Colin Charles Agenda

Skype 2.5 Beta is out for Mac OS X. Bottom line is, I’m rather excited and hope that we’ll see more of this in Linux land (webcam support, SMS).

I eagerly tried out the SMS feature, which is something I’ve longed for. It costs 0.071 Euros to send a message to an Australian mobile. At today’s exchange rates, thats about 12 cents Australian. Cheapest SMS sending facility available, I would think (15 cents on the 3 network, 25 cents on the Optus network), save for free services such as smspup.

By default it sends out messages sent out as your Skype name. What they don’t tell you in their default warning is that the custom ID is usually limited to the first 11 characters. For that, you’ve got to learn about setting your sender ID. All fine and well, another 12 cents down the drain and now SMS messages sent from Skype look like they come from my mobile phone!

I can imagine this being annoying when I move between Australia and Malaysia and want my number to be set in a certain way, but I’ll worry about that when the time actually comes.

The Show History feature is completely useless. Last time I used to be able to tell what calls were made, and what the duration of the call was going to be. To make it more useful, it should have shown me how much it was going to cost. Now the only way to get such information is via logging into their web-based interface.

Reviewing the changelog it does seem like some of the bugs that annoyed me (like not seeing any text in a Skype chat window when the main chat window was closed - affectionately known as the grey blank chat window) have been fixed. Maybe it’ll be more friendly with my USB headset (i.e. I don’t have to go to Preferences to “activate” it).

Technorati Tags: beta, macosx, skype, sms, webcam

While certain parliamentary members are wielding a kris, in hopes of telling the rest of Malaysia not to bring up Article 11 and 121(1A) of the Constitution (in where fairness, irrespective of race, should be practiced), Michael Backman decided to write: While Malaysia fiddles, its opportunities are running dry.

Yes, Malaysia (and majority of Malaysians - seeing by the voters and the current coalition in power) has a grossly inflated sense of its place in the world. Yes, we didn’t need the Petronas Twin Towers; its not even the tallest any longer, and last time I visited illegally, it was rather empty. I never knew Suria KLCC (the shopping mall) was managed by the Westfield group!

Now they plan on sending some fool into space (the first Malay and not Malaysian in space might I add) at a cost of nearly RM100 million. He’s going to play Malay children’s games without gravity! (news clipping) It seems Petronas will only have oil till 2025, and maybe about till 2040 for gas; oil importing begins in 2011.

He ends, with “That’s not Malaysia “boleh”, that’s Malaysia “bodoh” (stupid).” And I cannot agree more. The rights of Malays today are thanks to Petronas oil. When that runs out, I’d like to see where else they go. After about sixty years of hand-outs, I doubt much will change. Its no wonder there’s a brain drain in Malaysia…

(as always, there’s some rabid discussion at Jeff Ooi’s Screenshots.)

Technorati Tags: article, braindrain, malaysia, politics, racism, stupidity