Category: Uncategorized

I have started shopping around for a new laptop. My current laptop has been turned into a desktop replacement device – it is sitting under a 23″ monitor that plugs into it. The reason for this is because my laptop screen has five vertical stripes right in the centre, where the pixels have gotten stuck. The batteries have a life-span of about 3 minutes and so, it is permanently plugged into the mains. My laptop is almost 3 years old and while it is still a working device, my lifestyle has changed and having a mobility device would be useful.

So, I have started to shop around for a light laptop model – something that I can easily carry around in a small sling bag. Most people would immediately say netbook, but I have never ever thought that netbooks were a good purchase. I fully intend to do some real work on my mobile laptop instead of just surfing the net and reading email. So, I will need a slightly more capable machine than a typical netbook.

As before, I will start to chronicle different models that catch my eye as I go shopping before finally deciding on one. The first model that caught my eye is the Acer Ferrari One. The model sold in Malaysia has the following interesting specifications:

CPU: AMD L310 - 1.3GHz Dual Core, 1MB L2 Cache
RAM: 4GB DDR2
HDD: 320 GB
GFX: ATI HD3200
DSP: 11.6" HD-Ready LED backlit

It comes with wireless and wired networking options, a multi-card reader, dolby speakers and much more. As for my own criteria, for my work purpose, I need to have certain features. The main processor must be a dual-core processor with hardware virtualisation capabilities so that I can run virtual machines in it easily. It should also have more than 2GB of RAM for simulation and virtual machine purposes. I got to test out the keyboard on a demo unit and it seems fairly capable. It claims a 5-hour life on the standard 6-cell battery.

This seems to be a quality machine at a very reasonable price of RM2199 retail.

Okay, not for me obviously but a good friend of mine is getting married! Just got an email about it. I’m so excited now that I cannot sleep, that’s why I decided to write a short blog entry on it to get my thoughts out. I am really happy for my friend. The reason that I am happy for my friend is because – I was getting a little worried about whether my friend would ever find the right person in life.

This got me thinking about a couple of tangential things – the only constant thing in life is change and that one can never know what is beyond the next bend in life.

To think that we’ve known each other for years and gone through quite a bit in our similar journeys. Sometimes, I do miss those early days when we were bright-eyed students just getting started. Several years down the road and our lives have moved on. Honestly, I think that good things come to good people in the end and my friend is a good and kind person.

Well, I certainly wish them the best – “white head till old”, “early born expensive child” and all that.

Google had just release data on the number of government requests it gets for both information and take-down on its services, including YouTube. Since I am naturally a concerned citizen of Malaysia (read: busybody), I decided to look at the numbers for our Malaysian government. Turns out that our government is not too concerned sending take-down nor information requests.

According to the raw data, our government did not make any requests for data at all and only made less than ten take-down requests, of which none of them were complied with by Google. It is really interesting for me to note that our government is more than willing to order a take-down of content without first doing proper investigations, which is the reason why they issued take-down notices without any corresponding request for data. So, it comes as no surprise if Google refuses to take-down the content that was identified without due-cause.

Our government really needs to buck up on this. The data presented is only for the second half of 2009. I wonder how it would look come the next general election, once campaigning starts to heat up.

We live in interesting times.

A random thought occurred to me the other day regarding the appointment of professionals as ministers in our various ministries in contrast to taking in politicians. My basic argument behind this is simple, divorce the politics out of the everyday running of the country. Elected politicians should stay within the legislative branch and leave the executive branch to people who are truly qualified.

The worst kind of minister is the kind who is appointed as a senator and then parked in a ministry to collect a fat check for no reason. This person is neither there on technical merit nor political support. This kind of minister just smells funny and is a lame duck. With neither superior technical skills and experience nor strong political support, this kind of minister will be hard pressed to convince anyone to do anything. So, this kind of minister will only sit there and collect a fat check at the end of the month.

Another reason for wanting a non-political minister is to ensure continuity. If a minister is appointed because he/she is the best person for the job, ideally, that minister would be able to do a job regardless of the winds of change. That person would not be held sway to the whims and fancies of the day but rather to do the right thing to get the job done. Practically, this would require that these ministers be granted certain immunity from legislative or judicial interference.

However, finding the right people like that would not be easy.

A friend of mine and I were just talking about how working in the civil service wipes away idealism really fast. So, I suggested that maybe we should make it compulsory for every Malaysian to serve a short stint in the civil service in order for us to learn the inner workings of government.

I suggested that we should just do it as a form of national service. Such things are practised in other countries, with national service, where young citizens can choose to serve in any branch of the civil service in order to learn a thing or two about how their country works.

We could replace the present 3-month national service with a 1-year internship or apprenticeship programme design for high-school leavers so that everyone can gain some valuable work experience and also learn a thing or two about our government and how things work. All this knowledge will help equip our young people with real-world experience and inculcate a spirit of nationalist pride.

I think that it is a much better use of our tax-dollars to pay these people a small allowance during this programme than to spend it on the facilities and logistics for running a 3-month long nationwide team-building camp. We would probably get a better ROI on it.

The programme could be structured in such a way as to rotate the kids between 3-4 departments for between 3-4 months each. If a kid was interested to be a lawyer, for example, they could apply to intern with our courts. If a kid was inclined towards medicine, they could intern at a hospital. I think that it would be invaluable to the kids as well.

Of course, I do not expect the kids to cure cancer or put people behind bars.

I just read this interesting article and it voiced out certain things that I have also been thinking about and certain ideas that I have been toying with. I think that I’ll write down my ideas here and see if anyone will give me any feedback. My personal HR policy is simple – the cost of losing an employee is more than the incremental cost it takes to implement a fair system.

The trouble with most companies is that salaries are kept secret – that is just a recipe for trouble if people find out that they are earning less than their underlings or if newbies are getting paid higher than senior people because they came in during a market boom. Also, promotions are another sensitive issue as superiors decide who to push up the ladder – another recipe for disaster as it encourages unethical behaviour due to imbalances in power.

Salaries
The article said that salaries should be objective and transparent and be pegged at a single value – I fully agree. I will go even one step further. There should only be four salary grades at maximum – Experts, Masters, Adepts and Noobs.

There is no need for intermediate salary grades as it just does not make any sense. Like I always say about grades – they are good as a relative indicator, not an absolute measure. It is easy to differentiate a noob from an expert but it is difficult to differentiate between different experts. Once a year, adjust everyone’s salaries accordingly to cater to market rates and inflation but everyone in the same grade gets the same pay.

My main argument for this is because salaries are used for bread-and-butter things. We use them to pay for our mortgages and bills. So, what is most important about salary is not their absolute values but rather that they come in at a fixed value regularly, which helps people plan their lives.

Now, if we want to reward performance, that can be done through other means like bonuses, dividends and royalties – depending on the nature of the job. These things are usually quite measurable. If a product sells well, people should get a share of the profits. There is little to hide here as well since these things are obvious.

Promotions
I would like to talk about something that the article did not address – that of promotions. Instead of having promotions from up the hierarchy – I feel that promotions should be from down the hierarchy. Placing promotions in the hands of the superiors is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. There are just too many ways to abuse this.

For starters, promotions should be peer-evaluated. In order to decide who gets promoted, everyone at the same grade sits down and votes on it. Peers are usually more honest with each other because they need to work with each other and they will know whether or not the others actually did anything worthwhile. Furthermore, they will be really stupid to promote someone useless to be their boss. This is self-regulating.

In addition, this should be extended to those working under the person. If someone were to be promoted, they would inherit more responsibility and probably run a bigger team. So, we need to be sure that they will make a good boss. The best people to decide whether or not they are good bosses would be their existing staff. Easy.

Just my 2 sen.

I just read an interesting quote on SAI and I thought that I should share it here:

Entrepreneurs should NEVER lie. Even exaggeration blows your credibility.

Obviously good salesmanship is important, as is how you present information. But having listened to thousands of entrepreneurs tell their stories over the years, I can tell you that the thing that immediately raised my suspicions was any statement that damaged the credibility of the entrepreneur.

Some entrepreneurs just don’t know what they’re talking about when they make grandiose claims and projections. Some have no idea how hard it is to succeed, what successful companies’ financials look like, etc. That’s called “cluelessness,” and it also hurts your credibility. But it doesn’t hurt it as much as lying.

NEVER lie.

A good principle to live by.