One of the key reasons always cited to support the Angkasawan program is to promote the understanding of science and maths in Malaysia–unfortunately, the Angkasawan program seems to have a negative effect on our international test scores for science. I wonder why? I’ve made a video on why the angkasawan project was a waste of time, check it out here.

Taken from the newly minted Education Blueprint:

Malaysia places great importance on education as a means of becoming a developed nation to meet the challenges and demands of a STEM driven economy, by 2020. Accordingly, the Malaysian government instituted the 60:40 Science/Technical: Arts (60:40) Policy in education in 1967 and started implementing it in 1970. The policy refers to the Ministry’s target for the ratio of students with significant STEM education to those with a greater focus on the Arts. This policy target has, however, never been met due to various factors discussed below.

In 2011, only 45% of students graduated were from the Science stream, including technical and vocational programmes. Additionally, the percentage of secondary school students who met the requirement to study Science after PMR but chose not to do so increased to approximately 15%. This raises concerns about the education system’s ability to produce sufficient STEM graduates for the economy.

Now, any school child in a reasonably good school is going to tell you 200mW is nothing. 200mW actually translates to just 200 milli-watts, or 0.2 Watts. That’s less than 1 Watt!!

You see in science (and more specifically engineering), the lower-case  ’m’ is used to denote the prefix ‘milli’ or 1/1000th. It’s why a millimetre is 1000 times shorter than metre, and why a milligram is 1000 times less mass than a gram.

I would have dismissed this as a typo, if the article didn’t continue to read:

Petaling Jaya, (September 19, 2013) - To celebrate its 5^th Anniversary, Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (P1) invites all Malaysians to keep playing without limits by launching a special unlimited quota promotion for two of its award-winning wireless home broadband plans.

The ForHome^TM 99 and 149 offers a speed up to 1Mbps and 2Mbps with unlimited quota for the affordable prices of just RM99 and RM149 respectively for a limited time only.

There’s something terribly wrong, when a politician can’t get his million, billions and trillions correct. This Malaysian Insider story has quoted my favorite bigot as saying:

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“Right now, the GNI of Bumiputeras is RM56 million. So to achieve RM900 billion by 2020, the government must provide funds worth RM1.4 trillion to Bumiputeras,” he said.

I’m pretty sure the 56 million is a typo or just a slip of the tongue, however the RM900 Billion requiring Rm1.4 Trillion, is some what of a ‘calculator rosak’ moment for Ibrahim Ali. Of course this begs the question—where will the additional RM500 Billion go?

Vaccination deniers - KILL CHILDREN - Bill Gates.

Here’s a quick question–do you have a ‘original’ version of Windows running on your PC or is it pirated?

If you’re like me, then obviously you’ve learnt long ago to only use original versions of software–especially when it’s the operating system of your PC. Of course, I wasn’t always like this, back in my university days, I couldn’t afford the couple hundred dollars it cost to buy an original Windows XP, and hence used a pirated version–my windows installation CD was actually burnt from a pirated CD, I wonder if that made me a pirate of a pirate?

One of the things that puzzled me was that even with my obviously pirated software, I could still download Windows software security updates–something I thought represented Microsofts failure to engineer a way to check on the legitimacy of my software. It wasn’t until much later, that I discovered the true reason for Microsoft seeming benevolence–Microsoft was merely protecting it’s paid customers by providing free updates to the pirates.

Say what now?

It may sound ironic, but one of the best ways for Microsoft to provide security for their paying customer is to ensure that even the pirates receive security patches.

Imagine for a moment if Microsoft didn’t allow patching for pirated Windows, and assume that 20% of the Windows machines on the internet were pirated. What that would mean is that 20% of all PCs on the internet would be vulnerable to each and every Windows vulnerability discovered. That’s a large chunk of customers that would be affected, and the real down-side is that the 20% of pirated customers could end up re-infecting legitimate paying Windows customers. So in order to reduce the spread of vulnerabilities in it’s ecosystem, Microsoft had to protect it’s paying customers, by patching its pirated copies.

Vulnerabilities aren’t fun for Microsoft, but they’re a fact of life–and being the dominant Operating System of the 1990’s and 2000’s meant the Microsoft received more than it’s fair share of attacks, the problem of course was how to address the vulnerabilities as and when they’re discovered?

There are two ways to deal with this problem: Limit the number of people who know about the attack or reduce the number of systems that are vulnerable. The first method has been tried for years with little success. This leaves us with the option of reducing the number of vulnerable machines on the Internet. Or as one team of researchers noted (pdf), “a vulnerability dies when the number of systems it can exploit shrinks to insignificance."[1]

So Microsoft followed the science and attempts to shrink the number of vulnerable systems to insignificance, and that can only mean allowing patches for pirated versions of Windows, no two ways about it, a world where Microsoft didn’t allow pirated version of Windows to be patched would be a dangerous world to live in.

Wedding dinners in the Klang Valley, can only be called wedding dinners if they have at least 3 video presentations, one of photos of the couples on their ‘pre-wedding’ shoots, one for their ‘wedding-day’ shoots and of course the ever popular ‘story of our life’ montage–where the couple walk you through photos of their childhood over what is usually a Kenny G soundtrack in the background.

My parents wanted to have a ‘photo montage’ of my baby pics during my wedding dinner, but not being much of a social person and I obviously opposed the idea, even going to the extent of sabotaging the effort (I cannot reveal the extent of sabotage for fear of incriminating myself)–unfortunately my father is a master story teller in his own right, and still managed to illustrate embarrassing stories of my childhood that almost caused me to blush, almost.

Now obviously, not everyone is like me, and some people rather like having their naked baby photos published for their wedding guest to see and that’s fine. Privacy after all is a personal choice, some people like to share some people don’t. The essence of privacy is contextual, and everyone should be entitled to their own choice.

Everyone including children!

It may sound peculiar to you, but children are human-beings too, they are entitled to the same choices you adults make, and making these personal decisions on behalf of your children isn’t just denying them the choice, it’s a denial of their civil liberty. Everyone is entitled to their privacy, whether that’s a over-grown buffoon like Bung Mokthar or a 7-year old child just wanting to pee without someone watching. If you don’t wish to share, you shouldn’t have to.

What is an IP address?

IP is an abbreviation for the term Internet Protocol, and hence an IP address is an Internet Protocol address, but it’s probably easier to think of it as your internet address.

In much the same way that your postal address describes the location of your house in the ‘real-world’, an Internet address describes the location of a computer on the internet.

So take for example the address of the White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20500 U.S.

Ever stop to wonder how anyone from Malaysia could send a letter to President Obama by just addressing their letter to the correct address? In fact, the address of the White House is the same regardless of whether you’re sending it from Malaysia, Japan, Australia or even Timbuktu.