From RON97 to RON95?

The Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister has just announced that the current RON92 petrol sold in the country will be replaced by RON95, and selling at the price of RM1.75 per litre. It will be made available nationwide by 1 September 2009.

The price of RON97 super-fuel will also be increased from the current RM1.80 per litre to RM2.00 from 1 September 2009 onwards, which is a rise of 11.11%. This is a drastic move to encourage the people to switch from current RON97 to RON95. It is argued that RON95 can be used in majority of the petrol-fueled cars on the road.

How will be the performance of RON95 compared with RON97? We have no idea yet until we have used the RON95 and benchmark it with RON97.

However, we can make reference to the comparison between Shell Super (RON97) and Shell V-Power (RON98). The information about Shell V-Power is RON98 can be confirmed in Shell Malaysia website (you can click the link to go to the "V-Power Fuel Composition" page in that website).

So what's the different between Shell V-Power (RON98) and Shell Super (RON97)? What will be the different between RON97 and RON95 then?

And no doubt, the Shell V-Power will also be priced higher by 1 September 2009, following the price increase of RON97.

It is a pity that we are told to downgrade the fuel we use in our car from RON97 to RON95, or have to pay a higher price to maintain the same after 1 September 2009. While the global world is moving forward, why we always have a feeling that we are moving backward?

The rise and fall of Borland

I have almost forgotten Borland if not the recent news about it being acquired by UK based Micro Focus for $75 million.

If you have been doing computer programming, especially since the 80's or 90's, there is a very high possibility that you used Borland's product before.

During the good-old DOS time, Borland had been famous with their Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo C++, SideKick, etc. When the Windows time come, Borland continued their popularity with Borland C++, Delphi, C# Builder, JBuilder, etc. They also produced software development tools for Linux, such as Kylix.

Beside being famous in programming tools, Borland had also been the company behind some office productivity products such as Paradox (vs MS Access), Quattro Pro (vs MS Excel), WordPerfect (vs MS Word). They had made attempt to combine these 3 products into Borland Office as rival to Microsoft Office. Later, this office productivity business was sold to Novell in the mid-90's.

During their time of glory, Borland also bought over Ashton-Tate, the company behind the once very famous database software -- dBase & Interbase.

Over the year, Borland gradually lost ground in their competition with Microsoft. Nowadays, Visual Studio succeed in engulfing their software development tools market, and Borland Office has long lost their market to MS Office.

The name of Borland faded in the 2000's, especially after the departure of their founder Philippe Kahn, and was almost forgotten by many programmers who once developing software with their superb products with nice Integrated Development Environment (IDE), especially during the DOS era.

Philippe continued to bring wonders to the world after his departure from Borland in the mid-90's. He has contributed to wireless devices data synchronization technology, invented the first camera phone, and is currently the CEO of Fullpower Technologies, a company focuses in converging life sciences, wireless technology, accelerometrics, nanotechnology and MotionX solutions.

National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009

Organised by Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and managed by My Events Sdn Bhd, the National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009 (Karnival Kerjaya & Keusahawanan Kebangsaan 2009, K3G 2009) to be launched by the prime minister is targeting for the largest career and entrepreneur fair in the country entering the Malaysia Book of Record.

Theme: Realize Your Dream Job
Venue: Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC)
Date: 15- 17 May 2009
Time: 10 am - 7 pm
Dress code: Business casual
Admission: Free

This event provides exhibitors from GLC, corporate company and entrepreneur a great opportunity to meet face to face at one localized place with a variety of talented job seeker and aspiring entrepreneurs from all over the country. The exhibition will also serve as an exclusive platform to showcase exhibitors’ jobs which are in demand in the job market.

The floor plan for this event is as below:


Activities including:

• Resume Clinic
• Stage activities
• Internship corner
• On-the-spot interviews
• Consultations on career and enterpreneurship
• Career talk by industry experts and successful enterpreneurs

Click here for more information about the National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009.