Murder by Teaching

I just had a student accuse me of bloody murder and trying to kill them all, in an email. I must be doing something right at the university.

The students are just thoroughly not prepared for a teaching style like mine – where I actually treat them like adults. I give them the open space and freedom to explore and do whatever that they think is right.

For one, although I am teaching engineering I ask some fairly open-ended and argumentative questions in the tests and exams. In the mid-term test, I asked them to classify and justify whether an FM radio was a digital, analogue or mixed system. The default answer given by most engineers would be – analogue. However, some students answered – mixed – as large parts of modern FM radios are digital. I accept both answers as valid but only if it was justified.

For another, in their semester project, I asked them to design a small part of a digital system – either the transmitter or receiver portion of an RS232 or SPI module. I even pointed them towards the largest code repository in the world – OpenCores – encouraging them to use the many examples there. I did not even specify how they should implement it nor how they should demonstrate it as I left it to them to decide for themselves based on their skills and capabilities.

If they are really good, and can successfully implement it in hardware, good for them. If not, they can always demo it to me in software. Or even worse, if they fail to implement it completely, they can just show me what they’ve got in software. Heck, I even limited their project reports to under 6-pages!

I have even shown the previous lecturer the stuff that I get them to do in order to get some feedback on my teaching work and we both agree that the work is straight-forward and simple. I’m not expecting any of them to do rocket-science.

Honestly, now I get accused of bloody murder.

Some of these kids have no idea how much I am actually trying to help them learn and think. Well, I guess that teaching is a noble profession for a reason – it’s a thankless job. All I hope is that these kids will think of me fondly when they start to face some real problems in the future.

Sigh.

Triangle of Confidence

A few evenings ago, someone mentioned to me that there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and another one between insecurity and confidence. Personally, I think that I alternate between the three states regularly – sometimes literally context switching very quickly during a conversation.

This person also told me that being insecure is not a bad thing. One needs a healthy dose of insecurity in order to constantly strive to get better. If we do not have insecurities, we will never push to improve ourselves. I think that this makes some sense.

The trick is to learn how to manage this insecurity and not allow it to overwhelm. Actually, it’s also important to manage the confidence so that it doesn’t cross too often into arrogance.

But once in a while, it’s fun to just let things be as they may.

Curious Anuar

I’ve been reading the RCI report on TBH and regardless of what everyone thinks, the RCI did find some interesting things.

Para 57: “Anuar, though being IO for the operation, elected to sleep until the next morning in an area supposedly most accessible to the public: at the reception partitioned by a screen. He did not wake up until 8.30am on the 16th when many of the staff had reported for work. Anuar explained that he had chosen this area because it was easily accessible to his officers to consult him. Strangely, however, many officers who passed this area did not even see him there.”

Para 58: “At about 8.30am on the 16th, after waking up from his slumber, Anuar declared that he was informed by a lady officer called Norsiah of a bag she noticed at the sofa in front of Nadzri’s room. When Anuar subsequently returned to his room, he saw this bag which he believed had been brought in by TBH the day before. It was on the floor by the side of the sofa in the area described by Norsiah. Beside this bag was a mobilephone. He took possession of these and placed the mobilephone on his table and the bag on a chair in his room. He did not check the contents of the bag. We are puzzled by this rather careless and indifferent attitude adopted by Anuar in relation to the bag and the mobilephone.”

Para 59: “We would have thought that Anuar as the IO should have been more vigilant and concerned with what was in the bag. For all intents and purposes it might have been packed with explosives to blow the Selangor MACC office up as the office would no doubt be stored with incriminating evidence against suspects. Further, it defied logic not to be curious particularly when the purported owner of this bag was nowhere to be seen. A look at its contents may have given some clues as to who he was and where he could possibly be.”

Para 60: “But believing that TBH may still be in the office, Anuar went around looking for him. He was later joined by Hairul Ilham who had by then turned up for work. They could not find TBH but took no further steps to determine where he was.”

Curious.

Authentication vs Authorisation

Authentication and authorisation, while related, are two different problems in security. I fully support our government’s suggestion to pay for a voter authentication system, this only solves the problem of authentication, not authorisation.

The issue of a phantom voter is not merely an authentication problem. It is also an authorisation problem. We need to be sure that the person is who they claim to be (authentication), and we need to ensure that they are allowed to vote (authorisation) only once and only in that constituency.

A person could feasibly be issued multiple cards with different identities. Let’s assume that this person maliciously cloned the cards, substituting the bio-metric data. This person can still authenticate themselves and vote in multiple places under assumed identities.

If indelible ink is used, that person would have ink marks and can only vote once, even with multiple cards. Of course today, that person would also need multiple cards but they would not need to substitute the bio-metric data, which is much easier to cheat with.

So, while bio-metric identification is used to fix the authentication problem, it still needs to be coupled with additional steps e.g. indelible ink, which would help fix the authorisation problem.

That said, I hope that they don’t give the contract to Tricubes. That would just raise a whole PR problem.

Update @ 2011-07-24: The EC has admitted just as much, that there are clones on the electoral roll.

Forget about International Conferences

I am quite ashamed and disgusted at our immigration officers move to deport a prominent human-rights lawyer from our shores on grounds that he gave a speech.

According to the news article, “It is learnt police requested Bourdon’s deportation, claiming that he had violated his social visit visa by giving a speech at a dinner in Penang on Thursday night.”

Damn.

This means that it is now illegal for foreigners who come in on a social visit pass to give speeches. This will have a serious impact on our country as a destination for international speakers and conferences.

As part of the organising committee for an international conference in October, most of our speakers are foreigners who are experts in their fields.

I guess that this means that our organising committee has to try to get them a pas lawatan ikhtisas instead. I hope that someone from the committee is looking into this.

We’ve sunk to new lows today.

How low can we go?

Sex, Lies and Videotape

According to an article in TheStar, the cops have release a video-tape to dispel talk of excessive force used by the police. Honestly, these guys are so stupid that they are just providing more fodder to anyone with the brains to think.

From the article, “Another clip showed Bersih chairman Datuk S. Ambiga being given water, while Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar was given an oxygen mask.” Now, aren’t our police a caring bunch – giving Ambiga some water and Izzah some air to breathe.

Any thinking person would wonder why these two women suddenly developed such desires for water and air for there is only one reason why such a thing would happen – they got tear-gassed – in a tunnel. The cops must be seriously dumb to think that these ladies will thank them for the aid, given that the cops tried to suffocate them.

From the same article, “Batu MP Tian Chua was seen running with a group towards the Light Strike Force officers at KL Sentral. Comm Salleh said the officers had to take action by firing tear gas.”

Honestly, I know that Tian Chua can be a bit of a trouble-maker sometimes but what threat was he posing that the only appropriate reponse was tear-gas. Only in Malaysia, does a bunch of unarmed civilians walking or running towards the police, get greeted with tear-gas. That’s not called a response – it’s called an escalation.

Also, from a related article, “police have denied that they were responsible for the death of Baharuddin Ahmad during the Bersih rally in the city on July 9. Internal Security and Public Order director Comm Datuk Salleh Mat Rasid said police were not even at the site where Baharuddin died following a heart attack at Avenue K, a mall opposite KLCC.”

And I’m sure that just like what happened at Tung Shin, “the allegation that Baharuddin died in a tear gas attack is untrue as no tear gas was fired in the KLCC area during the Padam Bersih 2.0 operation.” Unfortunately for the police, regardless of whether it was true or not, nobody will believe them anymore.

In any civilised country, when the police are on the front-line with water cannons and tear-gas, the ambulances are right behind them ready to treat any injuries. However, in Malaysia, the ambulances are nowhere to be seen and they will probably find it difficult to enter the city as well.

My dear police, there is crime of commission and crime of omission. While the police may not have bludgeoned him to death does not mean that they are not responsible. The police rushed the unarmed civilians at KLCC and created unnecessary panic resulting in one death and numerous injuries.

We need higher policing standards in Malaysia.

Idiotic Goon Pwned

According to an article in TheStar, “Ismail said they lauded Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s suggestion to broadcast video recordings on how the police handled the rally, which would be evidence against claims that police were violent during the rally.”

Only in Malaysia does the Inspector General of Police (IGP) think that by showing the other side of the story, it will white-wash all the evidence of wrong-doings by the police themselves. I’ve got news for you. Regardless of how many videos you show, it will only be a single point-of-view versus the thousands on the Internet.

The fact of the matter is that the police tossed several canisters of tear-gas into Tung Shin hospital’s compound. No amount of white-washing is going to change that. I remember the government sticking to their story that none of that happened until a group of doctors spoke out, forcing the government to back-track.

The fact of the matter is that the police kicked and hit and roughly man-handled unarmed civilian protesters. No amount of white-washing is going to change any of that. The people were merely armed with a stout heart and a clear vision of what a future Malaysia should be. Yellow t-shirts are not a weapon of mass destruction.

“From my observations (on photos and videos on the Internet), I find there is something not quite right. We urge the public to surrender any evidence that can help us get a clear picture of what happened,” he said.

You know, that’s the only sensible thing that the IGP has said – that is something is not quite right. Obviously, he is being duped by his subordinates. The police did do the things that they were accused of doing. Thousands of eye-witnesses, photos and videos will not be silenced.

Dear IGP, there is no smoke without fire – Kalau tak ada api, masakan ada asap?

I’d also like to introduce a new word to the IGP – wikiality – truth by consensus. In a country where the rakyat no longer places much trust in the police, particularly when the police are capable of denying the truth, the informed rakyat will no longer care about the police version of the truth.