St0rY oF uNpReDiCtAbLe LiFe II

Well, being a smoker myself, one of the “must look” items from a new budget plan been announce every year is none other than the increase of cigarette’s price. The annual increase had been a trend for many years (as far as I can remembered) and to be honest, most smokers that I know (including me) will not stop this bad habit just because of price increase; they will simply find alternatives to satisfy their needs (buying cheaper/smuggled brand, shift to the traditional “rokok daun¹“, etc). I noticed today that British American Tobacco Malaysia had made an announcement that the company will increase all their tobacco base product which will be effective starting today. No need to make a guess; it’s because the new budget plan for 2009 announced by the prime minister.

Petaling Jaya, 1 September 2008 – As a result of the significant 20% excise increase, and taking into consideration the consequent impact of sales tax, trade margins and the higher than normal inflationary impacts on our own cost base, as global tobacco, paper and fuel costs have all increased by double digit amounts, British American Tobacco Malaysia has revised its cigarette prices.

The new cigarette prices, which will be effective Monday, 1st September 2008, are as follows:-
 • Dunhill Fine Cut 20s range RM 10.00
 • Dunhill D360 20s range RM 9.40
 • Dunhill King Size 20s range RM 9.00
 • Dunhill King Size 14s range RM 6.50
 • Kent King Size 20s range RM 9.00
 • Pall Mall Plain 20s RM 9.40
 • Pall Mall King Size 20s range RM 7.50
 • Pall Mall King Size 14s range RM 5.50
 • Pall Mall King Size 25s RM 8.20
 • Benson & Hedges King Size 20s RM 9.00
 • Benson & Hedges King Size 14s RM 6.50
 • Perilly’s 100s 20s RM 7.70
 • Perilly’s King Size 20s range RM 7.50
 • Perilly’s King Size 25s range RM 8.20

Source: British American Tobacco Malaysia

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Normally, I don’t post any politic related stuff. For me, politics is for real people with real knowledge to discuss. I admit I’m not “real” enough in those field. But, I’m getting sick when I encountered this picture from Mafrel site. Urghh…they manage to make themselves look stupid brilliantly. By doing that sick provocation act can they claim the other party rude? I’m not going to argue who’s right and who’s not because personally I don’t know. But action like this can initiate an uglier reaction from anyone and when things goes bad, who’s to blame? Owh…the picture is taken during the Permatang Pauh nomination day on August 18, 2008.

I’ve been reading a couple of news about blogs running wordpress been hacked. No matter on what purpose you run your blog for, it’s always a good idea to make it as secure as possible. There are many guides that you can find on the net; ranging from covering the basic security setup to the hardcore ways. In my opinion, the most basic security measures a user can take is to upgrade their wordpress to the latest version (currently 2.5.1). When you do that, at least you can prevent all the previous releases bugs from occurring on your site. I admit I’m no expert in talking with precise details about security in wordpress, but I do know that it’s a really really unfortunate event if your blog been take over by some jackass and ruining all file/setup you had made. I also suggesting you keep check at your files and make sure you do know all changes that occurred. Update your plugins often, be sure to install plugins from a reliable source, and personally, I recommend you to install Wordpress Exploit Scanner Plugin.

Suggested guide:
File Changes Notifications for Your Wordpress Blog on Linux
Did your WordPress site get hacked?
Three tips to protect your WordPress installation
10 Ways to Secure your Wordpress Install
Hardening Wordpress

The long awaited final version of Mozilla Firefox 3 had been released. Well, I’m eagerly awaiting this release to see how much different would it be compared with the Beta 5 version. To be honest, not much. There are some add-ons that I used is still not updated and I kinda can accept it since it’s not Mozilla’s concern (and to some extent, the add-ons developer themselves is not at fault here), so I’ll wait. But, it’s not going to stop me from updating and feeling impressed with the enhancement of the new release. One thing though, since the beta, I kinda feel the smart location bar is off to my liking. I mean, its size is kinda big, although I really like that features. Maybe I’m not used to it…yet. Thumbs up to Mozilla for fulfilling their promises to release it today (local time). If you’re wondering about the new features, you can view it at Mozilla Official Site.

P/S: Maybe it’s kinda too late I put this below, but better late than never I guess. Come on, join the initiative to set the world record!!

P/S 2: Well, due to the world record initiative thingy, the mozilla.com site was unreachable from around the world, occasionally responding with the message, “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable”; even the spreadfirefox site is not spared from the outage . It seems ok after a short while; a couple of refresh works for me. More news at the Netcraft’s news section.

Well, depends on what time you read my post here, due to midnight of 4th June (that’s only a couple of hours from the time of my writing), the oil price in Malaysia will rise up to RM2.70 per liter from RM1.92. The Rm0.78 rise or about 40% increase for the ULG 97¹ petrol. Diesel will go up by RM1 from RM1.58 to RM2.58. From what I read, this is all part of the new subsidy plan (announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi). Below are the quote from The Star Online;

Abdullah also announced a RM625 annual cash rebate per vehicle, for owners of private vehicles with engine capacities of up to 2,000cc, as well as pickup trucks and jeeps with engine capacities of up to 2,500cc. Owners of private motorcycles with engine capacities of up to 250cc will receive RM150. Payment will be made via Money Order upon renewal of road tax, from July 1. For owners of private vehicles with engine capacities exceeding 2000cc, road tax will be reduced by RM200. Owners of private motorcycles with engine capacities above 250 cc will get RM50 reduction in road tax.

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