Deactivate your Facebook account!

Malaysians have firmly entrenched Facebook in their lives

Did you know that Malaysians have the most number of Facebook friends in the world? A British research agency, TNS, revealed that on average Malaysians have 233 Facebook friends and spend roughly nine hours a week on Facebook. What a lot of time indeed!

Before proudly shouting Malaysia Boleh!, think about what this actually means. Facebook has become an integral part of our lives like nasi lemak, hence we need to fully understand its consequences before it becomes an enemy. Only a fraction of your Facebook friends are your actual friends.

It has become to easy to be Facebook friends with anyone. The list includes your neighbour’s best friend’s sister whom you once met at a Christmas party. The time spent on Facebook per week is disturbing. If today’s youth spend hours communicating online, what is the impact on their real life communication and social skills?

THE PERILS OF FACEBOOK

As we all know, online communication is a distant, disfigured cousin of face-to-face communication. Communication is a delicate tool with many layers to it.

To start off, there is verbal and non-verbal communication. This consists of spoken words, pauses, hand gestures, facial expressions, body language, vocal variety and intonation.

Facebook, like many other platforms of online communication, is a different ball game altogether. An entire conversation can take place without even a single properly constructed sentence. For that matter, an entire conversation can take place with just emoticons!

This has resulted in a generation who lack basic communication skills.There are so many people who can have hours of online conversations but can barely have a decent five minute face-to-face chat. In the real world, conversations cannot entirely consist of LOLs and smileys.

IMPAIRED COMMUNICATION

In reality, making new friends and meeting new people does not happen with a literal click. It takes time to build relationships and get to know people. Now, it is possible to be someone’s friend on Facebook without even having a single conversation or interaction with that person.

This destroys the natural flow of human interaction. Communication has been watered down thoroughly indeed. This evolution indicates the ebb of human communication skills.

Besides that, on Facebook, we are unable to observe the other party’s body language. This leaves a gaping hole in the communication flow, as body language makes up for nearly half of non-verbal communication.

Consequently, youngsters whom are major Facebook users are insensitive to body language responses of the other party. This will ultimately result in poor communication skills as youths are unable to decipher the non-verbal response of the other person.

It is also a common trend amongst the youth to respond to text/chat messages first rather than to the person speaking in front of them.

With electronic communication gaining preference over actual conversations, it is a common sight at gatherings to see people busy texting or tweeting instead of talking to the people at the party.

Our minds are tuned to prefer online communication, alienating traditional chit chat. It is a rather rude compulsion to respond to your beeping phone first as opposed to a person talking to you.

  Have we lost our offline communication skills? 

“SO WHAT?”

The inevitable “So what?” will echo from Gen-Y. Arguably, this is progression thanks to technology. Again, the age-old debate of whether technology is a bane or a boon. Using Facebook as an example, technology has created one-dimensional communicators.

There are a few scenarios to consider, the first being a job interview. Employers are invariably complaining about how job applicants are unable to hold a proper discussion despite scores of degrees and higher qualifications.

While they may have the knowledge, they are unable to communicate their ideas effectively. This is a career crutch, so to speak, because being able to shine in the workplace requries solid communication abilities. In this era, communication skills are a golden ticket to securing that job.

Another scenario would be networking events as traditional networking still plays a role in our personal and professional lives. Be it birthday parties, industry launches or university events, human interaction is much needed!

It is wrong to assume that being able to communicate and network skilfully online automatically translates to good face-to-face communication. Learning the art of networking can lead to obtaining valuable contacts and forging important relationships that will go a long way. Savvy communication skills will snag you a potential client or that really hot date.

As always, practice makes perfect. Thus, actively participating in such events instead of being physically there but virtually not (pun intended) will lead to better communication skills. We need to be able to sit down and enjoy a good old fashioned chat.

Another challenge young people face is to communicate with people of different generations, something you would not usually encounter on Facebook. While online, you tend to mingle with people of your age, with similar interests but in reality it is a useful skill being able to talk to anyone and everyone.

A sad scenario nowadays would be a family out for dinner but everyone is glued to his or her smartphone and tablets. Again, there is minimal interaction, defeating the very purpose of having dinner together.

THE PHONE STACKING GAME

There is a popular game to combat this issue; the stacking game. Commonly played with friends, it requires everyone to stack their phone in the middle of the table and the first person who reaches for the phone has to foot the bill. This ensures there is proper conversation and interaction between everyone present, with less virtual distractions.

So, be proactive about the situation. Consciously monitor your online and offline communication. Ensure you have sufficient skills to hold a conversation with just about anyone for a reasonable duration.

Realise that while online communication is good, offline communication will take you a long way especially in terms of career and relationship building. Take the initiative to practise and sharpen your communication skills before it is too late.

There are many organisations out there dedicated to improving communication skills such as Toastmasters International. Find out how you can be part of it.

Should we deactivate Facebook? Admittedly it is a little too harsh, but striking the right balance between our online and offline communication is the key.

Undeniably, Facebook has become part of our lives. Just like McDonald’s, the key is moderation. A good practice is to engage with people when with company instead of communicating with someone else online. Learn to be more articulate and expressive when speaking as there are no emoticons! Let us work together to ensure technology does not cause the annihilation of proper communication skills amongst us.

By RADHIKA CHELLIAH
mystarjob@leaderonomics.com

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For the sake of money people will risk anything

Singapore's investigation into banks was triggered by the Libor-rigging scandal last year. 

HOT on the heels of the London interbank offered rate (Libor) rigging scandal comes the Singapore interbank offered rate (Sibor), the Singapore equivalent of the Libor rigging.

HSBC, Standard Chartered, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and DBS are among 20 banks in which 133 traders tried to manipulate the Sibor, swap offered rates and currency benchmarks in the city-state, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said in a statement recently.

For the sake of money, people will risk anything. In this case, Singapore is well known as a tough regulator, but they still dare to mess around with the Sibor. They are definitely asking for trouble.

According to South China Morning Post, MAS has censured banks for trying to rig benchmark interest rates and ordered them to set aside about S$12bil (RM30.13bil) at zero interest, pending measures to improve internal controls.

It is surprising that these traders have been caught with their pants down.

Regulators have cracked down on market players following the Libor rigging fiasco, which involved Barclays, UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland paying fines of up to US$2.5bil (RM7.89bil).

This is why even when news emerged on punitive measures for the Libor rigging, very few people believed in its effectiveness.

MAS said it would make rigging key rates a criminal offence and bring supervision under its oversight.

To put this into process may take some time, while these market players exploit any loophole or weaknesses.

The fact that Asian banks are also involved in this Sibor rigging makes it even more unpalatable.

So far, Asian banks have remained strong amidst the financial crisis. Their reputation has remained largely untarnished, although most have been quite silent on their risk management.

Many of their Western counterparts have had to shed jobs massively and close down or downsize businesses, with some even having to accept taxpayers' money to survive.

At the same time, banks in the West became embroiled in the blame game, came under heavy fire from regulators and some even had to undergo a serious revamp of their business model.

Among the positive things happening among Asian banks is the recruitment of talent at a time of major job cuts in the Western banking sector.

But even that little positive aspect is going to be drowned by accusations of the Sibor rigging.

Manipulation of interest rates is a serious offence. Resulting from such collusion, some disruption may be seen in market movements, which may give rise to uncertainties.

Plain Speaking - By Yap Leng Kuen

Columnist Yap Leng Kuen reckons it is not always true that once bitten, twice shy.

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No privacy on the Net !

Revelations about PRISM, a US government program that harvests data on the Internet, has sparked concerns about privacy and civil rights violations. But has there ever been real privacy and security on the WWW?

 Demonstrators hold posters during a demonstration against the US Internet surveillance program of the NSA, PRISM, at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, Germany, ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit to the German capital.

IMAGINE a time before email, when all your correspondence was sent through the post. How would you feel if you knew that somebody at the post office was recording the details of all the people you were corresponding with, “just in case” you did something wrong?

I think quite a few of you would be upset about it.

Similarly, some Americans are furious over revelations made about a system called PRISM. In the last few weeks, an allegation has been made that the US government is harvesting data on the Internet by copying what travels through some of its Internet Service Providers.

The US Director of National Intelligence has said that PRISM “is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program”, but its detractors are not convinced that this doesn’t mean no such program exists.

I think there are mainly two kinds of responses to this revelation: “Oh my God!” and “What took them so long?”.

The Internet has never really been secure. Because your data usually has to travel via systems owned by other people, you are at their mercy as to what they do with it. The indications are that this is already being done elsewhere.

Countries such as China, India, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom allegedly already run similar tracking projects on telecommunications and the Internet, mostly modelled on the US National Security Agency’s (unconfirmed) call monitoring programme. For discussion, I’ll limit myself for the moment to just emails – something that most people would recognise as being private and personal.

I find many people are surprised when I tell them that sending email over the Internet is a little bit like sending your message on a postcard. Just because you need a password to access it, doesn’t mean it’s secure during transmission.

The analogy would be that your mailbox is locked so only you can open it, but those carrying the postcard can read it before it reaches its final destination. Of course, there are ways to mitigate this. One has to be careful about what one put in emails in the first place. Don’t send anything that would be disastrous if it were forwarded to someone else without your permission.

You could also encrypt your email, so only the receiver with the correct password or key could read it, but this is difficult for most end users to do. (For those interested in encrypting emails, I would recommend looking at a product called PGP.)

The analogy holds up for other Internet traffic. It’s easy to monitor, given enough money and time. And as easy as it is for the Good Guys to try to monitor the Bad Guys, it’s just as easy for the Bad Guys to monitor us hapless members of the public.

But who do we mean by the Bad Guys? Specifically, should the government and law-enforcement agencies be categorised as ‘Bad Guys’ for purposes of privacy? Generally, the line oft quoted is “if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about”.

Yet, I think we all accept that there should be a fundamental right to privacy, for everybody from anybody. An interesting corollary to being able to express your thoughts freely is that you should also be able to decide when and how you make them public.

The fault in relying on organisations that say “trust us” isn’t in the spirit of their objectives, but in how the humans in them are flawed in character and action.

An example quoted regularly at the moment is how the FBI collected information about Martin Luther King because they considered him the “most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country”.

One way of defining the boundaries are by codifying them in laws. For example, the Malaysian Personal Data Protection Act prohibits companies from sharing personal data with third parties without the original owner’s consent.

However, this law explicitly does not apply to the federal and state governments of Malaysia. Another clause indicates that consent is not necessary if it is for the purpose of “administration of justice”, or for the “exercise of any functions conferred on any person by or under any law”.

In relation to the revelations of PRISM, several questions come to mind: Can Internet traffic (or a subset of it) be considered “personal data”? Is it possible for government agencies to collect and store such data without your consent?

And if so, what safeguards are there to ensure that this personal data is accurate, is used correctly and is relevant for storage in the first place?

This should be a sharp point of debate, not just in terms of which of our secrets the government can be privy to, but also of which of the government’s information should be readily accessible by us.

True, there is so much data out there that analysing it is not a trivial task. However, companies such as Google are doing exactly that kind of work on large volumes of unstructured data so that you can search for cute kittens. The technology is already on its way.

Perhaps I am being over-cautious, but it seems a bit fantastical that people can know your deepest and darkest secrets by just monitoring a sequence of 1’s and 0’s. But, to quote science fiction author Phillip K. Dick, “It’s strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then”.

Contradictheory
By DZOF AZMI

> Logic is the antithesis of emotion but mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi’s theory is that people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Speak to him at star2@thestar.com.my.

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Taikonauts teach from space

Historic lecture broadcast live to millions of students all over China.

 

Students gathered in a school in Beijing ask Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping questions as she delivers a lesson from the Tiangong-1 space station  

ABOUT 1,000 Form 4, 5 and 6 students from the Beijing No 2 Middle School were glued to the projection screen in their classrooms to watch the historic lecture broadcast live from space together with millions of pupils and students in China.

Many students from the school could not take their eyes off the 40-minute physics lesson in which three Chinese taikonauts on board the Tiangong-1 orbiter first showed how they meditated airborne and measured their weight using a special scale, designed based on the Newton’s second law of motion, in a gravity-free environment.

Wang Yaping, China’s second female taikonaut and the teacher in charge of the lecture, then demonstrated how a gyro in a high-speed rotation motion could actually maintain the position of its axis in space like that on Earth.

She pushed a static gyro in the air and then spanned another gyro. The static gyro rolled forward but the rotating gyro kept its axis intact.

She noted that the fixed axis concept of the high-speed rotating gyro has been widely used in the aerospace field, saying that a wide range of gyroscopes had been installed in the Tiangong-1 orbiter to measure its flight pattern accurately.

Fifth former Wu Tong said she was especially fascinated with the experiment conducted by Wang to examine the movement of a small ball tied with a string to a holder fixed on a metal plate.

“Previously, we have been taught on the theory and not the practical side of it. It is rather difficult to simulate a vacuum environment.

“In class, our teacher used to tell us that the ball would move in a circular motion (when one pushed it) and would not stop. Today, we finally saw it for ourselves,” she said.

To many students, another highlight of the lecture was the water ball experiment that explained how zero-gravity magnified the surface tension of water.

Wang made a water film on a metal ring by inserting the ring into a water bag. Then she added more water onto the ring to form a thicker water film and eventually a water ball.

The water ball miraculously did not break even when commander of the crew Nie Haisheng used an injection needle to extract the bubbles inside the water ball.

After that, Wang moved closer to the water ball and said: “Look at this water ball. Does it look like an inverted microscope? Through it, you can see my inverted image!” At this moment, the classrooms were filled with thunderous applause.

Wu described the experiment as “magical and ingenious”.

“The experiment was well designed. They also injected gas and coloured liquid into the water ball to show us the increasing surface tension of the water,” she said.

Another fifth former Gu Xu said: “We have just studied this topic on surface tension. It is quite amazing to see how the coloured liquid spread all over the water ball.”

Apart from a total of five experiments, the taikonauts also took questions from four students who were attending the lecture at the High School Affiliated to Renmin University in Beijing.

On the presence of space debris, Wang said they had not spotted any space debris since they entered the orbit but they do exist.

“The number is quite big but the possibility of the debris hitting the spacecraft is rather small. If they do collide with the spacecraft, the consequences could be disastrous.

“That’s why before embarking on our mission, we had conducted an analysis of space debris and taken preventive measures to protect the Tiangong-1 orbiter,” she said.

“Did you see any UFO?” asked a Standard Four pupil amid laughter from the rest of the students.

Wang said that through the spacecraft window they could see the beautiful colours of the Earth, the moon and stars, but no UFO.

Wu said the lecture was very meaningful for her to widen her knowledge of space science.

She said she was proud of the Chinese taikonauts for conducting the nation’s first lecture from space, after other such feats by space exploration powerhouses like the United States and Russia.

Gu said the gravity-free environment in space provided scientists with new ideas and it was important for China to take the lead in exploring space and acquiring its technology.

“The research and development in science has no limits. When we are in command of everything on the land and in the sky and sea, space will be our new frontier,” he said.

MADE IN CHINA BY CHOW HOW BAN

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Malaysian students are disclosing their dirty secrets on Facebook 'confessions pages'

PETALING JAYA: High school and tertiary students have been flocking to certain online pages where they confess their dirtiest secrets and read those of their peers.

The pages contain postings that range from lewd sex fetishes and illegal activities to struggles with depression and suicide.

Students submit confessions anonymously to a mystery page administrator (whose identity is always kept secret), who then publishes it on the Facebook-based confession pages, mostly without any verification of the stories.

Many of the confessions are sex-related. Some goes: “I’m not sure if I have a sex addiction. Possibly.

“I masturbate a LOT and I’m bisexual. I think it’s really unhealthy but I don’t really know how to stop.”

Others use the pages to confess their personal struggles, including one that read: “I had an abortion before about six years ago and it still breaks my heart every single day.”

Another student confessed plans to commit suicide within 60 days, while another told of how he or she turned to marijuana to ease his/her depression.

The trend has grown globally, with news reports from countries like the United States, Australia, India, South Africa, Singapore and Saudi Arabia mentioning the confession pages over the past few months.

The pages (many of which have thousands of followers) are usually linked – without approval – to a school or university, which makes it easier for students to identify who the people confessing are.

One page administrator said the students were sometimes even tagged by friends in their confessions, thus revealing their identities.

The administrator for HUCP, a confession page for HELP University students, said the university’s authorities were aware of the page.

“I don’t think it’s unhealthy. It’s just a tool. It can be used for good or bad,” said the administrator, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He added that he filtered all the confessions he received to avoid any offensive content.

Malaysian Communications and Mul­timedia Commission chairman Datuk Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi urged caution when it comes to such pages.

According to Section 114A of the Evidence Act 2010, administrators can be held liable for any offensive or defamatory content published on their pages.

“In the case where anything posted from anywhere online that breaks the law of the land, the authorities have the right to intervene and call the people involved for investigation,” said Sharil.

> For the full story on school and university confession pages, turn to today’s R.AGE cover story.

By IAN YEE and DENIELLE LEONG
alltherage@thestar.com.my

Baring it online   

THE 19-year-old founder and administrator of the unofficial Catholic High School (CHS) confession page on Facebook received a shocking “confession” a couple weeks back – a student said he had “contaminated” the school canteen’s chee cheong fun sauce. You don’t wanna know the details.

As outlandish as the claim was, the admin – who takes his anonymity quite seriously – thought nothing about it and posted the confession on the page, just like the other 100 to 200 he receives daily about secret crushes, school gossip and, of course, sex.

“Since then, the chee cheong fun stall has been almost completely empty,” said the admin with an embarrassed laugh. “We’re trying to use the page to get people to eat there again, to help the uncle out.”

Welcome to the world of school, college and university Facebook “confession pages”, where students can submit anonymous “confessions” to a secret administrator, who will then post it on the page (not sanctioned by the schools or universities, of course). It’s all very Gossip Girl- y.

The confessions can be quite innocent, like: “To the girl who wearing pink t-shirt and carrying a LV bag, you’re pretty, hope to see you again [sic].”

Or they could be very raunchy, like: “I am a girl and I have a serious pornography addiction. Every night, I cannot go to sleep unless I spend at least an hour looking at porn.” And that’s just one of the posts we were allowed to publish.

Occasionally, they can be heart-wrenching: “Going to commit suicide in less than 60 days. Pressure mounts from every area in my life and I have just given up today. The reason I give myself 60 days is because my results will be out then and I am certain I will fail almost everything.”

According to American Degree Programme student Joanne Raena Raj, the university pages are usually more explicit.

“At my uni, it’s mostly about sex, drugs and how students don’t attend class,” she said. “There was even a confession about someone who saw a couple having sex in a lecture hall, filmed it, and uploaded the video to the Internet.”

With scandalous confessions like that, it’s no wonder these pages have become wildly popular. The UTAR Confessions gained 1,000 followers in just a week, and is now closing in on the 14,000 mark.

The Catholic High School page has over 3,700 “Likes” (and counting), and it has only been around for about a month! According to the admin, the school only has around 3,000 students.

“Our page statistics show we have followers who are 30-40 years old, and they’re from everywhere – the United States, Britain, Taiwan, Egypt... A lot of them are former students, who write about how they miss the school,” said the CHS admin.

The page masters 

It’s important to remember that none of these confession pages are officially associated with their respective schools or universities. Anyone can start a page, as long as they’re willing to act as a page admin. The pages that gain the largest followings simply end up as the school’s “official” unofficial page.

But being an admin isn’t easy (more on that on page four). Some of them have to go through hundreds of confessions a day, trying their best to approve as many as possible while making sure they don’t post anything that could get them in trouble.

Most pages use the same system – a Google Docs form for users to submit confessions (instead of the Facebook messaging system, which does not provide anonymity), and a Facebook page where the admin can publish them.

The admin for the HUCP page, which serves students from HELP University, said he started the page “just for fun”.

“The way I see it, it’s an outlet to express feelings,” he said. “It’s not just about love and relationships. Some discuss education, and critique their lecturers. We always say students should speak up in college, but when the lecturers ask, they don’t know how to do it.

“So this confession page is like a stepping stone to give people the courage to speak up instead of always bottling it up.”

The response to the posts have been very positive, even from the lecturers, who often get tagged.

“You see a lot of encouragement in the comments. One of the lecturers gives really good advice too, especially on a few posts about teenage pregnancy.”

Like all the other page admins we spoke to, the HUCP admin is very careful about keeping his identity a secret. His witty comments on the page have attracted a fair amount of interest from other students, but he doesn’t intend to reveal himself.

“I’m not doing this to get famous. Plus, some of them can get unhappy with me (over certain confessions). It’s also a good way for me to remain unbiased,” he added.

Official word 

Many universities and higher education institutions are aware of this trend, according to Monash University Sunway Campus senior marketing manager Ooi Lay Tin, who was quick to add that they are “not endorsed or controlled by the institutions in any way”.

The HUCP admin said the university has so far taken a fairly liberal approach towards his page. He said they’ve tried to find out who he is with no success, but they still managed to get in touch with him online.

“The university’s head of social media said it was fine for us to post our opinions – just don’t use the university’s name. And I respect that, I understand that, so we closed the group and started a new one – HUCP,” he said.

A university media relations officer, who had no idea her university had a popular confession page, was more wary.

“It’s good that the students have a place to rant and vent their frustrations, but confession pages are not the right platform as they could jeapordise the institution’s reputation,” she said.

For the HUCP admin, the key is moderation. Some admins are quite daring in approving confessions, but he makes sure everything that goes public on his page is not offensive or defamatory.

“The students have to learn to self-censor. The admins will moderate, but you should think for yourself and know what you should or shouldn’t post.”

CONFESSION pages have been sweeping the world, with news reports from the United States, Australia, India, South Africa, Singapore and Saudi Arabia all bringing the trend to light.

There’s no telling how, where or when the trend started; but the pages, which are unofficially linked to schools and universities, allow students to submit anonymous confessions to be published on a Facebook page – and they have caused quite a stir with the often raunchy nature of the “confessions”.

According to a story by Reuters, police in Montana, US moved to shut down two high school confession pages due to the constant offensive content, but the students simply started a third, prompting the police to threaten defamation charges. Pages in Idaho and Arizona have also been shut down by schools.

A more worrying case surfaced just three months ago when a student at Aragon High School in the US posted a threat against the school in a confession page, which has lead to police patrols around the school.

In Australia, ANU Confessions, a page for students of the Australian National University, was removed from Facebook due to explicit descriptions of sexual violence against women.

But that hasn’t stopped confession pages from popping up all over the world. Princeton, Harvard and Yale all have pages now (though they are very inactive, leading one user to comment “there’s a reason why they bring home Nobels”), while the National University of Singapore even has its own website (confesslah.com) with over 89,000 confessions and counting.



There’s even a website called www.college-confessions.com, where users (mostly from American universities) can publish confessions directly to the site, and not through a Google Doc form like most other Facebook-based pages. All confessions are tagged along with others from the same university, with the University of North Texas currently leading the way with almost 8,000 posts.

Most active confession pages


By DENIELLE LEONG, IAN YEE and KEVIN TAN