And which of thy Lord’s favours will you deny?

Ar-Rahman by safia el-shams

Syahada

Gurindam Jiwa….

 

The Demon Inside Me…….

dalam diri ini ada setan

yang duduknya dalam haemaglobin

yang sangat selesa

yang membisikkan was-was

yang memberi justifikasi

yang manasabah…..

Dengan Nama Nya………

Such a pity….

Such a pity, I think to myself,

That this blog will soon be abandoned,

Once our MIS class is over

And even more when the semester is done….

I wonder who will bother to read,

The ramblings so academic,

People would rather know,

About artists and politics….

So, this entry I have made,

Will be the last one for this site,

For I already have other blogs,

In which I prefer to write…..

WordPress can be beautiful,

WordPress can be hot,

But for more flexibility,

I prefer Blogspot…..

The End

Eleven, Eleven, Eleven

I woke up this morning and saw a notification on my iPhone that the iOS 5.0.1 is now available.

I was not aware of any flaws in the iOS 5 which I installed not a month ago, but the notification says that the people at Apple have fixed the bugs affecting battery life. The other fixes were for iPads which I do not own and probably will not own in the near future; and apparently there were issues with documents in the Cloud and improvement for voice recognition for Australian accent, but these are for iPhone4S.

I touched the update button anyway, even though as far as I am concern, my iPhone 4 and I are doing just fine.  Although, the beginning of our relationship was quite challenging. She kept giving me a “no service” message when everybody else around me has full bar.  That seemed to have resolved itself, because I haven’t had that problem for months now.

Back to the iOS 5.0.1, it was supposed to come with a panorama mode for the Apple camera where you can sweep the camera from side to side to take a panoramic pictures, and also a new auto correct menu for the keyboard.

But the software developers pull this out so that the bugs in the iPhone4s, especially the battery life issue, to be address quickly.

As for me and my iPhone4, I posted this status in my Facebook at the height of my frustrations,

I have learned to love my iPhone4 as it reminds me a lot of my lovely wife. She provides me with endless joy but at certain times, when she’s not in the mood, no matter what I do, I can’t turn her on….

That did not go too well with my wife.

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Lowensohn. J., (Nov 2011), iOS 5.0.1 arrives with battery fix in tow, CNet News, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-57322409-248/ios-5.0.1-arrives-with-battery-fix-in-tow/

Up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Technology: a necessity.

It’s that time of the month again….  Time to pay my bills.

When I was growing up, a telephone bill of more than RM100 was a shocker, sending my father (bless his soul) into a frenzy and a detailed audit of the bill was duly conducted.

At the time when I was wooing my wife, the telephone bill once reached RM300 and I had to pay my father back in three installments because at that time my salary was only RM900 (basic, before EPF & Socso).

Today, for telephony alone we (my wife and I) are paying, RM120 for myself, RM230 for my wife and college going daughter, RM90 for our other three children (prepaids of RM30 each) and about RM150 for the fixed line (this one is for my mother-in-law who refuses to use a hand phone). That’s a whopping RM590 a month, not including the RM99 a month I pay for my 1 Mbps internet connection.

Then of course, to entertain ourselves, I am paying RM170 for direct to you (except during rainy days) TV.

You might say, it is costing me RM859 a month to be connected and entertained.

In a post by a David Strom [1], he said he is forking out US$300 a month to be connected and entertained.  How he misses the days when TV was free and the internet connection was only US$20 a month. But considering my current pay against the cost I’m paying, Mr. Strom has the better deal.

Broadband cost in Malaysia is one of the highest in the world (but the service is still crappy)[2].

In Antigua, Guatemala a 2Mbps internet connection costs $80/ month. In Europe you pay around 50 – 60 EUROs for a 8Mbps line. In the US it’s about USD48 a month for a 10Mbps connection. [3]

Here we can get Unifi for as low as RM149 for a 5Mbps connection. They throw in a cordless phone and IPTV but you have to pay for premium channels. Maxis Home offers something similar at as low as RM128, no TV, though.

Until somebody comes up with a package that includes internet and voice connection with cable TV which includes the English Premier League Channels, HBO and Discovery Channels (just to make me feel less guilty) at say RM100, I am just going to stick to what I have now to satisfy my needs…. for as long long as I can afford it.

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1. D. Strom (2011), What is the Total Cost of Your Entertainment and Communication, Read Write Web; http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_is_the_total_cost_of_your_entertainment_and_c.php

2.  http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/newsandevents/Documents/BQS%202009%20final.pdf

3. http://compnetworking.about.com/u/ua/internetaccessproviders/how-much-does-your-internet-cost.htm

Facebook Makes You Smarter!!

Well… it hasn’t been conclusively proven yet, but scientists have found that there is a correlation between the number of friends you have in Facebook and the size of certain areas of the brain that has something to do with memory, emotional responses and social interaction [1].

Even so, since Facebook is fairly a new phenomenon, having been founded only in 2004, scientists cannot really determine if the increase in these brain areas are due to usage of Facebook or maybe the subjects selected were born that way (as Lady Gaga sang it).

The study by Ryota Kanai of University College London (UCL)[2] found by using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 125 university students that “the volume of grey matter in the amygdala, a region associated with processing memory and emotional responses, was larger in people with a larger network of friends in the real world.”

As at the time of this blog is written, I have 198 Facebook friends. Which is pathetic compared to those who participate in the study. On average, the subjects tested in the study have 300 friends with the most connected having up to 1,000 friends.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 27 year old billionaire, co-founder of Facebook, must be pleased. With 800 million users world wide, the presence and influence of Facebook on the lives of our current and future generations is massive. Perhaps, calling it a social network website is a misnomer as it is used by businesses and organizations as a means for advertisement.  The latest available figures indicate that in 2011, Facebook’s revenue is $4.27 billion, a 114% increase from 2010.[3].

But, whether Facebook will generate geniuses in the future is still unclear. The study only presented its findings but cannot say that if I were to add any Mamat, Ah Chong or Muthu who sent me a request to increase the number of friends on my Facebook page, I will get an A for Dr. Norzaidi’s MIS750 course…..

Or will I? Maybe it’s worth the chance.

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1. Facebook affecting your brain? retrieved from: http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2011/10/20/facebook-friend-count-affects-your-brain/

2. Kanai, R., Bahrami, B., Roylance, R. & Rees, G. (2011) Online Social Network Size is Reflected in Human Brain Structure. Proc. R. Soc. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.1959)

3. Womack, Brian (September 20, 2011). “Facebook Revenue Will Reach $4.27 Billion”. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved September 25, 2011.

Filtering Young Minds

The most disturbing news I read in The Star today, was the story of 4 eleven year old boys who gang raped a seven year old girl.

When I was 10, I thought the dais or “pelamin” on which men and women sat on their wedding day is the thing that made women pregnant. My first pornographic movie I saw was when I was 15 and I had to pay RM5 for it.

Today, the internet has made is easy to access everything. All you need to do, is Google certain words and you can see and watch endless pictures of nudity and sex. You can put on parental controls, but kids will find a way around it. Ironically, before entering the site, you need to declare that you are over 18 by clicking a button that say…”Yes, I’m over 18″…. Like if a 15 year old kid clicks it he will get a electric shock.

The knee jerk reaction is to blame ICT. As older people reminisce of the old “innocent” days, we are quick to vilify technology for making it easy for children to get to pornography.

The debate of internet freedom has been going on since… forever. Most offices now have put up access controls to ensure workers do not abuse their ICT privileges. Ironically, I once wanted access the Lembaga Zakat Selangor, but was block due to its “political” content.

In 2003, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) did a study to see how many sites were blocked by using keywords that may suggest pornographic contents. They found up to 85% of the sites were miscategorized and ten of thousands site were actually educational sites[1].

So whose fault is it? Being a parent, this kind of news bothers me. I can’t be watching over the shoulders of my children every time they sit in front of the computer. OpenDNS provides a resolution to parents and teachers in filtering internet access but, still many of the similar complains are heard. Some “good” sites are banned and some “bad” site slip through.

And the debate continues on, as will the debate on whether people should be allowed to carry guns.

I have made checks on the site that my kids visit and (thank God) more often then not, the girls go on to social webs site (which I forbid them to add anybody they don’t know personally) and the boys, game sites (no adult games thus far).

Maybe I am doing something right as a parent [2].

Thanks kids.

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1. Internet Blocking in Public Schools – A Study on Internet Access in Educational Institutions (2003) by Electronic Frontier Foundation. (https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/net_block_report.pdf)

2. Doctorow, C. (2011). Adult content filters can’t replace good parenting. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/17/adult-content-filters-good-parenting