Business Policies in IT Infrastructure ruining everything.

Lately I have been seeing a lot of advertisement encouraging Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency as a new age means of transaction or the transaction of the future, as some could call it, and could not help but to wonder, just how much does regular (non-IT) person really know about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Frankly speaking, I do not have a lot of confidence about people's understanding of these subjects (or any subjects related to IT and IT Infrastructure) but what does worries me is their level of ignorance in the matter. Because some things should not be left to ignorance or it could cause a great deal of problems later in life and bitcoin/cryptocurrency, at least in my opinion, is one of those.

So I have decided to write couple of posts about bitcoin and cryptocurrency due to the experience I had in the IT sector when I was starting to enter the job market in late 1990s. This post is the first one but it will touch more toward people, business practices which influence IT Infrastructure and the Society in general, as a sort of background to what I was to say about Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency later.  

People from business sectors had graduated from business schools and entered the IT field, especially in developing countries like Singapore and Malaysia where the IT infrastructure demanded a lot of new talents, which also means that the businesses needs to cough up a lot of money to hire, train and maintain a good number of IT people to support them. 

The college I worked in for example had (by 2004) had eight IT personals (three of them were women and they worked assisting the lecturers) for over 8 computer labs (30 PCs each), about a thousand desktops used by regular staffs, some 2,000 laptops used by lecturers and a hundred or two desktops used in the classroom. Basically, as the IT team, we (all eight of us) were entrusted to assets which worth over a million dollars and those does not include the licensed software and other IT equipment such as printers and such. 

And someone had convinced the business management that it could be easier, less expensive and less problematic if they were to adopt unfamiliar practices such as storing information in the Cloud computing and hiring Outsource agency (or as they are commonly known today as Call-Centers) to do what we were doing on daily basis to maintain their infrastructure. And the business management levels, they actually (stupidly) brought that nonsense and started to downgrade their own IT infrastructure to the level of Maintenance and House-Keeping Department. Another words, we were second only to those people who did not even finish high-school and mop toilets for a daily job. 

By 2018/2019, the newspapers were full of reports of data leaks, photo leaks and cooperate secrets being sold online or to third-party groups interested into buying such information. You may have heard the Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg case in the US Supreme Court but things were very bad in other sectors as well, especially here in South-east Asia. 

In my country (Malaysia) for example, bank information (personal accounts details) as well as medical details, credit card details, financial situations of individuals (as well as small/medium Entrepreneurs or SMEs) and even their expenditure histories were all up for sale for third-party groups who wanted these information to use for their marketing campaigns. Using such data, these telemarketers could then create products and services which are tailor-made for certain individuals (according to their expenditure level). 

The Pandemic (2019 to current time (2022)) have only revealed just how poorly the IT Infrastructure had been structured in South-East Asia (at least). 

If the IT Infrastructure were properly structured, managed, endorsed and managed since the beginning of the 21st century, it could have created a whole new method of dealing with the pandemic in a manner which were more manageable. The IT Infrastructure could have ensure that educational institutes were able to deliver education to the students of all levels properly even from their own homes. Health services could have created monitoring stations in each homes, which when combined with delivery services already existing, could have ensure that the lock-down was not as severe and hard on everyone and the economic initiative could still went on as normal. Farmers could still able to produce their crops with the help from the government and then deliver them to delivery stations to deliver to people who paid for it online. Banking services could not need to close down. Of course small businesses which has no IT Infrastructure such as restaurants, tuisyen centers, kindergartens and small shops could have suffered greatly but in my opinion, the implication of IT Infrastructure into the existing systems could have ensured that some level of economy remain intact throughout the country.

However, the bad policies of the business sector which had been influencing IT development in South-East Asia had caused major problems during the pandemic. Not only it had diluted the IT market with people who are educated in business sector (but with some knowledge of IT) and push these jokers into the position to make decisions for IT infrastructure, it also ruined the IT market with its own idea of IT product, namely with the smartphone industry. There are more shops and businesses today with the label "IT shop" which sells smartphones and its related accessories than there is shops selling IT related equipment and related parts. For every one IT shop in a Mall, you can find at least a dozen smartphone shops in the same place, at least here in Malaysia.

In my opinion, Business-minded people should NOT be in charge of making decisions of IT infrastructure policies. It is simply wrong. Business-minded people have only two main targets in mind - which is to reduce cost and increase profit. That is what Business sector is. That is what Business sector comprises of and revolves around. 

Sure, they could reach those two targets mentioned and it will bring them short-term profits as they could advertise BUT it could also set-up the company, societies and even nations for a greater lost in the long-term. Just ask Mark Zuckerbeg whether it was worth it to sell Facebook User data to a third-party for a profit now. As for today (May 1st, 2022) - Zuckerberg had lost 50% of his wealth in the past 9 months and fell from 3rd richest man to 12th position.

Another example why it is always a bad idea to put business-minded people in IT infrastructure (even if that infrastructure is based on entertainment) is the G4TV meltdown due to one person - Indiana "Froskurinn" Black who hit back at some of the viewers (of G4TV) and accuse them of being sexist. See, this is the problem with talk shows like this. It is hosted by people who has no idea about the game they are reviewing or talking about, and relies solely on the materials given to them (by the writers). They tries to be as "passionate" as possible in their presentation but sometimes, that is not enough, especially when the material you are providing are being viewed by people who actually plays the game and they see it as "wrong presentation". I do not know why some game reviewers could think that the can get away from talking about things that they themselves had not experienced (like playing the actual game).

Some of this viewers are not as matured or rational as others (such as myself who had been playing - and still playing up to the 3rd Decade). So when these immature viewers sees presentation which are incorrect, they get upset and they could lash out at the host (because they cannot see the idiots who wrote it in the first place) and that is how we have incidents like Frost's meltdown in G4TV who felt that she was being targeted by male viewers for being a female (in comparison to more successful hosts like Morgan Webb who was in X-Play series decades before). 

Another fine example of how business-minded people destroying the IT-Infrastructure with their policies can be seen in our (Malaysian) Internet Service Providers (ISP), like Telecom, Unifi and Broadband who operate at a condition which can be considered unethical at best. 

For Example - assuming you are living in an area which had 10 houses (including yours) and none of them have Internet connection in them. Now assuming that you got an internet connection from any of the ISPs mentioned and they promised 100 Mbps (Megabits Per Seconds) for RM200 (which is around USD 46.00) per month. You pay for the connection and you find that your Internet speed does goes up to 100 Mbps as promised (you can find out easily using one of the online Internet Speedtest sites). 

Now, imagine one of the houses near you gets the Internet connection as well. In a proper business environment, another person having the Internet connection should not affect your house Internet speed because you are paying RM200 per month for 100 Mbps, right? Wrong, your Internet speed will drop.

 And if you ask the ISPs about it, they could say that this is because you are now sharing the same mainline as your neighbor. Which means you are now paying RM200 for less-than 100 Mbps and despite of the connection drop, there is no changes on the payment. As more and more households in the area gets the connection, your speed will drop significantly further and the ISPs will give some bullshit excuses like old Routers or modems and such to compensate for their unethical conducts. And the main reason they are getting away with it is because Malaysian people in general are IT-illiterates who are very ignorant of the technology, Cyber-laws and their rights as consumers.

Source : 

https://www.geeksandgamers.com/g4-hides-backlash-from-viewers-after-epic-sexism-in-gaming-meltdown/

https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/digital-economy/the-unfolding-tragedy-of-jaring-malaysia-first-isp

https://chialee.com.my/basics-of-cyber-security-law-in-malaysia/

In the next post, we will look at Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Practice.