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If what Texas Instruments‘ Chairman Tom Engibous has said is to be believed. Basically, TI’s strategy to achieve this is by implementing a single-chip mobile phone solution, which by itself, will reduce the manufacturing cost of mobile phones by 30%.

Although this technology will make mobile phones more affordable to the masses, I’m really wondering about the features that this “budget moby” will have. Will it really be single-purpose purpose device, like our classic telephones, which can only be used to make or receive calls? (Eh, that’s two purposes, but what the heck :P). The reason for me wanting to know this is because my mobile phone is not only a communications device, it’s also my watch (I haven’t worn a wristwatch since owning my first moby), calendar, organiser, notepad and ad-hoc camera, among others.

Maybe I’m just not part of this budget moby’s targeted demographics

Personally, I don’t have any fantasies of living by the sea. This is probably because I’m already living pretty damn near to Stulang Laut anyway. I’ve also bought an apartment which faces the Strait of Johor, so I don’t really fantasize about seafront living… I just live it

However, what I do fantasize about is owning my own cool-looking pod. If I had the bucks, I’d get myself a piece of seafront cliffside land and build myself a Neptus 60 Cliff Habitat. Now that’s a really cool looking house, don’t you agree?

However, the housing refinancing on that beauty would probably cost me a soul and a half

Every fsckin’ year, them stupid Indons keep doing the same shit: clearing forests by burning them. Consequentially, the whole region is enveloped by thick haze, but this year’s haze is the worse ever. You can read more Malaysian haze related news from Google News.

I hate to over-generalise, but it’s hard to see it any other way… most Indonesians are idiots (especially their government, no, strike that… Indonesians voted them morons into power, so yeah… most Indonesians are fsckin’ idiots). It’s fine and dandy if you want to burn your fskin’ forests to make way for whatever “development” (congratulations on graduating on to farming… we had a good time with that since a few hundred years ago), but for God’s sake, can’t you keep it under control? If you can’t manage things as simple as this, how the hell are you ever going to be a civilised society (not that there’s any chance of it happening in this millenium anyway).

If I sound bigoted, let me just clarify that I’m merely pissed by the irresponsible attitude of the Indonesians with regards to the cause of this haze. I don’t really have any problems with Indonesians in general… heck, my maid is Indonesian. Just as moronic as the Indonesians are Malaysians who are also contributing to the haze by committing open burning. Heck, I’ve seen a lot of these idiots when I as travelling up to Kedah a few months ago.

It seems that the haze has suddenly became a hot blogging topic by Malaysians. Well, it’s unsuprising… that’s the very nature of the blogosphere. And almost every haze related blog posting I’ve seen links to Haze Haters in KL, so I will too… by the way, us Johoreans hate the fsckin’ haze too… thankfully we’re not as severely affected as you KL and Klang Valley people.

Those darn Swedish insurers sure are creative. Here’s an interesting quote from a Y!News article regarding these insurance policies:

“We believe drivers are under economic pressure and there is no room in household budgets to pay fines. We offer economic protection,” said Dan Glimmeras, head of marketing at Bisso.

Well, if there’s no room in your household budgets to pay fines, then don’t speed or park illegally… plus, you’ll save money on paying your insurance premium. Anyway, aren’t insurance supposed to protect you from unforeseen disasters? Are speeding tickets or parking fines unforeseen in any way?

My new employers are using a XOOPS-based CMS as the “corporate CMS“. There’s tons of customisation done on the CMS, however (nightmares of nightmares), the code is pretty fsckin’ messy! There’s at least 10 people who’ve worked on the system, from what I can gather from the comments in the code. And changes are only recorded as notes at the beginning of the respective PHP files.

Read the rest of Hacking The Corporate CMS »