yowkee essential

Impact of Price Control?

[via Aisehman] What’s the impact if Malaysia government insist to appy Price Control Act on CD, VCD, DVD and computer softwares? As this The Straits Times news pointed out, our government might be in breach of WTO agreement on intellectual property rights:

Lawyers also argue that by forcing copyright owners to lower prices, the government could be in breach of a World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement on intellectual property rights.

The agreement makes it clear that no signatory should do anything that would ‘unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the right holder’.

The Straits Times understands that the United States is looking into whether Malaysia is breaching its commitments under WTO or any other agreement by making CDs and VCDs price-controlled items.

And software vendor like Microsoft and BSA are worried about the price control would open a back door to Singapore and Thailand users. As

it is perfectly legal for consumers to buy licensed software from abroad for use in their home countries.

MDC compiled the feedback of local companies which related to digital product and voice out a “No”. The local legal experts have the same worry :

Meanwhile, legal experts said that the imposition of price controls in certain cases could contravene Malaysia’s obligations under international trade agreements to which the country has acceded.

These include the Asean Free Trade Agreement (Afta), and those related to Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

“Price control is normally used to control prices of essential items such as meat and vegetables,” said Benjamin J. Thompson, an intellectual property (IP) lawyer with law firm Sharizat, Rashid and Lee.

“This is the first time it’s being applied to digital products.”

May be our government would like to do it our own way, but please do more analysis before making decision.

PPS Goodies

I have been taking a break from blogging, being stuck with some personal events and ponder over my career. To catch up my blog reading with surfing PPS, wow, there’re lot of well written pieces. I got a long list to read, and notice some thought provoking blog:

CIA

Jeff got an idea to set up a CIA, where CIA stands for Citizens’ Intelligence Agency — similar to MIT Media Lab’s GIA. The mission is to provide an information repositary of individuals/organization/corporations related to government, and setup a secured channel for citizens to submit government related issues/information.

This is an good idea, though controversial. In one hand, it’s a channel for citizens to have a clear understanding of how the people we vote for run the government. There are so much policy/procedure/execution of government where we don’t really how it is being decided or executed. Increasing transparency is definitely a good point and nobody would against. But that brings up a few questions:

• Where do we get those government related information?
• If we could get it, how do we verify it?
• ISA — Internal Security Act, how should we cope with the fear and uncertainty? Where’s the boundary?

Considering the organizations outside of government: Keadilan, DAP, PAS, NGO, Malaysiakini…etc, the source of intelligence input might not be a problem. It might even play a better role to monitor government than the major media. Verification? I have no idea on a reliable verification mechanism.

ISA and OSA are law our govenment applying. There’s just no way you’re going to take easy on it. But there’s always boundary. It would be critical on the accuracy of information submitted. That’s why the important of verification.

Go take a look on the discussion, it’s well worth being posted on the issue.

Water Off My Back

Najah is making a note to herself: “NEVER GIVE INTERVIEWS TO JOURNALISTS”. She blog on her experience of how the paper media screwed what she said, which, either misquoted, out of context or viewpoint being bended. Her rant getting intense responses, where other people commented on different angles of view from journalist, the editing process, or personal experience. An interesting read. :-)

[update] Here’s a personal press of Najah again :).

New Streamyx Package

TMNet Streamyx got a new package of downstream 512Kbps and upstream 128Kbps. The basic package of 384/128 for residential customer cost RM88/month. And you got to pay extra RM40 for the higher bandwidth (512Kbps). Is it because they’ve done some marketing survey, which imply customers required higher bandwidth? Or they’re preparing for soon-coming wireless broadband competition?

As a subscriber of the basic 384/128 package, I am pretty OK with the bandwidth. But I can’t tolerate with the low quality of network connection, there’re network problems once per few months. The 24/7 Streamyx has been running for almost one year, and yes, they’re improving. Did it come to a reliable stage already? Its network seem quite OK recently, except the DNS. However, I just can’t have the faith on TMNet, for its bad record.

Price Control Scheme on Software

Bernama: Gov’t To Fix Prices If There’s No Cooperation From Industry

The government has no choice but to fix the prices of computer software, compact discs (CDs), video compact discs (VCDs) and digital video compact discs (DVDs) if the industry does not cooperate in determining the price control scheme for these products.

The Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry is going to meet with industries this Thursday to discuss price control for these products. Government decided last week to categorise these products as controlled items under Price Control Act 1946.

But what do they mean by “no choice”? I personally don’t understand how they could apply a price control scheme on softwares. It sounds like they’ve never studied the industry before voice out the decision. Just because it plays hard on pirates, then it’s “no choice” to fix the prices?!

Let’s looks at these items that going to put under price control scheme. We’re here talking about products regarding music, movies and computer softwares. They are more or less sort of intellectual products, not just some manufacturing items. And it’s sure the industries would oppose the decision, it cut their profit margin smaller or worse, making lost. On my personal opinion, here’s my though on the feasibility of implementing price control on these items:

• Compact Discs(CDs): This is refer to audio CD (music industry). How much is the cost to produce an album? I have no idea. But price of a CD could go from RM30 to RM50. If that has to be a positive proposal, one might could work out some price rate based on it. The current price range in the market isn’t that big and price control is possible.
• VCD: I always have a doubt on copyrighted VCD, especially on those western movies. Did the big corporates in Hollywood giving out the right to produce VCD? They have the channels to sell and distribute DVD. But VCD? There isn’t many VCD players sold in U.S.. Anyhow, I don’t know how the industry players should define the price of an original copyrighted VCD. But not doubt an affordable price could be worked out. Some of the original VCD is sold at about RM16 on the market. If applying some re-structure on the sale channels, it should be able to drop to a more affordable price.
• DVD: I never knew how much is a copyrighted DVD cost in Malaysia. Check around my friends, none of them ever bought an original DVD. So I could only refer to Amazon. On Amazon, most of the DVDs are sold at US25.00, which is around RM95. On copyrighted DVD, there is a region code embedded into DVD to ensure that DVD could play in certain region. Therefore, could government do put some power on this, taking it to a lower price? RM25.00 looks pretty reasonable to me :-).
• At last, computer software. Unlike previous 3 items, they already have publicly recognized price range and you could base on that to propose a better price scheme, software price is varied. It’s just too general to call it computer software, in that way, the price could go from RM15.00 up to millions ringgit. So, so how are they going to do with software? Categorise it, you said. But there are so many categories. Even if you’ve successfully categorize softwares on the market. You would face the most important question: how to measure it? Complication is the nature of softwares. Every pieces of the software development process is a decision of design (even when you’re coding, you got make a design decision in a few lines of code). And the complication increased when it involved human interaction. There’s just no effective scientific way to measure the effort of a software creation. It doesn’t sound right if you’re going to put a price control scheme on computer software.

I am not saying that software development is creative art but movies/music creation isn’t. For movies, there’s a mature market and VCD/DVD is the side-products. And either CD or VCD/DVD has a recognized stable market price to follow, and you could work on that if some kind of control has to apply on it. To talk of softwares, it is a big category — inside there price is varied, effort can’t be measured in a single way; even though most softwares could be develivered in a CD. It could be workable if government’s intention is to put price control on certain softwares (e.g. Microsoft Windows/Office).

Dinesh has his thought on Software like chicken rice and We just don’t get it !

A brief guide to ping PPS

Here come the PPS 1.5 Beta. Starting today, there are close to 20 testers would start to ping over PPS main page with their blogging entries. Watch out for PPS and you could easily keep posted of these Malaysian bloggers.

PPS is using TrackBack feature provided by Movable Type. Thus, for fellow testers, there’re basically two ways for you to ping PPS (which means, send a brief info for PPS to list your blog entry’s URL/extract):

1. If you didn’t use MT, nor your blogging system has the ping/trackback feature, you have to use a public pinger: Registered as a member, and then go to PPS’s public ping form. Just fill in the form and submit, you’re done. The detailed instruction has been given in Aiz’s email.
2. For MT user, a simple guide is illustrated below.

A simple guide for MT users to ping PPS.

1. First at all, you have to know what URL to ping. Aiz has published the trackback URL in PPS Beta mailing list. Noted down the URL. It’s important.
2. Logon to Movable Type
3. You could either manually ping PPS or configure your MT to automatically ping PPS once you post a new entry.
4. For manually ping, click “New Entry”, after you’ve done your writing, paste the trackback URL at the box labeled “URLs to Ping”. Click “Save”, then MT would send a trackback ping to the URL.

   

5. To automate the ping process, click “Categories”.
6. For the category you would like to automate the ping, edit the category attributes.

   

7. Paste the trackback URL to box labeled “TrackBack URLs to ping”, which fall under Trackback Setting->Outgoing Pings. If you would like all your post auto-send a ping to PPS, you have to configure this setting on all your categories. (Note: In other word, if you don’t have categories at all, you can’t automate this ping process)

   

8. Once you configure the categories attributes, that’s it, leave it there and MT would do the ping for you. If you would like to be in control which post to ping, choose the manual way and be remember to paste the trackback URL when you’re going to save a new entry.

That’s it. Enjoy.

Harry Potter

What’s so special on 21st June 2003? It’s the day available of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Book 5 of Harry Potter series.

My wife is fan of Harry Potter. We went to One Utama, with the intention to shop at IKEA, and of course, checking the availability of the Book 5. But end up she was disappointed. The book is in hardcover! It is thick and heavy. I wonder how possibly you could read it on the bed. Holding the book and reading is just simply a torture to your wrist, but then it isn’t comforable to read it on a desk because of the thickness.

So, is this still a book designed to be read by children? Parents must be training their weak wrist to give bed time reading to their children.

PPS Calling for BETA Testers

Project Petaling Street is now looking for 20-30 beta testers to help testing the blog-tal system. If you are a Malaysian bloggers, or even non-Malaysian who live in Malaysia, come to join the party! The details is illustrated at Volume of Interactions

We are looking for a cross-section of Malaysian bloggers (or non-Malaysians living in Malaysia are also invited to apply) to make up this team. When you email us your application to be a BETA tester, please include the following information:

• Full name (real name please, no pseudonyms)
• Email address
• Your blog name
• Your blog URL
• Age
• Gender
• Location (you can be a Malaysian living overseas, no problems)
• What type of blogging tool you use? e.g. Movabletype, Blogger, LiveJournal
• In a word or two, how would you describe the majority of the content of your blog e.g. current/affairs news, personal journal, technology
• Approximately how long have you been blogging i.e. we want a cross section of new and long-time bloggers - the new version has some technical aspects that we want to make sure everyone of all levels of blogging experience and technical capability will be able to use

All appllications should be written to beta@aizuddindanian.com. The application closing date is 26 June 2003. Successful applicants will be informed 28 June 2003. BETA testing will commence 30 June 2003 and last for 7-14 days, depending on how long it takes to iron out all the bugs.

PPS aimed to aggregate Malaysia blogs into a single space, come and join, make your voice heard and make PPS a better place.

Oon Yeoh quit

It come in a sudden. Oon Yeoh’s weblog, Transitions — the Malaysia’s first media weblog, closed today with his announcement

So, why am I quitting? No, it has nothing to do with the Special Branch breathing down my neck (they’ve got much bigger fish to fry). Nor have I been paid a million bucks to shut up (how I wish!). And no, I’ve not done a “Farish Noor” and quit writing because of criticisms from Malaysiakini readers (if I were that sensitive, I would’ve quit writing in February).

I’m afraid the actual reason is a lot more down to earth: I’ve taken up an exciting (it is to me, anyway) new journalism job with another media company. I’m not at liberty to reveal details right now but suffice to say, you definitely haven’t heard the last from Oon Yeoh. To quote Arnold: “I’ll be back” (albeit on a different platform).

Why did joining the other media company has to do with the quit? I don’t quite get it. To me, a blog is a blog and it’s owned by you, you could stay with it no matter you’re moving to any where. If that’s because Malaysiakini did the hosting, switch to others. If it’s something to do with the new company’s policy, well, that’s the other story.

Anyhow, hope we could see Oon Yeah back to the blogland soon. We’d miss his valueable writing. To think of this, that isn’t many Malaysian journalists having a blog, did they?

The uncensored comments

More and more bloggers being concern over the abuse of comments. There are flame war, personal attacks, spams happened in people’s personal blog. And just because the owner of blog openly welcome for discussion, it doesn’t mean you could play over the rules. There’s always boundary, abusing would only bring the mess and hurt. Think about the old days of usenet.

Jeff decided to suspend the conversation feature of his blog, because:

I had meant it for privileged interactive conversations among intellectuals. But this privilege has been taken for granted, and abused.

Instead of engaging each other in mature, intellectual discourse, many have used it to promote hatred among friends, among Bangsa Malaysia.

We can do without all these.

The way of discussion among people could lead to mess and ugly, especially while involving politics. OldKopiTiam (note: in Mandarin) is a good example if you remembered how many excellent articles have been there in old days.

May be Trackback should be used more often for conversation, you got to have a blog to communicate.

The start of Project Petaling Street

I surfed to Project Petaling Street after finishing some work. It’s kind of habit I’m going to catch up since it at least centralize a few blogs I used to read. But then, wow, there’s a heat event going on. Is it something wrong today? It’s 13th, Friday anyway.

First, Tim Yang made a corner turn and showing an attitude against PPS. Although he is one of the founders, he called PPS a self promotional wank, elitist and self-deluded. Instead, he put the other project, Matafilter, under his belt.

Then the people at PPS, which once met with Tim Yang at first blogger met, responsed. Check out Aizuddin, Dinesh, Oon Yeoh (and here), Jeff Ooi.

So far Dinesh has elaborated what’s really happening under the hood, in his perspective. And pretty sure then Tim has his side of story to tell. Anyway, it isn’t sound fair to Tim saying PPS is just sorta self promotional wank and he’s even one of founder! If he felt the idea was stolen or unhappy with how the project brought on, that’s the other story. I doubt Jeff Ooi need PPS to boost his blog as Malaysiakini would sure having more readers than PPS.

One of the critic raised by Tim is that PPS’s residents are through invitation. But everybody in a group got their very own opinion to share and voice out, and people have always having different ways to judge others’ writing, especially in web. And it is amplified by this blog phenomenon! So invitation could be a good start, it’s just impratical if you track a few hundred blogs at once.

However, the event would bring something to Malaysia blog community, whether it’s bad or good. We should do more pondering over this (as Oon Yeah called it) M’sia blog soap opera. :)

What a city

I live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s the biggest city in Malaysia. And as other major city in other countries, it is crowded, full of people, and cars. If you own a car and you used to drive to work, you got to be ready anytime, ready for any chance to stuck in a massive traffic jam. It could happen at any place, and anytime, as long as you are on the road. Don’t presume you’d be lucky on the road, just be prepared, and patient. Well, of course, that’s my very personal opinion.


It might not be a normal day. We’ve just gone through a congested evenning 2 days ago, because of flash floods caused by heavy rain (pity all those car owners whose cars buried by flood). And this morning, it came again, you’d be suffering if you drive to your office through middle ring road or Istana road, or somewhere else connected to them. There are two tanker accidents which one got on fire and the other turned over. Then of course it caused the other massive traffic congestion. I have to spent more than one hour to reach my office. As I woke up early this morning, I was wondering it’s so great I could go to office much earlier than normal and avoid the traffic jam. End up I was disappointed, just the other day stuck in the car matrix…and I might consider as lucky, my colleague left his home at 7:00am and arrived office at 10:00am!! Could you imagine that?

When I walked down my office to go for lunch this noon, looking up to the clouds, I saw a hazy air, not very sure if those hazy days are back to us or not?! And watching a row of bank people stand aside the road and picketing, lots of car drive through and horning to support them. I got a thought to escape from all of these stuff. Is it because of the city? Or is it just me feeling exhausted? Anyway, the city still breath peacefully, it has no up-and-down emotion. It’s just me, wandering around, thinking of love and hate of a city.

Malaysian's blog center

[via Screenshots] Project Petaling Street — Content by Malaysians being Malaysian, is a project started by a core group of Malaysian bloggers. It was an idea caught in a first ever M’sian blogger meet, and then with just a few days effort, the project is up and running! Not even the project site, there’s a Project Petaling Street Wiki too. They are way fast, amazing…

Mean while, the site showing blog entries, as well as RSS, of core members’ blogs with MT trackback; lots of stuff is going on, e.g. a search engine for M’sian blog based on it. Expecting the trackback by public would be available soon.

It’s so great that I could now tracking many M’sian’s blog instead of going to them one by one. It might be sound the same if you use RSS aggregrator to keep track of your favor blogs. What extra features such a bloggin center providing are, you would be keep posted with new comers, and there is always more and more collaborative stuffs would be created by the powerful community.

Three hours downpour

I got a very bad experience yesterday evening, as most other people who worked in KL city area. The 3 hours downpour afternoon caused flash flood in many areas in the city. And I got home after 2.5 hours I left office. My friend spent 3.5 hours to get home, damn, that should be enough for you to drive from KL to Johor (center Malaysia to south Malaysia, over 220 KM) in a normal day.

I can’t resist to think of quiting such a city life style, while stuck in the car. Is it worth? You may feel good to live in a city like KL for benefit of feeling “in” and easy access to lots of facilities. However, that’s always trade-off. The quality of life drop when it come to day-to-day working environment. Of course, the biggest problem would be the traffic situation. Some people could handle but discipline themselves like wake-up much earlier to go to office, staying late to skip the rush hour.

May be it’s just me. I couldn’t stand much with this, always dreaming to have a more relax working life and stay away of wasting time in traffic. Guess it’d be time to do something.

MSC Trustgate sack its chief scientist

I was reading Start In-tech and went through this article: The pro and his con. To my surprise that is somebody could make up such brilliant credential and thought he could last with that. Isn’t he too smart? The quoted paragraph shows the credential made up by Michael Chong

He had doctorates in digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasting from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); in microelectronics from Cornell University; in manufacturing from the University of Lausanne; and in electrical and computer systems engineering from University of Oklahoma.

This was in addition to MBA and MSc degrees from two Australian universities.

He had worked as executive vice-president for Disney World Technologies, was senior vice-president at Digital Equipment Corp, a vice-president at Aaron Spelling Productions, and a systems coder at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre.

He was then hired as chief scientist by MSC Trustgate to design and develop a DMS. How the fraud was being found? In Tech did a check on his credentials while asking for an interview with him. Then the finding was sent to MDC, which partly owns MSC Trustgate. And at more or less the same time, the company has suspected him while they found his knowledge isn’t reflect what he claimed. To end of the story, he admitted the fraud and surrendered the programming work, yet MSC Trustgate didn’t take legal action against him.

The story sounds pretty familiar. I recalled to read sort-of the same event years ago. First to check on Screenshots, Jeff did blog about this, his reader wrote to him and it seem the guy isn’t doing this for the first time:

The email writer claimed Michael Chong had only one PhD when his Singapore-based dotcom hired the con-artist in 2000 as CTO under similar circumstances: The CTO was leaving. A replacement is needed. IPO was in the works. …

The writer said his company filed a police report in Singapore and admitted that it should have done the same in Malaysia since “he was hired in KL to go to Singapore.”

Wow…it seem there are more stories, but nope, this isn’t what I rememberred. It got to be some cases regarding Singapore dot com company.…later with further searching, I got it:

• Singapore technology whizz sacked for faking credentials
• Post in Usenet: this and this
• And you could still get how the CTO claims their advanced AI technology on Internet

Internet got your footstep. May be company should adopt the habit to do some search on somebody whom they’re going to employ. Or may be they should check if the person got a blog. Would it make sense?

Personal Domain Name for Malaysian

[via Screenshots] The registrar of the .my domain, MYNIC, is going to launch a new domain category under .my TLD by this July. They have published a public consultation paper (note: pdf) to ask for public’s comments on the not yet decided personal domain name. There is even a poll running at MYNIC website for the voting of new domain name (the voting seem didn’t function at the mean time). From the poll result, .me.my is getting the most vote among others (.name.my, .nama.my, .nam.my). My preference would be .name.my since it sync with TLD .name.

There are currently 6 categories under country code TLD .my: .com.my, .net.my, .org.my, .edu.my, .gov.my and .mil.my. None of them could be registered by individual but organization. So the new domain would be a clear acknowledgement to the request of individual eligible domain.

Jeff Ooi's blog moved

Glad to see Jeff Ooi’s blog moved from a blogspot URL to his own domain jeffooi.com. His blog is an great alternative to traditional paper if you’re interested in Malaysia news. Even Malaysiakini has put an front page link to his blog.

Great, he is now using MovableType as his blog system instead of blogger.com. Smart move, Jeff.

The possible cause of SARS Death - Severe immune reaction

While some of us have becoming insensible to SARS because it is a everyday not-surprising news now, it’s still good to learn more about this virus instead of over react to those SARS news.

There is misery of why SARS seem more attackable to age 20-40 youth, and those supposely with strong immune system like doctors, nurses (they deal with virus everyday). Dr Klaus Stohr, the WHO chief scientist for SARS, said the medical study in Hong Kong indicated that over-reaction of immune response, might be the cause of SARS death. As reported at The Straits Times, Singapore, Klaus said:

In the first week…the virus is replicating mainly in the upper respiratory tract, causing high fever and dry cough. But in the second week we see an over-reaction of the immune response, and in 20 per cent of cases that leads to very severe disease

The other report at NewScientist.com on severe immune response kill SARS victim:

An excessive immune reaction appears to be the fatal factor in patients who die of SARS, according to medical data from Hong Kong. The best estimate of the fatality rate of SARS is rising steadily and so understanding how the disease causes death is critical to finding the best treatments.

Scientists have also discovered that the SARS virus can remain viable for at least 24 hours after being deposited in a droplet on a plastic surface - a simulation, for example, of an infected person coughing on to the wall of a lift.

I was wondering why doctors and nurses seem easier to be infected by SARS, they should more used to disease than ordinary people. The hospital is full of disease and working everyday more or less stregthen your immune system. There are people around keep saying strong immune system is the only way to fight to SARS. That isn’t necessary true though it’s a good thing. In contrast, the study of the scientists doesn’t suggest we should maintain a weak immune system.

Further reference:

• SARS Patients Killed By Their Own Immune Response

TheEdge: All Talk, No Action

TheEdge Daily published an article Open source: All talk, no action yesterday. Local open source people are pretty upset with the article carried by Sharmila Ganapathy, which it came to a conclusion that:

Still, the lack of open source adoption among the private sector in Malaysia indicates that most companies have, for now at least, decided it does not meet their business needs. That will, no doubt, be greeted with relief by Microsoft.

I couldn’t agree with the security issue mentioned in the article. But no points to go into that. Besides, it’s good to see Ritchie Lim’s deployment of Linux+PDA solution to their business need. And indeed it’s a cost on training of Open Source which some of the companies scared of (But isn’t Windows + MS Office need training too??)

You don’t see any statistics or data analysis showed in the article, except words from Open Source evangelist Dinesh Nair, Ritchie Lim — head of IT of Yeo Hiap Seng Bhd and Chu Hong Keong — CIO of of HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad. These people either explained what Open Source is about, talk about their implementation experience, and address some of the issues of Open Source. It’s rather realistic and positive, in my opinion. So how’s the author came to the conclusion that “most companies have, for now at least, decided it does not meet their business needs”?! It sounds ridiculous if you could conclude this with just the perception of the low adoption rate of Open Source in Malaysia.

Nobody is going to argue about the adoption since it’s intuitively a fact at the current moment. But as Dinesh noted in his weblog, there are certain achievement by local Open Source group, and Yeo Hiap Seng’s take of Open Source approach as an example, that showed the successful implementation of Open Source. Just as other development area, Malaysia is way slow in IT deployment. We’ve used to buying intellectual property from others instead of creating ourselves. Despite of Open Source products, you could rarely see the proprietary softwares fully “made in Malaysia” too (yeah, there are great softwares, but it’s too few compare to other country).

I bet 80% of IT managers heard of Open Source, at least at the local forums/conferences held by big corp like IBM. But what would they said? “Open Source, No support.…no security (sounds pretty unsure)…who want to take the risk? I feel comfortable in what I have/am now…leave me securely in my wonderland lah…” This isn’t all of the cases, but you’d know if you’ve ever worked in some of the big corporate here.

Related stories could be found at Screenshots , Alphaque: Action Talk , Poor quality of tech journalism in Malaysia .

MyKad, government-backed multi-application SMART card

About two months ago, my wife's handbag was snatched away by 2 motorists (this has become a serious threat to women walking in the streets of KL, it happened e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e). She had to apply for all losted cards like I/C (Identity Card), driving licenses, all ATM/Credit cards.... We have her I/C applied and two months later, she got her new I/C -- which is our Malaysia's proud chip-enabled I/C MyKad. We have the perception that, since we are going to have both personal information and driving license info stored into the chip of the one and only one card, we should wait for the new I/C and then to apply for the losted driving license.

It turned out that JPJ (Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan -- Road Transport Department Malaysia) didn't think the same way. We arrived there this afternoon, she got the ticket for queuing up, being instructed to take photo and have her new I/C photostated. What the heck! Why do we need to take photo and photostat a new generation I/C, which supposely having all the info securely stored in a chip? And shouldn't the database have the data already?

With doubt, we still spent the extra money for photo and photostat. Wait patiently and an hour later, we learned that, you could ONLY apply for the lost driving license of the old type, then to apply again to merge the old driving license into your chip-enabled, smart I/C. She got the driving license, and it's almost come to off of office hour, which means, if you want to convert the license, come again next time.

Why the extra process? Isn't it just straight logic you could have I/C and driving license in your MyKad while you're applying for new? What a pain! As a victim, you got a paid leave to apply new I/C, the other leave for driving license, and then some day later you got to merge this together because we have this proud chip-enabled I/C. And we are in process of upgrading all magnetic bank ATM card to chip-enabled bank card. Some days later we got to merge this to I/C, AGAIN. God, when are they going to think INTEGRATION ahead?! Or at least some simplified processes?!

Update on Dinesh/alphaque, Streamyx

Alphaque is back online, their premium 1.5Mbps SDSL Streamyx connection was down for 80 hours. The reason is ridiculous. As Dinesh said,

The problem ? Apparently one of the jumper cables in the MDF room in our building was not plugged in, thus causing the disconnection. Now, access to this MDF room is solely under Telekom Malaysia's control. Not even building management nor maintanence can get in, and the entire room is theirs. If a jumper cable was not plugged in, then it must have been some fuck up by their technician. Perhaps someone came in to get some work done on Tuesday, and either kicked the cable off, or pulled it out and didn't put it back in again.

Could you believe this? That's how TMNet service their premium customer and they don't even apologized for that stupid mistake. No exchange problem, neither whatever technical issues, just a cable unplugged! I laugh full mouth when I read it.

Meanwhile, I finally got Dinesh's update on his MySQL benchmarks, which I was waiting for after reading he gonna to implement a terabyte sized MySQL DB. The result is amazing, with proper tuning, a terabyte sized MySQL could still get minisecond range query latencies and thereotical max 4,000 queries/second. The benchmark was done on a dual CPU, 4GB RAM Asus 1U rackserver, running FreeBSD. The lesson:

• Force index selection with USE INDEX for optimization. You could use FORCE INDEX for version 4.0.9 or greater, which act like USE INDEX but with the addition trying the best to avoid table scan.
  
• Link MySQL with LinuxThread if you run MySQL under FreeBSD, with multi-processors machine. Jeremy explained it and thought "using LinuxThreads ought to help even on single-CPU FreeBSD boxes."
  
• Optimization could be dangerous though. Stick with helpful tools and carefully chosen your configuration.

Thanks for the sharing, Dinesh.

SARS less severe in young children

The study and observation shows that children with SARS are less infectious and having milder symptoms than adults. In the report of New Scientist, paediatrician Tai Fai Fok said:

"They tend to have all kinds of viral infections," he told New Scientist. "Antibodies may cross react with the SARS virus giving some kind of protection."
The second hypothesis is that the children were spared because their immune systems are still only developing. "In adults much of the lung damage in SARS is due to the body's own immune reaction to the virus," Fok says. However, he stresses that both hypotheses are purely speculative at the moment.

This might relieve a bit the worry of most parents.

The scream on Streamyx

I've been trying a few times today to access Dinesh's site. Apparently, it's still down. Later I learned that his blog is actually hosted with his 1.5Mbps SDSL line from Telekom, which is dead over the past 30 hours. Again, that's our "great" service from the monopoly DSL broadband provider. Their broadband product Streamyx has been going through frequent disconnection, failed DNS, failed international routing, always-slow connection.....etc, and they even have to offer once one month rebate, and once 14 days rebate for Streaymx customer.

I am the Streaymx subscriber too. I've been trying to spend less time on tmnet.streamyx because you'd scared by all the rants from its customers. The side effect is, once your connection is good, you dare not to do anything on it. No tuning this and that, no disconnect, even no reboot! That may be a bit exaggerate. But that's how a user feel about the service, especially for non IT literate users. You could sense how good the service is.

My streamyx has also gone through frequent disconnection, very slow connection, going no-way to International site....it's really annoying and would sometimes drive you to mad if you are working on something. So, I was pretty envy the Streamyx Support team's courage when they post this announcement [via Screenshots] and this :D.

My streamyx is still surfering with some weird routing problem. For example, www.nba.com could resolved by DNS but you could never reach there in your browser. I am forced to use several proxy to cope with that.

The Changing of the Guard -- A Survey of Malaysia

It's no more a news and pretty outdated. I would just like to post it here for my own memory.

At first, The Economists published a series of articles analyzing what's happening in Malaysia. The series, titled "The Changing of the Guard – A Survey of Malaysia", contained 9 articles, written by Christopher Lockwood. It is published at Apr 5th issue of Economist. Then weeks later, it brought attention to Barisan Nasional leaders, particularly Acting Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Defence Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. They started to hit out The Economist, stating what the survey said isn't true and it humiliate Dr Mahathir. Other Barisan Nasional leaders voiced out to support them, the issue has been getting more and more attention and running all over the medias recently.

I wasn't sensitive to such "political" issue. I knew this from blogs (Screenshots and Transitions) since blog reading has been my center of information gathering. If your only information source is local media, take these advice:

1. Read at least MalaysiaKini
   
2. Read these excellent Malaysian's blogs: Screenshots, Transitions, alphaque. It would be more out there and once more people is brought to blog, you get more chance to hear different voices.
   
3. Do your study. Get a chance to read The Economist's article in this case, do your judgement, don't simply follow leaders.

I can't comment the matter because I don't read the articles yet. What I got on Economist online was The changing of the guard, which is the first article in the series. The rest in the series are The greening of Malaysia, A tale from Terengganu, Anwar Ibrahim's long shadow, The slaugher of sacred cows, The big clean-up, Keeping up with the neighbours, An effusive welcome, A qualified success, which are premium content of Economist required subscription or payment. From what I have read at first article: The changing of the guard, which talk generally about the
post-Mahathir scenario. Based on what he perceived, the quality of the infrastructure, the money spent on big projects (KLCC, KLIA, MSC), not in fact impressed. Though, he did mentioned: "Malaysia, in short, has achieved remarkable successes, but there is reason to worry that they are not yet solidly bedded down, and they certainly owe more than they should to tough government action.".

Yeah, there is criticism. But it isn't as bad as humiliation. Is it really that big deal in the rest of the series? Our BN leaders has been used to state we shouldn't bother western media. Should they bother now? Or should all media being banned once there is critism on us? Look, people come, doing research/analysis, publish what they have learned and their opinion. That's what media do. Sometimes there is political rationale behind the story, sometimes don't -- it's just an article. However, I can't really comment until I do read the whole series. Meanwhile, I have chosen to keep an eye on it by reading these:

Screenshots

• Economist April 5 edition:
  What took Pak Lah and Najib 3 weeks to respond?
  
• Pak Lah now wants apology from Economist.By the way, Dr M will be back soon.
  
• Economist issue: Najib up-staging Pak Lah
  
• A race to show who could be more loyal to Dr Mahathir?
  
• Economist: Chun Wai does't read it either
  
• Economist: No apology to Malaysia; latest issue delayed.

Transitions:

• Chapter by chapter commented by Oon Yeoh
  
• Another comment on the issue:

  "From the magazine's acknowledgements of those who helped them with the story, it is clear that they spoke to a very large number of known opponents of Dr. Mahathir and the government," Pak Lah says. "These critics, who include opposition party leaders and pro-opposition media people, never have anything good to say about us anyway. Only a few of the people acknowledged by the writer are either neutral or pro-government."

  My thought: Could you deny these are also people who got influence in certain area? They do represent large or small part of Malaysian.
  
• Government leaders continue to whack the Economist
  
• Revisited on The Economist's articles
  
• Comment on Wong Chun Wai's column (The Star)

A search on The Star with "Economist": news of Economist issue.

Check out how local media handle this issue. I didn't see any view point from Economist in local media except anger of BN leaders making all the headline. The only exception, MalaysiaKini did bring the issue back to The Economist and have the author's words on it. That said a lot of providing multi-angles view of issue.

SARS Blog

Apparently there is much better coverage and brilliant blog about SARS in Malaysia. Screenshots, a blog of columnist Jeff Ooi (who is also the founder of USJ.com.my). He blogged a lot about War on Iraq and SARS, which also made his blog being popular. How ignorant am I not noticing his excellent blog? :) With his blog as a starting point, to Malaysiakini columnist Oon Yeoh's blog, and towards many other Malaysians' weblogs. Wow...it's really something new to me. I didn't really know there are so many of M'sian blogs out there. It's great. Blogosphere is great but we sometimes do need to get around neighbourhoods to have a feel of home.

The other blog, Wangjianshuo's blog, covers what happening in Shanghai, China. I am sure that are lots of blogs about SARS in Shanghai, mostly in Mandarin. Wang Jian Shuo's blog shows you how a day like in Shanghai while it's under the threat of SARS.

SARS "Index" Update

From Malaysia local paper:

Reported deaths, by country and worldwide:

• China (mainland): 131
  
• Hong Kong: 133
  
• Singapore: 22
  
• Canada: 21
  
• Vietnam: 5
  
• Thailand: 2
  
• Malaysia: 2
  
• Philippines: 2
  
• Taiwan: 1
  
• [Worldwide: 319]

Reported cases of probable infections, by countries with highest numbers and worldwide:

• China (mainland): 2,914
  
• Hong Kong: 1,543
  
• Singapore: 199
  
• Canada: 142
  
• [Worldwide: More than 4,800]

There are new probable cases found almost everyday. Sarawak (Malaysia) has new cases these few days. SARS cases found and probably spread in a hospital in Taiwan... Though WHO's latest outbreak report shows situation in Vietnam stay stabled, no underreporting of SARS cases in Shanghai, it's still no good in Shanghai and Hong Kong SARS progress. People still suffer the fear and try to move away from affected cities (Shanghai, Beijing). Malaysia is better in term of number of cases. However, the fingerpointing between Health Ministry and media revealed that people didn't really trust the ability on risk management of government. We keep hearing rumour and find people don't really trust the news announced by our government. Is it normal because of the critical outbreak, so people tend to guessing and spreading rumour? Or mainly it's just we lost the confidence on how our government handle the previous outbreak of Dengue and Nipah disease? Building trust is important, how you stand up and taking critial action ASAP, it'd calm people down and reduce the damage to the least.

Time reports on financial effect of SARS:

The financial toll, meanwhile, is already catastrophic. Economists predict that China and South Korea could each suffer some $2 billion in SARS-related losses in tourism, retail sales and productivity. Japan and Hong Kong stand to lose more than $1 billion apiece, and Taiwan and Singapore could lose nearly that much. In Canada, meanwhile, J.P. Morgan Securities Canada estimates that Toronto is losing $30 million a day. All told, says WHO, the global cost of SARS is approaching $30 billion.

More:

• SARS Info Center
  
• SMH's reporting on SARS
  
• Graph: Chain of transmission among guests at Hotel M -- Hong Kong, 2003 [Article]
  

SARS Crisis

Second SARS death in Malaysia confirmed. The most concerned thing of people now is the "SARS Index", which indicated how many "probable SARS cases", "suspected SARS cases" and number of people quarantined. The fear is widely spreaded. I felt pretty tensed while I was in my hometown (Johor, soutern area of West Malaysia) and watching Singapore TV. There is news about SARS progress around every 15 minutes on TV. Watching them didn't get me learn more about the disease, except nervous.

War is _almost_ over. We really hope this SARS outbreak could be over very soon. I wonder should my friends and I still go to Lang Tengah for our May trip, as planned two months ago. All we could do is wait-and-see.

SARS Information:

• WHO SARS site
  
• Unprecedented collaboration pinpoints new coronavirus as cause of SARS
  
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  
• Local paper: China raises SARS death toll by six to 92
  
• SARS Information Poster
  
• SARS Blog