Friendster bought out

I have noticed there is a change with Friendster, but until the yahoo article that it was sold to a Malaysian tycoon. Friendster was popular before the days of Facebook. It set limits to the number of friends you can add. That must be part of the put off that when facebook comes in, friendster loses the friends. So what could  a tycoon do to change the trend when facebook and other social sites are doing well? For now I only see appearance changes. The rest of the change or perhaps changes not started yet, it doesn't seems attractive to get me go back there. What they come up is already in other social sites. So time will tell if this name will go on or stop.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20091210/tbs-as-malaysia-friendster-88383ae.html

Would you pay for online news?

Everyone may have heard or read about Mr Murdoch started the ball rolling in getting news off Google search index, or anywhere in Google. Murdoch owns some newspapers as well news network or TV stations. Some other newspaper also follows to want Google to stop indexing their news. Reason as reported as the online news will be paid only. So if that is the case, Google should just drop their index. I don't think anyone would pay for news, especially online. News should be free. If I am to pay for news, I would rather buy a newspaper. No one get to restrict news since news happens in places that are no one's exclusive stories unless they are pre planned or someone's story. Public news are readily available to anyone willing to write or report about it. So if Google doesn't have your news links, they have links from others. It makes no sense to drop news but then there maybe more than what we expected. MS involvement. It is up to readers to decide what kind of partnership happens, it there is one. Whatever it is, feel free to make all news paid only. I could turn to the radio for my news updates. When the newpaper drop their news from the net, I stopped surf to their site. News are everywhere, just not worth your penny to pay for them online.

http://www.lockergnome.com/theoracle/2009/11/30/the-murdoch-effect-already-felt-in-the-uk/

Black screen of death?

Windows 7 had just launched and now there surfaced a complaint, BSOD. Nope, not Blue Screen of Death but Black Screen of Death. Just the difference in colour but it is as annoying as the blue version. I have never actually see the black screen at all. A search on the internet all shows different type of black screens, including the DOS mode, the F8 menu screens and even the MacOS black screens. I am still using XP and so far only blue screen and to get such a screen is rare. The black screen version maybe link to something the user installed. The reports on the internet first claimed that MS patches causes it, now they apologized and U-turn the claim. So if the patch didn't cause it what does? The user. The user is in charge of what goes into their computer so if something wrong happens it is the user's fault. Windows 7 is still new but it doesn't mean the anything that is approved to protect your system might not start the black ball rolling. In any case, no OS is safe of the different colours of death screens. Just make sure you have a backup of your stuff before the ball came crashing in.

cooling period for polling day?

The gov intend to have a cooling period for polling day. Something that some foreign countries been doing. Singapore is such a small country, cooling period is such a unnecessary.  There are other areas that need changes. Drop the GRC back to single seats. If your candidates is good, he will make it. Using GRC to stand next to veteran candidates just doesn't seems to be the way for people to choose. Are you saying they will go for the group as there is one or two veterans there while the oppositions are all new guys that hasn't been on the road yet? It is such absurd and cowardly to be hiding behind veterans. Strong oppositions such as the two opposition wards are an example, unless the ruling party put in a ministerial candidate to going against the opposition stronghold. Or they could choose the easy way out by merging the current opposition ward into a GRC. They did it before so it could happen again. But then again, what most people feel is that most citizens have never vote at all. Being a citizen, they do not get a chance to cast their vote, because the place they lives have been dropped by the oppositions. The respond would be there is no one worthy to take on the GRCs. If the oppositions are not given a chance on the field they will always be a newbie. Even if they have the people, they need to come up with a sum for being a candidate. So the cooling period is nothing as compare to not being able to vote. Scrape the GRC unless you have no confident on your own people.

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/12/pm-lee-proposes-24-hour-cooling-off-period-before-polling-day/

browser war.... what's the point?

What's the point of browser war when all we see are nothing special? Special features of the browser just does not seems as the main reason for a change. Users of IE keep getting lagging reload of pages while Firefox loads the page very fast. IE 8 have the dropdown URL bar not working. So to IE, you better fix it up instead of add on this or that. I have hold on upgrade to IE8 because he URL bar can't drop down. Search of the net shows users having the same problem and some users or perhaps MS 'fans' giving lame answers which just isn't the solution. That said, I am using firefox only if IE can't load. There are still functions that IE could do better but for now, speed is important. Better buck up IE or bye bye.