Sybreon Ones Nought

There have been stories recently about Google bowing down to China’s demands on censorship and basically painting a picture of an Internet giant cowering and crawling back to China with its tail between its legs. So, I got curious and took a look.

Turns out that the story is not exactly true – spin.

If you visit Google China, it will seem as though the search giant has capitulated and will now continue to allow searches on its China website. However, when you try to do a search, you will be immediately redirected to it’s Hong Kong site.

So, instead of an automatic redirection previously, it is a manual redirection with a splash graphic that is designed to fool any cursory examination. Seems like Google is playing games with the Chinese government. It will be interesting to see how they react.

I just read this really funny article in The Telegraph about the jailing of a Palestinian man who misrepresented himself when having consensual sex with an Israeli woman.

The court heard accusations that Mr Kashur misled the woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, by introducing himself with the traditionally Jewish name during a chance encounter on a street in central Jerusalem in 2008.

After striking up a conversation, the two went into a top-floor room of a nearby office-block and engaged in a sexual encounter, after which Mr Kashur left before the woman had a chance to get dressed. It was only later that she discovered Mr Kashur’s true racial background, lawyers said.

And the reason that it is funny is because:

Kashur’s lawyer, Adnan Aladdin, said he had filed an appeal to ensure that the verdict was not considered precedent-setting, adding that otherwise “many men would find themselves in jail.”

People, both men and women, misrepresent themselves to potential mates in order to get laid. That’s a fact. Drop into any target rich environment and you will find a whole host of people from all sexual orientations who are misrepresenting themselves in various roles. It’s all about the ‘image’, is what many friends have told me.

So, it’s weird to see a court jail a guy for consensual rape (now that’s an oxymoron!) while the girl gets free of the crime as a willing accomplice. I just don’t think that she’s going to get to see much action after this since every man would need to confess everything before the act – otherwise she will cry rape. There goes all sorts of pick-up lines!

I pity her!

http://www.newsy.com/videos/player.swf?related=http://new.newsy.com/api/get-related-videos/2653/10/&file=http://www.newsy.com/api/get-video/2653/&video_name=

I have just read a letter to TheStar about how badly our PSD scholars are being treated and I just have to empathise with what they are having to go through. It really sucks to be a Malaysian government scholar once you have graduated. The government just does not manage its talent pool very well, which is why it has to resort to buying talent from overseas.

It is so depressing to see people who have the expertise in critical engineering disciplines like aerospace, marine, electronics etc not being given the right jobs.

It is even worse if the person who ends up with the wrong job becomes bored doing something he doesn’t like.

Having a bunch of unhappy officers in the public sector is not a very productive way to serve the nation. This is the best way to kill the interest and talents of our best brains.

The Government keeps talking about wanting to reverse the brain drain, but I think giving the wrong job to the wrong person is just another form of brain drain.

Describes my feelings exactly.

I met up with some committee members of my IET local network today and we had a chat about membership. I raised a question on why there are so few local university students as our members as I felt that this was a bad thing for the future of the society. The answer invariably led to the UUCA and that caught me by surprise at first. Then, it made sense.

The UUCA makes it illegal for students to not only join, but also limits their support and participation for any society, body or group outside the university. Everything else has to be done with the permission from their vice chancellor. I suppose that this is an unintended consequence of the UUCA. As a result, it is illegal for these students to directly sign up as IET members.

Without the support and access provided by the IET, these students are just losing out on their peers in other countries. For one, they would be denied access to the local networks and international links. There are so many things that these students can learn from senior engineers in the industry, from the network of young engineering professionals and also each other.

Sigh.

The UUCA sucks ass. No wonder our local graduates have so much problems finding jobs. If they were IET student members, they would gain direct access to various engineering companies. They would also have access to all the publications produced by the IET, all the conferences organised by the IET and all the other academic material released by the IET.

It just does not make much sense to me that the stifling of freedoms within the universities, resulted in not just stifling political activity, it also ends up stifling good natured engineering and academic activities.

Sad.

I like this quote from a NY Times article about how a lady went from working for a management consultant, to working for venture capital, to starting her own business – successful or otherwise.

Exciting as it may be, however, the entrepreneurial life is far from easy. Stress is a regular part of the day. Money is tight. There are frequent emotional highs and lows, and the desire to succeed can become all-consuming. Underlying all of this is the knowledge that failure is the most likely outcome.

That’s the very essence of entrepreneurship – the delusional desire to succeed in the face of clear and present failure.

Turns out that this baby is fairly affordable, when it comes to fancy cars, that is. RM 240k OTR price, with a RM5k monthly installment on a 48-month installment plan. Nice!

I’m just worried that this would happen.