Category: Rants

Holland 3 : 0 Shitaly

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There’s no greater news to wake up to than this!

Now all it needs is for Italy Shitaly to ‘keep this up’ . Yes. Keep losing until they crash out of the first round ignominiously – preferably with ZERO (0) points and a large goal deficit. There’s nothing more satisfying than that!

But before that, Fabio Grosso must trip someone in the defending area near the end of the match and a penalty rewarded to the opposing team, whereby the opposing team will score and send Shitaly crashing out. And in the best case scenario, Materazzi must lose his cool and headbutt someone and get himself a red card too.

There will be nothing more deserving than this as a well deserved retribution to the thieves of the World Cup!

An Uneducated View on PDA / Smartphone Reviews (II)

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This is a typical PDA / Smartphone product review found on Cnet.

But before I begin, let me first emphasize that this is not an attack on the quality of Cnet’s review because it has always been my opinion that Cnet’s editors do some of the most balanced and objective, if not the best, technical reviews that can be found on the Internet. Very often I recommend that my friends read them up, and I also read up a Cnet review before making my decision to purchase a particular electronic product – be it a digital camera, PDA, laptop or even a mobile phone.

Take a look at the example of the HTC Touch review given above. As with all Cnet reviews, it gives you an overview of the specifications of the product, the features available, the good and the bad and even showing you the quality of the pictures taken with the built-in camera. I have come across a review of the iPhone which even some of the known gripes and criticisms from those already using a product is mentioned. For e.g., I quote: “CNET users have also reported volume problems, and a few people we called said they heard a slight background hiss.”

Unfortunately, this is where my praises for Cnet’s reviews end, and with all due respect to the Cnet editors, this is no fault of yours.

I am quite sure many of us has bought a product after comparing the features and taking the one with the most features usable for us, and also on performance, but ultimately found the product unwieldy and hardly of use for the purpose we intended it for after purchase. (That is also why I have completely sworn myself off PDA smartphones, with the exception of the Blackberry. The reason was that this is the one product that best suit my uses in the corporate environment, given to me free by the company because I am one of the Blackberry Enterprise Server administrators.)

Anyway, what good is a review telling you how good the sound or the quality of the picture taken is, the range the WIFI built in etc when there are so many similar products out there with comparable features? When our decision making is solely based on comparing features and specifications, is that not the very reason we found ourselves in want – not in need – of an upgrade, or desiring a better phone in the near future? In the end we end up trying to chase the technology and because our current gadget was only the best – a has been – until the next one comes along.

So what is the point I am trying to make here? What I am doing here is presenting my uneducated view here on how a product review can be further improved. For e.g. it might help us if the review tells us how the HTC Touch can integrate with the work of users of a certain profile, and there’s a short video or a presentation featuring a real user showing us what he has done with it etc. And I don’t mean looking for fan boys to sing the praises of a product and try to convince us just why a pile of stinking iDung or the iFart from Steve Job’s ass maybe fragrant.

I mean, don’t we all at times discovered we wanted something because our friends flashes us their gadgets and tell us just what he can do with it and how cool that might be because that’s something we are looking for all along? And wouldn’t that save also help save us a lot of money because this will be one product that will serve our purpose and last us for a long time to come?

I thank Endoh for giving me the inspiration to this article. And to Chaosdingo: ‘this is the article I told you I wanted to write sometime back on WLM. It is finally here.’

An Uneducated View on Current Events (I)

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Singapore vehicles can continue topping up on petrol in Johor, the Malaysian government said yesterday, ending days of uncertainty over whether it would implement a ban within 50km of the border.

The news came with the announcement of a 40 per cent hike in petrol prices from today.

Analysts say the move is a high-stakes gamble by Premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is fighting for his political survival. [Source: Straits Stooge Times, 5 Jun 2008]

This move is so much better and much more intelligent.

Keeping the subsidies and implementing a ban on foreign cars would be stupidity in the highest order. First of all, keeping the subsidies at the previous level would be like not doing something about the ‘bleeding’ that comes out of an ever enlarging wound. Next, implementing a ban would be the equivalent of cutting off the transfusion of blood coming in to replenish the blood you lose. It would be suicidal.

Either way, the days of low oil prices are over and some people should just live with it. How is it acceptable that at one point of time petrol was actually cheaper than even drinking water in some places? Consider this, water is a necessity, and burning fuel in your car is actually a luxury.

It really amazes me that the Malaysian opposition make a big fuss over this and actually ask the BN gahmen to maintain the subsidies and tighten their belts. There are few gahmens in this world that need to tighten their belts – Singapore being one of them.

Finally, The Financial Times reports that Bear Stearns tried to do a refinancing deal with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek just days before it was forced into the arms of JPMorgan Chase. Temasek is said to have declined to get involved for both practical and political reasons. [Source: HereIsTheCity 5 Jun 2008]

What practical and political reasons will stop the mighty Temasek in acquiring Bear Stearns, but didn’t stop them from investing in… UBS and Merryl Lynch, or even Shit Shin Corp? Perhaps there’s something about Bear Stearns we mere mortals didn’t know but Temasek does?

But with 20/20 hindsight, we mere mortals do know the fact that Bear Stearns was practically sold for a song to JP Morgan Chase. The original US$236 million deal sees Bear’s shares valued at US$2 each, and JP Morgan exchanging 0.05473 of each of its shares for every Bear share. At that point of time, Bear Stearns was valued at US$3.54bn based on its US$30-a-share price at the end of trading day.

I don’t know what Temasek was offered, but paying US$236 million for S$3.54 billion asset must have been a real bargain. In fact, even if we don’t look at Bear Stearns’ paper value, it’s building at 383 Madison in New York is worth US$1.2 billion! An almost US$1 billion worth in profits instantly. Now, the only real practical reason I can think of, for Temasek to walk away from this, is that the so-called ‘Federal Reserve’ did not agree to provide a $30 billion lifeline for the deal.

Anyway? If anyone had bought Bear Stearns shares off the market after the deal was announced, they would have made a bundle out of it as well. A week or two after the announcement of the deal, JP Morgan offered to sweeten the deal to US$10 a share! On that day itself, Bear Stearns shares hit US$11.25. In short, if you have bought the shares even at US$3, you would have made at least US$8 a piece.

Just try and imagine that if you had as much money as Temasek, and after you offered the crap deal at US$2 and bought a large bundle of the shares off the open market, you now say you will increase your bid to $10. Basically, you made some profits out of thin air, didn’t you?

Anyway, don’t flame me for all these, please! I have already said they are uneducated views. Is it a surprise if my views over these matters are well… wrong?

May 2008 – Month of Disaster

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The month of May is a month of disaster. On 2 May 2008 tropical cyclone Nargis hit the coast of Myanmar and devastated large parts of the low-lying Irrawaddy delta. Close on its heels on May 12, a devastating Earthquake rated 8 on the Richter scale, hit Wenchuan in the Sichuan province of China. Both of these natural disasters caused widespread destruction. And they should have brought those of us who are unaffected to reflect on our lives and how fortunate we are, and consider what we can do to help them.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. It appears to have brought out the best, and yet the worst of the human race. I will not talk about the tragedy of the people of Myanmar and the inhuman actions of the military junta, as they have been written about by many others (examples here: [1], [2], [3]) and I will look out of my depth, * erhem * shallow, talking about such a thing.

In fact, considering Singapore’s position as chair of ASEAN, and Singapore’s current political stand – if you even call that a stand – on this matter, is there even any meaning to talk about it? But here are some of the other sickening random examples of ‘personal disasters’ I wanna talk about:

Liaoning girl’s insensitive remarks about the earthquake
The video is found here, if it hasn’t already been taken down for its offensive content.

I saw a few postings on this matter and I had no intention to look at it as I originally considered this as probably some kind of cam-whoring or whatever. Just like Xiaxue has done with the iPhone review she did. But then I start receiving enough copies of them from my friends that I decided for myself I need to see this.

There’s no finer specimen of a selfish little muthafxxking bitch than this. Hearing the tone she used is irritating enough, the video with her crossing her arms and saying all that in miffed indifference is enough to make one’s blood boil just half way through the video. Had I been able to punch her through my screen I would have done it.

Damn! Even prostitutes from Sichuan working in Guangzhou have more decency and last I read on tabloid (or maybe china.com itself), some of them donated a million Chinese dollars to their fellow countrymen in Sichuan. Condemn these prostitutes for their sexual immorality for all I cared, but at least they still have what it takes to be a human being, compared to this little bitch who cared nothing about her stupid little TV programs and nice colors on the Internet pages.

Frankly, go get some psychological help, bitch. (老实说，小母狗你快找个精神医生帮忙吧！)

Sharon Stone on ‘Karma’
The video is found here.

I would like to ask Sharon Stone, is 9-11 karma as a result of America’s bias towards Israel in the Middle East? And guess what, I am quite sure I will be demonised and called an absolute bastard along with an assortment of bad words if I did that. And for some odd reasons it suddenly reminded me of Senator Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Anyway, I was so upset when that was exactly what someone told me when we were on the topic of the WTC attacks probably several days or weeks after that incident. Basically, I will no longer call the person a friend, and I no longer give a flying damn if he gets pushed out of the airlock of an airplane 30000ft up in the air. That, is the extent of my disgust to that statement.

So, serves you right, Sharon Stone, when I read that you probably lost S$80 million worth in contracts as Dior or whatever retract your advertisements in China. I guess that S$80 million would mean nothing to you, Auntie Sharon… and you can always go try do a Fatal Attraction 3.0 to make several times that money back. But I would sooner watch Elizabeth Taylor reprise her role as Cleopatra with…
* gasp * Ashton Kutcher as Caesar and Keanu Reeves as Mark Anthony!

And as if these aren’t bad enough, another disaster – not on a personal but corporate level – also deserved the honor of specific bashing. And no, it’s not about a particular CEO sleeping with his own employee… because there’s really nothing more to be written about that company which has sunk as low as a sunken hulk in the Mariana Trench.

Vuestar Technologies.
I first read about this case from this post. It subsequently made it to zdnet.

Wow. After Creative sues Apple, after some ad company’s charging bloggers for cashing out, and another forgetting to renew its domain name, just how the hell do some of these local companies always made it to international tech news in a negative light?!

My message to Vuestar, stop hiding and says you won’t sue gahmens or charity organisations. In fact, do this, sue the Singapore gahmen or any other gahmen (best that of China!) if they have indeed violated ‘your’ patent. I am quite sure their lawyers could easily rip you a new axxhole the same way they did to Mr. Peanuts Durai.

In fact, I think these guys, if they can afford it, should hire the same lawyers SPH did and rip Vuestar into small little microscopic shreds. What the hell are you guys thinking, huh? There are better ways to make money decently without trampling on the small guys. I’ll really love to see how Microsoft, Google or whatever drown you in a long, gruesome lawsuit in which you will lose and end up bankrupt!

And I won’t feel sorry for you when it happens. By the way, when you do end up bankrupt and begging on the streets, just make damned sure you don’t let me see you.


PS: There are other random acts of ‘personal disasters’ this month, such as several posts condemning a few ‘elitist pingsters’ which deserved ‘dishonorable mention’ . Fortunately, no specific bashing is actually required. IMO, one of the blogger who did that post has technically ‘self-pwned’ and more or less makes one reconsider anything associated with his employer as well. The incident left me and a small number of bloggers scratching their heads and wondering when this blogger writes in this manner in his personal capacity (i.e. without getting his facts right and then go on to build a non-existing case), then how should we consider articles which are associated with his employer on his blog?

Anyway, I’ll give Xiaxue Xiasuay more credit and respect than this. At least she names everyone she flamed, or at least is very specific who her target is – like some auntie who gave her a stare for not giving up her seat, molesters at the Orchard Road Christmas bash, or the handicapped person who gave her friend a piece of his mind.

If your dog bites someone…

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On Nov 26, 2007, 5 large-breed Rottweilers dashed out of a Lengkong Tika home and attacked a small-breed Jack Russell terrier being walked by its owner. The dogs had allegedly bitten a person earlier. What happened after that, was that the owner Madam Satpal Kuar was ordered to give up two of her dogs, as no more than three dogs are allowed on a private property. Potentially, she could also face a a fine up to $50000 for allowing all five dogs out unleashed and without muzzles. [source]

In fact, even if it has been your maid walking your dog, and then your dog bites someone, you will still be fined. You can’t just have you maid take the blame, and there’s no way for you to say:

“Although the maid was neither directly nor indirectly linked to the attacks of the dogs down the leash, and she was not at fault over the attacks, the maid was holding the leash of the dogs.”

And guess what the judge will do when you indignantly say,

“Why fine me? It’s not my fault?” .

You will still be fined. And on a particular bad day, the CJ will probably review your case and slap a heavier punishment on you.

Unless… you wear white and draws 3 million dollars of pay. Then probably the maid gets sent home for it and you get away scot free.

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