Meanwhile

While others have been talking a lot on the ISA issue, the 916 issue and lots of other stuffs, I just do not want to share about those issues.

Not that I'm not a fan of such things, but sometimes we are just overstuffed by such news. Yes, I agree that ISA should be reviewed, in terms Malaysia going for a more and better democracy and freedom. Even in Islam it is clearly noted that such arrests are just plainly denying the right of defending oneself until he is proven guilty. Even if someone is committing a crime, the procedure to take the criminal into custody must be done in a proper manner, through the court, and not just plain arrest without any compromise. This is very unjust.

Takeover

Meanwhile, the issue I would like to highlight is the Fannie and Freddie takeover. Some say it is the biggest takeover in history. Some say it is another mere ploy and conspiracy towards the USA Presedential Election this upcoming November. Some others were just too busy to care for such things.

My views, are we seeing another economic meltdown in these coming days ? Just like what happened a decade ago, and also what happened two decades ago, quite a few people are expecting another global economic meltdown, especially after the over-extensive issue of mortgage is the States. And we now come to this, two big arms of the investment banking are eventually being bought up by the government itself. This is surely not including other companies such as Lehman. These companies are also begging for the saviour Wall Street to save them, but still it is not known whether their prayers would be answered.

Of course, such actions were expected. Give a candy to a child in a kindergarden, and eventually the rest would showed themselves up, asking for the same candy. But the issue remains is whether are there just enough money, and will be action be another unproper action. The second issue is perhaps will the most contributing factor to whatever action taken by the government. Buyover of a company through the taxpayers, in democratic terms, are just undemocratic. It is the way of socialism, buying over businesses to be controlled by the government, in contrast to the US well-known policy of hardened capitalism. 

But, letting go of Lehman to suffer from liquidation might also be a bad idea. The States is already overridden with the suffering economic meltdown. Such liquidation will just add more wounds.

Outsourcing

Another news that not many would know is about Dell outsourcing themselves by 2010. Though it is not weird, it is still quite a shock. Being a 100% factory free, or in other words total outsourcing means that they are really suffering from overly cost of operations around the globe. These would eventually means that there would be no more Dell factories, only their HQ and maybe sales rep centres.

Outsourcing at a point is very good, you save costs. But in other views, it is very dangerous. Surely everyone would not like events such as smuggling and design copying to happen. Not like what happened to Camel in Thailand, or even Cisco in China. The companies really did suffered, and they just couldn't stop it, nor could they see it coming.

 

The Kingmaker

I do not wish to talk about Malaysian politics. Not that I'm sick of it, but honestly, it is just too much. The talk about politics have gone to the extent that more people are talking about Permatang Pauh than sharing on the upcoming Independence Day.

So let's go at the broader, wider scale of the world. Is United States of America still the king maker in world domination ? All right, maybe not a total domination in term of conquering the whole land and seas as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but being a major political power which can't be brushed or singled out in any international or internal events. Even during the Reformasi days we saw US, specifically Albert Gore who commented on the Reformasi as a good change to Malaysia, though Mahathir clearly did not like such words. Yet, Mahathir was very powerless when it comes to US, except to play with other cards such as new economical agendas; he singled out the US currency rate. He didn't care what values were the Dow Jones at that time, he made it a static value, a constant, to the very end that our currency became stable and better.

Well, that may be 10 years ago. The situation now is clearly different. The Eastern bloc, or Russians, are clearly showing their paws again, after a long stand of North Korea and Iraq who kept on to their words of not caring for the words of USA in their nuclear program. When Russia attacked the capital of Georgia for it's internal problem. It is believed that one of the states in Georgia, South Ossetia asked for independence, but rejected and moreoverly attacked by the Georgian Army for asking such things. Being an ex-state of the then-USSR, Russia felt needed to help South Ossetia thus counter attacked Georgia.

To me, the issue isn't just about brothers-in-arms. It's also about revealing the true power of USA. We kept on seeing USA as a real major political power, but in this event, they are not able to do a thing. Their resources has clearly been spent so much in Iraq and Afghanistan that they are not able to help Georgia retaliate. All they could do was to found a diplomatic stance between Georgia and Russia. Yes, we all know that such stance will not last long. Should Russia have enough power, they will again launch another attack on Georgia to confirm the strength of the States.

Hasselblad, Kodak Launch 50-Mpixel Camera

For those of you who love those megapixels, you now can drop a year's pay or so on the new Hasselblad H3DII-50 – a 50-megapixel camera. The H3DII-50 boasts the worlds largest sensor, at 36-by-48mm, built by Kodak.

Kodak states: "At 50 {megapixels] the sensor captures digital images with unprecedented resolution and detail. For instance, with a 50 megapixel camera, in an aerial photo of a field 1-½ miles across, you could detect an object about the size of a small notebook computer (1 foot by 1 foot)."

Don't expect high-speed shooting, though: The H3DII-50 can record at 1 frame per second. The camera's product page says that the camera captures 300MB files, but an informational PDF says that RAW files are just 65MB. At least it shoots in DNG format, which is perfect for use with Photoshop.

The H3DII-50 features a 3-inch display, a CCD cooling sink, and optional GPS accessories and media cards. The camera can shoot at ISO ranges of 50 to 400. It will use CF cards and SanDisk Extreme IV's. Don't expect to take many pictures at that huge size--you'll need to time yourself to capture exactly what you want to shoot.

The price is still unknown. The next model down costs around $40,000, though, so don't expect this one to be cheap.

Originally posted on Gearlog.