keithrozario.com

Quick post for today. I need to start writing even though, I’m still depressed from LAST sundays election results.

However, I’m keeping myself abreast with all the hate going around, including the latest ‘Buy Chinese Last Movement’ or BCLM. If you don’t know what it is, just Google it and you’ll find out, it’s the latest in a string of racist movements that have spawned since Pru-13, and it probably won’t be the last.

There’s a lot I want to get off my mind, but this so called ‘boycott’ of Chinese products seems to make little sense. It reminds me of the time when Malaysians were encouraged to boycott Israeli goods and services–a lot of good that did us. In fact, I feel that it’s impossible to boycott someone who has better tech than you–because when you boycott a country with better technology than you, that’s not a boycott–it’s a self-imposed embargo.

Think about it, the Arab League has been boycotting Israel since 1948, that’s more than 50 years ago. What impact did the boycott have on Israel? Well take a look for yourself:

The Israeli economy makes the Malaysian ‘Tiger’ economy look like slow poke Rodriguez. Their GDP per capita has increased at a constantly higher rate than Malaysia, I’m not comparing Israel to Malaysia, I’m just putting their economy into context–and remember folks the entire Arab League boycotted Israel since it’s inception.

The Israelis have gone their merry way, becoming a core country for companies like Microsoft, Google and even Intel. There’s basically not a single shred of technology that you can buy today that in some way did not come from somewhere in Israel. My favorite traffic avoiding App, Waze–is an Israeli invention, the technology in the kinect is from Israel and there’s a whole bunch more. So don’t tell me we’re boycotting Israel, the boycott only has political consequences, no economic ones…not for Israel at least.

So we’re back at square one again, a bunch of racist bigots thinking that by somehow not buying specific brands or frequenting certain businesses the Chinese in the country will ‘learn’–not only is this such a childish idea akin to my niece saying ‘let’s not friend them anymore’ the very fact that ALL the data suggest that it wasn’t a Chinese Tsunami, but rather an Urban one makes my blood boil that such people are so ignorant of the evidence. Not just ignorant, but arrogantly ignorant.

Boycotts don’t work–they just send a political message, but almost never achieve their desired economical objective. Add this to the fact, that the country with the most technology wins–and you’ll realize that Malaysia is in no position to boycott anything. We sent a man to space, built the worlds tallest building and even the 4th longest bridge in South East Asia–but we did it all with someone elses technology, whether it was the Russians, Japanese or Koreans. So until we start to develop our own technology–our boycotts will be nothing more than self-imposed embargoes. So the next time you switch on Waze, play with your XBox, or even use any PC with an Intel Inside Chip, just remember how our good (and technologically) superior friends in Israel help make it possible.

Tech columnist David Pogue shares 10 simple, clever tips for computer, web, smartphone and camera users. And yes, you may know a few of these already — but there’s probably at least one you don’t. Some however, didn’t work for me, like the double-space on my Samsung s3 just gave me a –double space.

Danny Hillis talks about a backup plan for the internet, and on the face of it — the idea sounds absurd. Why would anyone have a backup plan for the internet? There isn’t a single IT project worth it’s salt that would register the entire internet failing as a risk, the internet after all was built as a decentralized communications medium that couldn’t be taken down with a single hit on a command center–the internet can sure take a pounding and so far no single act of nature has manage to make a dent–no earthquake, no tsunami, no nothing!

I’m not just talking about just Google failing here, I’m talking about the ENTIRE INTERNET failing!

The events in the pas has made me ponder, we’ve seen how Pakistan ‘accidentally’ managed to take down youtube for several hours worldwide back in 2008, and just recently the world witness a global battle between Spamhaus and Cyberbunker. If a hosting company and a non-profit organization can threaten internet connectivity in Europe–what would become of the internet if countries went to War on it? Think of the ‘Mother of all DDOS attacks’.

This isn’t as far fetched as you might think–there are already political lines being drawn on the internet.

Put that together with the researchers who managed to map the internet–by hacking nearly 100,000 vulnerable routers and suddenly the internet doesn’t seem all that invulnerable as you once imagined. Ethical considerations aside, we’ll need to one day evaluate and address the very real possibility that the internet can (and probably WILL) go down one day–and where will we be?

Your phone runs on the internet these days, your house alarm runs on the internet, without the internet government services couldn’t operate and banks probably wouldn’t be able to run (do you really think ATMs have physical leased lines back to HQ)? In fact, when was the last time anybody used a physical lease line–at some point in the routing of our devices–something uses the internet.

The question then becomes–what happens when it goes down?

Everybody’s favourite yellow Malaysian telco decided to start April Fools day a bit early today–either that or somebody in Digi went a bit crazy, and who can blame them with all those yellow men running around the office an’ all.

Anyway, they offered a ‘vintage’ phone offer that includes phones like the Nokia 3310,  that comes with interchangeable covers, clock and alarm and best of all–an awesome snake game!! For the low low price of just Rm1499, you get the phone and 30GB of data–although that may a bit of challenge to use the Data, given that the phones pre-date not just 3G or LTE–but EDGE as well.

I personally enjoyed the joke, and actually reminisced about my old phones–ahhh those were the days.

Check our more of Digi’s Vintage Phone Offer here.

Finally after a year of procrastinating I finally sat for my TOGAF exam. I’m glad I finally did it, but I should have done it much earlier.

A lot of people wonder what TOGAF really is, TOGAF is an acronym that stands for the The Open Group Architecture Framework–yes it’s a mouthful and you’ve probably never heard of it before, but I personally believe architecture is a great place to be in these days, and ever since I moved into solution architecture (slightly more than a year ago) I’ve never regretted it.

Studying for the exam was straightforward enough, and the entire exam takes about 2.5 hours, not bad in comparison for the 4 hour PMP exam or the 3.5 hours for the CCBA. However, where TOGAF slightly differs is the fact that the certification involves two exams, aptly called part 1 and part 2.

Part 1 consist of 40 multiple choice questions, and unlike most other examinations this one has 5 possible options. In my opinion this is actually the harder of the two exams, but this one is a pre-requisite for part 2. If you fail part 1, you go home.

Part 2 consist of 8 ‘complex scenario questions’, which unlike the straightforward questions in part 1 consist of a complex scenario and 4 possible answers. However, the scenarios are quite elaborate AND take time just to digest and read –let alone answer. Once you’ve digested and truly understood the question, there’s still a matter of choosing an answer from a list of 4 possible answers–the only catch is that the answers aren’t right or wrong–there is a gradient to the answers and only the ‘fully right’ answer scores you full marks, the other ‘partially right’ answer score you fewer points. The last thing to note about part 2 is that it’s open book, which is helpful only if you know where to find the information from the 700 page TOGAF documentation. More…