Idul Fitri 2008 1429

Idul Fitri (Eid-ul Fitr, Eid al-Fitr) 2008 / 1429 is three days away. For Indonesian Muslim (and non Muslim alike) it’s the biggest holyday as some offices remain closed for about a week. Many Indonesians who work in the capital or anywhere outside one’s original place are supposed to do mudik or pulang kampung (going home) to meet their respective families, old-days friends and some have a “hidden agenda” of showing off one’s success (in terms of career, achievement, wealth, etc).

In short, Idul Fitri holiday is the most awaited and celebrated days in Indonesia. And for you all, I wish you a Happy Eid and Holyday. Selamat Lebaran. Mohon Maaf Lahir Batin and Happy pulang kampung too.
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Most Corrupt Countries 2008

Being a frontrunner in a good thing is a dream comes true for any achiever. It’s true also if such achievement or underachievement is awarded to a nation or country. An award which is actually not personal but could affect a mixed feeling for any person in earch country ranked by Transparency International yearly report through its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2008 as being the less or most corrupt. Each individual is happy to see one’s country being in the cleanest category and is ashame to see otherwise. Among ASEAN countries, Singapore people should be proud to be at no. 4 in the world followed by Malaysia (47), Thailand (80), Vietnam (121), Indonesia (126) [1], Philippines (141), Timor Leste (145), Laos (151), Cambodia (166), Myanmar (178). The lower the number stands for the less corrupt a country is and vice versa.
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Forbes 2008 World Most Powerful Women

Forbes magazine has this habit to rank the world prominent personalities in various categories and field of influences even on gender basis. This time around Forbes present 100 most powerful women in the world. Prior to this, Forbes has presented the Top 100 Richest People in the World and Top Richest Royals.

Interesting to note, especially for Indonesian, that an Indonesian woman that is Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia’s Coordinating minister for economic affairs and finance minister, has been ranked at no. 23 ahead of such prominent women as Gloria Arroyo, President of the Philippines, ranked at no. 41, Hillary Rodham Clinton (no. 28), Nancy Pelosi, US Speaker of House of Representative (no. 35), Oprah Winfrey (no. 36), Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (no. 38). You may wonder why.
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Pornography Bill

The Indonesia pornography bill–back then called anti-porn bill (anti pornografi dan porno aksi in Indonesian) – which draft had been diluted the first time it’s introduced in 2006 followoing some public outcry seems reemerge again now with stronger message: it will be passed. Hence, another outcry and protests especially from those whose interest might be distracted by this new law if realised. It gains support from parties that may get credit for the enactment of the bill.
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Malaysian Blogger Arrested

[Update 23 September 2008] RPK got two years jail term under the draconian internal security act (ISA).

A Malaysian blogger arrested. The reason as the Deputy Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Ismail Omar put it:

This arrest was made after our investigations showed that he (Raja Petra) did certain things which could cause unrest among the citizens of various races in this country

The blogger named Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) is a popular figure in Malaysia. He’s also a journalist and politician.
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SEO Title for Blogger Blogspot

We need a wordpress plugin to make a SEO[1] title in our wordpress blog and along with it a price. Since we cannot make it until we have our own domain, which is not free. For those blogger / blogspot users, however, you can do it just by a little tweak in the edit-html admin panel.
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Wordpress 2.7 Wish Lists

Although Wordress version 2.6.2 has just been released a few days ago, Ryan Roben, one of Wordperss developers team opens up a little secret that Wordpress 2.7 is on the pipeline. The WP 2.7 promises a whole lot new features including “reply to comments from the admin, threaded comments and new wp_list_comments() API, automatic plugin install and integrated plugin browser, automatic upgrade of WordPress” and many more.
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Common Ground News

If you want to be a world op-ed writer and feel confused as to where to send your articles, commongroundnews.org is the answer. The procedure is simple: write a 700-words article and submit it here. If your piece found to be eligible to be circulated by the Common Ground News or CGNEWS editors, you’d find your writing published everywhere around the world and not only in English since your op-ed will also be translated into many languages, including Bahasa Indonesia.
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Pop-up and Pop-under Ads

Every now and then I still do a blogwalking–though less frequently than it was– and I am a bit disturbed by some blogs I visited have a pop-up or pop-under ads in their websites/blogs from clicksor, game or porn sites. This is true and happens a lot especially to those who use blogger.com / blogspot. Obviously, it’s not the Google’s blogger.com/blogspot which install them. When I asked some of blog owners, they didn’t install the ads either. My suspicion is there must be a third party free services which hide the ads code into the javascript.
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Who’s the Best Indonesian President?

On 9 April 2009 another general election will be held in Indonesia after which we will have another new democratically elected president. Since gaining its Independence from Japan in 1945, and sucessfully defended the Dutch attack in 1949, Indonesia-barring Suharto and Habibie- has democratically elected six presidents. All presidents of course has their own plus and flipside. Having said that, there should be one or two who one thinks had the best performance & capability as the head of state of the country.
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