How to use Blue Ocean Strategy in Elections?

Blue Ocean Strategy is a book written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne and became one of the world’s best selling books. In Malaysian context, it is also the favourite book of Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, and he urged Malays in his party General Assembly to adopt its concept. For those who have not heard of the book, it is about creating new market and winning without competition. The author argues that competition with competitors only creates “Red Ocean” and finding untapped market will avoid bloods of fierce fighting and hence creating “Blue Ocean” of opportunities. So can the Blue Ocean Strategy be used in elections? Yes I am talking about elections, isn’t election also a kind of business.

Unlike business, in an election, it is the competition between ruling party and the opposition party(ies). And they are fighting over the majority and need as many vote as possible; the number of votes determines the revenue, and the margin is their profit. Like business, their market is the people (i.e. the public). From the issues either current or old and their manifestation, they will try to create new market. For example, by playing racial game, they will create a market of race based people, by giving out election incentives, they create a market of rent-seekers, by giving out promises, they create a market of anticipators, and by exploding ruling govt’s frauds, they create a market of haters. To them, to win over the election, it is best to win over as much as new market as possible. This is how ruling party and opposition party works, but how voters can create their own new markets to maximize their benefits from the competing parties/candidate? That is the question. Any Solution?

Ijok By- Election: Like Microsoft Vs Open Source

If you ask a computer enthusiast about the by-election in Ijok, what answer can you expect? Lets assume someone that read all sort of political news available online such as that from pro-govt site, opposition site, and not to forget, independent news portals explains to this computer geek about the scenario. How do you think he will explain it to you in non-political way?

He will first scratch his head and may end up telling you about the fight between open source movement and microsoft. He will try to argue that microsoft is always buggy and you pay to get those buggy software. On the other hand, open source software is free, they address many of the issue or functionality that proprietor software offer, although they normally don’t provide after sales services. On the publicity side, microsoft has huge fund with them and they can afford to advertise anywhere, anytime. In comparison, open source movement, with its limited fund, can only go for online promotion. Nevertheless, they aim to get bigger market share and give a stronger competition to microsoft. Microsoft is catchy to new users due to its graphical interface, but these users will start to think again when their microsoft system is hacked, and latter on need to reinstall with microsoft's immediate patch. It is how long you can stand with those patch work and the amount of dependence on microsoft software that will finally decide you to about turn and use open source software. The microsoft people recognise this, and to avoid dropping market share, they will introduce new products as well as preinstall new machines with microsoft products. In addition to that they had also made it easy to do patching and mostly it is automatic. This is psychology tactic to make it hard for them to switch to open source. Anyway up to now Microsoft is still winning the game…

Now, it is quite obvious that Microsoft is Barisan Nasional and the Open Source is Parti Keadilan Rakyat. Now your task is to guess the proper political word/phrase for the bolded words/phrases as this computer enthusiast is not common to those words/phrases… is this fun?

Formula One: Malaysian GP or Singaporean GP?

I am not a person with interest in formula one race. I always get bored with the live telecast of any GP in Malaysian TV (RTM namely) and always curse Malaysian Information Ministry for wasting time showing such events. I don’t know if they are having good ratting for such events or gaining good revenue. Anyhow, the reasons why I don’t like the game are:-

• I get fed-up seeing "Mat Rempit" race on Malaysian road. "Mat Rempit" is a famous calling for Malaysian night illegal road racers. The sounds always disturb me! Can't stand with it anymore!
• Not anyone can play the game except F1 video game! How to get interest of the game if you yourself cannot play it? I don’t even know its rule!
• Why should there be sexy girls showcasing their body before the game starts? To stimulate the driver? No wonder "Mat Rempit" also using the same style!
• Sound pollution - Al Gore need to take note of this in his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth V2.0"

But recently I saw news reports saying Singapore is going to have its own version of formula one GP. In Singaporean version, the race will not be on a dedicated F1 circuit, but rather on public road and will be at night. To me, the main question is why Singapore is eager to have F1? Could these be the possibilities?

• Singapore found that Malaysian "Mat Rempits" are glamorous. However, to save their face, they would like to have something similar but done more professionally. That's why it will be F1 race held at night and on public road!
• Singapore, a country with low birth rate, wants to have more NIGHT life. The F1 sexy girls if seen on public road converted race circuit may stimulate roadside spectators as well as the drivers. The feasibility study may have shown projected higher birth rate. Soon, young Singaporean couples will be mandated to buy Singaporean F1 tickets.
• Singapore Govt has changed its foreign policy to "Look North" policy. This will allow Singapore to copy whatever Malaysia (Singapore's North neighbour) is doing.
• Tit-for-tat action for Malaysia's aim to attract investors coming to Singapore to Johor's Iskandar Development Region (IDR). Since Singapore has labelled Johor as "not safe", it does not want to attract thieves from Johor. So, no choice, need to attract good people from Putrajaya, a place near to Sepang F1 Circuit.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) ... A Solution?

A System may run on many middlewares to support variety of services. These middlewares can be OS platform independent and hence easing deployment and development. However, not all services are developed using the same middleware, possibly to take advantage of support offered in a middleware for the developed domain. Therefore making it possible for set of middleware exist in the system. For this reason, designing and developing such system will be painful and for most of the time, the duration spent on it is much longer than spent on modelling business logics. MDA development methodology allows for concentration on business logics during computation independent modelling(CIM), then UML modelling, independent of platform is done for these CIM and is known as platform independent model (PIM) . The PIM will then be mapped to platform specific model using transformation guided by UML profiles.