Author: Grievous

Penalties for fare evasion

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Penalties for fare evasion on buses and MRT trains kicked in on Tuesday.

Under the new system, those who do not pay the correct fare will be fined S$20, while those who abuse concession cards face a penalty of S$50.

Offenders can pay on the spot or at any of TransitLink’s offices and Add—Value Machines located at bus interchanges and MRT stations. They have up to 14 days to do so. Any appeals should also be made within this time.

An additional penalty of S$1,000 will be imposed on fare cheats if they do not pay their fine. The same penalty applies if one refuses to give their personal details, or provide false information to the public transport official.

Repeat offenders may be fined S$2,000 or be jailed up to six months, or both. [source]

Right.

There’s a penalty for fare cheating… and even an estimate for losses as a result of fare cheating. But where is the estimate of profits coming from erroneous over-charging by transport operators? What penalties will there be against transport operators for such woeful mistakes?

When these freaking bus companies over-charged us, they just and write it off as ‘human errors’ , and claimed that some other guy will in turn benefit from that mistake. And we have to go through the freaking pain of spending our own precious time to go to some lousy Transitlink office somewhere, to claim back that money because of their freaking mistake!!

I repeat: We have to waste our time and at our own expense go to their office so they can correct their mistake!

But I know. Nobody cares, and nobody is going to be really bothered. 66.6% anyway. What the fxxk…

In fact, I expect some fumb duck to even say, “Unless you are a freaking fare cheat yourself, you shouldn’t be concerned” . On top of that, I am also expecting members of the PLP – which incidentally is the largest political party in Singapore (not the TaliPAP) – to tell me off. And here’s a great example of how a fine specimen or PLP would be doing it:

All the hikes in ‘GST, ERPs, fuel taxes etc’ may be annoying to us at times. However, people who do nothing other than repetitively whine about the government gahmen on their computers are not doing anything constructive.

Either they can try to run for a position that would influence these policies, or write to the people who make decisions. Or do *something* lah.

Rather than just complain and complain and complain some more.

Such a comment basically requires none of the analytical and critical thinking that is supposed to come with high education. Any jia-liao-bee can say that. And I had thought Mao’s Red Guards [红卫兵], and the Boxers [义和团] were the finest brainless / brain-washed specimens of the human species in the last 150 years!!

What do I have in response to that?

Reason obeys itself; Ignorance submits to what is dictated to it. – Thomas Paine.

Have a good day ahead.


Note:
– PLP is just an acronym for the Hokkien phrase Por Lan Pa [捧卵脬] – which translates literally as ‘supporting the scrotum’ or ‘carry balls’.
– Jia-liao-bee in Hokkien means someone is wasting the rice he eats.

Is Your Site Also Listed Here?

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Missloi brought to my attention on the Ping.sg shoutbox this site, www.solutiononline.org. And under the Blog Development section of their portfolio, her blog was found listed there.

Nothing really looked out of place until Missloi pointed out to me that she did not use the services of this company and the reason she brought it to our attention was to seek our advice on what can be done. Her own webmaster, who did this site for her, was pretty pissed off at this. On closer examination, I also realised that the description of the blog is wrong. Missloi’s blog is not just about exams anyway. (I had saved a copy of the printout of the site in PDF format here.)

This really takes the cake. I was really shocked that someone would stoop so low. Personally speaking, I am really clueless what can be done about this blatant and shameless attempt of taking credit for something one didn’t do. It appears to me ‘Solution Online’ is in India so I really am not sure just how far the law would reach. Even if they are not beyond the reach of the law, the question will be how much it would cost to legally make sure they ‘de-list’ Missloi’s blog from their site.

I took the conversation with Missloi off the Shoutbox to Windows Live Messenger and we agreed that mindless and vociferous denunciation of the company wouldn’t help at all. Above which, ‘peasants’ like us really don’t have the money to sue people. However, the idea of checking with those other blogs and sites listed to find out if they did use the services of ‘SolutionOnline’ came up. After all, if these people are in the same boat as Missloi, then it’s only a matter of courtesy to inform these people how their sites have been misused for marketing without their approval. Hopefully, they will be outraged enough to make a ruckus out of the matter and if they are in another country, take the matter up with their local media as well.

Since we were on taking up the matter with the local media, I suggested to Missloi to check with the Sunday Times reporter who interviewed her previously if they might be interested to run this news – for e.g. putting it up on the Digital Life section on Tuesday. We hoped that if enough attention (or even negative publicity) is created about this matter, then even the foreign media might pick up the news and run it as well – just like how Bo Davis became infamous for his bullying of the Trishaw uncle in Singapore.

Anyway, if anyone else have even better suggestions on how to publicise this matter – just like how the brouhaha of Nuffnang’s charging for their cheques hit the public domain, I believe Missloi and her webmaster – and in fact some of us who cared for our community – would be glad to hear it.

All suggestions are welcomed. Please however remember the main objective is to stop these jokers in India from using sites / blogs they didn’t help to do to market themselves. Thank you.

Vaporware: EFiX USB Dongle

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Wikipedia defines Vaporware as: ‘a software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle’ .

Is EFiX’s USB Dongle, which allegedly will Boot and install OSX on any PC, another vaporware? According to this gizmodo article, it is supposed to be released on June 23rd. But it’s already been at least 4 days since June 23rd and nothing. There’s also nothing on the EFiX website about the delay and it is half done up that it makes one wonder if it’s all a hoax. Or could they have stopped working on it because or pending lawsuits? It’s doesn’t surprise me if they are sued, considering that Apple is a even more monopolistic bastard than Micro$oft.

Anyway, it all began with Psystar’s Open Computer, which I become aware of while clearing emails in Hotmail (I still find it hard to call it Live Mail or whatever). From what I gathered, it was probably called the Open Mac originally, but was renamed Open Computer just to avoid some legal tussles, not to mention that it is offering OSX as an optional component while Ubuntu is the choice of OS for it.

From the links, I became aware of the OSx86 project. Ya, I know it’s been around for some time and I am being out of touch. And from reading if my laptop or desktop is compatible to have a hacked copy of OSX installed, which I found tedious (though not necessary difficult considering what I do for a living) that’s how I chanced upon the EFiX USB Dongle.

So what is this EFiX dongle anyway? Apparently it’s supposed to be the magic bullet that will remove all these hassles of hacking OSX to get it installed on the PC. And if you are wondering why I am looking at hacking OSX to install on a PC when people are getting Windows to install on a Mac with BootCamp, let me just say it’s just done because it can be done. It just gives me a sense of achievement and an opportunity to give an up yours to Apple. Furthermore, I am not going to pay Apple a ridiculous amount of money to get a ‘Mac Experience’ and their ridiculously proprietary hardware when I seriously despise Apple’s way of doing business.

Whether this dongle is vaporware or not, it is interesting to note that Wikipedia states this: ‘The marketing angle to “releasing” vaporware can be two-fold. On one hand the intention is to create the demand for a feature or product which did not previously exist in the market. On the other, the intent is also to judge the public reaction from the “release” and prepare a concrete marketing plan’ .

Is EFiX purposely doing this to test the market to see the reaction of PC users out there to see if there’s a demand for a Hackintosh, and hoping that if there’s a demand, some other company will jump the bandwagon to produce just such a thing?

It remains to be seen. Frankly, I haven’t heard of anyone talk about this in Singapore and if this is same level of interest – or rather, the lack of it – worldwide, I would say maybe that’s the real reason why EFiX remained silent so many days after June 23rd with their website in shambles. Perhaps, there’s really just not that many geeky people out there… and if this dongle thingie is really vaporware, I guess I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and read up those articles on how to manually install OSX on my Lenovo X61.

On 5th June, I predicted…

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I happened to be looking through the server archives of ‘Grapevine’ chats in the office and I found this little prediction I made on June 5th. (Time is in GMT.)

Damn! Why didn’t I go to bet on this? I would probably have made some money there.

Anyway, looking at the way Russia gets its clocks cleaned, there’s some speculation that both Turkey and Russia are out because of some match fixing.

After all… it would be a little hard on bookies to come up with the payout odds for Turkey to meet Russia in the finals. Too much uncertainty, and too hard to predict who will win.

And well, considering that if I was the bookie and I won’t leave that much to chance… such speculation is not hard to imagine.

More Security Boo-Boos…

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  • 11 June 2008 – Under the pretext of asking for water, two men – 32-year-old Jamaluddin Salam and 28-year-old Salman Abu Samah – made an escape from the lock-up in the Subordinate Courts off Upper Cross Street (yep, in the CBD!!) after assaulting two policemen.

  • 13 June 2008 – A group of Nepalese Gurkhas in a contingent attached to Singapore’s police ‘scuffled’ last week in a dispute over wages, a rare display of indiscipline in a force renowned for its bravery and devotion to duty.
    Singapore police said in a statement that the group, off-duty at the time, were involved ‘in an incident of disorderly and boisterous behaviour’ at their special compound on June 13.

  • 23 June 2008 – In his hurry to catch a flight at Changi Airport’s Budget Terminal morning, retiree Ang Heng Soon, 61, grabbed his 39-year-old son’s passport and left home. He actually managed to get on the flight all the way to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, before he owned up to the authorities there and was sent on a flight back to Singapore.

In just 14 days, here’s yet another 3 more counts of security fxxk-ups since Darth Kastari’s escape. And yet, the butt of all jokes in charge of security in Singapore remains shamelessly in his post.

Here’s my advice to you, you shameless dork. While I do not dare imagine I speak for the Big Man up there, take this as a sign that all these are happening probably because even He is displeased with your lackluster performance.

Or do you really need Him to actually use one of those Twisters in the East Coast recently to whip the clouds into the words: WONG, RESIGN NOW!!!, before you get take it that it is Divine will for you to butt out?

How long more do you expect Baby Lee to cover your ass and allow you to stay? Or is it so hard for you to understand the meaning and wisdom behind the Chinese phrase: 上梁不正下梁歪 ?

But I guess, any fxxk who can shamelessly justify for himself a 3-million dollar per year paycheck, already has a skin thick enough to take any kind of criticism.

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