Thursday, January 19, 2012

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Wishing all my Chinese friends and readers a prosperous new year. May this year of the dragon be filled with joy and happiness to you and the who family.

As always, drive safe, don't drink if you want to drive. Take a cab instead.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

CGPA grades or the grade of life??

A question I pose to those academician and hiring managers alike of whether the academic grade of a 4.0 is worth more than of a graduate who thinks out of the box and work smart which can work to the expectations and independently?
I have always a believer of street smart people who can achieve many things rather than of those who think they know they can of it , only just on paper rather than no real physical skill themselves.

For the past many years,Singapore have been emphasizing on the academics but lacking on the development of the thinking mind and took the short cut of just importing cheap foreign talents from India , Philippines and the sort and not heavily investing on the locals itself. Locals like the dominant sound blaster Creative Technologies will not be so of the standard unless he is without a thinking mind, not even a scholar. Why am I raising this matter up is that our GLC companies are wasting tax payers money on useless and outdated technology that even back dated England had used 5 years back. Technologies within the home team are so critical of the 3G technology that if an act of sabotage, they will be out of communications just as SingTel always screw up the 3G services. So what if there is a power outage or some china man used a cellular disrupter which you can buy off eBay for $29.95?? Where is the secondary system?? Lives would have been lost.

I just ask to take a few steps back and think out loud. Are we going back to the stone age and rely on foreign thwarts for everything and blame them for all the fuckups?? Or are we allowing Singaporeans fly out and never come back and be drained of the brain cells???

Friday, January 6, 2012

Another Singapore financial scam

The recent highlight of over 200 victims who had their debit visa and MasterCard ATM combo cards cloned and misused in Malaysia is just to show that cheap skate Singapore banks just don't listen to the reality of new age fraud and still using backdated technology in the name of saving money.

They just don't get the fact that magnetic technology which is super cheap don't work anymore. Everyone else is using EMV compliant technology, reading cards just off their data stored on the smart chip. I used it more than 10 years back in uk where we found the security loophole and here we are, Singapore stuck with the same old problem. Why?? Because they wanted to save money and still be able to charge you $2 a month for service fees. So what is the ultimate resolution for these faults??

Firstly, scrap all the existing cards. Replace all of them with NETS visa wave and embossed cards. This will deter clones and faults.

Replace all ATM machines with smart technology such as a combo cash recycler and cheque image deposit. Touch screen is pretty useless actually.

Update all the crypto keys with 4096 SHA2 SSL3 technology on all machines. All nets terminal to use wireless payment as mandate. The machines must accept all other card services such as diners club,Amex and Malaysian MEPS bank card as ocbc and uob are member banks there.

Automatic call notification of foreign transactions and especially ATM withdrawals. Locator services can see if customer is outside the country and manual checks done.

Now the customers suffer. Time for you to think if our Singapore banks are up to scratch.




Sunday, January 1, 2012

Happy new year!!!

Happy new year to all my friends on this first day of 2012.many are still hung over from yesterday's party and to those who were at the Marina Bay Float to usher in the New year, I just hope it was well worth it.

Well from what I know Siti Nurhaliza was there performing live till 3am in the morning. But I just stop to ponder as to why Siti,a multi millionaire and married to a super rich DATOK K had to stoop so low to a concert which she labeled 'with improper moral values' and with tickets at $25 a pop which she usually performs for nothing less than $100 and costing organisers at least $4million in performance fees alone. And why as a married woman stay out so late than rather spend time with her husband?? Are these signs of financial constraints or marital issues or are the rumors of her husband took on another wife which was said to be a Singaporean stewardess?? These are here say but her actions are portraying such.

As for the Samoans, they are enjoying the benefits of having to celebrate the new year twice since they swapped time zones last night, loosing the eve and head out to the eastern time zone instead.

Just that is my ramblings and wish u good health and great fortunes ahead

Salam always
Azrin