What The Toot!

I am a not a supporter of the current administration, BN. That is not to say I am a total supporter of the non-ruling party though. Generally, there are around the same amount of idiots in each camp. However, to make sure I am less biased, I have to read blogs from both sides.

I was looking at Lim Si Pin’s blog:

The normal homepage

That was how the homepage looked like on Thursday 28 August, 2008. I read the latest post from him and notice something peculiar.

Yea, quite "Rediculous"

If you hadn’t noticed that, take a closer look:

Totally Rediculed

I guess Lim Si Pin haven’t read this post of mine, nor this website. No, Si Pin - I will not keep quiet when I see that.

The importance of spell-checking and double-checking one’s work cannot be stressed any further. Most bloggers (including me) do not normally spell-check their post, but in fact, they should. An article, and the mistakes in the article says a lot about the author. I swear I shall spell check and double check my work, including this blog, in the future.

It’s one thing for bloggers and amateurs to make mistake, it’s another thing when formal news source do the same. I was reading news online, when I came across the following:

Australian Prime Minister is Ruud!

In one heading, there are two mistakes: “Ruud” and “Bilaterial”. While “bilaterial” has been corrected, as of today, no one has bothered to correct “Ruud” yet. The post still can be found here. That’s extremely “Ruud” of TheMalaysianInsider.com to misspell the last name of a Prime Minister from another country. That’s all fine, until I scroll down to the bottom of the news and read the news source - BERNAMA.

Non-Malaysian might not know this, but BERNAMA, short for Berita Nasional Malaysia, literally Malaysian National News, is the Malaysian National News Agency. Immediately, I search for “Ruud” on the website, and I swear I could not have made this up, this is what I see:

Ruud's visit again

As of today, the news complete with the mistake can still be read. Since the news from The Malaysian Insider is sourced from Bernama, it’s mildly acceptable for them to make the mistake, but it doesn’t exempt them from spell checking their articles, especially with a huge ass heading of “Ruud”.

BERNAMA’s mistake, is another thing. It’s the Malaysian National News Agency, man! If they can make such simple mistake, what about the average Malaysian?

Now I know why our national English level suck ass. Maybe Australia should consider terminating the “bilaterial” ties with Malaysia.

We here at WhatTheToot! seldom (read: almost never) praise anyone. Heck, the whole point of this website is to record the Toot stuff in the world, and to record the rants and displeasure that we have.

This post, however, is an exception. Today I am going to praise two organisation. The first being the State Secretariat Office of Penang. A few days ago, I saw another quotation which interest me. It seeks out company providing the software subscription for Lotus Note, a proprietary software. I am a self-proclaimed Open Source supporter and enthusiast, and when I saw that, I wrote an email to the State Secretariat Office:

To whom it may concern,

Hi. Firstly I applaud the Penang State Secretariat Office for the well-designed website. I have been looking at websites of different departments and agencies of Penang state and it appears to me that Penang State Secretariat Office website is one of the, if not, the best designed and user friendly website.

I also express my sincere gratitude towards the Office for your role in keeping the various departments and agencies under the responsibility of the Office functioning at its best.

I have been monitoring the tenders and quotations listed on the Penang State Portal (website) and I have recently come across the quotation aforementioned (PTMKN/2008/SH2). Specifically, it’s about the supply of Software Subscription of Lotus Notes to this Office.

I plead with you to reverse this decision. If anything, the state should move away from proprietary software and embrace open source culture. The obvious benefit would be cost, since one would not be tied to licensing cost. Next, surely the state doesn’t want to be “lock-in” to a specific software of a specific vendor.

The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has approve and  encourage the use of Open Source Software in public sector through the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC). Sadly, while other states like Malacca seems to be proceeding and embracing the usage of open source software in public software very well, Penang state seems to be lagging behind.

Thus, I hope you would reconsider the quotation, and modernise the public service in Penang by the use of open source software. I am sure the licensing cost and software subscription could be better spend in other development of Penang state.

Lastly, I hope that this email will be read and I humbly await your reply. Your earliest response is very much appreciated. Thank you very much.

For more information, please see the OSCC website:
http://www.oscc.org.my/

Within 24 hours, Abdul Hamid Md Noor, the Information Technology Officer from the State Information Technology and Communication Office replied my email:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and we appreciate your comments on the open source software.

For your information, the State offices are currently using Lotus Notes as our collaboration tools and maximizing the usage on the same platform for our workflow and knowledge base or document base applications. Thus it’s quite abrupt at this point of time for us to reverse this decision.

However, I would like to inform you that we also adhere to MAMPU guidelines on the usage of open source software as our premier choice for any new ICT projects. FYI, most of our applications run on open source software, for example you can see that our State Portal & SUK Office portal are on open source.

That is the kind of speed in replying email I am seeking. You do not need two weeks to reply an email. Another person I would like to praise is Syed Yusof Ibrahim who is in charge of the Corporate Services of RapidPenang. I have been emailing him back and forth a lot. Typically, his reply would come in less than 24 hours, more often in the range of 5 hours.

That is the kind of efficiency I am looking for. In this modern world, you don’t actually need official, material form that comes in snail mail. Using email save cost and time. And yet, our assemblymen doesn’t seem to understand this.

I still haven’t received any reply from any of the assemblyperson other than the ones mentioned in other post. It’s been a month. That’s their efficiency. Maybe they should learn a thing or two from the public sector itself.

Go to any advice page from website designer and the following two will be listed, in one way or another:

• Do not have any “Home” page that requires people to click to enter your website. The content is the most important part of a website, and having people click to enter your website is particularly unwelcoming, and serve no functional benefit.
• Do not have any flash content on your website, particularly not on your “Home” page (See above). Some unobtrusive and non-distracting flash content on the banner is mildly acceptable. A whole website made with Flash is not. Unless your company has anything to do with Flash, do not use it.

Sadly, it was once a norm to design website that incorporate the two aforementioned “features”. This is slowly changing, fortunately. However, since most of Malaysia’s governmental or organisation’s websites are designed before George Bush was president, they retain the same basic flaw.

After reading the news I mentioned, I went to Bank Rakyat website to have a look to see if they have anything to say about it. Sadly, I was greeted with this when I arrive at their website:

Yes, a page to select the language, not a page of content. First mistake. However, when I click on English, I was greeted with this:

A “Enter” page with Flash content that took an infinite amount of time to load on my 1.5Mbps broadband connection. Another non-content page. At this point, I decided that this is one of the worst website I have seen. After I click enter, this is presented:

That’s my browser at a resolution of 1024×768. I have no idea what the grey box is. At a “non-standard” resolution, like 1440×900 however, it looks like this:

Yea. Farking ugly - Fugly. I have previously wrote about stupid, ugly website, but Bank Rakyat Website takes the phrase “stupid website” to a whole new level.

I am having my exam right now, so I can only make a short post. Previously I have said that Penang has 40 state assemblyperson, 17 of which did not provide correct email addresses. That leaves 23 assemblyperson that I assume got their email. Out of this 23, how many have actually responded to me? I shall let the graph speak:

As you can see, only a few replied. Specifically, only 7 replied. The quality and content of their reply is, however, another story. Surprisingly, even one from BN responded to me.

Here’s a list of all the Penang State assemblyperson that have replied me (arranged by date of reply):

1. N14 Machang Bubuk - Honorary Mr. Tan Hock Leong (PKR) - May 18
2. N10 Seberang Jaya - Honorary Datuk Arif Shah Bin Haji Omar Shah (BN) - May 20
3. N24 Kebun Bunga - Honorary Mr. Ong Khan Lee (PKR) - May 24
4. N28 Komtar - Honorary Mr. Ng Wei Aik (DAP) - May 25
5. N33 Air Itam - Honorary Mr. Wong Hon Wai (DAP) - May 26
6. N29 Datok Keramat - Honorary Mr. Jagdeep Singh Deo (DAP) - May 28
7. N26 Padang Kota - Honorary Mr. Chow Kon Yeow (DAP) - June 2

I have to mention that Mr. Chow Kon Yeow replied after the arbitrary one-week limit I set for the assemblyperson to reply. The first two person replied only to the first email that I mentioned, and I never heard from them since. The next 5 assemblyperson all replied to the second email, which served as a friendly reminder that they haven’t replied my first mail.

It is appalling that only 30.4% of assemblymen who presumably got my mail bothered to give some form of reply. That’s only 17.5% of all the assemblymen we have in Penang. If they can’t reply to a simple email, how can they claim to represent us?

I also have to say that the issue has now become a non-issue, as Honorary Mr. Lim Guan Eng, the Chief Minister of Penang has decided to suspend the buying of laptop for the assemblymen temporarily.

Next up, we shall see the content of the emails. =)