Why WiFi in NUS sometimes can use sometimes cannot use?

NUS sent us an email today including an article "Why is NUS WiFi slow at times?". While this title was interesting, we found the article written too 'chim'ly and was a pain to read. Being the helpful resource we are, we will simplify the article for you.

Original article : http://comcen.nus.edu.sg/technus/it_spotlight/nusnet-wifi-service/?utm_source=TechNUS+May+2013&utm_medium=email&utm_content=html&utm_campaign=TechNUS+newsletter

Intro - Bunch of useless stuff leading up to the question -

Why WiFi in NUS sometimes can use sometimes cannot use?

1. Wifi Coverage 
Wireless technology means some areas are blind spots, the signal cannot reach. If you think anywhere on NUS always blind spot then complain to IT Care.

2. Wifi Capacity
Sometimes your internet lag cos some idiots watching HD ... shows and downloading... things. Bandwidth is fixed, so they kope your bandwidth with that of course your internet lag!

Imagine Transformer sit on the road, then cars cannot drive past. same thing.

3) Limited Radio Frequency Channels
You may say, why not supply more wireless internet power so everyone can surf happily? The answer is... Physics say cannot la. Will jam and interfere. There is a limit to how much internet power goes around in one area.

4) Wifi infrastructure
We need to pay professors $11k+ a month (source: page 55), no money to have better infrastructure for WiFi. Sorry ah. When got problem don't worry we will solve it asap.

Conclusion
Stop complaining about slow NUS WiFi. But if really really got problem then contact IT Care.

How to Become Famous

It has been a wild week for Singapore, in terms of viral news stories on social media platforms. There was news about taxi fare hikes, MRT breakdowns, radio personalities being censured for ridiculous reasons, and teenagers making a fool of themselves in their video rants. To top it off, there was even a pair of young teens dry humping each other in public.

The last two got me thinking - what does it take to get famous nowadays? The answer seems pretty simple - get caught on social media doing something stupid.

If you look at certain other 'famous' people like S L (have to be abbreviated to prevent this from being picked up by him (the narcissistic fool searches for his own name) ) and Dee Kosh (publicly humiliated by XX), they also shot to fame (or infamy) by doing something stupid and posting it on Youtube. The former is also known to be self-obsessed and extremely narcissistic on his own Twitter account.

Therefore, if you want to be famous, there's no need to take part in Singapore Idol or get interviewed by a Mediacorp reporter about the MRT breakdowns. All you have to do is

• Do something stupid
• Get captured on video/photos
• Upload on social media
• Spread it abit
• Wait
• Cash in

1) Do something stupid

'Stupid' is actually a replaceable term here. You can try 'moronic', 'nonsensical', 'ludicrous' or 'senseless'. They may in fact all be synonyms and fall under the same group in a Thesaurus. (In fact, they do)

Think of something that is beyond your wildest imagination (but avoid taboo issues like race, religion and terrorism unless your wish is to be arrested) in terms of stupidity. Imagine there's a scale of stupidity from 1 to Steven Lim (Oh shit, now he's going to pick it up), think of something BEYOND Steven Lim.

For those of you having problems, you can try a mindmap method. Just think of a starting word, the first word to come to your mind, and elaborate on it. Make it as stupid as possible. Then go further. Let me give you an example.

Cat. Cats purr. Purr like a cat? No not stupid enough. Meowing. Meowing really loudly. Meowing at the top of your voice on top of a table in the middle of a coffeeshop. No not stupid enough. Meowing at the top of your voice, alternating between falsetto and a baritone, while crawling around on all fours, in the middle of town.

Get the picture?

2) Get captured on video/photos

Talking about pictures, you will never get famous even if your act is hilariously stupidly dumb if noone is actually around to take a picture or film it. To be safe, get a friend to film you. Maybe get two friends, as one may run off to hide his face to avoid being associated with you.

This step may be entirely unnecessary, if what you're doing is something like boasting to the world How You  Slapped Your Mother or criticizing Kpop, because when you do those, you instantly jump to Step 6.

3) Upload on social media

Twitter or Facebook are your routes to success. However, you need to turn off your stupid switch and not do something like upload the video on your private account and expect it to spread like wildfire.

Also, if you have a grand total of 17 followers, don't expect it to spread to the whole world (unless your 17 followers include someone with 129837 followers)

@mention it to someone relatively more... connected than you, and hope that it's stupidly ridiculous enough to warrant a retweet, a like, or a repost. If it is, it will spread. Things spread on Twitter and Facebook. Besides STDs. For now.

4) Spread it abit

We already said this in the previous sentence. Oops.

5) Wait

This is really a redundant step, as you can actually invest your time better on step 4. Post it on everyone's wall or something (Though this may lose you many 'friends'. 'Friends' is in inverted commas because we all know noone really knows more than 80% of your Facebook friends anyway)

And now, depending on whether your act is outrageous enough to warrant a public uproar (most likely it is, because it is human nature to hop on the moral high horse and criticize), the next step follows:

6) Cash In

Fame may not be what you expect. You may be expecting the murmured whispers when you walk past people in public accompanied with not-so-subtle pointing. You may be expecting people to come up to you and ask for a photograph. you may be expecting newfound street cred among your gang of orangehaired monkeys.

However, you may be greeted with rude taunting, spam on your Facebook wall, and mass ostracism. Perhaps even a blanket party some time down the line if you haven't been through National Service.

Whatever it is, be prepared for the backlash. Be prepared that everything may turn out differently from what you expect. Maybe people will issue you death threats as they're now jealous of you. Maybe a parody Twitter account of you may sprout up. Who knows.

~~~

I hope this guide has been helpful in your quest for fame. Now if you will excuse me, I have to stop typing from my smartphone and get ready as my train is arriving in 2 minutes. Oh wait, I better not announce that, as SMRT has not made their official statement yet.

The (not quite) new features of iOS 5

I must preface this post by saying that I AM an Apple product user, and I do support Apple. They were indeed revolutionary and technologically ahead when they first introduced the iPod, iPhone, etc. The problem is, others have caught up, yet they don't seem to realize it. It's getting difficult ot defend them now.



The first sign of this was the release of iPhone 4, with the tagline - 'This changes everything. Again.'

This was mocked by many tech-commentators as alot of the 'new' functions implemented by Apple were already present in other brands. It was neither spectacular nor as revolutionary as their previous products. But they were stuck in the 'Apple bubble'. So they still thought so.


And now, their latest release, the iOS 5, had this caption:

"Taking a mobile OS that was already years ahead of anything else and moving it even further ahead"


Let's temporarily ignore the blatant (probably deliberate) exaggeration of being 'years ahead' - technology is known to change so rapidly that such a statement is absurd. Let's temporarily withhold judgment, as we look at the 'new' functions of iOS 5 and see if they are indeed "years ahead."
Looking at them sequentially, directly from http://www.apple.com/ios/features.html

1) Notifications Center

What is it?

A one-stop notifications center which lets you just swipe down from the top of the screen to see all your alerts such as from SMS, Twitter and Facebook.

Years ahead?

No.

HTC already had a similar Notifications feature (Other brands also had this, not entirely clear of which. iPhones were the only one which insisted on having Message/other Notifications pop up in your face to interrupt you)



And in jailbroken iPhones, notifications were already present:



SMS displayed in lock screen, as well as notifications, exactly what the supposedly 'new' iOS5 has



Plus the jailbreak notification system had a possibly better feature that is STILL absent in iOS 5 - the little icon at the top of the screen! (See the icons next to the battery bar, including the chat bubble?)

That chat bubble appears when you do have a text. A mail icon for when you have mail, etc.  In the present iOS5, there is no such icon - you have to swipe down to open Notifications center BEFORE knowing you have texts/tweets etc.

2) iMessage

What is it?

A free messaging system that lets you send unlimited texts using data/Wifi. Only compatible with others using iMessage.

Years ahead?

Obviously not.

BBM already offers the same functionality of exclusive BB to BB messaging, albeit using the RIM system I believe.



Even better -

Whatsapp also happens to be FREE on the date of writing this article on the App Store. Grab it now!

Whatsapp uses the exact same Wifi/data to transmit and receive messages. Furthermore, it is cross-device - You can whatsapp people using other phones besides iPhones as long as they have Whatsapp as well. Whatsapp also has group chat (something which I heard is buggy in iMessage - you can accidentally leave conversations or something)

They also have 'read receipts' which is simply the double ticks you see in Whatsapp.

(iMessage boasts 'read receipts' which let you know whether your receipient has received it. The funny thing is the default option is to NOT send out read receipts, so according to status quo bias, noone is going to bother turning it on)



3) Newsstand + Reminders

These next two are just lumped into one because they're not major inclusions anyway.

Newsstand, perhaps useful, but Reminders?? I don't see any real difference between this and setting reminders in your Calendar using the previous OS, besides having an actual 'to-do' list kind of thing.





4) Twitter integration

What is it?

Lets you tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or Maps, without having to open a Twitter app.



Years ahead?

No.





qTweet!

 Jailbreak iPhones have had this for ages and it is probably better.
qTweet is a Jailbreak-only app that basically lets you tweet from ANYWHERE, not just those mentioned apps. All you have to do is swipe down (you can basically set any kind of shortcut, whether it is swipe up swipe left, etc) from the top and this box drops down and you can tweet. From anywhere.



5) New and improved Camera features



What is it?

Two new added functionality -

1) Instant access to camera from lock screen (well not quite instant, you have to double-press Home button before the camera button appears)

2) Ability to take pictures by pressing Volume Up button, resembling an actual camera rather than having to tap the camera button on-screen which CAN be rather awkward often.

3) I know I said 2, but I'm just going to lump this together - added photo enhancement features such as to crop, rotate, remove red-eye, etc .

Years ahead?

No.

Jailbreak already has downloads that allows you instant access to the camera from the lock screen, not to mention this awesome jailbreak-only function that Apple STILL refuses to add:

ACTIVATOR.

Basically customize shortcuts from swiping various parts of your screen, to double tapping volume buttons, etc to perform certain features.

I can't remember offhand whether these features include taking a photo, but I think it does.

I have no idea why Apple doesn't include this nifty and handy feature that makes using your iPhone even more convenient and customizable. Oh right, they don't like you to customize their stuff (Which explains their refusal to add Themes too, something present in virtually every other phone)

As for the photo editing function - dozens of photo editing apps already exist, so I don't see the necessity of it. Perhaps convenience, but I'm pretty sure it pales in functionality to existing apps.

6) Integration/change of several apps

"Find my iPhone' used to be a separate app available for free on App Store, but looks like Apple has bought it out and integrated it into iOS5. Not a new feature.

Calendar has a new 'Year' view  - jailbreak already has customizable Calendars with different looks (including Year) and themes.

They split up 'iPod' into 'Videos' and 'Photos' (just like on iPod Touch 4G) -  not quite sure what the rationale of this was.

Granted, they do have some new features like iCloud, but  it appears that most of the major 'new' features of iOS 5 are in fact not new. Sorry to burst your Apple bubble. But it seems that the iOS 5 is actually years behind.

U Town - A first impression.

An inherent flaw that could be noticed before I even stepped into U Town was its accessibility. It is a good 10-15 minute walk from YIH, so you’ll probably want to be taking a bus in. However, there is only one bus that goes to U Town – Bus D. It’s bound to be packed! And what happens when a few hundred students end lecture together and have to head to Arts/Science/out of U Town? That’s right, a massive jam at the bus stop.  

 Upon arrival, I followed the signs that directed me to the ‘Town Plaza’ area which was basically the open walkway in between the buildings. F&B outlets lined the sides, but only a few were open. I saw Fish&Co Express, so I decided to give it a try.

It is nothing like an actual Fish & Co outlet – it resembles a fast food joint more than anything else. The menu boasted a variety of different combo meals such as Fish and Chips, Grilled Fish set, etc, with prices starting at $5.50.
One of the first things that I noticed besides the salty Fish Chowder was the absence of any network reception in the Fish&Co outlet. I don’t know if it was just affecting me, but I couldn’t get any connection on my iPhone whatsoever.  It was the same situation when I entered the Koufu Food Court later on.

After my pitiful lunch, I carried on my recce to locate certain places such as the enigmatic TP-AUD. I mean, we know CRE-AUD probably means CREATE tower Auditorium, and ERC = Education Resource Centre. But TP?

I saw a sign that I thought would bring me to my destination – ‘Town Plaza Auditorium’. However, when I followed the sign and walked into the building, it was ‘NUS@CREATE Auditorium’!  How confusing.
The entire area was still under construction too, so paint fumes and whatnot was pervading my senses. The auditorium’s seats were even still plastic wrapped! Hmm.

 I gave up on this quest and decided to head down to ERC, which was another 5+ minutes deeper into U Town from the one and only bus stop (Yes, the one with the magical Bus D) This means ERC is about 10 minutes from the bus stop. I don’t see how you won’t be late if you had a lecture in Arts just before a lecture in ERC… unless you had a car.

On the 1^st level of ERC (which is actually one level up from the ground floor), there’s a ‘Mac Commons room’ and a ‘PC Commons room’. Curious, I decided to go ahead and check it out… and realized they’re basically computer rooms! Yup, the Mac room is like a Comp Lab but it’s all Macs, and… yea I am in the PC room.

The monitors are one of the widest I’ve seen… by my estimate it’s a 25” monitor? Maybe even wider. It’s not even proportionately high, just REALLY wide.  You can easily open two pages of documents simultaneously and have more than enough space to read them at a comfortable font size.

Alright, I should probably continue my hunt for the ERC-AUD and also the mysterious TP-AUD. Hope to find them soon.                

Job Hunt

EDIT: Yes we know the screenshots are abit big and overlap onto the sidebar, but it's so that those with granny eyesight can still read

It's the summer vacation, and that usually includes holidays, camps... and the inevitable part-time job to raise some pocket money for your school term.

The admin here at realFASS has been browsing through some job advertisements recently... and many of them are quite.. interesting, to say the least.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy our job hunt. :)


What do most people consider when looking for a job? Yes, the $pay$ has to be good. How about this gem :

EIGHT dollars an hour to wash cups and tidy a pantry !?! That's almost as absurd as the ministerial pay in Singapore. 

I wanted to apply for this, but I don't think I am 'qualified' enough. I don't have any 'Cups Cleaning' diploma which I guess the successful job applicants all have.

Then you know some recruiters are really trying too hard when they write stuff like this:

MAGNIFICENT office environment! Comes with fancy chandeliers, English curtains and parquet floors! Its MAGnificence will be magnified beyond iMagination!

And I know some of you are lazy people, so I found this great job for you:

It has ZERO working hours! You just need to apply for it, and pay just enters your bank account without you doing anything! Real good for slackers and lazy people alike!

This just sounds like some loan shark advertisement.

You have heard of part time jobs, and then there are full time jobs. Did you know there is one more category?

.

.

.

Harhar, so creative. BIG TIME.

And what is the job description of a 'personal dancer'? 

Sounds like he's soliciting for a wh-re. 

That's all we have! Asked for contributions but no one came up with any :( Hope you liked these anyhow!

Election fever

I told myself I didn't want to participate in the slugfest of pre-elections, and so we didn't contribute any tweets amidst the current trend of political debate. There will not be any substantial arguments in this post, just some observations that we have.

I'm sure many of you are well-connected via Facebook and have seen the notes and statuses alike that have defended PAP or bashed PAP. From criticizing how TPL doesn't deserve to be in politics to Nicole Seah receiving more likes than MM Lee - these squabbles are certainly entertaining to read.

Two more recent occurrences:


Ministerial pay
Probably one of the hottest topics around is how Singapore's ministers are fetching such an outrageous amount. WP's Sylvia Lim has criticized it some time ago, and people are now still scratching their heads over how this is fair.
You have probably heard the arguments by now - 'oh, we need to peg it to the corporate sector, top CEOs get the same, blabla' and 'to retain talent, keep them loyal, blabla' so I won't bore you with them. What led me to even mention this here is this comment by SM Goh: (link here)

"Describing the issue of ministerial salaries as the Opposition’s "favourite flogging horse", Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong said yesterday that the "majority" of the population were not concerned about it.


All they want (to know) is: Have we produced jobs for them, can we look after their medical care, can their medical care be affordable, can we cope with the cost of living, can we deliver good housing at affordable prices? "


Firstly, I don't know what 'population' he is drawing his conclusion from, but I am certain MANY people ARE concerned about it, just by looking at our Twitter feed and at Facebook. I'm sure MANY people ARE dissatisfied about it. It's human nature. If you get one candy and your friend gets ten, you'll start asking why.

Next, is his deductive logical processing impaired? Does he not see that the second part of what he says directly follows from the first part? Providing medical care, helping SG cope with cost of living (hint hint  GST hint) , housing subsidies are all Budget-related issues - together with the issue of ministerial pay. How can he think they are unrelated?


Malay as foreign language
This is the context - There is a noted halt in fluency in the Malay language. How should we address this?

Minister Yaacob Ibrahim's solution was this - to teach Malay as a foreign language instead of as a second language.

??? Does this not make sense to everyone or is it just me? I shall leave you with a link of a short write-up about this issue to decide for yourself: http://www.sgpolitics.net/?p=6596


This whole debate
There are so many things that Singaporeans are complaining about with regards to PAP - housing prices, GST, etc. Many of them are not just whiny complaints, but are well thought-out arguments.

Some are also hard to refute - such as the Mas Selamat case where noone had to take responsibility (translation: step down/resign) for the whole incident.
(In case you think this is unfair, in the corporate world, if any big screwup occurs, the CEO will always take responsibility and personally resign even if it really isn't his fault and is some employee's stupidity)
And when this was brought up to PM Lee, he answered sarcastically 'If you say this, I was the one who brought TCH in to be Defence Minister - so I should step down as well?"
It's a good tactic really, if you don't have an answer to a question, just reply with a rhetorical question.

However, is simply pointing out of the problems of the PAP enough? How about what they have achieved for Singapore? How about their good points?
Perhaps the right way to do this is not saying 'They are bad, we are good, vote for us!' but instead "We know they are good, but we are better!"

Well, carry on the debate, we are enjoying every bit of it reading the emotional arguments being thrown left and right online. You have four more days to do this, until a decision is reached.

And I daresay whatever the outcome, people on both sides (opposition or pro-PAP) will resume their typical Singaporean behavior of finding SOMETHING to criticize the government about even if they had personally voted for the winning party.

The wise Social Psychology professor

Remember our email to our favourite Social Psychology professor? Well, we really didn't want to write another post just for him, but his antics sure deserves one. We are not emailing him this this time, so there's no sarcasm-filter for this post.


It started with this IVLE announcement: (any subsequent indented lines are from his IVLE announcements)
(If you are lazy to read the whole thing just read the lines in red)

3) The essay assignment grades will only be announced (on the IVLE) some time before the module's exam. You could collect the essay if you wish to, after the exam. I have decided to use such a system because of the complications and problems I encountered when I tried to return student's essay during term time (in the previous semesters). Students wrote to me to question about the grading and argued that they should have been given a higher grade after comparing what they wrote with their friend's who got a better grade. They also complained about what they perceived as biasness during student's feedback. It is all rather disheartening and defeats my aim to let students know their grades as soon as possible. Thus due to the unpleasantness that arise from the competitiveness of certain students, I have no choice but to delay the feedback. 

In case you didn't know, (if you haven't read that previous post where we emailed him, we encourage you to read it, other people seem to like it) the essays for this module were released in a staggered format, such that the first essay could be submitted in about week 4-5. (And the rest about week 7, 10, 13 accordingly)

However, he doesn't want to reveal how the students did until after term ends because, to paraphrase, 'he doesn't want to deal with students begging for better grades'.

Firstly, this is a poor reason to not release the grades. I would think a simple announcement stating 'Begging of marks will STRICTLY not be entertained' or 'The decision regarding your essay grade is FINAL' would suffice. Or 'I'm too lazy to talk to anyone just suck it up and accept your grades lamerzzz!'. Ok maybe not the last one.
Next, if students really wanted to question the reliability of marking, why would they not do so even if he released it after Week 13? Emails still exist, his office still exists, and it's not as if students don't return to NUS during Reading Week, if they were as 'competitive' as he says.

We won't harp on this for too long because recently, he made another series of announcements:

"Finally, look for the essay grades to be released on IVLE around the eve of the Social Psych exam"

Gives a definite date... but wait, next announcement 3 days later:

I received an email from a student asking me to delay the release of the essay grades and not to do so 1-2 days before the module's exam, please see the student's mail and my reply, and write to me if you have any objection.

Student's email:
 I am a student in PL3235 module. You made a recent announcement saying that you will release our essay results on the eve of our exam. I am writing to ask if maybe you could delay the release. If our results are released just the day before our finals, it would be very very demotivating for the students who did not do well.It would be better if you released the results after the exam is over in the morning. This way, students who perform poorly in the essay won't be affected.However, if you do need to release the essay results before the exam, then will it be possible to release it a few days earlier? At least this way, the negative emotions will be less intense by the exam. I hope that this is not too much to ask. But I think the other students will also appreciate this. Thank you very much.

 Summary - whine whine I am a sad person boo hoo whine whine can you not release the results just before the exam because when(if) I see my crappy grades I'll be emo and can't do well for my finals boohoo. thank you! you are very handsome!

Prof Cha's reply:
-----------------------------------------------
Thanks for letting me know what you think about the date to release the essay grades. I understand what you mean and I could do that. But following your argument, releasing the grade on the day after my module’s paper could also affect  students in their preparation of other exams that are scheduled after my module. This means that to address this concern, I will only release the essay grades when the entire exam period is over. In short, we will try to release the results 3 days before this module’s exam, but if this is not possible (the tutor and I are dealing with a huge marking load, and we are doing our best to rush -- not taking any time off during this period, the beach thing is just teasing you all ;)), then we  will do so only after the entire exam period.   I will announce this on the IVLE, but if more than 5 students write to me in the next few days (by 20^th April) to express their objection of waiting till after the exam period is over, and want to know the essay grades whenever it is ready (even on the eve of the exam), then I will revert this decision.   Cheers,ys 

Summary: You are right I will release it after the entire exam period instead if we can't release it 3 days  before the exam,  unless more than 5 people come and whine and slobber at my pants and want to know it ASAP, then I will admit I'm dumb and release it ASAP. Also, I'm only 24 years old. (Ignore this last line if you're not a PL3235 student, it's a recurring 'joke' he likes to make)

There is an obvious solution to the student's supposed predicament which he doesn't yet realize, and instead decides to release the grade after the entire exam period -_- Might as well just release it together with the exam results. It's only 3 weeks later. Moreover, won't releasing the grades then dampen the moods of students in their temporary 3 weeks celebration?


The thing is, if you are one to get affected by a bad grade, don't check your damn grade at all -_-

Anyway, we wrote in to inform him of the obvious solution, which he states in the next announcement:

"that is, for those who do not wish to know their grade (for fear that it will affect their morale, concentration, motivation, whatever...), they could simply delay the checking of grades till a later time that they find more suitable. There is no reason to hold back the rest who want/need to know asap."

CORRECT. Grats on the revelation Mr Cha.
Oh look, he admits his stupidity in a veiled insult to the students too:

I should have thought of it in fact -- must have been made stupid by all the stuff that I am marking currently.;)

Tsktsk.

Sorry about this distraction to all of you too!

No problem, you gave us content for a blog post.


P.S. We welcome any content for blog posts. Just email realfass@gmail.com with your content and you will be acknowledged if published. Or DM us anything you want us to blog about. Or just keep reading what we write and tell all your friends about us. Or .. we should probably stop this is getting too long.