Here comes a combined rant, from the random tabs opened in Firefox, about Malaysia.
Bloggers and the law
A Barisan National representative has mentioned that the same laws apply to those of newspapers and journals, even in the cyber world. I do agree that slander and libel should be avoided on the Internet, and getting sued for that, is probably sensible. However, censorship like in printed media, should be avoided (and as far as I remember, the MSC promise was that there will be no censorship of the Internet). I’ve been silent about the Jeff Ooi/Rocky case, because plagiarism is not something that is easily proven. Did Jeff and Rocky incorrectly slander Brendan?
The New Economic Policy
I don’t consider the NEP new, because its been around for over thirty years. Malaysia is probably the only nation that helps the majority, to become incompetent. Yes, maybe that is a strong word, but there’s no real other description for it – housing discounts, education preference, job discrimination, sleeping partners, gains without merit and the list goes on. However, there are calls within UMNO to get rid of the NEP, which is excellent. Tun Musa Hitam states that “there was a need to have a change in mindset to draw investors to the country.” No interests in cronyism, nepotism, the NEP. Yes! I quote the article, again:
In the last few decades of the NEP, the country used to have an Ali Baba way of doing business where Ali would give his name and Baba would do all the work.
“As time went on, Ali and Baba became equal and Ali was able to deliver as much as Baba. Now, there are even Alis who are using the Babas not as sleeping partners but as equals,” he quipped.
Will we see change soon? Will people in Malaysia be recognized on merit? Not by their race, the strings that they can pull, and so forth? One can only hope, or succumb to the brain drain that is already happening.
Copycats
What is with Malaysia? A long time ago, there was a Friendster spin-off, called Kawanster. Now, there’s a Digg clone? Aizat has a pretty good analysis of this. He asks if this is the best Malaysia can do – copying, or apeing other products? I’m beginning to wonder, myself.
WiMax
Malaysia should have rocking Internet access soon, I do hope. No more tied down to Streamyx, but WiMax access for everyone. The Star reports:
The four winners are REDTone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd,
Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (formerly known as MIB Comm Sdn Bhd),
Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd and Bizsurf (M) Sdn Bhd (a unit of YTL-e
Solutions Bhd).
Those are the companies to be watching, when it comes to improving broadband in Malaysia.
Chevna
The Linux distribution du jour, for Malaysians? (yes, bandwidth limit exceeded now). These were the TrianceOS folk, now selling Ubuntu for between RM39.95-49.95. From what I gather, they use Ubuntu mainstream repositories, add to sources.list a few more repositories (like mediaubuntu, beryl, wine, etc.), and they also have a Chevna repository at http://www.chevna.com/chevna. Is this an act we should support? I mean, Ubuntu + a sources.list that’s sexy, isn’t something that I think is worth much. But lifetime e-support? For RM50? I believe they’re going to encounter problems – even basing it off an LTS release, it probably doesn’t make sense to support something for life. And what about hardware issues?
It remains to be seen what they gather over just selling support for Ubuntu per se (I’d say, RM50/year, for Ubuntu support might make sense). And the next LTS release from Ubuntu, will send out free media. If anyone has tried Chevna yet, please do post your comments – I’m interested in giving it a twirl, the moment they fix their bandwidth issues.
Technorati Tags: malaysia, bloggers, law, new economic policy, nep, copycats, digg, wimax, chevna, ubuntu, linux, distribution, politics