Colin Charles Agenda

of all the hullabaloo of sending the first malaysian into space, only to find that the great sheikh muszaphar shukor is just a spaceflight participant (link). not an astronaut, but a space tourist. one that the government used tax payer dollars (okay, ringgit) to push him into. thats rm100 million to play children’s games and make teh tarik (pulled tea).

someone like mark shuttleworth, forked out his own cash, between USD$15 to USD$20 million to see space. this was an out-of-pocket expense, and now he’s the first south african in space. why are the malaysian tax-payers funding a space tourist?

malaysian spin-doctors better not make sheikh a laughing stock. now they’re talking about him praying more than 80 times a day, as the first muslim to go to space during ramadhan. was this one large joke?

p/s: rm100 million roughly equates to around USD$30 million. why was mark’s independent trip cheaper than this tax-payer-funded instance?

Update: Read Ditesh’s take titled The Angkasawan Programme is a political sham.

Technorati Tags: politics, tax payer, spaceflight participant, malaysian in space, first malaysian in space, sheikh muszaphar shukor, corruption, laughing stock, malaysia

so, the national union of malaysian muslim students are a bunch of morons. first they make gwen stefani dress up, because she’s got a past record of (get this!) “indecent dressing and obscenity”. these same jokers have made beyonce cop out on having a concert in malaysia. and they were the same jokers that got the authorities to fine the pussycat dolls rm10,000 for indecent exposure.

the idiotic student group says that the artists “need to understand our culture”. bloody tools don’t seem to understand that there’s more culture elsewhere, than their stolen culture. oh, and did i mention more cultures besides the muslim culture? its ironic that indonesia probably has more muslims than malaysia, only to find out that beyonce can dress up the way she wants there.

wong chun wai, in the star, has told them to pick on a worthy issue. claims that they have 10,000 dumb members, who’s Abdul Muntaqim to say gwen’s performance and attire is not suitable for malaysian culture? what is malaysian culture? is it not a copy, mix and merge from all the cultures that landed in malaysia? portuguese, british, indian, chinese, etc. and whats wrong with youths “emulating the Western lifestyle”? watching tv alone will get you that far.

these students, bums, who are provided for by the corrupt regime running malaysia, have nothing else to do. they don’t need to study, they don’t need to pay their fees, heck, they even get a huge allowance. hence, they spend their time on trivial issues. if you don’t like gwen, beyonce, etc. don’t bloody go to their concerts! no one is holding a gun to their heads and saying that they must go. or their puny-minded friends must go.

all i can say is, i’m disgusted. 50 years of nationhood, and malaysia is taking further steps back, on a daily basis.

Technorati Tags: politics, concert, gwen stefani, beyonce, malaysia, malaysian muslim students, national union of malaysian muslim students, culture, lifestyle

Via Khairil:

There is enough of us in the younger voting generation, that can say enough is enough, and it’s time to now shape Malaysia for us and not simply accept the corrupt racist system that is in place.

He’s so right. Even if you are overseas, you can still vote (postal votes, to your nearest consulate). I encourage you to read his entire post, because, he is definitely a forward thinking Malaysian. (notice, I didn’t care about his race?)

Register to vote. And just vote the opposition. Denying a 2/3rds majority is what needs to happen. And if what needs to happen again is the May 13 Incident, then so be it. The racist NEP must go. The mentality that half the population must limp on crutches with hand-outs from the government, is dated - a lazy Malaysia, be-gone.

Technorati Tags: malaysia politics voting may13 nep corrupt

Its exciting to see Zimbra being purchased for USD$350 million, by Yahoo!. Exciting because its a great product, exciting because I use it daily, and I guess Satish & team (of over 100 employees) deserve a big pat on the back. The other exciting thing to note is that its got MySQL in its core, and if they’re pushing it out farther and wider now thanks to the Yahoo! purchase, all the better.

There are a few things that are unclear, though, even from their FAQ:

• They mention commitment to Zimbra 5, but I’m still waiting for 4.5.7 :P (My Series 60 phone still hates IMAP via Zimbra).
• Will we see, say the AdSense Zimlet (only available in network, at the moment), disappear?
• Will they hurt the community by attempting to over-commercialise Zimbra? Compiling Zimbra from source control isn’t the easiest process, because of the dependency list, so I do hope they don’t run away from their amazing “easy” install process

I guess its good to know that they’re in the Communications & Community team. Yahoo! has a tendency to buy things and kill it in the past as well. Anyone remember Geocities? They were a better MySpace, any day. Lets hope Brad Garlinghouse ensures Zimbra stays committed to delivering their product, and remain relevant (today, I don’t see any better software for ease-of-use and integration available out there in the open source world). Again, congratulations to Yahoo! on acquiring a great company, and here’s me tipping my hat for their betterment in the future.

– a loyal Zimbra fan.

Technorati Tags: zimbra yahoo! acquisition

Disgusting. What will they think of next? (for context, read See you in hell Muhamad son of Muhamad) Using draconian anti-terrorism laws against those insulting Islam (a religion, supposedly official for Malaysia) or the country’s very much figure-head of a King.

How is this not strangling freedom on the Internet? How can he (Raja Petra) have crossed the line in making racist remarks, when we have ministers wielding daggers or parliament house used as a slaughter-house for sixteen cows & goats?

The ISA was something formed to use against the communists, something I believe Malaysia has not had in a long time. It was misused by the former recalcitrant Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir, during his lengthy tenure. And it looks like its making a comeback, against bloggers. It seems that “This is to put a stop to the freedom to lie in the blogosphere” - anyone reading should also note that Malaysia lacks press freedom, and all print media is a tool for the government of the day, controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda.

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blog, malaysia, silly, free speech, online censorship, stop internet censorship, free speech for all, .my, anti-terrorism, ISA, islam, king

I’ve never been a big fan of localization, especially in the Malaysian context. After all, Malay (ms_MY) is a bit of a sham. The proponents choose to believe that Bahasa Melayu is spoken in Singapore, Brunei, and Indonesia, and is rather an important language. Till the proponents realize that Indonesia has a rather thriving population speaking Bahasa Indonesia (granted, for technical terms, ms_MY and Bahasa Indonesia are quite similar). Singapore speaks English, while acknowledging BM, Tamil and Mandarin as national/official languages.

For a language that is spoken by at most 30 million people, most of whom can converse (i.e. read, write, speak) in English well, I find the translation effort a waste of time. Granted, there are a handful of stubborn people that refuse to go global, and learn to converse in English in Malaysia, because they believe the national agenda to be all important - these are the exact folk that will be left in the doldrums in the much touted K-Economy. Its okay, I’m sure the government will find some way to bail them out while oil money is still hot.

My purpose of this blog isn’t to bash the Malay language or translation efforts. Its to announce that I finally see a glimmer of hope as to why the translation might make a tiny speck of sense. Its not Bahasa Melayu or Malay. Its Bahasa Malaysia. For something that’s been around since last April, I wonder why it hasn’t taken on further?

“The Malay language belongs to Malaysians of all races and not just the Malays. The term Bahasa Malaysia would instill a sense of belonging,” Zainuddin told The Star yesterday.

Of course, Malaysia should look upon Singapore when it comes to recognizing national languages… The article also blames Anwar Ibrahim, the ex-DPM who had an affinity for backsides, for the change when he was education minister, back in 1986. How timely. If this is for national unity, I’m all for it. I then see the value in ms_MY. Translate away to Bahasa Malaysia!

Technorati Tags: ms_MY, localization, bahasa malaysia, bahasa melayu, malay, language, national language, malaysia

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

Here comes a combined rant, from the random tabs opened in Firefox, about Malaysia.

Bloggers and the law
A Barisan National representative has mentioned that the same laws apply to those of newspapers and journals, even in the cyber world. I do agree that slander and libel should be avoided on the Internet, and getting sued for that, is probably sensible. However, censorship like in printed media, should be avoided (and as far as I remember, the MSC promise was that there will be no censorship of the Internet). I’ve been silent about the Jeff Ooi/Rocky case, because plagiarism is not something that is easily proven. Did Jeff and Rocky incorrectly slander Brendan?

The New Economic Policy
I don’t consider the NEP new, because its been around for over thirty years. Malaysia is probably the only nation that helps the majority, to become incompetent. Yes, maybe that is a strong word, but there’s no real other description for it - housing discounts, education preference, job discrimination, sleeping partners, gains without merit and the list goes on. However, there are calls within UMNO to get rid of the NEP, which is excellent. Tun Musa Hitam states that “there was a need to have a change in mindset to draw investors to the country.” No interests in cronyism, nepotism, the NEP. Yes! I quote the article, again:

In the last few decades of the NEP, the country used to have an Ali Baba way of doing business where Ali would give his name and Baba would do all the work.  

“As time went on, Ali and Baba became equal and Ali was able to deliver as much as Baba. Now, there are even Alis who are using the Babas not as sleeping partners but as equals,” he quipped.

Will we see change soon? Will people in Malaysia be recognized on merit? Not by their race, the strings that they can pull, and so forth? One can only hope, or succumb to the brain drain that is already happening.

Copycats
What is with Malaysia? A long time ago, there was a Friendster spin-off, called Kawanster. Now, there’s a Digg clone? Aizat has a pretty good analysis of this. He asks if this is the best Malaysia can do - copying, or apeing other products? I’m beginning to wonder, myself.

WiMax
Malaysia should have rocking Internet access soon, I do hope. No more tied down to Streamyx, but WiMax access for everyone. The Star reports:

The four winners are REDTone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd,
Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (formerly known as MIB Comm Sdn Bhd),
Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd and Bizsurf (M) Sdn Bhd (a unit of YTL-e
Solutions Bhd).

Those are the companies to be watching, when it comes to improving broadband in Malaysia.

Chevna
The Linux distribution du jour, for Malaysians? (yes, bandwidth limit exceeded now). These were the TrianceOS folk, now selling Ubuntu for between RM39.95-49.95. From what I gather, they use Ubuntu mainstream repositories, add to sources.list a few more repositories (like mediaubuntu, beryl, wine, etc.), and they also have a Chevna repository at http://www.chevna.com/chevna. Is this an act we should support? I mean, Ubuntu + a sources.list that’s sexy, isn’t something that I think is worth much. But lifetime e-support? For RM50? I believe they’re going to encounter problems - even basing it off an LTS release, it probably doesn’t make sense to support something for life. And what about hardware issues?

It remains to be seen what they gather over just selling support for Ubuntu per se (I’d say, RM50/year, for Ubuntu support might make sense). And the next LTS release from Ubuntu, will send out free media. If anyone has tried Chevna yet, please do post your comments - I’m interested in giving it a twirl, the moment they fix their bandwidth issues.

Technorati Tags: malaysia, bloggers, law, new economic policy, nep, copycats, digg, wimax, chevna, ubuntu, linux, distribution, politics