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.

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

Controversial content in AWARE’s sex education programme sparks debate

SINGAPORE: The debate over the sexuality education programme by the Association of Women for Action and Research boils down to a 15-minute segment of its three-hour workshop, TODAY has learnt after obtaining on Wednesday pages of the group’s Comprehensive Sexual Education: Basic Instructor Guide.

The section in question defines terms such as “anal sex”, “virginity”, “teenage pregnancy” and “homosexual”. As part of the workshop exercise, students are asked to associate these terms according to three categories: Positive, neutral and negative.

The rest of the guide deals with topics such as body image, HIV/Aids, contraception and relationships. But it is the description of terms such as homosexuality and anal sex that appears to be at the heart of the contention raised by self-declared “feminist mentor” and senior lawyer Thio Su Mien.

She took issue with homosexuality being seen as a neutral, not negative, word.

AWARE’s former programme manager Deeksha Vasundhra said the definitions are for instructors to facilitate discussions.

The “private and confidential” guide is never given to students, she said.

While the majority saw the importance of educating their children on sexuality and making the right choices, many also questioned the handling of controversial topics and the explicitness of the material.

“It’s okay to let them know (about sex) but not to this extent. I don’t want my son to learn such explicit things,” said Ms Nor, a mother of three.

Father of six, Rizan Jantan, 45, felt children could approach parents and “we can explain to them (right from wrong).”

A mother of two boys said it was “all natural”, while businessman Chung Toh Keong, 56, felt such issues should be taught, since we “don’t dare talk about such taboo topics”. (Source: ChannelNewsAsia)

What caught my attention is Ms Nor’s comments where she agrees with sex education but prefers it to take a slightly conservative approach where issues such as “anal sex” and so on are not discussed. Is ignorance really bliss? Should there be limits as to where sex education should discuss? Wouldn’t it be just a matter of time (at the rate things are going) these issues become common discussions?

The open-minded Christian

It saddens me as a Christian ( which I believe literally should mean aspiring to Having a Christ like mind)) that the people who bear this name seem to have forgotten His commandment LOVE GOD AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS YOURSELF there is no othe rcommandment greater than these.

They have forgotten that it was the very act of loving and sitting with sinners that Christ was accused just as the new committee are accusing the old guard.

There is no commandment in the Bible which tells you to mattack anf make the already painful life of homosexuals harder. Please do not pick and pluck to justify your own agenda

It seems to me that the only people who have the mind like Christ are the old guard

truthFirst, April 25, 2009 Saturday 12:22 PM

I didn’t go to church today for various reasons (mainly deadlines to meet). On a side note, the world is changing and Christianity in America is in the decline.

In the name of Total Defense

Someone even brought in the Total Defense strategy. Do humans exist to serve these so-call strategies that humans come out with. Strategies will morph to suit the purpose of national defense.

Promote Lesbianism? What does that do to our already low procreation rate?

Where are we going to get our babies from..Where are our future soldiers going to come from ?

Where are going to get the next generation of workers and tax payers to look after the mid age and the elderly of today?

What does this do to our Health budget when STDs rise and gays demand cloning of babies?

Allowing gay activism and promotion in our schools will confuse our little girls.

This undermines our Total Defence Strategy.

Promoting Lesbianism is anti Nation building activity. Period – Shut down the lesbian movement before they shut down our beloved country with their deviant agenda !!!

Don’t be neutral. Think about the long term viability of our nation. Go to the EGM and stand up for decent family values and the Nation. Majullah Singapura!!!

nobird, April 25, 2009 Saturday 10:36 PM

I always get pissed when someone suggests cloning of babies. It’s not so much of it being unethical, it’s more of it being unneeded. Almost no one wants to see it, it’s out of touch and irrelevant in this era.

Gay movement liken to a virus invasion

Everyone is entitled to his or her own conviction. However to spread your own conviction to children without serious consideration, is like spreading virus to a healthy person. It can affect or be harmless depends on the immunity of the children. However do you think the old EXCO did the right thing? If those who think that old EXCO did the right thing by spreading the message that it was all right to have gay marriages, then there is nothing more to discuss. God bless these members of society.

csanson2004, April 25, 2009 Saturday 11:41 PM

And another suggest a quarantine

what about ALL those GAYS in local universities and tertiary institutions ?? ALL those GAYS in local universities are very disgusting , very very disgusting , they have AIDS AIDS virus , many of them have AIDS AIDS virus and they are spreading the AIDS AIDS virus to everybody . Why can’t they sent ALL these GAYS to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison ? ALL these GAYS in local universities and tertiary insitutions should be sent to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison They are spreading AIDS AIDS virus to everybpdy Why can’t they sent ALL these GAYS in local univerisities to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison ? or the least they should be expelled from the local universities They are spreading AIDS AIDS virus to everybody They should be sent to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison, ALL these GAYS in local universities and tertiary institutions should be sent to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison

josiewong, April 26, 2009 Sunday 04:52 AM

I don’t have much opinion on the issue actually. I’m not even sure if AWARE is a Christian organization or it is just a general women issues organization. (I’m often unAWARE of the news.) If they’re affiliate to a religion, it is fine to spread the anti-gay sentiments as they believe. If they are not affiliated to any religion, then there is no enforcement required at all. Just don’t mix religion into any non-religious organization. I don’t think much people care about gay issues anyway.

Ultimately everyone has the right to choose what they believe in. If the organization does not align with your beliefs and you do not wish to accept their beliefs, then you’re just hijacking the organization, you really should be starting your own.

Interesting, this has become a wonderful opportunity for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) to spread awareness to the public, many of whom probably don’t care of their existence. The LGBT and Christian-haters seem to have form some sort of alliance or something. The enemy of my enemy is my friend?