Aja Lapus

Tag: news

  • Internet Connection Problem Resolved?

    I would have blogged the buggy Internet connection I was experiencing since December 26 after I heard from my father news about the Taiwan earthquake that damaged undersea communication lines, but it was all over the Philippine Blogosphere with news from Jhay, Yuga, et al. that I decided to stay quiet instead—its no use blogging the same entry all over again.

    The early times during the lowered bandwidth period, I ,as well as my friend Jayson, noticed that we could still connect to our ISP, but it cannot resolve host names. I immediately turned my PC on and searched my browsing history for IP addresses. Alas! I found a Google cache URI of my site where Google used its IP address instead of its domain name. Great Google! Since it is a search engine in itself, I immediately searched for a Google cache of OpenDNS—I could not open its homepage in itself as my ISP currently could not resolve its domain name to the IP address—thus a cache is more than sufficient. My [and Jayson’s] DNS issues are resolved.

    Though I sometimes experience the reduced bandwidth and intermittent disconnections, I guess it’s still enough to say that it could have gotten worse than that, and I still feel somehow satisfied. But after reading Euri’s recent rant about crappy Internet connections from a café, I decided to test my own connection.

    Results from testmy.net

    I was shocked with the results considering I was downloading bittorrent files at 30-40 kBps, I’m on PLDT‘s slowest myDSL, plan 999, and test results from testmy.net prior to this one never reached 400 kbps! I even tried the Speakeasy Speed Test but got these lower but similar results from its Seattle, WA server:

    Last Result:
    Download Speed: 502 kbps (62.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
    Upload Speed: 114 kbps (14.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

    I really can’t tell whether or not I am the only one experiencing this, but I know the intermittent connections would likely last for several weeks. Was it really resolved so fast this time?

  • Buying the Competitor

    I first saw it with Adobe Systems‘ acquisition of Macromedia last year—i.e., buying Adobe SVG‘s competitor, Macromedia Flash, for one. Now the news is with Google Inc.

    I’ve just read in a press release from the YouTube Web site that the search giant would be buying them for $1.65 Billion in stock. But isn’t that Google Video‘s competitor? I really do not understand these companies making such actions, but still, with the proper explanation in the said press release, I think the merge could be beneficial to the users of the more popular YouTube.

    YouTube fans need not worry about this as they said that the YouTube team would still operate independently to preserve its brand and community.

    The complete press release is posted in the following Web pages:

    Note: Both pages contain the same content/press release.

    Now if only I could solve my connection problem with Google Web sites. [Yes, this is a different matter—completely unrelated to the news.] I could surf most sites but not Google and its sub-sites [Calendar, GMail] from time to time. I’ve checked my router and modem already, I just hope this is an ISP matter that is going to be fixed very soon as I don’t have time for fixing right now. Hmmm … I think I better study for the finals now. 😛

  • ABS-CBN should timestamp their news

    For those students who want to have a little break off from school: If you’ve read this news, which has been circulating as a reference during this past hours, you’d be happy. Of course, what you will be reading is the declaration of no classes on a Friday, which states no date on any part of the article, and no more. But if you follow the said declaration, you’d be marked absent tomorrow. Here are the reasons why:

    1. There’s no date when the article was posted nor a date when the suspension of classes should take place.
    2. At the end of the article, it stated that The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), meanwhile, gathered an additional 300 soldiers to augment crowd-control units for the 20th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution.—meaning it was posted last February.
    3. And another thing, if you look at the StoryId on the URI and compare it with a more recent news’ StoryID, you’d notice that there should be 13,487 more articles between what’s posted in 7:51 AM (the time the article was posted) and today‘s 4:07 PM.

    I admit I was scammed after a student council officer told me there really will be no classes for tomorrow. But, I was still skeptic about the article because of those things I’ve mentioned above. You be the judge. By the way, if you really want the proper guidance about the classes for tomorrow, read the article from INQ7.net.

    ABS-CBN should really timestamp and datestamp their news.

  • Are you one of them?

    I’ve read a front-page article about pupil illiteracy in the Philippines from the August 17 edition of The Philippine Star — a daily newspaper in nationwide circulation. The article, entitled Only 6 of 100 Grade 6 pupils ready for high school — study, showed statistics of disappointing value. But, I am not going to talk about it here.

    Only 6 of 100 Grade 6 pupils ready for high school—study I guess, you’ll say, But, why did you start with that topic? Oh, I have a reason. I think Sandy Araneta, the author of the article, is one of those “pupils” not ready for high school! She said in her first sentence, Fewer than one percent of Filipino students are high school and college material… Fewer than one percent? I thought you’ve just said 6 of 100 in the title? Six of 100 is 6%. And, all of the other numbers you mentioned inside the article referring to the Grade 6 pupils stated 0.6 percent, or only six out of every 1,000!

    Please, please, try to make it right everytime. I would also like to mention your editors though I do not know who they are. Yes, we make mistakes, but (all of) you are writing in a nationwide newspaper and your Math and proofing aren’t even correct! I think that’s one evidence to really say illiteracy is widespread in the country.

    To the writer and editors from The Philippine Star: I’m sorry for the harsh comparisons and descriptions written here. I admit I was a little bit exaggerating.

    Note: Image scanned without permission from August 17 edition of The Philippine Star.

    Note: The incident was reported by email to the webmaster of philstar.com. In response to that, the webmaster told me that the editors were informed about the error they have committed.