Techdirt recently reported on how Canadian Schools are Banning WiFi based on bad science, and I was appalled by the complete lack of science we have operating in the minds of these clueless parents. No doubt they’re well-intentioned but their complete and utter disregard of the scientific evidence in favour of fearful knee-jerk reactions are actually causing more harm than good for the very children they intend to protect.

Of course it doesn’t take much research to find out that WiFi isn’t dangerous, and there’s no evidence to show that it is dangerous. In fact, most studies suggest WiFi radiation is so weak, that a year of WiFi radiation equals to 20 minutes on a cell phone. The most important thing of course is not to fall into the trap of thinking we’re ‘better safe than sorry’ because we already are safe with WiFi and we have enough evidence to suggest what WiFi poses to health risk.

Wireless@PENANG : The Health risk of Public WiFi

Unfortunately, the consumer association of Penang wrote a long open-letter to Lim Guan Eng, chastising him for not engaging them enough. It was clear from the letter than the Consumer Association, while having the right intentions in mind–were clearly misled in terms of the science. It was even clearer that all they wanted was for them to be engaged, but from my end I can’t see how a consumer association who has looked at the scientific data (and lack thereof) not conclude that the benefits of WiFi almost astronomically dwarf the ‘perceived’ health risk– quite frankly there are no health risk. More to the point, I would not even begin a conversation with them, till they point to some scientific proof of how WiFi is a health risk. At present there is no such data.

However, this little directive provoked my thoughts, because I’ve always been intrigued by the ‘weeding’ effect of censorship. The ‘weeding’ effect is a simple analogy I came up with while I was –you guessed it– weeding my garden. You see I’ve got a small garden in my home, and every now and then I put a pair of pink rubber gloves and go weeding around by hand, it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. Now for those of you who’ve weeded anything before you know those nasty little weeds tend to grow in between the grass, and it’s really difficult to pick them up without plucking a fair bit of non-weeds with them. In fact, if you’ve got a lawn like mine–it’s almost impossible to get rid of the weeds without getting rid of the lawn grass as well. You most definitely want to avoid plucking out that expensive lawn grass you laid down.

The same goes with censorship, every time you try to censor something like the word ‘Breast’, you may inadvertently censor out something entirely innocent and useful–like Breast Milk, or Breast cancer, or Breast feeding. So while I really doubt the keyword Breast would lead to anything other than porn for the first 10,000 entries on Google, censoring the word Breast is really an ineffective solution because it could censor out a lot of really useful and relevant information.

A good friend and regular reader (or so I hope) of this blog sent me this link last week. It’s a really nifty chart of all the undersea cables in the world. Now, for those who don’t know what undersea cables are, they’re basically the huge data cables that carry around the data we use for the internet. While modern satellites orbit overhead, the unfortunate truth is that satellites aren’t able to carry even a fraction of the bandwidth that undersea cables do, and chances are if you’re reading this now–at least some of this data has gone through an undersea cable before ending up on your screen.

If you look at the moment from an abstract level however, you begin to notice that these cables tend to ‘cluster’ around certain areas. We can see clear clusters in America, but more specifically in states like California, Florida, New Jersey and Oregon. Other places we see clusters are in Brazil, particularly Sao Paolo, and then we huge clusters in the UK (and zooming in you’ll see there’s huge connectivity to Ireland), Portugal and a large amount of cables going through the Suez Canal. In Asia, we see huge metropolis of these things in Japan, Korea, Shanghai and Taiwan, and finally much closer to home we see a huge clustering happening next door–in Singapore and a tiny bit of clustering happening in Sydney, Australia.

So what’s the post about?

Well it’s the new Samsung ATIV PC promotion by Celcom!!

For just RM1,758 you can get a the wonderful tablet pictured above from Celcom. You’re probably wondering why would anyone spend that much on a Windows tablet when you can get an iPad or a Galaxy Tab for the same price–until you realize it’s a Windows 8 tablet–and then you start wondering again. Until it hits you that this isn’t really a tablet, it’s ‘almost’ a full fledge PC–except with an optional keyboard. This is what Microsoft designed the Windows 8 ecosystem for, and this is Samsung best interpretation of Microsofts vision.

Don’t believe me, well would a normal tablet have the following connection ports:

You’ve got just about every sort of port and plug you could possibly want out of a tablet and then some, this unit working with a full-sized USB 2.0 port, SIM card port, microSD card slot (for 64GB more storage than you get standard inside (also 64GB)). You get two microphone holes (built-in, not for larger microphones) that bring some noise cancellation, and there’s a microHDMI slot long the left. (Slashgear)

No. You’d be lucky if the next iPad had just 1/2 of what the ATIV offers in terms of ports. For more info on the Samsung ATIV, check out this review from Slashgear.

The White House has a “We the People” website where any member of the US public can submit a petition.If the number of people supporting the petition exceeds 25,000 then the White House will at the very least respond. While for the most part, the petitions are boring and politically slanted – the coolest and most techy petition to date was one to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016” . Now some of you might be thinking this was a joke–well it may have started out as one, but to date more than 34,000 Americans have signed it, well exceeding the minimum 25,000 required to elicit a response. Some of you might wonder what the hell a death star is, to those people I say–your lack of faith is disturbing!!

The coolest part about all of this though, is that the White House actually responded as promised, and they did it in style. Check this out:

A couple of days ago, a reader of the blog wrote a rather long comment on a post I wrote about writing to TM’s CEO to restore my Unifi service. The comment detailed out a long horrific story of a foreigner in Malaysia trying to get decent broadband. I felt the story was to compelling to leave in the comments section and requested permission from the author to post it formally on the blog un-edited and in it’s original form, she consented and so here’s a little bed-time reading from a rather unhappy customer of both Maxis and Unifi.

According to last weeks Star, MACC deputy chief commissioner Datuk Sutinah Sutan was reported to have said that Civil servants and staff of government-linked companies (GLCs) surfing social media or engaging in personal matters during working hours may be categorized as having committed corruption!!

The underlying logic to the argument seems plausible enough, Datuk Sutinah goes on to elaborate that:

“For instance, if a person spends three hours during his or her stipulated working hours for personal tasks, it can be deemed a form of corruption as the Government trusts and pays its employees to fully utilise the working period to complete tasks relating to the respective jobscope,”

Now while all this sounds good on paper, I think we need to delve deeper, because every time a broad statement such as this comes along it’s important to take a step back and analyze the evidence rather than rely on ‘common sense’. Common sense is after all–not so common (this reminds of the MACC lawyer who claimed the Teoh Beng Hock could strangle himself to death)

So here we have a situation where the MACC deputy chief seems to think that the social media habits of Government servants warrants a statement from such a high ranking officer and therefore logically this must be something of high consequences to the nation, much more than the RM250 Million soft-loan given to a company to sort out the nations beef issues.

There’s been a huge controversy over the newly installed digital Electric meters by TNB, with consumers from all walks of life raising hell over their the perceived rise of their utility bills ever since they’ve installed thenew meters. USJ State assemblywomen Hannah Yeoh blogged about her response to this, urging TNB to explain the price hike.

However the state assemblywomens action pale in comparison to Dian Abdullah who urged her YB to investigate TNB, and started a petition asking for independent calibration of meters–which she eventually hopes to present to Agong once the petition reaches 10,000 signatures. Ms. Dian Abdullah reports that she " personally feel(s) that the time has come where TNB should stop scamming the Rakyat especially those living and working in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor."

Of course, in typical Malaysian fashion–this is all mired in politics. A popular blog reported that the suppliers of the meters to TNB are linked to former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Obviously if we intend to get into that we might not have enough time or space in this one post.

My point though is that there is quite a simple engineering (or dare I say scientific) solution to the issue–something that doesn’t involve politicians or lawyers. It’s unfortunate that Malaysians immediately revert to political and legal solutions, when engineering and science can solve most of your problems for far less hassle, far more effectively.

Many folks seem to be stuck with their Unifi Passwords. It’s actually quite simple.

For the most part, most Shops and Restaurants that provide Free Wi-Fi via Unifi don’t change their Router Password allowing easy access for a nefarious intruder to logon and gain access to the router. Once inside, they’ll be able to do lots and lots of damage, including opening up a permanent backdoor to the router for continuous malicious fun!

Don’t be afraid though, for the most part iPhones are pretty invulnerable to network attacks, ‘most’ Androids as well. However, a small select few who choose to roots their phones and install non-standard pieces of software may be susceptible to.

If you’re on Unifi and find yourself ’locked’ out of your own router, try these password combinations:

Username : admin Password : <blank>

*<blank> means don’t enter anything and leave the field blank

Username : admin Password : telekom

Either of these should get you into your router. If you’re still unable to log onto your router, don’t despair. This is actually a good opportunity for you to practice your newly found skills. The guys over at Unifi Athena have actually come up with a way to find your router password through some very simple and easy steps, check out their tutorial here.

Coming just days after an announcement from Maxis, Celcom is looking to launch their own LTE network. I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about, only a handful of phones in the market will actually be able to ’enjoy’ the faster speeds of LTE, but I do remember my American Colleagues telling me that LTE is America is faster than the fibre connection they have at home–so be prepared people these things as blazing fast.