Colin Charles Agenda

Dear Nasrul,

I’ve watched the vitriol on osdcmy-list, I’ve seen the attacks on Facebook, and on Twitter and I’ve read all the comments on the Open Malaysia blog, and I think its time I chime in.

Firstly, I need to ask: do you know much about open source? I would highly recommend you read The Open Source Definition.

Next, you’re talking about Facebook, which is a closed platform, which was launched at an open source conference. Why?

But more interestingly, you won RM2,000 for “porting” MediaWiki to run on the Windows, IIS, MSSQL Server, and PHP. For what it is worth, MediaWiki already runs on Windows, and works fine with IIS. So it seems that your largest task, was to port the SQL, to run not on two very capable open source databases, but to run on Microsoft SQL Server (a closed source database).

I read Final Day: MediaWiki – What I learn so far from LAMP2WIN and My Journey with glee.

So I decided to poke a little. You haven’t submitted any code upstream to MediaWiki. But what’s worse is, have you seen Bug#9767? The title of the bug is “Microsoft SQL Server/MSSQL support (tracking)”. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you what the patches in that bug do.

Yes, DJ Bauch added support to MSSQL, via ADODB (work started in 2007, and its been ready since April 30 2009). Something you won money for. But worse? “.. winners walked away with RM2,000 in cash, a MSC Malaysia Participation Certificate. They will also enjoy facilitated access to MSC Intensive Technoprenuer Programme and the eventual RM150,000 pre-seed fund.” (via the Malay Mail).

Now you’re able to access a lot more money, for work that you, yourself, did not do.

I think you should get off your high horse, understand a little more Netiquette, and behave. After all, Google will forever remember what you’ve said, and all the personal attacks against active participants in the open source community, which I’m certain can do you no favours.

Kind Regards,
Colin

Taman Klang Jaya, formerly known as Taman Goodwood, currently gives me great woes, when it comes to getting an Internet connection. In short, there is no choice, but the monopoly that is Telekom Malaysia, and their substandard DSL service, better known as Streamyx.

Streamyx, as we all know, pretty much sucks. Heck, even Members of Parliament know this.

Hence, I have a Maxis Broadband modem. And guess what? Their 3G services not only suck in Taman Klang Jaya, they suck pretty much everywhere. On Twitter, people are suggesting to go back to just use the 2G network, and things work out fine. If the telco had any maruah, they’d do what DiGi did for their prepaid users: service outage = half price calls.

So I thought I’d try P1’s W1MAX. They seem to be selling in Klang, and I have a little Wiggy device. Still, no coverage in the area.

I’ve recently become a DiGi Broadband subscriber, and while it works fine (1mbps in my PJ home), it drops back to EDGE in Taman Klang Jaya. And as we all know, EDGE isn’t that fast.

So, what is a resident of Taman Klang Jaya to do? (Certainly, its not to subscribe to Streamyx, P1, Maxis and DiGi!) Rather than complain here on my blog, is it possible that I contact my local Member of Parliament? How do I even find out who my MP is? (Wow, that kid at BarCampKL that @tekong and I encountered, would be jumping all over this statement, right about now).

The state of broadband is such that even if I were to launch any high-bandwidth requirement businesses, I would fail. And I’m sure somewhere, in the MSC Bill of Guarantees, there is a provision that says the infrastructure itself must be world class. Streamyx today, is probably even worse than many third world countries I’ve visited.

Apparently, the whole idea behind registering bloggers is coming back. The esteemed Information, Communications and Culture Minister, Rais Yatim stated:

“The idea is good, but we have to see it from the legal aspects and from the aspect of freedom of Internet use.”

What is this? A world of X-Men, where there are mutant registrations, in where the special powers are that of questioning the current administration and providing a more balanced (or biased) view of the political scene? Ptff.

Curious I am, about the Multimedia Signature Act. I don’t think anyone in their right minds, is interested in registering the fact that they write a blog. But its great to see the threat of bloggers so mainstream, that they’ve been talking about registration for at least two years.

I was at the Google Maps Malaysia launch at No Black Tie yesterday. All round, the Google chaps did a great job at organising a fun-filled event, which basically meant I got to talk to a lot of friends (it was a combination of Barcamp, open source hackers, entrepreneurs and some new media folk – I think I spotted a smattering of bloggers too), and also meet a few new ones ;-)

• I guess the big deal about yesterday was the launch of http://maps.google.com.my. No longer will you be re-routed to the States, and have to specify, sometimes even up to postcode level. This kind of stuff has mostly been working for a while, but I guess its now official.
• When asked when Street View will come to Malaysia, there was no comment on the timeline.
• I saw KLue being mentioned, but there was no speaker from there. It seems like their event guide has been extracted via a mapplet, and placed on AppSpot, to give you a Events in Malaysia map “overlay”. Pretty cool, and can really be integrated well, into something else…
• VirtualMalaysia spoke at the event, showing how they did some copy/paste of the mapplets, and how they built somewhat of an app out of it. I think Yoon Kit tweets it best:
  

  Virtual Malaysia copy and pasted the javascript for Tourism Msia. @arzumy asks “How much did u charge for it?”. Its our money eh? #mymap

• Back to Mapplets: they’re mini-applications to run in Google Maps. You have data, it can be overlaid with Google Maps. This is worth playing with.
• Not maps related, but the AJAX API’s Playground is a useful learning tool. You can talk to all the Google APIs, and it becomes easy – copy/paste and things happen.
• When its finally time to write code, don’t redo, just reuse – check out gmaps-utility-library. Its all Apache licensed, so convenient to pop into your code.
• Its worth noting that searching for properties to rent/buy should be easier now, considering iProperty.com.my now is also powered by Google Maps.
• Are you a local business? Make sure you add yourself, in the local business centre.
• There were a bunch of international sites using Maps, but the only one that caught my eye was Travellr. I’d have remembered more sites, had the Internet been working…
• Highly amusing to see that there were people from the event management company, trying to show us how to use Google Maps Mobile. Poor girl had “fun” trying to demo this to Yoon Kit, Han, Ditesh, Kevin and I. Problem is, Yoon Kit, Han and I were already playing around with Maps on the mobile for a while, and had been sharing our locations with Latitude with each other for a while (for example, we knew that Han was on a highway about 16 minutes before he arrived for the event!)
• Naturally, no Google event is complete without a t-shirt. We’re all now proud owners of a blue t-shirt, which has a marker that says “I am here.”

Now a bit about the location (which in my opinion, was a little crappy):

• Kudos to Google for getting the valet service going at No Black Tie. I’ve never been there before, but my trusty GPS told me how to get there — and then I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if I had a device, with just Google Maps, and a 3G connection, and some intelligent caching (for when I hit network blindspots), and a GPS chip on board? I’d prefer that any day over Malsingmaps on my Garmin…
• WiFi was fail. Maxis Broadband 3G was fail. It seemed like Celcom was fail. The event location, near the stage, basically meant that you got no Internet. My phone (DiGi) still had EDGE though ;-)
• No Black Tie, doesn’t seem to have the best management. I personally would never hold an event there. Why? Because the management is quite liberal at trying to embarrass the event organisers. I was going to get a beer, when I was told that we were over the RM2,000 quota, and I can’t get a beer. He shows me his chit, saying how much over the tab we are — I don’t need to know this, and this is something you should never tell a customer. Take it up with the organisers, and solve it amicably. But what took the cake? Another bloke asked for two beers and he shouted at the top of his voice, that the tab was dry. I mean this is Google we’re talking about — they’re not exactly a company short on money, and they splurge on things, all the time. I don’t represent Google, but I felt bad for them. For what its worth, in under 3 minutes and 25 seconds Google had extended the tab ;-)

The good news – the website to track economic stimulus funds in Malaysia is now ready. Check out: Rangsangan Ekonomi Malaysia.

Even better news, they used an open source software solution (Joomla!) to make that website happen. So mad props go out to them.

Only thing that irks me? Its all in Bahasa Malaysia, with no translation in English.

Executive summary: If you make a mistake in your e-filing for taxes, you have to print out the tax form, submit supporting documents, write a cover letter, and send it over to the tax office, anytime after the tax madness of pre-April 30, is over. Read on, for the tale.

So, if you’ve been following my tweets, you know I’ve been a little under the weather lately. Plus I just flew back from San Francisco. No, I do not have swine flu, its just sinuses acting up. Nonetheless, the government of Malaysia’s, Inland Revenue Board (LHDN/Hasil/tax office) doesn’t believe in excuses, and had set an April 30 deadline (showing them my passport, I doubt would have been any help).

Much like Suanie, this is my first year of filing taxes. I thought I’ll try the e-Hasil method, which is basically e-filing, right in your web browser.

First up, the system is available in English. OK, the content is mostly available in English (its filled with Bahasa Malaysia at the top, with the English text, in small print), and the buttons are all in Bahasa Malaysia, but you can guess what needs to be done.

Getting my e-filing PIN was easy. I just went to a very crowded LHDN office, and asked the nice lady over the counter. I’m surprised she engaged with me, entirely in English, without any complaint. I got my Tax ID, my e-filing PIN number, and some instructions.

Upon going home, I attempted to get it all working. Its pretty easy, if you can get connected to the site (I ended up tunnelling my traffic – and Gareth warns that the servers do crash). It really did take less than 15 minutes. I just input my salary, how much I could deduct (charity, books, and medication for parents — who knew sporting equipment counted too? Time to buy some this year.)

And then, the next day, I realise I had made a boo boo. I had not input the maximum deduction for EPF. Why? Because the software didn’t translate it properly, and it did only say “KWSP”, not “EPF”. So there’s a RM6,000 deduction, making my taxes not seem in order (in a way that benefits me, might I add — this should add to my refund).

The site, is all written in ASP. There definitely are some checks, via JavaScript in some fields. It works fine using Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (I got to test it all — my parents too, decided to go the e-filing route this year).

Now, noting that there is already some JavaScript, why not, at the field which asks you about EPF (or KWSP as they put it), there be an alert? After all, if you’re paying taxes, you’re definitely paying for contributions to your retirement, to the EPF/KWSP.

To make matters worse, once you’ve submitted the form online, and “signed” it, you can’t amend it. I called up the Shah Alam office (because all other numbers went to hell), at 03-55103202, to ask for help. I must shout out to Twitter user, @derekw who had already emailed the tax office before with regards to a similar question. His email to me, was really useful.

I got transferred three times before I got to someone that spoke English to me. His instructions were simple: write a cover letter, state your case, attach the print out of the tax return, plus attach the document(s) required to support your claim. In my case, the nice bloke told me to just write the cover letter, and attach my EA form, which comes from my employer. And he said, don’t bother doing it now, just do it anytime next week (or later, even), since the offices are all too crowded now.

So, that’s been my tax tale. How can all this be improved? What’s good, what’s bad?

• Good: it works with Firefox. It also seems to be cross-platform. It could be worse — like some Windows based software, that will make you vomit
• Bad: its written in ASP, and uses Microsoft technology (Windows 2000, IIS 5). Spending money of the rakyat should be wiser, and using proprietary software, is bad.
• Bad: servers need to scale. Failing, or being slow, under traffic, is just unacceptable. You don’t need “extra” machines, so maybe some form of scale-to-cloud, during peak season.
• Bad: there are some checks now, with JavaScript, but there should be more checks on mandatory things (case in point, my EPF problem)
• Good: Its bi-lingual.
• Bad: the English interface needs improvement. Buttons need to be translated properly
• Bad: editing your tax returns, should be available, till the deadline, in the respective year
• Good: PDF’s are generated of your receipt, as well as your tax form

Again, thanks to the Twitterverse being helpful: @ShaolinTiger, @derekw, @kamal, and @mikefoong. In other news, I can heartily recommend you read: Why should we pay income tax to the BN? and the running commentary there, as well as on Suanie’s post.