Colin Charles Agenda

“I’m told that there is a Chinese proverb that says: 

If you want one year of prosperity, then grow grain. 

If you want 10 years of prosperity, then grow trees. 

But if you want 100 years of prosperity, then you grow people.”

(Via Remarks by President Obama and President Hu of the People’s Republic of China in an Exchange of Toasts at State Dinner | The White House)

As is becoming tradition, this year we celebrated the New Year’s Eve in London, and on New Year’s day we moved from London to Zurich. We woke up on New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam, so there were a lot of British Airways plane rides (now offering gate-to-gate usage of your tablets, kindles, phones). This past year, we threw the usual Christmas open house and only left on the 26th — something that I think was very useful, as I got to see a lot of old friends whom I don’t normally manage to catch up with (noon-8pm this time around).

In terms of travel, 2013 brought on 27 trips (36 last year), visiting 17 countries (20 last year), and 35 cities (42 last year). I only spent 223 days on the road (262 last year), and did 305,399 miles (456,110 miles previously). I’m still on my 28th trip so the stats are a bit munged now.

2014 is something I’m looking forward to. There are lots of exciting things brewing. I plan to travel a little less, looking at having more of a home base. I’m writing this after an exciting day walking around Zurich. I haven’t written a retrospective of 2013, and I never seem to do (i.e. look back), but when I look forward, I just see good things happening overall. Think positive, and all that ;-)

I’m taking more photos again (I now carry a more pocketable camera, the Fujifilm X-E2, which I picked up before Christmas). OK, signing off, time to go back to real life. Happy New Year’s! May it be prosperous for you (heard on British Airways, its clear the influence from China is now stronger).

This week has been nothing but disturbing following the happenings in Malaysian cyberspace. So much has happened and there will be much to learn from it, lest we forget what to do the next time around. This is broken up into pieces: Timeline, A Warning, What’s wrong with sweetyoungmalaysiangirls?, What about obscene images, What can you do as a victim/concerned Netizen?, What else to note?.

Timeline

Sunday – Netizens notice a blog, sweetyoungmalaysiangirls.blogspot.com and an Instagram account gadismukabukumy. They’re not too happy. Enough noise is made, The Star covers it: Blog with picture of young Malaysian girls, many of them minors, riling netizens.

Monday-Tuesday – (due to updates on initial posts) – The site goes down as many over-zealous Netizens click the ‘report to blogger’ button. Blogger ToS does not permit making money this way. The Star writes: Website hosting pictures of Malaysian girls taken down. But the best read from this is actually Harinder Singh’s account, Who’s behind these blogs. This is a must read – it’s a detective takedown story with a great amount of sleuthing and even entrapment (the video is golden – since been removed but surely archived somewhere). There is some back & forth here in the official statement about how he got hacked.

Wednesday – By then, the Netizens are all riling against this chap, Dustyhawk/Serge, pasting his WHOIS information in public, etc. His comeback is a little quirky: How to lose friends and make enemies – A social experiment. Harinder calls this Grasping for air. Wesley Chung writes an open letter which is also an interesting read. And a victim shares that her pictures were never public, they were just for Facebook friends, so by letting him into her circle, he transgressed her privacy.

Thursday – Dustyhawk/Serge posts An Apology and Asking for forgiveness while getting a few things off our chest. Before that, The Ant writes: Techie sheds ‘light’ on who’s behind offending blog site.

As I write this on Friday, it is worth noting that lawyer Foong Cheng Leong, who specialises in IT/cyber law writes about The law and the Sweet Young Malaysian girls blog. Another useful read!

A warning

Be very careful with what you share on social media or the Internet (this includes blogs, sites like Picasa or Flickr, etc.). Anything in the public eye can be saved (even if you disable saving there can be screenshots) and reused or aggregated later on. If you don’t want it to be public, do not share it. Be aware of those applications like Dropbox, Google Plus, etc. that auto-upload pictures – yes they put them in private by default, but if your accounts get broken into, these pictures can become public.

I am all for free speech on the Internet, but I draw a line at child pornography. Nudity, nude models, etc. may be obscene and against Malaysian law to some extent (which isn’t sensible), but child pornography is not tolerated in any jurisdiction. 

What’s wrong with sweetyoungmalaysiangirls?

Nothing. It is definitely in bad taste, but nothing is really wrong assuming these were curated images from the Internet. The images were re-blogged. Sure he slapped advertising on them. So that can be copyright infringement. 

There was once an estimate that about 5% of Tumblr blogs were nude/adult related. Recently Yahoo! removed them from public search. They still exist, but you’ve got to find the links elsewhere.

If the images were stolen from private Facebook profiles or a private Twitter feed, they are definitely not good. This is morally reprehensible and I would encourage the victims to make a police report immediately.

What about obscene images?

Nudity apparently may not be tolerated in Malaysia. Section 292 of the Penal Code says its an offence to post obscene pictures. Famously, this charge was a thought for using against the couple Alvivi (it wasn’t, they’ve been slapped with other charges). We also have the all encompassing Section 233 of the CMA 1998.

What can you do as a victim/concerned Netizen?

1. Victims, make a police report (if you’re over 18 now, you don’t have to inform your parents)
2. Victims or concerned Netizens might want to make a complaint to MCMC/SKMM. They have a content code, and Section 3 focuses on Obscene content that includes explicit sex acts/pornography, child pornography or sexual degradation. However, is a blogger a content provider? Or will this form of reporting just mean ISPs block offending URLs like they do for many porn sites? More on complaints to here.
3. MyCERT/Cyber999 is not a bad place to make a complaint (victim or concerned Netizen). Their definition of incidents are wide & varied, with cyber harassment to content related issues. Reports can be lodged here.
4. Complain to the abuse@ alias of the web hosting provider that the blogger is hosting at. They can either be DMCA takedown notices or just abuse notes. 

What else to note?

Freedom is a double-edged sword. One person’s morals cannot be imposed on another person. We want the Internet to be free, but within acceptability (so nudity, ala Alvivi is fine between consenting adults but not child pornography). The last thing we want is censorship of the Internet.

Don’t call people a pedophile. Or a sex offender. To be a sex offender, one has to be charged and convicted of the crime. Its easy to name & shame, but last I checked, that is defamation. Please re-read the opinion of lawyer Foong Cheng Leong.

Tell young kids and yourselves to be mindful of what you post on the Internet. Look at the selfie search on Twitter. Or the amount of detail you can get from an Instagram search.

Back then, it was camwhoring. In 2013, selfie is a dictionary word!

Be mindful of what you post online.

1. If you hire a PR firm, you tend to find that they “influence” journalists to write pieces. Fluff pieces even.
2. If you hire an analyst firm, they tend to be interested in you and start putting you on their subscribers radars. And in all their reports. And naturally press releases.
3. “Tech press” are more interested in covering M&A, money deals, etc. as opposed to real tech. This democratisation of media has caused the mainstream ones to follow suit too.

These are global observations not limited to a region. Gatekeepers still exist.

Cyanogen, makers of Cyanogenmod for Android devices, just raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. The founder Steve Kondik has a really nice story: a new chapter.

When you raise money, you certainly have to provide some form of “exit”. Many comments are asking how they’re going to commercialise, since they have a great commitment to opensource. Just look at their repositories.

The Verge thinks Cyanogenmod might be the third OS in mobile (after iOS and Android). It might even be ahead of Windows Mobile. Impressive. Just look at the opt-in installation statistics (~7.7 million installs).

I’ve never loaded Cyanogenmod on my Android device. I’ve owned a Nexus One, HTC Desire HD (10 days?) and a Samsung Galaxy S III. Samsung is clearly not pushing out updates yet (they delay them from what I gather now that the S IV is out) so I might look into Cyanogenmod soon.

I’m interested in how they’re going to monetize. Some options:

1. Make an easy-to-use end user installer. Charge for it.
2. Work with device manufacturers who are making cheap devices. 
3. Work with device manufacturers like HTC, who are making devices but aren’t really “successful”, and replace their UI to be more streamlined.
4. Secure messaging already exists; offer even better at a price tag?
5. Secure voice calling for a fee? The resurgence of VOIP in an easy-to-use format.
6. Offer hosted secure email, that is a gmail replacement? Nokia tried this to some extent with Ovi services. You got an Ovi account when you got a device.
7. Preload a Whatsapp-equivalent, like Samsung does (ChatON); make it available on many platforms?
8. Encrypted/secure backup & restore. Restoring on Android loses account details for example.
9. Acquire TrueCaller and have the services built-in. Imagine this running as a default? Imagine paying $1/month to never have to answer spam again?

Many options exist. The firmware will be free. This is great, because older devices that manufacturers choose to neglect will just run Cyanogenmod.

The potential for developing nations is great too. The second hand market for an Android device just got a lot better. The total lifespan of a device might become tremendously longer. Interesting moves and something to watch, especially in a world where more open options are starting to come by: FirefoxOS, Ubuntu phones, etc.

I saw a moving video (which I can’t find now) featuring Nick Vujicic and how he overcomes challenges. Check out Leaps of Knowledge: FrogAsia presents Nick Vujicic. I don’t normally listen to motivational speakers but I’m kinda happy that YTL is bringing him to town because both parents and students of the system need to ensure that the next generation don’t give up no matter what challenges they face. Those facing challenges in Malaysia are only stronger in the world because you focus on overcoming it well.

I don’t know if the series Leaps of Knowledge is going to be like a Malaysian TED-equivalent, but from what I’m told this is just the first of the series. Its part of the whole FrogAsia push that YTL’s spearheading to ensure that all students end up learning with a Chromebook. You know I’m excited overall about the ability for students to learn beyond their skewed textbooks and education system. The power of a Chromebook with an Internet connection will help all students overcome challenges. 

Its FREE for 1BestariNet ID holders (so again, targeted at parents/students in the education system). No reason not to go IMHO, so register at yes.my/1bestarinet. 

Many parents I’ve spoken to talk about how the education system needs fixing. Public education might be free/cheap, but its so incredibly broken. 1BestariNet no matter what will help improve the overall education system because if a student has an inkling to learn more, she will thanks to the Internet. It is a powerful tool, for example there are 24 e-books that focus on Malays in Project Gutenberg. Vast bodies of information that even I am trying to chomp thru over time.

I was lucky to be educated in an international school, learning everything in English and taking the O Levels. Today I am told that even with more international schools, there are waiting lists and the costs have skyrocketed. Its something I generally have to think about going forward because I will have children eventually too. 

So the system might be broken, but you have to overcome challenges. So kudos to YTL for bringing Nick Vujicic to talk about this, to motivate the next generation to thrive in a tough world. Giving it away for free is a bonus; I do sincerely hope that it is eventually extended to more than just 1BestariNet ID holders.

With all the challenges life throws at you, we all can use a little motivation, learn something new, and more importantly be inspired to get ahead of the curve.