As we approach the end of the year, and I have some free time to blog again, I thought I’d re-visit the Auditor Generals report for 2012, and focus specifically on that one project everyone is talking about, the MERS 999 project.

This wonderful project, that cost Malaysian citizens upwards of RM800 Million, was a monumental failure on behalf of the government and for all contractors and sub-contractors involved, however to be fair the blame probably lies squarely on the shoulders of those over-seeing the procurement of the service as opposed to the IT folks–but they have to take some heat as well.

As someone with years of experience delivering IT projects, I think this is an area that I comfortably call myself an expert in, so I think I’m fluent enough in IT to take a sneak peek at this particular project to find out what exactly went wrong and what could have been fixed. Unfortunately, the results aren’t that good, but if you’d like to hear a self-proclaimed expert dissect this, then please continue reading.

I don’t agree with most of Rockys opinions, but I still subscribe to his blog to ensure I have at least a different view of politics. However, a post he made on the ’new’ Perdana really sent my blood curling. Rocky was defending the proton re-badging exercise, something I felt was completely unacceptable. Proton is a company that for years has thrived under government regulations and policies that were designed specifically protect it–and part of that protection included raising the price of all other cars in the market giving proton an un-fair advantage.

Every other year, we receive fresh results from PISA or TIMSS, and every other year we see our children continue their slide to near insignificance on the global scale. I can’t phantom how the Education Ministry can remain so obtuse about such a catastrophe, and instead put on a façade of confidence, when there isn’t an iota of data to be confident about.

The education policies of this country and flawed in near every sense, and what we have are politicians continually failing and children–the same politicians who get re-elected year after year.

Satu sekolah untuk semua is destructive

Children need individualized learning, and if for what ever reason some of them prefer to learn Science and Maths in English or Malay, or Mandarin, Tamil or whatever language or dialect–then they should be encouraged to learn it in their preferred language. The parents who claim the need to learn science in the ’lingua franca’ of science are both mis-guided and mis-informed, the lingua franca of science isn’t English–it’s MATHS. Maths is the language of science, and everything else is superfluous–there are countless thousands of Malaysian children who will struggle to learn science and maths in English–why don’t we strive to make it easier for them, by teaching English in English classrooms, and science in science classrooms–in the language of their choice.

Am I embarrassed to be Malaysian?

Nope, I can never be embarrassed to be Malaysian, this is my home country. I’m not just from Malaysia–I’m from Klang.

I can however, be embarrassed about my government and the policies it seeks to implement. Like how our idea of a space program, is buying a seat on a Russian mission to the ISS, and then having the audacity to call the Orthopedic surgeon we sent to space–an Astronaut. Space tourist more like it.

I’m a big fan of the D-Link DIR 615 router, I think Telekom Malaysia made a pretty good choice selecting it as the default router for Unifi accounts. To be fair, TM have made some bad choices as well, but we won’t go into that here, overall the router isn’t top notch, but it gets the job done.

Unfortunately, D-Link as a company has come under the spotlight for some rather funky security practices. First, there was a rather questionable backdoor that D-Link installed on a couple of older versions of their routers, the router basically granted anyone access to D-Link routers by just changing the user agent string of their browser–worse still the back door carried the name of the author….it was Joel.

However, I’m here to tell you, that as a Malaysian–you want to hold off your pre-order. Now if you want to buy coin to show-off to your less tech-literate friends, then go ahead, but if you’re buying COIN thinking that it’ll simplify your wallet, you’ll be sadly mistaken.

Over the weekend, I saw the following tweet from the star, which I attributed to be either a badly timed April Fools joke, or a typo error:

Friday and Saturday are weekend rest days for Johor from Jan 1. What's your view? #Johornewweekend

— The Star (@staronline) November 23, 2013

Surely, a state like Johor that was trying to attract investment for the Iskandar region from companies like Frost and Sullivan, would not make such a catastrophic error. Alas, upon further checking, I found the information to be true.

Dear Tun,

First and foremost, let me start by telling you that I truly admire and respect your contribution to Malaysia. I remember shaking your hand when you attended my Convocation quite some many years ago. It was quite odd to see that while you were present, you didn’t give a speech, simply because you attended the function not as former Prime Minister of Malaysia, but rather as the spouse of the Chancellor–your wife Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah.

So  it saddens me deeply, that at another convocation–this time where you were giving a speech, you suggested that it is time to censor the internet to counter “distribution of pornography, questionable news and slanders”.

If I may be so bold Tun–censoring the internet is the single most destructive thing that can happen to modern day Malaysia, and something that must be opposed at every turn, even if it involves publicly correcting a senior leader such as yourself. As a citizen of Malaysia, I find it not just my right, but my duty to inform the Emperor when he has no clothes on.

Transcript:

All data stored in your computer is stored in binary digits, or bits. The word binary denotes two, just like bi-lingual, bi-weekly, or bicycle.

A binary number can have a value of either 1 or 0. Just like a switch can be on or off, or a gate can be opened or closed, but since it can only have two possible values, it doesn’t really have much capacity to store much information.

Really cool infographic of the evolution of cell phone to smart phone and how the major players evolved over time.

A couple of things that stood out for me were:

1. Nokia gave up such a dominant position and never came back

2. Just the sheer speed at which Nokia went from Hero to Zero is astounding, it’s like as though Nokia died from a gunshot, as compared to Kodak which died a slow painful death from cancer.

3. Samsung comes on the scene in 1997, but doesn’t make an iota of change, up until Google decide to launch Android almost a decade later. That truly was a game changer.

4. Nokia and Samsung still sell more than twice Apple’s volume in phones, but Apple makes more profit simply due to it’s pricing scheme (a cut from the telcos) as well as the fact that Apple only sells higher-end models with higher margins (5C being the exception).

5. Motorola started it all–but then somehow disappeared. Being first to market counts for naught in this industry, neither Samsung nor Apple were first movers.