Samsung Now Sets the Bar

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It even sets the bar for Apple’s next iPhone launch. Over the first weekend, the last iPhone reportedly received 4 million pre-orders. The Samsung Galaxy S III (SGS3), on the other hand, now has some 9 million handsets on pre-order. I don’t know when all the pre-ordering began (and some sites like the German Amazon started taking pre-orders even before the SGS3 was announced). But regardless, 9 million is an awful big number. The SGS3 looks all set to go…

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SCADA Security Breach

SCADA, or Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition, security breaches are not often heard about. At least, not at the same level of other sorts of computer crimes. But SCADA has the potential to impact the physical environment, physical security, and personal safety of all of us, so such incidents should not be taken lightly. For those who are unfamiliar with SCADA, it’s basically about computer systems and networks that monitor and control industrial, infrastructure, or facility-based processes. For example, SCADA…

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The One You’ve Been Waiting For

I’ve traded in my Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2) for the HTC One X, HTC’s latest flagship smartphone. It was, surprisingly, not a very difficult choice. The Samsung Galaxy S III (SGS3) was just announced earlier this month, and it does look like a a great phone. The choice between the SGS3 and HTC One X, however, was quite clear to me. I’ll tell you more about that later. Let’s talk about the HTC One X first. When the HTC…

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Nokia Pureview 808 Rises Above All Others

That’s right. Nokia’s latest Pureview 808 handset has soared to such great heights never before reached by other mobile phones. Literally. The Pureview 808 was carried by a ballon up 34 km high. From there, it took really cool pictures of our planet Earth. Not the whole lot of it, like you would see from the moon, but certainly impressive enough and something you’d never get on any other smartphone. The Pureview 808′s camera boasts a pixel count of… 41…

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An Android Tablet Review

I feel a little strange reviewing a product without really knowing precisely what that product is. It is an Android tablet, that’s for sure. But I’ve yet to figure out exactly what sort of tablet it is. You know, as in its make and model. This Android tablet is a gift I received as compensation for tolerating a 90 min (or as it in fact almost 2 hrs?) timeshare presentation. I had been considering getting an Android tablet. I’m already…

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The Line @ Shangri-La

We were back again at The Line, the buffet restaurant at Shangri-La hotel. It was yet another $29 lunch buffet promotion. The Line serves an international cuisine buffet. Their 16 culinary stations serves a very wide spread of food to suit every taste bud. It was a sort of buffet extravaganza, featuring Japanese food, Chinese dim-sum, Italian cuisine, Indian dishes, and even local favourites like chicken rice, roast pork, laksa, etc. Many years back when I first visited The Line,…

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Yacht Mary 3-D Puzzle

Ian was down with HFMD the last week or so. To be safe, both him and Vanessa were grounded at home. We try to keep them apart as much as possible so that, hopefully, Vanessa does not get infected. She had a false alarm with HFMD previously. She doesn’t have any symptoms at all this time around. Vanessa and Ian have been quite miserable to be stuck at home all day. Last evening, Vanessa was bugging me to fix up her…

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Dim Sum at Hai Tien Lo

The Wife was craving for some nice Dim Sum, and came across this Dim Sum a la carte buffet promotion at Hai Tien Lo. This is an award-winning fine-dining Cantonese cuisine restaurant located at Level 37 of the Pan Pacific Hotel. With breathtaking views of the Singapore skyline and the habour, this is the sort of place to go to impress business partners and clients. You’d probably think it will cost a lot to dine there. Yes, unless, of course,…

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EAT by Fei Siong

Have you heard of EAT? Not about the verb concerning the consumption of food. But EAT, the eatery that has been opening outlets all over Singapore in recent years. They sell local noodle fares like fishball noodles, minced pork noodes, dumpling noodles and laksa. EAT is a mini restaurant concept brand owned by the Fei Siong Group. The first outlet I knew about was the one at Rail Mall. I’m not sure if that was their first, but this one…

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Who Really Pays for MRT Fines?

Today’s Straits Times reports about LTA reviewing the penalty framework for MRT breaches. Everyone’s very mad about all the recent MRT breakdowns, particularly the two major incidents in December 2011. We’re all thinking that the MRT operator should be fined heavily. But do you wonder, at the end of the day, who really pays for the fines? If the operators’ bottom lines are affected by these penalties, or side-effects of such penalties (e.g. increased maintenance costs), they’ll ultimately petition the…

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MioTV Epic Fail on EPL Finale

As much as I sympathize with football fans who were upset by SingTel’s mioTV epic failure during the epic EPL season finale, I’m glad I don’t watch football. I would otherwise have been completely infuriated and spent the following week organizing a campaign against SingTel. This is a colossal engineering failure. Surely SingTel knew the number of subscribers they had on mioTV. I think most subscribers are on mioTV only because of the football programmes. Otherwise they would probably find…

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Our SMRT Drama Unfolds

The last couple of days we’ve been entertained by the public inquiry into the spate of SMRT disruptions. We’ve just come to the juicy part where SMRT ex-CEO Saw Phaik Hwa gets grilled. Not unexpectedly, we’re going to learn about many more things wrong about SMRT. One of the key issues is about the maintenance budget set by SMRT had not kept pace with the growing ridership. To cut a long story short, Ms Saw claimed a mid-life refresh had averted…

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The Helping Alvin Get Into School Saga Continues

You thought that would be it. An appeal for support to help him get into school. Then it got exposed by the Sunday Times article yesterday that Alvin Wang, the person seeking support for his appeal to get into NUS, actually did get into NUS. In fact, he was offered a place in the School of Computing’s Information Systems course. But he did not want Information Systems, he wants Computer Science. All the theatrics about the online call for support…

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