In my previous post, I wrote about how I bought and Amazon Kindle, and how I can use gift cards to purchase ebooks from the Kindle store. So far the Kindle has been an amazing experience and I personally recommend you get yourself one. However, there is a downside, since there is ’technically’ no legal way to obtain ebooks for your Kindle device.

Today I hope to explore the legality of downloading ebooks from Amazon, and how stupid copyright laws, badly behaving book publishers and a Malaysian Sales Tax  all contribute to making it impossible for you to purchase ebooks for your Kindle while still complying with any and all laws pertaining to them.

One thing is true of all governments, the most reliable records are Tax records. That is one of the coolest quotes from a very cool movie (which is saying a lot). In V for Vendetta, the heroes try to piece together a puzzle by visiting the tax records to locate some missing information, in real-life we’re also faced with the same problem. No matter how corrupt or bureaucratic you think the government is, there will always be a paper-trail for money and sooner or later someone will find it. The solution for a crony-heavy government was simple, load the system with bureaucracy so no one will find out. The problem was while no ‘one’ may have found out, a group of inspired citizens armed with nothing more than a proper system can troll down all the bureaucratic walls you can build.

A couple of years ago, the Guardian newspaper set out to go through all the tax and expense claims of every single member of parliament. While the fallout from the reports were clear, less publicity was given to the actual method that the newspaper used. People naturally assumed that when the news read “Guardian reports MP claims….” , that a regular journalist working for the paper trolled through some documentation and arrived at the results. Usually the assumption includes a snarly eyed journalist with big black thick-framed glasses, gulping down gallons of coffee while his tie came loose, just an assumption of course.

Digi.com has an annual Internet for all awards where they aim to with the aim of “showcasing the incredible creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism of ordinary Malaysians using the Internet in extraordinary ways” . A much simpler way of thinking about the Internet for all awards is that it’s just like the Grammys for Malaysian blogs.

Digi have actually increased the breadth of the awards to include categories like

Says.My :: Online shop of the year

Malaysiakini :: Photojournalist of the year

Google :: Most inspiring internet for good Award ; and my favorite

Lowyat.net :: Fave Tech Head 

In a moment of shameless self-promotion and drunken debauchery, I submitted this blog right here keithrozario.com into the Lowyat.net :: Fave Tech Head category, hoping that I may be considered as a Fave Tech Head. Of course, it’ll be a difficult task, considering the category consist of people like the legendary Paul Tan, or the immensely successful Hongkiat.com so I actually can be lumped in the “Doesn’t have a pray in Hell” category. Then again this blog has always been about me trying out new things, and trying to win an internet award is a new thing!

While they may have caused “The Great 9 day downtime of 2012”, and I ‘might’ have been terribly upset with them. Over the past few months, I must admit– My Unifi Connection Speed is Absolutely brilliant!!

Say what???!

You heard me right, although I had a terrible 9 days of no internet earlier this year, Unifi has been nothing but buttery silky smooth ever since. It’s really amazing, and for the price I’m paying I’m not complaining, in fact I’m actually congratulating Unifi for their great service. That’s right Unifi, here’s a congratulations to you!

It’s true, many people have wrote to me (some publicly, most privately) to complain about the service they get from Telekom Malaysia, and I still think they could do more to improve the quality of their customer service, as well as the processes behind them. I also think that these downtimes should be avoidable on Telekoms part, and Telekom should work better to win back and compensate affected customers.

However, it must be said that for me at least, my Unifi connection speed for torrent downloads and youtube videos is more than good enough, and here’s the proof.

Ever wonder how come the ads you see on Facebook or Malaysiakini reflect the searches you just recently made. Ever felt freaked out about it, there really is nothing to freak out about, unless of course you’re worried that a Multi-Billion dollar company may be keeping information about your searches and sharing them with ad sites that build profiles to uniquely identify you. Or that your personal search isn’t really private data, yet it can reveal very private details about yourself including your religious beliefs, sexual inclinations, medical conditions and even credit rating.

This is a blog about technology, but as of late it’s becoming increasingly difficult to focus only on technology without looking into copyright, censorship and privacy. I can’t blog about technology while ignoring these aspects, anymore than financial analyst you look at Apple ignore the technology around their products.

*Update: Malaysiakini have confirmed the update on their facebook page, looks like you need to look for other sources of Bersih 3.0  news, this could take a while. It’s also note-worthy that 10 people ’like’ this on facebook, obviously over-looking the fact that nobody should ’like’ this.

With barely 12 hours to go before Bersih 3.0 starts to swing into action, Malaysiakini servers appear to be down. I was trying to logon online to check the news only to notice that I couldn’t access the site, PINGs to the site seem to time out as well. Could this be a repeat of when Malaysiakini went offline in the run up to the Sarawak elections? Plus, I know this doesn’t affect me, because as a Google Chrome user I know when other users are also experiencing problems accessing a site.

The star today reports that:

e-Filing looks to be a definite winner among Malaysians well over half of the country's estimated 2.5 million tax-paying citizens have gone the paperless route.

Inland Revenue Board (IRB) figures showed that as at yesterday, 1,621,647 Malaysians had filed their taxes, with online filings accounting for nearly 75% of the total

I must say, if the numbers are true, that this is a fantastic achievement. I think there will always be people (particularly from the older generation) who prefer to file paper based tax forms and a rough estimate maximum e-filing rate would be around 85% in my view, so 75% isn’t quite far off.

So Maxis launched their new ebook portal aptly title www.ebuuk.com.my, far be it from me to point out that an ebook portal should at least have the word book spelled correctly (don’t you think so Maxis), also judging by the SSL certificate it appears wanted to go for a more generic myebooks.com.my domain name before switching to ebuuk.com.my.

I’m an avid reader and was excited when I heard the news, so I headed over to the Maxis ebuuk page, and noticed that it wasn’t up to my expectations. I was completely annoyed by the fact that in some cases the prices for ebooks via the ebuuk page was about twice the price of books you could download from Amazon. And the proof is below, it includes a book I’m about to purchase called The Progress Principle, retailing for USD9.99 on the Kindle for Amazon, while Maxis ebuuk retails it for Rm68.99. Now USD9.99 is about Rm30 or RM32, and Maxis is retailing it for about twice the price, that’s ridiculous. This is an ebook we’re talking about.

The Lowyat.net forum is abuzz with news and photos of a broken down Proton Preve. Not good news for a car Dr. Mahathir called the best proton ever. The rumour mill is abuzz with the reasons for the breakdown, but as of now it looks clear that the Proton in question didn't crash, but rather than some part 'lower arm assembly' gave way, or something like that.