Resonansi Kehidupan: Books Review

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Judul (edisi Inggris): Digital Fortress
Penulis: Dan Brown
ISBN: 0552151696

Jumlah Halaman: 510
Terbit: February 1st 1998
Penerbit: Corgi Books

Well, its been like almost 1-2 year(s) ago i have completely read this book. It was one of my friend recommendation to me. She said, "you might be loved this Author". And finally I am drawn to all Dan Brown master pieces (and waiting for his next novel in November 2017). Finally, i had myself reading the entire Dan Brown and now i felt like all of those books existence need to be known by others. So here i am, starting to review his first master piece Digital Fortress.

About Dan Brown, (again) citing from goodreads,

"Dan Brown is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels, including The Da Vinci Code, which has become one of the best selling novels of all time as well as the subject of intellectual debate among readers and scholars. Brown’s novels are published in 52 languages around the world with 200 million copies in print."

Well, lets begin...

Its about Susan Fletcher story. Having a high IQ (170! Could you imagine that?), she is one of greatest woman in National Security Agency division Cryptography). US has National Security Agency and Department of Defense while Indonesia only have Kementerian Pertahanan (which one of division is Security Division).

What is Cryptography after all? nah loh
Well, Cryptography is about how encrypted message could be decrypted. Encrypted messages itself has random characters that have no meaning at all. By decrypting its messages we could figure it out what is the meaning of such a message.

masih bingung juga? wkwk
Jadi gampangnya gini, Kriptografi adalah ilmu tentang bagaimana sandi-sandi atau kode-kode diterjemahkan sehingga menjadi bermakna.
Contohnya saya menulis pesan di enskripsi yakni "FEIRA".
Setelah di decrypting maka kita sadar bahwa FEIRA adalah sebenarnya ARIEF.

Such a branch of knowledge is called Cryptography. At first, they decrypt it manually, after several years when public encryption, million or even billion messages that were encrypted needed to be encrypted by NSA. Following 'something' theorem, that every encrypted message could be broke using brute force. It is just a matter of time, when brute force method is used, to get the message decrypted. Flooded with almost billion encrypted messages everyday, NSA was forced to build something impossible. A universal decryption machine.

The idea of universal decryption machine is to decrypt the messages using brute force method. Yeah it takes time alot, but with using high performance processor, everything are achievable as Bergofsky Principle told. Have you watched film named The Imitation Game? The Imitation Game is documentary film about someone named Alan Turing that built Enigma (universal decryption machine that helped allies won WW II). This universal machine, works like Enigma. In this novel, that machine is called TRANSLTR.

TRANSLTR successfully built. TRANSLTR recognized as a very secret project, everyone that was involved being told that the project was failed. Only several people in Cryptography knew the truth. With using TRANSLTR, there will be no secret messages over the world. Email password could be hacked by seconds while the most longest password within 15 mins.

One day, Ensei Tankado, one of former NSA who worked for TRANSLTR project and know its existence, released codes that make TRANSLTR work almost 15 hours without stop. As i mentioned above, it takes 15 mins to break a hardest password ever exist. Ensei Tankado said that it is a rotation loop algorithm or something name that. It is an algorithm that makes TRANSLTR could not stop guessing password because the computer did not know if it is already guess the password correctly.

bingung ya? maaf susah ngejelasinnya haha
Jadi intinya kan gunanya TRANSLTR buat nebak password, nah TRANSLTR tau passwordnya telah ditebak karena setelah passwordnya dimasukkan kata-kata yang terenskripsinya berubah jadi plain text which is ada di kamus besar bahasa. Nah kalo ini, ketika di tebak ternyata hasil tebakannya bukan plain text namun masih kata-kata acak. Nah meskipun password yang ditebak benar, hasilnya tetap teks acak. Nah ini yang membuat TRANSLTR berpikir kalau password sebenarnya belum tertebak yang padahal mungkin sudah.

The codes were released on Ensei Tankado website encrypted by using the same algorithm. kasarnya kaya nyimpen brankas yang gabisa dijebol menggunakan brankas yang gabisa dijebol juga. Ensei Tankado said that if TRANSLTR existence is not mentioned by NSA then Tankado will release the code that NSA itself cant decrypt. It would be totally disaster, terrorist attacks, and etc could not be predicted. Then what happen next? Read the novel! My personal rating about this novel is 4/5.

You wanna know about privacy in Internet?
You wanna know how we are living in a world which no private messages rules exit?
Then read the novel! Fyi, every technology mentioned by the author are really exist in real world!

Quotes about this book:

“Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.”
― Dan Brown, Digital Fortress

“Who will guard the guards ? If we're the guards of society, then who will watch us and make sure that we're not dangerous?”

― Dan Brown, Digital Fortress

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Image result for quotes in the girl who saved the king of sweden

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Judul (edisi Inggris): The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
Penulis: Jonas Jonasson, dkk

ISBN-13: 978-0007557905
Jumlah Halaman: 419
Terbit: April 1st 2014
Penerbit: Fourth Estate

Well, its been 2 months i was boring enough and finally i asked Golda (one of my friend) to recommend me books. She listed almost like 20 novels which now finally i had a chance to read it. Well actually, this novel is one of Jonnas Jonasson master piece. (the Author of "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared").

To know much more about the author, citing from goodreads,

"After a long career as a journalist, media consultant and television producer, Jonas Jonasson decided to start a new life. He wrote a manuscript, he sold all his possessions in Sweden and moved to a small town by Lake Lugano in Switzerland, only a few meters from the Italian border.

The manuscript became a novel. The novel became a phenomenon in Sweden, and now it is about to reach the rest of the world."

Well, lets begin...

Its about an illiterate girl Nombeko Mayeki who was born in 1961 in Soweto. Unfortunately, Nombeko had to bear, to live and to grow up with her mother (who finally die early in her poverty-stricken township, be it from drugs, alcohol, or just plain despair). Quite funny to know the fact that after her Mom died she spent all of her money on food (i forgot, maybe ice cream?) which later he found herself quite stupid.

Later on, She takes a different path (of course, if not, this novel wont exist lol) which taught me how to feel extremely grateful to be born in such a condition and family. This story also introduces us on how unfortunate condition doesn't limit your dream. Such a literate girl who doesn't really know how to read and do the math finally become one of powerful girl and helped an engineer to build atomic bombs!

And why the title is The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden? Read the novel! My personal rating about this novel is 3.5/5. Its quite good novel, but somehow the plot sometimes ruin my expectation and somehow the plot sometimes could be predicted (or maybe is it just me who could predict such a plot? haha)

Quotes about this book:

“The statistical probability that an illiterate in 1970s Soweto will grow up and one day find herself cinfined in a potato truck with the swedish king and prime minister is 1 in 45,766,212,810 according to the calculations of the aforementioned illiterate herself”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

“We all need someone to share our innermost thoughts with,”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

“The overworked man was tired of everything, and he only kept going because he had long since forgotten that life could consist of anything else.”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

“With the new antiterrorism laws, the government could call anyone a terrorist and lock him or her up for as long as they liked, for any reason they liked. Or for no reason at all.”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

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Deskripsi Singkat Tentang Buku

Judul (edisi Indonesia): Why Samsung

Penulis: Koh Seung-Hee, dkk.
ISBN: 9786027888586
Jumlah Halaman: 292
Terbit: Agustus 2013
Penerbit: Bentang Pusaka

So what is on your mind when you heard Samsung? You might be thinking about smartphone, tv, semiconductor, and so on. The fact is, those products are only a piece of masterpiece from Samsung. Samsung was build from merging several business units about perusahaan pengolah beras into Samsung Industry at 1936.

About this book, this book was written by Koh Seung-Hee and friends. Actually, the book itself is in English version named Why Samsung Story and later on was translated by Pradipta Nurmaya & Renci into Indonesia.

After all, this book describing an international well known company, Samsung, since it was established by its first president, Hoam Lee Byung Chul. It is also describing steps (management etc) that were taken in crucial periods of company development (you could name it such as world war, national monetary crisis, and so on).

Samsung, representing symbol of Korean spirit and ethic, was built through a philosophy that a company could construct (in real life) a good society. Samsung men, represent all workers in Samsung, were trained in how to build and implement values of the company.

For your information, when national monetary crisis came, Samsung is one of few companies that stood up by itself and helped Korea to pass the crisis through smart business strategies, steps, and actions (while the others companies, most of all, need government help to cover up their debt). With such a strong foundation in its basic management, strong visionary leadership, and determination in building and implementing a good society, Samsung Men could over through all those hardships until Samsung now become a World Leader Company in Technology Development.

At the end, although this book may catch your mind, but if you dont have any related background about company management, it is a little bit hard to understand the most of it. I am, myself, could understand only let say 1/8 of it lol. As i mentioned above, this book tells you about management steps, actions, and etc that were taken. So, you might be thinking it first before buying this book if you dont have any related background. Overall, this book's rating is 6/10 at least for me and might be 8/10 or even 9/10 for the others especially for someone who have any related background about company management.

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I will not argue on what is in this book and sorry if there are many mistakes in writing review in english, simply I want to argue or writing a review about how A Brief History of Time impacts me. At first, it is not that easy to understand this kind of book. Although it was made for lets call it society, still im as an engineering student who study at nuclear engineering (that used to play with relativity or whatelse) found that it is hard to understand.

Chapter 1: Our Picture of The Universe

Well, this chapter told us about what in the past or even present people think, see, and argue about the whole universe system. In this book, Stephen Hawking wrote that Aristotle in his book On The Heavens was able to put forward two good arguments (about the shadow of the moon that is round and the northern stars view) that earth was a round sphere rather than a Hat plate (that Greek people used to trust). And now we already knew that the earth most likely looks like a sphere rather than a round or even a Hat plate.

Well, about the universe model, Ptolemy ever made a great model of our galaxy. Ptolemy’s model is provided a reasonably accurate system for predicting the positions of heavenly bodies in the sky but using an assumption that sometimes moon orbit is 2 times closer to the earth which means, one time moon will appeared 2 times larger than usual (which is we know that it is absolutely incorrect).

Augustine said that the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe (which means easily there is no time before the universe was made). When someone asked him what god do before He created the universe, then he replied that Time was a property of the universe that god created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe.

Interesting point so far, by Hubble’s observations, he said distant galaxies are moving rapidly away from us (or in short one can said that the universe by itself is expanding). So we could say that it might be the universe itself in the earlier time have been close together where all of those are exactly in a point which its density was infinite. For those who are forgot about the density concept, we could say that density is mass/volume which it means in the earlier time, universe was ever come close each other in a point which had a very very big mass (it is really very big) and had a really really small volume (nearly zero). At this situation, it was very dense and that’s why we could say at the earlier time universe had an infinite density.

Hubble suggested there was a time that a big bang happened (for those who really didn’t know this, you must be kidding me) In which under such conditions all the laws of science and all ability to predict future would break down (simply we could say that all of those are not working).

Stephen Hawking wrote that, in order to talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss questions we have to make sure understand what a scientific theory is. A theory is just a model of the universe or a restricted part of it and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. A theory can be called good if it satisfies two requirements. First of all, it must be accurately describe a large class of the observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements. Second. It must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

To make sure all of us understand this, Stephen hawking states that Aristotle believed on Empedocles’s theory that everything was made out of four elements earth air fire and water. Okay let say this is a simple theory, but can it make a definite prediction later? Ofc NO. Then ofc this is not a theory. It is different with one Newton theory which is consists of three parts but it could make a definite prediction, then it is called a good theory. It is also said that any physical theory is always provisional which means only a hypothesis, because we can never prove it no matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, we can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. To disapprove the theory itself, we could just make another method of observations. If its result differ from a theory then we have to abandon that theory or at least modify it.

Well, what Stephen Hawking wants to do is simply provide a single theory that describes the whole universe. Scientist in its approach divide it into 2 parts. First, there are the laws that tell us how the universe changes with time (in short something that could predict what will happen next, and what was happen in the past. Or if you are an engineering students we could say this is a function with time f(t)). Second, there is the question of the initial state of the universe. Ofc many of us debate on this, one said scientist must only focus on first part, because God could have started the universe off any way He wanted, He could made it in a completely arbitrary way but yet it appears that He chose to make it evolve in a very very regular way according to certain laws. In this case, Stephen Hawking trusted that therefore it seems there is an equally reasonable to suppose that there are also laws governing the initial state.

So it is ofc really difficult to make or devise a theory to describe the universe all in one go (we could say by using only this theory, we could describe everything in the universe), thus scientist divide it into several partial theories by neglecting the effects of other quantities or representing them by simple sets of number (once again, in solving some problems, usually we are as an engineer neglect something to make it easier to solve it. Lets say we are calculating the actual time of free fall body from Y metes of high, sometimes or even most of us neglect air resistance)

Today scientists describe the universe by using 2 partial theories. There are the general theory of relativity (trust me, I didn’t learn this in class) and quantum mechanics. In short, general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe that size from a few miles into a big big big one, about 1 miles being followed by 24 zeros after it while quantum mechanics deal with something that is very small. But both of them is contradicting each other, so they cannot both be correct. What Stephen Hawking wants to find is a theory that will works on general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

In such a condition ofc we knew that it is logic to say Stephen might made a progress toward that laws. The discovery of a complete unified theory may not aid the survival of our species or even affect our lifestyle. But as we know, as a people we are very curious about something that they don’t know, a desire to know much, a desire to get more knowledge.

In this part, I cannot say that Stephen wrong. He might be right about the people curiosity. But as we know, so far what Stephen thought now is the most accurate things (but read again, there is never any physical theory that always works to something with assuming and neglecting few things), so it might be one day what Stephen said is not true. It is depend on ourself again, knowledge itself is not an objective matters. Knowledge that we got itself is being processed by our brain or simply being digested. Things that are not important or not match with our basic belief will be thrown away. By this way, things that we have found so far is never ever be an objective one. It must be contain at least a little subjective things. By learning, it must made us continue to remember Allah as our God. If it is not, we have to ask ourself whether it is we learn in a wrong way or what we have learnt is something that must not be learnt and being forbidden by Islam.

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@sharing is a book and was made by Handry Satriago. Handry Satriago is currently the CEO General Electrics in Indonesia. Having a wheeled chair around 17yo does not stop him to develop. Simply, this book is about his tweets on twitter (which is i do not expect so). The publisher divided it into several parts. At first i thought that this book is like an autobiography, so i expect more rather than just a merely "tweets". But things that have been brought must be reviewed. Let the review begin,

This book has 4 parts

About His Life (what he had been trough)
Indonesia and the World (why Indonesia, and putting Indonesia vs World)
Leadership and Followership (the difference, and tips tricks to be a great leader)
Management: Concept, Theory, and Application (In GE)

I will only review part 1, the rest you could buy it to appreciate his works ^^

1. About His Life

His life is starts to change at 17 yo. No one could expect, even himself, at the age of 17 he had to use a wheelchair. He said, facing the reality is the first step. We have to accept this fact, we have to accept this condition, and moreover we can not deny the reality. How hard we try to deny the reality, the reality will not change. Reality is reality. After taking a deep breath, and realizing the condition we shall move on to next step.

Instead of staying at house, he chose to go outside. There is no good point being let say it galau and staying at the house. He chose to go outside, again accepting reality and continues to move.

"You have a the psychological aspect of the problem, you can solve the technical easily then problem solved."

but remember,

"Leaders seem forget the psychological aspect of their problem, frequently blinded by technical yet they do not solve problem"

moreover,

"the psychological aspect of problem mostly driven by ourselves. Thats why lead yourselves first to lead your people"

He said that every people who faced problem will soon had his steel-mental (perhaps?) after solving the problem. Again, he stated how important to accept reality and making the next move :)

Back to his childhood, we could find something different (rather than me) about his childhood. He starts everything with why, and he is given chance to ask and tell everything and always being heard by his parents although it is not rare that the questions were not answered. He just threw as much questions as he found yet his parent never argue about it or even prohibit him. When he heard a story let say a cinderella, later he will retell the story with his imagination, several modifications are made, if he is stuck, he would say "Thats it, the story over" LOL

Ever heard about Pygmalion Effect? If no, you could google it, His mom always teach him that submission (i dont know what words could represent pasrah perfectly) is important. Submission is not just about accepting and waiting. It is about what ikhtiar that you have been do, and you give the result to God.

In short, his daddy always told about grow and being competitive while his mom always told about accepting and managing people.

He also defines the meaning of success. Success could be defined by yourselves and the others, We have to accept challenge, life is not easy, This is life, challenge are exist to make us grow. So define your success, reflect and learn, achieve, create new challenge :)

As a normal man, Handry of course having mistakes and failures. At first time working in GE, when he asked what he has to do, his boss replied "make your first mistake and learn from it". One of it like when his team had someone new, he always have in mind that "the new person" is not having a good experience, my networks are wider, and i know everything rather than him. The time when we disrespect the others, it is the time for us to block ourselves to learn. We have to work together as a team, no need to be barking "Hey this is my works". We have to be a diamond. Your job is shining, diamond is to be found, no need to bark around to be found.

Another mistakes is when presenting our idea, sometimes our idea were rejected not because it is not good enough, not good solution, sometimes it is rejected because we could not present it well. No body have enough time to listen to any details on our idea, so we need strategy to present it. He learnt Four Blocker way, which a slide is divided into 4 square no more. We have to speak in an elevator speech, means we have present it as fast as we are standing in an elevator, fast, efficient (not effective), and interesting. Dont forget to elaborate it with what are the advantages using this rather than the old one, why this is important. Last thing, dont forget to train yourself before presenting.

Lets back with the diamond, there will be time for us to expose ourselves. One of momentum is when having a crisis. We could expose ourselves with our skills and lead people to solve the problem. Remember, this is the difference between leader and do-er. Leader lead something and get ready for the response while do-er only do what boss said, while leader is not do what boss already said, somehow make an initiative way and followed by creative moves.

About life, our life outline has been made by God since we are not born yet, the problem is not arguing, protesting, and denying the reality, but live with it, and fulfill it with your own way. Take example such as Arief Rachman as a Headquarter of Labs School, till now he is still a teacher. Everyone's life has been outlined, but still, we have our own way to live with it. The most important thing is that, every way that we have been chose, there are happiness with it. Find your Happiness!

Overall, this book is good. It could open our mind about life. It could be a good or motivation for those engineering students. Good night :)

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