What The Toot! » Internet

Malaysia IS a country?

khensthoth — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:00:38 +0000

I can almost imagine what goes on in the minds of people who made those searches:

Hmm.. Malaysia? Vaguely familiar name. Let’s see which country it’s in..
Oh wait.. You mean to tell me Malaysia IS a country?

Seriously? 165,000,000 results for “Malaysia is in which country”?

Also note Malaysia is/is not an Islamic state

Also interesting is the Islamic state search results. 3.93 million results for “Malaysia is an Islamic state” versus 1.03 million for “Malaysia is not an Islamic state”. I have less faith in Malaysia now.

Cost and Completion Date of the Penang Second Bridge

khensthoth — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:00:47 +0000

October 10 2009 4:32 PM (16:32), BERNAMA News:

Bridge will be ready before 2013

October 10 2009 6.19 PM (18:19), TheStar News:

No, it's April 2013 and bridge is apparently spelled Bbridge.

It’s amazing how much news can change within 2 hours.

I decided to see how much the reported cost and anticipated date of completion of the Penang Second Bridge changed throughout the year, from 2003 to 2009. So I went through all the news source here and here, filtered the similar and obviously wrong ones, and plotted a beautiful graph:

Compiled from various news source from 2003 - 2009

Interestingly it was not too long ago in 2005 that Samy Vellu said the second bridge is not economically viable. Anyway, following the trends of the two graphs, we should be seeing further increase in cost and expected completion date. I shall be looking forward to April 2013 – I don’t remember the last time a Malaysian government mega-project was on-time and under-budget.

Ridiculous Religion Site Stupid

khensthoth — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:48:43 +0000

Ever since WordPress supported tags, we have been tagging each post because we believe it’s a better way to organise and find things that way compared to the archaic Categories (which I would add we still use as if they were tags). Over the years we have used quite a number of tags, and WordPress has a sidebar widget to automatically change the font size of the tags according to the times it is used. See the sidebar if you don’t understand.

Admittedly, we have talked about religion on this blog quite a lot, and our love for the Pastafarianism religion and the Flying Spaghetti Monster is quite evident. Perhaps then, by divine intervention, the tags have aligned themselves together to create a powerful message for all to see, although those tags were never used in tandem.

As if FSM is not ridiculous

Now THAT is what we call a message from God. We particularly like the part where Stupid were the most emphasised of all. A “Rediculous Religion Site Stupid” example would be “The Church of the Whale Penis” known to us many years ago. No, I AM deadly serious:

Yes, it's huge.

But perhaps one of the MOST ridiculous thing (even by crazy “Whale-penisism” standard) we have came across is from a book we got from a booth of an Islamic RMIT student association spreading the word of Islam, supposedly. We have a terribly good laugh looking at the so-called evidence of God in Quran, and forgot about it – until we rediscovered it online. Apparently the whole book is for all to see online.

Image from Pharyngula blog, originally from A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam

No, we are serious – the book compared the embryo to a “chewed substance” or a piece of chewing gum with teeth marks in it and call that evidence of the miracles in the Holy Quran. Now THAT is “Rediculous Religion Site Stupid”.

The next stage mentioned in the verse is the mudghah stage. The Arabic word mudghah means “chewed substance.” If one were to take a piece of gum and chew it in his or her mouth and then compare it with an embryo at the mudghah stage, we would conclude that the embryo at the mudghah stage acquires the appearance of a chewed substance. This is because of the somites at the back of the embryo that “somewhat resemble teethmarks in a chewed substance.”

Intrigued, we decided to do some research on that phrase in the Holy Quran. We referred to at least five translations, in English and Malay, of that specific phrase in the Holy Quran. We are not at all proficient in the Islamic religion, which is why we used translation. And all translations point to one conclusion – that the Embryo-Gum metaphor is totally ridiculous. All of them made more sense (even scientifically speaking) than the said metaphor.

Man We did create from a quintessence (of clay); Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of rest, firmly fixed; Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood; then of that clot We made a (foetus) lump; then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then we developed out of it another creature. So blessed be Allah, the best to create!

Now, we are not even sure if the book, in print and in online form, is a parody of the religion, or do some Muslim take them for Quranic miracles. We don’t even know if the RMIT Islamic students read and understood what they were handing out freely that day. I am sure they should have checked the facts, or at least the translation in the books, lest they misled people like me.

P.S.: We are not “bashing” Islam. We are just bashing some bad translation of the Quran.

Dear The Malaysian Insider Webmaster

khensthoth — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:27:02 +0000

Dear The Malaysian Insider Webmaster,

I like your online news portal very much. You provide me with up-to-date news about Malaysia and I enjoy reading the many columnist from both sides of the political divide a lot. In fact, the commentaries and opinions are where I spent my time the most, while I usually just glance through the news headlines and click “Mark all as read” in Google Reader. The news your website provide is, on rare occasions, ever-so-slightly-tiny-weeny biased, which is already a vast improvement over the traditional mainstream media in Malaysia.

However, for the longest time the RSS feed for your news items has been… dysfunctional, to say the least. Take a look for yourself:

Repeated news item. Screenshot from my Google Reader

The arrows point to repeated news items. This happens, at the very least, on a daily basis. Sometimes a headline would be repeated up to three times.

I don’t know the cause of it nor if you knew this problem existed. If you didn’t, this is me informing you. Suffice to say that if you were doing that to increase your pageviews to your website and by extension the online advertisements, it is failing – because this problem is absolutely annoying. The repeated news item in your RSS Feed only encourages me to nonchalantly glance through the feed, and makes me more “trigger-happy” with the “Mark all as read” button than I already am.

So, dear webmaster of The Malaysian Insider, please fix this. Thank you very much.

Sincerely,
WhatTheToot!

What is easier to understand than Google Wave?

khensthoth — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:24:16 +0000

I was very excited when Google Wave was announced, so excited, in fact I grabbed the 1 hour 20 minutes video of the Google I/O conference from YouTube. Partly because Google Wave has such an ambitious goal of replacing email and online communication, it is quite complicated – Google needs to design the protocol and the software, as if each is not complicated enough on its own.

Google Wave is so complicated that many video has surfaced online to explain what it is, and a lot of them is from Google itself. One of the better, funnier non-Google ones is this:

Yet, there are still a lot of people who find Google Wave hard to understand – which is whyI had a good laugh when I found this parody website. Well, apparently a lot of wisdom can be gained from such a simple site. For example:

Men are easier to understand than Google Wave

Women - definitely not so.

Google Wave pwned Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

Considering Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is not without it’s fair share of online criticism and ridicule, one should perhaps look at one of his ambitious, noble, still-unimplemented initiative – the Healthcare Reform.

Healthcare Reform? Too hard to understand.

It’s interesting to note similar amount and percentage of people find Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize and his Healthcare Reform Bill easier to understand than Google Wave. I suspect these two are the similar group of people, that is to say, people who actually understood the Healthcare Reform Bills more than Google Wave are the people who find it easier to understand why Obama won awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

… coz’ I certainly do not understand.

How do people find our site?

khensthoth — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:00:16 +0000

After a long hiatus, this series is back. This post, however, will just be a short one, serving as a teaser of things to come.

Seriously F-up

Let’s see where this visitor came from then:

IP blurred for his sake.

The Verizon hostname and the browser language flag should be a dead give away – that is to say, the visitor is an Amerifag (to use his/her choice of language), more commonly known as Americunt (Yes, it’s an Internet lingo). The IP address indicated that the visitor is from a small town in north-eastern United States.

It’s a little ironic that the keyword search landed on a category page for racism, as if his God was trying to lead him there. That should teach him/her a lesson or two about respect, xenophobia, and homosexuality.

More importantly though, I didn’t know one could find this site on the first page of Google Images search results using the keywords “allah is fag”. What that American visitor was trying to find, in Google Images no less, about THAT though, continues to baffle me.

Astrology to gain legal recognition in Kelantan.

Hean — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:37:59 +0000

Kelantan plans to table a bill which will give legal recognition to Astrology. It has been reported by The Star that this bill on Astrology will be used to determine the direction of the Kaabah.

Astrology to gain legal recognition.

“The move by the Kelantan government can be seen as a hit in the face to the modern understanding of Astronomy, or even the use of GPS,” said WhatTheToot Advisor on Scientific Affair, Toot.

However, there are others who celebrate the move by the Kelantan government. “It is time Astrology is given the recognition that it deserves. The day the bill is passed is the day of celebration for all Astrology activist!” said WhatTheToot Advisor on Supposed-Crazy-Beliefs, Toot.

It should be noted that WhatTheToot advisors are really the same person. Toot suffers from multi-personality disorder which is a disease which causes many people to say one thing, but act another way.

- Reported by WhatTheToot Mythology Believer, Toot.

¥1.5 million = RM750 million

khensthoth — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:35:31 +0000

I read the Metro North news of TheStar everyday to find local news regarding Penang. Last week I saw something of interest.

Oriental-style city proposed

Amidst the good news, however, I found something really really depressing:

¥1.5 million = RM750 million

I know the value of the Ringgit is not much, and in fact is gradually decreasing, but I didn’t know it’s at such a fast pace. Apparently, ¥1 is equivalent to RM500 now. At this rate, we are going the way of Zimbabwe.

Seriously though, what is the point of having an editor in a newspaper if such mistake are not apparent to them. Luckily the Chinese daily got the figures right.

When Hell Freezes over in Melbourne, Literally

khensthoth — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:22:21 +0000

I just upgraded my operating system to the latest beta of Ubuntu Karmic Koala to test it and have fun with it. Overall, it has turned out to be a fine release so far. As part of my upgrade however, I thought I would change the way I use computer and access applications, which is why I install Gnome Do and enabled Docky. Here’s how my current desktop look like:

Ubuntu 9.10 Beta with Docky

Anyway, one of the docklets included in Gnome Do is the weather docklet, which allows me to see the current temperature and a six day forecast of the temperature and the weather conditions with just a click. So, there I was checking the forecast when I was extremely shocked to see this:

Yes, it's that cold.

If that’s not immediately clear to you, have a look at Docky alone.

Doomsday on Friday

Yes, it’s going to be -5572°C in Melbourne this Friday. Even colder than theoretical absolute zero, in fact exactly -5298.15°C colder. Hell is freezing over Melbourne literally. Come to think of it, how is a low of 5°C and a high of 5572°C even be possible?

On second thought, I decided to refresh the weather data to see if there is any glitch:

Now THAT'S cold

Immediately the temperature dropped 29°C. For other days, Melbourne will be expected to enjoy weather in commonly experienced in Antarctica.

On the bright side, at least it’s going to be “just” -1747°C on Friday. Yay.

P.S.: The only graphic editing done was cropping the pictures.
P.P.S: Still, how is a high of -1747°C and a low of -26°C even comprehensible?

I CAN HAS WEBSITE?

khensthoth — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:52:37 +0000

Well, in a truly Malaysia Boleh fashion, Malaysian are greeted today by the news that Rosmah Mansor now has a website. The Malaysian Insider even graced it by putting a screenshot of the website:

Rosmah Website Up

Immediately, in the back of my mind, this keep popping up for some reason:

Cheezburger lolcat

Oh wait, something seems to be wrong. Nothing a little GIMP can’t fix.

Website Lol-person

Ah. Much better.

The typical Malaysian humour kicks off in the comment section:

written by Chris Chong, August 04, 2009
Malaysians can now get up close and personal with Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, the Prime Minister’s wife”

Why would anyone want to do that?

written by Newchief, August 04, 2009
what a joker this is. she should instead be like mahathir’s wife who tries to be out of the lime-light when her husband was on the pm throne. instead, this rosmah wasted no time to publicise her self IN FULL … what a waist we have….HA…HA…HA.

More importantly though, who is she to use the resources from the Prime Minister’s Office? Why should taxpayer pay for her website bandwidth and server cost?

Only in Malaysia…

Dear DAP Penang Webmaster

khensthoth — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:09:19 +0000

Dear DAP Penang Webmaster,

Firstly, as one of your strong state you are governing as at today, your website is, in my honest opinion, totally inedequate. Apart from a few photographs, a few YouTube videos, and some online polls, it is essentially only a blog, with a lot of the content originating from blogs of other Penang DAP leaders. Honestly, if you want to be a blog aggregator, you would be better off utilising a “planet” software like this, this or this. In fact, you should implement a Planet Penang DAP to aggregate all the blogs from the different politician together in one place.

Anyway, I digress too much. This post is not about the content on your website per se. If you want inspiration on what to do with your state website, just refer to the many websites of political parties around the world. I do, however, want to talk about my freedom. You see, this is what I see on your website:

Firefox 3.0.12 on Ubuntu 9.04

Being in the minority who chose to use a totally free (both gratis and libre) browser (Firefox 3) and operating system (Ubuntu 9.04), I thought it might just be my particular system. Thus, I decided to use a more mainstream browser in a more mainstream operating system to see what I presume you want your visitors to see when they visit your website:

Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP SP3

Everything seems to be in order, which is why I decide to see how well other browsers in Windows XP would do. To my disappointment, this is what I see:

Firefox 2.0.0.20 on Windows XP SP3

I then decided to conduct a series of test, and the following result is as such:

Firefox 3.5.1 on Ubuntu 9.04

Safari Browser on iPhone OS 2.0

Opera 9.64 on Ubuntu 9.04

If you have not noticed a pattern, let me inform you. You see, both Internet Explorer and Opera browsers are proprietary software, which means they do not release their source code to the general public for inspection. They both use proprietary layout engine. Safari browser is proprietary as well, but they use the open source WebKit layout engine. Similarly, open source browser Firefox uses open source layout engine Gecko. I consider myself a open source movement supporter, and a proponent of open source software. While I do not have a deep hatred for proprietary softwares and companies, I do avoid them whenever I can.

It dawns upon me that a party who champions social freedom and equal rights requires me to use a proprietary browser and a proprietary layout engine just to view the website. This seems like a huge irony to me. Thus, DAP Penang Webmaster, please fix your website!

Sincerely,
WhatTheToot!

Great Nokia Advertisement

khensthoth — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:01:31 +0000

I pride myself on having a 19″ LCD screen with a resolution of 1440 x 900, Of course, in this age of information overload and 22″ and above screen, that screen size is not adequate, which is why I value my screen real estate very much. Imagine my horror when I visit Gizmodo (Australia) and see this:

F*ucking Nokia N97 Advertisement

What the hell were they thinking? From my browser user agent, they are perfectly capable of knowing my operating system, my browser, and my screen resolution. Why the hell then would they want me to imagine viewing Gizmodo content through the small screen Nokia N97 when I am sitting in front of my computer with my huge ass screen?

To make matters worse, I decided to do some calculation:

Making matter clearer

The actual Gizmodo content has been reduced to a meagre resolution of 930 x 578. Great! In fact, taking into account the various title bar, status bar, menu bar and scroll bar, the advertisement effectively take away a cumulative 726930 pixels from me. That’s 56.1% of my screen resolution!

I have to say this is a great marketing idea though, since it creates brand and product awareness. Now I am fully aware of how much I hate Nokia N97 and aware that Nokia has sucky advertisement. Oh, and Gizmodo Australia? Shame on you. No wonder I prefer the US version.

It’s 2 a.m. …

khensthoth — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:59:16 +0000

What else? Of course it's time for anal sex.

I found the above image while wasting my time surfing in Digg. It seriously made me laugh out loud. Some of the comments are equally as funny:

That cracked me up.
Who has anal sex on schedule, really? – GamerGrllz

there are fish involved as well? - Cowboychrissy

I confess..that’s my graffiti. What can I say? It’s what I do @ 2:00 AM… - angrykeyboarder

On another issue, I still have no idea what the billboard is trying to advertise.

Great Nokia Advertisement

Study Smart, Not Hard: Counting Skill Not Needed

Hean — Sun, 10 May 2009 09:13:11 +0000

With exam coming in a few week’s time, and shit load of assignments due before the study break, I started to wonder what some people’s been harping about, study smart, not study hard. Anybody who knows me would probably agree that I’m a lazy bum who stays in front of the computer too much. So I google “what does it mean by study smart?” and clicked in the first link, to www.studysmartnothard.com.

A quick scroll through the website, (yeah, I’m too lazy to even read all those good advice) and I stumbled upon this:

So may I add, Myth # 6 (or 7, whichever you prefer), you DON’T need to know how to count to make a website, to write a book. Certainly, you don’t need to know how to count to tell other people how to Study Smart, Not Hard!

Brainless-ness

khensthoth — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:08:31 +0000

Nik Aziz is someone that I can respect. Although some of his views are moronic, his stance on racism and corruption is applaudable. Recent news however made me think twice about my respect for him.

AdblockPlus ROCKS!

Err… What? Muslim smokers worse than cows? What have cows ever done to Muslim or Islam? On the contrary, cows are often used for agriculture, and for its meat for great rendang. If he had said pigs (which are non-halal), the coment would have made more sense.

To make matters worse, he goes on about cows not having brain and cannot think. Ever heard of Mad Cow Disease? A disease that affect cow’s brain? Seriously WTF. In case you didn’t know, all cows have brains, around 500g in each. They think every second, but not in the way you and I think. They might not have conscience, but they definitely have brains.

Worst, just scroll down and you will see this:

Stupid comments

GOOD ANALOGY? Are you kidding me? It’s certainly original, but good it ain’t. The people who made these comments are seriously brainless.

Malaysian Leaders Embracing “Rediculism”

khensthoth — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:12:45 +0000

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.

BERNAMA Should Learn to Spell

khensthoth — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:14:54 +0000

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.

Efficiency of the Penang State Secretariat Office

khensthoth — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:21:51 +0000

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.

Bank Rakyat Website Stupid

khensthoth — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:38:27 +0000

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.

Penang State Assemblymen Emailing Experiment – Part I

khensthoth — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:48:40 +0000

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):

N14 Machang Bubuk – Honorary Mr. Tan Hock Leong (PKR) – May 18
N10 Seberang Jaya – Honorary Datuk Arif Shah Bin Haji Omar Shah (BN) – May 20
N24 Kebun Bunga – Honorary Mr. Ong Khan Lee (PKR) – May 24
N28 Komtar – Honorary Mr. Ng Wei Aik (DAP) – May 25
N33 Air Itam – Honorary Mr. Wong Hon Wai (DAP) – May 26
N29 Datok Keramat – Honorary Mr. Jagdeep Singh Deo (DAP) – May 28
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. =)