Colin Charles Agenda

I’ll admit to not using MegaUpload much or at all. There were very few times that I’d have to download something from the site, and it could never justify me paying for premium services. That aside, I think what’s happened to Kim Dotcom and his crew at MegaUpload is completely crap. He’s right — he’s an easy target, he’s not a big company, he has been known to be flamboyant, and while he’s immensely rich, he’s not as rich as a BigCo. All that said, I’m glad he’s fighting, and I hope he takes the government to the cleaners.

As I’ve said before, the piracy problem only exists because Hollywood thinks their old models still work. I’m all for finding new ways to entertain folk, and would love to see more indie movies, etc. Kim Dotcom thinks so too:

“If the business model would be one where everyone has access to this content at the same time, you know, you wouldn’t have a piracy problem. So it’s really, in my opinion, the government of the United States protecting an outdated monopolistic business model that doesn’t work anymore in the age of the internet and that’s what it all boils down to.” – says Kim Dotcom

This is a couple of weeks old, but I encourage everyone to go watch the first interview with Kim Dotcom on New Zealand TV as soon as he got out. If you don’t have time, read the transcript.

We’re reaching an age where digital rights are going to be very important to defend, and what has happened with MegaUpload and how a business has disappeared overnight is just bad news. It can happen to you. Always remember what Martin Niemöller said:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Via NYT: Days Are Numbered for Unlimited Mobile Data Plans

In Indonesia, nearly a third of the population is younger than 15 years old. So Telkomsel, the leading mobile operator in the country, offers a data plan called FlexiChatting for customers who want to do just one thing: gain access to and update Twitter and Facebook accounts on their cellphones.

Once more of this starts happening, we’re looking at inspecting packets. Some sites are more free than others. Consumers will love this because they save money and access services that they believe are important to them: Facebook & Twitter.

However this stifles innovation. How will the next Twitter or Facebook start? The startups that are coming to disrupt will be the underdog and will only be available to data rich folk; not the average joe.

Today I read a re-tweeted tweet by a fellow Malaysian who said:

@etp_roadmap @IdrisJala_ c what I meant u all cant change. U only RT tweets that favors U all but never on negative tweets..learn 2b fair

This is probably true. You can retweet whatever you want. Naturally, you’ll only retweet things that you find are positive to you (or align with your points of view). This is the thesis behind things like Tumblr and other reblogging platforms.

This is the beauty of Twitter as a conversation medium. You can actually just search for a string. And with the @reply mechanism, you just end up searching for “etp_roadmap” and you see heaps of amazing commentary.

Granted, this is not something everyone would do. But with social media you get the choice. With traditional media, you’re forced to look at one point of view. Letters that get published don’t necessarily have to be “independent”. Social allows those that are interested to dig deeper. This is true power.

Do the cybertroopers know this? Its easy to figure things out, if you’re looking.

It is widely stated that the late Steve Jobs had a uniform: mock turtleneck, Levis jeans, and New Balance sneakers. He did this because he didn’t want to think about what to wear daily and there was a sense of everyone being in a uniform. It didn’t catch on at Apple, but I’m sure the many fanboys do dress like him.

I’m totally with Jobs on this. In school I had a uniform. I never thought about what to wear. My last uniform at high school was a short-sleeved white shirt (long-sleeved only on Mondays afaik), blue pants, and a pair of white-ish sneakers. Oh and a blue tie. There was not much thinking, and it took a load off for me.

Nowadays, I don’t have a uniform. For most part of the 2000’s, I was just wearing free t-shirts from the various opensource projects I was involved in. After meeting Sara in 2008, I learned about the Polo tee. I’d still have to pick what shoes to wear, what pants to wear (be it shorts or long pants or jeans). I usually just ended up with cargo pants due to the many pockets that come with it.

So, my uniform lately is that I usually have a Polo t-shirt on. I’ve not figured out how to ease the pants problem — sometimes its shorts, sometimes its jeans, sometimes its pants. I very rarely need to wear a suit. I’ve also not figured out footwear.

All that aside, the idea of a uniform makes sense. I’m still figuring out what’s useful for me. Here’s to cracking the uniform code!

I’ve been on a plane quite a lot this month. Consequently caught quite a bunch of movies.

• A Good Year – a romantic drama with Russell Crowe.
• One Day – I like Anne Hathaway but this show is probably not one of her best. They pick moments from one day every year for some twenty years. Male star gets out of whack when she passes. Makes you always remember to seize the day. Carpe diem. Sometimes the best things in life are standing right in front of you.
• What’s your number? – romantic comedy, just to pass the time over a meal
• Killer Elite – most of Jason Statham’s movies tend to be action packed and this one is no exception. It’s based on a true story. I highly recommend watching this.

In non-movies, it’s worth noting that Californication is back! I’ve learned to watch Community, seems season 1 & 2 are complete so they are easy to watch back-to-back.

I just read that about 100,000 most likely Malaysian Facebook accounts have been cracked. Well their passwords are available for all to see in pastebin. Upon checking, I only saw a little over 75,000 since the third file has been compromised. From that sample, I quickly derived that the most popular Malaysian passwords are:

1. 123456
2. sayang
3. brokenheart
4. 123456789
5. rozaliqa75
6. effaluve
7. akucintaallah
8. zzz999
9. pradeebkumar123$%
10. 12345678

The least popular ones in that sample set include having spaces, hashes, brackets, and more. So there are some secure ones!

Using one’s phone number seems to also be popular. Sometimes appending or pre-pending a string (like a name) to it. Using birthdays seems to also be quite common, sometimes also appending or pre-pending a string like a name to it.

And for those wanting to “further analyse” the dataset yourself, I just quickly used standard Unix tools, and you can do it too.

grep "Password:" part_* | awk -F":" '{print $3}'| sort | uniq -c |sort -n

Pipe to less, use head/tail, etc.