{"id":643,"date":"2007-10-12T07:13:53","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T12:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/12\/more-disgust-with-the-spaceflight-participant"},"modified":"2007-12-18T07:11:32","modified_gmt":"2007-12-18T12:11:32","slug":"more-disgust-with-the-spaceflight-participant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/12\/more-disgust-with-the-spaceflight-participant","title":{"rendered":"more disgust, with the spaceflight participant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>of all the hullabaloo of sending the first malaysian into space, only to find that the great sheikh muszaphar shukor is just a <em><strong>spaceflight participant<\/strong> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/station\/expeditions\/expedition16\/exp16_adv.html\">link<\/a>). <\/em>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2006\/11\/15\/silly-malaysia-race-cards-pulled-out-what-happens-when-oil-ringgit-runs-out\">play children&#8217;s games<\/a> and make <em>teh tarik<\/em> (pulled tea).<\/p>\n<p>someone like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.markshuttleworth.com\/\">mark shuttleworth<\/a>, forked out his own cash, between <a href=\"http:\/\/www.space-frontier.org\/PressReleases\/2002\/20020425shuttleworth.html\">USD$15<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/transcripts.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/0204\/16\/ltm.08.html\">USD$20<\/a> million to see space. this was an out-of-pocket expense, and now he&#8217;s the first south african in space. why are the malaysian tax-payers funding a space tourist?<\/p>\n<p>malaysian spin-doctors better not make sheikh a laughing stock. now they&#8217;re <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffooi.com\/2007\/10\/spaceflight_participant.php\">talking<\/a> about him praying more than 80 times a day, as the first muslim to go to space during ramadhan. was this one <em>large<\/em> joke?<\/p>\n<p>p\/s: rm100 million roughly equates to around USD$30 million. why was mark&#8217;s independent trip cheaper than this tax-payer-funded instance?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> Read Ditesh&#8217;s take titled <a href=\"http:\/\/ditesh.gathani.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/13\/the-angkasawan-programme-is-a-political-sham\/\">The Angkasawan Programme is a political sham<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Technorati Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/politics\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">politics<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/tax%20payer\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">tax payer<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/spaceflight%20participant\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">spaceflight participant<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/malaysian%20in%20space\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">malaysian in space<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/first%20malaysian%20in%20space\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">first malaysian in space<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/sheikh%20muszaphar%20shukor\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">sheikh muszaphar shukor<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/corruption\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">corruption<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/laughing%20stock\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">laughing stock<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/malaysia\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">malaysia<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20more%20disgust%2C%20with%20the%20spaceflight%20participant&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2007%2F10%2F12%2Fmore-disgust-with-the-spaceflight-participant&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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That's about USD$12 million dollars! I quote, from the report: Savings on licensing fee alone by adopting OpenOffice.org have already exceeded RM12 million, which is based on the total installed seats of 12,760 at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;MySQL&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1821,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2010\/07\/05\/open-source-saves-malaysian-government-rm188-million","url_meta":{"origin":643,"position":1},"title":"Open Source Saves Malaysian Government RM188 Million","date":"5\/7\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in January 2009, we found out that the Malaysian Government had saved about RM40 million using open source. In a little over a year, that number has been topped: over the past six years, the total costs savings are now quoted to be RM188.39 million (USD$58.54 million)! That's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1174,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/11\/24\/qurans-costing-rm13-million-wisest-use-of-tax-payer-money","url_meta":{"origin":643,"position":2},"title":"Quran&#8217;s costing RM1.3 million &#8211; wisest use of tax payer money?","date":"24\/11\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This was in the news recently: Quran in hotel rooms soon. Excerpts: A copy of the Quran and its intepretation will be made available in most hotel rooms in the country to allow both Muslims and non-Muslims to have \u201caccess\u201d to the Holy book. Ahmad Zahid said Jakim would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1603,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2009\/10\/28\/credit-cards-and-malaysias-recent-budget-2010","url_meta":{"origin":643,"position":3},"title":"Credit Cards and Malaysia&#8217;s recent budget 2010","date":"28\/10\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear current ruling government of Malaysia, I see you've decided that it would be wise to charge a RM50\/year credit card tax, on a per card basis, while charging the supplementary users RM25\/year. Your opposition says that you will thus make RM400 million a year in revenue, just from these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1351,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2009\/02\/27\/malaysian-politicans-need-to-focus-on-the-economy-not-power-plays","url_meta":{"origin":643,"position":4},"title":"Malaysian politicans need to focus on the economy, not power plays","date":"27\/2\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"So, I don't read dead tree newspapers (dislike newsprint, think I get more unbiased news online, anyway), but I wish I had got The Star from a few days ago. Why? Because Anas Zubedy published an amazing ad. He spent about RM40,000 on it. The gist of the message? Please\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":933,"url":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/08\/11\/mas-saves-millions-with-lamp-stack","url_meta":{"origin":643,"position":5},"title":"MAS saves millions with LAMP stack","date":"11\/8\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Malaysian Airlines has impressed me, yet again. Last week, in The Star, they reported that Sharul Isahak, a MAS employee, has helped save the airlines close to RM70 million (about USD$21 million), thanks to his use of open source software. The software is meant to help airline maintenance, i.e. to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;MySQL&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}