News & Politics, Science

Of bandwidth caps and pay as you go Internet

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Maybe I’m easily amused, but I had fun reading through this huge troll of a thread on LYN yesterday evening. It was clearly posted from a dupe account made for the specific purpose of starting that thread, but the inspiration came from a comment by the real Fikri Saleh during an online interview with the Malaysian Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation Datuk Dr. Maximus Ongkili organized by The Star:

I am an Electrical Engineering undergraduate from the University of Melbourne, currently majoring in telecommunications. In Australia they charge you for download quotas, where the more you download, the more you will have to pay, say 100 GB @ $100 versus 20 GB @ $20, after which the speed is throttled down (slowed). By charging more for more quota, this can improve overall connection quality. The heavy downloaders can still download, but now they have to pay more. Thus we normal users do not have to put up with the network being bogged due to these heavy downloaders, because there will be fewer of them.

Regards,
Fikri Saleh

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Games

Facebook games

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I’ve had a Facebook account for ages myself, but never did anything with it until recently. A thread on QT3 about the growing popularity of games on Facebook and the serious sums of money this new niche is generating prompted me to go check it out. It so happens that a few people on QT3 are actively involved in making these games and even established games companies are looking into developing applications for Facebook.

After checking out a few of them, it’s clear that there’s barely enough gameplay in them to actually qualify them for being called games. Two of the more popular games, Vampire Wars and Mafia Wars, both by zynga for example, are basically identical with the main differences being their themes.  Another game I checked out, the relatively new Vikings, Pirates and Ninjas tries to ape fantasy MMOs, except that everything is simplified and doing quests just takes clicking a button. Above all, everything is stupidly repetitive with next to variation at all.

Still, this clearly hasn’t stopped them from being popular or earning a great deal of money, which confirms the suspicion that all gamers really need is to see the numbers on their screen constantly increase. I suppose that aside from their accessibility, the close integration that they have with Facebook effectively means lots of free advertising and allows players to pretend that they’re meaningfully interacting with their friends. These things aren’t really going to hold my interest for any decent length of time, but the really sad part is that most Flash games offer much more gameplay and some are really quite innovative, but none can match the earning power of these Facebook games.

Fun

Microsoft ramps up the browser wars

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So, Microsoft Australia is running a competition to encourage people to switch to Internet Explorer 8 by hiding a AUD$10,000 cash prize on a website somewhere on the Internet that can only be viewed using their browser. After all the anti-trust grief Microsoft has gotten, I wouldn’t have expected the company to try something like this. Personally, the only time I ever use IE any more is when I get a new computer and use it download Firefox. I did give Chrome a try when it first came out, but I found its UI a bit too minimal for me.

I have to admit though that I still notice plenty of friends and family using IE. Usually, when they call on me to fix their computer problems, the first thing I do is install Firefox, make it the default browser and hide access to IE. People get confused about why I do that, and are hesitant to switch to a different browser at first, but they get used to it and it sure helps to keep their computers clean.

Firefox is sadly not quite as good these days as it used to be, and every new version seems to be more bloated and prone to crashing than the last. The day may yet come when I’ll have to ditch it for something else but if Microsoft insists on telling Firefox users to get lost, I don’t think that’s going to convince me to move to IE.

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News & Politics

Index funds again

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I’m feeling lazy today, so here’s a cut and paste response that I posted to a question in LYN:

Can someone recommend some unit trust fund managers for KLCI INDEX fund? Is the OSK KLCI Tracker the only KLCI index fund around? I cannot believe this. Why other fund managers don’t setup an index fund? Why let OSK monopoly? I can’t even find two to compare and see which is cheaper.

Late reply, but this is something that I’ve wondered about in the past on this very forum as well. If you read a lot of general investment advice that comes out of experience in the US markets, the general consensus you should get is that most ordinary people should just buy index funds and forget about everything else. The rationale is that research has definitively demonstrated that over the long run, index funds in the aggregate outperform actively managed funds once you account for the higher costs associated with the managed funds. While it is possible for managed funds to beat the index, research has shown that it is not generally possible to predict in advance which particular managed fund will beat its benchmark index in any particular year. Research has also shown that the simple strategy of choosing the best performer of last year to invest in every year is a losing one.

Continue reading Index funds again →

Games, Personal Life

Getting into boardgames

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I’ve been thinking about getting into boardgames for a while now but I’ve only recently started it doing it for real. I don’t really have much experience in this hobby. I was a fairly avid player of Magic: The Gathering and other assorted CCGs back in the day, but the only boardgaming I ever did was a few very memorable games of Space Hulk at the short-lived Temple du Jeu in Tours where I studied. Still, I’ve always kept half an eye on the field and felt a strange lust for those giant boxes filled with all manner of figures and dice.

It turns out that there’s a boardgaming cafe at City Mall here in Kota Kinabalu, which you can play the titles in their very extensive library for a modest table and food / drinks for each player, so my wife and I decided to give it a try. We played a game of Carcassonne with just the two of us a couple of weeks ago and on Saturday roped in my wife’s oldest brother to join us. We ended up staying a bit longer than expected and played a game of Carcassonne and a game of Settlers of Catan. We probably won’t be going every single week but I have a feeling that this is going to a regular source of entertainment for the both of us.

Right now, I’m thinking of buying a copy of Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers because it’s a great, easy-to-learn game to take out when we have family and friends visiting. I’m also thinking of ordering a copy of Arkham Horror, a highly regarded cooperative game that the cafe, CarcaSean, doesn’t seem to have in its library. According to what I’ve read it’s perfectly playable for two but would be better for more people. I’ve also been trying to connect with other boardgamers in town so that I can finally get into one of those epic games like Starcraft, Battlestar Galactica or Twilight Imperium. So if any friends want to give this hobby a try and are reading this, do let me know. We could always use more players!

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Politics, Science

H1N1 Pandemic Fears: Justified or panic reaction?

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So the World Health Organization has declared H1N1 as a pandemic, which prompts questions of whether the fears over it are justified or a panicky over-reaction. I didn’t elaborate on the H1N1 precautions in Hong Kong in my earlier post, so let me say here that while they’re not exactly in a panic over it, it’s obvious enough that they’re taking it a lot more seriously than most people in Malaysia. Posters urging the public to take health precautions are everywhere and every time we used the subway, we were constantly bombarded by warnings and advice about respiratory diseases over the public announcements system.

One particular precaution that we found novel was placing hand sanitizers in many public areas. They seem to dispense some sort of alcohol-based disinfectant that you’re supposed to use regularly. Since the substance just evaporates, it won’t leave your hands slimy or wet. Many surfaces that you might expect members of the public to touch on a regular basis, such as escalator handrails, elevator buttons and even seats in public waiting areas had signs indicating that they’re disinfected on a regular schedule. Obviously all these measures take quite a bit of effort and money to implement, which means that they need to be justified on a cost-benefit basis.

Continue reading H1N1 Pandemic Fears: Justified or panic reaction? →

Games

Living the life in Liberty City

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As you can see, I’ve finally received my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV and despite some minor problems with signing up for Rockstar’s Social Club service and tying it to a Windows Live account, have managed to get it running. As expected, my PC is a bit too behind the curve to be able to turn all the dials up, so I have to settle for mostly medium quality graphics settings. It’s not painful on the eyes or anything, but the game does have an annoying tendency to makes shadows all blurry and everything is a little too jaggy for my tastes. I guess Rockstar hasn’t quite caught on to AA filtering yet.

Of course, no GTA game is ever going to win any beauty contests. The strength of the series has always been in the scope and detail of its cities, not in top notch graphics. Still, there’s no denying that the scope of Liberty City is beautiful in of itself. Cruising past the game’s rendition of Times Square is certainly an impressive experience. The city is wonderfully alive too with lots of interesting stuff going on in the background. Cops chase crooks and actually load them into patrol cars when they catch them. The bridges have working toll booths. Perhaps best of all, buildings and interior locations are now seamlessly integrated with the main city.

What I dislike most about this game so far is that it feels too much like a linear RPG set in an open city rather than a real sandbox. Previous GTA games had plenty of side activities that were mostly unrelated to the main plot, and I enjoyed being able to buy new houses and businesses. So far I haven’t seen any of that in this iteration of the series. Rockstar seems to think that GTA is all about the story and seems to be trying too hard to make it a serious epic, eschewing the over the top whackiness I loved in previous games. I’m enjoying it well enough so far, but my favourite GTA is still Vice City. We’ll see when I get to the end of this game if my opinion changes.

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The unexamined life is a life not worth living