Social Moths

While the folks in Singapore has Ping.sg which is a Community Singapore Blog Aggregator developed by U-zyn who has even been touted as the next Kevin Rose and was nominated as one of Business Week 25 Asia’s Young Entrepreneurs.

Well us Bruneians have…

Social Moths


Socialmoths Screenshot (click to enlarge)

Still blog-hopping to see the latest updates from some of the most popular Bruneian blogs? Well hop no more, in here you’ll find all the latest post from them.

This is a great site for those who want to know what Brunei bloggers are up to, especially with the recent on-going article at CNET Asia entitled “Brunei Bloggers, a retrospective look” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

It’s a great medium for those who haven’t found the joy of newsfeeds (e.g. RSS). But while I wonder where the “Register my blog” link or FAQ is, it makes me think I’m not much of a social moth to know how this site works *shrug*

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–Update 090206: Added screenshot of Socialmoths

Impartial Law

When I read the article entitled “Setting Priorities Straight” by Ignatius Stephen earlier this month I felt pretty disgusted with the way things got settled.

“Mr. Ambassador, sir, your car is being locked. Hurry, hurry!” cried the head waiter who came running. “Talk to the officers, please. Quick! Mr. Ambassador!”
….
“Sorry, I parked here. But mine is a diplomatic vehicle. Ours is a new mission here and meanwhile I am waiting for a diplomatic car number plate,” the emissary explained to the arms of the law.

Point on contention being that it seems that just because the person is an ambassador they think they can get away with the wrong doing of parking in a place they are not supposed to park. I for one am utterly disgusted with this. Just because the person is of a high social rank, he/she can get away with their actions despite being in the wrong, and in this case breaking the law. Laws are in place to maintain order. If we break it, we deserve punishment. I believe there is room for leniency, but in this situation that does not apply.

On a side note, what use is a law if it is not enforced? I sure many of us remember the raid of the kedai komunis (translated to “communist shop” (if anybody knows the origin of this do leave a comment)), that sold nothing but pirated CDs and VCDs at the time. There was a major operation to rid the country of these pirated materials. It happened once or twice but and after that, it seemed that they did not seem to care about piracy anymore. The kedai komunis is still there, selling the same old pirated goods. More recently last year they raided an IT computer school (I would give links but can’t seem to Google search within brudirect.com) for usage of pirated software and the typical non enforcement after that.

The most recent law in place is the prohibition of smoking in specific places according to the Tobacco Order 2005 and it was finally fully enforced on 1st February 2008. A friend of mine happened to be in a situation where she had to suffer the negligence of smokers smoking in an area where it was prohibited. She gestured towards the non-smoking sign and was given a sour face by the smoker. Who didn’t even stay to finish the meal but got up and left. Also reported in the papers:

One patron said he warned them about the new rules, but they ignored him. (source)

People need to learn to be less selfish and more socially responsible. If you want to smoke and decide to put yourself though the health risk, you may but let it not harm/effect the lives of those around you.

The order also makes it an offence to smoke in certain public places and vehicles and anyone found guilty of violating the order will face a fine not exceeding $1,000.

I for one would love to see the Tobacco Order to be enforced so we can leave in a cleaner Brunei. We as a people of Brunei need to do something. Let us not be innocent bystanders suffering at the hands of others. Let us do something.

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A Lesson in Web Application Security Part 1

So it was today that the ‘O’, ‘AS’ & ‘A’ Level Results came out and in the recent days before, it was pretty well advertised that students could get the results by SMS. So when I heard word that the results were out I went to the Registration page to be greeted with a pretty, how would I put it, not so aesthetically pleasing site. Yes I know functionality is what is important and I do personally believe in that and I know my skills in design need a lot of work but come on people!

screenshot of SMS registration site
The site in question

So I decide to take a look around and see how they handle the registration of users….

Step 1: Input Details
Input details

Step 2: Confirmation
Confirmation

Step 3: Nothing, we’re done!
Nothing, we're done!

It does state that registration is free which is good however they was a huge flaw in the design process of this registration. As shown in the next 2 steps:

Step 4: Receive Confirmation SMS
Registration for BN123 4321 CANDIDATE NAME is successful.
To cancel the registration, type MOE CANCEL 98765 and
send to 8885555

Step 5: Receive Results SMS
O LEVEL RESULT 2008
Exam Center: BN123
Candidate Index: 4321
A.M = A
B.M = A
BIO = A
CHE = A
COM = A
ENG = A
MAT = A
PHY = A
RSLT = 8 0

–Update: Actual candidate name and results changed for illustration purposes

Part 2 will be released once Mach Telecommunications Systems fixes the exploits in question (or if they don’t do anything about it, forcing me to release it)

Update: Read Part 2 here

The Great Brunei Flood of 2009

Like many others I was caught in the floods and inconveniences of last night. As with BruneiMotors.com I too wish to applaud the Fire resuce, Ambulance, Police and any other forces who were sent out to help the drives, the stranded and all those affected.

Some shots from Gadong
Unitek Area (next to bridge exiting Gadong via the Mall):
Unitek flooded

Unitek:
Flooded car

Car parked at the Unitek area
Unitek area & Bridge

More pics of the events of last night

The flood aftermath at RanoAdidas

Submerged! at anakbrunei.org

Heavy downpour last night cause flash flood around Brunei at BruneiMotors.com

With many people displaced/inconvenienced due to the floods or the lack of electricity, myself without electricity, it makes me think of how refugees feel. We can get so frustrated with these little inconveniences when there are so many others around the World running for their lives, not knowing if they will even live to see another day. I hope it helps us humble ourselves are realize how much we have and how much we take for granted.

Take care everybody. Drive safe. God bless!

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Pizzas at just $15.00 nett per person?

While dining at Sheraton, head over to Brunei’s only Italian Pizzeria at the Pool Terrace for pizzas at just $15 nett per person
Source (Brudirect)

Sheraton Promotion Flyer
Images taken from tigerlim.blogspot.com

So I had the Pizza promotion with a few friends the other day and we found out the hard way that it happened to be $15 net per pizza. The phrasing did seem a bit strange to me, but I didn’t think that Sheraton, being one of the finer hotels in Brunei, would pull such a scheme, but alas I was wrong. So this is just to show my disdain for the misleading marketing of Sheraton.

On a lighter note, the pizzas were pretty good though the pizza with 4 different types of cheese didn’t have blue cheese.

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BruDirect News RSS Feed

BruDirect dubbed Brunei’s No. 1 News Website also known as, in my books, Brunei’s No. 1 Website in advertisements and general page clutter as shown below (I dare you to click)
Brudirect screenshot

So I got fed up and created an RSS feed that automatically updates daily. After much tweaking finally I have

Brudirect News Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/brudirect

Updates daily, every 30 minutes

(Note: the feed contains only stories hosted on Brudirect, not external stories from Yahoo or ESPN shown on Brudirect)
For those who don’t know what RSS or news feeds are, Common Craft did a fantastic video of RSS in Plain English as show below

For if you just rather have a single webpage to read you can bookmark this page.

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No software is free?

So I finally started reading Clipmarks again and like reddit and Digg it’s a great place for random news and stuff. For the benefit for those who haven’t heard or used Clipmarks, it is a site that aggregates clips made by users of the articles or webpages they visit. User clip the most important / interesting parts of the article which is what is presented to the reader along with the original source to get the full story. It’s a great concept and a good place to get random or filtered information. You can even create your own searches, e.g. one for Linux or Technology.

Anyway I found an article entitled ‘Stupid Teacher’ that I just had to post: Original article w/ email response | clipped article. Though I think it’s more of an uninformed/ignorant teacher rather than stupid, but she should have done more research before sending out that email.

“…observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks.

confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.

I just had to laugh at the “No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful” bit. Come on people, get with the times, with the free and open source software movement up and about, bringing us software like Linux, Ubuntu and most notably Firefox, one can no longer say something like “no software is free”. Of course this concept of free is free as in beer, cost-wise. The other type of free (libre), as in speech, now that’s a whole topic altogether.

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Cbox RSS Feed

I just found out Cbox (a Free Tagoard and Chat Widget) actually has an RSS feed for the posts. Happened when I Googled rss site:http://cbox.ws/ (non LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com link)

Find your CBox URL and for the and replace the value for the “sec” attribute with “rss” instead of “main” (the actual entries) or “form” (the input form to add another entry).

CBox page: http://thewheat.cbox.ws/
CBox entries URL: http://www.cbox.ws/box/?boxid=977721&boxtag=2061&sec=main
CBox RSS URL: http://www.cbox.ws/box/?boxid=977721&boxtag=2061&sec=rss

Finding the CBox URL

Cbox owner

  1. Go to the publish page in the Cbox control panel
  2. Look at the textbox after “Step 1: Get your code”

  3. Look for the value of “src” attribute:
    http://www.cbox.ws/box/?boxid=977721&boxtag=2061&sec=main
  4. Replace “&” with “&”:
    http://www.cbox.ws/box/?boxid=977721&boxtag=2061&sec=main
  5. Replace “sec” value with “rss”:
    http://www.cbox.ws/box/?boxid=977721&boxtag=2061&sec=rss

Non-Cbox owner

  1. Go to the website / webpage where the CBox is used. E.g. http://thewheat.cbox.ws/
  2. View the page source code (typically from the View menu > Source or right click the page > View Source)
  3. Look for the <iframe tag and the “src” attribute value:
    hosted by Cbox.ws

  4. Replace “sec” value with “rss”:
    From
    http://www.cbox.ws/box/?boxid=977721&boxtag=2061&sec=main
    to
    http://www.cbox.ws/box/?boxid=977721&boxtag=2061&sec=rss

It seems to be totally undocumented in the Cbox site and I guess it’s a hidden treasure. Now do us treasure hunters get any rewards?

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