Category: Uncategorized

In light of the targeted attacks on the VC of UiTM recently, it just got me thinking about this whole issue with VCs. The attacks mainly focused on the VCs lack of academic qualifications and his personal political affiliations. While I can understand the political justification of such an attack, I cannot condone it as it is an undignified attack.

I should try to justify why I think that the attack was uncalled for. A VC is regarded as the Chief Executive of the university. Therefore, the VC is only responsible towards the staff and students of the university as well as the governing body of the university. This can be likened to a CEO being responsible towards his staff, customers and shareholders. Unlike a politician or public official, a VC does not serve the general public. So, for all intents and purposes, the VC is not a public office. If we condone public attacks on any VC, then we should declare open season on the CEOs of all companies, and anyone else in a position of leadership in any organisation, particularly those that are not answerable to us. Personally, I think that this is a crazy notion.

But the above article did get me thinking a bit about the position of a VC. So, I asked myself a simple question: What qualities should a VC have?

1. Management Skills
   As a CEO of a university, a VC’s job is that of strategic leadership and management. Therefore, a VC should be someone with strong management capabilities rather than academic ones. In fact, the current VC of the University of Oxford is an industrialist, with many years of experience as a director on many prominent New Zealand companies, before becoming the VC of the University of Auckland, then Oxford.
2. Credentials
   While it is highly preferable for a VC to be an academic, it is evident that it is not necessary. Saying that a VC must be an academic, is like saying that the CEO of a technology company has to be a chartered engineer. This is an entirely fairy tale notion. It is preferable and would definitely be very nice, but it is most certainly unnecessary. If it was necessary, we would not have any iPods to buy, nor would we have Wall-E to love.
3. People Skills
   A VC needs to get things done in a university through other people. This is where academic credentials may come in handy, to curry respect from fellow academics. But unless the VC is a Nobel prize winner, his/her academic credentials are unlikely to better that of the staff. And we all know that there aren’t enough Nobel prize winners to go around, even at Cambridge. So, a VC has to be able to command respect in other ways. One way to do that is through internal relationships with the other staff. If everyone knows you well and knows that you can do the job, you will command authority.
4. Networking
   But the bigger job of the VC is to bring in the big money to the university, just like it is the job of a CEO to search for funds for a company. In this particular case, academic credentials are not going to help much, but people credentials will play a bigger role. Building and exploiting external relationships and networks are vitally important in this respect. So, being well connected is a potential plus for a VC as long as he/she can exploit that connection.

So, looking at things this way, is the UiTM VC a suitable candidate for the job? From what little public information is available, he has got all of the qualities nailed down, at least on paper.

1. He is trained in administration. He graduated with a Diploma in Public Administration from ITM, worked as an Executive Officer in the Malaysian Treasury, obtained his BA in Economics and MA in Sociology from Ohio University, and obtained his PhD from the University of Maryland in Government and Politics.
2. He has little academic credentials. His publications include “Gaya Hidup Remaja Masa Kini. (1997) Shah Alam: Biroteks, Institut Teknologi MARA” and “Pendidikan Bermutu Masyarakat Sejahtera. (1990) Kuching: Education Department, Sarawak”.
3. He is a UiTM lifer. Besides a short stint in the Treasury, he has spend the rest of his career in ITM and UiTM. Therefore, he knows everyone and everyone knows him.
4. He has political connections. He founded an UMNO club in the US and was a former President of that club, served as a UMNO youth leader and committee memer of UMNO Youth.

But I do agree that the manner of his appointment can be improved. I personally can’t tell if he is the right person or not, without interviewing him. So, calling for a selection committee is a good idea. The VC can be internally promoted or externally searched. The job of the committee will be to vet the candidates. Just like the hiring of a CEO requires board approval, the VC can be hired if he/she is approved by the governing body of the university (i.e the Senate).

PS: I wrote this entry at 5am. It is a brain fart. Don’t ask my why. E&OE as usual. Now, I can go back to sleep.

This entry started out as a response to a blog comment. But since it turned out to be rather lengthy, I decided that it might as well be a whole new blog entry on its own. I would like to first state that although New Era is used as an example here, it is not any form of indictment. It was just the first institution to pop into my head, since it is located near a school that I once went to. Nostalgia.

UiTM and New Era are both essentially single-ethnic institutions. You can say that they are different and yet the same. One is founded by MARA, with its clear mandate on providing direct intervention towards the bumiputera. The other is founded by Dong Jiao Zhong (Chinese Education Association), which is clearly focused on only one particular group of people. Anyone who does not read Chinese or uses Konqueror will have difficulties surfing their website.

While I cannot prove that New Era discriminates against any particular group of people, neither can I prove that they don’t. The official wording on their website is: “Committed to multi-cultural, holistic and socially responsible education.” However, reality paints a slightly different picture.

I checked the latest list of students admitted, only to find that it is 100% of one ethnic group. So, if I extrapolate this and assume that every intake has the same composition, then I can safely assume that it is a single ethnic institute. But since I do not know the actual numbers, I could possibly be wrong. So, let’s just call it 95±5% using engineering notation. The question then is whether this is by circumstance or by choice.

It is possible to argue that UiTM is single ethnic by circumstance, its circumstance being that it is founded by MARA. Therefore, it is mandated to discriminate against certain groups of people. But at least, it is honest about it. It is quite possible that New Era is single ethnic by circumstance and that nobody from any other ethnic group bothers to apply. This is not true because there is a single Malay on its waiting list.

But it can also be argued that it is made difficult for people from other groups to apply, which is discrimination by definition. Looking at the application form, there is only a box for a Chinese name and an English name. The name Mohamad bin Abdullah is neither Chinese nor English. So, the forms were obviously not designed with everyone in mind. But since my Chinese is as useful as my French, I may have misunderstood the forms.

Some will argue that New Era is privately funded and can therefore do whatever it pleases, which is perfectly understandable enough. However, UiTM is MARA funded and can therefore do whatever MARA pleases. But ultimately, both institutions are funded by individuals like you and me. So, the argument is moot.

Personally, I think that until the day that everyone in Malaysia is willing to give up their last bastions of any racial identity, we will always have racial based institutions that continue to propagate racial based thinking and further polarise the country. So, if we want all the walls to be taken down, the only way is to take down everything race based starting with all the political parties.

PS: I wrote this while half awake and feeling hungry. So, E&OE as usual.

I had previously written about the D945GCLF board from Intel that comes with their new flagship Atom 230 low power processor. I had investigated its use as a potential HTPC platform as it is an integrated platform that is powerful enough to playback almost all kinds of video content. There is also little argument that it is a low power platform, which is important for a machine that will be placed in the living room.

Up till today, the only other alternative seemed to be the VIA Nano processor platform. It is another low power platform that is in direct competition with the Intel offering. AMD seemed to have little to offer as an alternative. But a detailed benchmark released today from Tom’s Hardware has blown all prior expectations.

They took an underpowered Athlon 64 processor and under clocked it at 1GHz versus the 1.6GHz speed that the Atom runs at. They coupled this processor with an advanced HTPC focused motherboard that has a modern Radeon 3200 graphics processor with built in HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs. The result is an AMD platform the runs faster while consuming less power than the Atom platform.

While the Atom platform requires 1 fan to cool down the main chipset, the AMD platform is capable of running without a fan on both the chipset and the processor. This allows it to run silent, which is fairly important for a HTPC. I would not want the HTPC fans to be drowning out any movie that I may be watching on it. So, this gave me an idea on options.

It may actually be better to build an AMD based HTPC system that runs completely silent. The price of the D945GCLF is listed as under RM250 for dealerships. The prices of the low powered AMD processors are pretty cheap. A low powered Sempron 64 LE-1150 is listed at under RM100 from the latest LowYat prices. There are a number of AMD motherboards that are priced from between RM150 to RM350, depending on the specifications.

From various benchmarks, the Sempron 64 is easily 3-4 times faster than the Atom and 2-3 times faster than the Athlon 64 2000. Although the fully loaded power is 60% higher than the Atom system, the idle power is only 8% more than the Atom. Another advantage to using the AMD system is that the processor can be replaced with a more powerful and lower powered one, when such a processor becomes available in the future. So, there is a further upgrade path available.

So, this is just another very plausible option to consider.

Notes: Sempron LE-1150 (RM90) LE-1200 (RM95) and GA-MA74GM-S2H (740G@RM240) A-S78H (780G@RM265) shelf price.

The hopes of an entire nation rested on his shoulders and I guess that it was a little too much to bear. As this was our country’s greatest hope for an Olympic gold medal, most of the Malaysians left in Cambridge gathered in my living room to watch the match and boy were we disappointed. It was so obvious from the beginning that it was a trashing, and not an even match.

For some reason, our Lee Chong Wei, was in horrible form today. The two of them have met each other many times in various international competitions. And it isn’t like Lin Dan won all of them. Chong Wei had defeated Lin Dan several times before. But today was not to be our day. Lin Dan was in superb form and trashed all our hopes and dreams. It was such a downer for me.

The support for Chong Wei is totally palpable. There have been so many blogs written about his semi-final match and people’s MSN messages were all in support of him. To think that the hopes and dreams of so many had been let down. I think that the manner in which he lost is a great contributing factor. We were all so depressed that he seemed to have given up hope. In the words of one of my friends, Chong Wei chuak liao. There were also accusations thrown of jampi and spiked food, entirely unsubstantiated of course.

I think that it is time to introduce squash as an Olympic event. Then, we’d be medal contenders for another game. Until then, better luck next time, to Lee Chong Wei! We are proud of you, nonetheless.

I have to say that I have been quite impressed so far, with the relative ease of use of Kubuntu. When I first bought this laptop of mine about a year ago, I did contemplate on whether to convert to 64-bit or otherwise. The new laptop came with a Athlon X2 processor that is capable of executing 64-bit code. There were both pros and cons to doing it and from my initial survey at the time, there were more difficulties than advantages.

The reasons to shift to 64-bit are mainly to do with memory and speed.

With a 32-bit computer, the maximum amount of memory that can be addressed without segmentation is about 4 gigabytes. However, due to the way that most modern PCs are constructed, some of this memory is reserved for accessing devices attached to the processor instead. However, I only have 2 gigabytes of RAM installed in this notebook anyway, and I will not require much more than that in the near future. So, there is no reason for me to switch to 64-bits for memory purposes.

With the use of 64-bit data paths, larger numbers can be computed at once. This will come in particularly handy for people who use a lot of large integers or double precision floating point numbers, which are typically used in scientific computing. Since I am not a user of these sorts of applications, I will not significantly benefit from using 64-bit computing. So, you may ask why bother switching then.

Due to the vagaries of the IA32 architecture used in most modern PCs, there are only 8 internal 32-bit registers in a processor. These registers are used to perform all the computational functions of a processor. Data is usually held in these registers and manipulated, before being stored in main memory. The AMD64 extension both doubles the size and number of register to 16 internal 64-bit registers. Technically, this means that more data can be processed inside the processor at a time, increasing speed.

So, there is technical justification for switching, but it was mainly due to the fact that I just wanted to try it to see.

All I can say that the experience was extremely fruitful. I completely reformatted, installed and updated Kubuntu to the latest version with KDE4.1 in just about 3 hours. I can attest to the fact that there were no significant issues with the switch. All the problems and workarounds that were needed in the past, seems to have been fully handled by Kubuntu automatically. For example, when I installed Firefox, it automatically installed nspluginwrapper, which allows the 32-bit flash plugin to work in a 64-bit environment.

As for the perceived performance advantages, I have experienced some aspect of it. Decompressing an archive is much faster than before, as well as compiling code. I have not yet tried encoding a DVD but I suspect that it should be much faster as well. This is not to say that there were not other problems with the installation, it’s just that these problems were also there in the 32-bit installation and I could fix them easily.

So, all in all, I think that it is a no brainer. I will install 64-bit linux on every other 64-bit machine that I get in the future. There is little reason not to anymore. And most importantly, the Atom 230 that I plan to get for my HTPC, supports the EMT64 extensions too.

Time to embrace the future!

The recent suggestion by our Selangor MB that UiTM (Universiti Teknologi MARA) open up it’s doors to people of other races and foreigners, has been met with all kinds of responses. To those who do not know, UiTM is pretty much a single-ethnic university, which was founded by MARA, a government agency created to funnel direct aid to a specific race. So, suggesting that the university turn away from its founding objectives is practically blasphemous, especially since it involves a racial right.

On one side, we have the people who believe that UiTM is the last bastion of education for their race. It provides its students a university degree and a chance at a life that many may not have otherwise. There is no denying that MARA serves a function. I was initially surprised when I first met several SPM Grade 3 holders who were on MARA scholarships, but after thinking about it a bit, I realised that MARA had a different set of objectives and criteria when awarding these scholarships.

Although such cases are extremely rare, MARA has already opened up entry to its junior colleges and also offers overseas scholarships to non-bumiputera for a decade. So, it is perfectly understandable that some people will feel threatened by the very suggestion of opening up a ethnic based university that is seen as many, as the last chance for some down trodden kids to do good. But what confuses me is the type of response that has come from the non-bumiputera side.

Many have taken this opportunity to vent their frustrations. The credibility of its VC has been challenged, the quality of its students have been questioned and the university itself has been a target of ridicule. Most have taken the stance that the university itself is useless and serves no purpose. Under such intense bias, I can perfectly understand why some 9,000 students of the university have come out in protest and promised to take further action if the sanctity of their institution is threatened.

Personally, I think that none of it is called for. The university has a function and a role, which many of us may disagree with. But while it is performing it’s duty, there is not reason to call it (or any of it’s members) names. The question of opening up UiTM affects more than just a single university, it questions the very existence of MARA. MARA has done a lot of good work in helping the bumiputera out of poverty. So, suggesting to dismantle such an institution, would obviously need to be thought through first.

Additionally, I feel that the very people calling it names and ridiculing the actions of its supporters, would do the very same thing if the situation was reversed. Assuming that the MB had called for the closing down of all vernacular schools instead, I can see the very same kind of irrational behaviour coming from the non-bumiputera of the country. In fact, I can imagine the whole thing flaring out of control, if it were to actually happen.

Personally, I see the MARA educational institutions in the same light as any other vernacular institution. Both sets of institutions are seen as the last bastion of whatever racial identity that they are designed to propagate. This is the crux of the problem. If we are to take apart one, it is only fair that we take apart all the others as well. In fact, I would strongly support this idea, if it was ever mooted. But it will take a suicidal politician to actually suggest standardising everything.

I’ve been having a lot of Boots meal deals for lunch recently. As a result, I have amassed a small collection of discount coupons for photograph processing. So, I decided to send a bunch of photographs in for processing yesterday. I ordered a bunch of 9×6 prints for next day processing. I went to collect the photos today and was told that there were problems with my order. They suspected me of breaching copyright and developing professional photographs.

So, I had to explain to them that I had taken those photographs myself using my own camera. The problem stemmed from the fact that I had embedded my signature brush on all of them. The people working there told me that the photos had a professional logo on it and asked me what it was. So, I had to explain to them that it was my signature and I even had to give them a sample of my signature. After comparing it with the signature brush in my photos, they decided that it was okay for them to release the photographs to me.

Well, that was good. I would have gotten into a fit if they did not release the photographs to me. I’m glad that they took the extra precautions to verify that the photographs actually belonged to me first. I guess that they have to do that with the strict intellectual property laws in the country. I doubt that they would want to be caught in any copyright infringement scandal. I guess that most professionals would not take their prints to Boots for processing.

As for the quality of the prints, I actually went to Boots to experiment. I wanted to see how the prints would come out in real life. As far as I can tell, the prints came out okay. Noise in the photographs were made more prominent in print than on screen. Dust specs on the lens appeared prominently on the photographs, especially against the sky. The colour saturation was just right although they seemed to have stretched the contrast a little.

So, this means that I’ll need to take photos at low ISO settings, and clean my lenses more often. At least, I should be very careful and treat my lenses with tender loving care. Also, I may not want to stretch the contrast of the photos too much. For post processing, I will just increase the colour saturation and correct the white balance. Prints tend to look duller and darker than on screen.

I still have another 5 coupons that I can use, which means that I can order another 75 large prints for a very cheap price. I’ll try to use up as many of them as possible, before I leave for home. It is certainly not cheaper to develop them at home