Andre

Friends gave their children (11 & 3) a pc, loaded with daddy's download tools, no (child) protection other than some hacked anti-virus and firewall but they expect the older kid to use the pc for studies. Furthermore, they expect the school to teach about how to use a computer - not only to turn it on but also to stay safe. Of course they also complain that the kids spend too much time playing online games - the 3year old can't read yet but navigates around the web like an adult.

No matter if the schools offer appropriate computer teaching or not, the problem is the combination of parents' lack of knowledge and/or interest about the relation of their kids with computers as well as the well too frequent lax attitude towards illegal copies. Asking for a 200HKD complete computer protection is already too much.

My experience of most parents' lesson to their kids: "get cheap pc, don't pay for software, download illegally, no need to protect, discover by yourself". (More)

A thought about "followers" on Twitter versus "friends" on about most other social (network) services.

There is something seriously wrong with the usage of "friend" when people clean up their social lists by removing 100s of "unknown friends". If those you follow on Twitter become real friends, it's because you have learned something about them or have communicated with them first.

You "follow" people/services because you are interested in their updates. I personally don't believe in the blind following out of courtesy. What I like about Twitter is that it is about "followers" and not like other sites where the whole world is your - often unknown - "friend".

"Thx for follow" tweets can be annoying but when they are links to "thx for follow" pages with video and plenty of ads, it becomes terrible.

You can follow me on Twitter - and just maybe we might become friends.

Some people still don't understand that there is no such thing as "public privacy". Opening online banking accounts on a public terminal such as in coffee shops is NOT a good idea, despite the acces code generator (Security Device) required for logging in and executing transactions.

Poor people of Tung Chung: sweating away in the hot summer temperatures, they are too far on the outskirts of Hong Kong and their place is too young (not taking into account the tiny fishing village it once was) as a town to have a public swimming pool; the nearest public one would be in Tsing Yi. Locals have resorted to play in the CityGate Outlets' shopping mall fountain and (most) children come fully prepared with the right swim gear.

To seemingly taunt them even more, each time the Tung Chung population decides to visit the city by MTR, they will pass an Olympic swimming pool mock-up in the Central MTR station:

However, a public pool project is under way for Tung Chung so in just a few years time - eternity for a child - cooling off options won't be limited to in- and outdoor shopping mall activities anymore (poor parents).

I had a chance opportunity to watch the latest Batman movie The Dark Knight in a Philippines shopping mall theatre. Happy about this and excited to see what everyone's talking about, the afternoon turned into a nightmare to the point of ruining the movie experience. I shall never set foot into a local cinema again, given I was assured there's nothing unusual about all that I experienced.

In short, throughout the movie I had to endure:

• Most of the audience were children aged anywhere from 5-10, having a blast like it would be their own McDonald's birthday party (forget about any movie rating whatsoever);
• People chatting like at a bar on a weekend evening;
• People coming and going like in a train station;
• Mobile phone lights like in a disco (surprisingly no ringtones though);
• The couple next to me was exclusively playing for the first 2/3 of the movie with their mobile phone and then left, not looking once at the big screen;
• People standing up for no reason;
• It was a lot colder than even the freezing Hong Kong theatres with occasional wind blows matching a typhoon.

 (More)