Review: Belkin Play Max

Belkin’s latest wireless-N router, the Play Max is unlike any ordinary wireless router but one that comes with apps that aims to enhance your home network. We’re now consuming more multimedia content such as pictures, musics and videos than ever before and Belkin’s new Play Max router aims to make it as easy as ABC for an average Joe to setup a wireless home network to share files and printer wirelessly across multiple PCs at home.

Out of the box, the Belkin Play Max router comes attached with the WAN network and power cable with a simple 3 steps instructions. It’s really a no-brainier and simple to get the router up and running. Despite its easy wireless setup process, Belkin has also ensure that the wireless security is not easily compromised with a common (factory default) key across its router with a random security key on a little card attached to the router. Belkin has also made some little but notable well thought out placeholder to keep this little card under its stand for future reference. Otherwise I bet many of us would have lost this card that contains the wireless security key.

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Do we really need it?

The recent headlines in the local dailies has left me quite disturbed of the present government of Malaysia. The level of incompetency, ignorance, stupidity, and corruptness of several ministers in the government just left me speechless. I sense that the government of today is no longer serving the needs of the rakyat but more of their personal whims and fancy.

* Since it’s the world cup fever season, I shall use some football analogy.

There’s been many nice promises and targets set by the government in the 10th Malaysia Plan. However, I sense that it’s just a very rough idea of what the government plans to do for the next 5 years. There’s no concrete plans of the implementations and actions that will be taken to achieve the targets. It’s like the M-team wants to win the world cup but there’s no strategy going into the game, our coach just tells us to kick the ball into the net, but the opposition team (reality) is not going to make it as easy as it sounds.

Then we have our national budget deficit. I believe most Malaysians (myself included) do agree that the country’s budget deficit issue needs to be addressed. On one hand, we have an ex-CEO with business acumen heading the government’s transformation program team (Pemandu) telling us that the government’s subsidies on essential food and petrol needs to be reduced/removed or the country may go bankrupt by 2019.

On another hand, we have the finance ministry and central bank saying the figures being exaggerated. So who’s telling the truth? Well, it doesn’t really matter because the government of the day is spending money like there’s no tomorrow on projects which I doubt will bring any multiplier effects to the economy. So if the money saved from the reduced subsidies are going to be spend the way it is currently being spent. Then perhaps the subsidies should be kept as it is for the benefits of the poor rakyat.

Here’s a list of some projects which I felt “Do we really need it?”
Parliament
Do we really need a new RM800m parliament? Or even a renovation that would cost another RM150m which has just been recently refurbished just a few years back. I’ve not personally entered the parliament hall, but from the images of it on TV, the sittings do look very comfortable. Perhaps a little too comfortable to the extend that some MPs are falling asleep during debates.

New Palace
Do we really need another new RM800m palace? The current palace could still serve its purpose and the main palace building has been standing tall even before independence with some history within its walls. The money will be better spent on developing human capital to help bring the nation to a higher income nation. Anyway, it’s been set in stone and construction has already begun.

Nuclear Power
Do we really need nuclear power plant? I do agree that we do need to source for an alternative energy and reduce our over dependency on coal and gas, but nuclear? Last I check, nuclear is not a renewable energy either, and neither do we have the uraniums to run the plant nor the technical expertise. Given our ‘tidak apa’ attitude, if applied to the operations and maintainence of the nuclear plant may just wipe out the whole South East Asia. I’m not looking down at fellow Malaysians to run a nuclear plant, but is this the best option? The risk and negative impact of nuclear waste is certainly not cheap. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to go green? Perhaps solar power would be perfect given our country’s climate. We now have a couple of solar panel manufacturers here in Malaysia, so why not get some used here instead of fully exporting it? It may be expensive for now, but given enough R&D and mass production, I bet it can only get cheaper.

Back to some football analogy… We’re like a mediocre football club building a new and bigger stadium even without a huge fan-base to fill up the current stadium’s capacity during football matches. Instead, the money will be better used to buy better players, or better coaches to enhance the player’s training sessions to improve the teams’s game in the football league.

There’s just too many ‘white elephants‘ infrastructure development in this country. Well, don’t get me wrong, I’m not against infrastructure development. I do agree that some infrastructure developments such as the public transportation (such as LRT or MRT), a bigger LCCT, and high speed broadband are necessary to keep Malaysia competitive. There’s just countless hours wasted in traffic jams and our broadband speed is very much like narrow-band in more developed nations like Korea.

So… do we really need it?

I’m back

I’m back!!

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog. Looking at my last post, it’s been about a year ago now and I’m now refreshed and rejuvenated to start blogging all over again.

To my loyal readers and friends (you know who you are), thanks you for your encouragement.

Stay tuned… more updates to come soon.

4th Year And In Hiatus

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve updated my blog, which will be 4 years old today. It’s been quite a long time running for this blog (by internet years standard) and the updates are getting lesser with each passing year. A sad but true fact which I have to admit.

The numerous commitments in life and the time factor pulls me away from spending more time to blog. Maybe the enthusiasm just isn’t there anymore. But I shall still try to make it a point to update my blog once a month (hopefully), or whenever there’s the mood to do it. I’m not abandoning this blogging hobby yet.

So what’s new? Well, I’m in the midst of developing a web based application which will hopefully be ‘the’ project that will shape my future career. It’s something which I’ve always wanted to do and perhaps when the time is right, I’ll blog about it here.

As merdeka is just around the corner, I’m feeling a bit disturbed by a chain of events since the last elections. Perhaps it’s time for Malaysia to undergo a ‘reformation’ which many developed countries have experienced before as they move forward to become where they are today (E.g. Europe’s Renaissance, America’s cold war, Japan’s Meiji era). The various political scandals being uncovered, abuse of funds and power, and the escalating crime rate and inflation is just saddening.

The 1Malaysia concept is really what this country needs and hopefully there will be more affirmative actions and policy changes towards making it a reality. And lets not forget about the Vision 2020 which has now taken a step back (it seems). Happy Merdeka!! (And Selamat Berpusa to all Muslim friends)

KAV 2009 False Alarm CIMB Clicks

Despite all the rave reviews on Kaspersky Antivirus 2009 (or Kaspersky Internet Security), it caught a false positive last night while I attempt to login to CIMB Clicks online banking service The URL I’ve entered was definately correct as I’ve bookmarked the website, and have no problems all the while… until the very recent definition update.

A good antivirus software should not let any virus/malware/phishing website to get pass its security scanning; while legitimate application/website should be accessible without restrictions. Looks like Kaspersky just made an error in its recent definition update that causes this false alarm. Luckily it only affects the CIMBClicks main page and not it’s login page, otherwise many KAV and CIMBClicks users will be blocked from the online banking services.

Looks like it will be one negative point for Kaspersky from this experience. It’s not a big issue as I would rather have false alarm than get infected with viruses or fall victim to a phishing scam wiping off my banking accounts. Maybe it’s time for me to scout for a new antivirus software soon…

UPDATE: Kaspersky has release an update for the KAV on 20 May 2009 morning that fixed the false alarm. Everythings back to normal now.

Why play alone? Viwawa

I’ve not been blogging much recently… well, here’s one reason why – Viwawa!! It’s an online casual gaming website, with cute characters (wawa) to represent each player in the game. No it’s not one of those MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), which I’m definately not keen of.

Viwawa’s games are more universal, simple and mostly an online version of traditional games like Chess (Western), Chinese Chess, Mahjong, Big 2 (Chor Tai Di) and many other variety of puzzle-like interactive games. One of my favourite is Sushido where the game revolves around making sushi from a maze of ingredients.

Anyway, it has many nice game to meet up with friends online and have a game or two when it’s not quite possible to meet up physically to play. So “Why play alone?” (Viwawa’s motto). Go get a wawa and have fun!

Viwawa.com

* Disclaimer: I’m NOT paid to promote Viwawa, I’m just sharing a nice free online game.