I recently came across this article on 7 bad signs that you should not work for a company, mainly applying to software companies.
I do not know whether to laugh or cry. I think that I’ll just laugh it off then. Ha!
And the rumours are finally confirmed! The PS3 slim is coming out on Sept 1 for a cheap price of $299! Yeay! The reason that I am celebrating is because this price drop will finally put the PS3 in direct competition with the other best selling console, the Wii. It will also finally put the PS3 into a price-range that I can justify spending on without justifying my spending. Here’s me hoping that the price will translate directly into RM1049 or something in that range (currently retails for RM1599 everywhere).
I love it. This means that I will finally be able to play GTA4 and Fallout3 in all its glory. Plus, I already have my HDTV. So, I can safely go and buy myself a PS3 once it is out!
Found it, loved it! Sharing it…
There are some rumblings within cabinet walls on dropping the required ‘third field’ that every Malaysian has to fill on every form in the country, regardless of its use – the question of race. The rumblings say that the government will consider dropping the field from official forms except where the issue of bumiputra status comes into being. While I think that the question should be dropped entirely, this is at least a step in the right direction.
In the UK, they ask for ethnicity profiling on many forms as well. However, these are invariably disclaimed as merely for statistical purposes and can be filled or not by the applicant. Even if the applicant chooses to respond to the survey, they are free to submit it anonymously as well. In Malaysia, we do not have this choice as we have to pick a side when filling any sort of official form.
You see, the government has nothing to lose by dropping the question. On the public side, people will see a visible change in the forms and interpret this as a subtle shift in government policy. On the government side, nothing needs to change as people can continue to be profiled by race. You see, it is far to easy to sort out most Malaysians from the way we look and from our names itself.
I have been playing around with the issue of race on official forms since coming home. I have tried filling all kinds of things into the field and ultimately, the person who is entering my information from a form into a computer database, inevitably selects ‘Cina’ as the field. This has happened in banks and also at government offices. I am invariably listed as a ‘Chinese’ in all the official documentation regardless of what I chose to fill into the form.
So, the government truly has nothing to lose and can gain a little PR victory. They would be able to earn some brownie points with the rakyat and use this in whatever campaigning that they do.
Once in a while, I come across someone who wonders why I have such an interest in working with microprocessors. Often, these people would tell me that microprocessors are already a commodity and there is no value in working with microprocessors anymore. Whenever I hear this, I just smile and walk away. There is no reason to argue with people who do not understand microprocessors and what they actually do.
Microprocessors are definitely a commodity today, but only specific kinds of microprocessors with no applications – the venerable general purpose microprocessors. You can license, buy and get various architectures that will happily solve your problems until you actually try to solve some really cumbersome real-world problems and realise that your microprocessor lacks the computational power to do it.
There are still two diverging areas for microprocessors to evolve through.
One, microprocessors can evolve vertically to become more and more application specific. We already see that happening in the evolution of DSPs and other multi-media processors. However, these are basically specialised architectures of generic processors that turn them into much better number crunchers than commodity processors. In fact, most commodity processors have such ‘extensions’ built into them. Extrapolate this and you will see that as the market evolves, processors will also evolve to cater to more and more application specific uses.
Two, microprocessors can evolve horizontally to embrace more esoteric architectures in order to better model and solve real-world problems. In fact, commodity processors are very bad at solving a lot of real-world problems. Once you do anything more complicated than adding two numbers together, things start to fall apart. In fact, you can think of commodity processors as simple adding machines. Take the example of solving systems of partial differential equations, for example. Present day computer technology is particularly bad at solving these problems.
Furthermore, I am not even going into those computational realms of biological and quantum processors at all. Once those areas open up, things are going to get really hairy. So, anyone who thinks that microprocessors are dead, obviously do not know a thing about microprocessors. They are far from dead and there is still plenty of room to evolve and innovate.
It has been a while since I watched my last anime so I decided to get something to watch last weekend. I went to the store and as there were sales, I decided to get something that looked faintly interesting – with a nice animation and interesting storyline. In the end, I picked up “Vexille” and it turned out to be a fairly interesting film.
By the 2060s, robotics technology has advanced to the point that cybernetics have become plausible. World opinion begins to turn against robotics, leading to the U.N. declaring a unilateral ban on further research and development in 2067. Japan, being home to robotics pioneer Daiwa Heavy Industries, strongly protests this ban, but is unable to prevent its passage.
In protest, Japan withdraws from international politics. All foreigners are deported, and further immigration is prohibited. In addition, the R.A.C.E. network is constructed – a series of 270 off-shore installations that cover Japan with an energy field that distorts the entire electromagnetic spectrum, nullifying all communication between Japan and the outside world and making even satellite surveillance impossible. Trade continues, but for all intents and purposes, Japan vanishes from the world scene.
2077: A series of bizarre incidents lead the American technology police agency “SWORD” to believe that Japan has used the R.A.C.E network to conceal extensive development of banned technologies. They thus embark on an unapproved scheme to infiltrate Japan and determine the distortion frequency of the R.A.C.E. network, enabling SWORD to gather intelligence on the country . Among those chosen to make the attempt is a veteran agent named Vexille.
Personally, I am starting to grow enamoured by the cell-shading type of computer generated anime that has started to become affordable and popular out of Japan. The only draw back are their human articulation models. Sometimes, the movements just do not seem ‘right’ for some reason. However, this will only improve. Of course, the emotional element needs to be worked on as well but since this is an anime, the cell-shading works to its advantage.
I decided to go watch Tale-n-Time by Yasmin Ahmad, today. Since the cinemas were showing a limited re-screening of the film due to her recent passing, I thought that I should take the opportunity to catch it on the big screen. I fully intend to purchase the DVD at some point to complete my collection. So, I walked up to the box-office and got a ticket for the film. I was rather surprised that there were very few people actually catching the film. I pretty much got to sit wherever I wanted to.
Anyway, Yasmin outdid herself this time. Her films have always been decidedly multi-lingual – because that is just the way things are in Malaysia. In this particular film, there was English, Malay, Tamil, Cantonese, Mandarin and Sign. Yes, that’s right, she even got some of her actors to sign in this one as one of the main characters was ‘speech and hearing impaired’ and did not speak a single line in the entire film.
The message this time has always been the same as the message last time – addressing very key issues pertaining to race relations in Malaysia. Again, there was one pretty pointless scene, which solely existed in order to highlight the issue of race in educational scholarships in Malaysia. Again, cross race and religion love played an important role in the film again. However, she always addresses these issues in a very artistic manner, but it hits you in the face nonetheless.
By the end of the film, I was brought to tears again. Although I found her film very entertaining and funny at times – it whispers to my heart of all the things that most of us Malaysians would have gone through growing up – it still managed to tug at the heart-strings. For that, I have to salute her. She had a clear vision of what it is to be Malaysian and was daring and bold enough to put it on screen. I hope that the people who watch it won’t just dismiss it as a pipe-dream as it is something that we can all truly benefit from.
I should just mention that I loved the way she started and ended the film. I just laughed so loud in the first minute of the film, when I saw them taking an exam. It was so typical of things in school. In fact, her choice of school – Anderson, Ipoh – brought back a lot of memories for me too. I did not attend Anderson but I was in another colonial school as well. These schools were all designed and built in the same way – the windows, doors, hallways, stair-cases and courtyards all brought back sweet memories. Of course, her choice of location – Ipoh – brought back a lot of memories too.
PS: There are some nice tunes in it too! The OST should be good.
Sybreon Ones Nought 