I respect academic freedom but once in a while, a paper got through that makes you think “WTF!?”

</p> <blockquote style='margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1em; border-left: 5px #ddd solid; '><p> <span class="content comments_count_2 withoutphoto" ><span class="text" > </p> <blockquote class="comment_body comment_body1" ><p> The sociology paper published last November, which has been making rounds over the Internet and was recently picked up by The Atlantic, uses illustrative statistics and qualitative data to conclude that there is a strong relationship between an engineering background and involvement in a variety of Islamic terrorist groups. The authors have found that graduates in subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world. The authors also note that engineers, alone, are strongly over-represented among graduates who gravitate to violent groups.<a href="http://r1.sharedcopy.com/5tcpm7#shcp1" > ^{link &raquo;}</a></p></blockquote> <p class="comment_body comment_body2" >Okay so I am now an &#8220;Islamic Terrorist&#8221;???<a href="http://r1.sharedcopy.com/5tcpm7#shcp2" > ^{link &raquo;}</a></p> <p> </span></span> &#8211; from <a href="http://r1.sharedcopy.com/5tcpm7">EETimes.com &#8211; Holy War! Researchers say EEs have a &#8216;terrorist mindset&#8217;</a> via <a href="http://sharedcopy.com">sharedcopy.com</a></p></blockquote> <p>

by Raymond Crowe

</p> <blockquote><p> <span class="content comments_count_1 withoutphoto" ><span class="text" > </p> <blockquote class="comment_body comment_body1" ><p>Americans sometimes debate (though not often) whether in principle it is good to rely so heavily on money controlled by a foreign government. The debate has never been more relevant, because America has never before been so deeply in debt to one country. Meanwhile, the Chinese are having a debate of their own-about whether the deal makes sense for them. Certainly China&#8217;s officials are aware that their stock purchases prop up 401(k) values, their money-market holdings keep down American interest rates, and their bond purchases do the same thing-plus allow our government to spend money without raising taxes.<a href="http://r5.sharedcopy.com/7s3na#shcp1" > ^{link &raquo;}</a></p></blockquote> <p> </span></span> &#8211; from <a href="http://r5.sharedcopy.com/7s3na">The $1.4 Trillion Question</a> via <a href="http://sharedcopy.com">sharedcopy.com</a></p></blockquote> <p>

Very long article but worth reading it from beginning to end!

3 months, 27 companies & research institutions for 1 hour demo. Phew, it is finally done…smooth and well received.

Not my show so not for me to talk about it here but I work with some of the most amazing companies in the last 3 months. As I was watching the 1 hour demo with the VIPs, I was asking myself “Wow! We actually have all these stuff in Singapore!”

On a related story, I found sometime to watch The Secret History of Silicon Valley. Amazing talk and definitely worth the 1 hour of your time!

Jun Murai just informed IETF that Vint Cerf has won the Japan Prize for his work on TCP/IP. Congratulations!

Update: With my wine adviser in Beijing and conspirator in Washington, a lafite 1986 was delivered successfully to Vint 48 hours later. Not exactly the prized 1961 but 1986 is still a classic. Enjoy!

As Suharto lies in his bed on life support, and the buzz online about MM Lee visits over the weekend, mostly negative from the Singaporeans, it is timely to remember Suharto as he is.

Like many outsider to Indonesia who is less then 40 years old, my original perceptive of Suharto is a corrupted dictator who deserve his fate and a trial at court. After all, he and his family accumulated billions (by some estimates US$15-30b) in assets in a country whose income per capital is merely (PPP) US$4,000.

But since traveling to Indonesia in the last two years, making more friends and particularly interacting with older generation who remembers his regime, I realized I have being influenced by the western media perception far more than I admit.

MM Lee quote “Yes, there was corruption. Yes, he gave favors to his family and his friends. But there was real growth and real progress” is no further from the truth.

One has to remember Suharto took control in 1966 (a year which I haven’t been born), Indonesia was in hyperinflation, massive poverty, constant political conflict among fraction, and technical at war with its neighbors.

Over his regime between 1966 until 1998, Indonesia grow on average of 7% per annum with a population of 200M people. Experts estimate the percentage of Indonesians living below the poverty line shrunk from 60 percent to 11 percent and life expectancy improved by 20 years.*

Communism is active in the region back in 1966 and without Suharto, communism might be in control. Konfrontasi in opposition to the formation of Malaysia from the Federation of Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore was the policy of confrontation from 1963 to 1966. The younger generation would not know the MacDonald House bombing of 1965. Suharto brought peace to the region by putting a stop to Konfrontasi.

More importantly, anecdotal from Indonesian who knows him, remember him as a hardworking thrifty man, who eat simple meal everyday. Some still believe his only fault is that he put too much support to his family who are the main benefactors of the corruption but not himself.

Suharto brought many Indonesia out of poverty (many has since fall below the poverty line again after 1997), bring economic reform and growth in an enormous large country of 200M people, political stability and peace in the Indonesia and the region. His downfall comes in the 90s where he began to make political mistakes.*

I am not trying to justify corruption is right or whether he should be pardon or not. But it is sad that the wikipedia entry of him mentions all his failures without remembering what he has done for the country and the region.

Several weeks ago, Dr Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications And The Arts, announced the launch of the RFP National Broadband Network (NBN) project for Singapore. The NBN project comes with a carrot of S$750m is a passive optical network fiber to the home (FTTH) that “will offer pervasive and competitively priced ultra high-speed broadband connectivity to business users at the workplace as well as to Singaporeans at home, schools and learning institutions and other premises.”

Surprisingly, there aren’t so much talks in the industry about the project. Perhaps it is something almost everyone wants to part-take as we can see from the 12 shortlisted consortium. The most prominent comment is a single word “Idiosyncratic” said the CEO of Telstra, who have no direct interest in this effect except perhaps not to see Australia going down the same path.

The comment probably refers to the layer separation of the services¹ (see NBM slides Page 14)

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