it is great to give

It is always a great thing to give Khoo Teck Puat gave $34 million to Beijing University. His own money. It is easier to give other people's money, or taxpayer's money. There is now a storm at NUS for giving 40% of its bursary to foreigners. At NTU, bursary is only for Singaporeans. There is a difference in philosophy here. One believes in charity begins at home. One is international philantrophy, give to the world. Hopefully their pocket is deep enough. Now the donors are not happy. They donated in the belief that this will be given to help needy local students. Now, was there a written position or an implied understanding of who the donation shall go to? According to Education Correspondence, Sandra Davie, these detractors, a new term for complainers, are unhappy. Maybe using the term detractor is more pleasant. But if there was an understanding, implied or written, that the fund should go to local students, then the complainers are more than detractors. The onus of proof to justify the allocation of funds to foreign students will then lie squarely on the administrators of the fund. Then I wonder what is the best term to describe them

thoughtless violation of ownership

What is ownership? What is it that belongs to you? And if it is yours, can anyone take it from you against your wish or without your permission? Or can anyone, through a show of hands, that they are the majority, thus they decide against your property or interests? Or can the govt legislate anything it wants from you? The truth is that all these is happening right in front of us. And Singaporeans did not even have a second thought whether it is right for such things to happen. A very good example is an article in the newspaper by a writer, Nelson Quah, suggesting a mandatory deduction of $2 from all employees to set up a fund for the poor. And this is not the first time Singaporeans are suggesting such a measure with no respect for ownership. Whose money? Who does all these Singaporeans think they are to decide to take someone else money or property because they think it is for a good cause? Just legislate it and it becomes legal. Look at what is happening to our CPF? It is perfectly legal. It is also your money, or maybe not now.

now no fear to post at redbeanforum

Then please use the very same technology to banish all FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about your IP address being traced. Regain your anonymity, freedom and privacy. Exercise your free speech in order to preserve what little freedom you have left. Do you like anonymity? Do you wish to circumvent MDA's or any censor's content filters for that matter? Then use Tor technology. It's a network of onion-routers operated mostly by private individuals (some .edus and non-profit orgs also do so). But coz no one person/company own/ have access to the entire network - a common pitfall of so-called "free anonymous proxies" - they can't store all details about you - even if they want to). Tor continually hops and cycles through thousands of IP addresses in its network before exiting your data stream through hundreds possible exit nodes. So unless you're being watched and timed at both entry and exit nodes, no one knows where you came from nor where you're going. Anyway, so what? You easily re-establish another ID using new hardware with fresh MAC addresses. And of course using a public hotspot helps, too. If you want to try out Tor, go to http://torrify.com/ and download Torpark and run that from your machine. Once you've got it running go to http://cmyip.com/ to verify that your IP is indeed masked. Better still go download the Firefox browser from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ and torrify it from http://tor.eff.org/download.html.en so you get the benefit of Privoxy as well. Allow yourself to speak out freely without any more FUD. So you see, Knowledge is Power and Information is Freedom in an information-controlled and fear-induced environment. BTW, Tor, Firefox, Privoxy software that power such technology is Open Source Software. Meaning it's FREE and LEGAL to be downloaded and used. So use and support OSS to enjoy a better tomorrow today. PS. don't complain if your surfing speed is now slower. That's the trade-off you make to enjoy anonymity and circumvent content filters. You choose if it's worth it. Anyway, there's the Tor button that toggles if off - if you feel safe to do so.

increase in postage rate

Increase in Postage rate. The increase in postage rate effective 18 Dec 06 will be from 23c to 25c, 70c to $1.10 and $2 to $2.20. Effectively the percentage increase ranges from 8.7%, 10% and 57%. There it goes!

littering no more

We have been very successful in cleaning up Singapore over the years until things took a drastic change lately. Singaporeans in general, except a few untrainable, have been accustomed to the non littering habit that have been instilled in them from young. Why the sudden turn of event? Have Singaporeans gone back to their third world mentality? It is pointless to tackle the problem if we failed to see the cause of the problem. Indeed some Singaporeans have returned to their ugly habit of littering. But that is not the major cause. Why are people so blind not to notice who are the littering our streets? It is not the Singaporeans but our foreign workers. Not too sure about foreign talents. Overnight, fields and playgrounds and footpaths were strewn with litters, papers for sitting on the ground, plastic bags, food wrappers, emptied drink bottles and cans were everywhere. For the situation to reach such a state, it means someone is sleeping. Someone who is tasked to do the job is not doing it. Is this a complain? To some arseholes, yes it is a complain. To the enlightened, it is feedback. And they would probably thank people who talked about such problems and start cracking. The problem is straightforward and the solutions too are quite simple. But if we do not understand the source of the problem, we are barking at the wrong tree.