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As part of its Intelligent Nation 2015 program, the island nation will be able to boast of countrywide Wi-Fi coverage in a few months, Bill Chang, executive vice president of wireless service provider SingTel, said in a recent interview.p/s: Malaysia bila pulak?
"At the end of the year, Singapore will be one mega hot spot," he said. "They are breaking Singapore into three regions and looking at ways to maximize coverage."
The country had a pretty good head start. The official report released with the unfurling of the Intelligent Nation program pointed out that Singapore already had one public hot spot for every square kilometer at the end of last year. Communication between hot spots will be augmented by mesh networking, according to the Intelligent Nation report. Commercial WiMax--a wireless standard that allows signals to travel over longer distances than those using Wi-Fi--will begin in Singapore by the end of the year, said Chang.
The Intelligent Nation program, officially unveiled last year, seeks to make Singapore a global leader in communications technology in a decade. The country doesn't have the large domestic market, manufacturing base or low costs of places like India and China, so the idea is to focus more on industries with a large intellectual property component, similar to what South Korea and Israel are doing. The program is backed by various government subsidies and incentives.
HANOI (Reuters) - A convicted Vietnamese robber who escaped from prison 20 years ago chose a sly way to hide from the law -- inside the police force and as a member of the ruling Communist Party.Related post: yahoo, news, odd, crime, prison
A police-run newspaper reported on Friday that Ngo Thanh Tam, 51, was re-arrested on Tuesday, two decades after joining the police under a false identity in the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong.
The An Ninh Thu Do (Capital Security) newspaper described Tam as a "dangerous criminal" on the national wanted list. After his arrest he was purged from the party, which he joined in June.
It was unclear how Tam's real identity was discovered.
Tam was sentenced to four years in jail in 1984 for a series of robberies, but he escaped from prison in 1986, the newspaper said. In 2003 Tam was promoted to police chief of Dak Ru commune.
He had also been elected to the Dakru People's Council for the 2004-2009 tenure.
SAN BLAS, Mexico (Reuters) - Three Mexican fishermen have been rescued after drifting for about nine months across thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean in a small boat, an ordeal they survived by eating raw birds and fish and drinking rain water.Related post: news, odd, yahoo, mexico, survive
The shark fishermen said on Wednesday they left their home town of San Blas on Mexico's Pacific coast in November and were blown 5,000 miles off course after their 25-foot (8-meter) fiberglass boat ran out of gas and they were left to the mercy of the winds and the tides.
Their families had given them up for dead, but they found a way to survive in what appeared to be one of the most impressive feats of endurance on the high seas.
"We ate raw fish, ducks, sea gulls. We took down any bird that landed on our boat and we ate it like that, raw," Jesus Vidana, one of the three survivors, said in a Mexican radio interview from the ship that rescued them.
JARING has rolled out three new Internet applications to boost security, select content and provide a mix of education and entertainment for children.:|
JARING chief executive, Dr Mohamed Awang Lah said on Aug 15 that the applications were an anti-phishing software GRID Authenticator, content selector SurfRight, and an education and entertainment portal for young children LetzHop.com.
He said GRID Authenticator was an add-on for subscribers’ Internet browsers and installed as a toolbar.
“It will verify whether subscribers are connected to a genuine website, while preventing fraudulent websites from deceiving users into revealing their personal identity or login credentials.
Mohamed said Internet users who performed online banking would benefit most from the GRID Authenticator’s technology by confirming the authenticity of websites. This would also help promote Internet Banking in Malaysia, he added.
On SurfRight, he said parents and educational institutions could control, monitor and guide Internet usage. It would block young Internet users from accessing unwanted websites.
“We want to help adults manage their own children and practice self-censorship because content selection at user level is so much easier than at the ISP level,” added Mohamed.
LetzHop.com provides a formal and informal learning platform for children to gain knowledge and have fun at the same time.
He said these new products would be available by Aug 31 and would be offered to all Internet users.
“It is not limited to JARING subscribers. Anyone with an Internet account can get these products from us,” he added.
Related post: news, war, iraq, yahoo, odd
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 300 U.S. soldiers who just weeks ago returned home to Alaska after a year in Iraq are being ordered back to try to help bolster security in Baghdad, the U.S. Army said on Monday.
The soldiers are part of the 3,900-strong 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright in Alaska. Facing rising sectarian violence in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on July 27 ordered the unit to remain in Iraq for up to four months past its scheduled departure.
That order provoked anger and disappointment among some of the soldiers' families in Alaska. It also made clear that any significant reduction in the 135,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq was unlikely in the immediate future.
The brigade was so far along in the process of flowing out of Iraq after its yearlong tour that 378 soldiers had returned home to Alaska and about 300 had arrived in Kuwait en route home, the Army said.
All of the soldiers who had reached Kuwait were sent back to Iraq, the Army said. Now, 301 of the 378 who made it to Alaska will be sent back to Iraq in roughly a week, with the remainder allowed to remain home, said Maj. Gen. Charles Jacoby, head of Army forces in Alaska.
"Of course, this comes as a huge disappointment to the families and perhaps a greater disappointment to kids that were really expecting dads and moms home," Jacoby told reporters.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Three would-be thieves broke into a bank in northern Malaysia but failed to make off with any cash as they yanked out the wrong machine — a check deposit machine instead of an automated cash dispenser, the national news agency Bernama reported Wednesday.Nan merampok pun bijak la sikit :|
The three men broke into the entrance area of the bank in the northern town of Bukit Mertajam early Wednesday, and tied a rope — attached to two vehicles — around a machine, police district investigation chief Chor Ah Sing said, according to Bernama.
They jerked the machine off its hinges, sending it crashing to the ground floor, Chor added.
The crashing sound alerted a security guard to the breach who chased them away, it said.
The three men had already managed to open the machine, but found no cash as it was a check deposit machine, the national news agency said. It is not immediately clear if they made off with any checks.
Local police officials could not be immediately contacted for comment.
There are many reasons why good employees quit, most are preventable. From my years of experience as a consultant, I’ve identified a “Top Ten” list of reasons why people leave jobs:Related post: reading, job, list, business, management
1. Management demands that one person do the jobs of two or more people, resulting in longer days and weekend work.
2. Management cuts back on administrative help, forcing professional workers to use their time copying, stapling, collating, filing and other clerical duties.
3. Management puts a freeze on raises and promotions, when an employee can easily find a job earning 20-30 percent more somewhere else.
4. Management doesn’t allow the rank and file to make decisions or allow them pride of ownership. A visitor to my website E-mailed me a message that said, “Forget about the “professional” decisions—how about when you can’t even select the company’s holiday card without the President rejecting it for one of his own taste?”
5. Management constantly reorganizes, shuffles people around, and changes direction constantly.
6. Management doesn’t have or take the time to clarify goals and decisions. Therefore, it rejects work after it was completed, damaging the morale and esteem of those who prepared it.
7. Management shows favoritism and gives some workers better offices, trips to conferences, etc.
8. Management relocates the offices to another location, forcing employees to quit or double their commute.
9. Management promotes someone who lacks training and/or necessary experience to supervisor, alienating staff and driving away good employees.
10. Management creates a rigid structure and then allows departments to compete against each other while at the same time preaching teamwork and cooperation.
ROME (AP) — An Italian resort plans to create all-female beach sections for Muslim women wishing to shed their headscarves and long robes to enjoy the sun in privacy, officials said Thursday.p/s: Malaysia bila pulak?
Riccione, a resort town on Italy's eastern coast, will let hotels set up partitions on the shoreline to satisfy requests from growing numbers of Arab and Muslim tourists.
"Our beaches are big enough to answer this need," said Loretta Villa, Riccione's councilwoman. "We live on tourism and we can't survive if we don't satisfy the requests of our customers."
By making some areas off-limits to men, observant Muslim women will be able to ease up on religious restrictions to cover up if men are present, Villa said.
The reserved beaches would be waited on by by waitresses and watched over by women lifeguards.
The partitions will not reach into the sea as a section, Villa said.
To allow Muslim women to swim without covering up in robes and headscarves, Riccione would consider building reserved seaside swimming pools, she said.
Lycos announced today that their beta email service now offers 3 GB of storage and allow attachments of “essentially unlimited” size to be sent and received. Gmail is currently topping out at 2.75 gigs of storage, Hotmail at 250 MB and both limit attachments to 10 MB. For $20 per year, Lycos will up the limit to 5 GB of storage.
To prevent infrequent use just for sending huge files, there’s a stipulation that Lycos mail accounts that go unused for 30 days will be deleted, but for $6 per year that limit is removed. Upping the storage and attachment size limits will probably be of interest primarily to people working with multimedia files, for which there are plenty of other options online to store and send such files, but adding this functionality to an everyday email account is a good move.
Whether Lycos can offer search and spam filtering as good as Gmail’s remains to be seen. It also stands at a disadvantage via Gmail’s integration with the rest of Google’s offerings.
Related post: news, malaysia, blog, politic, internetThe Government’s warning to bloggers to stop rumour-mongering and spreading malicious gossip has caught the ears of the on-line community.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi warned that offenders could be detained and have their websites or blogs investigated.
He said that the freedom given had been abused, resulting in some people spreading lies.
We checked with some well-known bloggers for their take on the issue.
Most, however, agreed that 90 per cent of blogs are not malicious as they mainly deal with trivial issues, serving as a diary of sorts.
Most believe that only the remaining 10 per cent touch on sensitive issues, and whether intentionally malicious or not, are involved in spreading half-truths and gossip.
All the respondents felt that the Government should not cast aspersions or blame the community squarely because some blogs ran malicious comments.
They said blogs are media to express constructive opinions and other thoughts, in the name of freedom of speech. Here are their comments:
- Mack Zulkifli, 35, www.brandmalaysia.com:
"First, the authorities should investigate thoroughly before detaining the person running the blog or website.
"Once found guilty of the crime, only then can they act on it.
"But I don’t want to see a scenario where only certain bloggers will be investigated, because their opinions run contrary to the ‘official’ stand.
"I also hope the public as well as the authorities know the difference between blogs and other types of media. A blog is a medium to express a person’s thoughts and share it with other bloggers.
" It’s like a diary. Most bloggers speak about themselves and diary up their life. However, some abuse it for political or personal gain.
"Most of the time, there’ll be disagreements on certain topics among bloggers which is healthy, though. Bloggers should not fear action by the Government. I think as long as you know you’re telling the truth and not posting rumours or malicious comments to damage the other person’s reputation, you’re okay.
"I think disclosing your identity for the readers doesn’t necessarily enhance a blogger’s credibility. You can be anonymous for many reasons. Maybe you don’t want your employer or family to know about your stand on an issue. It’s the freedom you choose. If you are an anonymous blogger but still have your comments linked to other sources of information from the reliable mainstream media, you can still maintain credibility."
- Muzaffar Mustapa, 31, sultanmuzaffar.blogspot.com:
"The Government can take action but they must get those who are involved in making malicious comments.
"What Pak Lah said is important because, apart from having their views aired on topics, bloggers should also be more responsible when giving constructive criticism.
"When there’s a medium to voice their concerns, they should also have the responsibility to give the correct information.
"The freedom to blog should be used wisely and responsibly. Like everything else, there’re pros and cons to blogging. We can read and learn a lot of constructive comments and suggestions from it.
"The Government can closely monitor the content of blogs or websites but proper investigations should be made first before they detain someone. People shouldn’t generalise blogs as negative or malicious. It’s like pornography and the Internet. Just because web-based porn exists, it doesn’t automatically mean that the Net does more harm than good."
- Terrence Smith (aka TV Smith), in his 30s, www.mycen.com.my/duasen:
"It’s not practical. The Government can detain bloggers who publicly disclose their identities, but what about the anonymous ones? There are many bloggers who remain anonymous and have a tendency to come out with malicious comments. If the information or comments on the Internet or blogs are wrong, the Government should dispute it and come out with their side of the story. Detaining the owners is a little extreme.
"We should leave it to people to decide what’s good, what’s bad, what’s malicious and what’s not.
- Patrick Teoh, 58, actor/former radio deejay, patrickteoh.blogspot.com:
"I don’t agree with the Government’s plan to control the Internet. It should be a free medium to express views on something.
"The Internet should be treated as any other media. Give freedom to it."
Related post: link, tv, service, internet, videoChannel King provides the best selection of free Internet TV channels. Free broadband TV channels from around the world enable you to watch TV from anywhere with broadband. Large collection of TV channels on the Internet for free.