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Fifteen hours is certainly not temporary!
Now, I am no big fan of oil companies and petrol stations, but I feel the Ministry has overstepped its authority in this “must open 24 hours” issue.
Since these are private businesses (not owned by government), the Ministry has no authority to dictate their opening hours. If it can do this, what is to stop the Ministry from dictating the opening hours for any other businesses? For example, it may order all clinics to open 24 hours. For that matter, why not order all mechanics and car workshops to open 24 hours?
I watched the press conference on Tv3 news last night where Datuk Shafie threatened unspecified sanctions against the petrol dealers. When pressed by reporters for details, he only said something like “They know what will happen to them.”
This gives me the impression that the Ministry has no legal standing in this matter. Plus, Datuk Shafie comes off as capricious, and the Ministry appears to be making up rules as it goes along.
Worse, the Ministry’s stance on petrol stations staying open 24 hours is a direct contradiction to its stance on hypermarkets’ opening hours.
Recall that this is the same ministry (and the same minister) which, in 2004, barred hypermarkets from opening 24 hours. This, despite protests from consumers, and appeals from the hypermarkets who actually want to open 24 hours (unlike these petrol kiosk operators).
One excuse that the Ministry is using is that petrol is a “controlled item” or “essential item”. But aren’t there a lot more controlled items sold in hypermarkets? Don’t I have a right to buy sugar, flour and chicken at any time of the day or night? Isn’t food more of an essential item than petrol?
I read with interest Star's Jun 9 front page story about the beef import cartel under the headline Cartel broken.
However, the story is a little scant about how exactly the cartel was “broken” and how it came about in the first place.
It also raises other questions. For example, are there competition laws or anti-cartel (i.e. antitrust) laws in
Since the Government is portraying itself as cartel-busters, how about looking at the book and magazine suppliers in
If you’re interested in some good examples of anti-cartel laws take a look at:
United States Antitrust Law or European Community Competition Law.In today’s Reuters story run in The Star:
No safe haven: Diet sodas linked with health risks
Soft drinks -- even diet ones -- may be linked with increased risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, US researchers said on Jul 23.
Caution: Some soft drinks may seriously harm your health
Expert links additive to serious cell damage.
In the book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (2004), Ray Kurzweil and Dr. Terry Grossman also reveal how dangerous soft drinks are:
Soft drinks are hard on the body
>> Your body will act to neutralize acidic drinks with alkaline blood buffers. Most soft drinks are extremely acidic. Colas also contain high levels of phosphoric acid, an acid capable of poisoning you if not quickly neutralized. Cola (regular or diet) has an extraordinarily low pH of 2.5 (that is, acidic).
It would take 3,200 glasses of alkaline water with a pH of 8 (or 32 glasses with a pH of 10) to neutralize a single 8oz glass of cola. If the body did nothing to counteract the acid in the cola, a single glass would lower your blood pH to 4.6, killing you instantly (…)
There were no colas nor carbonated soft drinks thousands of years ago, so our bodies did not evolve to deal effectively with the onslaught of acids that many people consume today, and there are problems resulting from the body’s detoxification strategies. <<
I completely quit soft drinks about 8 months ago, and my only regret is that I didn’t do so earlier.
I only had some “cravings” during my first week without soft drinks, but after that, I lost all desire to consume the stuff. As an added benefit, I’m a lot less of a sweet tooth these days, and I have also cut down on sweet foods and sugar in other drinks.
On occasion, when we come across PCs infected with a virus, spyware, trojan, or other types of malware, we've found that the Task Manager has been disabled.
Malware creators like to disable Task Manager to make system troubleshooting difficult, and also to make it hard to remove their malware.
Ramesh Srinivasan, a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) covers this
issue on his website at http://snipurl.com/jk50.
“If this restriction was enabled in your system without you doing anything or without your knowledge, then it’s highly likely that a Virus has blocked the usage of Task Manager in your system by enabling the DisableTaskMgr policy via the registry.” Srinivasan notes.
He suggests that “you perform a thorough checkup of your system immediately”. The steps listed below will unblock the Task Manager, but will not remove malware (if any) from your system:
1. Click Start, Run and type Regedit.
2. Navigate to the following registry branch: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies\ System.
3. In the right pane, you should see a line called DisableTaskMgr.
4. Double click on DisableTaskMgr and change Value Data to 0 (zero) to re-enable Task Manager.
5. Close Regedit.
By the way, you can also launch Task Manager by using this keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
A 2004 article from Radio Free Europe covers this topic well:
Is Raising State Salaries Enough To Combat Corruption?
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/04/761efa32-229e-4ecb-bf4d-f07b42c35fc1.html
An excerpt:
So does that mean that raising state salaries is all it takes to root out corruption? Actually, no -- far from it. Corruption in the state sector sometimes forms a chain, from the lowest bureaucrat to the most senior ministers, and in this case breaking the cycle is more difficult.
Laurence Cockroft, chairman of Transparency International's British chapter, told RFE/RL: "It's also sometimes part of an organized racket, so that the policeman on the beat may be taking a bribe from the public at the behest of his senior, who may be trying to organize quite a large taking from those more junior policemen whom he controls. So one has to accept the fact that although petty corruption for the most part is a means of survival, that's not always
the case and it's not the whole picture."
At the most senior level, Cockroft said, ministers have access to information and decision-making powers that have the potential to earn them millions of dollars, so doubling or tripling their salaries can have little effect. "If we move up the scale to the level of ministers, then certainly in terms of the developing world, whether we're looking at India or Cameroon or Colombia, the fact of the matter is that ministers are paid a small sum and do find it difficult to survive on those salaries," he said. "On the other hand, the fact of the matter is that in those cases, the means of sustaining or increasing their take-home pay is really to become involved in very large contracts where the distortion of public finances is rather serious and the implications for society as a whole are likewise very serious."
What ultimately makes more of a difference in combating corruption are factors such as the transparency of business rules, laws, freedom of the press, and cultural pressure. The more government officials have the leeway to create rules and regulations as they go along, the easier it is for them to use their discretionary powers for personal gain and the harder it is for the media to act as an effective check against corruption.
Here's my reply: You are right to be hesitant about RealPlayer from RealNetworks Inc. Previous versions of RealPlayer have been criticised for serving up ads, installing too many startup and background programs, and attempting to set itself as the default player for many other file formats, not just RealMedia ones.
None of us at In.Tech have installed RealPlayer, and we generally avoid viewing RealMedia files. We're not the only ones who feel that way; in a PC World story titled The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time (May 2006), RealPlayer was listed in the No. 2 position.
But if you absolutely need to play RealNetworks' file formats, consider Real Alternative instead of any product from RealNetworks.
Developed by a third party, Real Alternative allows you to play RealMedia files with Media Player Classic (a free program), without having to install RealPlayer or RealOne Player.
Real Alternative supports the RealAudio (.ra and .rpm), RealMedia/RealVideo (.rm, .ram, .rmvb, .rpx .smi, and .smil), RealText (.rt), and RealPix (.rp) formats.
It also supports RealMedia content that is embedded in webpages. However, certain RealMedia files like .smi and .smil files are not fully supported, so only the first part will usually be played. The developers say this is a limitation of the current version of Media Player Classic.
Real Alternative's RealMedia browser plugin supports Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and Netscape.
The proxies that are listed likely to be malicious proxies, i.e. proxies set up by hackers to record, or worse, to alter traffic that passes thru them.
