October 03, 2009

BROADBAND or BROADFRAUD

The recent Oxford report (sponsored by Cisco) and reported in Malaysia Today regarding Broadband service of many countries, confirms what many Malaysians have long suspected.

The blogs and forums are full of tales of slow and unstable and intermittent Malaysian internet service.

Malaysian ISPs tell their customers that service is provided on a "best effort" basis, meaning there is no benchmark, whatever the speed or uptime may be, the ISP is doing it's best, so don't expect more.

Customers of Malaysian ISPs should explore the website of the Malaysian Multimedia Commission regarding the matter.

In the website they will find that a benchmark actually exists, so many percent of advertised speed so many percent of the time.

The website notes that ISPs can be fined for failing to provide the required level of service.

3 problems:

1) Malaysians don't demand for the service promised.
2) The quality of service required of ISPs is not enforced by the
Multimedia Commission.
3) There is no real competition amongst Malaysian ISPs.

In countries overseas ISPs compete for customers vying to offer the best service at the lowest price.

Overseas ISPs give the customer COMPETENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE when there is a problem, otherwise they will LOSE that customer to a RIVAL ISP.

Malaysian ISPs, like many Malaysian companies, usually provide clueless customer service, that is, when it's possible to contact customer service.

One word describes the situation (and the situation with Proton cars too):

MONOPOLY

Competition leads to excellence, monopoly leads to mediocrity.

WRITTEN BY PAKAC LUTEB

September 30, 2009

AVOID BECOMING A VICTIM

Letter from Pakac Luteb

There are as many scams as there are dishonest people.

Fortunately there is information available to help people avoid
becoming the victim of a scam.

As a public service I provide below links to such information.

MLM watch

Pyramid Scheme Alert

Scams

It is my wish that you never become the victim of a scam.

Don't expect others to protect you.

Protect yourself.

A word (a few words, actually) of warning.

One of the sites tells how can give the scammers a headache by tricking them.

Actually tricking the scammers may be dangerous, some of the scams are done by Nigerians and the Nigerian gangsters are well known to be extremely violent.

Warm regards,

Pakac Luteb

September 27, 2009

BIG BROTHER STRIKES

Malaysia loves to be the tallest or biggest in something.

Now Malaysia continues that practice by trying to act like cybercriminals.

Malaysia is launching denial of service (Dos/DDos) attacks on Malaysia Today. According to Wikipedia:

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.

One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.

Denial-of-service attacks are considered violations of the IAB's Internet proper use policy, and also violate the acceptable use policies of virtually all Internet Service Providers. They also commonly constitute violations of the laws of individual nations

Those attacks overload the Malaysia Today site server denying access by legitimate visitors.

Denial of service attacks are a cybercrime. (CLICK THIS LINK for more information)

Such attacks in effect put a wall between a site and its users.

Why are such attacks a cybercrime?

For example, a company could attack the site of a competitor. That would be in effect a business welding a shutter covering the door of a rival business.

That would not be tolerated, for obvious reasons.

The Malaysian government is committing a cybercrime by blocking Malaysia Today.

The Malaysian government is also once again demonstrating its utter contempt for civil society and the law by engaging in cybercrime.

Whatever damage Malaysia Today inflicts on the Malaysian government, the Malaysian government is inflicting additional damage on itself by engaging in cybercrime.

Malaysia Today is merely exposing wrongdoings of the Malaysian government.

The Malaysian government can stop Malaysia Today without resorting to cybercrime, very simply actually, just become a responsible government, end corruption, deaths in custody, cheating in elections, exploiting the poor and the myriad other misdeeds of the government.

Independent media such as Malaysia Today have a vital role in democratic societies, the role of keeping the government honest and exposing official wrongdoing.

Malaysians are truly fortunate to have Malaysia Today and other sites that provide receiving information from sources other than state-controlled sources.

Written by Pakac Luteb