What The Toot!

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.

I was wondering if there’s any online broker in Malaysia, and after a quick search on Google, I arrived on this page.

For those who are curious, you can visit the homepage, and I think you’ll agree that the whole website is just nearly as stupid as Bank Rakyat’s website, as mentioned previously by Khensthoth.

WARNING: Web design may cause seizure. Viewer must be cautious. For safety purposes, an image of the website is included below:

As I was saying, I reached this page, and scrolling down a little, there’s “Wise Investor Game, click here to play” gif image which aroused my curiousity. So, I was clicking through the “game” and came across this:

Money is a great friend once you send it off to work. For example, if you deposit RM500 in a savings account that pays five percent interest, a year later you have an extra RM25 and you didn’t have to do anything to earn it. Your money earned it!

Twenty five dollars might not seem like much but if you deposited RM 25 for ten years while the interest is compounding and building up, at the end of the tenth year you would have RM 6,603.39, comprising RM5000 you put in, plus RM1,603.39 that was earned from the money you invested.

Alright, aside from having an amazing 5% interest rate, it says that the RM 25 is earned without doing anything. Sure, RM 25 extra, but there is no information whatsoever about the inflation rate at that time. If the inflation rate is higher than 5%, which is probably the case, I do wonder how wise the “investor” is. I am not saying that one should not put money in the bank. What I am saying is that nobody will get any wiser playing this bullshit.

Alright, it then says that in total, you have put in RM 5000, by saving RM 25 over a period of 10 years. Assuming the the saving is periodical, a quick calculation shows that one will need to save RM 25 approximately every 18 days….. Right, sure. 18 days is easy to remember. I deposited RM 25 on Monday. Alright, I’ll come back to the bank on Friday 2 weeks later. That’s easy to remember…. Right. So, on the assumption that the interest rate is 5%, and that RM 25 is deposited every 18 days, a not-so-fun calculation shows that one will get approximately RM 7121 by the end of the 10 year period, NOT RM 6603.39

Let’s see what other wise advice is given there, shall we?

If you invest RM500 a year in stocks your money gets a chance to do you a really big favour. On average you will double your money every seven or eight years. A lot of smart investors have learned to take advantage of this; they realise that money is as important as their job.

Double your money every 7 or 8 years? That is between 9% to 10.4% of annual return, and as stated, from investment in STOCKS! On average! Can you believe that?

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.

So, I was snooping around governmental websites of Penang again, and I have found some interesting things. I have seen the website of Municipal Council of Penang or Majils Perbandaran Pulau Pinang (MPPP) before, and seriously it’s one of the worst in the world. In this age of Web 2.0, the design of the website is as if they are designed well before the dot-com bubble even existed.

The website design is so bad and outdated that in fact they ask you to have Flash 5 installed, and best viewed in IE 4.0, on a resolution of 800×600. Seriously man, Flash has been acquired by Adobe and is up to version 9.02, IE up to 7.0 and the typical screen resolution is now 1024×768.

My browser at 800×600, and I don’t use IE.

Worse yet, if you were to actually use a screen resolution of 800×600, you have to SCROLL!!!

My Firefox 3.0 RC1 again at 800×600.
Hi our Mayor (or President) of MPPP. Hope you hire someone to redesign the website!

Well. That’s all fine, until I saw the statistics site, which list their income. I am utterly shocked!

The unit on top of the column is RM Million. Total income for 2007 - RM 201,229,912 Million. In other words, that is RM 201.2 Trillion. You heard it right. TRILLION! Even the US Federal budget cannot match that.

Let’s hope that MPPP and our President of MPPP, Dato’ Zainal Rahim bin Seman, use that massive income to hire people who knows:

• Real, effective, and nice web design
• How to make tables
• How to double check their work before publishing it on the internet

[UPDATE]: Table has been changed. Who says blogs doesn’t have power to change anything? =)

SIRIM, or the Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia is the “corporate organisation owned wholly by the Malaysian Government, under the Minister of Finance Incorporated. It has been entrusted by the Malaysian Government to be the national organisation for standards and quality, and as a promoter of technological excellence in the Malaysian industry.”

Moreover, according to Wikipedia, it is:

• the national organization of standardization and quality
• the prime mover in industrial research and development
• a catalyst in bringing about national economic dynamism through excellence in technology and international acceptance of Malaysian products and services

Malaysians would be familiar with products stamped with the SIRIM logo, as an assurance of quality:

Imagine my surprised when I see their website on 20 May 2008:
(Click for larger image)

Well, yea. The national organisation of standardization and quality website is hacked. What does that tell you about SIRIM certified product? What does that tell you about Malaysian quality?

Today, I decided to see what has happened to the website. Here’s what I see using Firefox:

Yup. Nothing improved. It’s even worse. In addition to being defaced, it is now added with malicious malware, as blogged by The Danesh Project. It’s so bad even Google is stopping you from visiting the website. Search SIRIM on Google and click on the first link.

So there you have it. If the National Organisation for Standardisation website can be hacked so easily, I shudder to think of the quality of everything in Malaysia.