Month: February 2009

What can I say about this film. It has far exceeded my expectations. I had only bought it because there wasn’t much else left for me to buy. I have purchased a large number of Korean films from the local inventory. Since this film was relatively cheap, I thought that I would give it a try.

This is a seriously good film. It kept me at the edge of my seat, made me cry, and caused me to scream at one point. Instead of writing my own, I thought that I’d just quote one from the Internet:

Ex-cop pimp Jung-ho is irritated because his girls keep disappearing without clearing their debts. One night, he gets a call from a customer and sends Mi-jin. Jung-ho realizes the phone number of the customer matches that of the calls the missing girls got last. As something smells fishy, he searches for her. During his search, Jung-ho dents a car in the alley. When Jung-ho spots blood splattered on the driver’s shirt, he senses the man, Young-min, is the suspect. After an intense chase, Jung-ho catches Young-min. But because of Jung-ho’s pretense as a cop, they are both taken to the police station. At the station, the man bluntly confesses he has killed the missing women, and the last girl, Mi-jin, may still be alive. As the whole police force is obsessed with a random search for corpses, Jung-ho is the only one who believes Mi-jin is still alive. With only 12 hours left to detain the serial killer without a warrant, Jung-ho’s hunt begins, searching for Mi-jin entrapped in a place nobody knows.

All I can say is that this is one hell of a show. After watching so many Korean films, I’m starting to get a sense of their style of cinematography and story telling. This film is classic Korean with one heck of a story. I’d watch it again just to be able to scream out loud again.

I had, on recent occasion, an opportunity to play with the HP Mini Netbook for a few hours. After fooling around with it for a bit, I have come to the conclusion that it is really not suitable for me.

I’m sure that there are many people out there who find them utterly indispensable, evidenced by the growing Netbook market, but I doubt that I would find it very useful – except possibly as a CarPC (come to think of it, it would make a pretty decent CarPC).

I have two main peeves with the Netbook.

Firstly, the keyboard. While the HP Mini has the largest keyboard of all the present Netbooks in the market, it is still pathetically small. Typing on it is extremely erroneous but I’m sure that after some adjustment, it would get better with time.

Secondly, the monitor. All netbooks come with a very small screen (8″-10″) that is further plagued by a low resolution. I found myself bent over trying to use the screen. Increasing the font-size may help, but that will further reduce the effective work area on screen.

However, this is all just my personal opinion.

I can however, see netbooks replacing smart phones. If they built some 3G capabilities into device, it could easily become the business appliance of choice. You can not only check email on it but also do some serious work alongside. Plus, you wouldn’t need to compromise your browsing experience on a even smaller phone screen.

Now, if only Intel can come up with a better use for their Atom platform.

Bill Gates, infamous for releasing buggy software into the world, recently released a jar of mosquitoes at TED recently! He was quoted as saying, “there is no reason only poor people should be infected.” (He surely has a flair for the theatrics) Man, you’re my hero!

In Malaysia, we are presently having an outbreak of dengue. I remembered my British friend telling me about dengue with fear and trepidation and me smiling at him and thinking to myself – dengue, no biggie. Thing is, we get it all the time here. It’s endemic to this region.

Thing is, I don’t really understand all this fuss over dengue. According to this article, it has a 0.02% fatality rate. Seriously, 0.02% (mainly the babies and geriatrics).

Anyway, here’s the full video. He releases the mosquitoes at about 5:15 and talks a lot about how we can make great teachers from about 8 minutes onwards.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

PS: Before anyone accuses me of being a Bill Gates fan-boy, I have to say that I’ve always respected the man, regardless of his shortcomings.

Well, the dust hasn’t settled yet, but for the situation to even come to this stage is utterly laughable.

• The Sultan orders (by royal decree) the MB and the whole exco to resign. The MB is refusing to follow. This is just crazy. Doesn’t he realise that the Sultan has the legal authority to just banish him from the state if he feels like it? Once the Sultan makes his decision, it’s unwise to go against it.
• All sorts of people (who used to like the idea of defections) no longer like the idea of political defections. It’s nice that some people have finally had a taste of their own medicine. I’ve never been a fan of defections. I’ve always preferred the idea of re-elections.
• Senior UMNO politicians are condemning the defections. Dr M and Ku Li have openly criticised the way in which Perak was turned over to a ‘blue’ state again. Frogs like to jump. They can jump left one day, and right the next. It’s never a good idea to depend on frogs.
• There are massive public rallies planned for tonight. The PR are planning to use people power to pressure the Sultan into dissolving the state assembly and calling for fresh elections. I doubt that it would work but good luck anyway. Stay safe and don’t get hurt.
• The PR are filing legal challenges against the decision by the EC to recognise the frogs. As far as I can tell, this is too little too late. No amount of legal wrangling is going to change the fact that a royal decree has been issued. Even if the PR win the legal case, they will still need to deal with the Sultan.

Personally, I’m just kicking back and waiting to watch the show. It is darn funny.

I knew that it was too good to be true and it turns out that it was. There were lots of conflicting reports on an Indian $10 laptop. Turns out that the device is not a laptop but rather a storage device. So, instead of replacing the textbooks in class, they are going to replace school bags.

It is basically a over-glorified flash drive with a bluetooth connection. While this device would have had a great market about 7 years ago, this is not so big today. Storage prices are dirt cheap. You can get a 4Gb flash drive for under $10 and 4Gb can store a whole lot of text books and other reference materials.

However, I do like one the basic concept – which is to remove the whole idea of school bags entirely. A kid just needs to bring a thumbdrive to school, loaded with reference materials (including an entire encyclopedia). The kid can plug this into the school terminal and use it for lessons. Teachers can assign homework (on PDF forms) that students carry home and do it on their home computers. They then carry it back to school the next day to be evaluated by software. Snazzy!

We can already implement this today with USB thumb-drives. For RM26 ($7) retail, we can already buy a 4Gb thumbdrive. Anyone who grew up in the 90s like me, will remember using multi-media encyclopedias that fit on a single CD-ROM (700Mb). With newer compression technology, we can definitely fit even more information on this 4Gb drive. 4Gb is a lot of storage space.

All that is needed then, is a way to use the storage space effectively. Students would need to be provided with individual computer terminals in school. This may turn out to be cheaper than trying to give every child an individual laptop. Centralised terminals are much easier to deploy and maintain than individual computers. All we need is a system like the LTSP system.

Wow, this is most definitely do-able. Unfortunately, I’m not interested in it.

I don’t think that anyone really knows what is happening in Perak. Personally, I don’t even want to know. I just hope that the Sultan/Regent will make the right decision and leave such decisions to the people. Although I have been down for the last few days, I have been following events as best I could.

However, I would like to quote our opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim:

BN is trying to form the state government by hook or by crook – more by crook.

He says the funniest things sometimes. I assume that he is saying this in respect to the froggie state reps who have jumped ship to the BN. Funny thing is that he croons a totally different tune when someone decides to defect over from BN to the PR side. I guess that it is just another day at the office for these politicians. Just remind me never to turn into one.

E-Machines is not a brand name that is well known in Malaysia. After being bought by Gateway (which was subsequently bought by Acer) several years ago, they seem to have languished and been forgotten but I have recently spotted a unit at a local computer store. The EL1700 is destined to be a HTPC machine.

At a glance, it has:

• Intel E2200@2.2GHz processor
• 1GB RAM
• GeForce 7100 graphics
• nForce 630i chipset
• VGA and HDMI video outputs
• 5 Audio ports and S/PDIF audio outputs
• Multiple memory card readers

Its VGA and HDMI ports mean that it can be connected to any LCD-TV unit with ease. The 5.1 and S/PDIF audio outputs enable it to output sound to any low or high end sound system. The integrated memory card reader allows photos from digital cameras to be viewed. Most importantly, it has a built in PCI/E port for adding a suitable TV capture card.

Wow!

My main concern is power. I’m pretty sure that the ‘active’ power usage will be higher than an Atom based system. However, ‘passive’ power usage should not be too bad. I will definitely hibernate the machine when it is not in use, which will be most of the time. Until I actually measure the power consumption using a DMM, I won’t trust any power consumption numbers released by the manufacturers.

PS: It does not look half bad either. You can even lie it down flat.