Colin Charles Agenda

Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor, is without a doubt, someone who cannot understand the dynamics of the Internet. And he serves as the Deputy Engery, Water and Communications Minister in Malaysia. Why, you ask?

He wants bloggers to register with the authorities, to prevent the spread of “negative or malicious content”. He hasn’t defined the difference of a blog being hosted in Malaysia (I guess this will be a hit for web hosting companies there) or just the ones with the .my suffix, though he seems to be aiming for the latter. Just like in Australia, to get a .com.my you need a company backing that up – why would a company host malicious blogs? A web hosting company, is of course, exempt from whatever it is they host.

Blogs, are the hype du jour. You don’t need one to spread malicious or anti-government propoganda. People were blogging, long before blogging software existed – early Internet adopters, just wrote in regular HTML. If a blog is meant to tell what you’re doing or going to do, does anyone remember finger and the Unix .plan file? Blogs might have just made the barrier to entry for publishing lower (but one can argue that, so has Microsoft FrontPage).

The Johor Baru MP, Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad thinks, “that the problem was also about inflammatory comments by unidentified visitors to the blogs.” You can’t control what commenters say, and if you don’t exert any editing right over comments (quite unlike Jeff Ooi), you’re protected by the law. If you’re going to run a political forum, exert no editorial content over the comments, and you’re a “saved by the Communications & Multimedia Act 1998” common carrier.

Back in the heyday (’98), the government did say, no-censorship on the Internet. If people are going to move to hosting blogs overseas, this will be a very dark day for Malaysian web hosters (so I suggest, they stand up, together and submit to the government or relevant bodies, how silly this idea is). Marina Mahathir (Dr. Mahathir, ex-Prime Minister’s, daughter) has always mention this would make Malaysia look ridiculous.

It’s also ironic, now that Kathy Sierra has received death threats, people are talking about a bloggers code of conduct, policing the blogs, and so forth. If you listen to Adam Curry’s daily source code, he’s got some interesting recent episodes (DSC576,575, possibly 574) about how wanting to register or police is really silly. We’re all humans, and we’ve all got our ugly sides. The Internet as a whole is just a new medium, that a lot of politicians or people in high ranking places don’t seem to understand.

Why does this matter to me? Its not like I’m running a political website. But I do have interests in the freedom of the Malaysian Internet – those of you that receive email from me, realize it usually comes from a .com.my address, something I’ve not bothered (or wanted to, really) change for years. I also have servers sitting in Malaysian data centers (bandwidth, unlimited, and comparatively cheaper than hosting in Australia).

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

In conclusion, it should be noted that I refuse to register anything, and if the government chooses to be silly, I will be moving my interests elsewhere.

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blog, registration, malaysia, silly, free speech, online censorship, stop internet censorship, free speech for all, web hosters, .my

The decision to reduce the number of boxes, is something I’m slowly coming to terms with. With virtualization (Xen, Parallels, and soon I’ll be using VMWare too) it seems kind of daft to have actual physical hardware sitting around, consuming precious space. And with smart OSes now being able to sit off USB (or Firewire) disks, again many boxes seem irrelevant.

hagrid, my ancient file server, a Pentium 200MHz MMX with 64MB of RAM is going the way of the dodo (after nearly five years of service). hagridII is a low-power consuming Pentium III, with 384MB of RAM, and is most definitely not running Red Hat 8.0. At least now the server can also be an SSH gateway, rather than it running on my main desktop. Main reason for an upgrade? The Red Hat 8 install is just plain old, and the 80GB disk, and the 200GB disk that I picked up last year, is just too small. Today, a 320GB disk is only $125, and Ubuntu 6.10 is being popped on. SSH, Samba, fixed IP, and away I go!

Of course, life itself is never going to be so good to you. After I let Ubuntu do all its automagical configuration (good, it detects a “clever” user that likes to be called root and disallows it!), it prompted to reboot. Then I saw the infamous Error 18 from GRUB. It has largely to do with /boot not being in the first cylinders that the BIOS supports (or “selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS“). There exists an open Ubuntu bug for this, ubuntu#9006: system unbootable due to old BIOS. So maybe not the friendliest of installs. Fixed with moving drives around, as HagridII is actually 80+200+320 in disks.

Interesting problem, even up to Windows Vista, when they access Samba shares. /movies and /Movies are the same thing (well, /Movies seems to redirect you to /movies). Highly ironic, that they’ve still not gotten case sensitivity correct.

19″ BenQ FP92W ($275) was going off relatively cheaply today, so decided that I could use that as a replacement to the last remaining 17″ CRT that is still around. 1440×900, 5ms response time, seemed like a good purchase to add to the rest of the BenQ flat panels. It seems like a good addition for the PowerMac G5!

Unrelated to hardware, but openSUSE’s mirror select tool is broken. Come from an Australian IP, get pushed to pacific.net and find a file not found error. Oops.

I still need to sort out moving the PegasosPPC box somewhere on the floor (it takes up quite a bit of desk space, as its a big pizza box), and finding a nice PS/2 keyboard, with maybe a trackpad built on it, that is really small. I know IBM make these for server racks, I just wonder where I can get one retail? Good Friday tomorrow, so holiday abound, I’ll get to more cleaning, I’m sure (with everything closed, and all).

Since my last foray into writing book reviews, I figured it made a little more sense to get a few more out of the bag, that I remember, since then.

• Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

Amazing autobiography. Does things in the name of fun, has become a billionaire, over and over, and has got some really practical advice about running a company (and now, companies) on a shoestring budget. Partnnership, diversification, is clearly key.

• iCon by Jeffrey Young & William Simon

Steve Jobs, Apple, Pixar. Successes over and over, but there were pains at the start. Management mistakes to not make. Probably a good read for any Mac fan.

• Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Simply interesting, its a must read. Drop in violent crime, in thanks to abortion? Drug dealers who still live with their moms, because they don’t really make much money? Interesting scenarios, that will make you think, for certain. Most entertaining reading, picking the book up, makes it very hard to put it down till it was done.

• Lonely Planet: Thailand

Dodgy copy picked up while in Siem Reap, but served its purpose of giving me enough information to survive in Bangkok.

• Lonely Planet: Cambodia

Without this, I would have had no Siem Reap trip. Truly used this, plus the driver we hired, to have a good six day holiday, touring the Angkor, and the regions that most don’t visit. The book was mighty handy, and will probably serve well when writing the travelogue.

• A Year In The World by Frances Mayes

Reading this was actually inspirational, in the sense that it paved my way for last December’s travels. I actually had a passion to explore, plan to a certain extent, and leave some parts of travel to chance. I must say, I’ve never had a better amount of time, travelling, and its all thanks to her joyous sense of adventure and travel. Recommended reading if life’s feeling like a rut, and you’re just wating to escape into a holiday.

• Under The Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
  I read this after reading A Year In The World, as I absolutely adore Frances Mayes style. The recipes are typically helpful, and the idea of living such a Bohemian lifestyle, will make you want to visit Italy.
• God’s Callgirl by Carla Van Raay

A memoir, of a Dutch girl, who’s family emigrated to Australia. What’s interesting is she grows up in a full-on Catholic environment, goes on into the convent to become a nun, is a nun, then leaves for freedom. Upon leaving, her sex drive seems to be active, and she becomes a prostitute. This is her story, about self-sabotage, and being a working girl. Probably a very useful text for women’s studies.

• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

I am a big fan of the series, on Discovery Travel & Adventure. When I saw the book lying at the bookstore, I had to pick it up. Its a gripping tale spanning two decades of life as a cook. Starting from the bottom, right to being a chef in his own kitchen, he paints a very interesting story, of what it’s like to be behind the scenes, at a restaurant. There’s also practical advice for those wanting to cook (at chef levels, even). What makes this book highly interesting is all the anecdotes, of life as a chef. Its definitely a recommended memoir. Now to find his other book, A Cook’s Tour.

Caught:

• The World’s Fastest Indian – inspiring story, telling you, you can still achieve your dreams when old, and when everyone writes you off. Some Down Under-isms, and how it is when going to the US clearly made me chuckle
• Bulletproof – this came via Quickflix, and I realized that I’d already seen it before and not logged it. The wonders of cable TV, ala ASTRO, while I was in Malaysia. Its a funny show, with a bit of action here and there…
• Super Size Me – terrestial TV had this. Amazing show. I knew McDonalds was bad, but I’m pretty certain that my bulking up in recent years was caused by McDonalds, pizza, and Snicker bars. Slowly thats all being cut down, or cut off, but fast food is probably a really bad idea.
• Ghost Rider
• Wild Hogs
• Norbit
• Death to the Supermodels – utter rubbish, don’t ever waste your time watching it. Quickflix’s recommendations are getting worse.
• Kinky Boots – terribly interesting, great inspiration to remaking and reinventing things.
• Lonesome Jim – boring, put me to sleep, even the presence of Liv Tyler didn’t help.
• The Sweetest Thing – wow, television has come a long way in showing something I actually enjoyed. Funny, Cameron Diaz show, about taking that leap.
• EuroTrip – a teen flick, seemed very much like Road Trip on steroids, but I enjoyed it much (also on television).
• Derailed – the last good movie Quickflix has sent. Its excellent. The plot is something you can’t figure out till the end. Justice is served, pity that all the crooks die in the end :-(
• Bobby – amazing cast, all connected together by JFK. Interesting concept, but I think this might have been money better spent elsewhere. Watch it for the stars?
• Borat – its out on DVD. Incredibly funny. Crass. Though Ali G in my opinion, was much better.

Of course, when I cancel my account with Quickflix at the end of this month (the value I was getting was certainly not good, with each DVD costing at least $0.05 more than if I got them at a video rental store), I certainly want to watch a bunch more “old” movies, that I’ll probably just list here, quickly:

• Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets
• Win A Date With Tad Hamilton
• The Good Girl
• Boy Eats Girl
• Chocolat
• Ghost (but I remember getting this DVD, its just some 8000kms away, and I’ve seen bits and bobs on telly)
• Matchstick Men
• Changing Hearts
• The Day After Tomorrow
• Les Miserables

After typing that all, I realized that this would be best kept in Tomboy. But if anyone has recommendations or wants to tell me something in the above list sucks, by all means, do so.

MySQL Forge has been recently worked on. The Wiki got updated, there are some new extensions sitting around, and its “secure” as MediaWiki can get. The Forge itself has a nice little MySQL Conference & Expo banner, kudos to Lenz. Incidentally, register now, already. MediaWiki doesn’t have great banner support, so you’ve actually got to go in and hack on the PHP to display banners (MediaWiki:Sidebar itself, doesn’t support image loading! Then how do you link to an image?).

Been doing so much other stuff at MySQL recently, its a bit refershing to work on Forge. We’re safely off the 1.6 branch, and single sign on should be a goal next.

From the Google Summer of Code point of view, we’ve got a firmed up “wanting to accept” eight students, possibly. If Google will give us that much. Interesting stuff, with auditing software, IPv6 support, benchmarking (i.e. load testing), an Atom store, test suite, anti-profiler, keyword search in MySQL applications. We’ve got some amazing mentors – including Jim Starkey.

Technorati Tags: mysql, mysql forge, forge, mediawiki, summer of code, google summer of code, gsoc