malaysia

With site block, Malaysia seems to break promise

KUALA LUMPUR--The nation's vocal political bloggers and commentators are bracing for a government crackdown, even as Malaysia celebrates its 51st anniversary of independence this weekend.

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission earlier this week ordered all 19 of the country's Internet service providers to block the controversial political portal Malaysia Today.

According to a report on Thursday by online news portal Malaysiakini, the MCMC chief operating officer, Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, confirmed that the commission was behind the site blackout. "It is being blocked because we found that some of the comments on the Web site were insensitive, … Read more

Malaysia moves to OpenOffice

Citing cost and ease of use considerations, the State of Pahang in Malaysia has officially moved to OpenOffice. I wrote yesterday about how emerging economies may prove to be the best source of growth for desktop Linux. Here is one more proofpoint:

The driving force for this migration seems to be cost of proprietary software and the fear of unlicensed software. OpenOffice.org is the obvious solution to these two pressing problems (thanks, BSA!) What is good is that they have chosen ODF by default, and they are not changing the file format to the binary proprietary ones.

What is … Read more

Arrgh...Movie pirates nabbed with night-vision goggles

You'd think catching movie pirates would be as easy as preventing anyone with a camcorder from entering a movie theater. Or throwing a net over Johnny Depp's house.

Instead, Malaysian theater workers are employing a high-tech strategy. According to a Reuters report, the Motion Picture Association is training Malaysian theater workers to strap on night-vision goggles to catch pirates in the act of filming.

And it's working. In the past two months, 17 illegal movie-tapers have been caught by begoggled Malaysian ushers.

Could New York City be the next test bed for the night-vision goggle probe? According … Read more

Bring nature into...the shower?

I could say something really deep, introspective, and postmodern-pop-philosophy-ish about recent trends involving large-scale indoor horticulture. You know, about the blurring of indoor and outdoor spaces in the collective unconscious, and the human yearning for closeness to the organic in a sterilized world, and...

Boring.

Here's a better way to put it. These days, it seems to be kind of trendy to take things--like owls and tree branches--that are normally found outside, and put them indoors. Like that wall of plants they've devised over in Sweden. Well, a design group in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has taken the … Read more