.sg 10th riskiest domain

THE next time you click on an unfamiliar website ending with .sg, think twice.

Spam masters are zeroing in on the .sg domain. Singapore was singled out as the 10th-riskiest domain out of 104 worldwide in a recently released McAfee report – and the rise of such sites, said experts, could cause Internet users worldwide to lose trust in Singapore websites.

The report warned that more .sg domains are being used for phishing and spam activities and to serve up viruses – almost one out of every 20 (4.6 per cent) tested by the security company this year.

The jump is spectacular – from just 0.3 per cent last year to 4.6 per cent this year.

In contrast, Hong Kong and Japan were noted for their ‘aggressive steps to clamp down on scam-related registrations’ and stricter registration requirements for domain names.

McAfee senior research analyst Shane Keats noted that pharmacy sites touting pills were the main route used to send spam.

Source: The Straits Times

Then again.

This video is obviously fake. It has zero evidence of it’s claim, it doesn’t show any cats being eaten by sharks, it doesn’t show any cats being pierced with hooks (although a gloved man pretends to), it doesn’t show anything really. It only shows black cats supposedly dangling from a hook, and a gloved man pretending to hook a kitten…

Source: AdSavvy

Eeeks. What’s worse? Killing kittens for sport, or making a bundle from humans’ compassion?

Either way, watch this video if you haven’t already. Perhaps we should be using humans as bait next.

Save Our Cats and Kittens Society (SOCKSFF)

But this letter, from a irate consumer in India, to Virgin boss Richard Branson, takes the cake.

************************************

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this: [see image 3, above].

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation:

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly

XXXX

************************************

According to the Telegraph, Paul Charles, Virgin’s Director of Corporate Communications, confirmed that Sir Richard Branson had telephoned the author of the letter and had thanked him for his “constructive if tongue-in-cheek” email. Mr Charles said that Virgin was sorry the passenger had not liked the in-flight meals which he said was “award-winning food which is very popular on our Indian routes.”

Bad move, Paul. Don’t just thank a customer for his feedback. Bloody do something about it!

Capcom’s classic arcade game, Street Fighter returns with a bang on video! Well, not quite. It’s only College Humor up to their usual.

What? Did you expect Ken, Ryu and Chun Li would really be back? We can only hope. For now, enjoy this…

Haduken!

For more, see the full list here in the 10-part series.

Recessions affect everyone, even the most powerful man on the board.

‘I Had a Job to Do’ Whether the government liked it or not, says ex-president Ong

ONG Teng Cheong will go down in history as Singapore’s first elected president. But for twenty years before that, the Chinese-educated, foreign-trained architect was a stalwart of the nation’s People’s Action Party government led by its first PM Lee Kuan Yew. Ong, now 64, was minister of communications, of culture, and of labor; he was also deputy PM, secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress, and chairman of Lee’s PAP. By common consent, he was the man who kept the Chinese ground loyal to the party; indeed, his command of the language was such that Lee always asked Ong to accompany him whenever he visited China. In the 1980s, Ong was one of the party’s four senior ’second echelon’ leaders who were considered as possible successors to Lee. It was Ong’s longtime friend, Goh Chok Tong, who got the nod for the job. Ong, who was diagnosed as suffering from lymphatic cancer in 1992, chose instead to run in the first elections for the presidency the following year.

He won — and soon became embroiled in a six-year long festering dispute with his former colleagues in government over how much information he should have in order to fulfil his role in safeguarding Singapore’s prodigious financial reserves. The altercation came to a head last year when Ong and his mentor Lee and friend Goh clashed publicly and rancorously in a rare display of disunity among PAP heavyweights. He decided not to run for re-election as president — but not before he had spooked Goh’s men by leaving the announcement until the last moment. He has now returned to the private architecture firm he set up with his late wife, Ling Siew May, and which is now run by one of his two sons. His doctors have given him a clean bill of health after a debilitating bout with lymphatic cancer — though he still wears a cap to cover the baldness caused by chemotherapy treatment. Last week, he gave his first in-depth interview about his presidency to senior correspondent Roger Mitton in a nearly two-hour long talk. Extended Excerpts:

It’s now six months since you stepped down. How do you feel about your time as president?

I am satisfied with what I did. I hope it was all for the best. I was elected to do a job. And I had to do that job whether the government — or anyone else — liked it or not.

It seems that often they did not like it, but let’s go back: How did you first get into politics?

In the early 1970s, Lee Kuan Yew asked me for an interview to get me involved to stand for election. I stood in 1972 and I won and became a PAP backbencher. A year later, Lee asked me to take up ministerial office but I turned it down because my younger brother was dying of cancer. I had to assist him and to settle his affairs after he died at the age of 25. Then Lee Kuan Yew approached me again and this time I agreed to take up office. Lee is very persuasive.

He must have been impressed to make you a minister so quickly — you were a young architect with no experience of politics.

Yes, I was not trained to become a minister or a politician, but you learn on the job. Whenever I went to a new ministry, I always asked myself basic questions: What is this job all about? What am I supposed to do? That’s what I did in 1980, for instance, when I became minister of labor, in addition to being minister for communications. I went through all the legislation and I decided that the trade unions should not just be designed to organize and finance strikes, but instead should help improve the workers’ social and economic wellbeing.

You became head of the NTUC and also remained a cabinet minister — and Singapore remained strike free.

Yes. But in January 1986 I did sanction a strike, the first for about a decade. It was in the shipping industry where the management was taking advantage of the workers. I did not even tell the cabinet about santioning the strike. And some of them were angry with me about that. The minister for trade and industry was very angry, his officers were very upset. They had calls from America, asking what happened to Singapore? — we are non-strike. I said: if I were to inform the cabinet or the government they would probably stop me from going ahead with the strike. It only lasted two days. Then all the issues were settled. It showed that management was just trying to pull a fast one. So I believe what I did was right.

It marked a trend — that you have never been afraid of doing something your ministerial colleagues might disagree with?

No. If they don’t like it, I can always come back here to my architecture firm.

Around this time you were discussing the succession to PM Lee?

Lee Kuan Yew had been discussing this since about 1983. At that time, the second echelon was Tony Tan, S. Dhanabalan, Goh Chok Tong and myself.

Were you a candidate for the top job?

I was considered as a member of the group. At that time, we did not know who would be the successor to Lee. We finally made the decision to pick Goh Chok Tong. He agreed on condition that I agreed to be his number two. So I was the second DPM; he was the first DPM. In 1988, Lee asked Goh to take over, but he was not ready. He said: two more years. So two years later, he took the job.

Lee did not agree with your decision to pick Goh.

No, he did not disagree. He said he would leave it to us. His own first choice was Tony Tan. Goh Chok Tong was his second choice. I was his third choice because he said my English was not good enough. He said Dhanabalan was not right because Singapore was not ready for an Indian prime minister. That upset the Indian community. There was quite a bit of adverse reaction to what he said. But he speaks his mind. He is the only one who can get away with it.

Personally, you felt Goh was the right man?

Well, among the four of us, he was the youngest. Tony Tan said no. I said no. And he sort of accepted being pushed into the position, on condition that we stay on to assist him.

Soon after taking over, Goh called a snap election in 1991 — but the PAP’s vote slipped and there was talk he would quit.

Well, we did discuss about that. But he didn’t indicate that he wanted to step down.

At that time, you were no. 2 in the executive after PM Goh.

Yes. Well, no. 2, no. 3, doesn’t matter.

So why run for president?

The elected presidency was Lee Kuan Yew’s initiative. He came out with the idea way back in ‘82, ‘83. After parliament passed the measure in 1991, I considered it seriously. At that time, after 20 years in politics, I was thinking of a way to ease myself out, to exit the political arena. I wrote to the prime minister twice to say that I’m prepared to go.

You saw the presidency as a way to do that?

Yes, the unionists egged me on. They came to see me a couple of times and they suggested that I take it on. I discussed it with the prime minister, being old friends, and he gave me his support.

The well-known oppositionist J.B. Jeyaretnam wanted to run against you?

Yes, but he was not allowed to because he did not qualify under the stringent criteria. Maybe too stringent.

You were glad Jeyaretnam could not run?

No, it’s okay. I think it would have been more fun.

Some of your colleagues did not think it was much fun when your only opponent, a former accountant-general, Chua Kim Yeoh, got so much support?

Yes, all of them were quite worried. Some ministers even called me to say: Oh, we are worried about the outcome. At first, we were quite confident about getting over 70 percent of the vote. But there was a swing of support over to my opponent’s side, especially in the educated class — civil servants and the Shenton Way group. The issue was whether they wanted a PAP man as president to check on a PAP government, or whether it would be better to have a neutral independent like Chua. That’s why they voted against me because I had the PAP government support. I would have been happier without the PAP’s open support. I think I would have been better off with just the unionists’ support and the Chinese-educated heartlanders. Without them I would not have been elected.

But you did win and you had to figure out how to do this new job as Singapore’s first elected president.

Yes. At the first opening of parliament after I was elected, I was given a speech prepared by the government. I read the speech carefully. Besides ceremonial functions, it said that I’m supposed to safeguard the reserves and to help society become more compassionate and gracious. So I decided that, well, if that is what is said in the speech, then that’s going to be my job. And I am going to do it. That’s what I tried to do. In fact, during the six years I was president, I was very busy.

Doing what?

Well, I got involved in a lot of things. The Istana presidential palace and other places had to be renovated. All this had to be planned and these places got ready one by one, so that ceremonial functions and other business could go on as usual. I had to press the government to finalize the procedures for the protection of the reserves. A lot of the teething problems and misunderstandings were because there was a lack of clearcut procedures ofwhat to do. Towards the end of my term, I pressed the prime minister for a White Paper to be tabled in parliament that would set out all the principles and procedures for the elected president. Then I will announce my decision to step down. I want to get the job done.

Initially, he did not want to do that?

It’s not that he did not want to do that, but it had been dragging for a long time. They produced a White Paper eventually, tabled it in parliament last July, and that made the future president’s job easier. We have already tested out many of the procedures during my term, except for asking the president to approve a draw on the past reserves during a deep economic crisis. That was never done. It’s that part of procedure that was not tested. How to do it?

It was this issue that caused the dispute between you and the government?

Yes. But I don’t want to go into details and upset everybody. The thing is that the elected president is supposed to protect the reserves, but he was not told what these are until five years later. From the day the Constitution was amended in 1991 to provide for an elected president, he was supposed to fulfil that role. My predecessor, Wee Kim Wee, although he was not elected, was supposed to play that role during the last two years of his term. But he did not actively check. So, when I came in in 1993, I asked for all this information about the reserves. It took them three years to give it to me.

The holdup was for administrative reasons?

Either that or they did not think there was any urgency. You see, if you ask me to protect the reserves, then you’ve got to tell me what I’m supposed to protect. So I had to ask.

Why did they not want to tell you?

I do not know. Don’t ask me, because I don’t have the answer. I’ve been asking them. In fact, in 1996, exactly halfway through my term, I wrote prime minister Goh a letter. At that time, everybody was expecting a general election in December or January. After the election, a new government would be sworn in. When that happens, all the reserves, whether past or current, become past reserves and are locked up on the changeover date. As president, I have to safeguard them and they can only be drawn upon with my permission. So I said to Mr Goh: It’s already halfway through my term, but until today I still don’t know all these figures about the reserves.

So the government had been stonewalling you, the president, for three years?

Yes. What happened actually was, as you know, in accounting, when you talk about reserves, it’s either cash reserves or assets reserves. The cash side is straightforward: investment, how many million dollars here and there, how much comes from the investment boards and so on. That was straightforward — but still we had to ask for it. For the assets, like properties and so on, normally you say it’s worth $30 million or $100 million or whatever. But they said it would take 56-man years to produce a dollar-and-cents value of the immovable assets. So I discussed this with the accountant-general and the auditor-general and we came to a compromise. The government would not need to give me the dollar-and-cents value, just give me a listing of all the properties that the government owns.

They agreed?

Well, yes, they agreed, but they said there’s not the time for it. It took them a few months to produce the list. But even when they gave me the list, it was not complete.

It seems the Singapore government does not know its own assets?

Yes. It’s complicated. It’s never been done before. And for the assets of land, I can understand why. Every piece of land, even a stretch of road, is probablysubdivided into many lots. There are 50,000 to 60,000 lots and every one has a number. If you want to value them all, it would take a long time. In the past, they have just locked everything up and assumed it is all there. But if I am to protect it, at least I want to know the list.

When they eventually gave you the list — the incomplete list, did you have enough staff to do the checking and other work?

No, I did not. I only had one administrative staffer and two part-timers from the auditor-general’s office. For things like approving the budget of statutory boards, the auditor-general’s office would normally go through that for me. They are very good. They check on everything. And they query and ask for information.

For government financial policy matters that you had a veto over, did you get all the details?

They finally came with an executive summary to say that they had checked through all this, and that this is what they have, this is how much they are going to spend, and that it won’t need any draw from the reserves — or that there’s likely to be a draw. There never was a draw during my time, but there were instances where it was a bit dicey whether the budgets of one or two statutory boards would require a draw. But finally we resolved that.

Eventually then, with the list of properties and the executive summaries, you were kept informed?

I wouldn’t be able to say that. Even in my last year as president, I was still not being informed about some ministerial procedures. For example, in April last year, the government said it would allow the sale of the Post Office Savings Bank POSB to DBS Bank. In the past, when there was no elected president, they could just proceed with this kind of thing. But when there is an elected president you cannot, because the POSB is a statutory board whose reserves are to be protected by the president. You cannot just announce this without informing him. But I came to know of it from the newspaper. That is not quite right. Not only that, but they were even going to submit a bill to parliament for this sale and to dissolve the POSB without first informing me.

What did you do?

My office went to tell them that this was the wrong procedure. You’ve got to do this first, do that first, before you can do this. It was question of principle and procedure. We had to bring all this to their attention. That they cannot forget us. It’s not that we are busybodies, but under the Constitution we have a role to play and a responsibility. Sometimes in the newspaper I came to know of things that I am responsible for, but if it had not been reported in the newspaper I would not know about it.

You must have been pretty angry that this was still happening in your last year as president?

Yes, I was a bit grumpy. And maybe not to the liking of the civil service. They did not like what I said. But I have to be a watchdog all the time, you see. So this is where they are supposed to help me to protect the reserves. And not for me to go and watch out when they do right or wrong.

Under the Constitution, you have the right to all the information available to the cabinet.

Yes. That’s right. And I sourced much information from the cabinet papers. But they are not used to it. So I said: I understand, it’s something new, and I know you don’t like my interference and busybody checking up and so on. But under the Constitution it is my job to do that.

Despite all this, it was widely believed that you wanted to run again for a second six-year term as president?

No, I’d been telling my friends since late 1998 that my inclination was not to stand for re-election. But of course, life is unpredictable. In March last year, I went to Stanford and my American doctor confirmed that my cancer was in complete remission. He is very experienced, a world authority on my sickness. So I was fine after my treatment. I gave a complete report to the prime minister and we discussed it. I told him that my inclination was not to stand, but that I’d make the announcement later on. Then the cabinet met and they decided that if I were to stand again, they would not support me.

You had been given a clean bill of health, yet your former colleagues would not support you. Did that annoy you?

I told the prime minister over lunch: Well, I don’t need your cabinet support. If I want to stand, whether I do or not, it will be my personal decision. And I’ll make that decision nearer the date of the presidential election — because I have another checkup in June, July, and I want to know my latest position. Also my wife was sick with cancer and we knew that if she died, it would be difficult for me to stand without a first lady. She felt very apologetic and that was another reason why my inclination was not to stand. I hoped that if I stepped down I would have more time to be with my wife, because her prognosis was not very good.

By waiting until July to announce your decision, were you ruffling the government for the way they had treated you?

Maybe so. Maybe it was my miscalculation that my stated inclination not to stand again had not been good enough for them. But I had been telling that to all my friends. And I did not want to tell people my wife was dying, either.

But the government worried that you might suddenly decide to run again.

No, I made it very clear and I called a press conference in July to tell everybody. But I believe some people were still afraid that I might turn up on nomination day. Even friends asked me if I might do that. How could they? I had given my word that I would not stand.

A straw poll apparently indicated you would beat the government’s candidate, S.R. Nathan, if you had stood.

Yes. But I gave my word that I would not run. And I don’t think it’s right. I’m a very old-fashioned man. Also, my wife passed away in September. And I became more sceptical about all these medical reports. Well, not sceptical, but certainly I find life more unpredictable than I thought. Full of uncertainties.

In the end you were happy to stand down?

Yes, I’d been preparing for that psychologically since late 1998. I was quite happy when the decision was made, happy to return to private life to do the work that I enjoy.

How are your relations with PM Goh these days?

They are okay. I just had lunch with him last week. I can’t invite him now, so he invited me. When I was president, we took turns to invite each other for lunch in the Istana.

Did Senior Minister Lee join you?

No, we did that separately.

Lee spoke out against you last year. How are your relations with him now?

We’ve never quarrelled.

It’s said that your recalcitrance upset him and your former colleagues, leaving you estranged and bitter?

I would not call it recalcitrant. I mentioned some of the problems — or many of the problems — that I faced. If they regard that as an attack on the government and on the civil service, then that is for them to interpret. The prime minister and I spoke at my farewell reception. We agreed that we would say what we have to say. I think it came out well. He said that my statements, and his rebuttal in parliament, were probably a good thing. They showed the transparency of the system. I stand by what I said.

Dr Chee Soon Juan’s article “Change and America’s new president” on the SDP website drew some asinine comments, which isn’t uncommon.

Stuff like:

Obama and Chee. Both are Democrats.

The difference : 1 is due to take presidential office soon while the other 1 is due to enter prison, also soon.

Not all Democrats are the same.

Next up, Chee Soon Juan in Singapore!

Should read,
Next up, Chee Soon Juan in Singapore PRISON !

Here is my response, which I also left on the SDP website:

Political change is coming. And it’s not just about Dr Chee or the SDP.

They can throw the man in jail, over and over again. They can forbid him from speaking. They can bankrupt him. They can twist malleable minds to convince the masses that he is the devil incarnate.

But this is more than “Chee vs Lee”, or PAP vs SDP and {insert random political party here}.

This is about us, as Singaporeans, what we believe in, and what we are willing to fight for.

So those cheering the jailing of Dr Chee, please stop being dumbasses. Take your heads out of your asses, and start thinking.

It’s not about the imprisonment of one man; it’s about the rape of a nation.

Why are you cheering your own repression?