Crippled

Salam.

Google to trial ultra high-speed broadband networks

2010/02/11

NEW YORK: Google announced plans Wednesday to build experimental ultra high-speed broadband networks that would deliver Internet speeds 100 times faster than those of today to up to half a million Americans.

 The Web search and advertising giant said the envisioned one gigabit per second speeds would allow to stream 3-D medical imaging over the Web or download a high-definition, full-length movie in less than five minutes.

“We in the US are still lagging behind the rest of the world,” he added, noting that some countries have 100 megabit per second home connections.

Median US broadband speeds are less than 5.0 megabits per second (Mbps) — capable of moving five million bits of data per second — according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, far slower than those of Japan (63 Mbps) and South Korea (49 Mbps).

And here in Malaysia, we are still, patient, or may be thankful to what the 384kbps broadband has done for us. WiMax is still gaining its foot hole. There is none yet, at this time of posting, Wimax service in Sabah and Sarawak. There are plans though, and it should be in this year.

Whilst most of us are thankful for the wonders (or frustrations) broadband has brought to us, to add salt to the the wound, pockets of thievery still occurs once in a while, enough to disrupt the broadband service. This week, it was said that the cable line was stolen at the park in Machang. This crippled most of the phone service, let alone the online service. Everyone had to revert back to the manual mode again. Returns were hand delivered to the health office all the way from Temangan (30 min drive 70km/hr) and Labok ( 15 min drive 80km/hr). How much carbon foot print were left behind?

Wonder what satisfaction that the thief got from taking away the lines. Monetory gain? That is despicable. Not to mention the difficulties his/her act brought to the people here. That is sinful. However, it is easy to criticise, but it is interesting if we could just ask him why did he chose to steal for that meagre sum of money.

Sad that this kind of social ills still occurs here. Could it be that the abundance that we have here did not reach all? Enough is seen on "bersamamu TV3". Would the good samaritans be there to help if such sorrowful depiction did not go on air?

Could there be an underlying underreported number of kleptomania or impulsive need to steal objects occuring here? Or, could there be a proportion of thiefs in the Police's record who are kleptomaniacs, but are not at all diagnosed?

Certainly, the burning of places of worships are not due to pyromaniacs.

God bless Malaysia.