誰かが負担しないといけない

どこかの政治家がテレビで高齢者の医療費負担増についてこう言った。

「誰かが負担しなければならない」

日本語って主語も目的語もないのに文として成り立つのは面白い。上記の文では目的語がないので、文脈から分かるといわれるが、話し手が本当に考えている目的語は何なのかは話し手にしか分からない。特に政治家にとって曖昧であった方があとでそのとき意図したい説明がつく。

通常考えると「誰かが負担しなければならない」は高齢化している日本では本当にその通り。しかし、毎日のように報道される社会保険庁のずさんな管理や、天下りの高額給料及び退職金、役所の人間が盗んだ住民の保険金、ハコモノに使われる膨大な資金を考えると、もしかして上記の言葉の話し手はこのことを言いたかったのではないか。

「誰かが何百億円や何兆円の無駄遣いや消えたお金を負担しなければならない」

その誰かは国民であり、そして今回は高齢者である。まさに弱肉強食だ。

Indonesia makin bodoh

Ini dari milis:

Para Pelanggan Yth.

Sehubungan dengan Surat Menteri Kominfo Nomor: 84/M.KOMINFO/04/08 tanggal
2 April 2008 Perihal: Pemblokiran Situs dan Blog Yang Memuat Film Fitna,
maka situs berikut ini untuk sementara kami tutup sampai pemberitahuan
lebih lanjut :

1. Youtube
2. MySpace
3. Metacafe
4. Multiply
5. Rapid-share

Jika ini benar, menyedihkan sekali. Harap2 Indonesia makin pintar dengan usaha2 meningkatkan bandwidth serta jenis akses last on mile, eh malah makin bodoh. Apakah YouTube, misalnya, situs porno? situs komunis? situs anti agama tertentu? Jika iya, silahkan dilarang, tapi tidak kan? Hanya karena ada konten yang tidak cocok mengapa seluruh site diblok? Ini saja merupakan tindakan bodoh, tapi kondisi akan menjadi lebih parah jika ini dibiarkan, sebab pemerintah akan bebas memblok situs2 yang dia rasa tidak cocok, sama seperti Soeharto menutup Tempo dan media masa lainnya dijaman orde baru.

PDB, PRC formats

Palm's PDB and PRC formats are not only used by Palm, butl also by e-book reader on Symbian and even desktop PC. Here are some description on its format:

NS Basic/Palm PDB File Structure
http://www.nsbasic.com/palm/info/technotes/TN02a.htm
The PRC Format

http://web.mit.edu/tytso/www/pilot/prc-format.html

Other related resources:
Palm emulator on Mac
BookDesigner - A tool to create PDB/PRC file?

Browse Nokia 6680’s files over BT on Mac

Mac could not browse Nokia 6680's (or, it seems, any Nokia's S60 device) files over BT on Mac. The problem is not on Mac side, but on Nokia side. Nokia has crippled the device.

Here is how to make it work:

OBEX File Transfer on Series 60, with Bluetooth File Exchange on OS X
(See full article at http://www.martin.st/software/s60-obexftp/)

Download these softwares:
SdpBrowser
SDP Editor (for Series 60 1st and 2nd edition)

Usage:
Using SdpBrowser, select Get PC Suite info in the Device menu, select the phone and click browse. If everything works as it should, it gives the SDP record handle of the OBEX FTP record and the RFCOMM channel of the PC Suite service.

Then start SDP Editor on the phone, choose Update channel in the menu, and enter the handle and RFCOMM channel given by SdpBrowser. Then, Bluetooth File Exchange should be able to browse the files on the phone.

The handle and channel shouldn't change as long as you don't install/remove any service on the phone, so in general you'll only need to rerun the application on the phone with the last, working values.

If it doesn't give all the necessary information, you can try to read it manually from the raw SDP records. Select Browse in the Device menu, and select the phone. Look for a record with the text "OBEX File Transfer", and look for the number on the row starting with "0:" in this record (e.g. "0: 0x10006"). That's the record handle (in hexadecimal). Also look for a record with the text "Nokia OBEX PC Suite Services". That record should have a row like "4: { { <0100> } }, { { <0003> }, { 0xc } }, { { <0008> } }". Here 0xc, that is 12, is the RFCOMM channel.

Bible on Symbian

A free reader for free Bibles, as well as other reading materials, on Symbian? It turns out that there is no ideal solution now:

Olive Tree
Free (but not opensource) Bible reader for Symbian, excellent usability, but only handles file produced by Olive Tree. Even though file format is Palm's PDB, for example Palm Bible+ PDB files are not readable. So, use a general e-book reader for other reading materials? Such as Mobipocket.

Mobipocket
This general e-book reader is owned by Amazon, and is in fact quite cool. Its file format is Palm's PRC. It has a free (but not opensource) client for Symbian, and even a free software to convert MS Word documents etc into PRC format that it can read. But, since it does not read PDB format, and there is very little free Bible available for Mobipocket, it cannot serve as one-stop application for both Bible and other materials reading purpose. Installing both Mobipocket and a Bible reader would be an inefficient resource use and is not convenient.

SymbianBible (formerly S60Bible)
Free and opensource Bible reader for Symbian, ported from Palm, and reads Palm Bible+ PDB files. SymbianBible does not read Olive Tree PDB files. Olive Tree reader is slightly better, but this is good enough. Now, can this read other reading materials? Theoretically yes, as long as it is in Bible+ PDB format. But there is scarce information as how to create one. There is only information, i.e., the one in BibleConverter. BibleConverter is a Java program from Palm Bible+ that will convert a specially tagged text file into PDB file readable by Bible+. I tried creating PDB file using BibleConverter, but for unknown reasons the resulting file are often unrecognized by SymbianBible.

Other prominent e-book reader is Plucker, though opensource and has tools for MacOS X, but lacks Symbian support.

OpenOffice &#8220;Aqua&#8221;

It's rather difficult to find the place to download OpenOffice "aqua" version (for Mac). Here it is:

Porting site (but not uptodate?)
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.html
Updated main site (in Japaese)
http://homepage.mac.com/oz_k/open_soft/aqua_ooo24.html
Download site:
http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/

Use Inkscape on Mac to do batch conversion

Here is how to use Inkscape on Mac to do batch conversion from SVG to PNG:

1. First, get Inkscape for Mac
2. Open Terminal then run as follows:

for i in *.svg; do /path/to/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/bin/inkscape -f "$i" -e "$i.png" -w 1000; done


-w 1000 is make the size big (1000 pixels)