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Now why the hell didn’t I see this petition earlier! But better late than never… thanks to Chan Siau Liang for pointing it out in his blog.

Basically, all IT-aware Malaysians know that the reason why we got shitty broadband coverage in Malaysia is primarily because of TMNet’s virtual monopoly of the market. Yeah, yeah… there are other pseudo-ISPs such as Jaring, TIMENet and Maxis… but none of them really offers nationwide broadband coverage.

So basically, they’re screwed… because in more than 90% of cases, only TMNet’s Streamyx ADSL service is the only choice that Malaysians can pick when choosing a broadband plan.

Why is this so bad? Well, some people have service related issues with them. As for me, I rarely have service issues with Streamyx… probably one slow night every 4-6 months or so. But I do have a huge problem with their service coverage in “new” commercial/residential areas in Johor Bahru.

God damn it TMNet, fibre optics are not a god damn excuse to deprive residents of decent ADSL service. For shit’s sake, DSLAM units are not really expensive… especially for GLCs like you!

Another issue that I have with regards to Streamyx is that, TMNet seems to employ thieving, lying bastards as sales-reps for the service in Johor Bahru. I had one of these bastards coming in my office offering Streamyx when I know for a god damn fact that it’s not available in my unit. The bastard even convinced me that the reason my self tests failed is because of the Centrex service I subscribed from Telekom (TMNet’s parent company, the monopoly telephone fixed line provider in Malaysia) cocking up the test.

I can’t believe with the number of years of experience I had in IT and technology in general, I fell for that bloody con! Till this day, I curse the day I met that bastard. Anyway, for those who didn’t get the gist of the story: Streamyx availability does not depend on your usage of Centrex or other PABX-like services.

I cancelled the Centrex service for the lines (not one but TWO, one in the HQ and another in our Pulai Utama branch) which I wanted to use for Streamyx. The bastard told me that their techie will come to our premises within a week to deliver the modem (technically it really is a router, but I guess none of you gives a flying shit) and do the installation. After a week, nobody came, so I called the bastard and he assured me the application is “being processed” (another tell-tale sign when you’re about to be conned by a sales drone).

Because I have lots of other important things requiring my attention, I just let this thing sit… probably because it already dawned on me by then that I got conned by the bastard. And sure enough, the typical “sorry, no Streamyx for you… but you’re now on our fsckin’ waiting list” letter arrived.

Bloody bastard… but anyway, the moral of the story is: TMNet will work harder if it wasn’t a god damn fscking monopoly with no taxpayer money tit to suck on. So, help your fellow Malaysians: sign the damn petition! The future of Malaysian broadband penetration depends on you!

I just noticed this, it seems that Gmail has doubled the storage size for its email accounts. It is now at a whopping 2GBs!

Heck, I don’t even use 1MB of my current gmail account, and I wonder how anyone would even use up the original 1GB offering by Gmail, and now they have doubled the size.

Anyway, I got lots of Gmail invites to spare, so if you want one (I’d be suprise if there are folks out there who still don’t have a Gmail accout, or two), just drop a comment here and I’ll send you one.

I was reading this article (it’s in Malay, and this is Utusan we’re talking about… they’re like the mouthpiece of ultra-nationalistic Malayism in my damn opinion) while having dinner and I almost choked on my food. Basically the whole stupid article slams companies in Malaysia which specifically mentions proficiency in Mandarin to be a prerequisite for any vacancies advertisements.

Before I proceed, let me describe myself first before cries of “You racist bastard!” come up in the thick heads of some people. I’m a Malay guy living in a Malay household (why the hell would a copy of Utusan be in my house anyway… do you really think I like reading that shit? I’d rather read fine prints on pieces of toilet tissue), however, there are also Chinese and Indians in my extended family… in other words, I’m a true blue Malaysian. I see myself as a Malaysian rather than a Malay, much to the chagrin of the more right wing faction of society.

Read the rest of Like It Or Not, Mandarin Is Important »

My favourite DE, Xfce has a new point release, in fact, it’s the first point release of the 4.2 series. Downloads are available here.

I can’t find the damn changelog for this release, if anybody has an idea where it is, please drop a comment.

For those you who can’t find a binary package for your own distro (or *nix-like OS), but have neither time nor patience to compile Xfce from sources, you should check out the graphical installers from the guys at os-cillation.com. They work great! I know, I use them myself :).

Update: Xfce 4.2.1.1 has been released quickly after 4.2.1. It includes a fix for a bad bug where panel loses its configuration when saving the session in 4.2.1. Found the changelog for 4.2.1 here.

Pop quiz… How many “religious officers” (that’s my best attempt to describe these people… heck, not that I care about them that much anyway) in a country of 27 million of which roughly 50% are Muslims, are needed to ensure that uncooked and cooked food which are sold publicly are “Halal”?

One thousand? Five thousand? I just heard on TV3 News (you might not see the particular article anytime soon, they are not exactly “real time”), that the answer is… wait for this… six. 6… as in, between 5 and 7!!! Unbloodybelievable! Essentially, this means that there is one Islamic Development Department (JAKIM) officer looking after every 2.25 million Muslim Malaysians’ right under their religious dietary law. Unbloodybelievable!

And there’s more… the highly intellectual people at JAKIM know that they have “some” manpower issues at present, and that they are in the process of increasing the number of officers to 160 nationwide. So, instead of one officer for every 2.25 million Muslims, they think that one for every 84,375 would be a more logical ratio… ah well, whatever. They seem to be overlooking another key problem in their department, which is their bloody slow pace of getting things done.

I’ve seen hundreds of expired Halal stickers in food joints all around Malaysia. When I pointed out the issue with the owners, the response are always the same… “We’ve been calling those JAKIM folks forever! And every time, they say that they’re coming… but they never came!”. If I’ve only heard it once every blue moon, the stall/shop owners might be lying… but when everyone says the same thing… I tend to believe them. Perhaps it’s also due to my own experience dealing with governmental bureaucratic bullshit… especially by these inefficient clowns… but that’s a story for another day.

But I guess this is the Malaysian way lately… the government will only act when the media screams. Not that I’m complaining! Under the old leadership, the only purpose for the media’s existance seemed to be as a pro-government propaganda platform… I believe that we’re much better off now than we ever were for the past 20 years or so.