Extract from “The Best I Could”

The Best I Could at 186:

“The Kallang body parts case, as the media called it, was truly an unforgettable case. First the photographs of the dismembered body were gruesome. I’ve seen some horrifying photographs in my life but these were the worst: legs here, a head there, some parts already decomposed. Some of the girls in the office felt nauseous looking at the photographs while others,  strangely enough, were studying them with great intensity and commenting on the size of the bloated legs and the clarity of the colour photographs. I’ve noticed over the years that there are very different reactions to gruesome murder pictures. Some people feel nauseous and sick , some are drawn in a kind of morbid fascination, while others are indifferent.”

Somehow, it is strangely reminiscent of the internship experience at KhatterWong where we have to look through autopsy photos. Good observation, Subhas.

Rock Climbing

Tried rock climbing today at Ferrer Park with Wen Lin. Realized that it is all about strategy, techniques and determination.

I found early on that I have to plan my path so as to get into the correct position for a grip. This made it a lot faster for me to reach to the top than to think as I move from one hold to another.

At first, I was kinda cocky, thinking that I can go up the wall with ease once I have my ‘perfect’ path set out. So I thought. It turned out that I almost always fall off the wall halfway on those more advanced paths. Wen Lin, who has learned the techniques on the other hand, was much better at negotiating those paths and often reached further and faster than I did. Techniques matter.

Imagine your forearms souring, your weight held just by your fingers, and you trying to reach for that next hold. That’s when strength and determination count. People who do rock climbing often use hanging boards to train their forearms so that they do more advanced paths and difficult holds. I used to think that’s excessive. As usually I was proven wrong. Often, my grip failed me because I just didn’t have the finger strength to hold myself there.

Next time I climb, gotta keep those things in mind.

Updated layout

In case u havn’t notice, i have streamlined my blog. Most of my photos will now be posted on my photoblog. There is a link on the right side to that section. I figured that this will make it easier for people to navigate. I thought about putting up an index page for the photoblog but I decided against it in the end. Life is a journey. I think the way one navigates through the photoblog reflects that. Besides, it is too troublesome for me A man only has a limited lifespan.

p.s. apparently the “archive” page on the photoblog works quite well as an index page.

Kayak

This life is awesome. hmm.. 2 stars now.. need 3, 4 and 5. one year at a time.

Something About CyberCrimes

Bad hair day

I must have done something bad these days. I have just finished my IT law assignment on Wednesday. It’s on Cyber attack prevention through counter-hacking as a form of self-helpremedy. In the spirit of rule of law, I argued that self-help of this kind has no place in the law of cybercrimes. *pious thoughts*

The next day, I got malware infection on my computer with not one, but FOUR different kinds of malware/trojan horse combo. (fine.. i didn’t install anti-virus nor did the due-diligence over internet downloads these days) Not only does these pesky things send my info to someone else on the internet every five min (blocked by Norton + Spyware Doc now), they disabled my task manager, registry editor, programme menu, control panel… bla bla bla. Basically, it just made my attempt to restore my computer a hell lot more troublesome.

Now, a nice legal letter to those bastards who send these things will just be in order. The only problem is that I already knew that there’s nothing i can do with all those jurisdictional and evidentiary legal gaps in the way. To think that I have argued for the ban on aggressive self-help?! I would be the first one to send a virus the other way now if it were legal. (unfortunately not.. reproduced a part of my assignment below) In any case, I won’t be so lenient on those guys in my research papers this time. *fume*

Extract:

“

… While the laws on cyber-crimes allow most forms of self-remedy, they do not sanction active self-remedies. Any form of self-help that countenance a form of active counter-measure will mostly likely fall foul to the present legal regime governing cyberspace. This applies to both the Singapore jurisdiction as well other major foreign jurisdictions.

In Singapore, the primary legislation regulating cyberspace activities is the Computer Misuse Act [CMA].   Section 3 to 7 of the CMA criminalize various kind of computer misuses. Given the wide definitions of operative terms such as “access”, “data” and “Computer”, the CMA determines the criminality of a particular act primarily based availability of “authority” from the owner of the computer system. An active self-help defence that attempts to “attack” the intruding computer system would thus breach CMA because there will obviously be no “authority” by the intruders for the counter-attack.

For example, section 7 of the CMA makes it a crime for “Any person who, knowingly and without authority or lawful excuse.. (a) interferes with , or interrupts or obstructs the lawful use of, a computer;”.  In a scenario where the “attacking” computer launched a denial-of-service attack on the “attacked” computer, the later may employ an active self-help remedy by reflecting the incoming data back to its source.  Here, not only does the act of the hackers constitutes a crime under section 7 of the CMA, the person responsible for the act of the “attacked” computer will also be caught under the same section. Any such counter-measure will fall foul of CMA because of the lack of “authorization” from the attackers.

Arguably, a computer intrusion into the host computer system may be characterized as a criminal trespass upon the host computer. By entering the host computer system without authorization, the intruder has trespassed upon the “virtual space” of the computer owner. Thus, the act may constitute criminal trespass under section 441 of the Penal Code. Given that such computer intrusion are by nature sudden and unexpected, there will be probably no time to have recourse to the protection of the public authorities.  As such, the owner of the host computer may claim to have a right of private defence under section 97 of the Penal Code. It is then not an offence for him to employ active self-help measures (provided that it is proportionate) to defend his computer system against attacks.

However, the better view is that the computer intrusion would not fall within the ambit of Criminal Trespass.  When the CMA was enacted, the Parliament intended the Act to deal with the difficulties arising from applying the 200-years-old Penal Code to computer crimes.  The existing criminal rules were largely unchanged. This suggests that the Parliament does not intend “property” under s. 441 to include “virtual property” in the Cyberworld. Such offences should fall under the ambit of CMA instead.

The availability of active self-help as a legal justification is similarly absent in foreign jurisdictions.
The common thread that ties the foreign legislations together is their common reliance on “authorization” as a determinant for the offences. In India, the primary governing legislation is the Indian Information Technology Act 2000.  Section 66 of the Act addresses the issue of unauthorized access and hacking.  In Australia, Cybercrime Act 2001 (Cth) supplemented the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) with offences governing computer crimes. Section 477.1 of the Act prohibits unauthorized access, modification or impairment with intent to commit a serious offence.  In UK, the primary legislation is the UK Misuse of Computers Act 1990.  The UK Misuse of Computer Act is comparable to the Singapore CMA in its reliance on “authorization” as the operative term. In fact, over 40 countries, including all the U.S. States and the U.S. federal government,  have enacted computer crime laws that prohibited “unauthorized access” to computers in the last 30 years.

The commonality in these statutes is the absence of an active self-remedy defence to the offences. Hence, any active counter measures would potentially fall into the same legal trap as the case with CMA…

“

crazy people doing fun things

just awesome

F1 Singapore Grandprix Racing

Awesome pictures from photographers with press pass:

p.s. The official formulae 1 website wrote that “Coulthard likened the track surface to the cobbled streets of Paris, and predicted a lot of incidents in the race.” on their Friday analysis – Singapore’s star shines bright (29 Sept) article.

Cool… XD

New photos

New album added in my photography section: Rinjani Trip

The Idea of Faith as a component of a rational belief system (draft thoughts)

We shall propose that a faith based belief system has certain utlitarian benefits that warrants its adoptation. Let’s define, for this short discussion, the concept of faith is about adopting a position on an issue without requiring the need to prove the stand. Let’s assume also, for the time being, that the idea of faith can be seperated from the notion of God. I.e. the faith need not necessarily be placed in some central, supernatural being.

There are utiliatarian benefits for adopting the concept of faith. The first benefit is one of time saving. As human beings, our time is necessarily limited. We could not possibly prove everything in our lives. Therefore, we need to choose which one to prove while taking other positions for granted. Faith is thus a tool that we can use to temporarily put off the need to prove everything in our lives.

We can take faith in moral issues as an example. The issues which we usually place faith in can be moral issues that affect daily lives. Here, placing faith in moral positions is plausible because traditional moral positions taken by most other people serves an instrumental value on what is the correct position to take. (note: this faith must accomodate other moral positions through tolerance or evening embracement. to be explained next time) Only when the situations calls for the re-examination of a default moral position, will it be necessary for us to suspend our faith in a particular moral position, and to evaluate the position again.

The second benefit of faith is that it places people on a better position than if they were not to adopt it. We must admit that no matter how intelligent and knowledgeable we are, there are limits to our intellectual capacity. Our conceptions of the world, through theories, concepts and facts (with the benefit of the realists’ insights) are best approximations of what we are living in. They does not indicate for certain what is happening in the real world. There is thus a degree of uncertainty in our expectation of events.

This uncertainty breeds sub-optimal outcomes. An illustrative example would be that of the prisoner’s dillema. (not to be reproduced here, check wikipedia) This is especially so where a person’s attitude and his decision on the amount of effort to invest in has a significant bearing on the outcome of the event. Hence, the more a particular issue approximates the prisoner’s dillema scenario, the more effective a faith based system would be in achieving an optimal outcome.

Of course, blind faith would not be the solution to every problem in our lives. We need to distinguish the kind of issues that we can adopt a faith based approach from other kinds of issues that requires an alternative analytical framework (such as scientific discourse). For example, while adopting a faith based approach in a relationship will likely increase the chance of its success, adopting a similar approach in financial trading (as opposed to using rational financial anaylsis) would potential bring dire consequences to one’s portforlio. (thx ZSQ (note: this would imply that there are limits to the sphere of operation of any belief system, which should be followed up next time).

It is interesting to note that the idea of differentiating different kind of faiths has been expressed by a recent book as well. in Carse, The Religious Case Against Belief (2008), the author explored the idea of belief in the lens of different kinds of ignorance. According to the review from Amazon.com:

“…Belief, he suggests, is a response to ignorance. Carse examines three kinds of ignorance: ordinary ignorance is simply lack of knowledge of some kind, such as the weather in Africa. Willful ignorance purposefully avoids clear and available knowledge, such as Creationists acting as if they know nothing of evolution. The tenacious beliefs that grow out of willful ignorance often result in bloody religious conflicts. Finally, what Carse calls higher ignorance accepts the fact that no matter how many truths we accumulate, our knowledge falls infinitely short of the truth. Individuals acting in higher ignorance can recognize the many truths that religious traditions can offer…”

The concept of faith we are discussing now would be strikingly similar to the response to the higher ingnorance, as defined by Carse. A reading of the arguments made in that book would certainly augment the strength of the case for the idea of faith based belief system. (self-reminder: source for the book online).

a love for clouds

Frankly, it’s one of the easiest thing to shoot. All I need to do is to bring my camera along and wait for the opportunity. That does not mean they are boring. In fact, clouds are some of the most interesting subjects I have taken. They are random and unpredictable. Unlike other subjects, some new shapes will always come up. The smooth tonal changes and contrast with the sky supplements aesthetic view. In an abstract way, they lead one’s imagination away from the mundane. I guess if i had the time, I could easily spent a couple of hours just observing them and their changes.