Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Brother just messaged me:

Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
eh
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
fix alread
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
already
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
but
davidlian thinks you should get Happy says:
how it fixed?
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
well
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
I did what u said
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
but I change a bit
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
I took the modem
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
go to mummy's room
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
connect the modem to the top
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
DSL lighted
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
but couldn't connect
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
called TMNet
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
did some DNS changes
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
can connect
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
so it means that the wall port in our family room something wrong
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
he said that TM doesn't support this
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
and anyway
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
it is most unlikely that the lightning strike was the one that caused the port to have problems
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
so
davidlian thinks you should get Happy says:
yeah i know
davidlian thinks you should get Happy says:
so how?
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
dunno la
davidlian thinks you should get Happy says:
haha... lol
davidlian thinks you should get Happy says:
good lah
davidlian thinks you should get Happy says:
fast or not?
davidlian thinks you should get Happy says:
or still buggy?
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
normal speed
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
the DSL dials almost immediately
Darth Razor (James Lian) - YAY! NO! says:
means that all this while it has been our wall port's problem

It's great to have worked around our Streamyx problem. No thanks to the lazy Streamyx people who wouldn't even come and check it out for us. Sigh. What about the much less technical people with no aptitude for a workaround like this?

*Saving my long rant for another post, it deserves one*

Streamyx is not equals to free illegal downloads buffet

So there was a report a couple of days, was this post on Lowyat.Net that basically warned off people using Bit Torrent to share and download illegal copies of movies, music or software, otherwise the government would be waiting just round the corner to slap them with an RM 250,000 to RM 500,000 fine. Let this be a warning, people.

Anyway, what really surprised me was the response by the readers. They (as in the general sense you get from reading the comments; not that every comment was like that) made it sound as if this would render the internet completely pointless - someone even said Streamyx would lose 50% of subscribers!

No guys, it doesn't. Are we trying to say that the whole point of Streamyx, broadband connections and unlimited packages (which get throttled anyhow) is for us to have access to pirated stuff in the comfort of our home? Come on, what's illegal offline is illegal online as well. That includes piracy.

Think the government can't track you? Don't be misled - I'm pretty sure the TMnet has logs of all the stuff you've downloaded, your emails, your photos, etc. etc. The only reason the government has not acted on all this evidence is because of the promised 'privacy' we get. But, don't think that they can't selectively start pressing charges with this evidence - and label it as a campaign to stamp out piracy. They could do this in an automated fashion - using algorithms to match bits passing through their servers to identify peer-to-peer traffic (that's what bit torrent is) and then pull this out and inspect the data transmitted.

You can get caught. You only don't because the Government has so far promised privacy to Malaysian internet users. Technically, we're perfectly capable of becoming like China where the Government overtly monitors your internet activity - it's not a matter of inability, its a matter of respectign the individuals privacy.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say the Government should invade our privacy and check us up all the time. I like my privacy. What I'm trying to say is that we need to do quid pro quo a bit here - don't do the piracy so the Government doesn't have to crack down on our privacy. Capiche?

Happy Post!

This is also the sorry post. So I've kept myself a bit busy and also a bit secretive over the past week simply because of this little Happy I was working on. So here goes:

Yow Looi: Here's what you've been waiting for - time to change line?
ST & Mack: Sorry I've been slow on Utopia, Internet at home dieded and I've been to busy on Happy to spend any office time workin' the thievery trade.
Jason & Group James: Sorry about yesterday night, I really want to help with Water World, but it's just bad timing, I guess.
Lydia: Thanks for being patient. Won't come home late every night of the week again ok? Promise.

So what was it that was happening? Today we launched Happy - Malaysia's first no-frills mobile service. Basically, what this means is that Happy's got really good rates. For both short and long calls - 1 sen per second up to a maximum of 99 sen. Happy is able to offer these rates because they don't sponsor mega events, celebrities etc. or spend money to develop frilly services like caller ringtones etc. - just offering the simple "calls and SMS" deal. So I think Dad will so love this deal.


Okay, not going to take too much time posting here. You can read yourself. Check out www.happy.com.my tomorrow once the site goes live at 12:01 AM.

No Internet@home = sadness

Sorry. Kenot post long. Busy busy busy with work. Then when I go home, internet has been fried.

TM's taking its time to fix it - within the next 2 working days. *sigh*

Back from the Forest Reserve

So I found out that calling it the "jungle" might be a bit of an overstatement. Someone actually pointed out to me that Chongkak was actually more of a nature park or forest reserve. Not so wild and you're not likely to get eaten by wild animals.

But we encountered wild boar hoof prints I tell you! And a live snake! And some civet cat tracks. So, it was fairly dangerous lar...

Okay, that's besides the point. Actually we wanted to just go to a quiet nature like place, eat some carbon infested food and come back with our members learning a thing or two about maturity. Also, we learned how to control our bowels real well. I'll post up some pictures and a bit of commentary in a bit once I get some spare time, so watch this post.