*choke* Talk about a new low. There goes my appetite.

Filed under: Picture

I was clearing out rubbish from my PC when I came across this:

Hilarious! Now if only I remember the source...

Filed under: News, Humour, Picture

In Taiwan, an anti-AIDS print ad featuring a smiling nun holding a condom has been dropped. In the ad, the nun enthuses "Although I don't need one, even I know".

Personally, I think this isn't a bad idea on its own. Except for the tinny little fact that nuns tend to be uptight about these sort of things (a lifetime of chastity... I'd be uptight as well). Oh, and the fact that the Catholic Church has a tough stance against contraceptions doesn't help too.

I don't understand why this is an "insult" to the nuns though. While the ad could be religiously sensitive, I'd like to think that I'll chuckle if I were a nun (like, in my dreams). So which part is insulting? The part where the nun is smiling, the part where they "don't need one" or the part where they "know"? Hm.

I really want to look at an image of the ad though. Searching for "nun" and "condom" on Google Images brings up results that have nothing to do with nuns. Come to think of it, no condoms either.

Filed under: News, Doh!

I ORD'ed 2 months too early to benefit from the new NSF payscale. I enlisted 2 years too early to benefit from the shortened 2 year NSF liability (I can go on, for these are but mere portents of the Greek tragedy that is my NSF timing).

But ye gods! I haven't ROD'ed too early to benefit from the shortened reservist liability!

This means I can stop donning the army uniform when I reach a lau kok kok 37 (assuming 3 deferments). Whoo!

Filed under: Singapore, Personal, NS

(Answer to "Identify This")

This:

Becomes:

Filed under: Picture

Because the previous entry was long enough (too long?), I decided to make a separate entry for the reactions from the two petitions. I've never been a believer in the effectiveness of online petitions, but they are pretty good for a chuckle or two. Please note that the comments here are reproduced from the petitions, and are in no way my own or under my endorsement.

Petition One (with matriculation numbers)

458. Alex - [matriculation number] Online add/drop/swap of tutorials run from 2300 to 0900 the next day. bloody effing brilliant, someone should be fired for giving that timing.

416. CORS - Can Only Run Sometimes (Apt, but it's really Centralized Online Registration System)

414. Bill Gates - MS058888Z - I know why... cos CORS is running on Windows 3.1 with Service Pack 2

392. Silver- Our CORS is even worse than Warcraft III servers (I can say it's worse than Guild Wars server also)

383. CSJ - How come NUS doesn't have the money to maintain the servers? The fees was just increased not long ago. Where have our tution fees gone to? WHERE'S OUR MONEY?!

294. God - Thou shalt upgrade thy servers.

289. NATO -NUS students are No Action Talk Only. Sign peition for what? We should boycott the CORS bidding altogether. Let them have empty tutorial groups.

253. NUSSU - Isn't the Student Union supposed to do something about this? Or are they just another EMASCULATED union like NTUC?

220. James Bond - Why did they increase tuition fee and build the shiny uni hall instead of upgrading the dumb cors server?

212. Lu Huiru Grace - [matriculation number] (would just like to point out that staring at the screen for 6 hours may be a good exercise in patience, but a ridiculous waste of time, and even more ridiculous when one considers that this was completely avoidable) {She wins me... I spent four at most}

140. angry - with the dumb CORS system, bidding the modules and tutorials are MORE STRESSFUL than studying for the modules...

84. PSC - There's a reason why I don't send my top scholars to the 18th best university in the world.

77. disappointed. - come on lah, how can this be taken seriously when you have jokers like 's.r.nathan' and 'shih choon fong' signing it?! (So he signs off as "disappointed" instead.)

67. paranoid - Will they be blacklisting all the matric no. listed here?

38. S.R. Nathan - FUGGINGKNNCHEESEPIEXXX

Petition Two

796. NUSSU should rename theselves NUS Servile Union. They are only good at organising parties and bazaars, but will never dare to do anything that might possibly antangonise the NUS admin. Fight for students' rights? Dream on. (Ire at NUSSU... interesting)

726. I dun see free milo for a long time already! I want my free milo! wtf is NUSSU doing? Getting CCA pts and yet no milo! By the way, CORS sux, its just to a slacking scheme of the admin ppl to push work around!

723. CLOSE BIDDING is a stupid redundant system. after 3yrs the system is still so screwed up when traffic gets heavy. probably the R&D pple r dead or they are getting paid and not working to improve the system.

719. jean - isn't technology suppose to make life easier....?

718. not only were the servers down, the phone lines were jammed up too. utterly disgusted.

711. Instead of extending round 1a to 9am (thur) directly, CORS chose to extend the closing time bit by bit, so as to ensure that there's a constant stream of students to continously jam the servers.

707. When the website is working, the CORS team takes the credit for it. When the website screws up, they blame the students for overloading the servers.

695. I bet the NUSSU will only tell the students to forget about this incident, they wouldn't have the balls to demand for an apology. They only dare to talk down to the student body, which they are supposed to serve. Confront the admin? Forget about it.

694. Want NUS to apologise? Wait long long. They'll say, "It's a HONEST MISTAKE. Nobody is at fault, so nobody is going to take any responsibility."

673. Marcus Wong - CORS is nothing more than a glorified gambling programme for my academic future

640. CORS Sucks! Take students' money to implement this kind of system with this kind of appaling service! Top 20 University in the world? My foot!!!

636. candice - CORS: waste of time, waste of electricity, doesnt help to make the lives of uni students better with all these unnecessary frustration. Errors are inevitable, but hopefully it would be the last time.

505. If this is the 18th best standard in the world, I shudder to think how long the bidding of modules at lower ranked university will take.

357. Kok Hwa Siang: Whaa.. what? Extension of Round 1A is the solution? The "Magic Wand?" Just like raising ERP prices? Traffic jam, raise ERP prices? Network congestion, extend balloting deadline?

Filed under: Singapore, Education, NUS, CORS

There is a brewing storm of dissatisfaction over the bidding system of NUS, known as CORS (petition one, petition two). As far as I know of, there has been two major disruptions in the bidding so far. The first one occurred during module bidding 2A, and the second one during tutorial balloting 1A.

CORS Introduction

Before delving into the details, let me attempt to summarize how the bidding system works. The information here is based on three years of my understanding, and should be accurate where it matters most.

First of all, understand that module allocation in NUS is unique, as it is facilitated by online bidding via CORS. Students are given bidding points in two accounts every two years. These two accounts are known as the Programme Account and General Account. Points in the programme account are used to bid for compulsory modules in each student's track (core modules). Points in the general account are used for non-core modules. Students have a limited number of points in both accounts, and can decide whether to spread them thin, or concentrate on a few select modules.

There are three major rounds of module bidding, discounting the preparatory round 0. In round 1, students place bids for their core modules, and are allocated core modules at the end of each subround 1A, 1B and 1C. Students who missed getting core modules in round 1 can continue to bid for them during all subsequent rounds. In round 2, bidding for non-core modules begin, and non-core modules are similarly allocated based on bids at the end of subrounds 2A and 2B. Finally, round 3, which has 6 subrounds A thru F, will take place. Students may bid for all modules during this round, at the end of which electronic bidding officially ends.

During each subround (1A, 1B, 2A etc), there are two phases of bidding. Open bidding, typically beginning from the start of the subround to two hours before it ends, provides information on the number of vacancies, number of bidders, the highest bid and the minimum bid required to be allocated the module. Close bidding, typically beginning from two hours before the subround ends, hides information on the highest bid and the minimum bid required to be allocated the module. The minimum bid required is usually the most important information, because no matter how high a bid is, extra points above and beyond this minimum bid are refunded to the student. Hence, if the minimum bid stands at 100, and I've invested 1000 points in this module, I'll be refunded 900 points at the end of the subround.

Tutorial balloting occur in a different mechanism. There are 2 major rounds of balloting, and 4 subrounds. Based on the modules that students are allocated, a list of available tutorials will be displayed when tutorial balloting begins. Students arrange their options according to preference, and tutorials are assigned to each student at the end of each subround.

This summary as well as timings and dates for all the various rounds are made public on the CORS website. Some details may be missing from my summary, but it should nonetheless be functionally accurate.

Excellent Premise

CORS was built for an excellent purpose: to train students to understand the opportunity costs of their actions. Because points in each account are limited, students have to make a choice as to whether play it safe and invest them in one popular module, or to spread them over many other modules. The close bidding mechanism removes perfect knowledge and entire certainty, which almost never occurs in the real world. The system hence advocates responsible decision making, careful resource allocation, rewards vigilance and even the occasional risk taking.

Such lessons are invaluable. With limited funds, a fund manager has to decide what to invest in and how much. With the proper analysis, the fund manager obtains an approximation of the return on investment, and yet still faces an element of risk when he finally makes his decision. Project managers, programmers, store keepers, indeed almost every strata of society faces this scenario at one time or the other, whether the scenario has to with which projects to initiate, which technology to learn, which product to stock up on.

The student who takes CORS seriously can hence pick up several lessons that cannot be imparted in traditional balloting or first-come-first-served systems. I for one, learnt that it is not a good idea to show my hand at the very beginning of open bidding, unless I am extremely confident of winning the bid. Otherwise, my action will only drive up the minimum bid of that module, making it more costly to obtain that module. I learnt to anticipate competitors as well, to find out the minimum and highest bid just before open bidding ends, and to make allowances for my own bids when close bidding begins.

Like I've said, those are excellent lessons, and CORS succeeds admirably as a simulation and pseudo decision support system.

So What's Wrong?

For all its noble intentions, many NUS students are unhappy with the system. Just this semester alone, CORS has twice been plagued by downtime during bidding and balloting. Support personnel have been hounded by furious students, possibly leading them to provide curt and non-commital replies when questioned on the next step to take. Based on personal experience as well as a perusal of the two petitions, I offer some bugbears here below.

a) Critical Bottlenecks
Bandwidth is important- this we all know. Combine this with a burgeoning student population, and something's got to give. A recent study of British websites found that 25% of website overloads and crashes occurred due to poor planning. Website owners failed to account for incomplete transactions, and user journeys through the websites were not properly monitored. This is more than a problem of increasing bandwidth however, for if the website was not designed properly, the doubling of hardware will not result in a doubling of performance. In particular, the study notes that "with knowledge of the journeys [of website users] and the likely load levels, sensible code refactoring and configuration tweaking can give an order of magnitude throughput gains at the critical bottlenecks".

The bottleneck in CORS presumably is two-fold. First of all, students who logon and do not log off may have their session information stored on memory, depending on the website design. Should this be a prevalent behaviour, then CORS is a disaster waiting to happen. The second bottleneck could lie in the calculation of bid transactions. While transaction volume per student may be unimpressive, the entire volume can be hefty enough to cripple the system. Students who reload the webpages to view updated information also contribute to the load, even though designers may have overlooked them during planning.

These are however merely my speculations, and will remain as such.

b) CORS World vs Real World
After the downtime during module bidding 2A, students were informed by school administrators that the system failure was caused by a massive number of students logging in at the last few hours of open bidding. After the downtime during tutorial balloting 1A, students were informed by school administrators that the failure this time was caused by a massive number of students logging in immediately once balloting began, even though tutorials were not balloted on a first-come-first-served basis.

These two events combined to paint a picture that the CORS world does not mirror the real world, no matter how much its designers want it to be.

In the CORS world, students who are vigilant enough to obtaining bidding information just before open bidding ends are rewarded. In the real world, these students crash the system, although they were doing what CORS advocated in the first place.

In the CORS world, students will stagger themselves over a normal probability distribution when tutorial balloting begins, because the system is not based on a first-come-first-served principle. In the real world, students log in early, so that this chore of preference indication is settled early, and also because the last minute rush during the previous fiasco is still fresh in their minds. Again, they crash the system.

In the CORS world, students who for some reason fail to receive a module can lodge an appeal. In the real world, many students skip the bidding, and directly lodge appeals at the end of the rounds. This allows them to obtain "free" modules directly, without sacrificing the minimum bid.

In all these cases, behaviour of the end users of CORS clearly deviated from the designers' and adminstrators' expectations. Perhaps more work is needed in tracking student behaviour, logon times, frequency and patterns, because end users seldom work in the way we expect them to.

c) Administrative Mistakes
When CORS failed during the first downtime, the CORS helpline was inundated with calls. It was almost impossible to get help via both phonecalls or emails. When the lucky few did manage to get through, the response from the support team was less than helpful. Word got around that "nothing could be done" because it was the "fault" of the students. Everyone was advised to simply "wait and see".

When you've been hitting refresh again and again for the past three hours, despite knowing you're contributing to the problem, this is the last thing you want to hear. Module selection is an important activity in a student's academic life. "Wait and see" is infinitely less preferable to reassurance that the incident will be handled, and that affected students will be attended to.

When the emails finally arrived, they came with no explanations, no apologies, and one even carried a remonstrative undertone. A PR nightmare if nothing else.

d) End User Dissatisfaction
Perhaps the most insidious threat facing CORS now is not hardware or even performance in nature. In software projects, user acceptance and satisfaction is a major hurdle. Multi-billion projects have failed because of this, and project management literature is rife with warnings.

Being an academic system, I like to think that CORS has a natural advantage over corporate systems. Unless the entire student body of NUS refuses to use the system, the few who do not go with the flow do so at their own disadvantage.

Yet dissatisfaction simmers. Comparisons with the NTU system are made and disgruntled students make caustic jibes at NUS's recent 18th international ranking. Had participation in CORS been voluntary, I dare say it'll be headed the way of website graveyard, despite its good design and purpose.

Conclusion

As I've stated before, I believe CORS is a good system. It teaches responsibility, resource allocation and opportunity costs, something few module allocation systems can boast of. Nonetheless, various performance flaws threaten its effectiveness. More importantly, NUS needs to do more to win over students where CORS is concerned. It can always choose the autocratic way by offering neither explanations nor apologies and dismissing these two incidents as isolated ones. But while that route may solve its short term woes, it is ultimately untenable in the long run.

Filed under: Singapore, Education, NUS, CORS

I'm a bit upset right now, because both my favourite male and female Project Superstar contestants have been shut out of the finals. Even though Jun Yang and Xin Hui performed better and garnered higher scores from the judges at the male and female finals respectively, they were still given the proverbial boot.

Project Superstar bah. More like Project Shoot-the-Stars.

On the bright side however, since the good ones won't be releasing a CD, I can save some money. Oh well.

Filed under: Singapore, Entertainment, TV, ProjectSuperstar

I've had a love-hate relationship with science fiction since my teens. My first few forays into the genre began with the novels of Star Wars. I hated them. The particular novels I picked up were full of jargon that made Chewbacca sound poetic in comparison, disjointed plot lines and ten billion peripheral characters who either have a remarkable propensity to die or escape death.

There were limits to being a geek: I found mine real fast.

Later, by chance, I stumbled upon novels by Ben Bova. Not exactly sci-fi literati, but they were majorly entertaining. Plus they inevitably featured front covers with gorgeous and exotic spacescapes and/or majestic spaceships. Awesome.

From Ben Bova, I went on to Greg Bear, Stephen Baxter, Ursula K. Le Guin. With the exception of the latter's Earthsea canon, I usually gravitated to the subgenre of sci-fi that revolved around space and the universe. Big weapons, hyperspace, wormholes, death of the Sun. Stuff like that.

So naturally when my eyes caught a module titled "Understanding the Universe", I immediately took note (another module that caught my attention was Science Fiction and Fantasy but the last literature module sort of scared me off literature for a while). As I remember, it had a perfect module description. I can't reproduce it now, but it was exotic, exciting, different. Not the usual Physics module (thermodynamics.. bleah). So why not, I thought. At the very most, I'd just feel like Harry Potter taking Divinition classes.

Man. Divinition is probably more exciting.

So far, it has been a disappointment. I believe the lecturer is keeping something up her sleeve. She's asking us whether we know that Earth rotates around its own axis, only because she's saving the best for last. She has to be. I refuse to contemplate otherwise. Therefore, we shall get hyperspace, wormholes, Planck's constant, anti-matter, String theory, Minkowski space, Fermat's last theorem and the Fornax Dwarf galaxy after we've established that the Earth revolves around the sun and that there are nine planets in our solar system (technically speaking there's also 2003 EL61, 2003 UB313, Sedna and a host of other Kuiper Belt objects {ignoring the lil fact that Sedna lies outside of the Kuiper Belt}, but what the heck. She says nine, I'll play along...).

Patience, patience. The day will come. Until then, I have to go work on how much distance a light-year really is.

Duh. As if hyperspace warps wouldn't take care of that.

Filed under: SF, Personal

a) This is Public Nuisance. Cannot follow.

Will lead to:

b) This is Patriotism... Not Public Nuisance or Illegal Assembly, because a license is 100% obtainable... Can follow.

Images are from SDP and ChannelNewsAsia. SDP has absolutely no permission to quote this. However, SDP should carry on pretending that it is TalkingCock in disguise. There's no better strategy to bolster the credibility of a political party I say.

Filed under: Singapore, News, Politics

That's it... another walkover for the presidency. No more holiday. If we ignore the fact that 27th Aug falls on a Saturday anyway, that is.

Andrew Kuan and two other candidacy hopefuls failed to clear the PEC hurdle. The latter two remained mostly out of the spotlight for the past few days, while Kuan received lots of bad press.

JTC and Hyflux probably provided the most damaging salvos to Kuan's credibility, with JTC asserting that Kuan's work performance was not up to standard and Hyflux all but claiming outright that Kuan sought work at their firm to boost his credentials for the presidency race. Even before these two salvos, there were murmurs of Kuan being ambitious and high-handed. People he'd work with, as well members of his condominium council did not exactly rush to give him ringing endorsements. (Or if they did, the media did a fantastic job downplaying them while highlighting the negative.) JTC's press conference in particular, was the most damaging. By claiming that Kuan's performance as CFO was substandard and not elaborating on the whys and wherefores, they've managed to fuel even more speculation and negative sentiments than if they'd come straight out to say exactly how and why they were dissatisfied.

However, while Kuan's delay tactics at JTC is instantly suspicious, I also wonder why JTC allowed him to stay on as CFO time and again. Surely even an employee with heart will be hard-pressed to keep an under-performing employee for three years, much less a CFO. The fact that all employees are eligible for performance bonus (JTC says that performance bonuses come in 5 categories. Kuan received the second lowest category of bonus.) despite their poor performance also boggles the mind.

Kuan, in an article on today's Straits Times, claimed that the Government was out to "discourage" (euphemism for impede?) him. Considering he's not endorsed by PAP, there could be a germ of truth in that. Makes me wonder what obstacles the late Ong Teng Cheong would have faced had he decided to run a second term.

Anyhow, heartfelt congratulations must still go out to President Nathan. You da man!

Filed under: Singapore, News, Politics

And no, it's not a furry appendage. Answer and source to come in a future post.

Filed under: Picture

I have been playing CPF's online board game Voyage of Life for the past few days. Here's a question that stumped me:

Click on thumbnail to see full puzzle

Juvenile humour aside, I can't seem to find the answer to this (boob is so obviously wrong, besides the singular usage). Mortgage? Interest? Location?

Anyhow, I thought this is a pretty good attempt to entice people like me to brush up on knowledge about CPF, even though I'm replaying again and again for the wrong reason: I am 160k away from an iPod. Grr.

Filed under: Humour, Internet, Singapore

So I hear Apple has a new mouse. It has christened it Mighty Mouse. No kidding. Mighty Mouse. And they call Microsoft a ripoff. If I were the mouse, I would have died from shame and embarassment.

Initial reviews for the product are mixed, although many seem to be complaining about the USB wire (source 1, 2) .

A mouse by any other name

In other product news, this new offering also seems to making waves. Methinks this is an excellent home for all Apple products.

What is it?

Filed under: Technology, Humour

This firm, sometimes billed as the Chinese Google, made its U.S. market debut two days ago, opening at $27 per share and closing at $122.54.

《青玉案 · 元夕》

辛弃疾

东风夜放花千树，更吹落、星如雨。　　　　

宝马雕车香满路。　　　　

凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞。

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，笑语盈盈暗香去。　　　　

众里寻她千百度。　　　　

蓦然回首，那人却在，灯火阑珊处。

And I thought the site was only good for chinese music files. (source 1, 2, 3)

Filed under: News, Internet

China Miéville's Iron Council and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are in the run for best novel (full list here).

Excellent.

Not that I've read all the nominated novels, but Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was utterly memorable for its lightness of touch (what Harry Potter used to have) and the sheer scope of its imagination. And of course, its long and elaborate footnotes.

Filed under: SF, Fantasy, Books

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- A man who got angry with his wife because she wanted to cuddle after sex when what he really wanted to do was watch sports on television was sentenced to death for killing her with a claw hammer. (source, check out his eyes man...)

Talk about sudden death.

One thing's for sure though. This lovable man is not going to find any annoying cuddlers where he's going, unless said cuddler's a hair bear named Bruno.

Filed under: News, Sports

I recently got embroiled at a particular post over at Tomorrow, not primarily because of its contents, but rather because of how it was handled (My comments there are labelled by my acronym WJ).

Tomorrow led to a post on a blog which I normally avoid.

The blog I normally avoid led to two other posts (1, 2) on yet other blog. And some comments among those left on this blog rendered me speechless:

And oh, so you are a judge what is 'serious' and what is not?

hahahahahahahaahahahahahaHmm. If you are a 'serious blogger' but you no have no one reading your blog, are you still a blogger?Childish? Infantile? Those are folks like you label us.

If that's what you call us, that's fine by us. Now, run along, and continue blogging on a blog no one reads.

I must confess that I am a bystander in this: I read these comments late and had no idea what kind of circumstances led to them. In fact, I probably should keep totally out of it, except a part of me wants to record it down for posterity's sake (the part of me that revels in gossip and all things irrelevant).

I now realize why many firms are worried that their employees blog. We can write disclaimers all we want, deny affiliations all we want, but at the end of the day, everything we write reflects on our employer. And the Internet is a large place. The seemingly innocuous comment left in one place can snowball and one day, flatten you.

Reconcile the comment above, for example, with this person (I was pretty flabbergasted to find the Wiki... even Sim Wong Hoo's Wiki is not as detailed!). Kind of scary? Believe me when I say that this "Internet pioneer" of Singapore made not one, but many comments like the above. Better yet, go read them yourself.

Nicholas' blog finally led me to La Idler's, an ex-editor at Tomorrow who dropped out. No prizes for guessing which one person she's referring to.

Filed under: Internet, Blogger, Blogging, Musings

At a presentation made to the dean of SoC as well as SoC's corporate affiliates:

My colleague, upon graduation from RJC, successfully got accepted by MIT. I, upon graduation from RJC, successfully got accepted by Oxford.

However, because we had no money, we came to NUS.

Stunned silence. Then raucous laughter.

What's more, the presenter was a beneficiary of SoC's startup funds for entrepreneurs. Talk about a faux pas.

Filed under: Humour, Doh!

Microsoft has quietly released what appears to be its next generation search engine. Click on the image below to get to the preview Start.

The no frills interface goes down well with me, as is the handy feed aggregator that pops up when I click on the top left hand logo. Pinning, unpinning and moving around pinned feed previews also works like a breeze and is more intuitive than the service provided by MyYahoo.

Of course, the jury is still out on how well the search engine itself runs. No figures are available yet on search benchmarks, but it seems that threading is not available for results within a domain. It's still a preview though, so I expect more features will come. In the meantime, Start certainly is looking great.

Filed under: Technology, Microsoft, Internet

An email about Xbox 360 or a foreshadowing of Microsoft's forays into politics and world dominance?

Filed under: Technology, Microsoft