Everybody Hates Rais The Senile One

Bersih 2.0 chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan denied today all links between the recent spate of cyber attacks on government websites and her electoral reform group raised yesterday by Datuk Seri Rais Yatim, saying his conjecture is an attack on Malaysians.

 

A group of hackers calling themselves Anonymous mounted an attack on at least 200 websites last Thursday, saying they are against censorship of websites by the government.

“It’s a wholly unfounded, unreasonable, preposterous suggestion made by a Cabinet minister who should really know better than to make such wild accusations,” she told The Malaysian Insider.

She added that Rais’s comment was an attack not just on Bersih but on Malaysian citizens’ constitutional right to assemble peaceably.

“I am entirely surprised by the raving of a few members of the government against Bersih 2.0 and their attempts to demonise Bersih; and I view Rais Yatim’s comments as one of these attempts.

“I consider this an attack on the people and it is a shame they chose to do this rather than listen to the people,” the former Malaysian Bar president said.

Rais, who is the information, communication and culture minister, had linked yesterday the mass attacks on some 200 local websites to the upcoming Bersih rally on July 9 after Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Maximus Ongkili told reporters initial investigations showed 90 per cent of the hackers were based in Malaysia.

Rais further described the cyber attacks as politically-motivated and intended to disrupt the workings of the government, but did not provide details as to how the denial of service attacks were related to the July 9 rally that is pushing for electoral reforms.

Read more here

*********

No, it's not Everybody Loves Raymond but the title alone is opposite to what's happening right now.

I simply cannot understand how a minister with a PHD certificate would say something crap and nonsense as above. This has clearly demonstrated that he is unable to discern the clear difference of the real purpose of those attacks by Anonymous group and the purpose of Bersih 2.0 rally holding on. This also demonstrates that he is not worth living with the title given. Instead what is seen is jumbling things up, and trying to connect both as one. From what he said above, it seems clearly he has been probably wrongly advised by his advisers or other colleagues and bringing into his kind of conclusion.

Prior to this, he did say that Malaysia was unperturbed by attacks shows how ignorant can a minister be and chose to remain eye-closed to the reality.

Anonymous's intentions is clear: they, on behalf of Malaysia netizens want to send a message to the government of the clear displeasure of the MCMC, acting on the request of the Domestic Consumer Affairs Ministry, (Ismail Sabri a.k.a. Ayah Dafi) to block 10 file sharing sites, which includes some that are legit, and it got mixed with some that are famously the bane of some parties (e.g The Pirate Bay). They also want to send a message that the Najib administration has violated the promise of no Internet censorship, and blocking those websites is also considered a violation to that promise.

Note: If you have read the text they have sent - there are absolutely no references to Bersih. Unless it was deliberately skewed.

So Anonymous' intentions has totally nothing to do Bersih's objectives and intentions. Both Bersih and Anonymous are two different eggs, yet Rais puts them in one basket.

Until today, there are thousands of youngsters that are very angry at not only this senile old man but other ministers and parties that are behind their problems and inconvenience. Six minutes ago at this time of writing, the number of 1M Malaysians Don't Want SKMM Block File Sharing Website on Facebook hit 32000. Meaning, there are 32000 Malaysian netizens that angry at these people. Not only that, in the last two days, there are many tweets out there with the tag #yorais that vented anger at that imbecile.

Here's a screenshot to show the thousands of tweets focusing anger at that man.

A friend of mine recently lamented of the thesis that Rais wrote previously about the evils of ISA and other things that needs to be repealed that in later on, Rais's stance is a complete opposite of what he stood and wrote for. He did questioned of whether it's the matter of his own principle being compromised for the political stand and having his own principles run down. This was one of his observations regarding him and he summed  / rant one conclusion: "Someone should strip him the PhD certification."

There are still some people to this day call him "Rape Maid" Minister because of his scandal involving the rape of an Indonesian Maid , although it is a matter of time yet to be seen whether those being sued by him over that claim would be able to proof with many things that indicate that what actually happened is contradicting Rais' claims. This is still one of the skeletons remaining in his closet.

Maybe it's time for him to be dropped from the Cabinet, as what Abdullah Badawi did to Zam Maidin previously - but already too late.

You see below is the excerpt of an open letter written to the senile old man by the name of Rais "Ayah Dino" Yatim. There are many youngsters out there very angry at that old man. 

Assalamualaikum Datuk Seri. Hari ini saya ingin mengajukan beberapa soalan. Dimana , tidak semua yang mengetahui asal usul penyekatan yang dibuat. Dan saya memerlukan jawapan yang terperinci , bukan yang disebarkan oleh media-media akhbar , tetapi dari mulut Datuk Seri sendiri.

 Soalan pertama , Why block us?. Dan jika Datuk Seri cakap tentang Violation , What violation? If the malaysian citizens are downloading Local Artists music , video and others , you should compare that to what they gain. Even without us downloading their work , some of us wont even download it , "Why?" do you say? Because , i would rather HEAR Justin Bieber instead of hearing some of the locals. You should get a download statistic. Compare the downloads between locals and foreign.

If File-sharing is illegal , then am i sharing my notes to my friend , illegal aswell? Some of us , is working for a foreign company , but they are working inside of Malaysia , and sometimes they need to send a large files. So how do they do it if not through a file-sharing websites.?

No censorship for the internet was stated on the Bill of Guarantees and was said TWICE by both of our Prime Minister , that is Tun Dr. Mahathir dan Dato' Sri Najib Razak. Yet this line was crossed.

Local artist have a low income because of File-Sharing sites? And was it our fault? First of all , the quality standard , and the attitude of some local artist , i would say that it is BELOW average. That is NOT good.

To love the local artist? AS soon as you hear foreign artist , you would be throwing local away. Im talking about modern artist. Comparing V.I.P under KRU , with Rebecca Black , I would still rather HEAR Rebecca Black sing.

Dan apa pula KAITAN Bersih dengan hacker? Isnt the hacker that attacks the website is called Anonymous , which is a foreign hackers while the Dragon Force Malaysia , Rilekscrew and other hackers is NOT EVEN a political party hackers. Why would you even go THAT far to think about hackers involved with politics! I myself, is learning Software Engineering. I THINK like engineers and i THINK like those hackers as those hackers was also once a Programmer , a Software Engineer , a Networking Student. We IT student THINK alike , as we LOVE the same thing. My MIND doesnt even COME with politic, yet you said that those Hackers are involved with it.

AND! you said , the hackers have been identified , but yet you STILL accused Bersih to be having or IS the hacker. We need you to give us a proof please.. EVERYONE would like to know this.. Who is the hacker and Why do you still Accused Bersih if YOU HAVE the hacker already.

Read more here.

Examining The RM 1.8 million Six Facebook Fan Pages Case

KUALA LUMPUR, June 14 — A whopping RM1,758,432 was spent on developing six Facebook pages to promote Malaysian tourism, the Tourism Ministry said today. 

Deputy Tourism Minister James Dawos Mamit said this today in reply to a question from Anthony Loke (Rasah-DAP).

Each Facebook page cost RM293,072 — Cuti-Cuti 1 Malaysia, Citrawarna 1Malaysia, Karnival Jualan Mega 1 Malaysia, Festival Pelancongan Seni Kontemporari 1 Malaysia, Kempen 1 Malaysia Bersih and Fabulous Food 1 Malaysia.

The Citrawarna 1 Malaysia page has so far attracted 20,292 Facebook fans since it was launched on May 21.

Mamit said that the RM1.8 million included costs for designing, flash programming and coding, testing and debugging, uploading and launching the application, system server deployment and campaign management.

“You need RM1.8 million to run Facebook pages and applications? A six-year-old can start a Facebook page.

“If Datuk Seri Ng Yen Yen has problems getting people to help start Facebook pages, DAP headquarters can help her out, we have people who can develop these things at no cost,” Loke told reporters later at a press conference.

Loke said that unless Ng explained the reasons behind the “exorbitant” costs for the “social media branding” exercise by her ministry, he would lodge a report to the Malaysian Anti-Crimes Commission (MACC). - The Malaysian Insider

******

I was briefly involved in freelance web design process cycle with one of my ex-colleagues that was done as way of making an extra buck out of it and we actually have a rough idea how much these kind of service would cost, depending on requirements, the hosting facilities, the content required, and the time needed. This is then factored with the number of additional people required to complete that work. Back in 2008, we had done this kind of work before, and given of the need to have it ready by a month, we had a few extra hands in India side to help us out. And of course the final cost would wary on that.

At first, when the minister said that it cost RM1.8 million in total for those six Facebook pages, I was at first thinking that the minister has actually no idea of how much is the production cost of developing those pages. It's likely that since there's not many savvy people in IT in that department, it crossed my mind that they have no idea that it would be that high or otherwise. 

As what Anthony Loke was saying in Parliament, any person can create a Facebook fan page without a cost or even a small fee just to get it done professionally. A web page can cost more than that because there is also the annual cost of hosting (depending on the size) and domain name fee, creating other features and so forth. If you are creating a Facebook Fan Page (since it accommodates more than 5000 fans), you don't even need a domain name, no need database and a hosting since Facebook already has it already.

For those who are unsure how a fan page is created, you can view one of the sample guide sites on doing.The first link is a basic how to create a Facebook fan page, while this link has much details and tutorials on doing a fan page.

I decided to do some search via Facebook's search function and Google and it turns out that by entering those entries it turns out to be that some are not really Facebook fan page, but actual pages itself. For instance, confirmed non-Facebook pages are: 1Malaysia Green And Clean, Fabulous Food 1Malaysia, while Citrawarna 1Malaysia is confirmed to be a Facebook Fan Page. I suppose that the Tourism ministry website is also being counted on the RM 1.8 million work that is, since the last update was just today.

Thus, whatever that James Davos was replying in Parliament is not entirely accurate and can be tantamount to misleading the Dewan Rakyat on the information given. One argument about that thing was that he said all of those pages are Facebook fan pages, whereas it turns to be not all. For the cost factor, after looking onto the entire content, the cost for RM 293K per page is acceptable for the three non-Facebook pages, because it requires flashy content, high storage capacity, ability to update information on the go, search engine optimization and the number of people required to work on the website. 

So RM 293K X 3 = RM 879K.

The cost of working on 3 Facebook Fan pages is little fishy here, should cost a fraction of RM 293K. If that is the case, after calculating the above, I suppose that the balance of the RM 1.8 million spent would be on the advertising marketing campaign, in order to promote these six websites.

Unfortunately, at this time, there has been lack of information on the breakdown of costs. We don't know at this time whether there are at least two companies involved in working on those pages. One for design pages, another one for aggressive advertising. The one for designing pages was identified as Impact Creations Sdn. Bhd. There are several references to Tourism Ministry and Impact Creations, with several items related to like:Tourism Minister's Friend Admits Links To Company (referring to Juni Ewe). The rest can be seen on search results: 

Unfortunately, I didn't really agree entirely to some other people who wrote on this matter, including Paula - who wrote it 5 hours ago. But what is interesting on the matter is that politicians from both fronts (e.g Anthony Loke and Khairy) have been pushing for Ng Yen Yen to reveal for it opens the interest of everyone to find out more about the thing. And there must be an emphasis that the answer that James Dawos Mamit gave is not accurate in entire.

Violating The No Net Censor Promise

Flashback:

Less than two months ago the Prime Minister wowed that his govt “would never censor the Internet.”

The govt also has an Internet “Bill of Guarantees” (BoGs) in place that stipulates citizens are granted certain incentives, rights and privileges. Among them is BoG 7 which states that the govt is “To ensure no censorship of the Internet.”

On May 30 2011, The MCMC sent a circular to all ISPs in Malaysia. See the letter below:

As of this time of writing, many people particularly youngsters have expressed outrage at the party causing all of this: the Domestic Consumer Affairs ministry. According to the letter, the request was submitted to the MCMC by the Ministry. True, you can't really blame MCMC in this case. The Facebook page, 1M Malaysians Don't Want SKMM Block File Sharing Website at this time has 5424 likes.

Of all the 10 websites blacklisted, Pirate Bay is the most famous of all. It is also banned in Italy and Indonesia. Hollywood studios called that site the bane of their existence. However, Sweden ISPs refused the government order, Danish ISPs challenged the court order and Dutch ISPs have decided not to follow the request. (see related news here)

However, some of the legit online storing sites were also victims of the block. A statement by the MCMC enforcement division director, Mohd. Roslan Mahayudin, quoting from The Star said:

“Anyone who feels the ban is wrong can write to us and we will look into it.” 

Not only does the action invited anger, some industry analysts say that it is a wrong approach and instead suggested that  co-operating and finding alternative means would be better than a suicidal front approach that will invite backlash. Some notable quotes in regarding to that:



“Forcibly blocking access to the website only lent more credence to online censorship which contradicts the MSC Bill of Guarantees. In fact, it is foolish to think that online censorship works. There are still many other ways for surfers to access the portal.”

Content providers could look into means to “offer more competitive pricings” so as to encourage consumers to not be involved in the piracy of copyright content.

Two years, ago, a Universal music executive has clearly admitted that it is virtually impossible to wipe out piracy, citing that no matter how hard the laws can be on blocking sharing sites, there are still people getting it from alternative means, particularly the resourceful type of users. This problem is caused as the result of uncontrolled capitalism system and the problem of people unable to acquire things due to inaccessibility and financial affordability also contributed to this factor.

In light of the case, many resourceful users have been trying ways to get pass the blockade.

This is no coincidence. There is a sinister agenda behind it. This is likely following the damage on the USA government done by Wikileaks. Interestingly, there was a letter published on Malaysia Today on Friday that has the excerpt below:


The Malaysian government is under the order/direction of the US government. If you've read recently, US government legislated new laws to ban P2P and other file sharing/hosting websites.

This is after the Wikileaks incident.


Connect the dots, and you will see there's a war against humanity going on... 

" legislated new laws to ban P2P" - The main proponents of the bill introduced in the USA is none other than Senators Patrick Leahy and Orin Hatch.

This extract below from Tech Dirt reads:

They do realize, of course, that Hollywood (who is pushing them for this law) was established originally as a "pirate" venture to get away from Thomas Edison and his patents, right? Things change over time. Remember, that YouTube, which is now considered by Hollywood to be mostly "legit," had been derided as a "site dedicated" to "piracy" in the past. It's no surprise that the Justice Department -- with a bunch of former RIAA/MPAA lawyers on staff -- would love to have such powers, but it's difficult to see how such a law would be Constitutional, let alone reasonable. And finally, we must ask, yet again, why the US federal government is getting involved in what is, clearly, a civil business model issue? The Senators quote the already debunked US Chamber of Commerce reports on the "harm" of intellectual property -- which just shows how intellectually dishonest they're being. They're willing to base a censorship law on debunked data.

Oh, and even worse, this proposed law is supposed to cover sites worldwide, not just in the US. For a country that just passed a libel tourism law to protect Americans from foreign judgments, it's a bit ridiculous that we're now trying to reach beyond our borders to shut down sites that may be perfectly legal elsewhere. The way that the law, called the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," would work is that the Justice Department could ask a court to declare a site as a "pirate" site and then get an injunction that would force the domain registrar or registry to no longer resolve that domain name.

For those who do not know about Leahy, he has a brief appearance in The Dark Knight opposite the late Heath Ledger.

You Don't Even Need So Many E-mail Accounts!

I am just simply baffled by whoever in Pemandu was proposing that every Malaysian gets an e-mail account although most of them are already tech-savvy and have their own e-mail accounts. My first impression is that those buggers there didn't think deep and instead it is merely a dangling carrot and a mileage for political support.

Many people have asked the question of who is this company Tricubes. Apart from the knowledge that they develop the MyKad reader that are used by many government departments, they are in a very precarious financial position such as Bursa Malaysia can delist them in the space of six months of so. 

Pitching this idea also brings back of the illogical explanation of not having automated registration of voters. It simply defies logic really. Actually the approach is that you straight away register the voters automatically, and then if the person who wants to vote in the area of choosing which does not match with the one in the database, they just have to go to the Election Commission office. It is far better in that way rather with those many excuses that prop out from the commissioner's mouth or so.

RM 50 million of people's money on this project is a waste. It could have been done to expand the broadband penetration in Malaysia. They can do it in Sarawak now that the BN government manage to defend it in the state elections. If they don't, don't you think that it counts as a violation of promises? But the rate still remains slow, no large thanks to Telekom's monopoly over the wires they have to increase broadband, coupled with high monthly fees.

Even without the proposal above, I always have a hard time when communicating with government departments as they keep redirecting my calls to other departments here and there. It's pretty hard when they can't even understand what I wish to convey although I speak to them in Malay! Then what's the point of having this kind of stupid idea? Bailout Tricubes? 

Hey..look at some of the tweets and it's easy to say no to that idea - unless Pemandu wants to bulldoze it over:

“RM50 million for email?? existing MP published email also can’t reply efficiently, What level of confident such will improve the effective or efficiency in communication? 1malaysia only for who? actually?” said one fan.

“Please use OUR money in the correct way, upgrade our broadband, subsidy gasoline, remove credit card tax or whatsoever! We already have our own email account (gmail/yahoo/hotmail/etc) which is free, we no need 1Malaysia email account. Totally disappointed to your motto and actions,” said another fan.

A third said: “It’s astonishing how the gov is able to frequently come out with nonsensical plans to waste our money. Malaysia Boleh!!”

I am also very much against privacy so, it is always a concern where you can be contacted without consent in regards of e-mail. If you remember being one of those that receive SMSes or e-mail greetings from Najib (the former in particular)  without your knowledge, know that your privacy is at the risk of being used by third-parties with no consent.

At least a person has an e-mail account, and Gmail's space that increases exponentially for each user means they can be stored as long as you want, so why need more e-mail accounts to juggle for anyway? Nothing better to do huh?

Who's To Blame For The Broadband Woes Here?

Wireless and broadband coverage in Malaysia is starting to expand gradually, but in the pace that I think that it is still slow and performance wise, still not to the best level that users enjoyed in other countries like the States, Australia, etc.

A college mate of my brother once told me that though there's Cyberjaya you can't get any other wireless broadband services other than Celcom. True, I tried testing Maxis or Izzi back there and the reception was terrible. I thought since P1 is the most popular WIMAX service in the nation there should be coverage there as well.

Checking at the coverage map, although there's wireless coverage in major cities in Malaysia, yet the coverage is still not enough. For example in Ipoh, there's coverage for areas like Fair Park, Silibin, Sungai Rokam but not places like Ipoh Gardens, Rapat Setia, Bercham etc..

I asked a guy from P1 is it because of pending of approval from city councils and he said yes, and usually the time for approval is about a month or so. But since Cyberjaya is a IT city in Malaysia and supposedly full of Internet facilities, why can't they do another wireless town as in Kuala Lumpur? Some time ago, my brother told me that it is likely of the monopoly competition there. Maybe TM or the Sepang municipal council is not willing to approve here because it could destroy the TM monopoly there.

In the end, who is to blame? Look at the Malaysiakini article whereby Australian investors might not invest in there because of poor Internet faciilities. Who is the person behind the approval of installation? Well, Rais and Najib will need to look into this matter.

Malaysia Today Blockade Extended to All ISPs

Yesterday, I have mentioned that the MCMC has ordered a total block of Malaysia Today following the PKFZ leak. However, as of this time, the blockade has been extended to all other ISPs including Maxis, P1, etc.. as they found that people are able to access them outside Streamyx.

Apparently the directive was also issued to them on this matter which is starting to get out of hand.

And the police are now going for the shoot the whistleblower path, despite the fact that it is a cover up of the real mccoy.

For some reason, I managed to find out briefly that the main page of Malaysia Today has been removed no doubt by hackers. On further checks, the No Holds Barred and Corridors of Power segments have articles as prior to the expose of the PKFZ documents there. This was about an hour ago until even both segments have been blocked.

There is a user's right to anonymity.Article 12 of The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

Let's present ourselves a dilemma: if you are a person who has the military intelligence on a murder of a foreigner that can bring a leader down, will you expose it to the world? You know this involves other countries, the World Court in Hague, an other parties investigating including the United Nations, FBI, etc..the scale is higher than PKFZ..what will you do?

Remember: you can't kill the news.

Update: 5.45 pm - I am able to access the website. Anyone from streamyx able to do so?

MCMC's Latest Episode Could Cause More Embarassment For Malaysia

Even after the interviews / and questioning of the Malaysiakini staff, the Multimedia Commission still repeats with its probes and jumps into the Jaring office in Technology Park, trying to salvage pieces of information from the servers there.

Even if they can still get their hands on the two videos, there is no way that they can stop the videos being copied and shared around. Today's web browsers like Firefox contain companion widgets and components that allows saving the videos by other users. That means, if the source happens to be accidentally deleted perhaps due to a virus attack or something else, the video will appear elsewhere.

It will still be a lose situation for the MCMC. Say if someone happens to give the video to international broadcast companies like CNN, BBC, Al jazeera, it will be the same thing that happened to Malaysia on the Kartika caning incident. MCMC and the ministry has been whacked left and right by not only the cyber community throughout the world, but MCA and the international journlism community as well.

The real fault actually lies on two main fronts:

1. Hisham Hussein has made a bad mistake of saying that statement that was captured the video. That has proven that UMNO who was the chief instigation behind the temple protests last month has showed its real stripes of being the wolf in the sheep's clothing. Or two-face as you can call it. He should watch his word though on that day.

2. The mainstream media alone plays part of the problem. The naked truth was not told in hold to the people and the target audience. When covering that episode, it is either that it was spin to tell the different meaning or a critical piece of information was deliberately withheld for the fear of being called by the Home Ministry / 4th Floor Boys (notably during AAB's days).

MCMC cannot shutdown Youtube because doing so violates the MSC charter and Najib's promise last month that Malaysia will not censor Internet. It's a Catch 22 situation here. Even if they insist of pressing charges on Malaysiakini, what they will do will draw flak from everyone. I mean, everyone will whack left and right. The problem is it is now a problem in Malaysia for big muscle to shoot the messenger and this means that big muscles are behaving like in the feudal period.

"Malaysiakini is an online news media. This is a common duty for them to provide such a report. The deputy minister should just stick to the law and not trying to pull the public into the investigation to support the agency's action against Malaysiakini."

The remarks by the deputy minister Joe Salang Gandum is somewhat as a misinterpretation and built on the assumption that every one will support the actions by the MCMC. In fact Salang is wrong. Totally wrong. It is the other way wrong. The presumption that every people is against a protest is wrong and the truth is if their cries and requests fall to death ears, they need to do something drastic to prove their point to the country leaders.

Since Malaysiakini has insisted that they have done nothing wrong but doing their duty of journalism, they will have a big fight on their hands, which is to proof strongly that they have no intention to annoy people. But I see from the video, it has proven how fallible the Barisan Nasional leaders are right now, particularly on those little Napoleons. These little Napoleons represent the bad apples of the BN that makes everyone angry at them.

You're No Computer Expert, Rais..So Back Down!

The Malaysian Insider reports that Rais Yatim's ministry is evaluating the feasibility of the Green Dam software as part of the aim of filtering unwanted content from the Internet.

But as said, the idea will draw flak as it violates the MSC bill of guarantees.

Rais, listen to the IT experts. You are only a politician. There are technical people out there including myself who thinks that taking this idea is a waste of time and still will not be able to accomplish the objective.

"The move comes on the back of proposals to register bloggers, most of whom are said to be anti-government, and the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition parties to have a larger Internet presence."

Look....we criticize not of we don't like you...but the mistakes that you're committing and you don't bother to listen at all. Who is to blame later on?

Even other people, who writes blogs, will start getting very angry and bash you down the moment they hear some illogical idea. Just back down, will you?

30% Subsidy For All IT-Related Equipment

Every year, PIKOM organizes a PC fair nationwide in the months of April, August and December. The is always a sense of encouragement by government and PIKOM to improve the IT awareness and penetration to the end-user. That is why PC fairs are part of it. But then, despite all the latest equipment and encouragement to improve IT awareness, the amout of sales and buying power from the end user is still low - only at buying when necessary - status.

The reason is very simple that the cost of buying is simply over the amount we can afford. Most of the equipment purchased are imported from China or America since they are manufactured there. The cost is calculated on the exchange rate of USD to Malaysia to Ringgit at the time the stock was acquired. The cost also includes the 30 percent import duty imposed by Customs.

This is Malaysia, we do not have the much buying power as Singapore do, as they can buy 5 times more than us. If you want to increase buying power, here, then the government has to give 30 percent subsidy to all IT related items like hardware and subsidy. Removal of import duty imposed on this should be suffice though or deduct 30 percent from all items cost.

But this is not a suggestion. It is a radical must do thing. Dino, anyone?

Dateline Windows 7 Vienna - 22 October 2009

Windows 7 or Vienna is due for launch worldwide on October 22 2009. One of the main features addressed in the OS is about the performance in which Longhorn (Vista) was heavily criticized upon. And secondly, it combines the support of 32-bit and 64-bit in one instead of separated out versions.

The European version, due to its laws imposed will exclude the Internet Explorer browser. But the good news that for those who bought new machines and then featuring Windows Vista, there is the option to upgrade to Vienna with no costs, but you need to request a CD from Microsoft. Not sure Microsoft Malaysia will send one to customers like us, in this case, I'm using Vista business.

See also - Features in Windows Vienna (7)

TM's Broadband Monopoly In Malaysia

I noticed of the poor broadband penetration in Malaysia, with as of this time, it is still at a dismal 21 percent, with no chance of hitting the target 70 percent by end of 2010. I have always been very suspicious of saying that penetration is low due to the monopoly and hogging by Telekom Malaysia and its sister subsidiary Celcom over the coverage of network.

I also have looked through the coverage provided by other broadband players such as P1, Maxis, Izzi, and so far, only main cities in the West coast of the peninsular including Kuantan (P1 was already launched in Kuantan on Wednesday and in Ipoh last week) . The rest part of Malaysia and some towns primarily using Streamyx, with small percentage on Jaring broadband.

I find it really unhappy over why people in one city apart from the Klang Valley, Penang / JB / etc is unable to have other broadband options to consumers apart from only making them to pick only Streamyx, which uses the DSL streaming technology. The DSL streaming technology, if ranked by efficiency is 5th. Wifi is 4th, WIMAX is 3rd, High Speed Data Packet Access is 2nd and Radiowave (e.g Izzi) is first. Streaming technology can be very unstable sometimes and this is illustrated through the use of copper wires that TM is still using.

A case in point to illustrate the point above is always Cyberjaya. Cyberjaya was originally envisioned to be a I-City, before Shah Alam, it is to be a city with full of IT activity and thus, broadband penentration in the area is expected to be high as with its neighbor city Putrajaya. However, I have the chance to test Maxis's broadband reception in its area sometime ago and in Puchong, and sad to say that its service coverage was pretty abysmal. I have also enquired to P1 about a possibility of seeing its wireless coverage in Cyberjaya and as of this time, after checking its latest coverage, the answer to me is a no. A check at Izzi on its coverage to shows a resounding no too, although it covers Serdang, Seri Kembangan and Bukit Jalil.

Ini kerana penyibaran broadband terbelenggu di Malaysia kerana TM mengamalkan prinsip“anti-competitive conduct” dalam penentuan tariff bagi rangkaian kuprum (copper network) yang menjanakan fixed-line broadband secara teknologi DSL. Meskipun arahan “unbundling the local loop” telah dikeluarkan beberapa tahun yang lepas, namun TM mengendalikan“predative pricing” sehingga pemain-pemain industri seperti Jaring – satu lagi GLC -- disekat daripada bersaing dalam satu persekitaran industri yang, dengan izin, “level playing field”.

That thing above has put me in conclusion that other broadband players who are better in offering services are stopped high-handedly or in other words could not ply their services there due to the monopoly of Telekom and Celcom. As Jeff said in Parliament, unless Telekom cuts down its monopoly and hogging attitude over communication services here, broadband penentration will not even hit 50 percent by 2010 or 30 percent by end of this year. We will still lose out to other nations even upcoming ones like Indonesia or Vietnam.

Satyam Chairman Quits On Scandal

From BBC:

The boss of Satyam, India's fourth-biggest software firm, has quit after revealing false accounts including some $1bn (£663m) in fictitious reserves.

Chairman Ramalinga Raju apologised and said "the gap in the balance sheet has arisen purely on account of inflated profits" during several years.

He said he was subjecting himself to the laws of the land and would "face the consequences".

India's benchmark index fell nearly 7% on the news, as Satyam stock shed 82%.

In a letter to the board of directors, Mr Raju said that neither he nor the managing director took any money from the company and did not benefit in financial terms following the "inflated results".

He added that no board member had been aware of the situation the firm was in.

"What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profits and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years," said Mr Ramalinga's statement, which was sent to the stock exchange.

"It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten," he said.

Satyam specialises in business software and benefited from the IT outsourcing boom.

Implications

"We have to go beyond this letter and find out what actually has happened," the Securities and Exchange Board of India told reporters.

"This is an issue which has very serious implications... It also raises the issue of authenticity of accounts that have been audited and certified by the auditors."

'Fictitious assets'

The news comes after plans to acquire Maytas Properties and plans to acquire a 51% stake in Maytas Infra failed.

"The aborted Maytas acquisition deal was the last attempt to fill the fictitious assets with real ones," said the letter.

Mr Raju said a task force investigating the failed deal had been set up. He also recommended to the board that Merrill Lynch be entrusted with the talk of "quickly exploring" merger opportunities.

*****

I actually saw a fax transcript of the entire letter to the board that I stumbled upon through my colleague Alfred. The faxed transcript has those quoted passages mentioned below and it did say that it is highly believed to be an insider's job that caused the mess. However, I do not have the exact thing to reproduce here.

Satyam is ranked number 4 of all the IT firms in India according to a top business magazine in India as of at the end of last year. My firm was ranked 28th overall. This is largely due to the workforce amount - 53 thousand in 63 countries.

My Review on Izzi Broadband

It was shopping galore for me and my colleagues at PC Fair yesterday. We bought a lot of stuff and a colleague of mine told me that it's still not enough....

I decided to switch from my present Maxis Broadband to the new Izzi IBurst thing, since I was told that it performed well than other ISPs - which includes location altitude, different signal transmissions (it uses radio wave than the present satellite link), better radius of coverage and etc.

After calculating, I thought it was roughly the same price as the Maxis one. I was still bound by the 18-month contract period until next month and the prices there are now lower than last year. Oh..well, I decided to take it with the interest free installment.

Open the box and it's just that piece and a CD...that's it.

After going through everything..I was ready to start up. Except that I got a little stuck because I was looking at the wrong place for the security number!
Comments:


Of course it's better than the current Maxis line I'm using right now. The speed I measured at night time - 260:55 is usually what I get in the morning in Maxis. And another disadvantage would be the P2p control you'd see in Maxis.


Placing your thing is very important in order to get a constant connection. I got disconnected a few times simply because I realized that I placed it at the wrong direction. You can try moving the piece around the table to see where's the best place to put. In the end, I've put it at the top left of my table.

Another test I did was gauging the loading times for a video in Youtube. For a six minute video, it takes about 3 minutes to load completely in daytime, while at night it could take about 5 minutes, since there's high usage at night by others. In fact in Maxis, at night time, it takes 10 minutes or more to load a video clip like that.

The summary? If you are staying in high-level buildings beyond level 5, then you might want to go for this, if you don't have or don't like Streamyx. Prior to that, I would suggest checking for a the nearest node point before deciding on which broadband you want to subscribe. For example, if you are staying very far from the node point, then you might want to get this. My nearest node point is somewhere near KFC in Jalan Genting Klang so, the radius can be roughly two-three kilometers from my house, which I can get it well. The high selling points here would be the radius, coverage and it's flexible money back clause.

It's worth to pay $98 per month really for a good and better connection than other BBs.

A.N: I am planning to test it at my brother's apartment near Cyberjaya and if it performs brilliantly there, I might get another for him.

Viacom Digging The Nook and Cranny of People From Google

As if being owner of Paramount and MTV isn't enough for Viacom and it's majority stakeholder, Sumner Redstone, Viacom wanted 12 terabytes of logs from Google (who also owns the Youtube video service) given to them. But the logs consists of personal data (user identities, IP addresses and etc..)

So Viacom aims to become a sub-set of Big Brother - exactly as the Orwellian concept of 1984. But the decision by the US Court has drew the ire of those privacy experts and NGOs who feel that this could be exploited and misused by people. Fortunately the ruling stopped short of ordering Google to give a trade secret - source code - to Redstone's company or something.

This is much more dangerous than the common Facebook privacy leaking problem that every user facing. This is about invading privacy of 3 billion people on the planet who use internet to watch videos disregarding whether it's self-made or otherwise. Privacy expert Simon Davis said:

He said: "The chickens have come home to roost for Google.

"Their arrogance and refusal to listen to friendly advice has resulted in the privacy of tens of millions being placed under threat."

Sometimes such things will force more bootlegging than it's intention of getting rid of it. Maybe this is the dark side of the phenomenon called 'capitalism'. I wonder who's executive genius that started the whole thing against Eric Schmidt and co.

Google Must Divulge Youtube Log

High Definition War: And The Winner Is...Blu-Ray!

The high-definition format wars is over and the a clear winner has emerged: The Blu-Ray format championed by Sony and Samsung. The final straw that decides the winner was an announcement by Toshiba, one of the pioneers of the HD-DVD format that it will no longer develop, manufacture and market its HD-DVD players anymore.

The factors:

1. Even though HD-DVD is initially superior in terms of picture quality, cheaper prices and no region encoding, Blu-Ray has a better marketing strategy. Although initially the video quality of Blu-Ray discs suffered badly, it has improved tremendously. The fault lies in the poor MPEG-2 encoding and they have recently improved the encoding methods and deliberately give extra spacing to the discs, for instance 50GB instead of 40GB for better picture quality.

2. HD-DVD was launched with a finished tech, resulting in perception that not many potential for improvements. This was in contrast to Blu-Ray that has an unfinished tech and people see the potential of vast improvements in the future.

3. Sony's Playstation 3 is also a Blu-Ray player as well. When the console was launched out in the market, the amount of sales against HD-DVD players was staggering. 10 million units of Blu-Ray against 1 million units of HD-DVD players sold. Although HD-DVD is supported by XBOX 360, the problem of the requirement of getting an external drive to connect together is one of the faults in marketing strategies.

4. In late January, two studios, Warner Brothers and its sister studio Newline had declared that they would be shipping HD titles in Blu-Ray format exclusively from June 2008 having selling titles in both formats to gauge the preference of format.

5. Last week, movie renting companies like Netflix, Best Buy, Target, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart have declared of renting titles exclusively in Blu-Ray.

6. For computer users, a Blu-Ray drive has been launched and selling in the market.

Even though Blu-Ray is the clear winner in the format technology, the problem is the most players are not equipped with the new version of the firmware called Profile 2.0 which allows BD-Live, the equivalent of HD-DVD's IME - In-Movie Experience. The only player that utilizes Profile 2.0 is Playstation 3 right now as it also allows firmware updating capabilities instantly.

Essential Open Source Utilities

Sure, everyone who owns a computer at least must have three utilities such as a notepad, CD Burner program and a zip program. The commonly used programs is Notepad, Nero Burner and Winzip.

But these programs are considered requiring a license to continually used as you are given a 30 day evaluation before the whole program disables its features seen in a registered version after it reaches the expiration day.

Let me tell you of three essential utilities you might want to consider if cost and license is a problem
.

PSPad

PSPad is touted to be a successor of Textpad. It has the features of Textpad but it also caters for XML files which Textpad does not have. And you only need to download, unzip the package and run it. This tool is also a favorite of Java programmers who prefer to use a normal textpad program than using an IDE like Eclipse and Netbeans.

Infrarecorder

Someone told me that it is the alternative of Nero burner as it can burn CDs and DVDs. My problem right now is that my old version of Nero could not work in Windows Vista. Nero requires a CD key to run properly, I mean most of the features could be run in a registered version. This would be a good alternative.

IZArc

A good compressor tool as this supports the ISO format seen in Daemon Tools as well as the RAR format seen in WinRAR. However, a better compressor program is out there and it is deemed the best open source program of 2007 - 7-zip as it has a higher compression rate. 30-50%

You can look for all of these tools at Sourceforge.net.

In This Corner....In That Corner

In this ring on my left, it's Newline and Warner Brothers, team Blu-Ray!

In this ring on my right, it's Paramount and Universal, team HD-DVD!

In an unexpected decision, Newline and Warner Brothers, both under Time Warner have decided to release high-definition titles in Blu-Ray format only with effective from June 2008. This brings another problem to consumers who are eagle to watch movies in high-definition format but either undecided on which format they prefer or could not watch movies who have a different format than their existing player.

Even though it was said that HD-DVD is much in demand for those in North America, Europe and Asia are more leaning towards Blu-Ray players. A few key advantages of Blu-Ray is of its sound system, which is far better as well as the format is embraced by the PC market. Samsung has released a Blu-Ray drive and it is already been selling in Singapore.

If for some reason, perhaps we can wait for the LG Hybrid Player that could be out at later this year. Somehow, they can play both formats if we want to watch all. HD-DVD is better in terms of picture quality and inclusion of the IME, In Movie Experience that is not seen in Blu-Ray so far.

It's just another parallel fight between X-Box 360 and Playstation 3.

The 300th Post - Talk To The Hand

Arnold's new catchphrase of the new decade: Talk To The Hand!

Boy, that was funny...*giggles*

Hardwares Wishlist for Gaming Machine 2008

Continuing from where I've left off: The Must Have Gadgets of 2008.

Previously, I've covered the gadgets on my wish list next year. And now, if I want to build my own custom gaming machine, then I think some of these stuff would fit the wish list.

1. Penryn Quad Core - The 45nm processors got launched off in October but I would want to wait until the second half next year as the prices will get lower as time goes. Buying this right now is considered as burning a hole in your money pocket. But for that price, there's better power management and higher performance.2. Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 - They called this board as the king of over-clocking. This board actually supports the hybrid DDR2/3 memory, which means when prices for DDR3 drop later, I can switch to that. But somehow, in the motherboard category, I got torn off of whether to get the MSI P35 Diamond as the alternative because it remains the only motherboard to have an onboard Creative Xi-Fi audio card built in.
3. Kingston Hyper-X DDR3-1375 - Remains one of the brands that starts selling DDR3. Period. I think having 2GB is a must since some games run only on Vista. Vista needs 1GB to run well....

4. MSI GeForce 8800 GTS - So far, MSI is the best of the GeForce cards around the market if we look at the overall situation. Good features and reasonable pricing. I felt that ASUS was more on the high-end of pricing but this one is balanced. I might want to get it but I'm not sure which shop in Low Yat sells that card. Most of them would sell Gigabyte or Asus. And this comes with a complementary copy of Company of Heroes. My brother loves Radeon cards so he might want to go for the Gigabyte 2900 XT. But the 3800 series marks the first time a 55nm GPU is used.
5. Antec Truepower Quattro - These kind of components needs a lot of power. I think this is one of those that places emphasis on good power management. You don't need 1500 Watts for one machine! I think 850 Watts will do. Just don't be like Warlock (Kevin Smith in Die Hard 4.0), okay?

6. LG GGC-H20L - High-Definition! This is one of the hybrid drives in the market. I always prefer LG for its optical drives. LG and Pioneer are one of the few brands that produces heavy-duty use optical drives. One time, many years ago, my disc broke into shards when it was playing in a normal CD-ROM drive. My friend said that high-definition for PC means Blu-Ray Drives. But Toshiba and Paramount are quite stubborn over the insistence of HD-DVD!

7. Seagate Barracuda Hard Drives - Need to say further? They are better than WD. I don't even need a lot of spaces, unless people are quite lazy to remove unnecessary programs from the machine.
8. Gaming mouses? Maybe Razerback Diamond 3G would be good enough.


9. Dell UltraSharp 2707WFP - The monitor template for Dell is almost the same as what my colleagues had in their terminals (some of them get upgrades because of the need to do more work). But this is the only monitor that has HDCP capabilities and plenty of connectivity options like D-sub and HDCP-compliant DVI-D ports, Component, S-video, Composite video inputs, two USB 2.0 ports, an upstream USB port, a speaker power port, and memory card readers. But it's only 6ms...not as responsive as the Samsung SyncMaster but a perfect balance of watching HD-movies and games. Boom..boom...Double Kill!

The Must Have Gadgets of 2008

I have to admit that I am a tech gadget freak. Yes, there are things that are deemed cool in the market that I want to get. Some things I want to get my hands on the next time I have a permanent home of myself.

Hardware Zone, a favorite tech portal of mine, catering for South East Asia has released a list of top products of 2007, some are the my wish list.

I will split between gadgets and PC components. After all, it is due time for me to upgrade one. So, suppose if I am given about $20000 USD, what will I want?


1. Nokia N95 8GB - This is one heck of a phone! I felt that I was right not to get a N93 for there could be a better model than that. My friend told me that the first batch of N93s had glitch where video recording and playbacks hang sometimes. The N95 fixes it and it has a better camera size and it has the HSDPA thing, which makes things easier the next time I want to use a wireless Internet connection without using Streamyx. Another alternative would be the 6500 model, which I kind of like it's slider version.



2. Nikon DSLR D40X - I remembered D40 has 6.1 MP but X has 10 MPS and they say that this model is a tie or equivalent of Canon's E400 DSLR. But I admit that the price that they offered is quite good. Currently, the price of the body plus a 55mm lens and 2GB card kit is at $2400. What I like is that of lenses. You see for those who do not know, Panavision's E-Series lenses has a good contrast and color because it uses Nikon glass. If you get a 135mm lens package, you can should beautiful close ups. I am more of a fan of telephoto lenses, so this is part of the list. ISO is better, meaning that I can push a standard high speed stock up by two stops.

3. The Sony Bravia-X series 46-inch. In the last six months, Sony remains at the top of the ranking of HD television sets. Toshiba and Hitachi are behind. Even though Hitachi has produced a new HD TV set this year, but Sony still wins hands down. The W series is also an alternative is cost is a problem.

4. LG-BH100 There has been a indecision over whether to buy a Blu-Ray player like Sony or a HD-DVD player like Toshiba. See, Paramount only released titles in DVD and HD-DVD format, not in Blu-Ray. But then, I was told by my friend that LG has released a beta-version hybrid player that will play both formats. There are still bugs though, so I thought I would wait longer.




I knew that my brother is starting a graphics design course in February so he will need a notebook that he can carry that contains graphics processing capabilities. Should I get him a gaming notebook? Or something that will fit his needs.

I think Asus G2S fits the bill, but it could be quite expensive. Maybe G1s is more appropriate.

Next: My hardware picks for a decent gaming machine!