Life

1. Tough but needed loss.

2. Something that's really hard to live by. But I promise to give something better and in a better way.

Loves, mom, family and friends.

Friday Sermon

You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness

THE CRIME OF DRAW MUHAMMAD DAY; MANAGING THE INSULT

My fellow muslimin, place the best efforts and strive for the highest level of taqwa in our lives. The strives and the passion on doing what is ordained, must be complemented and supported by the prevention and precautions on what is forbidden.

My dear muslims

The world’s tolerance is again tested when it comes to the confliction between religion, religious principles and the freedom of expression. Whilst the Social Networking such as Facebook and top social medias You Tube, promoting the freedom of expression with their insensitive taunt to muslims and declare the May 20th as the Draw Muhammad Day, the only things appear is that the world is now seeing the upside down of the intellectuality level, scratching and denting their intellectual with irrelevant actions and morale misbehave. Muslims, just like others, should be the first to defend anyone’s right to express their own opinion, no matter how offensive it is. The reason it happen is due to the lack of knowledge surpassing their actions, or the ignorance that they’re practicing, intentionally or unintentionally. No matter where we are living, be it in a majority scale or minority would it be, the world and the human sense believe and respect values and diversity. But on top of that, on any reasonable and understood ground, freedom of expression does not create an obligation to offend or to show disrespects to the religious beliefs or revered figures of others.

Despite the cartoonist's and the Facebook seemingly attempts to distance themselves from the fake event, the extremists against Islam and those who promoting Islamophobia made sure the call to draw Muhammad went viral on the Internet. They are hoping to offend Muslims, who are sensitive to created images of the Prophet Muhammad or any prophets. What they need to know, of most possibly that they’ve acknowledged the matter long ago, as for muslims, we believe visual representations of not just our beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, all prophets are inappropriate in that they distract from God's message and could lead to a kind of idol worship, which is obviously forbidden in Islam. For all we know, what exactly happen to other religions which allow drawing, sketching the visual figure of their Prophets, it’s not just the false idolization, but they’re free to insult their own religions and its teachings. They expressed their frustration towards their own religions by mocking their religious leaders and even the Prophets and the God! It is strongly suggested to any other religions that their scholars and leaders sensitively look into this matter and might as well joining the aspiration and the stand of Islam in banning these types of visualizations. Bible didn’t approach its readers to visualize Jesus or their religious leaders. It can never be the good way to make people close to their religions, rather it does succeed in distracting people far away from their own beliefs.

So, what will be our best reactions? Firstly, it must be made clear to muslims and non muslims that Islam teaches us about the value, freedom of speech and have no desire to inhibit the creative instincts of cartoonists, comedians, artists or anyone else. What other religions and their leaders need to do is, positively pull themselves on the same discussion table with muslim leaders in their region. Let the intentional ignorance attitude washed away to the drain, based on the freedom of expression factor. If this can be done, they will acknowledge that people is free to practice their religious beliefs, and this freedom must be engaged with morale, respect and responsible acts. Should you say that you’re free and wanted to express your freedom in expression in all things, including religion, then you must let muslim women for example, to feel free wearing their burqa. It’s their personal choice, it’s the dressing style that they personally chose. Belgium who banned it, simply on the basis of its contradict with the culture of the country. Ironically, the country claimed to hold a tolerance, respect and diversity as the core culture.

That’s why rationally and truthfully, freedom is defined with responsible acts and not just totally free. Nobody is allowed to trespass other’s land, nobody is allowed to enter other people’s property, nobody is allowed to hack other people’s bank account. They’re free to buy lands and property and doing the transaction with banks, but they simply are not free to touch other’s rights. If they can accept this fact, why can’t they rationally accept that Islam forbids the visualization of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in any ways?

Secondly, Muslims and non muslims must examine how the Prophet Muhammad himself reacted to personal insults. Our Prophet has been abused, have it in words and actions from the pagans of Makkah and in Madinah too. He has been labeled with so many inappropriate names and calls. Islamic traditions include a number of instances in which the Prophet had the opportunity to retaliate against those who abused him, but refrained from doing so. He said, ‘You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness.’ Even when the prophet was in a position of power, he chose the path of kindness and mercy. When he returned to Makkah after years of exile and personal attacks, he did not take revenge on the people who had reviled him and abused and tortured his followers, but instead offered a general amnesty. With the strength of patience in preaching and deliver good messages, instead of reacting negatively to the bigoted call to support the Draw Muhammad Day, we should use that and every other day as an opportunity to reach out to people of other faiths and beliefs to build bridges of understanding and respect.

Barakallahu li walakum

Mohd Erfino Johari

Note : This is only the first part of the sermon by Ustaz Erfino on 21 May 2010 at UK Malaysian Student Department, London. You can read the whole sermon here.

Google TV

Playing with CSS

...bila dah bosan nie, macam nak mintak new term start awal sket la plak

Actually I really wanted to learn Python as soon as possible but the whole redesigning thing took all the time up until now. With the weather taking the devil's side, I was here in the living room the whole day being a geek tweaking this blog.

I was reading a lot too. If only I have the writing skills, I'd have written some good summed up articles but nah maybe later.

So, wanna know what have I changed? First of all is the whole layout size. Having a netbook, it has been a must for me to make sure that this blog is viewable via my netbook as normal as it is viewed on the other expensive computing crap (no offense). So, I made it just so that it fits both just nice. Secondly, the whole typography thing. I used mostly Georgia. Looks appropriate for any long article.

Then, I added the "pullquote". Not sure what that is? Is the thing there on top right of this post, where I used mostly for quotations. That one is inspired by BBC News for its neat looking. I also modified the "blockquote" a little bit. See it below, so now you know I don't just make up my own story, hehe.

A teenage engineer has scooped several awards at US science fair for a device which could be used to save lives.

The design of James Popper, 18, from Wiltshire, detects kitchen fires without setting off false alarms.He was inspired to develop the device after an elderly friend with dementia had a devastating kitchen fire.About 1,600 students took part in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose last week.

The CookerSmart design detects the infrared in flames, reducing the likelihood of false alarms.
The Marlborough College student won accolades including the best of category award for Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, and an invitation to the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar.It sees 25 of the world's best young scientists and engineers meet during the Nobel Prize ceremonies.He also came first in the US Government Patent and Trademark Office Society Award and was the winner of the United Technologies Corporation Prize.

James received cash awards, two scholarships, company shares and a grant for his school.

(Source : BBC News)

Note : This kid is awesome. How would you know those little daily observations can help you to achieve something like that? Okay, next time we stare at things with thought more than our eyes alright?

There is also the whole sidebar thingy. Not much but that's all to it. The last one is the "menu bar" above. That one is pretty tricky. I wanted to make something like the menu bar here (see it at top right) but I just couldn't make it work right. Maybe I'll try again later.

That's all folks. There are a few new things to be added, I guess maybe next time :)

What dya think?

Happy Holidays!

...err, to some of you

...and Happy Fishing LeGone!

(Credit : Basketbawful) 

Survived

This trimester in short :

1. Started the trimester with a mistake.

2. Put the blame on myself. I put my trust in someone I barely know and believed.

3. Suffered a great loss. It hurt.

4. It affected my life since then, in a good and bad way.

5. This time around, instead of with friends, I stood on my own.

6. It was a roller-coaster road. Avoidance helped.

7. Started believing. Life went on.

8. Life went on. Basketball was the best therapy. And oh yeah, friends too.

9. Life went on. Feeling good. Feeling great. Studying.

10. Finished exam. I think I survived this one.

Thanks god :-)

Stay strong

I'm just right behind ya, Panny

Invest with caution. Invest with extreme caution.

For those who are happened to miss this.

...it was too risky for an ordinary worker to decide on the type of investment

PETALING JAYA, May 12 (Bernama) -- Invest with extreme caution.

This is the impassioned plea from the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) to Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contributors intending to invest in unit trust funds.

A wrong decision could wipe out their investments in such unit trust companies, despite approval by the EPF Board, said MTUC general secretary G. Rajasegaran.

He said the MTUC had received many complaints pertaining to workers not benefitting from their investments, with some even losing their investments due to price fluctuation.

Rajasegaran was commenting on the increase in the number of withdrawals by members to invest in unit trust fund companies.

He said the EPF should provide special consultancy services to members who wished to invest in unit trusts.

"In the absence of such expert advice, it was too risky for an ordinary worker to decide on the type of investment," he told Bernama in an interview Wednesday.

Rajasegaran said, while MTUC appreciated the board's move to provide opportunities for EPF members to invest their savings for better returns, he felt this should be done very cautiously as the majority of the members were ignorant about the risks involved in such investments.

So far, the board has approved 16 unit trust fund companies. Another 25 would be appointed later.

According to Federation of Investment Managers Malaysia president Tunku Yaacob Tunku Abdullah, the number of EPF contributors investing in unit trust funds in 2007 was around 300,000.

The figure is expected to increase to a million by 2015.

(Source : Bernama)

Gold Investment

The interest was brought up alive again by a friend. Here's a good news :

Kuwait Finance House Malaysia Launches KFH Gold Account-i

KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 (Bernama) -- Kuwait Finance House (Malaysia) Bhd (KFHMB) aims to sell 50kg of gold under its newly-launched KFH Gold Account - i by year-end, says its Retail and Consumer Banking Head Attar Salleh.

He said since the soft launch of the account two-and-a-half-month ago, the bank had received more than RM1.08 million and transacted nine kilogrammes of gold.

"The KFH Gold Account-i, is the first Shariah-based gold account offered in Malaysia, where KFHMB sells physical gold to the customer," he told reporters after the official launch of the account here on Friday.

"Through the account, customers are able to purchase and invest in gold in a convenient and secure way. Customers have a choice to either collect the gold or keep it with the bank for safe custody at no charge," he said.

Attar also said customers can start investing from as low as 10 grams of gold and must maintain a minimum balance of two grams.

He said the gold price is about RM125 per gram.

"Customers can always sell or withdraw their gold at the branch based on the bank's daily purchasing price. The physical withdrawal of gold can be made in denominations of one, five, 10 and 50 grams," he said, adding that the account is available at all its seven branches nationwide.

Attar said the bank also plans to launch automobile financing in the second half of this year.

He said the bank has target its consumer business to constitute half of its undertakings by 2015.

"We plan to form business alliances with several third parties. I can't reveal their identity at the moment. We believe such alliances are important to growing the business," he said.

(Source : Bernama)

So far, I've known 4 banks who offer Gold Investment ;

1. Maybank : Kijang Emas and Gold Savings Passbook Account
2. Kuwait Finance House (KFH) : Gold Account-i
3. Public Bank : Gold Investment Account
4. UOB Bank (Not much info I've got so far)

Interestingly, there were arguments on the little advantage of Gold Investment in term of gaining revenues. Even my friend's dad said ASB is better in generating revenues. I'll dig some info on this.

Mom

A shoulder that keep lifting works for us

Hands that are always overwhelmingly open

Eyes that sparkle with heavy care

A mind filled with amazing things

A smile that can jump right into our heart

Laughters that can wash our pains away

Mom,

I may not pray much and I may not pray often

but when I do,

rabbir hamhuma kama rabbayani soghiroh

I love you mom. Happy Mother's Day! :-)

Basketball in MMU? Just forget about it.

Wrote this last night out of anger. Thought I wanna reward myself with ball game of one or two after a not-so-okay exams paper but those 'unbelievable' people are just unbelievable. Scrolled through the website last night and found this one liner from Mr. Director's page :

          Everything we do here begins and ends with students

Excuse me Mr. Director, you might wanna evaluate your current department's work vision. Otherwise, you might wanna stop making people confused and change that one liner to something like this;

          Everything we do here begins with students' money and ends with more students' money

It sounds a little bit childish and 'really' serious which later made me thinking maybe I shouldn't send this in. Not that it matters to me soon - I'll be staying off campus next semester. But it freaking does now! I do ball for stress-relief. Now that you've taken those away, should I exercise other things like smoking, 24 hours gaming, clubbing and other stuff people find pleasure in? Gimme a break you unreasonable punk!

Ok, here's the letter. Sorry about the grammar, I'm not good in writing official letter thingy. It's good that I paid attention to the late Tech Comm class.

Dear Sir,

I would like to make a formal complaint regarding the sports facilities provided by in Multimedia University Cyberjaya Campus and to be specific the use of the indoor court for basketball.

First of all, this is my first year in MMU Cyberjaya and I found my student life here is both challenging and enjoyable. Both the system and the campus environments have been really helpful.

To make the matter clear, I would like to describe the events that lead to this complaint. Yesterday, May 3rd, at approximately 6PM, me and one other friend went to the indoor court with the intention to play basketball. At first we found out that the indoor court was being used by the staff for badminton and hence we decided to wait as we understand they could have booked the indoor court. We came back two hours later at around 8PM and discovered that they were still using the court. We figured that the indoor court would be closed at 10PM and so we decided to go ahead to play on our own there. We started to use the basketball boards and there were no indication from the staff who were playing badminton at that time that they booked the court for themselves. As we are aware, anyone is allowed to use the court as long as no one booked them.

At about 8.30PM, one of them confronted us and complained that we should not be using the indoor court for basketball. She then added that the indoor court can only be used for basketball tournament and not for the regular basketball activities by students. We continued to play as we were not informed with such rules before and the fact that we have been using the court for some time as well as the fact that the indoor court is the only available facilities for us to play basketball in the campus at this moment. To pay some respect to the staff, we continued for just about half an hour and decided to get the correct information about the matter soon.

Unfortunately, today at around 6PM, we went to the indoor court and shockingly found that basketball boards have been kept aside and the rims are taken out. In other words, the facilities for us to play basketball in the indoor court are no longer available and that is very frustrating.

I believe as an MMU student, I have the right to address this issue and kindly demand proper explanation from the right personnel over this matter.

As I see fit, I would also like to address the issues regarding the hostel basketball court. First of all the rims are broken and in my view, the sole reason behind this is because they are low quality rims. I want to clarify that they were no act of misuse present as the cause of the condition of the rims. The rims are simply easy to get defected and would not last long. I believe this has been the case before and the only reasonable resolution is to replace the use of the low quality rims with higher quality rims that will last longer. For your information, the basketball court has been in this condition for several months now and I have waited and saw no efforts done in improving it by anyone.

The other issue I would like to mention is the condition of the floor of the court. Unlike the nearby futsal court, the basketball court is very unusually slippery and hence presents higher risk for students who use the court to get injured. I would like to suggest the need for improvement in the condition of the floor of the court such as to use the same kind of materials that are used for the nearby futsal court.

I have attached some photos to show the current conditions of the court.

I am not filing this complaint to benefit only me, but I am filing it on behalf of me, my colleagues and others whom the issue might concern in any form.

I would really appreciate it if you look into this issue as your office has helped provided solutions to lot of students’ problems and I look forward to your reply. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Yours sincerely,
Mohd Rafsyam Hasyemi bin Serilanang
Electronics Engineering majoring in Telecommunication (ID :1091105796)
+60145281378
mrafsyam@gmail.com

This is just an example of how poor MMU management is. I could list a couple more but you know, sometimes being grateful works better...What are the odds of me getting kicked out of school for sending this letter to the management?

Thoughts on Flash - Steve Jobs

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

(Source : Apple)