Sunday, January 29, 2012

Opting Out Google Ad Tracking

If you've been following the new Google Privacy policy, you must have known about the Ad Tracking. That is, Google will "track" your browsing habits and present you with personalized result on various Google services that you use. If you think that you don't want to be tracked, you can opt-out. These are the steps:
  1. Go to Google Dashboard (https://www.google.com/dashboard/)
  2. Sign in to your account
  3. Go to Google Ads Preferences Manager (http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/?hl=en)
  4. Choose opt-out in the services you wished not to be tracked (or all of Google services that you use)
If you're using Google Chrome browser and want this setting to be applied permanently, you can use the Keep My Opt-Outs Chrome browser plugin.

Monday, January 16, 2012

How to Recognize The Documentation That You Wrote Has Gone Too Deply Nested?

One of the way to recognize that you have gone too far "nesting" your documentation section. For example, if you have gone to make section v.w.x.y, that means you're now four levels deep. Four levels are already too deep because human brain are not naturally able to remember something with "nesting-level" more than that.

When your nesting has gone too deep, consider creating a new "chapter" and provide a smooth transition into that new "chapter". That way, people will understand what your're trying to say. Monstrous "chapter" is not good or it's better to say that it's a bad writing habit.

Be aware of it next tome you write documentation

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Intel Atom Finally Arrived in Smartphone (x86 malware finally enters the phone)

Well, as Anand points out: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones. Intel Atom smartphone will finally arrive this year.

I'm not that much concerned about its performance but I'm really concerned with the "malware legacy" that the platform has. x86, due to its prevalence has been the playing ground for malware "craftsmen" for years. So, when it enters the smartphone space, surely it's a cause for concern. Android NDK provides the "entry point" to "craft" a host of new malware for the platform.

It seems to be there will be a lot of work for the security guys in that particular platform even before its public release from Intel partners.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Modifying Trac User Privilege into Trac Admin

The basics to modify Trac user privilege into Trac admin is explained in detail here: http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracPermissions.

Why would you want to do that? I found an excuse to do just that because I prefer to make changes to milestones, tickets, etc. via the Trac web interface instead of via command line. Now, let's see what you need to do to change a "normal" user login into a trac admin login. You need to run the trac-admin utility from your trac server akin to this example (change the user name as needed):

me@mymachine:$ trac-admin    permission  add    TRAC_ADMIN
Now, the your_username user should be promoted into Trac admin and you will see the admin button when you login as that user in your Trac web page.

That's it.