In Unique Singapore, as the Lee Kuan Yew Singapore government admits, you will never stop being surprised at their, strange ways; that is guaranteed. I wrote on Dec 19, 2010, Singaporeans going nude, a step in the right direction the article about an inexplicable phenomenon among Singaporeans who suddenly drop all their clothes in public without any provocation at all and walk around stark naked. According to the local state controlled papers the numbers engaged in this activity has shot up to about 500 a month!
We had heard of a 50 year old Chinese woman who stripped of all her clothes, and calmly waited at Singapore bus stop and getting on it just like that. One Chinese man went to MacDonald's for a hamburger without any clothes. Several more people all over the island were doing the same. Nudity it appears is now strangely the favorite pastime in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore.
The word of this has spread, it appears, as I understand many tourists have come to Singapore especially for the purpose of spotting naked people and taking pictures. However they have not always been successful since it is impossible to guess at which location the next woman or man is suddenly going to strip, and as a result many have been disappointed, not having seen any naked people.
One man in particular, Victor Guerrero, a 40 year old Italian Australian had told a local Singaporean on Thursday that he had just arrived the day before, and had waited all day, camera in hand next to the Singapore Merlion, a statue of a cross between a lion and a mermaid, which is itself not only unique but outright silly, hoping to catch a glimpse of the next naked Singaporean but sadly without success. He claims he has not given up and is hoping to change location for better luck.
Strangely Lee Kuan Yew's government has decided not to prosecute anyone for nudity, since the last report in the State controlled newspapers of naked people in public. We can therefore safely say that today, it is lawful to go around naked in Singapore. In a way it does make sense because, as it is so very hot and humid in the island, there is really no logical reason for clothes.
I myself confess that I had some temptation to do this myself in Singapore when I was last there in 2008 because, believe me, there could not be another hotter or more humid place in the whole world. Any clothes you wear will become soggy wet with sweat within minutes, that is how hot it is.
I am not sure the motive behind this strange activity, whether it is occasioned by the heat or is it a form of protest, but whatever the reason, surely Singapore has now earned another world title, the Naked People's Hub, among all the the hubs they already are; the prostitution hub, the idiots hub and not to forget the "Digits Hub" (remember Lee Kuan Yew's term for Singaporeans, "digits").
Nudists all over the world should keep in mind that their next destination should be Singapore, the one country which finally has decided to do away with any clothes. I don't think you could behave like this even in Amsterdam.
On the other hand, in Uniquely Singapore, while you could go around naked in public, you are not allowed to give a public speech unless you have a government permit. Dr. Chee Soon Juan has been repeatedly arrested and jailed for speaking in public without a permit from Lee Kuan Yew. This law of jailing public speakers has created a new problem for many with the advent of cell phones. I was told only a few days ago that Singapore police had arrested a number of people heard to be speaking in public, only to find that they were in fact speaking on their cell phones.
I understand that many of them were arrested and charged by Lee Kuan Yew's Attorney General who enforced the no speaking in public policy to the letter. Most of them were sent to the mental hospital in the island on suspicion that they were nuts for speaking to themselves, but when discovered otherwise, were given fines, which are called "speaking fines" ranging from $500.00 to $1,000.00. The judge had specifically warned them never to speak again in public, making it very clear that if they wanted to speak, they should do it in their own homes and not bother people in the streets by public speaking. I understand their cell phones were confiscated as part of their punishment.
This "speaking law" is the latest addition in the already existing litany of strange laws in that strange place, which include the no chewing gum law. Anyone caught chewing gum is immediately stopped by Lee Kuan Yew's police, their mouths prised open with "chewing gum tongs" and the gum violently forced out of their mouths after which they are giving a lashing at that very spot.
It must be a strange place indeed, with speaking in public being illegal while walking around nude is perfectly legal!
Gopalan Nair 39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1 Fremont, CA 94538, USA Tel: 510 657 6107 Fax: 510 657 6914 Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/
Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.
I�ve been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for a little over 5 years now, sprinkled in with a little Muay Thai and Boxing to complement the ground game. I�ve average a two hour class about 4 days a week, which has resulted in a loss of 60lbs (kept off) and a respectable brown belt. I�m currently working my butt off to earn black. While being a BJJ black belt would be unbelievably cool, honestly the belt color isn�t all that important to me. I�ll be training for as long as I�m physically about to for life regardless. The power of this martial art is simply amazing.
Right now I�d prefer to be training BJJ (MMA) twice a day 4-5 days a week, but between WhiteHat and family commitments there is just no way. When vacationing in Maui that�s pretty much what I do with all my down time, in between going to the beach of course. My BJJ game skyrockets to new levels super fast because guys out there are no joke. Everyone is in shape and train all the time. You�ll even find private MMA cages in people back yards that provide �something to do� when there�s no waves.
My job requires me to travel a lot. I�ve been to 5 continents, about two dozen countries, and 35 or so US states. Fortunately there has been an explosion in the number of BJJ academies thanks in large part to the UFC and MMA phenomenon. There�s at least one academy in every major US city I�ve been to and make a point to visit as many as I can. I always fly with my gi, rash guard, mouth guard, and fight short. Trained in about 20 academies across the US and abroad, including in Brazil where of course BJJ all began. I don't do this to try and prove how tough I am or anything, mostly just looking for a good workout (way better than the gym), learn a new move or two, and benchmark my progress. So if see me on stage with what looks like mascara, you�ll know why.
In 99% of the academies I�ve had lots of fun and amazing an experience. Got to meet some really cool people outside of the security industry and keep perspective on things. I�ve also learned a couple of important lessons on what NOT to do:
1) Don�t visit an unfamiliar academy as an out of town traveler unless you are a solid blue belt level or above, which equates to at least a year or more of hard training experience. Not everyone, instructor and students, are nice people so you must be able to truly protect yourself from serious injury in the rare case that someone is actually trying to hurt you. I�ve never had a problem in a strict BJJ (Gi) academy, but some �MMA� (No-Gi) places do have a level of �fighter� attitudes where some try to prove themselves outside of the cage. I�ve only had to deal with this kind of ego twice before. Both times it didn�t end up good for the other guy. They slept, I left.
2) As a sign of respect, call ahead and speak with the instructor. Introduce yourself and your training background. This lets the instructor know where to place you with their students skill wise and tell you if the place isn�t right for you for whatever the reason. Again, I�ve had two moderately bad experiences showing up to a martial arts academy unannounced. One was a primarily an Aikido place and the other Taekwondo, both advertising some BJJ classes on their site. Apparently the instructors in those disciplines also taught the BJJ class, but weren�t highly skilled. I asked if they do full speed sparring, to which they nodded. Once they found out my level, they wanted no part of me and asked that I leave. I think they were concerned that I might tear up their students or something and make the school look bad. Who knows, I complied.
3) NEVER tap anyone in an unfamiliar academy that is a higher belt than you. I hate this rule, but take my word for it. If you get a hold of a submission, let it go. Of course that doesn�t mean you go and let yourself get tapped out. Screw that! Fight to maintain control over your opponent, flow with the go, which demonstrates skill more than just about anything. While it shouldn�t be the case, I�ve a bad experiences when tapping the instructor. Things turn in Abu Dhabi night in an instant. I won�t be making this mistake again until I�m a black belt.
Remember the quote from The Matrix Reloaded, "�you don�t really know someone until you fight them." I�ve found this to be profoundly true, including in myself. A persons true mental disposition really shows when they are under physical duress. Chris Hoff (@beaker), cloud infosec icon, also trains BJJ while on the road. We�ve locked up in battle on the mat several times. His game reflects his personality. He's elusive and unassuming, but DO NOT underestimate him for one moment. He�ll catch you off guard the very moment you back off and not paying very close attention. For me its not who beats who, but having fun, bringing my best game, and see what happens. Learning where Chris is getting an edge on me or where I missed an opportunity.
The Council of Europe has just published a new book on 'The European Court of Human Rights - Facts and Figures'. The book, available in both English and French, forms a kind of snapshot overview of the Court's work, including all kinds of handy charts and figures. This is the abstract:
The importance of the European Court of Human Rights in the European judicial landscape and its influence well beyond Europe's borders are undeniable. For over 50 years the Court's rulings have resulted in numerous changes to domestic legislation and helped to strengthen the rule of law throughout the wider Europe. This book retraces the Court's activities and case-law since its foundation in 1959. The presentation of several hundred of the cases the Court has examined, together with statistics for each State, paints an overall picture of the Court's work and the impact its judgments have had in the member States. With its approach by theme and by article of the European Convention on Human Rights, this work shows the full extent of the rights and freedoms the States Parties to the Convention have undertaken to secure to everyone within their jurisdiction. It also takes a country-by-country look at the cases the Court has been called on to examine, and at the impact its judgments have had in the States it has condemned for violating the Convention. The clear, concise way in which the cases are presented shows just how alive the Convention is today, 60 years after its adoption, and how the Court's interpretation of it has helped it to keep abreast of social change in Europe.
OpenDarkEngine is a FOSS replacement for + improvement on the DarkEngine system used in the Thief game series by LookingGlass Studios as well as SystemShock 2 by LookingGlass and Irrational Games.
They managed to get some things clicking, but the project kind of fell flat a couple of months back. Maybe with all the interest in Arx, someone fans of this (rather similar) game series would like to jump on this project and help out.
Windows Shield Center is a rogue security product that pretends to find system and registry errors on a victim�s machine in order to frighten him or her into purchasing this useless application.
Windows Shield Center is a rogue security product that pretends to find system and registry errors on a victim�s machine in order to frighten him or her into purchasing this useless application.
Gigabyte is a longtime leader in computer technology and innovation, today announced an exciting new 10.1-inch Windows 7 S1080 Slate PC with slim and elegant looks. The Gigabyte S1080 Slate features a Windows7 operating system and is powered by an IntelAtom N550 dual core processor.The S1080 Tablet Specs offers 10.1-inch capacitive multi-touch screen backlight TFT-LCD 1024x600 display, built in 1.3mega pixel camera for video conferencing, with massive 320GB of built-in storage, users can add all their important applications and files without worrying about whether there is enough space.
Gigabyte S1080 Windows 7 tablet also comes equipped with a built-in VGA port, which allows users to hook up an external monitor or projector whenever a larger display is needed. It has built in wireless 802.11b/g/n ,Bluetooth 3.0,SD card reader and USB 3.0 for fast transfers from/to external storage units. Gigabyte S1080 Slate will be available in next month with a price tag above $500.
Gigabyte S1080 Windows 7 Tablet Specifications
* Runs on Windows 7 OS
* Intel Atom N550 Dual Core processor for high multitasking * 10.1 inch multi-touch screen backlight TFT-LCD display with 1024�600 pixel resolutions * 320GB built-in storage HDD * 1.3 megapixel web camera * Bluetooth 3.0,802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, USB 3.0 * SD card slot for expansion of storing large files * Built-in VGA port * weight under 0.90kg (1.98lb) * Supports multi-touch, on-screen keyboard and handwriting recognition software
REWILDING THE WORLD: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution
By Caroline Fraser 416 pp. Picador
Reviewed by Lynne M. Hinkey
Rewilding refers to the reintroduction of wildlife to native habitats and their restoration to healthy, functioning ecosystems. In Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution,
If you are a regular reader of RHA you might remember offer to Review My Blog & Get A Free Linkback which I offered for blogs with low page rank and low traffic, I have decided that I am ending this offer due to large number of requests and finally it's time to decide the winner of the contest as I promised to give my book "A Beginners Guide To Ethical Hacking" to the best reviewer.
Congratulation Ksub you have just won a free copy of my book "A Beginners Guide To Ethical Hacking" Kindly leave your email in the comments section and claim your free book. I would also like to remind you that the last date of entry for the contest on Free Copy Of Facebook Hacking Course Worth 37$ is going to end on 7th February and the winners will announced on the same day if you haven't participated yet here is your chance to get your hands on my Facebook Hacking course
How to hack?, I get this question asked daily, Lots of people are curious to learn Ethical hacking but they do not know where to start, Any one can become a fairly good Ethical Hacker if he/she can learn from basics and he/she should have a place to practice what he learned
This is where The Hacker's Academy comes into play, If you are a beginner or intermediate or advanced this is still for you, The Hackers Academy is one of the most professional online Ethical Hacking and penetration testing institute, one of the best parts of hackers academy i like is that they give you labs(A place where you can practice) so you can try the concepts for your self
The course will contain of audio recording and video recordings but the most important part is that once you are a member of hackers academy they will tell you exactly how you can create Labs so you can practice what you have learned.
If you get stuck some where then they have professionals 24/7 there to help you out with any problem you have or any question you have. The Hackers Academy course will also prepare you for different types of certifications, once you become a member of The Hackers Academy and I can say it surely that you will pass any type of Ethical hacking certifications and tests
The membership program also has a 30 day money back guarantee, so you have nothing to loose!, If you are unhappy with them, then they will return your every penny
So what are you waiting for, Don't wait until you loose your chance!Get it now!
Lenovo announced its new IdeaCentre B520 All in One PC which especially made to attract the entertainment users to play high-end games .The Specs of Lenovo IdeaCentre B520 all in one packs with Intel Core i7 CPU (also the 2nd generation) with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, powered with Nvidia GT 555M 2GB graphics, a 23-inch full HD 16:9 multi touch screen display, up to 16GB of DDR3 SDRAM, and a up to 2TB HDD. You'll also get a 3-in-1 mouse, integrated Dolby Surround Sound 5.0 speakers, and a Blu-ray drive with optional Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi.
Lenovo IdeaCentre B520 All in One Specifications:
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium OS
Intel Core i7 CPU (also the 2nd generation) with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0
23 inch slim, frameless multi-touch screen display
Full HD 16:9 widescreen
NVIDIA GT 555M 2GB enhanced Directx 11 graphics
Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) technology
Optional USB 3.0 port, Optional Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi.
Today I would like to start a new regular (?) feature here on FreeGamer: The Dev-corner!
As you should know by now FreeGamer is all about FOSS games, and of course the most important part of the FOSS development model is participation! So, yes that also means you! Yes you... don't think I am not seeing you... and don't switch to that other browser tab to hide from me ;)
So with the new dev-corner we will try give you some easy introductions how to participate in FOSS game development, maybe do some more development focused developer interviews and so on. I also hope to get some guest bloggers to write an introduction into contributing to their projects or something like that... so if you are a developer interested in this contact us :)
So what can I do?
You though about contributing to a project already, but are not much of a programmer guy/gal? Well... there is an artist in all of us (it's in our genes the anthropologists say)!
But getting started with that can be a bit scary... 2D art is of course an option, but the learning slope is steep there, as for a long time everything you draw will look like crap (trust me, I am still in that phase also). But if you are interested in that there are a few pretty good FOSS tools for that (we will do a dev-corner on that some other time).
3D art on the other hand is more accessible, especially if you are not a born artist! You can make some pretty awesome (albeit simple) art in the first few days of learning, and you will certainly not have the feeling of "ahh... this is all crap" like you will have with 2D art. Oh and non-computer people will be amazed by your l337 computa skillz ;)
But who am I kidding here... you probably downloaded Blender (or another non FOSS modeling application) already, and the complexity of the programs made your head spin, right? Yes... those are full modeling suits meant for experienced professionals, and can do much more than you will ever need for FOSS game development. But don't get scared away by this... there are other options and once you got the basics concepts, Blender and the like will suddenly appear much less scary and actually quite easy to use ;)
The maybe easiest 3D modeling application is Google's Sketch-up, but due to it's non-FOSS nature and the severe limitations in what it can do, we will not go into much detail here... but have a look at it if you like to get some simple models done fast.
Primer to Wings3D modeling
There is another really great FOSS modeling application next to the all over shadowing Blender however: Wings3D! It is not a full 3D suite, however and only focuses on the modeling and texturing part. In those parts it is generally accepted however that it is among the best of all programs out there (FOSS or non-FOSS)! So head over to their new website and get the latest version 1.4 now!
Now, the advantage of limiting the program's feature scope is it's much less cluttered interface and the quite a bit lower learning curve for the beginners. But don't get me wrong... it's not a beginners toy (like Google's sketch-up); Wings3D is capable of everything you will need for even the most professional models!
Have a look at this video to get an first idea what to do (I suggest you to use Blender camera style movement ;) ):
More video tutorials like this you can find on the Wings3D Youtube channel, and other nice tutorials here and a user manual here.
One of the especially helpful features of Wings3D is that all menus are context sensitive, so you will only see the options that make sense to use at that time. Also all features are available through the menus and are not hidden behind obscure keyboard short-cuts like in Blender (but you can fully customize all commands to shortcuts in Wings3D to speed up your work-flow). And last but not least... at the bottom status bar you can always tell what options are available with each tool upon different mouse and button combinations... so it is very easy even for the beginners.
However due to the way model data is set up in Wings3D, it is really geared towards box-modeling, e.g. a standard work-flow approach that works by extruding features from a single original box, instead of shaping the model from individual polygons (like normally preferred in Blender)... but don't get scared by this tech-babble ;) It's the better and easier way anyways, and just think of it as if working with a real-life clay model.
Ok I got the basics, where do I start contributing?
Well you could of course look for a FOSS game directly... and there will be for sure plenty of projects happy to have you helping out. But as a beginner you can also first practice a bit more. A good option for that would be for example to participate in the weekly challenges over at OpenGameArt.org. There you have a simple topic every week and you can also discuss with other 3D artist about techniques and so on. Definitely a great way of practicing.
Oh and one last word of caution: You might realize at some point that making 3D models and contributing to game development is actually more fun than playing games... but don't say I didn't warn you ;)
Delicate and contemplative sounds from one of the Colony residents. Something very delicate and beautiful about this mix. Perfectly suited for a Sunday...
MTP Target has had a bit of a turbulent life; the game was designed to be monetized by a pay-for-features/content system and the lead developer closed the server code's source in order to "protect" this model. A couple of years later, the lead developer took down the servers due to conflict with players, effectively killing the game (a cautionary tale for all, I think). Tux-Target tried to implement an updated FOSS server from the 2005 sources but it never reached a workable state
Last October (tardy free gamer) they brought the servers back online; so the game is back! Be sure to check out this foss-y classic and help awaken it from hibernation-stupor
I am a US lawyer specializing in US Immigration Law, criminal law and general practice. Otherwise I am the Singapore Dissident.
Singapore's state controlled newspaper's online edition of Jan 29, 2011 has the story "Singaporean denied Australian refugee status". It states a Singaporean had applied for asylum in Australia because "he could not express his political views in Singapore and because he faced a jail term for being a national service (NS) reservist defaulter if he returned to Singapore". Except for this, Lee Kuan Yew's state controlled newspaper does not give anymore details.
Let me give those contemplating asylum some advice.
A "refugee" is someone in his native country (Singapore) who is granted refugee status by a foreign diplomatic post in Singapore or elsewhere. As an example today many Afghans are screened for claims of persecution by the UN High Commission for Refugees in New Delhi or Islamabad Pakistan and if approved, they are accepted by the United States and various other western countries in the world. Technically, a Singaporean could go to the Australian High Commission in his country and ask for refugee status on account of persecution by the Lee Kuan Yew government and if he has a meritorious claim, he can get it. In practice, unless there are ongoing wars and great calamity in the region, such requests are extremely unlikely to succeed.
An "asylum applicant" is a person who has left his native country and travelled to the West, in this case Australia, and there asks for asylum. In effect, the application is the same as if he was outside Australia, that is, he is asking for refugee status. In other words, an asylum applicant has to prove that he is a "refugee".
What do you have to prove to get refugee status? You have to show that you are unable or unwilling to return to Singapore because of persecution or a "well founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular group or political opinion". This requirement is the same in the USA as well as every other country that accepts refugees or asylum seekers.
In other words, you have to prove that you fear returning to Singapore because the Singapore government would persecute you or will not protect you from persecution. In Singapore's case, this is easy to prove since it is the government itself that persecutes it's own citizens on political grounds.
Who should be guilty of persecuting you? It has to be either the government of your country (Singapore) or a group which the government is unable or unwilling to control. Therefore you have to show that the Singapore government persecutes you by reason of your race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular group or political opinion.
One important thing to remember is this. Refusal to do national service is not a ground for granting asylum.
In this particular Singapore case, it does not state the details except to say that he "could not express his political views". If this is all he suffered, I am not surprised that he did not succeed. In order to succeed in asylum, you not only have to show that you have a fear of persecution, generally, you also have to show that you were in fact persecuted for expressing your political beliefs.
In other words, the Singapore government has to deliberately target you for what you do or believe. Unless you are among the few who had actually done something in Singapore which Lee Kuan Yew did not like and were chosen for punishment, you are unlikely to get asylum anywhere. Merely claiming that you cannot express yourself freely, is not enough because you could take measures yourself to change the repressive system there. Think of it, since everyone in Singapore is unable to express his political opinion freely, surely the entire population of Singapore cannot be granted asylum in Australia.
Let me give you some examples. Dr. Chee Soon Juan who is the daily punching bag of Lee Kuan Yew for his political opposition would be granted asylum in almost every country in the world. That is guaranteed. I am sure he is not seeking asylum anywhere. I am using him merely to illustrate my point. Dr. Chee is a vocal implacable Lee Kuan Yew critic, proponent of democracy and freedom of speech which Lee knows, and for this he has been repeatedly jailed and bankrupted. Therefore he is being persecuted by the state for his political opinion, a classic guaranteed asylum success case.
On the other hand if I am an ordinary citizen of Singapore just as everyone else, nothing has happened to me yet, but I file a claim for asylum because I cannot express myself openly. This case fails because firstly it is hypothetical, and the direct nexus between fear and persecution by the state has not been shown.
If you properly prepare your case, Singapore would be one of the easiest countries from which to get asylum. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew is known world over as a dictator who abuses the law to silence his critics. But then you first have to show that you are a critic who has been persecuted because of that.
I can tell of some in Singapore now who would definitely get asylum in the west. Other than Dr. Chee Soon Juan, John Tan and the 2 others who were sent to jail for wearing T Shirts with pictures of Kangaroos would definitely succeed. The "Marxist Conspirators" Lee Kuan Yew's label for the 22 civic minded citizens who were sent to jail would all get it of course. Recently the guy who was arrested for anti government graffiti would get it as well.
My advice is this. If you are a anti Lee Kuan Yew political activist, carrying out your political activities openly and were arrested, you would almost certainly get asylum. But if you merely articulated your personal fears when nothing actually happened to you; you will fail
To take another example, all Arabs living under Israeli occupied West Bank are persecuted. The West cannot possibly grant asylum to every one of them. On the other hand, there are a few Arab who have been active in their political work, who are in the sights of the Israeli government, and were arrested and persecuted. These people would be granted asylum.
Remember, I myself received asylum in the United States. The facts in my case were as follows. I was practicing law in Singapore and a member of the Workers Party with the late JB Jeyaretnam. In the 1980s I wrote a letter to the Attorney General then, Tan Boon Teik asking him to explain why he advised the President not to give Jeyaretnam a pardon when the Privy Council had exonerated him. Just for that I was suspended from practicing law for 2 years.
Also at that time, I had written a letter to the HDB on behalf of my client, Patrick DeSouza, a rag and bone man of Sungei Road, who was thrown out of his flat just because he fell into hard times. I accused them of being heartless, which was true. I had then, circulated this letter to all foreign embassies in Singapore to publicise my clients plight. For this action, disciplinary proceedings against me were commenced.
In another case, in 1991, as Workers Party election candidate for Bukit Merah, I had made a speech at a rally criticizing the manner of appointing Subordinate Court judges, a legitimate criticism. Not liking what I said, Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore convicted me of contempt of their courts. I was fined Singapore $8,000.00, and in default I would have been jailed for 2 months; and ordered to pay costs which amounted to Singpaore $13,000.00. Laura Lau, one of Lee Kuan Yew's minions at the Attorney General's Chambers wrote to me in the US asking me to pay or else. I refused to pay.
You can see a pattern here. I was exercising my right by peaceful means to oppose the Lee Kuan Yew government. For this I was being punished by the state. Therefore I qualified for aylum. Of course I am now an American citizen.
You need good legal advice and you must document a strong case showing you were targeted for persecution by the Lee Kuan Yew government and you in fact suffered persecution as a result of one of the enumerated grounds above. In addition you have to show a subjective fear of being returned to Singapore.
One thing that is troubling is this. How did the Singapore Straits Times come to know of his case? As far as I know, asylum applications are confidential and neither the court nor the government will reveal the details of either the grant or the denial of the asylum application to anyone including the country from which the applicant fled.
Neither are any details of the claim revealed to anyone. I am sure the Australian court or agency did not disclose this information, which makes me believe, that the one party state of Singapore in it's usual disgraceful ways must have obtained this information through it's usual dirty tactics. Shame on you Singapore for reporting this case. We all know why they did it of course; which is to discourage others from applying for asylum abroad.
Despite this setback in this case, I would hope that more would apply for asylum abroad with well documented and demonstrated cases. If you need my help, ask me. I can help you win, I can assure you that.
Good Luck. The dictator, Lee Kuan Yew is indeed having a hard time from every direction. The end cannot be too far. Ben Ali of Tunisia has fled and very soon Egypt's Mubarak will be on the run with his son Gamal Mubarak in tow. It will be Lee Kuan Yew's turn next, with his Prime Minister son in tow as well, and that will be a pleasant sight.
Gopalan Nair 39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1 Fremont, CA 94538, USA Tel: 510 657 6107 Fax: 510 657 6914 Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/
Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.
RHEL6 - Red Hat.Inc, penyedia solusi open source terkemuka didunia, dengan bangga mengumumkan ketersediaan rilis final Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Rilis ini adalah rilis yang dinanti-nantikan dari RHEL 6 yang memuat perbaikan-perbaikan dan itu tersedia untuk arsitektur i386, AMD64/Intel64, System z, dan IBM Power (64-bit).
Namun, Red Hat mengumumkan bahwa rilis ini tidak akan memberikan dukungan bagi arsitektur Intel Itanium. Selain itu, prosesor POWER5 tidak lagi didukung, hanya CPU POWER6 atau yang lebih tinggi yang akan mendapat dukungan.
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux selama bertahun-tahun menjadi platform mission-critical pilihan bagi banyak perusahaan. Pelanggan seperti British Airways, Citi dan NTT Communications telah menjadi mitra terpercaya dalam pengembangan platform Red Hat Enterprise Linux."
"Kami sekarang memasuki era enterprise computing di mana fleksibilitas, portabilitas dan interoperabilitas yang lebih penting daripada sebelumnya. Dan hari ini, kami memberikan platform yang dibutuhkan konsumen. Ini selalu menjadi fokus kami".
"Apa yang kami berikan lebih terbuka, lebih dapat diandalkan dan lebih komprehensif daripada produk lain di pasaran. Dimasa mendatang,ini adalah platform yang dirancang untuk menghantar pelanggan ke generasi berikutnya dengan virtualisasi dan cloud". - Kata Paul Cormier, executive vice president and president, Products and Technologies di Red Hat, pada press release.
Yang baru dengan Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6:
Peningkatan grafis installer;
Dukungan untuk file sistem baru (EXT4, XFS, NFS, block discard);
LVM enhancements;
Power management yang lebih baik dengan powertop dan tuned;
Peningkatan PackageKit dan Yum package managers;
Dukungan yang lebih baik untuk clustering, dengan Corosync Cluster Engine;
Peningkatan keamanan;
Pelabelan Network packet dan dukungan untuk IPv6;
Fungsionalitas Suspend dan resume;
Dukungan untuk multiple display;
Driver video Nouveau untuk kartu grafis Nvidia;
Dukunga Internasionalisasi;
KDE SC 4.3;
OpenOffice.org Office Suite 3.1;
Mozilla Thunderbird 3;
Mozilla Firefox 3.5;
Apache 2.2.15;
MySQL 5.1;
PostgreSQL 8.4;
Dokumentasi yang lebih baik;
Peningkatan dukungan C++;
Peningkatan Samba;
Dukungan penuh untuk KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine);
Dukungan Alternative PHP Cache (APC) untuk PHP;
Penambahan memcached.
Bagai manapun distribusi Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) lebih ditargetkan ke pasar komersial, termasuk mainframe, yang menikmati dukungan teknis selama 7 tahun atas Red Hat setelah perilisan. Versi baru RHEL dilepaskan cukup cepat dan dengan demikian, pengguna dapat meng-upgrade versi yang sedang digunakan ke rilis terbaru secara gratis. Red Hat didistribusikan menjadi empat versi RHEL: RHEL AS (Advanced Server), RHEL ES (edge, ekonomi atau server entry-level), RHEL WS (workstation) dan Red Hat Desktop.
Bagi Anda yang berminat mencoba, dapat men-download RHEL 6 beta 2 di sini.
The gulf is widening between the vendors and the practitioners. It was never more apparent this week than at Learning Technologies - one of the largest events of its type in Europe. The conference attracted over 400 delegates, the free exhibition downstairs several times that many punters. But something was seriously amiss. Several people remarked openly that the 'downstairs' learning technology and skills exhibition was the 'same old same old' and that it contrasted sharply with the practices that were being debated, disseminated and discussed 'upstairs' in the main conference venue at Olympia 2, in West London.
So I went down to see for myself. What struck me about the downstairs exhibition which took up two floors and consisted of over 240 company stands was that it really hadn't moved on from last year. It was just as busy, with plenty of potential customers wandering around. As usual there were plenty of chocolates, pens, mouse mats and squeezy toys being given away for free, and lots of colourful lights and backdrops. There were the same polished corporate presentations. The technology was just as shiny and so were the salespeople, but looking past the veneer you could see that many were offering the same tired old fayre as last year. This exhibition was very much about the technology, very little about learning. Again, these were the observations of several people.
I did no better down on the ground floor where the 'learning skills vendors' were plying their trade. In the first two conversations I had, I was asked if I wanted to know more about learning styles and if I was interested in a course in Neural Linguistic Programming. Whilst the first has absolutely no scientific basis, the second is so unsound and risky it is tantamount to dark ages shamanism. I almost started looking for the chicken bones. I didn't waste time telling the vendors what I really thought about their 'products'. I just politely but firmly told them that I wasn't the right person to be asking. I then shook the dust of my shoes, and smartly returned back up the stairs to sanity. But think about this for a minute. If training companies are still peddling such unsound, unproved and frankly dangerous concepts after all these years, what kind of a future can we expect for learning and development in the corporate sector?And who is driving change in education and training? Let's hope it's not the vendors. For some very good reasons.
Fortunately, returning to the upstairs conference venue, it was possible to hear sensible, visionary and practical stories from many of the excellent speakers at the Learning Technologies event. The likes of Jane Bozarth, James Clay, Craig Taylor and Cathy Moore regaled their audiences with inspiring and challenging talks. My own talk was packed out as I talked about Web 3.0, Web x.0 and the future of web based learning. My new best buddy Clark Quinn (pictured - who at the last minute stepped in to replace Mark Oehlert) was excellent value with his own personal take on games based learning, and Olympic Medal winning high jumper Steve Smith also shone with his motivational speaking on - motivation. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Itiel Dror, and although I failed to find time to hear him speak, we did have the dubious honour of sharing the experience in the small hours of Thursday morning standing outside shivering in the sub zero temperatures, while the Novotel staff and London Fire and Rescue Service tried to discover what had triggered off the fire alarms at 3.30 in the morning.
All in all, and the interrupted sleep aside, LT11UK was a great event, well organised, and replete with great speakers, all thanks to the talents of Donald H Taylor and his excellent team. But for me there was only one floor in the building that mattered. It's clear that the practitioners, the L and D professionals, have moved on and advanced their agendas from last year. But not so the vendors. They appear to have been stuck in a time warp. I'm sorry to report that the exhibition downstairs was lagging so far behind the times it could quite easily have been located on another planet.
SEVEN SHOTS: An NYPD Raid on a Terrorist Cell and Its Aftermath By Jennifer C. Hunt 344 pp. University of Chicago Press
Reviewed by David Hoekenga
In Seven Shots, Jennifer Hunt writes passionately about the officers of Six Truck of Emergency Services Group of the New York City Police Department, who were responsible for thwarting
Some months ago, during one of my hospital stays, I received another inquiry seeking permission to use one of my figures for what I thought would be an illustration of some essay on gravitons. My reply was essentially "yeah, whatever," just in some more words. I now was sent a link to the result, a digital book, in French, called "Du LIVRE de Mallarm� au livre mal arm�." The website is here, and you can download the ebook here. It looks to me like a collection of sciency philosophy essays. My figure appears in section "14.59�" - whatever that might mean. If your French is better than mine, please let me know in the comments what this compilation is all about!
Here's an article I filed in the category "Complete Bullshit:" Daniel Sarewitz in Slate claiming, in a nutshell, that it's a problem Republicans are represented among US scientists in a smaller percentage than among the US population: "No wonder the Republicans are suspicious of the science," he writes and goes on to make a case that "the scientific community should be willing to investigate and discuss the issue" because this situation is clearly politically incorrect. I had the intention to get upset about this article, but it's so completely bullshit it's not even worth the effort, so I just let you read it. Don't miss the comments.
JAKARTA - Seorang hacker mengaku bisa menjebol pertahanan di situs resmi Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB). Dalam aksinya, sang hacker mengaku tidak berniat untuk mengacak-acak situs tersebut. Hanya saja mereka ingin mengungkapkan jika keamanan jaringan sebuah situs sangatlah penting. Apalagi saat ini diduga telah terjadi perang cyber antara hacker Indonesia dengan Malaysia.
"Ada beberapa backdoor yang tertanam di situs ipb.ac.id. Itu tugas admin untuk membersihkan dan mem-patch celah yang berpotensi disusupi hacker," tulis sang hacker dalam pesannya, Jumat (31/12/2010).
Memang sang hacker tidak mengacak-acak situs secara keseluruhan. Buktinya konten-konten dalam situs IPB masih bisa diakses. Hanya saja sang hacker bisa menerobos keamanan situs dan menambahkan konten baru ke dalam situs tersebut.
Bahkan dalam satu halaman yang dibuat hacker sebagai bukti kemampuannya, yaitu dalam halaman webometrics.ipb.ac.id, dirinya menyematkan sebuah foto yang menggambarkan nasionalisme anak Indonesia.
Beware traveller. I am here to slay your computer. Unstable fun awaits, betas with bits that may break your bit cruncher. That's what open source is about. Blowing up people's PCs with untested, untried, untrustworthy alpha and beta amateur programmer software! Well, perhaps some of the programmers are not amateurs...
Good news, settlers of the new world! (Or those who feel like settling new worlds but were born in the wrong period of history.) FreeCol 0.10-alpha has been released. Get it from the unstable version download area of their website (the current stable version is 0.9.5).
Speaking of Free* games, did the latest FreeCiv beta get a mention? FreeCiv 2.3.0-beta1 supports gigantic maps and over a hundred simultaneous players.
Development of VDrift is, as ever, ongoing. You can test out build 3030 put together on the 25th Jan. After a period of suffering regressions, some changes have been sidelined to bring the main development branch back to a more stable, playable state. It plays well, although - after the being seeing the deforming crashes on Rigs of Rods - I'd like to see the cars sustain damage. I know, I know, lots of work, little gameplay gain. I'm fickle.
OpenTTD is ramping up to another major release with 1.1.0 beta4. OpenTTD 1.1.0 seems to be really focusing on a combination of network play enhancements and compatibility with the Transport Tycoon Deluxe modding community. Free free to correct me if I am wrong.
MegaGlest continues to enjoy rapid development with 3.4.0 beta2. They embody the, "Release early, release often!" philosophy that I like to parrot.
Cool websites for projects? MegaGlest has one coming. UFO2000 has a sweet homepage. Peragro Tempus too. What are your favourites?
According to FOSS game developer and Lips of Suna project lead Ari Mustonen (aka Nekotaku, amuzen) the answer is the perfect, intelligent, witty, dungeon crawler. As luck would have it he, along with the Lips of Suna dev team and supporters, have set about the monumental task of realising this vision, reaching a major milestone yesterday with their 0.2.0 release.
For players, Lips of Suna, or LoS as it's known, is a cooperative online, persistent dungeon crawler/RPG, with deformable terrain, procedurally generated dungeons,seamless gameworld, actual player skills instead of leveling, and witty storyline giving the the player and any friends online the opportunity to do battle along side the world's five races as they descend into the depth of the dungeons of Suna to save their world. Unlike a lot of other RPGs/FPS of various flavours success will really depend on knowledge, cooperation, strategy as well as skill.
The Freegamer team caught up with Nekotaku yesterday:
FG: The obvious question, of course, is why FOSS?
Because it's fun and convenient. The FOSS game development circle is somewhat small and fragmented but that and people generally being friendly and open-minded makes it easy to get into it. You only need to play by the few simple rules and you're a respected member of the community. You can host your project for free on a number of open source development sites, you can borrow useful code from incredibly many projects, you sometimes get free coverage on some popular sites, you can get lots of new users with next to no extra effort by getting packaged by Linux distributions, and so on. All that just because you're FOSS. It's a great choice for a hobby project even if you're not into the ideology itself, I think.
FG: LoS has gone through a lot of changes and re-iterations over the years, what is your overall vision for LoS; what would you like to achieve and how has this changed from the original vision
The grand vision when we started the project was to develop a manga style cooperative multiplayer RPG that had no experience levels or other character progression mechanisms. We wanted to have fun time making a game that one can pick up at any time and play with one's pals or some random people without having to worry about being rejected due to not being in the same level with others.
I think that the core concepts still stand strong but the details were horribly blurry for the longest time. The grand vision itself is easy to set in stone but guessing how things will fit the big picture and work together in the more detailed level is challenging. Quite a few smaller ideas have been amended on paper as it has become evident that they won't work as is. There have also been several occasions when an idea already being implemented, despite sounding good on paper, turned out to be so infeasible that it required major changes or had to be ditched entirely.
FG: You have implemented a lot of rather cutting-edge technologies in the LoS engine; how has surfing the cutting edge treated you so far and what new tech would you like to see gain traction?
I'm not sure if any of it is really that bleeding edge. The graphics code is probably the closest to it, though since the graphics hardware I target is already one generation behind the capabilities of the graphics card I have, it hardly feels like that. Most of the things in other areas have been done before too by other games.
Lots of things I did were new to me, though, and I had lots of fun researching and testing them. Especially in graphics programming, the newer things tend to be very easy to use, to the point that I actually regret not going for OpenGL 3 earlier. For example, implementing hardware accelerated skeletal animations only took one day to get working. There's a number of nice features that help you speed up the graphics code while actually making it simpler.
I don't know if other projects should bother much with the fancy new technology. On the other hand, when you have modern graphics card, it would be nice to have games with pretty graphics but on the other I'd rather like to see games focus on the basic gameplay and the content rather than some engine features. However, if you're interested in the new tech, I think it's not a bad idea to dip into it a bit, learn something new in the process, and implement a couple of things that your game can use.
FG: What is your vision of the future of FOSS gaming? Where would you like to see it go, and where do you think it will actually end up?
I'd like to see FOSS games explore difficult and controversial subjects more instead of obsessing over moral and political correctness. I think one of the great things about games is that you can experience harmful and disgusting things without real harm. However, FOSS games offer nothing to people who crave for such experiences since it's all but impossible to even find a character who says "fuck" or to hear a dry mention of sex, much less to see the real deal.
I think FOSS projects generally have a great sense of professionalism and want to look very organized and serious. The ideas tend to be traditional and tame most of the time as well. Even though I'd like to see fresh and radical ideas for a change, I doubt it's ever going to be commonplace. People make the kind of games they like themselves and organize their projects to benefit their own needs. Career motivations and maintaining a neat public image of oneself are big factors so it takes a lot of courage and nerve to radically defy the status quo.
FG: LoS has a rather... unique... sense of art direction. Are there any specific inspirations design wise in that regard, and how do you think it has affected the development process?
The project was founded by two regulars of a tiny anime and manga community so the choice of art direction was pretty obvious back then. We never concerned ourselves about whether the mainstream would like the style and what they'd say if they didn't. It's just me now but I still don't let the external pressure limit the artistic freedom.
Actually, there's no external pressure to speak of. Everyone in the FOSS circle is so timid that you can go for years without anyone being able to find the words to bluntly say that nudity and panties offend or intrigue them. As long as you have thick enough skin to ignore the regular trolls, you could easily be even more blatant without any meaningful consequences.
Over time, the art direction has been affected a bit by a couple of other games, such as Oblivion and its mods. It's eye-opening to witness someone make the skimpiest armor and others not only not complaining but rather endorsing it hundreds of times and downloading tens of thousands of times. I think people with a more adult taste are a legitimate target audience for a FOSS game, and an easy one even since there's no competition at all.
FG: LoS has it's own custom written 3d and game engine, whereas there are loads of open source engines of all shapes and forms already in existance. Why did you choose to go this route, and would you do so again if you where to begin a new game project?
Learning new things as I develop is a big factor to me and graphics programming has always intrigued me. I think the biggest reason why I chose this route was the educational aspect. Researching all the new techniques and learning the ins and outs of different rendering techniques has indeed been a lot of fun. Studying and testing all the different things took quite a lot of time but the 3D engine code itself is only a bit over 9000 lines of C code currently. Writing that with the knowledge I have acquired wouldn't take very long so I think it'd depend on circumstances whether I'd write my own engine for any future project or if I'd use an existing engine.
Using an existing engine isn't always so easy either. If you have a very specific list of requirements and some of them are less common ones such as dynamically changing terrain, heavy use of paged geometry, and modifying meshes on the fly, it's hard to tell if any given engine will fit your needs and if it doesn't, how easy it'll be to add the required features. Other factors such as uncertain requirements, ease of integration, quality of documentation, complexity of the code base, and so on can also significantly impact how well the engine will work for you.
I use quite a few libraries already, though. ENet for networking, SQLite for saving and loading data, and Bullet for physics, for example. The smaller libraries are easy enough to use but Bullet is giving me a lot of trouble and I'm afraid that doing things such as collisions responses for the terrain properly would require doing something unsupported such as implementing your own collision shapes. It's quite a pain and terrain physics are quite broken as the result.
I don't think there's one right way to sort out the engine. If you think that you'll have more fun if you write the engine code yourself and you'd like to take the time to write an engine that solves the problem well, write it yourself. If you don't have interest in engine development and don't mind some rough corners getting on the way of development of the actual gameplay and content of the game, use an existing engine or glue several libraries together to make one. Whichever route you take, it'll still take several years to complete an ambitious project, I think.
FG: Terrain deformation, has become fashionable, through Minecraft's arrival (1 million units sold and all that).. We understand that LoS will feature deformable terrain, but work was done far prior to the Minecraft craze. What were your inspirations and in what areas in the game is terrain deformation used?
I think Nethack was the original source of inspiration. The idea was to support mining in a similar fashion, but in 3 dimensions, to allow players to move more freely and gather resources in interesting ways. Since then, Dwarf Fortress has done good job at utilizing the third dimensions and, judging by gameplay videos, Minecraft seems to have a lot of interesting ideas too.
I think 0.2.0 is the first time LoS has had any real success with voxel terrain. The previous iterations had serious scalability and usability issues but it's finally getting to the point that you can have a full-sized map without the game crawling to halt, and you can do something useful with it. Getting it to work has been quite an exercise of trial and error and finding compromises and it still isn't quite there yet.
FG: You and other projects such as 0ad have chosen to get playability and enjoyability in sooner rather than later. What are the advantages and do you reccomend adjusting development cycles for all FOSS projects?
This may be an accurate statement in the grand intergalactic scope but from my point of view it took a long time until the actual playable bits started to emerge. I feel that LoS is actually the opposite since it wasn't much more than an engine technology demo until late last year, which is when I decided that the internals were good enough to be able to support the game. I think it'd be more accurate to say that LoS has simply chosen to get playable.
However, I do think that you should aim for playability as soon as possible, especially if you want to have contributors or have existing team members and you want to keep them around. If you're already working alone and don't have a lot of faith in your recruitment skills, it might be the same to get the most disruptive internal changes out of the way now when no one's around to get affected by them.
The timing can vary but you need to decide at some point that you're making a game rather than an engine, a technology demo, a portfolio or something else. Some genres are more forgiving about it than others but I think that at least content heavy game types and games with complex game mechanisms will never get done if you don't consciously start focusing on content and gameplay. RPGs are particularly nasty in that respect since with the engine alone you just have a fancy walking simulation and the interesting stuff is all content and intricate game mechanisms put together.
FG: 3 years of development is a long time, and you were involved from conception through the hard initial periods of coding without much in the way of tangibles to demonstarate and gather contributions with, through to to geting to the stage where the project is taking off. You would undoubtedly have garnered some insights on avoiding the slings and arrows of FOSS development. Any tips for FOSSers at the beggining of that journey?
This is probably the most useless tip ever but projects die when they're killed. I'd say the biggest factor determining how successful your project will be is how much and for how long you work on it. An hour or two of useful work per day with no end keeps the project healthy and eventually leads to success, whereas affairs with the opposite sex and other real world phenomena increase the chance of failure.
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Now, following from that, I think that you as the developer are the primary audience of your own game. If you design the project so that you will love to work it for years to come, it's more likely to be a success than a project that's designed to appeal to the largest possible audience but the developer isn't ecstatic about it. This is because the former will probably finish whereas the latter will likely die when the developer loses interest.
FG: Who would you like to thank?
#freegamer for wasting so much of my time with all the interesting discussions and for allowing me to waste your time with random status updates and pointless rants
The LoS development comminity is a very accesible place with no formal obligations or requirements where people can come and contribute with feedback, 2d/3d art, music, scripts or code in whatever areas of the game they feel like. So head over to their forums, and visit their wiki.
