Dear CORS,

I would like to register my displeasure with the performance you and your colleagues had brought me twice every academic year. You may be one of NUS’ most important information systems, you may also might as well be crowned the worst system that could ever exist with the NUS label. I’m not being personal with you and your incompetence but let me tell you why.

For every beginning of each semester, I have to pray that you do not crash. No doubt many friendly students like myself have feedback after each bidding exercise, your instablility in handling traffic still sends shudders down my spine each time I hit enter on that URL. Your past performance has not only brought forth tremendous trepidation during the first few weeks of school, it also makes me wonder if having you in the first place truly justify the taxes we have contributed.

If people can get crazy and kill themselves each time they burn their fingers in the stock market or after the results are released, I wouldn’t be surprised if students start killing themselves after not able to get their modules/tutorials allocated.

I doubt anyone bothers to read through your documentation because they are meant for esoteric people like your designers. We will prefer step by step videos, dedicated teams to be around during bidding rounds to guide students or simply give a lecture on CORS (but since you can’t understand human language, I suggest you give that idea a miss). Or perhaps perhaps, you should take up module CS3240 (which is Human-Computer Interaction) so you can understand our needs better.

You know what? Many first users who have seen you couldn’t even navigate properly. Your interface is bewildering. What’s with the declaration of your home address each time you sign in? Couldn’t you just have the manners of asking once and remembering it? Or couldn’t you have a link to a profile which can be prominently displayed on the sidebar, so we can update our home addresses whenever a need arises?

Continue reading …

Netizens in Singapore has ignited an avalanche of campaigns after Odex (a local anime distributor) lost their bid for a court order for Pacific Internet to release names of illegal downloaders. The reaction displayed by anime lovers here in Singapore is intriguing.

Here’s a rebellion video clip posted by another anime artist?

I tried to understand from the papers today why PacNet won, but it wasn’t clearly stated. But many have reacting that Odex should not be the ‘party’ to take legal actions against illegal downloaders.

My guess will be Odex’s status as sub-licensee of anime may well lose them the court order. Since they are not the owners or creators of the anime, and definitely not a sole distributor, who are they to take legal action? They may even impress upon others that they are gaining extra revenue through this major crackdown. To make things worse, their boss even made a crude comment that ‘he is busy suing people’ on an occasion.

The nebulous idea of intellectual property here in Singapore hasn’t been helpful enough to educate Singaporeans. Sure enough Singaporeans should respect intellectual property, but if copyright owners do not care about their own property, why should ’sub-owners’ be the one frowning?

It’s just like someone sprayed paint on your doors and your tenant come along filing civil suits against another for vandalism on ‘their’ property.

Here we have the Business Software Alliance (BSA) to protect software vendors of their intellectual property. But what about other intangible assets? Like typography and photography? Even music is protected by RIAS. To protect creative artists of their assets and inspire to do more, we need more organizations established to become guardhounds for these purposes. And I think IPoS (Intellectual Property Office of Singapore) should spearhead this initative.

And I thought it’s a great time to talk about them. The problem either lies with CORS (a system used by NUS to allow students to register their modules) or with the Computing management.

I had a problem earlier on with my tutorial balloting. I couldn’t get the slot I wanted. So when I waited for the second round balloting, all of the available slots which could have taken me in were taken up. It left with slots that clash directly with my existing timetable.

So logically one would advise me to file an appeal request to the system which they are supposed to have dedicated staff to help me resolve the problem. And that was what I did.

The first appeal result came back with a nonchalant comment; provide a timetable to show that you cannot attend other slots. But God knows provide to who. There isn’t any reply email stated and there is even a notice that no emails should be replied to the sender account (which is regbox). Even the approving authority field is left blank.

So I proceeded to file a second request. And I waited an entire afternoon till the next morning (today) to find the appeal not successful. No apparent reason. Nothing. But this time round, the approving authority was named wku. Who the hell is wku anyway? And I didn’t even have a reason why the appeal was dismissed.

Yea, they were dedicated staff indeed. Dedicated to disapprove thousands of appeal requests within minutes. I’m astonished by the cavalier attitude displayed by NUS staff. And I thought bidding was a pain in the ass every semester. Now, balloting for tutorials is just as exasperating.