CategoryKeith’s Favorite Post

A collection of my favorite post in no particular order

Evidence Act: Anonymity before the internet

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I read a brilliant article on the Evidence act by Zul Rafique and Partners that I think everyone should read. In it, the author compares the newly amended Evidence Act (supposedly amended to combat the evils of the internet) to a sub-section of the original act meant to look into telegraphs. Now I must admit, that as an internet kid, I don’t quite understand the concept of a telegraph, but...

Auditor-General report 2011 : When can Malaysians expect Transparency in IT spend

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As a tech blog in Malaysia, I thought it’d be interesting to see the latest Auditor-General’s report faired in terms of IT spend from the government. IT spend is a tricky thing, and most don’t understand just how tricky it is, particularly around big IT spend by governments–they often fail. In fact, one of my favorite blogs is dedicated solely to IT failures, aptly...

Software piracy in China : Can the Yankees really complain?

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Did you know the term ‘Yankee’ is thought to be derived from the Dutch name Janke, which means “little Jan” or “little John,” a nickname that can be traced back to the 1680s, when it was used as a slang term for pirates. Yes, you heard that right, the Americans were regarded by the Europeans as Pirates. At least that’s what Matt Mason, author of The Pirates Dilemma suggest. Matt...

Why Apple is really suing Samsung

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I’m not the biggest fan of Apple, I consistently compare my Galaxy S3 (which is great) to my wifes Iphone 4 (which is not so great). So when I first heard the news that Apple was suing Samsung for a ridiculous amount of money because of things like ‘slide to unlock’, ‘pinch to zoom’  and even ‘bouncing effect while scrolling’, I thought it was just a...

One Visa files suit against TM : Is it a Human Rights abuse?

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The Star today reported that a company called One Visa is suing Telekom Malaysia (TM) for providing telecom services and infrastructure to squatters on it’s land in Negeri Sembilan. TM was alleged to have trespassed five pieces of One Visa’s land by supplying the telco services to the illegal occupiers of its land. One Visa had sought RM23.07mil as special damages being the total...

Why I stopped the Nuffnang Ads on my blog

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About 2 months back, I posted up a nuffnang ad on my blog, and with reasons explaining why I felt the need to advertise. The guys from Nuffnang were pretty stand-up characters and I felt like I could trust them, so I begin to post Nuffnang ads and monitor that over time. Unfortunately the results haven’t been so good, and after some reflection I decided not to port over the nuffnang ads...

Evidence Act Technological Misconceptions: A response to Rocky and Fatimah

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The government has finally ‘relented’ and now wants to ‘discuss’ section 114A of the Evidence act 1950. Now it’s great because it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that: 1. The internet can be used for fantastic good. 2. The general Malaysian public can make a difference in the governance of the country. My website also had the pop-up banner, and according to Google...

MSC Cloud Initiative : Why it’s a bridge too far

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Why does Amazon–arguably the biggest cloud player in the world–choose to launch it’s Asia-Pacific Offering in Singapore rather than Malaysia? One would think that the prohibitively high prices of land in Singapore, coupled with it’s higher base cost and employee wages would make Singapore a terrible place to put up a Huge Datacenter comprising of thousands of Servers and...

Personal Data Protection Act 2010 Malaysia

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[box icon=”chat”] Data is the natural by-product of every computer mediated interaction.  It stays around forever, unless it’s disposed of.  It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully.  Otherwise, its after-effects are toxic. – Bruce Scheneier As society moves towards a ‘knowledge’ based society, data naturally becomes a by product. Every action you...

Wikipedia from a Malaysian perspective

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Wikipedia is quite possibly the greatest repository of information mankind has ever seen. It’s built around an amazing concept of allowing anyone the ability to create, document and moderate information in real-time, and so far the concept has proven successful–some may even argue that it’s too successful. For the past two days, I’ve been writing about Bigquery and Big...