Category: Uncategorized

Since I have not read about this in the recent issue about the use of certain words (look to the right image) in Malaysia, a thought just occurred to me – that the crazy hard-lined Muslims are painting themselves into a corner. They keep saying that Allah refers to the Muslim God and that the Christian God should be referred to as Tuhan instead. Now, it occurred to me that our national anthem uses the word Tuhan a lot. Let’s see.

Negaraku, tanah tumpahnya darahku,
Rakyat hidup, bersatu dan maju,
Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,
Raja kita, selamat bertakhta.
Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,
Raja kita, selamat bertakhta

Those two lines roughly translate into “Blessings of happiness, may God grant”. Now, to me, it seems odd that on the one hand, these same crazy hard-lined Muslims would want everyone to think that Malaysia is an Islamic state while at the same time, asking the Christian God for blessings every time that they sing the national anthem. To me, it is just odd and implies that Malaysia might be a Christian state. Otherwise, we would not be asking the Christian God for blessings. But this obviously is not true.

Now, on top of this, let us look at our national creed.

Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan
Kesetiaan kepada Raja dan Negara
Keluhuran Perlembagaan
Kedaulatan Undang-undang
Kesopanan dan Kesusilaan

There you go again. See, our national creed tells us that first and foremost, we must believe in the Christian God. Now, I may not understand this but according to the crazy hard-lined Muslims, the Christian God and the Muslim Allah are two different entities. I am ignorant and jahil in these matters but it has something to do with the rejection of the Holy Trinity concept by the Muslims.

And if we take this with the first Islamic kalimah – لا إله إلا الل – Muslims must only believe in the one and only God, in this case Allah and so, this means that no Muslim can uphold the concept of our very own Rukun Negara, which kinds of spells doom for Malaysia seeing that about 60% of the citizens are Muslim. Additionally, it seems to imply again that Malaysia is founded in the Christian tradition as even our national creed tells us to believe only in the Christian God. Once again, this is obviously untrue.

Now, before anyone accuses me of sedition or anything crazy like that, I do love Malaysia and I think that all this is just crazy. I do not agree that Malaysia is an Islamic state and I do not think that it is a Christian one either. Malaysia is, and always will be, a beautifully harmonious multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious state. Let’s all just stand at attention, and sing the national anthem and remind ourselves of its real meaning.

Government and politics should stay the hell out of religion.

My brothers and sisters in the crazy hard-lined Muslim community, do not be jahil and please remember the first wahyu that Prophet Muhammed (pease be unto him) received from Gabriel. Make sure that you truly understand things before taking a stand.

And to those idiots fire-bombing churches, you do realise that you are attacking the wrong churches, don’t you?

This is a feature on Al-Jazeera 101 East programme. At least the panel is not so brainless this time around. Even the ABIM dude was at least eloquent even if he is what I would consider a bodoh sombong person – a confident idiot.

As I had feared – the dubbing leaves much to be desired. The range of emotion is just not there! While there are plenty of experienced anime voice actors in Japan, Square probably could not afford to hire top Hollywood/Broadway/West-End English voice actors. Sadly, they have got the money so I don’t see why they could not put more effort into the International version.

However, the graphics are spectacular! The teardrop at the beginning of the trailer really shocked me. I wonder how much time someone spent on coding that piece of trick. I don’t recall seeing such beautifully rendered tears in any game. I hope that this is a sign of games to come and that developers have begun to come to terms with the console hardware architecture.

I asked around and the Japanese version of FF13 is retailing for almost RM400 in Malaysia. These local vendors really know how to make money. I will probably buy it from the UK when I go back there next time.

I have a favourite saying that my colleagues have begun to use – stupidity does not discriminate.

I am currently attending a short course conducted by Dr Bradley Jensen from Microsoft. I like him already. He was really honest when he stressed to us that CMMI is only good for one thing – documenting failures. That put our Director of Quality on the defensive. He added that this did not just apply to CMMI but whatever else we had in place – whether it be Six Sigma and what nots.

Everyone in the room laughed. You see, those of us that do the actual development have known this for ages. The only people who believe in the religion of Quality and pray to the God of Six Sigma in the temple of CMMI are people who have never done any sort of actual development. I liked what a colleague of mine once said – the Quality people know just enough about engineering to be dangerous!

I will blog more about why these things don’t work in a later entry. It is very simple to understand and Dr Bradley Jensen actually mentioned it as well. Unfortunately, during the break, poor Dr Bradley Jensen got accosted by all the senior staff of the Quality department. Shame on them!

This machine is the perfect Mac mini Server killer! Curiousity got the better of me today and I decided to see what Dell had to offer in terms of a small form factor machine that might be useful as a Net-serv. When I hit the website, I was instantly drawn by the Inspiron Zino, the perfect net-serv device – and it is only retailing for RM899!

The base configuration comes with:

CPU: Atom 230
RAM: 1Gb
HDD: 160Gb
GFX: GMA 950
ODD: DVD-RW
OS : Ubuntu 9.04!


That is right, you saw it! Dell is officially selling machines pre-loaded with Linux, in Malaysia!

This machine is only 899 and if I can use the RM80 discount coupon for this week, that goes down to RM819 only! And it is so small that it sits in a nice 8″x8″ space, which will fit nicely into my server rack. However, I do think that this might be a little pricey considering that it only comes with such entry-level specs. It would have been killer if it came with an Atom330, 2Gb of RAM and at larger hard disk. That would have just sealed the deal for me. I tried customising the device but it was not possible on the Dell website.

As it is, for an additional RM300, you can get the HD version that would be splendid as a HTPC! The Inspiron Zino HD comes with the following specs:


CPU: AMD 2850e
RAM: 4Gb
HDD: 500Gb
GFX: ATI 3200 (780G)


For an additional RM300, that is an excellent buy. Even the RAM and HDD upgrades alone would already be worth RM300, not to mention the better processor and better graphics including HDMI output. Excellent! Either of these machines would be wonderful as a little server sitting in the corner. However, I get the feeling that this machine just doesn’t want to stay quiet in the corner.

Let us all take a page out of science fiction – Babylon 5. Watch the whole thing. The message to take away is this – let us all rejoice in our diversity instead of trying to stake a claim of rights over certain words or burning down certain buildings. As a self-professed religious atheist, I do not see the logic in such madness.

Delenn: Exactly what sort of demonstration does he have planned?
Lt. Cmdr. Susan Ivanova: He just said it’d showcase Earth’s dominant belief system.
Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair: All right, we’re all set. If you’ll come this way.
Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair: [shaking hands or bowing or giving the appropriate gesture] This is Mr. Harris. He’s an atheist. Father Cresanti, a Roman Catholic. Mr. Hayakawa, a Zen Buddhist. Mr. Rashid, a Moslem. Mr. Rosenthal, an Orthodox Jew. Running Elk, of the Oglala Sioux faith. Father Papapoulous, a Greek Orthodox. Ogigi-ko, of the Ebo tribe. Machukiak, y Yupik Eskimo. Sawa, of the Jivaro tribe. Isnakuma, a Bantu. Ms. Chang, a Taoist. Mr. Blacksmith, an aborigine. Ms. Yamamoto, a Shinto. Ms. Naijo, a Maori. Mr. Gold, a Hindu. Ms….