The locals have spoken! The daily wastepaper did run the story and the government apparently could not be bothered with the fact that Singapore is ranked 140 in the press freedom stakes. My favourite PM, Goh Chok Tong, says that it is not important because the list has some other countries higher up on the scale who do not make it at all in the economic game.

Well, Chok Tong, it is sad that you have been given the task to tackle this instead of the man who brought it upon us. I am sure deep in you, you feel sad. This country of ours is being laughed at. Isn't it interesting that Loong does not seem to care?

The local press continues to have no credibility and trust (did it ever?). I am sure my friends in the press who earn a honest wage will be sad to see this - but, alas, what else can I say? My friends will not say it like it is for they know that their editors and their upper rung will not allow for honest writing and reporting. My friends are being dragged into this whirlpool of distrust and shadowplay and all they want to do is to see their children grow and live a good life. Choices!

How naive? Here's an email I got from the a local newspaper's online site on September 29 2005:

 Dear STI Reader,

We hope you have enjoyed reading The Straits Times Interactive (STI), 
the online version of The Straits Times - the nation's flagship newspaper 
with a readership of 1.35 million daily.

STI went into a subscription model in March this year and many have 
signed up as a subscriber for their daily feed of local & international
news.

For the rest that have yet to do so, we understand that most of you are 
still visiting the STI home page daily to read the news headlines.

To encourage you to become a subscriber so that you can read beyond 
the home page to enjoy the full stories behind the headlines, we are 
pleased to offer you this special promotion exclusively for our STI 
registered members that have yet to take on our online subscription:

STI Registered Members Subscription Promotion

Sign up our 12-month subscription at S$120, for as little as S$10 a 
month! This would work out to an unbelievable rate of 32 cents a day. 
If you are currently also our print The Straits Times subscriber, you 
will enjoy a 50% discount and only need to pay S$60 for a year's 
subscription.

*Sign up and you will receive an exclusive gift from us, two additional 
months of subscription!

Moreover, you will also stand a chance to be one of the lucky winners 
of a ThinkPad notebook in our monthly lucky draw.

Make STI your one-stop news station. Click here to subscribe online 
today to enjoy your daily news read. Promotion starts on Sept 29 and 
ends on October 15, 2005. Act now!

After making online payment, your account will automatically be 
updated with two extra months of subscription.

For further clarification, please write to Miss NAME DELETED at
NAMEDELETED@sph.com.sg. Once again, we thank you for
reading STI.

Regards,
==NAME DELETED==
Business Manager
Internet Business Unit
Marketing Division
Singapore Press Holdings Limited
Co. Regn. No. 198402868E
Web Site Address: www.straitstimes.com

Suffice to say that I choose not to pay the 16 cents a day for access to what is essentially a self-censored government mouthpiece.

It is amazing that they have an infrastructure to support thousands of online users, only to see that after their new money-making scam, less than 500 people have taken the bait. They claim to be 160 years old this year - the dead tree edition, btw - but what have they to show for
the 160 years? Nothing.

The Straits Times is nothing more than a small town newspaper. It is not the New York Times, or the Times of India, or the Wall Street Journal.

My country is suffering a serious deficiency in robust and healthy debate of issues because the media has failed the country.

Reportes sans frontieres report about the ranking of press freedom in the world for 2005. Nice to see that Singapore make the list at about 140 our of 167. Let's see if it ever gets reported in the local press.

Am back. I have decided to keep this blog for how I view the state of my country. I will have my technology related stuff at LiveJournal.

Open XML from MS?

Reminds me of the debate I had with Peter Moore of MS Singapore a the Accenture CIO workshop in 2003 about the fact that their "openness" is really a lie. FWIW, all Peter could do was to smile.

The games MS will continue to play

This discusses how MS wants to coerce using absolutely stupid "IP" excuses to lock out open source developers. It is still not clear yet, it should be obvious that doing the mono is a dead end (it was a dead end to start with, now it is even more obvious).

LTSP in Singapore

Will LTSP make sense in the schools of Singapore? Well, let's see if the demo of LTSP to be held at the Nanyang Polytechnic to a bunch of school IT heads of department make any waves. We have to keep trying!