Lawrence Krauss is a smart guy, he’s a professor of physics, he’s written a whole plethora of books on science and has an award list from the scientific community that’s longer than my sunday grocery list (and trust me that list is looong).

He’s also famous for one of my favorite books, the science of Star Trek, in where he explains things like warp speed an teleportation. So in general Lawrence is a pretty big voice in the physics community and when he says something people usually listen–they may not agree, but at least they listen.

I recently watched a 2 hour video of him conversing with Richard Dawkins about ‘Something from Nothing’, and I was really intrigued, but what really caught my attention was a 5 minute piece he did for Big Think about why Science Teachers should be paid more than Humanities teachers. It’s quite interesting to think about, the general premise being that:

A couple of months back, I wrote about I was helping kickstart the brilliant guitarist Igor Presynakov. I was getting a bit worried that this was yet another kickstarter failure, as I had just receive a couple of updates and nothing much else.

But then things got interesting, 2 weeks before Christmas I got a surprise package in the mail, and it was a beautifully packaged crisp IGGYFIED CD. I felt really good supporting a great musician and getting my name on a CD, this also happened to be my very first autographed CD, so all in all it was a good move.

I wrote recently about the sad state of Science Education in Malaysia, now I’m beginning to see some examples of really bad Mathematics as well.

Bernama today reported that:

BN has the ability to obtain a two-third majority in the 13th general election (GE), that is expected any time soon, Department of Special Affairs (Jasa) director-general Fuad Hassan said.

He said to garner two-third majority, BN needs to draw at least 30 percent votes from the Chinese voters, and respectively 65 percent from the Malay and Indian voters, nationwide.

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.

For the past week or so, Malaysians have been completely engrossed by the “Listen Listen Listen” video, and barely a day went by without me hearing some lame joke about listening, speaking…and even sharks. Over the weekend however, I had some time to contemplate through the craziness and realize that underneath this viral video that took Malaysia by storm had some rather interesting lessons we could all learn from–that includes the sharks cause everyone knows sharks have got problems and Jaws really needs to shut up and listen.

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.