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.

As you’ve probably gauged from my recent bout of paranoia, I’m a bit of a security-freak. My PC at home, not only runs an original version of Windows (something rare in Malaysia), but also multiple anti-virus and anti-malware suites, not to mention using EMET for even more security and a software firewall to boot.

So it sort of makes sense, that after taking all those pre-cautions I would also use a Virtual Private Network or VPN.

Now security isn’t the only reason to use a VPN, they also come in handy for accessing location based services like Netflix and Hulu. All in all they’re at least 4 good reasons to subscribe to a Virtual Private Network.

Reason 1: A VPN encrypts and secures all your outbound connections. This makes it difficult for anyone trying to ‘sniff’ your connection to see which websites you’re visiting. If you’re looking for a VPN provider to secure your connection, then look for one that implements OpenVPN, that provides the best security for this purpose.

Reason 2: A VPN allows you to access US based services like Netflix and Hulu. Here in Malaysia these providers block access from Malaysian IPs to their services–so if you want to watch Netflix, or even subscribe to Amazon, you need a US IP. If you’re looking for a VPN provider to give you this, then make sure they have a US gateway.

Reason 3: A VPN connection allows you to access blocked/censored content. In Malaysia, the government has been known to censor the internet, every once in a while. So if the government suddenly decides to block youtube, or if you wish to access those file sharing sites local ISPs have blocked, then a VPN is a great way to circumvent censorship. Remember that in 2008, the Government blocked a pro-opposition website, Malaysia Today, so this isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. *Not to mention that innocence of Muslims is censored on Malaysian youtube.

Reason 4: A VPN connection ‘anonymizes’ your IP connection. When you use a VPN to post a comment on a website online, the website won’t be able to trace your IP address, since only the IP address of the VPN provider would be visible to them. Beware though, that a VPN will only help anonymize the IP and not the content, you can leave online bread-crumbs in a multi-tude of ways, but a VPN connection helps mitigate that–somewhat. If you wish for a truly anonymous internet (like me), then look for a VPN that doesn’t log any data of it’s users.

Reason 5: A VPN connection allows you bit-torrent without restrictions and anonymously. I’ve previously showed you how bit-torrent downloads could be traced to your IP address quite easily, but a VPN helps prevent that. Without a VPN, someone could do a quick search on your IP and determine what you’ve been downloading on bittorrent. Also VPN connections allow you to bypass certain restrictions and filters that your ISP may have in place to throttle bit-torrent downloads (note that Unifi doesn’t throttle torrent downloads). If you plan to use your VPN for this purpose make sure they don’t block torrent traffic. Just check out the advert below from the people at BTGuard.

So in short a VPN provides you extra security, extra anonymity, the ability to access location based services and the ability to bypass censored content online. So it’s really a no brainer at this point–if you want to truly get the most of your internet experience–you need a VPN.

I pity TheStar, it gets whacked from both sides of the political spectrum, one for being too pro-government, and for not being pro-government enough. However, my sympathy has its limits when I saw what is undoubtedly the single stupidest article in any newspaper titled “Spicy food can trigger aggression”

Now sure, the wonderful world of science sometimes throws us a surprise every now and then, but to link spicy food to aggression without any form of scientific study is tasteless (in every sense of the word). Not only can it reinforce bias on cultures that love their spicy food (Thais and Indians), it also serves to mis-inform the public by passing off what is one mans opinion as scientific fact–when it truly isn’t.

About a year back, I wrote about how excited I was that Lazada was finally coming to Malaysian shores, however I never really got around to buying anything from Lazada until recently. As you know, I was in the market for a new Unifi router and after some online shopping I decided to settle for a Asus router from Lazada, not only was the price cheaper, Lazada promised free delivery and even an RM10 discount if I subscribed to the newsletter.

So I created and account, subscribed to the newsletter and purchase an Asus router from the website–thinking all I had to do was sit and wait, and the router would be at my doorstep within 3 days.

WRONG!

Payment under Review

What I suspect happened was that my payment was successful BUT Lazada ran out of stock, hence placing the order under review. The wording of the email was poor, and the whole experience left me unimpressed.

[box icon=“chat”]

Those maroons and stupid who complaining customer service should work before as customer service first you bastard!!! if you in thier postion than only u know thier pain… they can give you promise u asshole but who want to fullfill it???? if u want complaint complaint to higher management . dont try your bullshit by spoke with supervsior can resolve your problem. they cannot do anything there coz they have barriers asshole. pls go work as customer service before talk regarding them

If you’re looking at implementing a large scale cloud offering, something where you measure capacity in chunks of 100TB, then you might want to weigh in on the pros and cons of each possible Cloud provider.

Or you could just read 79 page protest Amazon filed in a US court claiming it’s ‘successful’ bid on a CIA tender was legit, and IBM had no business going to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to get the CIA to re-tender.

Update: 20-July-2014

I can’t recommend this router because the after sales service from Asus is terrible. The router cost just Rm199, but for me to claim my warranty would require a 1-hour car ride to KL, the cost of petrol, toll and parking would easily exceed RM40/trip, and I’d have to make 2 trips (might as well buy a new router at that point)/ I emailed Asus hoping they’d at least provide some other way of claiming warranty–postage for example, but they’ve re-iterated that I’d still need to go to Imbi to claim the warranty.

Bad service–and the quality of a router that fails after just a year is suspect as well, the D-Link Dir-615 router I have still works, but this more expensive router failed after just a year?!!

Wouldn’t touch Asus routers ever again! I’ve left the initial post below for you to view, but I would recommend TP-Link routers instead.

Screenshot of the 3 Asus service centers in Klang–none of which are service centers anymore (their contracts have expired), and Asus should remove them from the website.

[caption id=“attachment_4496” align=“aligncenter” width=“550”]

None of these are service centers anymore[/caption]

Original Post below this line:

[caption id=“attachment_4003” align=“aligncenter” width=“550”]

My rather un-professional grainy picture of the Asus router. Look at how Tall it is.[/caption]

The first thing you notice about the Asus N12HP is that it’s TALL, and I mean like if Yao Ming married Kareem Abdul Jaabar and had kids it would like this router. Those long antennas really make the router look like a child who’d undergone a growth spurt in the all the wrong awkward places.

Now don’t get me wrong, the standard D-Link router that TM provides you FOC with every Unifi connection is actually a pretty good router, but if you want something with a bit more oomph! then you may have to look to Asus to provide that. Is it really worth changing your Dlink, and is the Asus N12HP really the best replacement router out there?

Well…for one thing, this router Looks Good.

I try to keep this blog focused on technology, but every once in a while the urge to veer off topic gets the better of me. The recent state of Malaysia has been one of paranoia and hyper-sensitivity. It seems that not a day goes by without a report of someone somewhere or ‘challenging’ the position of Islam, and that Muslims need to be united to stop this wave. Well if the solution was really Muslim unity, why doesn’t UMNO take it upon itself to dissolve and then the Muslims can be united behind PAS?

Here’s the deal…the internet is so big, that if you try hard enough, you’ll find something that offends you. Even if it is a 3 year-old video tucked away in some back alley of the internet, that shows a woman cleaning the feet of dogs.With a little elbow grease and some help from Google, you’ll have more than enough ‘offensive’ content to reveal day after day.

This recent spate of hyper-sensitivity I suspect will be used to justify some form of censorship of the internet, the government already has full control of both print and broadcast media, the only avenue it hasn’t fully controlled is online–and they’re just itching to start.

But even in the most hard-core censorship environments, things slip through. These are the false positives, and they exist everywhere from birth control pills to internet censorship. Imagine a much smaller internet of just 20 Billion pages, with 100 million ‘offending’ pages. If the government had a success rate of 99%, it’ll still wrongly block nearly 200 million websites. More importantly there would still be more than 1 million ‘offensive’ pages that would seap through the wall of censorship we construct. The futility of such an exercise should be apparent for anyone to see.

So futile in fact, that even in a fairy tale scenario of 99% accuracy would be no where near enough. If people had enough time to find a 3 year old video, they’d more than easily find those 1 million offensive web pages.