Colin Charles Agenda

While I am not a Jeff Waugh apologist (disclaimer: he’s a friend of mine, whom I met through the open source community), I find this kind of journalism, simply appalling.

Five whole pages over the running of a Planet? With pulling out details from the archives of lists? It clearly looks like Sam Varghese is a little bored these days. And iTWire, which is on my “daily” to read list, is on the verge of being removed. Its becoming drivel.

If Jeff was really doing a bad job, and this is after all the open source world, where is the fork of Planet GNOME?

P/S: For added value, read the comments.

I read the newspapers on the plane yesterday, it was the Sunday New Straits Times. I suddenly realised, that it provided dated news. Dated how?

I had already read about the Malaysian Dreamgirl from various blogs I follow in Google Reader. I had also already read about the Nokia challenge with regards to their N82 and using the GPS and so on. Heck, I had even seen the pictures and more.

Why does anyone bother with the drivel that is printed media? Its all one big propaganda machine for the ruling party of the day (albeit weakened).

Media might still matter in countries where freedom of media expression exists (Australia, the United States, etc.), but in nations where media expression is stifled, and the Internet is uncensored, old media is dead.

Bold statement? I have a feeling I’m somehow right though.

What made Marie Digby? I’ve heard about her on the radio from time to time, while I do the unnatural act of driving somewhere. Now, I’ve been invited to an event, where the tagline says that she’s “a star born from YouTube”. I had to dig further.

Decided to watch the famous video. Its just her, sitting with her guitar, performing an acoustic version of Rihana’s Umbrella. Nothing fancy. I’m told she sat in front of her MacBook to make the “hit”.

Grassroots marketing? Bands try much harder, and still feel the pain of becoming somewhat famous. What makes her different? Beauty (she’s of Japanese-American heritage)? Sultry look?

I wonder what her tipping point was. She’s had it easy, when you think about it. The Internet has popularised so many good things, and even if you rewind back say fifteen years ago, there is no way an artist would have made it easily, via grassroots events/stunts.

Aren’t you glad you’re part of the free software revolution? If not for Linux (SuSE), Python, MySQL, and lots and lots of disk, you will not be seeing Marie Digby, now will you? And naturally, if not for the ease-of-use of her Apple laptop, and how they’ve become commodity hardware (15 years ago, there were for “graphics professionals” and were sordidly expensive). Times do change.

Maybe I’ll go to the event… if I’m not too jet-lagged (imagine, planning a month in advance to be jet-lagged)…

Technorati Tags: marie digby, music, youtube, trends, rihana, umbrella, macbook, apple, open source, free software revolution, tipping point

I’ve found Twitter to be an amazingly useful web service. So useful, that I’ll dedicate a blog post to them. If you haven’t already read Anything Could Happen, do yourself a favour and get reading. Its an interview with Evan Williams, who founded both the ever popular Blogger, and now Twitter.

Tim Bray, brings up the general idea that succeeding in this world, is all about being first, no matter what. Its where the community is at, right? It doesn’t matter if there are better, competing services, its where the community has gathered, and who’s first. Time to Market or Time to Twitter?

Its probably true. Twitter has had its fair share of problems, mostly around scaling their application. Yet, people stick with Twitter, no matter what. The community of users have already got a vested interest (all previous “tweets”, favourites, a community of friends, et al) and there’s no point recreating it in Pownce or Jaiku. I’ve got accounts on those two other services, and I pretty much never, ever user them beyond the initial review period.

In other news, I found this tip to be useful:
curl -u username:password -d status=”so, you can make twitter updates via the command line and curl?” http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

Even comes back with about 19 lines of output, in XML, telling you that your update has been successful. Shows that you’ve updated from the web, in terms of status. Now, if only I had ubiquitous Internet access everywhere…

Technorati Tags: twitter, evan williams, command line, interview

Illegal downloading
It seems like March has clearly become a dark time for illegal downloaders. With Exetel in Australia willing to disconnect offenders, following on what seems to have started on in Japan and Sweden (where the ISPs can give to the courts, information on suspected file sharers). The United Kingdom is not far off. Encrypted P2P would seem like the way to go, along with port randomisation, and maybe even using tunnels?

Bloggers to pay a more important role in Malaysia?
It seems that the newly appointed information minister, Ahmad Shabery Cheek, wants to have a meeting with bloggers, as they play a role in nation building! They surely played a role in brining down the coalition. The important thing is that they’ve realised that they, the government of the day, will not control bloggers. Nothing to realise really, that’s what the MSC Bill of Guarantees provides: “7. Ensure no Internet censorship.”

Zimbra, and quality
Upgrading Zimbra has scared me in the past. This time, another problem cropped up with the ill-fated 5.0.3 release, which was pulled almost immediately. Good thing 5.0.4 has also been released. I cannot wait to have “online backup” in the open source version.

Bloggers feel more connected?
Recent research in Melbourne show that bloggers feel happier and more satisfied with their friends. Swinburne University studied new bloggers, and found that within two months, bloggers felt more socially connected, and generally felt part of a community. However, its not all bells and whistles – bloggers might also be more psychologically distressed? Or maybe, they’re just MySpace bloggers ;)

You weren’t meant to have a boss
Paul Graham tells us that having a boss, isn’t the natural scheme of things. Reading the sub-heading, on Trees, definitely makes a lot of sense. A bold statement, yet true: “You can feel the difference between working for a company with 100 employees and one with 10,000, even if your group has only 10 people.” I can already say I can feel myself resonating with it. As always, a good piece of advice: “A lot of people in their early twenties get into debt, because their expenses grow even faster than the salary that seemed so high when they left school. At least if you start a startup and fail your net worth will be zero rather than negative.”

Technorati Tags: illegal downloading, p2p, bloggers, internet censorship, zimbra, quality, social, community, boss, startups

It seems that Badawi has caught on the Internet trend. Malaysians can now send their gripes, suggestions, and comments to the Prime Minister, via the Warkah untuk PM website.

Comment to t he Prime Minister in all four languages

The Star reports that it was the DPM, Najib, who had to launch the website. Whats interesting is that each message from with public will get a response from Abdullah, according to Najib. Does this mean that the sleeping PM will now spend all his waking hours responding to email? I highly doubt it. More interestingly, creative and innovative ideas, by the first hundred submitters, will ensure you get to visit the PM. Its gotten the blogosphere talking.

What I don’t get? They fear public debate, seeing that there’s easy comparison now with the American elections, yet they are interested in hearing public gripes and responding to them?

On open source friendliness…
What pisses me off? The website is running Windows Server 2003, on IIS/6.0. This is even more a waste of public money for a site that is simply a feedback form.

In comparison to the open source friendly, DAP, PKR, and PAS. I’m impressed, they all run Linux, save for the latter, in where PAS runs FreeBSD with the Suhosin-Patched PHP. All served up via Apache HTTPD, and DAP has got a smattering of lighttpd even.

For what it is worth, Barisan Nasional’s website, bn2008, is also running Windows Server 2003 and IIS/6.0. Disgusting.

If they can waste your ringgit on buying proprietary software licenses, when there are clearly open source alternatives, can you trust them with spending and budgeting for a country?

Technorati Tags: abdullah badawi, najib, warkah untuk pm, website, feedback to the prime minister, public debate, public spending, open source, windows server 2003, iis

To be fair, Kenny Sia over-did the “election” vs. “erection” thing. But the transcript, I would have thought was a joke, is actually true. So kudos to Kenny Sia for typing it all up.

Now, an Information Minister (Zainuddin Maidin), speaking to a television station, in that kind of language? Someone ought to send him for media training.

Highly entertaining. Watch the video. I mean, I thought he was stupid a few weeks back, just didn’t know he was this stupid.

In the newspapers, there are some quotable quotes from Zam slams Al Jazeera’s coverage:

• “They also cited a blogger as an independent journalist when the blogger is actually a DAP member,” he said. –> referring to Jeff Ooi, who in every respect is an independent journalist (isn’t that what bloggers generally are? I mean we refer to housewives [and to be politically correct, house-husbands] as domestic engineers…)
• “The police only used water cannons and tear gas and did not shoot anyone,” he said. –> shoot anyone? Really, who knew you could be shot for protesting. Well, maybe you can be in the current situation in Burma, or Pakistan, but in Malaysia? Shocking.
• Zainuddin said Al Jazeera should use its base in Malaysia as an opportunity to strengthen bonds with the West rather than to portray Malaysia as anti-West. –> how is the video in any way, portraying Malaysia as being anti-West? Is the idea of democracy, a Western one? What is the West anyway? India is the world’s largest democracy, and its hardly located in the “West”

All in all, its great to see Wikipedia being used to push truths (or untruths). Currently, as I write this, the neutrality of the article is being disputed. Article in question: 2007 Bersih rally.

Oppressive governments, like the one in Malaysia, is probably really feeling the pain of the Internet. Blogs, video distribution, immediate distribution, rallies being organised via the Net. Wind back a decade ago, and I think the then-prime minister, Dr. Mahathir had no idea of the power of the Internet. Even then, the bungaraya and sangkancil lists were being run, and the early birds saw what was coming. Arguably, soc.culture.malaysia on Usenet was a good venting point for folk too. Yes, there was online political activism, before Jeff Ooi ;)

Technorati Tags: politics, malaysia, information minister, zainuddin maidin, al jazeera, jeff ooi, DAP, english, bad language, media training, democracy, protest, freedom to protest, BERSIH

What’s a good, quick way, to learn a new language with the help of Linux?

In particular, I’m interested in learning conversational Mandarin. Basic reading, is a bonus, but hey, I’m not that fussed. I’d like to not pay for my software, if possible, and since I tote a Linux laptop most of the time (this might change to an OS X based one that actually works - rant on this soon), if it runs on Linux, all the better. The Popagandhi tells me I need to go to a good class - do these exist in Melbourne/

Some useful links I’ve found, so far:

• QQ for Linux - QQ is the Chinese version of ICQ, that pretty much everyone there uses. Though MSN seems to be a lot popular these days (compared to what, 2.5-3 odd years ago)
• ChinesePod - podcasts to help? Well, maybe here’s a reason to use an iPod again…
• I saw this thread on the Ubuntu Forums, but it doesn’t really address anything of requirement

Technorati Tags: linux, learning, mandarin, foreign language, qq, chinese