A while back, I wrote about how the Government blew nearly RM 1 Billion ringgit on the MERS 999 system. A system that soaked up nearly Rm30 Million in consultancy cost alone–yet failed. The biggest issue I had with the MERS 999 system was that the government had a similar system called MyDistress, which not only worked well in the Klang Valley, but was given to the government free of charge...
Why the 3-D printed gun is an overblown concern
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’ve heard about the 3-d printing. 3-D printing is supposed to be the next ‘big’ thing in technology, it allows anyone the ability to physically ‘print’ 3-dimensional objects like cups, toy models, even car parts from ABS plastic (that’s the same plastic used to make Lego pieces), in...
ATM Hacks are so bloody boring
Last week, while I was flying from KL to London, I noticed a strange anomaly on the screen of the boarding gate at KLIA. Closer inspection revealed that it was an anti-virus warning that signaled the computer had been infected by a Virus (almost 2 days ago!!). As a techie, I quickly deduced 3 things from the screen. One, the computer was running Windows, and probably an outdated version of...
MyProcurement: All government tenders in one Excel file
I’ve updated this post on 31-Mar-2015, to incorporate the latest changes, and to provide more up to data info on the procurement database. Left everything else in tact. Happy birthday Malaysia!! Just how awesome is our country, that we celebrate an Independence Day AND a Malaysia Day, not to mention 2 New years day, (or 3 if you count Awal Muharram). So on that note, I decided to use my IT...
Is Malaysia’s Broadband slow–no it isn’t.
Recently KiniBiz did a piece on Malaysian broadband speeds, and once again the hoopla about how Malaysian broadband speeds are slow arose. Kinibiz quoted an article from Asean DNA which stated that the average broadband speed in Malaysia was just 5.5 Mbps, while Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore had speeds that were double that (or more!) The report however was inaccurate, and I think there’s...
A Techie’s view on the Law
Are some laws worth following–in other words, are some Laws so idiotic that they should be ignored completely? That sounds anathema, because we have a romanticized definition of the law, we define the Law as a broad general agreement a society undertakes, and the law keeps society from tearing itself apart. In other words, the law is so sacred because without it–we descend into...
Nearlyfreespeech the hosting provider that takes security seriously
You all know how much I love nearlyfreespeech, it’s one of the best hosting providers out there. Here’s one more reason, recently they alerted me to a suspicious number of login attempts to my wordpress site, which usually means someone was trying to hack it. If you remember the post I did about the RHB bank scam, it’s quite common for hackers to inject pages onto a wordpress...
Why the ban on Uber means more than just Taxis
Uber, a company that connect passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services–is now banned in Malaysia. The Uber service was viewed as a god-send by citizens of KL simply because the existing taxi service in the city–is Shit! So why did the Government choose to ban a service, that was improving public transport in KL? For the small matter that it violated a...
What do ISIS and Genghis Khan have in common?
I thought I’d take a break from writing about Tech this week, to focus on where the worlds attention should be–Iraq and Syria, and the existential threat that is besieging the middle-east, a threat we’ve come to call The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). ISIS may have started of an off-shoot of Al-Qaeda, but they’ve evolved to be much more, they’re so far...
Is illegal downloading considered stealing?
There’s a general perception that illegal downloads of movies, music or books is akin to stealing the works of the artist, singers and authors. But downloads are more akin to trespassing than it is stealing–they’re nothing like stealing and if you take some time off to think about it, you’d figure this out too. When you steal something, you’re denying the victim...