i.justrealized

Seems like another loss for privacy advocates. On a lighter note, at least Blackberry can continue to function.

CrackBerry addicts rejoice: No ban in India. For now.

At an eleventh hour meeting with government officials Monday, Research in Motion (RIM) caved in to India’s demands for access to users’ emails and other data to avoid an immediate ban on its encrypted data services.

Under the agreement, RIM will immediately implement systems to grant “lawful access by law enforcement agencies” to customer data, India’s Home Ministry said in a statement. The
regulatory bodies will evaluate the feasibility of this arrangement for the next 60 days, even as India presses forward with demands to force not only RIM, but also Google and Skype to set up servers for hosting customer accounts in India — which would facilitate easier access to private data and wire tapping of voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) phone calls. (via Globalpost)

To be honest, I don’t think this would work. If users are really going to send something really secret, there are still ways to do that unless encryption is entirely outlawed. What if the government monitor these supposedly encrypted messages and use them to gain competitive advantage in business that they have an interest in? I would rather trust corporations than government here.

Our population has reached 5.08 million in a recent survey by the local statistics department. Singapore has always been a country that welcomed foreigners and they have played a part in our success. Our forefathers are largely foreigners too and without them we won’t be here.

Here’s the related the blog article:

S’pore population tops five million, one in three are foreigners

SINGAPORE, Tuesday 31 August 2010 (AFP) – Singapore’s population crossed five million this year and more than a third of the total are foreigners, the statistics department said Tuesday.

The city-state’s total population stood at 5.08 million people at the end of June, it said in a statement.

Of the number, 3.23 million are citizens, 540,000 are foreigners with permanent residency and 1.3 million are foreign professionals and workers along with their dependents, resulting in a 36% share for foreigners in the general population.

The population growth rate was 1.8% in 2010, reflecting a slowdown in the number of permanent residents and foreign workers being admitted into the country, the department said.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong acknowledged the problems in a speech on Sunday and vowed to review immigration policies, cap new foreign hiring this year and enhance benefits accorded to citizens. (via Yahoo Singapore News FTP)

I feel there’re some unjustifiable resentment towards foreigners. Had Singapore not opened the country to foreigners in the 1900s, many of us probably won’t be here. In the 1900s, people are just here to earn some money back home. No one’s probably loyal to Singapore. We went through a world war to bring about this loyalty and this sense of belonging. Foreigners who did not leave Singapore during the 1940s (yes, they probably have nowhere to run to, too) fought for Singapore and later earned their right to be called Singaporeans. Foreigners today don’t have the chance (and thankfully they didn’t) to earn the title “Singaporean” in a similar way. The most they can ever do is to work in the country and thereby contributing to the economy. Today, we seem to be overvaluing our right as citizens when we haven’t do a thing. We just happen to be born in the right place.

Now, what is the difference between a foreigner and a citizen? Have we undervalue their presence? We are citizens and are enjoying the wealth that the country has produced. We are just refusing to share it with foreigners, aren’t we?

I’m just asking that we reexamine how we reached the conclusion that foreigners are not good for Singapore and why we can make claim we are better off. Is curbing the foreigner influx just a convenient way to ease, what appears to be, overpopulation?

[I am a Singapore by virtue of birth and I count myself lucky since day one. I've just heard one too many negative remarks toward foreigners.]

Haa! Final Fantasy mod for Starcraft 2. Very convincing:

Starcraft 2 Mod – Final Fantasy 0.2

As you all likely have known, Starcraft 2 is out but it is not within my financial comfort to make purchase of the game. I was in a game shop last week and came really near, like 20 cm, to purchasing the hugely popular game that I have been attracted to for, well, nostalgic reasons. However at almost a hundred dollars, it just strikes me as a rip off and I hate having the feeling of being ripped off.

Perhaps I am not that a big gamer to begin with; I love games but I love my $100 more.

Oh yeah, the Jack Neo incident. I can’t comment on it till today. I never know about Jack Neo that much until today actually. At some point of time I thought he was gay and I started to know he is a family man and all respected family man gave their household a Mitsubishi Electric air-conditioner. (We had an LG aircon which gave us trouble so Jack Neo probably is right.) I never had much an impression till his recent press announcement of his infidelity.

My mom thinks it’s shocking. She couldn’t believe what has happen; I mean, after all, it’s the Jack Neo whose movies she grew to find so lovely. Sure it is shocking but I am just shocked that others can harp about it for a week. More shocking is the reaction of the journalists who blockade the exit even though Jack Neo’s wife looked like she fainted.

So to the question that I was recently asked — will I watch Jack Neo’s movies again?

Yes I will. In fact I haven’t watched Jack Neo movies much but now I have noticed him and so yes I am watching his films in the cinema quite soon I hope. Had the scandal not happened today, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t know about the movie.

I’m frustrated with courier services. They haven’t been as punctual as I hope for.

They give a time range, nine to twelve, where I woke specially to prepare for a delivery. I stayed and waited.

And waited. (x100)

It’s half-past-damn-twelve and my package did not arrive. If they claim they would come between 9 to 12, I expect them to come at around 10:30 by rule of averaging. I can’t wait any longer and I’m leaving to 24seven office right now.

This is not the first time this particular delivery is missed. I hope one day courier services would at least send an SMS to inform me that they cannot make it or something.

This is the first time since a decade ago where I buy a computer with an OS fully installed. I almost have no recollection how easy this supposed to be. When I received my MacBook Pro earlier in the day I had thoughts on how I have to set things up.

It was delivered (finally) at half past 4. My brother and I opened the package which presents itself well and earned an excellent first impression. I switched on the MacBook Pro and was delighted it just works. (That’s not to say that others computers don’t.)

I begin by trying out all the eye-candy stuff, the dashboard, the expose and made sure I opened each and every application to see how it looks like. Then I played with the System Preferences, probably that excites the geek part of me.

Instead of getting Mac OS X to suit me, I decided not to do any custom settings and use all those System Preferences as default. I explored around like a kid with a new toy and felt Apple delivered the experience.

Then my frustration sets in. All the function keys require the ‘fn’ to be held down. I don’t mind if the controls that took over are useful, but it’s being replaced with crap like backward, forward, play buttons that is just unnecessary. There’s no Home button. And I still have no idea how to get the Num Pad out, or is there even one?

The first thing I installed was, well, Windows 7. Please don’t scream at me. It’s the nearest I could get to something familiar. Windows 7 works for a while and start giving my blue screens then black screens then no screens. I tried resurrected it by starting the recovery console where my brother and I stared at the damn forever-progressing progress bar left to right till we got dizzy. It didn’t fix itself. I switched off and went back to Mac OS X.

It’s destiny I tell you.

I haven’t exactly thought of programming as a chore. And I am always quick to admit that I am not a good programmer, it just so happened to be what I do better in.

Lately, programming has been turning into a tiny chore and I hope it doesn’t enlarge itself. I overcome it partially by adding interesting things to do into the project so it felt a little more fun and probably can gain myself a little more satisfaction. I define “interesting things” to be something I never done before and have a high chance of getting it right. However, these “interesting things” aren’t good for me because I ended up having to maintain these interesting things.

My work generally involves – development, maintaining. I think I am supposed to squeeze testing and planning in somewhere in the steps but I don’t give a crap about those management level definitions.

Development is always the more fun part. You make something in 10 hours and watch it work. However you may end up watching it work for 10 days leaving your eleventh day in front of the computer debugging for the next 5 hours. This process typically recurs and the base case is the termination of product.

I don’t have a good solution for it but I need a constant feed of “interesting things”. So during maintenance, I added in those “interesting things” which is really just a curse. These “interesting things” come back and haunt me; and I end up having to maintain these “interesting things”. And during the maintenance of these “interesting things”, I added…