Wednesday, August 30, 2006
I was playing Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday when I saw this. Twas a selection of Malaysian Intelligence heads.
OK inane post
cheers
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Review: Official Malaysian (Government) Website
What caught my eyes was the public complain, we can actually complain about the government and the government has provided a means for that. So does that mean we can tell the government about possible corruption by VIPs, poor management, useless policy, rising oil prices and why did Barcelona win the Champions League. Eager to make the world a better place I clicked at the option so fast that no evolution actually manages to occur in that split moment. I was very exited with the prospect to be able to complain about a certain
Ok fine, I click back to homepage and try another link that can some how convince me the government is trying to combat corruption. So went to see the government tenders. Hoping to see tons and tons of tender here especially since RM-9 has just been announced, NOT!!! There were only 2 bloody tender categories available!! I understand if some of the tender are not listed for tender due to the nature of the project wouldn’t it still make more sense for the Government to show the respective status of tender (more transparency remember?). Of course I am not expecting it to be filled with tender information those stuff as confidential anyway but a least I would like to know who tendered for them and who got them, right? Maybe just maybe informing us why they got it, a general information will do like company A won the tender because they offered the lowest price or company B got the project because so and so son in law is a share holder.
Yes fellow readers (if any), the government is actively combating corruption as we can all see and they are using the internet as well. At least for this they are censoring the content as they say they would. Admitedly I did not surf the whole site but I lost interest and felt disgusted by just these few links. Final score 2/10 (round up number).
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Sheltering the Thieves from the Charlatans
If we had sufficient space for dissent on the mainstream media and a sense of humour, everyday would be a field day for political satirist, like the brilliant Stephen Colbert. But we have neither, so you'll have to be content with stolid little me and a promotion for an American satirist.
Onwards ho! then to the topic at hand. Yesterday, Datuk Fu Ah Kiow, the Deputy Ministry of Internal Security and a member of Malaysia's cramp and noisy classroom raised his hand to speak and the media promptly obliged. Answering questions at coincidentally, a school (not in a classroom though), he told bloggers to watch their mouth again.
Needless to say, it builds on a decades of non-affiliated mouthpieces as peddlers of lies, damned lies and statistics. Of course statistics are something that can may well be good, accounting for the lack of them forthcoming from the government. As I've said before, you can never counter rumours with lack of information. Obviously we can't tell a lie when we don't know the truth.
But the bigger whopper is him saying, "there should be some self-censorship of articles so as not to offend any group or religion or cause disharmony". Now I'm all for not pissing people off unnecessarily. I'm sure that's the best way to crack a relationship, using that analogy on races in Malaysia. But then again, we must remember that the line between acceptable and piss-off is very limiting. The slight raising of theological issues would bring the big elephants bearing down on you the very second you go public (Elephants are heavy).
So here's my question. Is it most effective that we go after everyone who airs thoughts that may be deemed sensitive (even the mild opinions that breaks no law) instead of educating reason into the people who raise a ruckus at a prick of a rose thorn? Let's face it, Malaysians are a touchy bunch. It doesn't matter in what way you broach the subject (whether in an academic and polite way or in a fiery way), people would pick up their placards and tie their bandanas if you even broach the subject.
And here comes the analogy aforementioned in the title. Those who post deliberately ire-raising content are just as guilty as those who are pissed off by the most docile and harmless of words. The former however, are the only ones who Johnny Law wants to watch. The charlatan gets away while thief rots in jail.
As an aside, notice the misquoting done by The Star when they said
"A case in point is the comment in a blog where readers were urged to "shoot to kill" a local journalist" concerning the whole lame saga at Screenshots. Apparently journalism has degraded into chain message passing and information is minced up before it hits the presses. I'm sure everyone's familiar with the experiment on how a sentence is passed on along a chain of people via whispers that concludes with the sentence being mangled beyond recognition at the other end. This is what's in operation here.
Oh well I'm hungry.
cheers
Saturday, August 05, 2006
The Paradox Of Halting Rumours
Good ol' Zam (Datuk Zainuddin Bin Maidin), our prolific (ramblings-wise) Information Minister is making good his new found power as a full minister. Now we all know that the rest of the cabinet are usually toothless room fillers, owing much to the centralisation of executive power in the PM office by our Grand Old Man and also the fact that they're like Malaysian classrooms, overcrowded and noisy. But this man is something. Emulating Badruddin Jerai and Bung Mokhtar, he's found his place in the limelight: The Reactionary Loudspeaker.
His latest adventure of course is the uneducated dream of to controlling blogging, a subject of the previous Clueless entry (I'll get to that later).
Here's the paradox: How do people judge the validity of rumours if the real truths are never revealed? You cannot stop untruths happening if you do not disseminate real facts.
There. That was remarkably simple and short. Funny how it eludes degree holders with years of public service experience. Anyway bottom line: If you wanna halt rumours, you've gotta preempt them with the truth not truthiness (it's gonna be an Oxford certified word soon). Remember, rumours themselves are products of truthiness, and you really can't douse a fire with gasoline, or Bovine Excrement (Bullshit) for that matter.
Concerning the post below, I'm sure you can surmise through it's incisive insults and smirks that it's the product of a sibling. And so it is. For the record I cannot afford Jack Daniels and he's the spawn of diabolical marriages between a succubus and a balrog.
Now stop THAT rumour. Heh.
cheers
Thursday, August 03, 2006
The crack just got bigger
This blog has been dead long enough that I have decided to do something(hopefully change the look while I'm at it) thus the beginning of some elaborate plan. The first step was to gain control of the blog account, sound simple enough except that I am no Kevin Mitnick.I could hire a hacker but I don’t have the financial capability to do so that cuts are the rest of the other option that requires some sort of currency (bribing the administrator, hostile takeover and etc). Having around 90% of possible option cut off I had my work cut out. So instead of taking this as a problem I decided to look it at another way, this means that there are fewer variables to consider. After countless sleepless nights I have finally decided to do what every wannabe does, make a false claim. I email the blog owner and claim that I have eyewitness account and picture implicating him of indecent behavior. I wish I could say more but the nature of my claim is so extreme that it is consider a taboo and to some society sacrilege but all I can say that involved an undergarment, a leash and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels which presumably is consumed by the owner. I knew such a claim would be a long shot but hey if it failed maybe there will be a posting about it and that could count as some success. So imagine my surprise when I received a reply asking pleading for mercy. You can feel the desperation as he is willing to do anything just to ensure the destruction of any proof of his 'experiment'. I knew I had reached the jackpot and the rest is history.
So for my first posting (and subsequent posting), I won’t be writing anything meaningful. I just wanted to make the crack bigger as it just seem there is more to write as one gets old. Maybe I just wanted to blog in defiance to the government who wants to control blogging. This is the same goverment that claims freedom and promotes technology. Wtf!! It was already frustrating enough seeing our leaders calling each other animal and one Sabahan MP mocking a fellow MP for being handicapped. As a Sabahan, I am ashamed of such a behavior from a Sabahan MP who just wanted to tunjuk temberang but only succeeded in making a fool out of him and seem bloody proud of it too. It such a shame that these leaders are so out of touch, no doubt the internet has not always been providing true news, facts, etc but don’t they realize that we are educated enough to tell the difference. Broadband penetration in
