughout Europe and Asia in the past years, which were funded mainly by internally-generated funds and some borrowings.

"In this, we have tasted much success, demonstrated in our revenue rising from around RM500 million in FY2005 to RM1.3 billion in FY2008," he said.

Loo said Pelikan's focus in the future was to grow the group's business in the global market.

"In view of this, we hope for the rights issue to increase our share capital base to be commensurate with our increased volume of business, and more significantly, enhance our balance sheet with greater financial flexibility in our continued business expansion," he said.

On the group's prospects, Loo said: "We're optimistic this exercise will fuel the growth developed so far, and at the same time prepare us for our expansion plans in the near future."

The proposed rights issue is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2010. Maybank Investment Bank Bhd is the adviser to Pelikan's proposed rights issue.

Perkiness of the Strongest and the Confession of the Drop Out

I never expect myself to be caught in any new gadget launching midnight rush fiesta but hey everyone got their first time. It's all started with one of our colleagues yelling and shouting about the HTC Touch2 65 unit 65% discount launching event hosted at Sunway Pyramid, 9-October to 11-October-2009 on first come first serve basis. I thought it would be fun for most of our R&D personnels to hang out together late at night since he proposed that we go there around 2AM queuing up. 10-October 2AM, what the hell.. Could I end up being robbed by some hooligans? Well, I actually reached there around 2:20AM and spent like 15 mins to find the place to queue, and and I gotten myself a "virtual" number of 48, which I counted myself. Then after 30 mins, I count again and this time 53. Well well, looks like many of the queue cutters are on the move. Luckily I'm surrounded by smart fellas, literally. The guys in front of me were supplying the paper and pen and the fella right behind me was spending some efforts to make sure people who spends hours to queue got a queue number in the list. The physical number which had my name craved is #56. Wow, imagine what will be my number when it is 10am later. Anyway, I only to get my hand on the phone around 3:30PM in the afternoon, phew. that's a 13 hours effort for a RM560 Touch2 phone :D

Some hiccups during my queuing experience:

Around 5 or 6AM (Sorry, I really lost my sense of time), a family of 3, an uncle, auntie and their son I guessed making noises until almost 9AM. Wow, very persistent.
I don't really get what's the point they try to make, think it'something to do with why their name was not in the list blah blah... They retreated under the ambience of Booooo-ness of course.

Then around 10AM to 11AM, another family of auntie and her daugthers I think making some complaints like "In the flyer, it stated from 10AM, I don't care whether others queuing from what time, when I reached at 10AM I deserve one unit from the 65"... Bang Head... Joke of the Day.


My first time, turned out to be a very inspiring lesson to me.. When a person gets old and retired from work.. they really have time for non sense.

Phew!

Case study on Najibnomics

Eddy said: Freakonomics? Hell no, it's something else.



KUALA LUMPUR - THE Harvard Business School in Boston will undertake a case study on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak?s courageous and bold initiatives to tackle the financial crisis.

The case study, to be used as a subject in the core curriculum of the macro-economic module, will be a capstone on how crisis is transmitted internationally.

It will also discuss how a country that has sound fundamentals and good regulations could withstand an international crisis.

The country is known for consolidating the banking, insurance and financial institutions following the 1998 currency crisis, said the Harvard Business School Alumni Club of Malaysia in a statement yesterday.

Besides highlighting Najib?s bold economic reforms, the Harvard study would also focus on the various economic liberalisation moves, measures taken to prepare the country for the Asean Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organisation negotiations, said alumni president Tan Sri G. Gnanalingam.

'Harvard will also bring to attention how the country positions itself on free trade agreements with other countries and how its economic zones are poised for further foreign direct investment attractions.

'We in the alumni are proud to be associated with such a work as the study will become part of the syllabus programme and will be taught to thousands of international students.

'Moreover, students at Harvard will hear about what the Government and Bank Negara Malaysia have done since the 1998 crisis to regulate and stabilise the economy,' said Mr Gnanalingam.

The previous case study on Malaysia published in April 2002, 'Malaysia ? Capital and Control' written by Rawi Abdelai and Laura Alfaro, has been one of Harvard?s most successful case studies.

It analysed the political economy of capital controls in Malaysia during the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis.

It has been taught in every class for the last seven years not only to Harvard Business School students taking a masters degree in business administration but also to senior managers who attended executive programmes. -- THE STAR/ANN

Xerox to Acquire ACS in $6.4 Billion Deal

Eddy said: Hmmm.. what do you think, Sir?

By KEVIN KINGSBURY

Xerox Inc. agreed to buy business-services provider Affliiated Computer Services Inc. in a deal initially valued at $6.4 billion, as the copier company follows other technology giants in increasing its services revenue.

Xerox, based in Norwalk, Conn., has suffered from declining sales of copiers and printers, and the accompanying diminishing uses of ink, toner and paper. The deal for Dallas-based ACS is expected to triple Xerox's services revenue to an estimated $10 billion next year from 2008's $3.5 billion.

The move also represents the first bold move by Xerox Chief Executive Ursula Burns, who took over on July 1. Ms. Burns called the deal "a game-changer" for her company.

Xerox's agreement comes a week after Dell Inc. agreed to buy information-technology service provider Perot Systems Corp. for $3.9 billion. The sector's recent merger activity -- which includes Hewlett-Packard Co.'s purchase last year of Electronic Data Services -- leaves Accenture PLC, Computer Sciences Corp. and Unisys Corp. as some of the larger services companies still independent.

Based on the closing prices Friday, Xerox's deal values ACS shares at $63.11 each, a 34% premium to Friday's closing price and 55 cents below the stock's record high set in February 2006. Holders would get $18.60 and 4.935 shares of Xerox for each ACS share. Xerox also will assume $2 billion of ACS debt and issue $300 million of convertible preferred stock.


ACS's purchase price is similar to the $6.2 billion offer made two years ago by Cerberus Capital Management. Some investors objected early to the proposal, reasoning that the board could get a more lucrative offer. But such a bid never materialized, and Cerberus pulled its offer, citing turmoil in credit markets.

ACS eventually requested the resignations of five independent directors.

The combined Xerox-ACS company would have $22 billion of annual revenue, $17 billion of which would come in on a recurring basis. As much as $400 million in synergies are projected to be realized in the first three years after the deal's closing, slated for the first quarter.

ACS President and CEO Lynn Blodgett said, "We also know that for ACS to expand globally and differentiate our offerings through technology, we need a partner with tremendous brand strength and leading innovation. Xerox offers that and more to bring our business to the next level while strengthening theirs."

ACS has grown over its more than 20 years into a 74,000-person company with a broad product pipeline that includes consulting. That breadth has insulated ACS from a broad downturn in information-technology spending, allowing the company to snap up smaller companies and hire new employees. It serves the commercial and government sectors through long-term contracts.

About a quarter of ACS's revenue comes from the health-care sector, which includes commercial and government contracts. At an investor day earlier this month, ACS was confident that it could increase its Medicaid contracts as well as benefit from a push for more electronic health records, according to a J.P. Morgan research note.

Xerox makes printers for offices and large-scale production, but garners most of its sales from its services businesses, which include maintenance contracts, printing supplies and lease revenues. The recession has exacerbated weak demand for printers, and results have been muted by a strong dollar as much of the 54,000-employee company's revenue comes from overseas.

Nonetheless, Xerox is perceived to be in solid shape – and certainly much stronger than the near-bankrupt condition that Anne Mulcahy assumed in July 2001 when she became CEO.

IBM to acquire analytics-software maker SPSS in all-cash deal worth $1.2B

On Tuesday July 28, 2009, 9:55 am EDT

ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) -- IBM Corp. said Tuesday it agreed to acquire SPSS Inc., a Chicago-based company that makes software to help businesses spot future trends as well as shifts in consumer patterns and behavior, for $1.2 billion.

N.Y.-based IBM said the acquisition of SPSS for $50 per share will boost its business-analytics technology, which can also be used to help reduce credit risk, increase customer loyalty and detect and prevent fraud across diverse industries, it said.

The deal represents a 42 percent premium to SPSS closing price Monday of $35.09. The news of the deal sent SPSS shares soaring in premarket trading on Tuesday, and it recently changed hands at $49.11, up $14.02, or 40 percent. IBM shares shed 46 cents to $117.17.

SPSS software predicts customer reactions, including to sales pitches and marketing campaigns. Clients include financial firms, telecommunications companies, government agencies and educational institutions.

The deal is expected to close later in the second half, subject to approval by SPSS shareholders and regulatory clearances.

Separately, IBM also said it has acquired Ounce Labs Inc., a privately held software company in Waltham, Mass., for an undisclosed amount. IBM said the company makes software that helps businesses reduce the risk and costs associated with security and compliance concerns.

Methodology Clashes?

We are all enslaved by our own dogma. Don't you agree?

I'd disagreed. Being dogmatic shouldn't be mistakenly treated as being held to facts as with stubborn to persistence. And yet facts must not be confused with common senses.

If in the entire universe, there are only 2 software development methodology and equal hordes of followers for each, can you tell which method is better? Hard to decide, ya. Most probably they are equally good or in a more negative perspective, equally worse. Survivorship bias contributes to the ill-perceived successfulness of perhaps any favored winners. Take water fall life cycle model for example, as one of the classic methods adopted in software development in past few decades, many large projects completed and rolled out but yet practitioners yelling about project failure rates. To certain extent, water fall model is proven to be a necessity for project failures and this judgement can only be made because the method had been used and tested extensively over a long period of time. The point is given two unproven, untested and possibly unknown methodology, it could be better in saving project time, if we just simply pick one and get a head start.

We now moved on to a world of unprecendented complexities and yet we are striving to simplify our understanding of "things". Many of us don't know about how a motor vehicle works, how Facebook homepage managed to show on your computer screen and so on. Despite all the simplications, we did not eliminate or reduce complexities but we now hide these nitty gritty details underneath a layer of people with professional skills. Ironically because of enormously growing complexity, even more details need to be abstracted from these professionals using friendlier tools or the hiring of "hard core" professionals. LOL.

Even better, the higher you climb on the corporate ladder, the less complex your works will be and more people are hired to manage your problems and well... complexities. Better life and higher pay :D.


Me Blabbing again...

The obligations of rating agencies

Eddy: The thoughtless following of rating agencies is just the same with a bank blindly following their internal risk models. Why you never expect to see this coming? Perhaps the followers believe that rating agencies are another group of entity with the "Too Big to Fail" nature? :D

---

By Mustapha Kamil.

Rating agencies just can't issue an opinion and then skate scot-free, says the chief investment officer of CalPERS

WHAT was said by the chief investment officer of The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) last Wednesday was interesting and somewhat made sense.

Speaking to Bloomberg and of the suit CalPERS is undertaking against rating agencies, Joseph Dear said: "They (rating agencies) just can't issue an opinion and then skate scot-free, even if they're totally wrong, which they were with respect to these securities".

CalPERS was taking action against three bond rating agencies for the US$1 billion (RM3.58 billion) loss the pension fund suffered as a result of what it calls "wildly inaccurate" risk assessments by the rating agencies. Besides CalPERS, other investors who suffered massive losses in the subprime meltdown crisis has also commenced legal actions against rating agencies.

Whatever the outcome of these litigations will be interesting as any one of them may form a precedent for future cases.

So far, there has been no known successful action taken against rating agencies.

But rating agencies are not the only ones that issue some form of advice on investments. Stockbroking firms do too when their research arms make calls on stocks.

Investment banks do too when they issue advice on corporate moves to minority shareholders and sometimes, there is a grey area where even the financial press may find itself in.

In the past, rating agencies in the US have successfully argued that they were protected by the first amendment in the American constitution, just as the press are when newspapers publish indices, as they were merely issuing opinions on securities.

But such argument is being challenged by lawyers who essentially said there is a limit to the protection the first amendment accord to the likes of rating agencies.

The American courts are clear on this, in that when a rating agency rates only securities it is hired to rate or when the agency itself participated in the structuring of the security (such as in the Collateralised Debt Obligation debacle) and if such security was privately placed instead of offered to the general public, then the protection accorded by the First Amendment would be lost.

Stockbroking firms too are expected to follow development in these suits against rating agencies closely as the outcome could have a bearing on them too. And so too would the financial press in their role in disseminating information that may assist investors make their investment decisions.

Perhaps, the absence of malice would be a strong defence on the part of rating agencies and stockbroking firms as do fair comment on the part of journalists.

But the litigations against the rating agencies have just begun and even if they succeeded in mounting a strong defence, it remains to be seen whether they can escape other charges irate investors like CalPERS may pile on them.

There are always other possible suits, including perhaps, for negligence.

Slowly Changing Dimension

Slowly Changing Dimension a.k.a. SCD is literally means Slow..ly Chang..ing Dimension. Simple.

It's a kind of table designated as a Dimension using the OLAP terminology and referred the most in star schema or snowflake schema design. Contents in the table are descriptive in nature, i.e. Name, Code, Description attributes rather than for analysis, i.e. Measures. A SCD can be designed to handle Type 2 changes, loosely speaking, maintaining full history of incremental changes.

The key to understand and correctly use SCD Type 2 feature in your favourite ETL tools is "Slow...ly Chang..ing". The ratio of changes in the dimension over a defined time interval ideally must not be greater than 5% (heuristically) of the original records, meaning 5 million record changes in every 100 million count. If the ratio is more than expected, you must exercise precautionary measures to ensure the performance is still acceptable. Secondly, the method to identify whether a record already changed is critical (Absolute value, hashsum, timestamp or etc. Thirdly, proper indexes in place will help in improving the performance of SCD process.

If changes are anticipated to be widely covering the source data, perhaps keep a complete snapshot of new data would be more efficient for loading, at the expense of storage and IO processing.

Business Intelligence Project

Phew, it's being a month since I last updated this tiny blog. Sorry mate, I was stucked in a jungle of confusions and disturbances, now still.

We've heard about so many business intelligence projects failed despite relatively little success stories shared by major players in the market. One common fallacy about successful BI project is not about how flexible or friendly is the tool but the overall process that leads to the eventual outcome. In data mining projects, it's a known fact that the process framework is more critical or makes more business sense than just sneaking at mere churned numbers. We have SEMMA and CRISP-DM process methodology just to name a few.

To be fair, project failures in this context do not mean absolute technical failures but refer to the inability to meet constraints, key performance indicators or explicitly stated objectives. A project can considered failed due to expectation mismatch of final deliverables, user resistance to adapt or high total cost of ownership.

Anyway, BI effort is a Product, not a Project.

The formal definitions of project and product are well defined in IT management literature. Briefly, a project has well defined deliverables with final delivery dates which is usually once off. In a project, vendor delivers something then possibly station a few support staffs onsite and done. From the perspective of vendor, yes, a BI "project" can be treated as a project. However rightfully any business intelligence application owners must see it as a product. Very important, the mindset has to be right.

I'm not really a hard core proponent of big bang design phase guy. Planning and design is a must, yes I agreed but not to the extent of every nitty gritty details. My view is that development methodology that involves a big chunk of time allocated for plain design works is not practical and inefficient. Iterative and incremental is still the way to go. The longer that you plan ahead the more deviate the outcome will be compared to your original plan.

Changes need to be embraced.

If BI effort must be considered as a/part of a product, then ideally the vendor commitment to such product shall be time driven, not work driven. And why is it you might ask? Think about it, if the commitment is scoped by works, one obvious characteristic of such arrangement will be vendor resistance to work changes. Any potential works that can result in significant business value to the organization simply dropped or "overlooked" due to the stringent time frame or slight technical difficulty to meet the deadline.

Secondly, the fact is real business requirement changes faster than the frozen paper works. The whole problem with something called scope creep is again merely due to the idea of scoped by works. Scope creeps must be embraced. Customers only realize certain direction of BI usages or more efficient/effective ways of utilizing BI after they know more about it. That's why customers with prior failure in BI efforts are more demanding because they know at least more compared to previous on how to make better cases for BI. This trial and error way is costly. I propose a non-trivial business intelligence to be bounded primarily by time, making the scope of works secondary though still significant.

A scenario. Organization ABC signed up a 2 years service contract with a BI solution provider called XYZ. The arrangement shall be like this, given a set of business requirement that can be materialized in the solution within a month, the vendor starts a common lifecycle to manage the deliverables. Plan, analysis, design, development, test and deployment. A month later, the targeted users can start to make use of the new analytical capability and derive more requirements from it then combine with the latest requirements drive by other factors such as market trends, regulatory compliances and new technology enablements. Here it forms the second payload to start the next iteration of efforts. We must remember that all these efforts are part of a BI product meaning the core of the product (deliverables from the month 1) can be changed, removed and enhanced to accomodate the version 2 requirements. Technically, this means that original tables can be dropped, combined or enriched with more attributes or data behaviors. All ETL jobs are vulnerable to changes. At this point, you might argue that why can't I design nicely and properly beforehand even before the lifecycle of month 1 started? You can't or properly speaking it might not make full business sense. A product must be enhanced only when real needs arise, critical bugs/issues found, significant feedbacks and new corporate directions.

Quantitatively, let assume deliverables from month 1 effort are 10 jobs, 5 reports, 20 tables and 3 cubes. For month 2, assume 5 new jobs added/3 old jobs must be refactored, 2 cubes added/1 cubes refactored, 4 reports added/1 reports refactored and 10 tables added/10 tables refactored. The numbers suggested here are superficial but you might see the pattern as time passes, more the development iterations that the objects (cubes/reports/tables/jobs) went through, the more stable it will be and the business value of each can be justified and maximized. 2 years duration thus might turn into a 24 iteration of BI "project" cycle.

One major advantage of this approach is that the analytical capability of the corporation along with its BI users is truly increasing and now they are more trained to adapt business changes and more flexible to face competitions.

To emphasize again, the experience process is more important than the outcome.

Training, Re-training and On-going Training

Many people, maybe just too many people have this very skewed perspective about the concept of training. Even the definition of Training found in Wikipedia is too obscure for a person to really understand what the heck training is about.

To this, I tend to be very simplistic. It's ALL about repetitively performing some predefined tasks in order to adapt to a particular work.

Strictly following this definition of training, I don't think any creative minds would like the idea. As a matter of fact, any currently highly trained workforces are all very likely to be replaced by computerized automation or robotic solution in the future. YOU'RE FIRED.

I'll despise myself if anybody tagged me as highly trained. No no, that's not me.

Creativity, innovation, revolutionary, evolutionary, dynamic, spontaneous and even FUN are the attributes I will value for any senior personnel I'm going to hire. Well of course, in any organizations we need foot soldiers or so called highly trained specialists to actually do the jobs.

The truth is even a person like me need to bow down to the dreaded cruel reality in order to make a living, so YES, you can just viewed me as highly trained (and I would like to add the word) sophisticated specialist but make sure you compensate me well.

The bottomline is any such highly trained person shouldn't forget that they too can make a difference by thinking out of the box. Don't just be a fool. LOL

Now, I'm thinking about training a data mining model to do my analytical thinking, YEAH BABE YEAH !

Sleepless Night

Darn, the word 'Insomnia' popped out from my head and yelled.

On the record, I'm now at page 174 of this 994 pages SAS Advanced Programming book and the counter just can't stop. I get kinda excited though. Some of the technical details are quite interesting and definitely will be helpful when I'm gonna optimizing my project data integration batches. Take for example, it is fun to think about how many passes/scans of data is needed for some of the proc sql statement.

Emm... It's time to create a Nerdy SAS blog.

Anyway, SAS Intelligence platform 9.2 is still long way from perfection.

Page 176 now :D.

I saw an article about S&P providng credit scoring solutions to banks. Hmm, maybe I should find one good day and knock on their door to see the stuff.

Pelikan went up to MYR1.24. Well, I still got no time to organize my transaction history for blog posting purposes. Give me some time.

Haiz, just googled about 'Cure for Insomnia', this is what I get:

...
In the long run, the best cure for insomia I’ve found is regular and vigorous exercise. Once I got more serious about my workout routine, I found myself sleeping like a baby at night. Just 3-4 times a week I got for a short 20-30 minute run, and on the off days I do some push-ups, sit-ups, and lift free weights. Most people can’t stand the thought of exercise, but just 20 minutes of a day is a very small price to pay for better sleep!
...

That's why I went and played that stupid basketball game and got my hand injured. Duh!

I also peeked on DOW JONES data. The downward pressure not strong enough to reverse the recent bullish movements. H1N1 or N. Korea or a big time president assassination would do the trick. Peace Please!


Speaking of H1N1, I will (if free) post up pictures of my stockpiles of Dettol 'Kill Flu Virus' sprays, pandemic period food supplies, surgical masks and a couple of N95 masks. But bear with me, the so called 'pandemic period food supplies' were almost deplenished by a hunger nerd every morning. Duh!

This sort of self murmuring during a sleepless night starts to freak me out, boring....

Back to my crunching of book and snacks. Ciao.

Be Fear, My Hand of Wrath

WTH, played basketball once after so many years and I've injured my left hand and right ring finger. Geez, who said sports is healthy?!

Previously I already visited a general clinic nearby and the doctor prescribed some blue-coloured pills (Viagra?) and a tube of cream for muscle relief thingy. Useless.

I've decided to give traditional chinese treatment a try.

The fella charged me MYR70.00. MYR30.00 for the herbs he put on my hand wrapped with bandages and MYR40.00 for professional services. He said I can just unwrap the thing after 24 hours. Emm.. kinda efficient, don't you think?

Well, will know the outcome tomorrow. God (or whoever) bless me.

Burn Baby BURN !!

It's darn dry and hot out there and sometimes polluted with hazes. It smells like hell and feels like hell.

And the best is the hell fire burning near my house, right behind my yard.

Apparently some idiotic morons did a open air rubbish incineration and cascadingly it turned out to be a wild fire on the run.



Firefighters spent like 3 hours to put it off and yes, you're right, it smells like hell.

IBM MQ Solution Designer Certification

O ya. I almost forgot to post my status on the IBM MQ certification test number 996.

Compared to the SOA certification I previously taken, which I commented most of the questions are very subjective to different minds, MQ exam is straighforward and technical indeed. Maybe one or two questions are abit gray because of the way they phrased the statements, the rest are the kind either you know or you don't know because you didn't study.



I think this paper is not a big problem for professionals who got extensive designing and solutioning experience (like me!). Another certification paper on MQ administration should provide more comprehensive coverages on how MQ really in action operationally.

Wireless Mini Dehumidifier

I bought this gadget from Ace Hardware shop at One Utama, costing me few ten bucks. Usually, I bought disposable Thirsty Hippo-something for absorbing excessive moistures at home, but it seems like going to incur relatively pricey ongoing $$.

Here is how it looks like.



In front, an indicator is available to show you the amount of moistures absorbed, relatively by different colours.






Back there, you get a socket to connect to power outlet to heat up the device to enable something called water crystal regeneration thingy



For first trial, I placed this in my very humid store room and one day after, the colour indicator turned to pink, phew! Then I went and recharged it for 7 hours and now back to purple colour and my store room got less moistures. Cheaper indeed.

More information here

http://www.olee.com.sg/prod_dehumid_reusablemini.html

IBM SOA Fundamentals (2008) - 000-669

I went to take this SOA entry level certification last Tuesday during the IBM SOA Service Management Conference 2009 in Malaysia (The exam is FREE!). Well, the thing is I don't really have the luxury of abundant time to prepare for this one, partly because I was prep-ing for MQ 996 Solution Designer exam the day before (Will post details on this later) and I only managed to cover the following reading materials.

*Best Practices for SOA Management (Chapters 1 - 3)
Publication number: REDP-4233-00

*Propagating Identity in SOA with Tivoli Federated Identity Manager
Publication number: REDP-4354-00

*Understanding SOA Security Design and Implementation (Chapter 1)
Publication number: SG24-7310-01

*WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Handbook (Chapter 1)
Publication number: SG24-7386-00

*Implementing Technology to Support SOA Governance and Management (SKIPPED)

*SOA fundamentals in a nutshell (Quite a number of questions from this, thought might not in a direct way)


Publication number: SG24-7538-00

More:
IBM Recommandations for Test Preparation

I find most of the questions in the paper very subjective and open ended to the background and experiences of one person. Giving an analogy, the question can be:

13. Please select 2 out of the following that best describes the way to die peacefully.

a. Died when sleeping (Pretty obvious huh)
b. Jumping down from 100 storeys tall building
c. Jumping down from 50 storeys tall building
d. Use a knife
e. Use a gun

When I saw some of the questions similar to the above style, I was like "HUH", then "EMM", then "SHIT"... Well, at the end I need to resort to 2 of my most effective strategy:

A. Use Common Sense in The Context
B. Choose either the shortest or longest answer (!)


By the way, there's another candidate in the same room with me that can't even tell the test number (000-669) when the proctor asked him. What's the whole point of taking the test without even understand the details of the test, its' objectives and structures.

Result receipt

83.3%..... Answered 9 questions wrongly. Darn.

The bottomline is this test is just merely testing your knowledge and common sense on SOA at a very introductory level and yet term "Fundamentals".

I guess product specific certification is more interesting... I like the logo though.

Why holidays can be bad for your health

Eddy said: May be this is THE reason for me not being to ANY vacation for the past few years.


World Health Organisation issues warning on stress and offers tips for travellers

By Jeremy Laurance, Health editor


Anxiety caused by fear of flying causes 3.5 per cent of in-flight emergencies

Travel is said to broaden the mind – but it can also damage it, experts say.

In an unprecedented move, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued a warning that the stress of international travel can lead to mental disorder in vulnerable people.

For the first time, the global health agency has included detailed guidance on the psychological impact of travel in its annual publication International Travel And Health.

Simon Calder: Travelling overseas can be a cure, not a curse
Almost one billion people leave home to venture abroad each year, just over half of them tourists going on holiday, and mental problems are "among the leading causes of ill-health among travellers", it says.

"Psychiatric emergency" is one of the most common medical reasons for evacuation by air ambulance, along with injury and heart disease, the WHO report says. Up to 100 patients a week are brought back to the UK by air ambulance, according to the British Ambulance Association, and many more are returned on commercial aircraft, mostly accompanied by medical staff.

FlyMeNow, an air charter company based in York, said it had flown a man with bipolar disorder from Egypt back to Manchester last October, after he became manic while on holiday with his wife. "He had to be sedated for the flight; he was stretchered on to the plane and police were waiting when it landed in Manchester. He was taken to hospital where he was stabilised on drugs and discharged the next day," said Andrew Whitney, the commercial director. The cost of £25,000 was paid by the family, who did not have travel insurance.

Dan Sanders, of Oxford-based Air Medical, said the company had flown a woman from Ireland back to Germany last year accompanied by "four to five" security escorts. "There had been some violence on an earlier flight but when she got in a light plane she was fine. I think she realised no one was watching – she had no audience," he added.

Extreme anxiety such as phobia of flying is a key problem faced by travellers, and is involved in 3.5 per cent of all medical in-flight emergencies. People who suffer panic attacks may feel more comfortable in an aisle seat when travelling by plane, the WHO adds.

It warns anxiety sufferers to avoid caffeine, certain over-the-counter cold medications and the anti-malarial drug mefloquine (brand name Lariam), which has been linked with psychotic episodes in some people.

Air and road rage are on the rise, it says, and travellers arriving in exotic places, freed from the social constraints of home, are at greater risk from drink and illicit drugs, which can trigger mental breakdown. One study showed that more than half of backpackers had used illicit drugs and another found the proportion of individuals who drank alcohol more than five times a week doubled from 20 to 40 per cent.

Pilgrimages to places with historical or religious significance carry particular risks for the mentally fragile. "A traveller may become overwhelmed at pilgrimage centres such as Mecca, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela, as well at holy places in India," it says.

Adjustment to different cultures, lifestyle and languages can cause distress in some people. Equally, returning home can present a challenge for younger people after long-term trips, such as those taken by gap year students who have identified strongly with the new culture and may experience a sense of loss on leaving.

The WHO says medical staff should include an "enquiry into psychiatric history" as a standard part of any pre-travel consultation for vaccinations or health advice.

IE7 Tab Spawning issue with Follower (FriendConnect) gadget

I've posted an entry in Blogger Help Group about a frustrating problem that I faced with the Follower gadget. Apparently, no responses yet from anybody or from Blogger, is it only my problem or others just being ignorant. The post is copied below:

---

Hi,

I would like to report a possible bug of the Follower gadget when it
is added and run under IE7. The versions of IE7 i have tested are
7.0.5730.11 and 7.0.5730.13. IE8 and FireFox seems not affected by the
issue.


Symptoms:


When you opened multiple tabs in IE7 and one of the tab is loading the
page that contains the Follower gadget, if you close that tab before
the page loaded completely, IE7 will open new tabs indefinitely, at
random chance.


If you have multiple instances of IE7, the tab openings will be done
in the first instance of IE7 and proceed to second instance if you
manage to kill the first instance of IE7.


Currently, I need to kill all instances of IE7 to stop the tabs from
being opened.


It is mostly a design limitation of how IE7 handles some of the
Javascript calls, but I think that the team should make the gadget
less affected by such behaviors.


Thank you.

Reports: Freddie Mac official found dead

Eddy said: Holy Cow! One downed, how many else to drop?

Broadcast reports say Freddie Mac official found dead

WASHINGTON (AP) -- David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home Wednesday morning in what broadcast reports said was an apparent suicide.

WUSA-TV and WTOP Radio reported that David Kellermann was found dead in his Northern Virginia home. The 41-year-old Kellermann has been Freddie Mac's chief financial officer since September.

Sabrina Ruck, a Fairfax County police spokesman, confirmed to The Associated Press that Kellermann was dead, but she could not confirm that he committed suicide.

Kellermann's death is the latest blow to Freddie Mac, a government controlled company that owns or guarantees about 13 million home loans. CEO David Moffett resigned last month.

McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac and sibling company Fannie Mae, which together own or back more than half of the home mortgages in the country, have been hobbled by skyrocketing loan defaults and have received about $60 billion in combined federal aid.

Kellermann was named acting chief financial officer in September 2008, after the resignation of Anthony "Buddy" Piszel, who stepped down after the September 2008 government takeover. The chief financial officer is responsible for the company's financial controls, financial reporting and oversight of the company's budget and financial planning.

Before taking that job, Kellerman served as senior vice president, corporate controller and principal accounting officer. He was with Freddie Mac for more than 16 years.

Using SHA-1 as message digest algorithm instead of MD5

In the light of a comment dropped by T.Rob in my previous post "A First Look at using MQ with SSL", I did some rough browsings about MD5 vulnerabilities and would like to share some of the links here.

Tim Callan's SSL Blog

SearchSecurity - VeriSign addresses MD5 flaws

Wiki - MD5

MD5 considered harmful today

The truth about the new attack on MD5 signatures

I guess for development purposes, it's ok for using MD5 based finger print/digital signature. We should now avoid using MD5 to perform critical application level hashing to prevent potential security issues. SHA-1 apparently is a better choice now even though it is theoretically vulnerable to the same issue albeit requires more significant processing power to do the trick.

Note that iKeyMan GUI, runmqckm (MQ 6.0) and Java keytool program uses MD5 as default signing algorithm.

For Java keytool, you can use the -sigalg SHA1withRSA option to override the default.

For strmqikm and runmqckm (MQ 7.0 uses sha1 by default, check here ), you can use GSKCapiCmd instead because it allows the specification of -sigalg sha1 to use SHA-1 algorithm


There's another way I found from the comments:

Option B is to acquire any IBM Java 6 JRE, add the IBMCMSKS provider to
java.security, and use the bundled ikeycmd or your /bin/gsk7cmd with
JAVA_HOME pointing at the new JRE -- sig_alg will be accepted there as well.

--
Eric Covener

MustGather information for Certificate problems

The following page provides useful information to diagnose problems with digital certificates.

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/httpserv/ihsdiag/gather_certificate_doc.html#PKCS12

'Worst of UK recession is over,' says CBI

By Catherine Boyle

The CBI said today that the worst of the UK recession was over but warned that there would be no recovery until this time next year.

The business group said that the recession worsened more quickly than expected in the first three months of 2009.

It expects the speed at which the economy is contracting to slow in the second half of this year.

However, the recovery is predicted to be “slow and fragile”, with growth in GDP beginning again in spring 2010.

The Ernst & Young ITEM club also predicted a recovery in spring 2010 but said that there would be a tough road ahead as unemployment rises above three million.

The CBI expects the number of jobless people to peak at 3.25 million in 2010.

Peter Spencer, ITEM’s chief economic adviser, said: “Although one or two positive signs have started to appear, we face another12 to 18 months of serious grief.”

The forecasts emerged two days before the Budget, which is expected to include moves to slash public spending by £15 billion.

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is predicted to say that UK output will shrink by at least 3 per cent this year.

The CBI has revised its GDP growth predictions for 2009 from -3.3 per cent to -3.9 per cent to reflect the worse than expected contraction of -1.8 per cent for the first quarter of 2009.

It expects that aggressive monetary policy, a weaker pound, low inflation and fiscal support packages will combine to help the rate of UK GDP decline slow through 2009 and make a fragile improvement to reach quarter-on-quarter growth of 0.2 per cent in April to June 2010.

There is also some comfort in its prediction that the economy will have shrunk by a total of 5.1 per cent by the end of this recession, less than the cumulative 5.9 per cent seen in the early 1980s recession.

Yet the average UK consumer is expected to continue to cut back on spending, with household consumption forecast to drop by 3.4 per cent this year and 0.4 per cent in 2010 as low inflation and job worries keep average earnings growth weak throughout 2009.

The ITEM Club says that consumption will fall by almost 4 per cent as people become more concerned about savings.

The CBI expects businesses to cut down on investment in the face of the recession, with business investment predicted to shrink by 9.3 per cent in 2009 and a further 3.4 per cent in 2010.

Richard Lambert, the Director-General of the CBI, said: “The UK economy remains deeply troubled, and the first quarter of this year has been tougher than expected. Firms have been running down their stocks of completed goods, and that is having a real impact on output, jobs and investment. Anxious consumers are spending less and building a savings buffer.

“Given falling tax revenues, the shrinking economy and alarming levels of government debt, we urge the Chancellor to avoid any further major fiscal boosts in the Budget. Budget measures should be targeted on jobs and investment, with a focus on efficiency savings and public service reform.”

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: “It is futile to get involved in a forecasting competition.

“All we can sensibly discuss is what is actually happening. That is unemployment growing rapidly, more and more families struggling to pay their mortgages, the growth of negative equity and an unrelenting budget deficit.

“We are undoubtedly in the middle of a major economic crisis, compounded by the reluctance of banks to lend.

“No amount of spinning by Government can avoid these simple, brutal economic facts which the Budget has to address.”



->

A First Look on using MQ with SSL

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology is meant to provide a standardized solution to many security services such and authentication, confidentiality and integrity. Almost all distributed technology products nowdays comes with built-in SSL support. To name a few, IBM WAS, Apache Tomcat, Internet Explorer/Firefox and etc. Even sophisticated operating systems like i5/OS and z/OS has SSL integrated into the core.

The good thing about learning SSL is because SSL is one layer above TCP/IP (The transport protocol stacks) and below application layers such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP and blah, the concept is easily brings into new context.

I won't go deep into the major technical details of SSL in this post (maybe will do it in future posts), but there are a few jargons we need to share a common understanding. More information about these stuffs can be found in WIKI.

Certification Authority (CA) : A party designated to sign/issue digital certificates. Commercial CA such as Verisign.

Certification Revocation List (CRL): A list that stores the revoked/cancelled certificates

Digital Signature : A piece of information encrypted by the sender's private key.

Digital Certificate : A structure that complies to standards such as X.509 and includes also a digital signature

Certification Chain : A tree like relationship between signer CA, intermediate CA and ultimately the owner of the digital certificate.

Symmetrical Crytography : A branch of crytography focusing on shared keys.

Asymmetrical Crytography : A branch of crytography using non-shared keys to avoid key distribution issues.

SSL Handshake : A process in SSL protocol to establish SSL communications between SSL client and SSL server which includes negotiating algorithms, exchanging keys and encrypting messages.

SSL Key Store/Key Ring/Key Repository : A storage medium (usually a physical file) that keeps keys and certificates. Usually a password is needed to open the medium.

And many more terms as you delve into the realm.

I will assume the use of IBM Webpshere MQ6.0 and Windows XP.

---

In IBM Websphere MQ, SSL is only used during client mode communication. Bindings are direct and not involving SSL. More precisely, SSL can be configured for message channels and MQI channels. Message channels are meant for queue mangers (QMs)intercommunications and MQI channels are for MQ clients interaction with QMs.

Note: SSL is not used for access control purposes. In MQ, if you need to perform authorization checks, you might need to implement something called exits.

I will configure the following settings to demonstrate the usage of SSL for message channels (For MQI channels, it will be a future post by itself):

* 2 Queue Managers
* QM communications using Sender-Receiver channel pairs.
* 2 properly configured keystores, one for each of the QM.

The steps are:

1. Creating MQ QMs


2. Creating Key Stores


3. Creating Self Signed Certificates


4. Exchanging Certificates


5. Configuring QM


6. Creating and Configuring channels and listeners


7. Test out SSL connections

---

Assume %MQ_INSTALL_PATH% = C:\Program Files\IBM\Websphere MQ\

1. Creating MQ QMs
   
   Create 2 queue managers with name qm1 and qm2
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Creating Key Stores
   
   I will be using GSKit iKeyMan utility that comes with Websphere MQ. Otherwise you might want to use other similar tools such as OpenSSL. The keystore format is CMS and their file name is ended with a .kdb extension.
   
   Command line version of iKeyMan is iKeyCmd (runmqckm)
   
   To run iKeyMan, proceed to command prompt and execute
   
   

   
   STRMQIKM
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Then choose from the menu bar [Key Database File] -> [New]
   
   Select [CMS] as the type, enter "qm1.kdb" as the file name as specify C:\ as the location for this example.
   
   
   
   You are required to key the key store password to protect your key store and you must tick the [Stash the password to a file?] option.
   
   The screen will looks like below once the keystore is successfully created and you can see that the iKeyMan preloaded some trusted CA certificates for you.
   
   
   
   
   As one of the best practice, you should remove all the preloaded certificates and remain only those necessary to prevent potential security issues.
   
   Repeat the above procedure for qm2's keystore with [CMS] type, "qm2.kdb" name and C:\ location.
   
   I recommend you to open another instance of iKeyMan (strmqikm) to avoid confusion when switching between key stores.
   
   


3. Creating Self Signed Certificates
   
   While you opened qm1.kdb in iKeyMan, from the [Key Database Content] filter, select [Personal Certificates], see below:
   
   
   
   Click on the [New Self Signed] button at right hand side and fill in the form like the screen below:
   
   
   
   In Windows platform, MQ will use the key label to identify which certificate to be used to authenticate a queue manager.
   
   The key label must be prefixed with "ibmwebspheremq" and then concatenated with the queue manager name, in this example "qm1", all in lower case. Here the key label is "ibmwebspheremqqm1".
   
   Repeat this step for qm2.kdb keystore but with the key label "ibmwebspheremqqm2".
   
   
   


4. Exchanging Certificates
   
   In the same screen, select [Extract Certificate] button.
   
   
   
   
   
   For ibmwebspheremqqm1 certificate, extract it to C:\qm1.arm
   For ibmwebspheremqqm2 certificate, extract it to C:\qm2.arm
   
   
   For qm1 keystore, import C:\qm2.arm by selecting [Signer Certificate] from the [Key Database Content] drop down and click [Add]. Specify "qm1.kdb" and C:\ as the location and when you click [Ok], a [Enter a label] message will prompt you to specify a label for the to-be imported signer. Enter "ibmwebspheremqqm2" and press [OK]
   
   
   
   The qm2 certificate will appear as one of the signer in the list.
   
   
   
   By now, your settings should be:
   
   

   
   -qm1.kdb (Keystore for Queue Manager qm1)
   --ibmwebspheremqqm1 (Personal Certificate for qm1)
   --ibmwebspheremqqm2 (Signer Certificate for qm2)
   
   -qm2.kdb (Keystore for Queue Manager qm2)
   --ibmwebspheremqqm1 (Signer Certificate for qm1)
   --ibmwebspheremqqm2 (Personal Certificate for qm2)
   

   
   
   


5. Configuring QM
   
   I will use RUNMQSC command line utility to perform most of the configuration. Of course, you can use MQ Explorer.
   
   Execute
   
   

   
   STRMQM qm1
   STRMQM qm2
   

   
   
   to start both of the QMs.
   
   
   
   Execute
   
   

   
   RUNMQSC
   

   
   
   to enter MQSC interactive session for qm1.
   
   Check out the current SSLKEYR attribute by executing
   
   

   
   DIS QMGR SSLKEYR
   

   
   
   
   
   By default, the value should be C:\PROGRAM FILES\IBM\WEBSPHERE MQ\QMGRS\qm1\ssl\key
   
   We will change it to point to our qm1.kdb.
   
   Exexcute
   
   

   
   ALTER QMGR SSLKEYR('C:\qm1')
   

   
   
   

   
   Note: Do not include the .kdb extension in the value of SSLKEYR.
   

   
   
   
   
   

   
   Note: I recommend you to open another instance of command prompt to work with qm2.
   

   
   
   
   Repeat this step on qm2.
   
   

   
   RUNMQSC qm2
   DIS QMGR SSLKEYR SSLEV
   ALTER QMGR SSLKEYR('c:\qm2') SSLEV(ENABLED)
   DIS QMGR SSLKEYR SSLEV
   END
   

   
   
   


6. Creating and Configuring channels and listeners
   
   Execute commands below for qm1.
   
   

   
   DEFINE QLOCAL('qm2') USAGE(XMITQ) TRIGGER INITQ(SYSTEM.CHANNEL.INITQ) TRIGDATA('TO.qm2')
   
   DEFINE LISTENER('LISTENER.TCP') TRPTYPE(TCP) PORT(10001)
   DEFINE CHANNEL('TO.qm1') CHLTYPE(RCVR) SSLCIPH(RC4_SHA_US)
   DEFINE CHANNEL('TO.qm2') CHLTYPE(SDR) CONNAME('localhost(10002)') SSLCIPH(RC4_SHA_US) XMITQ('qm2')
   
   START LISTENER('LISTENER.TCP')
   REFRESH SECURITY TYPE(SSL)
   

   
   
   
   Execute commands below for qm2.
   
   

   
   DEFINE QLOCAL('qm1') USAGE(XMITQ) TRIGGER INITQ(SYSTEM.CHANNEL.INITQ) TRIGDATA('TO.qm1')
   
   DEFINE LISTENER('LISTENER.TCP') TRPTYPE(TCP) PORT(10002)
   DEFINE CHANNEL('TO.qm2') CHLTYPE(RCVR) SSLCIPH(RC4_SHA_US)
   DEFINE CHANNEL('TO.qm1') CHLTYPE(SDR) CONNAME('localhost(10001)') SSLCIPH(RC4_SHA_US) XMITQ('qm1')
   
   START LISTENER('LISTENER.TCP')
   REFRESH SECURITY TYPE(SSL)
   

   
   
   


7. Test out SSL connections
   
   You can now test the connection by starting sender channel in each queue manager manually.
   
   To do this in qm1, execute the following:
   
   

   
   START CHANNEL('TO.qm2')
   DIS CHSTATUS('TO.qm2')
   

   
   
   To do this in qm2, execute the following:
   
   

   
   START CHANNEL('TO.qm1')
   DIS CHANNEL('TO.qm1')
   

   
   
   If the channel communications are successful, you will get screen similar to the one below:
   
   
   
   Pay particular attentions to the attributes
   
   

   
   STATUS=RUNNING
   SSLPEER=
   SSLCERTI=
   

   
   
   

   
   Note: If you need to change any of the SSL related attributes like key store location and channel SSL settings, remember to issue the following command:
   

   
   
   

   
   REFRESH SECURITY TYPE(SSL)
   

   
   
   

   
   Note: To troubleshooting problems, you can check out the QM error logs located at %MQ_INSTALL_PATH%\QMgrs\qm1\errors\
   

   
   
   

A Simple Loan Rate Appeal Letter

I just can't believe it.

I can't believe the TRUTH about the existence of certain groups of people that are not willing to do a simple task to save their money but instead cramping up their tiny brains speaking about surviving economic crisis or making their money work harder.

Fine if you may argue that these people don't know YET about such money saving task.

I'm talking about revisions of your housing mortgage interest rates.

Firstly, I would like to make a few points about your monthly repayment.

#1: If the bank've reduced your repayment amount, that doesn't mean you pay lesser in total.

Meaning if your current repayment amount is MYR1000 per month and your bank sent you a letter informing you that now you can pay MYR900 instead of the original RM1000, beware.

The rationale can be explained like this:

When the bank calculates the monthly instalment amount upon the creation of the offer letter, usually the calculation is made using some baseline rate at that moment, e.g. Base Lending Rate, or your first year effective rate.

Let's assume now that rate is 5% and the repayment amount is MYR1000.00. Also assume that your contract rate is BLR-2%.

If the effective rate remains stationary over a particular period of time, the MYR1000 is properly follow the amortization table schedule. In a better scenario, the effective rate dropped and the partial amount of the MYR1000.00 is used to deduct directly into the loan principal. Good because you can cut short your repayment tenure, e.g. settle the entire in 25 years instead of the original 30 years tenure.

But what if the effective rate increased... Imagine the BLR now is 8% and your effective contract rate will become (8-2)% = 6%. Now the MYR1000 is insufficient because the increased interest amount will "eat up" the principal repayment portion thus you will spend more money the loan and you might get surprised when you are required to fork out a relatively large amount of money for the last instalment of the loan in order to orderly complete your loan obligation. Bad idea.

Solution: Make sure you pay your monthly instalment according to the real effective rate instead of the static amount in the loan contract. Some banks do notify you about the new amount to be paid whenever the effective rate changed BUT there are banks "forgot" to do it.


#2: Fire Insurance, Misc and Other Charges debited into your loan
If your loan requires the purchases of MLTA or fire insurance or etc that auto-debited the amount into your loan, these amounts will become part of the overall principal you need to pay off if you didn't offset them immediately using an equivalent amount of extra loan repayment. Don't underestimate the magnitude of these amounts because the interests on them will get compounded over let say 30 freaking years.

Solution: Don't do the auto-debit thingy or make sure you do extra repayment to offset these extraordinary items in your account.


#3: Make sure your effective interest rate is reasonable
I remember there was a time when a fixed rate 5.99% mortgage loan package is considered as an attractive market deal. Of course, if you view the fluctuation of the market interest rates over 20 to 30 years, then stick to 5.99% for the entire tenure does make some senses. But hey, at this moment, people are paying say BLR-2% which translated into effective rate of 3.55% and you are paying extra 2.44% which is roughly extra MYR2440 each year for every 100k principal outstanding you borrowed, i.e. an extra MYR7329 for a 300K outstanding for 1 year. And you should know that due to amortization effects the first few years of repayment contributed the most to the total interest paid.

Who cares what will be the rates 10 years from now? What's matter is to SAVE money NOW.

Among many options, more commonly you can opt to either APPEAL or REFINANCE your loan.

For fixed rate package, it is not likely that the institution will accept your appeal to reduce the rate because they mayargue that in the long run the interest rates might still shoot up and it's a risk to them too.

NOTE: It is true that if you don't want to withstand the OPPORTUNITY and RISK from interest rate fluctuation, then you better stick to your fixed rate package. No point shouting later when the interest rates make a cinematic return to sky high.

So, you might consider refinancing your loan meaning taking a new loan to substitute the fixed rate one. Refinancing package might include certain options such as zero moving costs and blah. Ask your banker thoroughly about how much you can save by refinancing because this way will involves paying legal fees and doing the entire process of going through land office and blah.

Another option is to make an appeal to the bank to REVISE your effective rate.

Plainly speaking: Ask them to reduce.

It is in the bank's interests to retain customers/loans when the competition is fierce due to volatile interest rate movements and consumer spending patterns. The idea is simple: If the rate is really reduceable and the bank refused to reduce, then REFINANCE and move away from that blood sucking bank. Loss of loan accounts mean loss of PROFITs.

The trick is that the appealed rate wouldn't be as good as refinancing rates although they can be comparable. What the bank have in mind is to remove your economic incentive to REFINANCE so that you don't feel like going through all the trouble just to save a couple of hundred bucks YET the bank still earn a level of interest enough to cover their required rate of returns.

Note: Even when your loan is within the locking period (Usually 3 or 5 years), you can still appeal for a reduction if the savings are large enough to justify it.


Solution: Talk to your banker about APPEALing your rate and use the following template if you like to submit the appeal application. The template is a Word 2000/2003 document and you need to replace some information inside with your own details.

Loan Appeal Letter Template

---

Reply to: tigerspank33
- If the bank offered a not so satisfactory rate to you after your appeal, you can always reject it and either appeal again or consider refinancing options.


Reply to: meitang
- Yes, the bank might charge you a minor fee (usually less than MYR100) ONLY after your appeal is approved. No fee should be applicable if say the appeal is being rejected.

Reply to: mmmsss
- You need to speak to your banker to find out the potential savings because refinancing will involve more costs than simply appealing to reduce the rate.