Serves them right!

The big profit makers are at it again. This time, Microsoft was fined by the European Union a record 899 Euros in a new antitrust ruling by EU regulators, according to this Yahoo! report. The report quotes the regulators as saying that the company charged “unreasonable prices” for those who want to manufacture software or hardware compatible with the company’s near-ubiquitous operating system in the world’s computers. The company immidiately responded that those issues “have been resolved” and that it was working to make its operating system more often.

 Neelie Kroes of the EU however was still skeptical. “Talk is cheap. Flouting the rules is expensive,” she said. How true.

 Haven’t we all heard it before? Promises by big conglomerates assuring worried consumers that nothing is to be feared by their monopolies, and that such monopolies would not hinder, but help, improve the quality of offered products or services. Yet stauch capitalist advocates have the galls to tell us all that “capitalism promotes competition, which in turn benefits the consumer”. Yeah right. This is but one example putting paid to that off-quoted lie.

In this situation consumers are still lucky. The governments in the Eurozone still place much weight on consumer/worker protection, and strong standards on “fair” trade are in force, much to the chagrin of the more free wheeling capitalist states such as the US. Such strict standards are also not applicable in Asian countries mostly, and its only Asian government and people apathy for concepts such as “interllectual property” that keep us free from conglomerate domination of our economies.

 People could do better though. For one, they could actually strive to abolish capitalism altogether and usher in a world commune. But nah, that would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it?

My First Accident

 My First Accident

Well. I have just created this blog on the 23rd of February 2008. What better a first entry then that of my first car accident on the 22nd of February, which was yesterday.

On that fateful day, a Friday, I had went to Cyber Law class as usual at 8:30 am, expecting (and yet not prepared for) a test. Thankfully my lecturer, lets call her SH, was kind enough to let everyone off the hook for that day. Why? Well, despite there not being a lot of people who ended up going to the trip to the Anti Corruption Agency organised by the Law Society (I’m a law student by the way) she had apparently planned for a cancellation beforehand, and it was so cancelled, much to my delight of course. After attending an interesting-as-usual lecture, I set off for my Mooting presentation at 10:30. My and my partner, we shall call her KN, hit it off in front of the judge. Afterwards I offered one of my opponents in the moot a lift home, and to speed up the events a little, at around 12:30 pm I dropped him off at a husstop near his place of residence.

 Here is the thing. Soon after dropping him off, I was driving along Persiaran Kayangan, a road, to a junction. We drive on the left side of roads here in Malaysia, and when I turned to the right to go home to my house in Section 6 of my city, following a lorry who just went before me, a car came from the other side and crashed into my car, sending it swirving to the right off the road, over a drain down a slope (it was a hilly area). Divine intervention ensured a rock stopping the back right wheel from the car going down any further. At first I though of death, but then after the wheel had been stopped I quickly realised the need to turn off the engine, as it could have exploded. After shutting it off, I unbuckled and got out of the car to see passers by gather. Some fat Malay guy came up to me and trust a workshop tow agreement in my hand, and without thinking any further (I was dazed after all) proceded to fill it up. It was good at that point though I remembered to call my mum, who happened to be out of town, first. She immediately said not to, and asked me to call our trusted mechanic, Ah Long, instead. She thereafter send me an SMS saying that she had called him and he would call me. He didn’t call me though, one of his representatives did. He came over shorly after, and recommended I sign up with this other mechanic, some Chinese guy. After everything, some Malay guy named Eddie took over and handled me to his car to take to the Police Station, where I had to make a report on the incident. My friend who I had dropped off, came up to see me in the aftermath and helped, along with his dorm mate, but did not follow me to the station.

 At the police station I made the report, but had to wait for the sargent to record my statement, so I was sent somewhere else to have lunch first. It was at that time I called my trusted schoolmate, FW, to come and accompany me back to the Police Station afterwards, and he came. My statement was recorded, and it seemed to be my fault for making the negligent turn, and so I was ordered to make an appearance before the Shah Alam High Court for it, or either compound the offence by paying RM300.

That guy Eddie then send me and my friend back, telling us that I needed to find the insurance documents. I spend a while with my friend at home looking for them, found them, and then we went out again to eat, on pretext of calming my nerves. Mum came back later that evening. She wasn’t pleased of course, but seemed happy I was alright.

 It was one heck of a day!