Ash Report

Have you read about the US Mayor prostitute scandal? Yup.. the guy blew US$10,000 a night with high-class prostitutes from Emperors Club VIP - sometime even more. I’m not going into details but read more about it here.

What is not widely publicised is how this was discovered. The use of IT in the monitoring of all banking activities in USA is the culprit originator. As part of the anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorism initiatives, all banks in USA have to diligently file with US Treasury something called Suspicious Activity Report (SAR). (Bank Negara also has similar system with the banks here). With some remarkable accuracy, out of the billions of transactions per month, they managed to single out Client #9 (that’s the mayor) suspicious activities - even though he had carefully avoided making payments over US$10,000 - which would have automatically be captured by the SAR. Read the article How an information system helped nail Eliot Spitzer and a prostitution ring from zdnet.

Another interesting IT angle is that the escort agency Emperors Club VIP has an official website, albeit hosted at a cheap Homestead web-hosting place. (Rates start from $4.99/mo) Apparently e-commerce friendly some more.

I read yesterday that the oil price has reached a record high of US$108 per barrel. Ouch and double ouch…. the problem for the consumers here in Malaysia (yes.. that’s you and me) is that we’re shielded from this crazy prices through the subsidized-fixed-price regime being implemented. But the govt-subsidy will not protect the businesses who will undoubtedly face higher prices for its supplies and raw materials - especially if they come from overseas. Like it or not, they are in business to survive and will then pass on the cost increase to users…

So the sequence to people-on-the-street will go like this. I heard on TV that US oil price increase again - dangerous but that’s overseas. But, stock market also increase - good. Petrol price not increased - good. Suddenly, my foodstuff become more expensive, price of my household stuff also went up and worst, by business suffering because I cannot cover the cost of my production. Soo unfair - somebody has to do something about this.

The problem is we have all embraced free market (big misnomer) economy - where demand and supply rule. We don’t live in a socialist economy (like Stalin’s or religion based) where social equitability rules.

What it really means is that - if you wish to, you can control supply of a high-demand product and you will rule. And as long as, people worldwide panic of high oil prices and buy as much as possible today - demand will be higher than supply and oil price will continue to rise until it balloons and eventually burst.

Really, what can we do? Not much.. Well, actually there’s something we can do but we Malaysians really hate to do it. Use less petrol and if collectively everyone do that, the market demand will slow down and the balloon will burst. But this is just like the crap-environmental-recycling mantra. Recycle? Save environment? Never mind lah … so troublesome some more. Know what I mean?

PS: Just to avoid misunderstanding from straight-line people, the last para is sarcasm. Really, it happens, it may not be obvious for everbody.

Unless you’ve been meditating in a cave somewhere in Sarawak for the last month, I’m sure you cannot miss the voting fever that’s now gripping the country. Once in every four/five years, another festivities will be added to the already busy Malaysian’s social calendar (well, what with the annual Hari Raya, Xmas, New Year, Chinese New Year, Muslim New Year, Indian New Year, Deepavali - then add to that the 3 times a year Mega Sales, Matta Fair, PC Fair and not to forget the weekly festival of pasar malam).

As is with other festivities above, the General Election is also another festival. Although primarily a very serious and important part of nation building - for the people on the street, it is often seen as a source of entertainment as well. By 8th March - next week - this will all ends but in the mean time we all get to see various entertaining things

• All sorts of people make all sort of promises. Many of which is not even worth a pinch of salt (opposition and ruling parties all guilty of charge)
• All sorts of people come up with all sorts of allegations and all sorts of dirts will come out in the open (especially if you brave the crowd and join the unofficial gatherings/campaign)
• All those high-and-mighty-powers-that-be will come down from their throne and brave the sun and sweat to meet the common people who will feel so lucky to get to shake hand with the YBs that they only get to see on TV all this while
• The number of Malaysian websites doubles overnight with various tabloid-like sites promoting their respective champions and dissing the opposite sides

Well the list can go on and on but you know what I mean. We have not reached the absurdity of the US presidential campaign yet but I’m afraid it will be there soon. In the USA, even before you get to the General Election, candidates are already lobbying and spending hundreds of millions of US dollars just to be selected as the candidate for their party. In Malaysia, we know that individual candidates spend hundreds of thousands DURING the election campaigning process (some say the level has crossed the million threshold now) and all this cost will somehow need to be recovered post-election. Imagine the scale of cost recovery that the US candidates will have to eventually recover post election. Little wonder the super-power country is perennially running in deficit. Hmm.. not only the grass on the other side of the fence is always greener, the mud is probably much thicker and slimier as well.

If you’re healthy and of sound mind, do your bit and cast your vote come 8th March. All the bitching is tong kosong and of no use if you don’t cast your vote yourself. Just check online at SPR website or send SMS to 39988 with text ’spr [your IC no]’ - it will not only tell you where you’re registered to vote but also which ‘lane’ you need to go to at the polling centre. At least there is some IT application (beside the tabloid sites) that is being put to use in the process.

It’s official. BluRay, championed by Sony, has won the high definition DVD format war against key rival HD DVD, championed by Toshiba. Today, Toshiba gave up the fight and declared that the company is shutting down the HD DVD business. Less than 12 months ago, HD DVD appeared to be the winning horse when Microsoft’s XBOX 360 pledged alliance to HD DVD and Toshiba slashed the price of its HD DVD price.

However, Sony who lost the VHS vs Beta war twenty years ago apparently has learnt its lessons. “Content, content, content” must be the mantra playing in the head of Chubachi San (Sony President). True enough, the defection of Time Warner’s Warner Bros to the Blu-Ray camp last month proved to be the clincher and followed by US key retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Best Buy Co Inc and online video rental company Netflix Inc.

I suspect Malaysian users have not gotten their fingers burnt as there is little HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray players and discs can be found in the stores. Except of course, the I-must-be-the-first geeks that have forked out thousands to buy HD DVD kits will curse at the obsolete equipments. Very much like I myself who’s scratching my head for what to do with my double-sided-laserdisc player and collection of LDs. Oh yeah… does that mean HD DVD equipped Xbox 360s will be pretty much useless soon? Ouch…

I was wondering what to write for my first blog entry for 2008. Mind you… the last entry in this blog was in Nov 2007 (shame on you Ash…Ed). It must be interesting and catchy. So here I am writing about the main news of the new year 2008 (sorry, it’s not the date of Malaysian election) - Sex, Lies and Videotape.

The first of which that blast the new year was the 2-DVD-length sex video of a (then) senior minister. One that is infamous that my English friends asked in their New Year greeting to me.

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Move over billionaires - the dotcom mob is now taking over football club! A football fans website in England called MyFootball Club Trust was set up with the main objective of taking over a football club. In just 11 weeks, they attracted 20,000 subscribers - paying £35 membership fee - and raised £700,000. Soon they were courted by no less than 9 club owners but they settle for a Kent club Ebbsfleet United, who currently lie ninth in the Conference, which leaves them in contention for promotion to the Football League this season.

What’s in it for them? Members of the site get to vote on team selection, player transfers and on all major club decisions. Beats fantasy football for sure - this is for real man!

Check out the story here.

Despite a harder than usual ‘ballistic landing’ (gee… try to visualise a ballistic landing) and 200km off course, the Soyuz capsule carrying Malaysia’s first cosmonaut safely landed at 6.37pm, 21 Oct 2007 - 11 days after blastoff from the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, back in 1961.

Judging by the wild grin etched on Dr Sheikh Muszaphar (see pictures below), one can conclude that he survived the huge G-force on re-entry and the mission is a success.

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Tomorrow, 10/10/07, is the day when the first Malaysian will go to space. Dr Sheikh Muzaffar won the place after a unique nationwide public-call selection was held 2 years ago.

This maybe old news in USA where anyone can go to space by paying a fare of just $5 million (or something like that), but it certainly has caught the imagination of the people here.

Going to space? Where no one can hear you scream? That’s so orbit man.

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Just imagine this.

You can create your typical office application (spreadsheet, word processing and presentation) over the web, work on it and then save it online. It can be accessed whenever you are - at office, home, mamak stalls or hotel rooms, just by using any standard web-browser. Not only that - you can then share and collaborate these documents with other people.

Sounds good heh? Welcome to online apps world and it seem that another office-apllication-war is brewing.

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The proposed Budget 2008 was announced last Friday by Pak Lah. It’s a feel good budget, a little bit of everything for everyone and none taken away. Heck, even the smokers and drinkers were spared of higher ’sin taxes’. But what does it really means for us CHIP’rs.

Here’s a low down of the more relevant items for us.

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