Sounds From The Dungeon

Dumb Questions

For some reason, I had to use my SingPass and while logging in, I was asked to pick and answer some security questions. If you've signed up for an online service, chances are that you've been through the same experience. Here's the list of five questions of which I was asked to pick two:

1. What is your pet's name?
2. Which is your favourite actor?
3. What is the title of your favourite book?
4. What is your mother's maiden name?
5. What is your father's date of birth?

So let's see:

1. I don't have a pet
2. Favourite today? Film? TV? Indian? Angrezi?
3. Favourite today? Fiction? Non-Fiction?
4. Okay.. that I know
5. Okay.. that I .. wait.. you want the year also?

Why do they pick questions that will most certainly have answers that change with time? Some months in the future, after I've read some awesome new book and have decided that that has to be the best book ever, you expect me to make a careful note as to which is the second best book ever just so I don't get locked out of this account. WTF?!

For the record, I chose to answer 4 and 5 and I'm sure I put in the wrong year. I wonder how many incorrect answers they'll allow before sending the cops to get me.

rants | 5 comments | permalink | 04.02.2008 12:12 SGT

How did we get here?

Last night, my housemate came back with a new hard disk to replace his laptop's dead one and asked me to get it up and running. Although I hadn't done a Windows install in ages, I figured it would be straight-forward and wouldn't take much time.

1. His HP came with an honest to god proper Windows CD and not some restore partition bullshit. Good on HP! Let's boot from this CD.
2. Start setup.. it copies files.. reboot.
3. Graphical Setup begins.. bunch of copying.. bunch of questions.. copying.. questions.. copying.. questions.. aargh! Why can't you ask me all the questions in one go!! Reboot.
4. Login and realize wireless doesn't work. Hmm.. no option to use WPA TKIP auth? Quick googling on another machine reveals that WPA is only available with Service Pack 2. What's this machine? SP1. Okay...
5. Dig out a spare ethernet cable and take the laptop to the router and mate the two.
6. Now let's start Windows Update. Update needs to update? Okay. update Update. Reboot.
7. Start Windows Update again. What, no SP2 option? But you have 60 other critical updates instead? But wait, what's this shiny graphic next to the critical updates list urging me to update to SP2 to get security updates?! I want to but how do I get SP2?! I'm suffering some cognitive dissonance here. Okay, whatever.. I'll install these updates first. Accept license.. Accept lic.. Accept.. Go!
8. As the clock turns midnight and an Amazing Race episode ends, we are asked to reboot. Of course.
9. Start Windows Update yet again. Finally an option to install SP2! Start.. Accept.. Go! SP2 setup downloads some 70 odd MB, starts and gives some error that you need to be on AC power before running setup. Aren't we already on AC power? Weird; we are plugged in and yet, there's a battery icon in the systray instead of a power plug icon. Hmm.. remove and re-insert power cord. No change. Reboot (long shot) and try again.. still no go. AC power is still not detected :-( Okay, remove the battery (really long shot!) and boot just on AC power. Works!
10. Start Windows Update for the nth time. Thankfully, SP2 setup resumes without re-downloading from scratch. Bunch of next, next, next and off to bed hoping it'll do its thing without needing anymore nexts.
11. Come morning and SP2 setup is waiting for someone to reboot.
12. After reboot, go to wireless properties and WTF?! Still no WPA option?!
13. Hmm.. open Device Manager, find the wireless card, update driver. Thankfully, no reboot needed!
14. Open wireless properties with trepidation and hallelujah! Finally, we have a place to enter the WPA key and get online!

While I certainly haven't used all of the operating systems out there, I can safely assert that none of them can be managed by regular people.

---

This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but I forgot to upload!

rants | 2 comments | permalink | 11.01.2008 14:44 SGT

Mobile Extortion

So I got my mobile phone bill today and there was an item that read, "Mobile Data Usage: $9.06". A bit high, I think, considering that I pay roughly $60 for unlimited, high speed broadband access at home^.

So I go poking around M1's website to try and find how much they charge for mobile data. Turns out, it is $0.0105/kb in 10kb blocks. That's $1.608 to download just this single image picked out of M1's website:

That's right folks! A dollar just to download that single image on my phone! It's a good thing I've disabled downloading images on my mobile browser!

Mobile data rates are nothing short of extortionate, if you ask me. My telecom-industry friend tell me that GPRS essentially uses unused spectrum so it's not like the telecom operator is paying additional license fees to the government for it. They are just using their existing investments more efficiently and charging me more at the same time!

Let me go a bit further to show you how ridiculous the situation is. M1 recently launched an "unlimited broadband" service wherein they offer (among other plans) a 3.6Mbps connection at $68 per month. An attached fine print states that a Fair Usage Policy applies to their "unlimited" plans. What does this policy say? I quote:

1.1 For data services, your usage should not be:
(a) Excessive (downloading or uploading more than 2 GB each month inclusive of video streaming, video calls, email access, VOIP calls, downloading and uploading of any content); or
(b) Unreasonable (use which may adversely affect our network, or other customers’ use of our network and/or services); or
(c) Fraudulent (including resupplying our service without our consent to a third party to access the data services).

1.2 If you are in breach of Clause 1.1 above, we have the option to :
(a) charge you a rate of S$0.01 per KB in blocks of 10KB, for continued data services usage; or
(b) suspend or terminate this Agreement in accordance with Clauses 5.2 and 5.3 of this Agreement.

Hmm.. how much is 2 GB per month? It translates to roughly 6.4 Kbps when using the connection 24x7. If you use the connection a third of the time, the effective speed is 19.4 Kbps. How's that for a $68 per month 3.6 Mbps unlimited data connection?

Or look at it in another way. If the connection really worked at its advertised maximum speed of 3.6 Mbps, how fast would you use up your quota of 2 GB per month? Take a guess first without doing the math.

You'll run out of your quota in just 1.26 hours!!

This industry has no hope. Operators really like to screw their customers in every position imaginable. We don't just need a revolutionary iPhone: we need a revolutionary iOperator before we can achieve mobile nirvana.

rants | 1 comment | permalink | 13.02.2007 23:36 SGT

Dear SISTIC

Dear SISTIC,

There are these wonderful things called self-service kiosks. You most certainly have seen them since our island is practically littered with them.

Would you please consider installing those kiosks so that I don't have to wait twenty freaking minutes in a queue just to have one of your agents press the print button?

Buy Online, Save Time -- yeah right.

Sincerely,

/me

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 11.10.2006 20:20 SGT

Deepak Sarda: Spammer Extraordinaire?

For some reason, roomie asked me to Google for my name. What a shock! The number two search result for deepak sarda is a spam site. And not just any spam site - it is a testimony to how cunning the spammers have become & how far the race between search engines & spammers has come.

The number two result, as I write this post, is deepaksarda.goodsletter.com. When you & I, aka humans using a standard web browser, visit the site, what we see is a regular, old spam site. It shows fake search results which point to either other spam sites (creating a link farm) or to whoever is paying for this crap.

Here's where it gets devious. When Google's robot visits the site, it sees an entirely different version of the site. Take a look at Google's cache to see what it thinks is deepaksarda.goodsletter.com. It finds a page which has been constructed from bits & pieces of my online life. Seeing all that arguably legitimate content (at least from a robot's perspective), Google thinks it is a pretty good site and gives it a decent page rank & thus, the spammer's link farm grows.

In other words, the spammers are using my online presence built over several years to power their shady operations. If I were a believer, I would wish them Hell.

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 15.08.2006 23:02 SGT

Evolution

Stage 1: "What is this e-mail thing?"
Stage 2: "Whee! So funny! Forward to everyone!!!"
Stage 3: "I am going to kill the next forward propagating worm"

Related: Today, I sent the following to an email list I am on.

After Godwin's Law, I propose:

"As the age of an email group increases, the probability that someone sends a senseless forward approaches 1."

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 28.12.2005 18:22 SGT

Stupid Ad

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 07.09.2005 22:41 SGT

For want of a good coffee

Oh, what do I need to do to get a good cup of coffee around here?! My new workplace sucks when it comes to coffee.* The snack store in the lobby sells the most terrible combination of coffee beans, condensed milk, sugar and hot water. Then there's the back office pantry which is stocked with all kinds of coffee powders, not to mention tea in every possible colour. Ok, just green tea and regular tea. But damned if I can make a good cup of coffee!

Making coffee is a trial-and-error process for me. Take hot water, add coffee powder, add milk powder, add sugar. Taste. Add more of any of the ingredients as needed. Taste. Repeat until satisfied. That's the ideal case. Thing is, this iterative process results in a non-converging sequence for me. I've never been able to make a good cup of coffee :(

Oh, there's a coffee dispensing machine too. But that's the most evil machine possible. Yesterday, when I asked for coffee, it sent me away with just milk and sugar. So I played safe and took mocha for the rest of the day. Today morning, when I asked for mocha, I got just black coffee! Arrggghhhhhh!

*My new workplace sucks when it comes to food in general.

rants | 6 comments | permalink | 06.07.2005 10:00 SGT

Journalism 101

One person's blog is another's news story.

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 22.06.2005 16:53 SGT

Tomorrow.sg

So we have this Tomorrow.sg which seems like a meta-blog created with the intent of linking to interesting Singaporean stuff. Let us leave the question of what constitutes interesting Singaporean stuff aside for the moment and look at how content fills up the pages of Tomorrow.sg.

Folks submit interesting links and there are a bunch of Editors At Large who decide what goes up on the site. Pretty standard format - boingboing showed us the way onto human click-n-surf energy based collective data mining techniques.

Now a couple of days ago, Kevin wrote up something about Superblogs wherein he pointed out to a possible negative effect of popular super/meta-blogs: agenda setting through editorial gatekeeping.

Think about it. Boingboing is about as liberal as you can get. Is it a carefully thought out agenda? I doubt it. But the liberal attitude just seeps through and it surely is a reflection of the editors' thinking, don't you agree?

But Mr Brown disagrees that such an agenda leak can happen on Tomorrow.sg 'cos, you see:

... the 11 [Tomorrow.sg] editors come from a very diverse range of backgrounds ... diverse enough to ensure that no one view dominates ... There is a certain check and balance built into the composition of the team.

The editorial team's composition is AFAIK, accidentally diverse rather than by design and there are no stated ground rules for editors. So I am a bit skeptical about the 'no one view dominates' claim but I'll not press this point since it's hard to set an agenda based on infantile content. ;-)

The other point of concern that Kevin raised was the possible polarization of the blogosphere where the "popular get more popular, the lesser known get even lesser known."

Again Mr Brown artfully denies this:

Tomorrow does not seek to turn the our VIBs into VIPs. On the contrary, one of the reasons it was set up was to turn LKBs (Less-known Blogs) into VIBs and VIPs. The editors on Tomorrow do not seek to promote themselves, but rather to promote as many blogs about Singapore as possible.

Which brings me to the whole fucking point of this post (you noticed this was filed under rants?) If the editors are not some super important people but just regular folks helping out with some link collection, then why the fuck do they have to keep editing the main posts on tomorrow.sg to add their comments? Why the hell can't the editors use the comment section like the rest of us?

It's because their stupid comments are more important than our stupid comments, that's why.

And finally, compare and contrast: Tomorrow.sg vs Sepia Mutiny.

rants | 5 comments | permalink | 16.05.2005 22:59 SGT

Don't be a moron

There's a brouhaha in the Singapore blogscene (don't like blogosphere) about bloggers (who happen to be on govt. scholarships) writing racist/defamatory stuff and getting slapped with take-down notices as a result of that. As you can guess, posts about free speech and fascist state and writing sensibly and being sensitive and good deals at Sim Lim were a natural outcome of all that.

Here's my three bullet points take on the whole situation:

• If you blog, you blog on the World Wide Web! This isn't a private place for you to exchange views with your buddies! If you are putting up your background online for all to see, then be ready to stand behind what you say and face the consequences of that.
• Be mature in your dealings with others. Just 'cos you are writing online doesn't give you the right to be a dick.
• If you see the need for blogging anonymously or if you just want to be a dick, then read EFF's guide to anonymous blogging.

rants | 2 comments | permalink | 26.04.2005 12:51 SGT

Dazed and Confused

That's the blog my buddy Saip writes. For some PHBesque reason, he can't blog using Blogger et. al. and so he's using eBloggy.

Here's the rant: this 'Simply Blogging' site doesn't offer RSS feeds. Blogs without feeds? WTF! It's 2005 people!

Wouldn't Scoble have the choicest things to say about eBloggy? ;-)

rants | 2 comments | permalink | 20.04.2005 09:35 SGT

Newton's Apples

This is the worst self-congratulatory piece of crap I've seen in some time. Except for something which I can't write about here. Hah!

I digress. Here's that piece to assault your neurons:

Boys are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. The girls don't want to reach for the good ones because they're afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground, that aren't as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think that there is something wrong with them, when in reality, they are amazing. That is why we just have to be a little patient and the right girl, the one who takes a chance to find the good, right apple, will come someday... Send this to all the people who you know are at the top of the tree. So Guys if u are alone...this means that u r on top

Maybe the good and smart guys at the top should invoke Newton's Law and reach ground level? You know... down to earth.

rants | 3 comments | permalink | 28.02.2005 10:45 SGT

Gmail makes me cry

I've got fifty Gmail invites to give out now. Please take them away.. take them all away...

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 02.02.2005 23:15 SGT

Rediff Again

An interview with a geologist, Dr Amitabha Ghosh, who's a member of NASA Mars missions teams. The story's headline reads, 'IITians don't rule the world.' Read the story and tell me if you don't agree that only a tabloid could smack that headline on that interview.

rants | 3 comments | permalink | 13.01.2005 22:19 SGT

On God

From Alas, A Blog:

It was amazing to see churches and mosques the only buildings standing when all else have been levelled to the ground. Perhaps the buildings were built stronger, but that is only a partial explanation. Could there be some form of divine intervention?

It would take a very selfish God to keep his places safe while letting other places get washed away - along with those living in there.

Which brings my thoughts to the very central problem I have with religions today, especially with the concept of Hell. If I refuse to acknowledge Him, to worship Him and sing praises in His name, almost all contemporary religions assure me of a place in Hell with a ringside view of the fires and suffering.

So is this all knowing, all pervasive, all powerful God so selfish that He wants and needs to be worshipped by everyone? If that's the deal, then is He worth worshipping? For being selfless is a virtue taught by all religions, isn't it?

rants | 5 comments | permalink | 08.01.2005 13:26 SGT

Get a clue, Rediff

Rediff.com apparently believes in outdoing itself all the time. Which is fine normally. But in Rediff's case, they seem to outdo their own stupidity every few days. Consider this piece, Abysmal failure to check nature's fury.

At the outset, it appears that Ms. Kanchan Gupta, the writer, is taking the Indian govt. to task for not putting into place an effective disaster management system after the cyclone in Orissa and the earthquake in Gujarat. But no, that's not it!

The whole article is about how our scientific establishment has failed us by not being proactive in putting into place a tsunami warning system. The total cluelessness of Ms. Gupta is apparent if you read this:

The US-led 26-nation Pacific Tsunami warning system is an example. India chose not to join this arrangement, ostensibly because what happens in the Pacific is not of any interest to us. ... On the other hand, a more down-to-earth pragmatism as practised by China convinced its leaders and scientists that joining the Pacific arrangement was not without merit.

I think someone needs to lookup the world map. India isn't a Pacific rim country, China is!

A sense of misplaced pride in our own ability and the outmoded slogan of self-reliance kept India out of the Pacific arrangement.

Misplaced? Outmoded? To rubbish the achievements of thousands of brilliant people with a couple of choice adjectives - yeah, that's some journalistic talent.

This is not to say that the scientific institutions in India are without fault. Hey, I've spent some time at one such place and I'll be the first to admit that things could be much better! But if you pick all the wrong reasons to criticise someone, then you aren't a journalist Ms. Kanchan Gupta. You are just a hack.

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 02.01.2005 12:51 SGT

Wrong signals?

Came upon this web design company that goes by the name 37signals. From their home page:

... We give all of our clients personal attention and are proud that 100% of our clients are references...

If all their clients are references, it means that none of their clients came upon their website and decided to hire them by looking at their online portfolio of work.

So if your website isn't selling your own business, why should I trust my business' online presence with you? What signals are you sending?

rants | 2 comments | permalink | 23.09.2004 21:38 SGT

Am I an e-flaneur?

So iriver, as expected, is branding their spiffy new N10 player as a chic accessory for the chicks ladies. Akihabara News has some pics of the advertisements that iriver is running in Korea for these thingies.

Cool model, great photos, styling which would make Audrey Hepburn hep (see below), but really, really crappy copy. I mean, 'Listen, Look'?! WTF? Or does any bit of English thrown in work as great copy in Korea? Like it does in Japan. These people are trying to create a whole new market, that of expensive electronic jewellery. And sloppy branding isn't the way to do that. Unless, expensive electronic jewellery is already a well defined market in Korea. In which case, ignore me and my stupid ranting oh you magnificent Koreans. Thou are the messiahs of cool and I pray unto thee to lead our ignorant English world into the light. Amen.

That said, if the N10 came with pink express-on covers like the Nokia phones, I'll buy it 'cos it'll look good with my favourite pink floral shirt and bunny slippers.

rants | 0 comments | permalink | 13.08.2004 04:06 SGT

Poor, poor soul

My poor friend Abhishek went and met Kareena Kapoor of all people. Wait, should I say Kareina Kapoor? Or CarryOn Caper? Anyway, what can drive a man to such insanities?

• A case of insane boredom - something Hyderabad is known to cause at times.
• An obsessive interest in the strange relationship between bitchy attitude and media attention.
• A belief in the credo - 'Who needs to know how to act? Not me!'
• A case of mistaken identity.
• A homoerotic thrill.
• A can of Pepsi.

Look at these pictures and decide for yourself what drove him to do this pitiful deed.

rants | 3 comments | permalink | 30.07.2004 18:46 SGT